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# The interplay between shell effects and electron correlations in quantum dots

## I Introduction

The advances in nanofabrication of the last years opened the goal to build 2D quantum dots (QDs) and quantum dot molecules (QDMs) – artificial mesoscopic semiconductor structures of selectable shape and size – as containers for a controllable fixed number of electrons . Recently, depending on the strength and shape of the effective confining potential, the formation of spin density waves (SDWs)  and Wigner crystals  in QDs and QDMs has been predicted by different groups with different theoretical approaches. Hirose and Wingreen  argue that SDWs are reproducible artefacts of spin density functional calculations. For a 2D parabolic confining potential the accordance of the spin-configuration with Hund’s Rule has been predicted by Koskinen, Manninen, and Reimann  and questioned by Yannouleas and Landman. All these effects are governed by the intriguing interplay between shell effects, the pure coulomb repulsion, and the fermionic repulsion due to the Pauli exclusion principle and depend strongly on the values of the interaction parameters in the commonly for single QDs assumed Hamiltonian

$$H=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\left(\frac{𝐩_i^2}{2m^{}}+\frac{m^{}\omega _0^2}{2}𝐱_i^2\right)+\underset{i<j=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{e^2}{\kappa |𝐱_i𝐱_j|}$$
(1)
where $`\kappa `$ is the dielectric constant, $`m^{}`$ is the effective mass, and $`\omega _0`$ defines the strength of the confining potential.

Apart from the interesting physical questions that arise for quantum dots the reliable prediction of their properties is an ultimate test of modern methods in quantum chemistry. Due to the compared to atoms very shallow confining potential long range electron interactions and correlations play an important role in QDs and QDMs. Therefore it is misleading to name them artificial atoms and molecules. Well established and very elaborate methods of quantum chemistry might fail in describing them properly. Hartree-Fock and spin density functional methods use single Slater determinants or sums of them to approximate the many-body wave function. In spin-density functional methods the approximation of the functional for the exchange correlation energy  adds another source of uncertainty and systematic errors to this approach. The Path Integral Monte Carlo method (PIMC) used in this paper samples the full many-body wave function instead.

In contrast to density functional methods with PIMC it is possible to study the temperature dependent properties of QDs. The reason why PIMC is not yet a standard method of quantum chemistry is its numerical limitation due to the fermion sign problem. The rapidly increasing power of modern computers resizes this limitation. In sec. II we briefly summarize our implementation of PIMC and comment on how to limit the numerical deficiencies due to the fermion sign problem.

We apply PIMC to calculate the electron density and two-particle correlation functions for quantum dots with up to 12 electrons. To compare to various experimental as well as to other theoretical studies we use different dielectric constants $`\kappa `$ and strengths of the confining parabolic potentials. The calculated addition energies are in very good agreement with the experimental findings of Tarucha et al. .

For $`N=6`$ we investigate the temperature dependence of the Wigner crystallization (WC).

## II Numerical method

For a system of $`N`$ electrons with position eigenket $`\stackrel{}{x}_i,s_i`$ ($`s_i=\pm \frac{1}{2}`$ for spin-up and spin-down electrons) in an external potential the Feynman path integral can be written as

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \left[\underset{\gamma =1}{\overset{M}{}}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\mathrm{d}\stackrel{}{x}_i(\gamma )\right]\underset{\delta =1}{\overset{M}{}}det(A(\delta ,\delta +1))}`$ (2)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\beta }{M}}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha =1}{\overset{M}{}}}V(\stackrel{}{x}_1(\alpha ),\mathrm{},\stackrel{}{x}_N(\alpha ))\right)+𝒪\left({\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^3}{M^2}}\right)`$ (3)
with

$`(A(\alpha ,\alpha +1))_{i,j}`$ (4)
$`=\{\begin{array}{cc}\stackrel{}{x}_i(\alpha )\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\beta }{M}\frac{𝐩^2}{2m}\right)\stackrel{}{x}_j(\alpha +1):\hfill & \hfill s_i=s_j\\ 0:\hfill & \hfill s_js_j\end{array}`$ (7)
and the boundary condition $`\stackrel{}{x}_j(M+1)=\stackrel{}{x}_j(1)`$. $`M`$ is the number of so-called timeslices of the Feynman paths. In the limit $`M\mathrm{}`$ Eq. (2) becomes exact. For quantum dots the space dimension is d=2 and the (2NM)-dimensional integral given in (2) can be evaluated by standard Metropolis Monte Carlo techniques. Due to the determinant the integrand is not always positive and the expectation value of an observable $`X(𝐱)`$ depending only on position operators has to be calculated using

$$X=\frac{_{g=1}^GX_g\mathrm{sign}(W_g)}{_{g=1}^G\mathrm{sign}(W_g)}$$
(8)
where $`X_g`$ is the value of the observable $`X`$ and $`W_g`$ is the value of the integrand in (2) in the g’th Monte Carlo step. Eq. (8) reveals a severe problem connected with the path integral for fermions which is commonly denoted as the fermion sign problem (see e.g. ). It can be shown that the ratio between integrands with positive sign ($`W^+`$) and negative sign ($`W^{}`$) is approximately given by

$$\frac{W^+W^{}}{W^++W^{}}\mathrm{exp}(\beta (E_FE_B))$$
(9)
where $`E_F`$ and $`E_B`$ are the ground state energies of the Fermi system and the corresponding Bose system. It is now obvious that the statistical error in (8) grows rapidly for small temperatures $`T`$. Moreover the energy difference $`(E_FE_B)`$ will grow with increasing system size causing an increase of the statistical error.

Within PIMC the calculation of the kinetic energy expectation value is another critical task. This is merely due to the fact that the Monte Carlo calculation is usually done in position space and that the discretization of the paths allows a number of different approaches to calculate the expectation value of a momentum dependent operator. A number of various different energy estimators has been discussed in the past .

To avoid these difficulties we developed a procedure which allows the calculation of all energy expectation values from the knowledge of the pair correlation functions

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{i,j}(r)=\delta (r\stackrel{}{x}_i\stackrel{}{x}_j)$$
(10)
and the radial density functions per electron

$$\rho _i(r)=\frac{1}{2\pi r}\delta (r\stackrel{}{x}_i)=\frac{1}{2\pi r}\varrho (r),$$
(11)
where $`\varrho `$ is the probability of finding electron $`i`$ in distance $`r`$ from the center.

Due to the particle symmetry we have

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{i,j}(r)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(r):& s_i=s_j=+\frac{1}{2}\hfill \\ \hfill \mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(r):& s_i=s_j=\frac{1}{2}\hfill \\ \hfill \mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(r):& s_is_j\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
and

$$\rho _i(r)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \rho ^{}(r):& s_i=+\frac{1}{2}\hfill \\ \hfill \rho ^{}(r):& s_i=\frac{1}{2}\hfill \end{array}.$$
(13)
Utilizing the hypervirial theorem of Hirschfelder  the energy can be written as a sum of ten parts

$`E`$ $`=`$ $`E_{\mathrm{kin}}^{}+E_{\mathrm{kin}}^{}+E_{\mathrm{kin}}^{}+E_{\mathrm{kin}}^{}+E_{\mathrm{kin}}^{}`$ (15)
$`+E_{\mathrm{pot}}^{}+E_{\mathrm{pot}}^{}+E_{\mathrm{pot}}^{}+E_{\mathrm{pot}}^{}+E_{\mathrm{pot}}^{}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N^{}}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dr\varrho ^{}(r)r_rV_1(r)+{\displaystyle \frac{N^{}}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dr\varrho ^{}(r)r_rV_1(r)`$ (23)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{N^{}(N^{}1)}{4}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dr\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(r)r{\displaystyle \frac{V_2(r)}{r}}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{N^{}(N^{}1)}{4}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dr\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(r)r{\displaystyle \frac{V_2(r)}{r}}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{N^{}N^{}}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dr\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(r)r{\displaystyle \frac{V_2(r)}{r}}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{N^{}}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dr\varrho ^{}(r)V_1(r)+{\displaystyle \frac{N^{}}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dr\varrho ^{}(r)V_1(r)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{N^{}(N^{}1)}{2}}{\displaystyle dr\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(r)V_2(r)}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{N^{}(N^{}1)}{2}}{\displaystyle dr\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(r)V_2(r)}`$
$`+N^{}N^{}{\displaystyle dr\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}(r)V_2(r)}`$
While in density functional approaches the calculation of the kinetic energy and the exchange correlation energy is a major topic and subject to permanent discussion, within the path integral approach these energies are included in a natural way.
However, the systematic error arising from the limited number of timeslices $`M`$ and the statistical error of the Monte Carlo calculation have to be controlled carefully. We checked our algorithm extensively using eight non-interacting fermions in a parabolic trap as a test system. We found that at low temperatures where the ratio of signs is around 0.99, convergence can only be achieved obeying the following rules: 1) The determinants have to be calculated very accurately using a more costly algorithm with pivoting. 2) The completely uncorrelated generation of the Monte Carlo steps is essential, i.e. the coordinate to be moved should be chosen randomly. Moving the particle coordinates using always the same sequence produces inaccurate results. 3) A good random number generator with a completely uncorrelated sequence in all significant bits of a 64 bit real number should be applied. We therefore developed a 53 bit random number of Marsaglia-Zaman type instead of using one of the standard 24 or 32 bit random number generators coming with standard system libraries. 4) Further, to improve the convergence a number of different Monte Carlo steps can be applied, i.e. moving single time slices, moving complete particle paths and parts of a path.
Our Fortran-code is completely parallelized using MPI and Lapack.

## III Results

To compare our PIMC calculations to experimental data we calculated the addition energies

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E=E_{N+1}2E_N+E_{N1}$$
(24)
of a QD with up to 11 electrons using the material constants $`m^{}=0.067m`$ and $`\kappa `$ = 12.9 for GaAs as given by Hirose and Wingreen . It is assumed that these parameters mimic the experimental setup of Tarucha et al.  reasonably well. The strength of the harmonic potential is fixed at $`\mathrm{}\omega _0`$ = 3.0 meV. The resulting effective atomic units are $`E_H^{}`$ = 10.955 meV for the Hartree energy and $`a_0^{}`$ = 10.1886 nm for the Bohr radius. The Boltzmann constant is $`k_B=7.8661\times 10^3E_H^{}/\mathrm{K}`$.

We performed PIMC simulations for quantum dots with different spin configurations at a fixed temperature of 10 K. Due to the fermion sign problem the number of Monte Carlo steps necessary to push the statistical error of the total energy, which has been calculated properly from 25 uncorrelated subsequences of MC steps, into the range of 0.1 percent is extremely high. The number of Monte Carlo steps ranged between 2.5 billion steps per particle coordinate for $`N6`$ and about 10 billion steps for $`N=12`$. Fig. 1 displays the addition energies for quantum dots with up to 11 electrons. The circles indicate the results from our path integral calculations at 10 K, the squares are results of spin density functional calculations of Hirose and Wingreen , and the triangles are the experimental results of Tarucha et al. .

Both theoretical calculations reproduce the general $`N`$-dependence of the addition energies in great detail. Tarucha et al. give an estimate of the electron temperature in their experiments of $`T=0.2`$ K. For computational reasons our PIMC calculations are performed at 10 K and it cannot be expected that the absolute energy values agree as well as the 0 K DFT calculations with the experimental results. However, it should be noted that PIMC correctly predicts the drop in the addition energy from $`N=7`$ to $`N=8`$ while the DFT calculations fail at this point.

The inset in Fig. 1 displays the total spins of the spin configurations with lowest energy as found in DFT and PIMC at 10 K. In DFT calculations (0 K) the spin configuration of the ground state is determined by Hund’s rule for up to 22 electrons. In contrast, in our PIMC calculation at 10 K the total spin is not always in accordance with Hund’s rule. For $`N=4`$ we checked the temperature dependence of the spin configuration. At 5 K the energy of the spin 0 configuration is 0.01 $`E_H^{}`$ higher than the spin 1 energy indicating a temperature dependence of the favored spin configuration.

As an important fact we note that the $`N`$-dependence of the addition energies is not affected by the actual spin configuration. The situation is quite similar to that in transition metal clusters with extreme small energy differences between states with significantly different magnetic moments .

As can be inferred from Fig. 2(a) the radial spin densities are significantly different for both spin configurations. The total potential energy for the spin 1 configuration is about 0.07 meV lower than that of the spin 0 configuration. At 10 K this is overcompensated by an 0.27 meV higher kinetic energy (see Tab. I). Although the kinetic and potential energies for different total spins significantly differ the total energies are almost equal. Similar situations are found for larger $`N`$.

For convenience and easy comparision we determined the value of the dimensionless density parameter $`r_s`$, which is sometimes used to characterize quantum dots (see e.g. ) to be $`r_s`$=4.19 for $`N=4`$.

The energies given in Tab. I correspond to the integrals in Eq. 15. The total kinetic energy which is the sum of all $`E_{\mathrm{kin}}^x`$ terms is always positive while some of the addends might be negative. Tab. I reveals that larger total spins result in larger kinetic energies. The total potential energy is almost unchanged, the larger contribution from the trap potential is compensated by a smaller contribution from the Coulomb repulsion. We note that the ratio $`E_\mathrm{W}`$ between the kinetic energy and the total energy is considerably larger for $`N=4`$ than for $`N=9`$ reflecting the looser binding of the smaller system.

Next we consider the dependence of the Wigner crystallization on the temperature and the choice of the material constants. The localization of the electrons in space is commonly referred as Wigner crystallization. For quantum dots the occurrence of well separated humps in the radial electron density and the pair correlation functions has been interpreted as WC. However, it is a nontrivial task to find a general parameter identifying if an electron system is crystallized or not. From a solid state physics point of view the electrons should have a low mobility, i.e. a small kinetic energy, and should not interchange their lattice positions. For fermions the localization of single electrons does not make any sense, and, as stated above, even the decomposition of the many body wave function in sums of determinants of single particle wave functions is probably a too rough approximation for QDs. These facts limit the analogies between crystallization in solids and electron systems and make the term crystallization  itself somehow misleading. We therefore view Wigner crystals as states of the many body wave function with a relatively low kinetic energy.

First we consider the strength of the Wigner crystallization depending on the choice of the interaction parameters. Fig. 3 displays the radial densities and pair correlation functions for six electrons with $`S`$=0, $`\mathrm{}\omega `$=5 meV and $`\kappa `$=3.0, 6.0, and 12.9. Of course, for stronger electron repulsions (small $`\kappa `$) the electron distributions are broadened. The qualitative picture of the distributions is merely the same. For all $`\kappa `$ shell effects indicated by off-center maximums of the radial density occur. However, only for $`\kappa `$=3 and 6 we observe a maximum at $`r`$=0. From our point of view it cannot definitely be decided from this figure if a system is Wigner crystallized or not. As a parameter reflecting the strength of the WC we employ the ratios between the kinetic and the total energies $`E_\mathrm{W}=E_{\mathrm{kin}}/E_{\mathrm{tot}}`$ which are 0.07, 0.10 and 0.14 for $`\kappa `$=3.0, 6.0 and 12.9. Although the radial distribution function for $`\kappa =`$12.9 is quite narrow, the relative mobility for the electrons indicated by $`E_\mathrm{W}`$ is twice as large as for $`\kappa =`$3. The underlying physical process can be understood intuitively. Due to the stronger electron-electron repulsions the electrons are fixed in an energetical favorable geometric configuration and as a consequence thereof the relative kinetic energy is reduced and the difference between the pair correlation functions of equal and oppposite spin almost vanishes (see Fig. 3).

It is an interesting and to our knowledge open question, if the crystallization of electrons can be viewed as a phase transition. We therefore consider next the temperature dependent properties of a quantum dot with N=6, S=0, $`\kappa `$=3 and $`\mathrm{}\omega `$=5 meV. The results for temperatures between 10 and 150 K are presented in Tab. II. Most notably $`E_\mathrm{W}`$ increases relatively smoothly from 0.07 at 10 K to 0.22 at 150 K. Within our numerical accuracy the caloric curve does not show any evidence of a phase transition. The transition from a crystallized state to an electron fluid seems to be squashy. Of course, from our calculations we cannot exclude that a phase transition exists for larger $`N`$ or different interaction parameters. Fig. 4 displays the radial electron densities and the total electron pair correlation function for different temperatures. Up to 60 K the radial density shows clear geometric structure effects with two maximums while at 150 K only a smooth curve resembling to a simple gaussian remains.

## IV Conclusion

In conclusion, we have found that despite of the notorious fermion sign problem PIMC is capable to answer interesting questions for strongly correlated electron systems like QDs and QDMs. For QDs PIMC reproduces correctly the experimental addition energies. Our temperature dependent calculations give new insights into the process of WC. For the 2-dimensional QDs a ratio $`E_\mathrm{W}=E_{\mathrm{kin}}/E_{\mathrm{tot}}`$ below 0.1 seems to indicate WC both for $`\kappa `$ and temperature dependent calculations. However, reagarding this aspect a more firm classification parameter e.g. similary to the Lindemann criterion is desirable.

A comparision to other QMC methods seems to be in order here. Even our most complicated simulations took less than two hours on a Cray T3E with 62 processors. Taking the advantages of modern computer power and optimized software, the brute force PIMC applied here is able to produce very precise results. Different algorithms have been published to improve the performance of path integral methods. A recent one is the Multi-Level Blocking method published by Mak et al. . Simulations using this algorithm are expected to converge better than our direct treatment since the fermion sign problem is avoided partially. The published results of the treatment of quantum dots by Egger et al.  do not confirm this expectation. Obviously the advantages of the new method are more than compensated by other numerical problems, maybe due to the energy estimator used . Nevertheless, a combination of the Multi-Level-Blocking method and our technique might result in a very powerful tool.

## V Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the Regionales Rechenzentrum Niedersachsen and the Konrad Zuse Institut Berlin for their excellent computer support and E. R. Hilf for stimulating discussions.


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# On dust-correlated Galactic emission in the Tenerife data

## 1 Introduction

A small, but significant correlation of existing Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data with maps of Galactic dust emission has been detected. It is important to understand the origin, and hence the characteristics of any Galactic emission present in CMB maps with structure on angular scales relevant to CMB measurements. With such information, we can attempt to remove these contaminating emissions from the data, to be left with a pure CMB map.

Cross-correlating the COBE DMR maps with DIRBE far-infrared maps, Kogut et al (1996a,b) discovered that statistically significant correlations did exist at each DMR frequency, but that the frequency dependence was inconsistent with vibrational dust emission alone and strongly suggestive of additional dust-correlated free-free emission ($`\beta _{ff}=2.15`$). A number of recent microwave observations have also shown that these correlations are not strongly dependent on angular scale. Different experiments ( DMR: Kogut et al. 1996b; 19GHz: de Oliviera-Costa et al. 1998; Saskatoon: de Oliviera-Costa et al. 1997; MAX5: Lim et al. 1996; OVRO: Leich et al. 1997), together give, with $`95\%`$ confidence, $`3.6<\beta _{radio}<1.3`$, consistent with free-free emission over the frequency range 15-50 GHz. However if the source of this correlated emission is indeed free-free, it is expected that a similar correlation should exist between $`H_\alpha `$ and dust maps. Several authors have found that these data sets are only marginally correlated (McCallough 1997 and Kogut 1997). Thus, most of the correlated emission appears to come from another source.

Draine and Lazarian (1998a,b) suggest that the correlated emission could originate from spinning dust grains. This model predicts a microwave emission spectrum that peaks at low microwave frequencies, the exact location of the peak depending on the size distribution of dust grains, and has a spectral index between -3.3 and -4, over the frequency range 15-50 GHz (Draine and Lazarian 1998b, Kogut 1999). The spectral indices obtained from various experiments do not seem to conform too well to the spinning dust model alone. However, recently de Oliveira-Costa et al (1999) (hereafter DOC99) claim to have found evidence of the spinning dust origin of DIRBE-correlated emission using the Tenerife 10 and 15GHz data. They find a rising spectrum from 10GHz to 15GHz, which is indicative of a spinning dust origin, as opposed to a free-free origin, for the dust-correlated Galactic foreground at these frequencies. In this paper, we use the most recent Tenerife data to show that the correlated emission is not necessarily indicative of spinning dust.

## 2 The data and Galactic templates

Tenerife is a double differencing experiment that takes data by drift scanning in right-ascension at each declination. Data are taken every $`1^{}`$ in RA and at intervals of $`2.5^{}`$ in Dec. We used the Tenerife 10GHz and 15GHz data in the region, $`32.5^{}<`$Dec$`<42.5^{}`$, and $`0^{}<`$RA$`<360^{}`$, with point sources subtracted and baselines removed. The Tenerife experiment has beams of FWHM $`4.9^{}`$ and $`5.2^{}`$ for the 10 and 15GHz experiments respectively, with a differencing angle of $`8.1^{}`$ between east and west positions on the sky to make up the final triple beam (Jones et al (1998)).

Figure 1 shows the patch of sky covered by the experiment in Galactic projection. Figure 2 shows the dust data and the Tenerife data at all the five declinations where data have been taken. We have extended the analysis presented in Gutierrez et al (1999) to also cover a region outside the high latitude range ($`b>40^{}`$) that they use to constrain CMB fluctuations. Therefore, the data we have used are different from that used in DOC99 as they did not extend the coverage of the raw data processing to be outside this range. This is one of the reasons we would expect differences between our results and those of DOC99. A great advantage of using the Tenerife data to constrain the spectral index of the dust-correlated component lies in the fact that similar angular scales and the same patch of the sky can be used. This is not the case when the correlation from different experiments are compared. Therefore, we have not used the two further declinations covered by the 15GHz data set (Decs $`30^{}`$ and $`45^{}`$), but not by the 10GHz data, avoiding any effect from features present in these declination strips. However, we have redone the calculations using these extra declinations and there was no significant difference with the results presented in this paper.

When looking at Figure 2, a difference between the two sides of the RA range, at almost all declinations is apparent. The rise (drop because of the double differencing) of the Galactic signal towards low Galactic latitude seen in the convolved dust maps on both sides of the RA range is only followed on one side by the Tenerife data. The Tenerife Galactic signal shows a stronger Galactic centre / anti-centre difference and a variation with declination which is different compared to the dust template with a particularly strong feature at Dec $`42.5^{}`$. Also note that the noisier 10GHz data show a wider spread toward low Galactic latitude, which does not appear systematically Galactic, at least when compared to the Galactic dust template. This may be due to a systematic error in the Tenerife data that is not fully represented by the error bars.

The Galactic templates used are the destriped DIRBE+IRAS $`100\mu `$m template of dust emission (Schlegel, Finkbeiner and Davis 1998), the 408MHz survey of synchrotron emission (Haslam et. al. 1981), and the 1420MHz survey of synchrotron emission (Reich $`\&`$ Reich, 1988, hereafter $`R\&R`$). We used the cleaned and destriped versions of the synchrotron emission maps by Lawson, Mayer, Osborne & Parkinson (1987).

## 3 Correlation analysis and results

### 3.1 The method

Assuming that the microwave data consist of a super-position of CMB, noise and Galactic components, we can write

$$y=aX+x_{CMB}+n.$$

Here $`y`$ is a data vector of $`N`$ pixels, $`X`$ is an $`N\times M`$ element matrix containing $`M`$ foreground templates convolved with the Tenerife beam, $`a`$ is a vector of size $`M`$ that represents the levels at which these foreground templates are present in the Tenerife data, $`n`$ is the noise in the data and $`x_{CMB}`$ is due to the CMB convolved with the beam. The noise and CMB are treated as uncorrelated.

The minimum variance estimate of a is

$$\widehat{a}=[X^TC^1X]^1X^TC^1y,$$

with errors given by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{a}_i=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{ii}^{1/2}`$ where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is given as,

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }=<\widehat{a}^2><\widehat{a}>^2=[X^TC^1X]^1.$$

$`C`$ above is the total covariance matrix (the sum of the noise covariance matrix and the CMB covariance matrix). The noise covariance matrix of the Tenerife data is taken to be diagonal, and the CMB covariance matrix is obtained through Monte-Carlo simulations with 10000 CMB realizations (this can of course be found analytically as well, as in DOC99). In all the above equations $`X`$ and $`y`$ are actually deviations of the corresponding quantities from the weighted mean with weights111We have tried a variety of different weighting schemes, including uniform weights, to check our method and all results found were within the $`68\%`$ confidence limits of those presented in the paper. given by $`C^1`$ (this is different to DOC99 who use the actual $`X`$ and $`y`$ in the analysis). It should be noted that there may be other components of emission present in the data so that the errors we consider here are only lower limits. Also, the templates that we are using may not be perfect and we do not account for possible uncorrelated structure in $`C`$. If there are other non-Gaussian components present in the data then the minimum variance estimate of $`a`$ will be incorrect.

### 3.2 Results

Listed in Table 1 are the correlation coefficients obtained for the Tenerife data sets and the $`100\mu m`$ DIRBE template, the Haslam, and the $`R\&R`$, with each Galactic template taken individually. Table 2 shows the correlation coefficients obtained when fits are done for two templates jointly. The DIRBE and Haslam correlations correspond to joint $`100\mu m`$-Haslam fits, whereas the $`R\&R`$ values correspond to joint $`100\mu mR\&R`$ fits. $`\mathrm{\Delta }T=(\widehat{a}\pm \mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{a})\sigma _{Gal}`$ is the amplitude of fluctuations in temperature in the Tenerife data, that results from the correlation ($`\sigma _{Gal}`$ being the $`rms`$ deviation of the template map). The analysis is done for different Galactic cuts. Only positive Galactic latitudes are used in these tables as the Tenerife data do not extend below a $`b`$ of $`32^{}`$.

From Table 1, we see that correlations with each of the three templates are detected with high significance. However these correlations fall off in significance towards higher Galactic latitudes. For comparison, the rms of the 10GHz data (after subtracting noise) for $`b>20^{}`$ is $`181\pm 9\mu K`$ (the error is due to a $`5\%`$ calibration uncertainty). If the templates are not significantly correlated with each other, one would conclude that 40% of the signal at 10 GHz is Galactic emission from Table 1. It should be noted that the correlation between the DIRBE and Haslam Galactic templates is significant for all Galactic cuts although if the dust and free-free emissions (or spinning dust) are 100% correlated then the Galactic emission would still only account for 50% of the total emission (assuming that all of the Galactic foregrounds present at this frequency are present in either the Haslam or DIRBE templates).

We also see that the DIRBE-correlated component has slightly higher significance than the Haslam or $`R\&R`$-correlated components near the Galactic plane for both the data sets. Away from the Galactic plane, at 10 GHz, the component correlated to the Haslam map becomes dominant (for $`b>20^{}`$) whereas at 15 GHz the DIRBE component remains dominant. However, there is almost no significant correlated emission beyond this Galactic cut.

### 3.3 Discussion

It is seen from Table 1 that individual correlations with dust do not show a rising (spinning dust) spectrum with significance between 10 and 15 GHz for any Galactic cut. From the joint $`100\mu mHaslam`$ correlations (Table 2), we see that it appears as if there is some evidence for a rising spectrum of dust-correlated emission only for the $`b>20^{}`$ cut (as reported by DOC99). Spectral indices inferred from the correlation coefficients are listed in Table 3. Errors are small close to the Galactic plane. However, the values do not consistently agree with the spectral indices of any one of the three Galactic emission components, -2.8 for synchrotron, -2.1 for free-free and positive for spinning dust, for example +1 if the peak is at 20 GHz, that could be expected to be present as contaminating emissions in CMB data.

From Table 3 we see that the value of the spectral index inferred from the DIRBE-correlated component at 10 and 15 GHz is negative for most Galactic cuts (the correlations for $`b>30^{}`$ and $`b>40^{}`$ are not significant, so it was not possible to infer a spectral index222 No significant correlations were obtained even for the $`b>25^{}`$ cut, indicating that only a small region near $`b`$ $`20^{}`$ Galactic latitude is correlated.). From the positive value of the spectral index for $`b>20^{}`$ DOC99 conclude that spinning dust is responsible for producing the major part of the DIRBE-correlated emission. However, since the spectral indices inferred for all other Galactic cuts are negative, a specific model of the spatial distribution of spinning dust would be required to explain the data. On the other hand it could also be that in the $`b`$-range where the Galactic signal in the Tenerife data drops the estimation of the spectral index becomes more sensitive to systematic effects we have not accounted for. To decide this we focus in on the $`b>20^{}`$ range and divide the data further. It should be noted that these spectral indices were found using the values for $`\widehat{a}`$ and not $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$ as the beam sizes between the 10 and 15GHz data sets are slightly different giving rise to a lower expected $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$ (although the same relative level of contamination and hence $`\widehat{a}`$) at 15 GHz than at 10 GHz which would systematically bias the values obtained.

When we examine the spectral indices obtained from the component correlated to the Haslam map at the two frequencies, we find that the values from the individual analysis are less negative than expected for synchrotron emission (Table 3). Joint correlation of the $`100\mu `$m dust and Haslam maps with the data result in spectral indices that are steeper than expected for synchrotron. This seems to imply that most of the emission in the 15GHz data that is correlated with the Haslam map is also correlated with the DIRBE maps (this is expected as the region that correlates lies close to the Galactic plane), leading to a much lower value of $`\widehat{a}`$ for the synchrotron-correlated component than expected at 15GHz (and hence a much steeper spectrum). This may simply be because dust-correlated emission is more significant in the 15GHz data. Similarily since the Haslam -correlated emission is more significant at 10 GHz, the joint correlation method gives a lower value of $`\widehat{a}`$ for the dust-correlated component and a correspondingly higher value for the synchrotron-correlated component. Being able to correct for this effect might therefore sort the systematic discrepancy. However, since we see this discrepancy with the synchrotron spectral index we should be wary of the dust template correlation as well.

If we now consider the DIRBE template to be an exact predictor for either spinning dust or free-free emission (so that all the features present in this template are present in the Tenerife data; as we are assuming when performing the correlation analysis) then the level of ‘contamination’ $`a`$ will be independent of the region tested. This means that each value of $`a`$ in Table 1 should be the same for the 10 and 15GHz data respectively. We can therefore take the variance of $`a`$ across the different regions analysed as a measure of the error in this method, and find that weighted mean and rms at 10 GHz and 15 GHz are 157 (20) and 122 (10) $`\mu `$K / (MJy sr-1) respectively. This would correspond to a spectral index of $`0.6_{0.5}^{+0.5}`$.

### 3.4 Further study of the $`b>20^{}`$ cut region

We now divide the data into halves in RA, which gives two regions, one towards the Galactic centre and one towards the Galactic anticentre, at each declination. Repeating our analysis on these data we quantify the visual impression from Figure 2. Although the rise of the Galactic plane signal is equally strong in both regions of the dust template, we only find a significant correlation with the 10 and 15GHz data in the Galactic centre region, in spite of the fact that the noise errors in both regions are comparable. The results of this analysis are listed in table 4. It is seen that of the five declination stripes in the centre region only the three at higher declination are significantly correlated. The anticentre regions are found to be uncorrelated or even significantly anticorrelated in two stripes, which again demonstrates that the structure is not correlated rather than that our sensitivity is reduced when dividing the data. Again if we take the weighted mean and rms in the value of $`a`$ between declinations, we get 197 (66) and 157 (91) $`\mu `$K / (MJy sr-1) for the centre regions at 10 and 15 GHz respectively, giving a spectral index of $`0.6_{2.8}^{+2.2}`$. The variation between declinations is high and the spectral index thus obtained is consistent with both free-free and spinning dust models.

We perform yet another split of the data in an attempt to identify the region where the correlation mainly comes from. It was found that the 20 pixels at lowest Galactic latitude of all declinations taken together (100 pixels) gave significant correlations, while the remaining pixels (750) gave no correlation (see table 5). Again the spectral index for dust-correlated emission is small and negative, while that for emission correlated to the Haslam map is steeper than expected. Since it is clear that the different declinations correlate differently, correlating them together is incorrect. Hence, shown also in table 5 are the values obtained for the same analysis on the 20 pixels at lowest Galactic latitude of each declination. Even though the signal to noise is much lower here, it is clear that the Galactic plane signal correlates with a free-free like spectral index while the rest of the pixels shows a significant anti-correlation with dust at 10 GHz for some declinations. The Galaxy correlates positively while the remaining regions correlate negatively or insignificantly. It is clear from analysing such splits that the correlation coefficients obtained when taking all declinations together as in tables 1 & 2 ($`b>20^{}`$) and in table 4 & 5, and which seem to indicate an almost flat or less negative spectral index between 10 and 15 GHz, are composed of regions that correlate with a negative spectral index and regions that do not correlate significantly at all. The anti-correlation, which occurs mostly in the 10GHz data, lowers the combined best fit $`a`$ value at that frequency, and hence raises the spectral index of dust-correlated emission. Note here that the high values of ’a’ obtained need not to be in contradiction to the level of free-free allowed by Hα as the detections are all close to the Galactic plane, where the level of free-free is expected to be high. We still see a large variance between the three declinations which correlate significantly. If we take the weighted mean and rms of the highest three declinations as indicative of a composite correlation, we get 313 (172) and 219 (83) $`\mu `$K / (MJy sr-1) at 10 GHz and 15 GHz respectively, giving a spectral index of $`0.9_{2.2}^{+2.8}`$, again consistent with both free-free and spinning dust. Note that this value was obtained from the weighted average of three pairs of numbers shown in table 5, where each pair indicated a negative spectral index. The spectral index obtained simultaneously for the component correlated to the Haslam map is consistent within 1 $`\sigma `$ with the synchrotron spectral index.

Given that the dust templates correlate with the data only in a small part of the Tenerife patch above $`b=20^{}`$ we further test, how physically meaningful the detection is. This is important because the spectral index of a component in this method is inferred by assuming that the difference in the correlation amplitude between the frequencies is solely due to the change of emissivity of a single physical component and is not due to a spurious change in the strength of the correlation.

## 4 Sky rotations

Another way to test for systematic errors in the method is to take random samples from the Galactic templates themselves as ”Monte Carlo” simulations. The advantage is that we can test against chance correlations with typical structure in the templates without having to understand the templates to a degree that would allow us to model this structure. Since the rise of the signal towards the Galactic plane clearly is a strong feature in the data and high Galactic latitude correlations are at best weak, we correlate to rotated / flipped maps in the northern and southern hemispheres, which all have the same orientation relative to the Galactic plane. Figure 3 shows $`\widehat{a}`$ and its significance for 10 and 15 GHz, for the $`b=20^{}`$ Galactic cut, the Galactic centre region of all declination strips taken together, and the spectral indices derived from these values. We find that the real patch does not correlate most significantly at either frequency. Given the number of patches that correlate more significantly we conclude that the real correlation is at most typical and only due to the Galactic plane signal. Further we see that the 15 GHz real correlation although less significant than the neighbouring points has a higher value of $`\widehat{a}`$. It seems that the real dust patch, although it does not represent the observed 15 GHz structure particularly well, happens to produces a high correlation amplitude. Indeed the real dust patch shows no strong features (low intensity rms), which explains the weak correlation and results in an overestimate of $`\widehat{a}`$ at 15 GHz. An interesting point is that the mean spectral index which could be interpreted as the spectral index derived from correlations to typical Galactic plane dust signals, correlations which are about as significant as the real correlation, has a value of $`1.5\pm 1.2`$, well consistent with free-free emission. The $`rms`$ variation in the value of the correlation coefficient at 10 and 15 GHz can be taken as an estimate of the error in $`\widehat{a}`$ for the real patch. The error estimates obtained in this way range from about $`20\%`$ for $`a`$ at both 10 and 15 GHz for the $`b>0`$ Galactic cut, to $`64\%`$ and $`30\%`$ at 10 and 15 GHz respectively for the Galactic centre regions in the $`b>20`$ Galactic cut. As expected, the errors from sky-rotation increase with decreasing signal and size of the region and are very large for the individual declinations. Note that the lower Galactic cuts give the highest correlation with the highest significance for the real patch showing that the correlations there are not just due to aligned structure of the typical Galactic plane. The error estimates presented in this section are similar whether we include or exclude the rotated patches near the Galactic centre and anti-centre, where significantly different structure could be expected, though in the first case errors increase slightly for both 10 and 15 GHz. Henceforth we use results corresponding to the second case.

Since we have strong indication that the correlations between dust and the Tenerife data results only from the Galactic plane signal which will be similarly present in many physical components of Galactic emission we further investigate this particular feature of spatial distribution by modelling it in the next section.

## 5 Galaxy modelling

A problem with the interpretation of the correlation results at different frequencies purely as a spectral dependence is that it neglects the possibility of variations in the shape of the Galaxy due to different components at different frequencies, and the resulting change of spatial alignment. For example, this method for obtaining the spectral index of correlated emission does not take into account the varying extent of the galaxy in the different data sets and template maps, so that the errors that we are quoting in the above tables might be too small and could be systematically wrong. If the Galaxy has a different spatial extent at 10 GHz, 15 GHz and 3 THz ($`100\mu `$m), it will result in a higher or lower value for the overall correlation coefficient than is actually the case. We investigate this effect by modelling the spatial distribution of Galactic emission in the next section.

A significant correlation between the Tenerife data and the DIRBE dust template only occurs close to the Galactic plane where there is a rise in the overall Galactic signal. This rise may be frequency dependent if different physical components are present (for example free-free and synchrotron) so that care must be taken when comparing correlation results between different frequencies. We take a simple model of the Galaxy

$$S(b)=S_{}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{b^24\mathrm{ln}2}{FWHM^2}\right)$$

where $`b`$ is the Galactic latitude, $`S`$ is the amplitude and $`FWHM`$ is the full width half maximum of the Gaussian model for the Galactic plane. The value of $`S_{}`$ is arbitrary as it will only scale the estimate for $`a`$ for the various correlation results and not affect the relative value between models with different width. Each model is then convolved with the appropriate experimental beam, and correlated with the data, while varying FWHM.

Figure 4 shows the widths of the Galactic models which correlated best with the data and the Galactic templates for the two declination strips in the centre region which do show convincing correlation. Two strips showed no significant correlation between the data and the templates, and Dec $`=42.5^{}`$ has the strong feature at 10 GHz, which is also incompatible with the templates. It can be seen that the most significant correlation between the dust/Haslam template and the model occurs with Galactic models of different sizes (FWHM), which are also different from the sizes obtained for the 10 and 15GHz data. However there seems to be a clear trend of decreasing width with increasing frequency compatible with more synchrotron emission at 10 GHz and more dust-correlated structure at 15 GHz. The combined fit to all declination stripes simultaneously also shows this expected trend of increasing Galactic width with wavelength. If this systematic change is real we might be able to fit for two distinct components with different width and spectral index. Although our fits of a single Gaussian component are all well acceptable the quality of the data is however not good enough to fit for two such components, if they are present independently of templates.

In Figure 4 the points for the dust correlations lie closer to the 15 GHz points than to the 10 GHz points, implying a better match of the Galactic shape for 15 GHz. When correlating the dust template to the data, the significance of any correlation will drop and $`\widehat{a}`$ will change systematically, because the structure at each frequency is different. When correcting for this mismatch, assuming that the correlated component we are looking for has identical appearance at any frequency, we find that the correlation amplitudes for both 10 and 15 GHz shift upwards. However the 10 GHz amplitude, because of the larger difference in size with dust, gets a larger shift, which results in a drop of the spectral index for the dust-correlated emission by typically about 0.2. Taking this effect of mismatched structure into account for the Haslam correlations results in a less steep spectral index, which is more consistent with synchrotron emission.

When we subtract the best fitting Galactic models from the data and the templates no correlations remain between the residuals, neither between the data and the templates nor between the templates, showing again that any correlation is only due to the Galactic plane signal, which we are able to model. Figure 5 shows these best fit models for the 10 and 15GHz data, for Dec 42.5, and the residuals. The fit achieved by the single component Gaussian model is indeed good and in fact better than the joint correlation fit, which we show for comparison. Further we find that since the joint fit to the 10 GHz data is rather poor in terms of goodness of fit, synchrotron and free-free components with the expected spectral indices (-2.8 and -2.1) can be fitted with an almost similar goodness of fit, based on the reduced $`\chi ^2`$. When the same is done for the other declinations the goodness of fit is generally better for both the joint fit as well as the model fitting. Further in the other declinations also we generally find equally acceptable fits for a dust-correlated component which is constrained to give a free-free spectral index.

## 6 Template errors

Another yet unaccounted source of error is an intrinsic error in the dust template itself, which can be instrument noise or data reduction errors due to point source subtraction etc., but also systematic variations in the dust emissivity, which might not be followed in the same way by the components at 10 and 15 GHz. Note that the DIRBE maps at different frequencies are correlated with each other to not more than $`95\%`$. If we assume that there is a $`5\%`$ Gaussian error in the flux at $`100\mu `$m due to these errors we can model this effect to quantify any change that would occur in the correlation. To do this we added a $`5\%`$ error in the flux (on the Tenerife angular scales) to the maps and calculated the new values of $`a`$. We performed 300 Monte-Carlo simulations and found that there was a systematic drop in $`a`$ for the 10 and 15 GHz data by factors of $`1.6`$ and $`1.4`$ respectively, when the centre regions of all declinations were taken together for the $`b>20^{}`$ cut (similar values are obtained when the entire $`b>20^{}`$ region is taken). Turning this effect around for the real data, assuming that there is an intrinsic $`5\%`$ error present in the template map, we need to increase the values of $`a`$ given in the tables by these factors. The value of $`a`$ at 10 GHz has to be increased relative to 15 GHz, which results in a significantly steeper spectral index, again more consistent with free-free emission. However, it should be noted that we do not have error maps for the templates at present and thus in this current paper we have not attempted a quantitative evaluation of this effect Presumably template errors, given that we have an idea of the likely causes, will be greater towards the Galactic plane. Since we have found that the only correlations we have to report result for pixels close to the Galactic centre, this will be an important source of systematic error.

## 7 Conclusions

Spinning dust emission can be identified and discriminated from free-free emission if indications for a peak in the emission spectrum can be found at low microwave frequencies, which are probed by the Tenerife experiment. A rising spectrum between 10 and 15 GHz can be taken as a prediction of the spinning dust hypothesis, although the exact location of the emission peak depends on details of the model. Tentative evidence for a turnover in the spectrum of the Galactic dust-correlated microwave component between 10 and 15 GHz has been presented by DOC99. We however find that the spectral index of dust-correlated emission is negative for all Galactic cuts except for the $`b>20^{}`$ cut. The Galactic signal, and with it the significance of the correlation, decreases with increasing Galactic latitude, and no correlations are detected in the higher Galactic latitude regions of $`b>30^{}`$. The variance in the value of $`\widehat{a}`$ between regions with different Galactic cuts is rather large. We further find that the correlation detected in the $`b>20^{}`$ region comes only from a small number of pixels at low Galactic latitude and towards the Galactic centre, where signal from the Galactic plane is present. This correlation shows a free-free like spectral index, whereas the rest of the region was found to be uncorrelated, or even significantly anticorrelated.

Using sky rotations we show that the correlation we see at $`b>20^{}`$ is only an alignment of structure due to the rise of the Galactic plane signal. Employing a simple model for this structure we were able to demonstrate that the spatial distribution of Galactic emission is in fact different in the templates and in the data, giving rise to a systematic error. We were also able to show that this simple model of the Galaxy fits the data generally better than the templates. Further, modelling a Galactic free-free component, which correlates with the dust template, generally yields an equally acceptable fit to the data. Another significant systematic effect arises due to intrinsic errors in the templates, and all these effects cause a misleading increase in the inferred spectral index of the dust-correlated component between 10 and 15 GHz.

A comparison of our results with other experiments is presented in Figure 7. Here the data points for the Tenerife experiment, obtained by taking a weighted average of all detections (all regions of all Galactic cuts, joint analyses) with errors taken from the sky rotations, correspond to values of $`180\pm 47`$ and $`123\pm 16`$ $`\mu `$K /MJy sr-1 at 10 and 15 GHz respectively. Note that the 10GHz point on the plot is significantly higher, as compared to that plotted in DOC99 and the value quoted in our table 2 This is because this region consists of parts that are correlated as well as parts that do not correlate or even anticorrelate, as in the case of the 10GHz data. Here, since we are focussing only on the regions that correlate (these regions are the same for both 10 and 15 GHz data and have been found to lie close to the Galactic plane), the value is significantly higher. Note that the high values of $`a`$ that we get need not be in contradiction to the typical level of free-free allowed by $`H_\alpha `$ maps of other regions as our detections are close to the Galactic plane, where the level of Galactic emission is expected to be high.

The spectral index for dust-correlated emission as deduced from the 10 and 15 GHz points is less negative (by about $`1\sigma `$) than expected for free-free emission. The spectral index deduced simultaneously from synchrotron-correlated emission is systematically steeper than expected. This could be attributed to the effects that we have identified and which have all been shown to influence the correlation in the same direction. Note also that in this plot only the Tenerife and COBE DMR points, at different frequencies, each represent data which probe the same angular scales and were taken with the same sky coverage. Inferring a spectral index by comparing different experiments assumes that the Galactic component is traced by a given fixed template and does not depend on parameters which vary over the sky, but our analysis of the Tenerife data shows large variations of Galactic correlation with the sky region.

With the present analysis of Tenerife data we are not able to make a firm claim about the origin of the dust-correlated component, since we do not find convincing support for a spinning dust component. This does not have to rule out this hypothesis, since environmental conditions or grain sizes, which affect the position of the spectral peak, could change systematically with location on the sky, particularly in the transition region between low and high Galactic latitude. The spatial variation in the correlation amplitude and the possibility of the presence of some spinning dust emission along with free-free emission need to be dealt with. The separation task is difficult for two reasons. Firstly neither the frequency dependence nor the spatial distribution of any of the Galactic components at low microwave frequencies is particularly well known. And further we would expect these components to be correlated, since we find their templates to be correlated, at least at low Galactic latitudes. The combination of the results from the other experiments, shown in Figure 7, might not be strongly constraining, but nevertheless, does not give conclusive evidence for spinning dust emission either, without an expectation of the amplitude of free-free emission based on dust-correlated Hα emission.

In order to make more reliable inferences, a pixel by pixel separation of components would have to be performed, using the Maximum Entropy method for example. In a forthcoming paper we shall perform such a separation incorporating information about spinning dust. Also, including other data at frequencies lower than 10 GHz and adding other templates of Galactic emission such as the $`H_\alpha `$ maps from the Wisconsin H-Alpha mapper (Tufte, Reynolds and Haffner 1998) would be useful.

## Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the people involved in taking the Tenerife data set, and Juan Francisco Macias-Perez for useful comments. PM acknowledges financial support from the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust. AWJ acknowledges King’s College, Cambridge for support in the form of a Research Fellowship. RK acknowledges support from an EU Marie Curie Fellowship.


text:
# Fractal index, central charge and fractons

## Abstract

We introduce the notion of fractal index associated with the universal class $`h`$ of particles or quasiparticles, termed fractons, which obey specific fractal statistics. A connection between fractons and conformal field theory(CFT)-quasiparticles is established taking into account the central charge $`c[\nu ]`$ and the particle-hole duality $`\nu \frac{1}{\nu }`$, for integer-value $`\nu `$ of the statistical parameter. In this way, we derive the Fermi velocity in terms of the central charge as $`v\frac{c[\nu ]}{\nu +1}`$. The Hausdorff dimension $`h`$ which labelled the universal classes of particles and the conformal anomaly are therefore related. Following another route, we also established a connection between Rogers dilogarithm function, Farey series of rational numbers and the Hausdorff dimension.

We consider the conformal field theory(CFT)-quasiparticles ( edge excitations ) in connection with the concept of fractons introduced in. These excitations have been considered at the edge of the quantum Hall systems which in the fractional regime assume the form of a chiral Luttinger liquid. Beyond this, conformal field theories have been exploited in a variety of contexts, including statistical mechanics at the critical point, field theories, string theory, and in various branches of mathematics.

In this Letter, we suppose that the fractal statistics obeyed by fractons are shared by CFT-quasiparticles. Thus, the central charge, a model dependent constant is related to the universal class $`h`$ of the fractons. We define the fractal index associated with these classes as

$$i_f[h]=\frac{6}{\pi ^2}_{\mathrm{}(T=0)}^{1(T=\mathrm{})}\frac{d\xi }{\xi }\mathrm{ln}\left\{\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴(\xi )]\right\}$$
(1)
and after the change of variable $`\xi =x^1`$, we obtain

$$i_f[h]=\frac{6}{\pi ^2}_0^1\frac{dx}{x}\mathrm{ln}\left\{\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴(x^1)]\right\}$$
(2)
where in the Eq.$`(\text{1})`$

$`\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴]={\displaystyle \frac{𝒴[\xi ]2}{𝒴[\xi ]1}}`$ (3)
is the single-particle partition function of the universal class $`h`$ and $`\xi =\mathrm{exp}\left\{(ϵ\mu )/KT\right\}`$, has the usual definition. The function $`𝒴[\xi ]`$ satisfies the equation

$`\xi =\left\{𝒴[\xi ]1\right\}^{h1}\left\{𝒴[\xi ]2\right\}^{2h}.`$ (4)
We note here that the general solution of the algebraic equation derived from this last one is of the form

$`𝒴_h[\xi ]=f[\xi ]+\stackrel{~}{h}`$

or

$`𝒴_{\stackrel{~}{h}}[\xi ]=g[\xi ]+h,`$

where $`\stackrel{~}{h}=3h`$, is a duality symmetryThis means that fermions($`h=1`$) and bosons($`h=2`$) are dual objects. As a result we have a fractal supersymmetry, since for the particle with spin $`s`$ within the class $`h`$, its dual $`s+\frac{1}{2}`$ is within the class $`\stackrel{~}{h}`$. between the classes. The functions $`f[\xi ]`$ and $`g[\xi ]`$ at least for third, fourth degrees algebraic equation differ by plus and minus signs in some terms of their expressions.

The particles within each class $`h`$ satisfy specific fractal statisticsIn fact, we have here fractal functions as discussed in.

$`n`$ $`=`$ $`\xi {\displaystyle \frac{}{\xi }}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Theta }[𝒴]`$ (5)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒴[\xi ]h}}`$ (6)
and the fractal parameter§§§This parameter describes the properties of the path (fractal curve) of the quantum-mechanical particle. (or Hausdorff dimension) $`h`$ defined in the interval $`1`$$`<`$$`h`$$`<`$$`2`$ is related to the spin-statistics relation $`\nu =2s`$ through the fractal spectrum

$`h1=1\nu ,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}<\nu <1;h1=\nu 1,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}<\nu <2;`$ (7)
$`etc.`$ (8)
For $`h=1`$ we have fermions, with $`𝒴[\xi ]=\xi +2`$, $`\mathrm{\Theta }[1]=\frac{\xi }{\xi +1}`$ and $`i_f[1]=\frac{6}{\pi ^2}_{\mathrm{}}^1\frac{d\xi }{\xi }\mathrm{ln}\left\{\frac{\xi }{\xi +1}\right\}=\frac{1}{2}`$. For $`h=2`$ we have bosons, with $`𝒴[\xi ]=\xi +1`$, $`\mathrm{\Theta }[2]=\frac{\xi 1}{\xi }`$ and $`i_f[2]=\frac{6}{\pi ^2}_{\mathrm{}}^1\frac{d\xi }{\xi }\mathrm{ln}\left\{\frac{\xi 1}{\xi }\right\}=1`$. On the other hand, for the universal class $`h=\frac{3}{2}`$, we have fractons with $`𝒴[\xi ]=\frac{3}{2}+\sqrt{\frac{1}{4}+\xi ^2}`$, $`\mathrm{\Theta }\left[\frac{3}{2}\right]=\frac{\sqrt{1+4\xi ^2}1}{\sqrt{1+4\xi ^2}+1}`$ and $`i_f\left[\frac{3}{2}\right]=\frac{6}{\pi ^2}_{\mathrm{}}^1\frac{d\xi }{\xi }\mathrm{ln}\left\{\frac{\sqrt{1+4\xi ^2}1}{\sqrt{1+4\xi ^2}+1}\right\}=\frac{3}{5}`$.

The distribution function for each class $`h`$ above, as we can check, are given by

$`n[1]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\xi +1}},`$ (9)
$`n[2]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\xi 1}},`$ (10)
$`n\left[{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\right]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\frac{1}{4}+\xi ^2}}},`$ (11)
i.e. we have the Fermi-Dirac distribution, the Bose-Einstein distribution and the fracton distribution of the universal class $`h=\frac{3}{2}`$, respectively . Thus, our formulation generalizes in a natural way the fermionic and bosonic distributions for particles assuming rational or irrational values for the spin quantum number $`s`$. In this way, our approach can be understood as a quantum-geometrical description of the statistical laws of Nature. This means that the (Eq.5) captures the observation about the fractal characteristic of the quantum-mechanical path, which reflects the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

The fractal index as defined has a connection with the central charge or conformal anomaly $`c[\nu ]`$, a dimensionless number which characterizes conformal field theories in two dimensions. This way, we verify that the conformal anomaly is associated with universality classes, i.e. universal classes $`h`$ of particles. Now, we consider the particle-hole duality $`\nu \frac{1}{\nu }`$ for integer-value $`\nu `$ of the statistical parameter in connection with the universal class $`h`$. For bosons and fermions, we have

$`\{0,2,4,6,\mathrm{}\}_{h=2}`$

and

$`\{1,3,5,7,\mathrm{}\}_{h=1}`$

such that, the central charge for $`\nu `$ even is defined by

$`c[\nu ]=i_f[h,\nu ]i_f[h,{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\nu }}]`$ (12)
and for $`\nu `$ odd is defined by

$`c[\nu ]=2\times i_f[h,\nu ]i_f[h,{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\nu }}],`$ (13)
where $`i_f[h,\nu ]`$ means the fractal index of the universal class $`h`$ which contains the statistical parameter $`\nu =2s`$ or the particles with distinct spin values which obey specific fractal statistics. We assume that the fractal index $`i_f[h,\mathrm{}]=0`$ ( the class $`h`$ is undetermined ) and we obtain, for example, the results

$`c[0]=i_f[2,0]i_f[h,\mathrm{}]=1;`$ (14)
$`c[1]=2\times i_f[1,1]i_f[1,1]={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}};`$ (15)
$`c[2]=i_f[2,2]i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}]=1{\displaystyle \frac{3}{5}}={\displaystyle \frac{2}{5}};`$ (16)
$`c[3]=2\times i_f[1,3]i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{5}{3}},{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}]=10.656=0.344;`$ (17)
$`etc,`$ (18)
where the fractal index for $`h=\frac{5}{3}`$ is obtained from

$`i_f\left[{\displaystyle \frac{5}{3}}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{6}{\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^1}{\displaystyle \frac{d\xi }{\xi }}`$ (19)
$`\times \mathrm{ln}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt[3]{\frac{1}{27}+\frac{\xi ^3}{2}+\frac{1}{18}\sqrt{12\xi ^3+81\xi ^6}}+\frac{1}{9\sqrt[3]{\frac{1}{27}+\frac{\xi ^3}{2}+\frac{1}{18}\sqrt{12\xi ^3+81\xi ^6}}}\frac{2}{3}}{\sqrt[3]{\frac{1}{27}+\frac{\xi ^3}{2}+\frac{1}{18}\sqrt{12\xi ^3+81\xi ^6}}+\frac{1}{9\sqrt[3]{\frac{1}{27}+\frac{\xi ^3}{2}+\frac{1}{18}\sqrt{12\xi ^3+81\xi ^6}}}+\frac{1}{3}}}\right\}`$ (20)
$`=0.656`$ (21)
and for its dual we have

$`i_f\left[{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}\right]={\displaystyle \frac{6}{\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^1}{\displaystyle \frac{d\xi }{\xi }}`$ (22)
$`\times \mathrm{ln}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt[3]{\frac{1}{27}+\frac{\xi ^3}{2}+\frac{1}{18}\sqrt{12\xi ^3+81\xi ^6}}+\frac{1}{9\sqrt[3]{\frac{1}{27}+\frac{\xi ^3}{2}+\frac{1}{18}\sqrt{12\xi ^3+81\xi ^6}}}\frac{1}{3}}{\sqrt[3]{\frac{1}{27}+\frac{\xi ^3}{2}+\frac{1}{18}\sqrt{12\xi ^3+81\xi ^6}}+\frac{1}{9\sqrt[3]{\frac{1}{27}+\frac{\xi ^3}{2}+\frac{1}{18}\sqrt{12\xi ^3+81\xi ^6}}}+\frac{2}{3}}}\right\}`$ (23)
$`=0.56.`$ (24)
From the Table I we can observe the correlation between the classes $`h`$ of particles and their fractal index, so our approach manifest a robust consistence in accordance with the unitary $`c[\nu ]`$$`<`$$`1`$ representations.

Table I

| $`h`$ | $`i_f[h]`$ | Denomination | $`\nu `$ | $`s`$ | $`c[\nu ]=i_f[h,\nu ]`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`2`$ | $`1`$ | bosons | $`0`$ | $`0`$ | $`1`$ |
| $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | fractons | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ |
| $`\frac{5}{3}`$ | $`0.656`$ | fractons | $`\frac{1}{3}`$ | $`\frac{1}{6}`$ | $`0.656`$ |
| $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | fractons | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ |
| $`\frac{3}{2}`$ | $`0.6`$ | fractons | $`\frac{1}{2}`$ | $`\frac{1}{4}`$ | $`0.6`$ |
| $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | fractons | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ |
| $`\frac{4}{3}`$ | $`0.56`$ | fractons | $`\frac{2}{3}`$ | $`\frac{1}{3}`$ | $`0.56`$ |
| $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | fractons | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ |
| $`1`$ | $`0.5`$ | fermions | $`1`$ | $`\frac{1}{2}`$ | $`0.5`$ |

Therefore, since $`h`$ is defined within the interval $`1`$$`<`$$`h`$$`<`$$`2`$, the corresponding fractal index is into the interval $`0.5`$$`<`$$`i_f[h]`$$`<`$$`1`$. Howewer, the central charge $`c[\nu ]`$ can assumes values less than $`0.5`$. Thus, we distinguish two concepts of central charge, one is related to the universal classes $`h`$ and the other is related to the particles which belong to these classes. For the statistical parameter in the interval $`0`$$`<`$$`\nu `$$`<`$$`1`$ (the first elements of each class $`h`$), $`c[\nu ]=i_f[h,\nu ]`$, as otherwise we obtain different values.

In another way, the central charge $`c[\nu ]`$ can be obtained using the Rogers dilogarithm function, i.e.

$$c[\nu ]=\frac{L[x^\nu ]}{L[1]},$$
(25)
with $`x^\nu =1x`$, $`\nu =0,1,2,3,etc.`$ and

$$L[x]=\frac{1}{2}_0^x\left\{\frac{\mathrm{ln}(1y)}{y}+\frac{\mathrm{ln}y}{1y}\right\}𝑑y,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0}<x<1.$$
(26)
Thus, taking into account the Eqs.(12,13), we can extract the sequence of fractal indexes ( Tables II and III ).

Table II

| $`h`$ | $`\nu `$ | $`s`$ | $`i_f[h]=c[\nu ]`$ | $`h`$ | $`\nu `$ | $`s`$ | $`c[\nu ]`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`2`$ | $`0`$ | $`0`$ | $`1`$ | $`2`$ | $`0`$ | $`0`$ | $`1`$ |
| $`\frac{39}{20}`$ | $`\frac{1}{20}`$ | $`\frac{1}{40}`$ | $`0.858`$ | $`2`$ | $`20`$ | $`10`$ | $`0.142`$ |
| $`\frac{37}{19}`$ | $`\frac{1}{19}`$ | $`\frac{1}{38}`$ | $`0.854`$ | $`1`$ | $`19`$ | $`\frac{19}{2}`$ | $`0.146`$ |
| $`\frac{35}{18}`$ | $`\frac{1}{18}`$ | $`\frac{1}{36}`$ | $`0.849`$ | $`2`$ | $`18`$ | $`9`$ | $`0.151`$ |
| $`\frac{33}{17}`$ | $`\frac{1}{17}`$ | $`\frac{1}{34}`$ | $`0.845`$ | $`1`$ | $`17`$ | $`\frac{17}{2}`$ | $`0.155`$ |
| $`\frac{31}{16}`$ | $`\frac{1}{16}`$ | $`\frac{1}{32}`$ | $`0.84`$ | $`2`$ | $`16`$ | $`8`$ | $`0.16`$ |
| $`\frac{29}{15}`$ | $`\frac{1}{15}`$ | $`\frac{1}{30}`$ | $`0.834`$ | $`1`$ | $`15`$ | $`\frac{15}{2}`$ | $`0.166`$ |
| $`\frac{27}{14}`$ | $`\frac{1}{14}`$ | $`\frac{1}{28}`$ | $`0.829`$ | $`2`$ | $`14`$ | $`7`$ | $`0.171`$ |
| $`\frac{25}{13}`$ | $`\frac{1}{13}`$ | $`\frac{1}{26}`$ | $`0.822`$ | $`1`$ | $`13`$ | $`\frac{13}{2}`$ | $`0.178`$ |
| $`\frac{23}{12}`$ | $`\frac{1}{12}`$ | $`\frac{1}{24}`$ | $`0.814`$ | $`2`$ | $`12`$ | $`6`$ | $`0.186`$ |
| $`\frac{21}{11}`$ | $`\frac{1}{11}`$ | $`\frac{1}{22}`$ | $`0.806`$ | $`1`$ | $`11`$ | $`\frac{11}{2}`$ | $`0.194`$ |

Table III

| $`h`$ | $`\nu `$ | $`s`$ | $`i_f[h]=c[\nu ]`$ | $`h`$ | $`\nu `$ | $`s`$ | $`c[\nu ]`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\frac{19}{10}`$ | $`\frac{1}{10}`$ | $`\frac{1}{20}`$ | $`0.797`$ | $`2`$ | $`10`$ | $`5`$ | $`0.203`$ |
| $`\frac{17}{9}`$ | $`\frac{1}{9}`$ | $`\frac{1}{18}`$ | $`0.786`$ | $`1`$ | $`9`$ | $`\frac{9}{2}`$ | $`0.214`$ |
| $`\frac{15}{8}`$ | $`\frac{1}{8}`$ | $`\frac{1}{16}`$ | $`0.774`$ | $`2`$ | $`8`$ | $`4`$ | $`0.226`$ |
| $`\frac{13}{7}`$ | $`\frac{1}{7}`$ | $`\frac{1}{14}`$ | $`0.759`$ | $`1`$ | $`7`$ | $`\frac{7}{2}`$ | $`0.241`$ |
| $`\frac{11}{6}`$ | $`\frac{1}{6}`$ | $`\frac{1}{12}`$ | $`0.742`$ | $`2`$ | $`6`$ | $`3`$ | $`0.258`$ |
| $`\frac{9}{5}`$ | $`\frac{1}{5}`$ | $`\frac{1}{10}`$ | $`0.721`$ | $`1`$ | $`5`$ | $`\frac{5}{2}`$ | $`0.279`$ |
| $`\frac{7}{4}`$ | $`\frac{1}{4}`$ | $`\frac{1}{8}`$ | $`0.693`$ | $`2`$ | $`4`$ | $`2`$ | $`0.307`$ |
| $`\frac{5}{3}`$ | $`\frac{1}{3}`$ | $`\frac{1}{6}`$ | $`0.656`$ | $`1`$ | $`3`$ | $`\frac{3}{2}`$ | $`0.344`$ |
| $`\frac{3}{2}`$ | $`\frac{1}{2}`$ | $`\frac{1}{4}`$ | $`0.6`$ | $`2`$ | $`2`$ | $`1`$ | $`0.4`$ |
| $`1`$ | $`1`$ | $`\frac{1}{2}`$ | $`0.5`$ | $`1`$ | $`1`$ | $`\frac{1}{2}`$ | $`0.5`$ |

On the one way, we can estimate the fractal index for the dual classes of $`h`$ with rational values, considering a fitting of the graphics $`i_f[h]\times h`$ and $`c[\nu ]\times \nu `$, plus the observation that the $`i_f[h,\nu ]`$ diminishes in the sequence

$`i_f[h,\nu ]`$ $`=`$ $`i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}},{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{5}{4}},{\displaystyle \frac{3}{4}}],`$ (33)
$`i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{6}{5}},{\displaystyle \frac{4}{5}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{7}{6}},{\displaystyle \frac{5}{6}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{8}{7}},{\displaystyle \frac{6}{7}}],`$
$`i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{9}{8}},{\displaystyle \frac{7}{8}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{10}{9}},{\displaystyle \frac{8}{9}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{11}{10}},{\displaystyle \frac{9}{10}}],`$
$`i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{12}{11}},{\displaystyle \frac{10}{11}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{13}{12}},{\displaystyle \frac{11}{12}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{14}{13}},{\displaystyle \frac{12}{13}}],`$
$`i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{15}{14}},{\displaystyle \frac{13}{14}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{16}{15}},{\displaystyle \frac{14}{15}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{17}{16}},{\displaystyle \frac{15}{16}}],`$
$`i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{19}{18}},{\displaystyle \frac{17}{18}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{20}{19}},{\displaystyle \frac{18}{19}}],i_f[{\displaystyle \frac{21}{20}},{\displaystyle \frac{19}{20}}],`$
$`i_f[1,1].`$
This way, we observe that our formulation to the universal class $`h`$ of particles with any values of spin $`s`$ establishes a connection between Hausdorff dimension $`h`$ and the central charge $`c[\nu ]`$, in a manner unsuspected till now. Besides this, we have obtained a connection between $`h`$ and the Rogers dilogarithm function, through the fractal index defined in terms of the partition function associated with the universal class $`h`$ of particles. Thus, considering the Eqs.(12, 13) and the Eq.(25), we have

$`{\displaystyle \frac{L[x^\nu ]}{L[1]}}`$ $`=`$ $`i_f[h,\nu ]i_f[h,{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\nu }}],\nu =0,2,4,etc.`$ (34)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{L[x^\nu ]}{L[1]}}`$ $`=`$ $`2\times i_f[h,\nu ]i_f[h,{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\nu }}],\nu =1,3,5,etc.`$ (35)
Also in we have established a connection between the fractal parameter $`h`$ and the Farey series of rational numbers, therefore once the classes $`h`$ satisfy all the properties of these series we have an infinity collection of them. In this sense, we clearly establish a connection between number theory and Rogers dilogarithm function. Given that the fractal parameter is an irreducible number $`h=\frac{p}{q}`$, the classes satisfy the properties

P1. If $`h_1=\frac{p_1}{q_1}`$ and $`h_2=\frac{p_2}{q_2}`$ are two consecutive fractions $`\frac{p_1}{q_1}`$$`>`$$`\frac{p_2}{q_2}`$, then $`|p_2q_1q_2p_1|=1`$.

P2. If $`\frac{p_1}{q_1}`$, $`\frac{p_2}{q_2}`$, $`\frac{p_3}{q_3}`$ are three consecutive fractions $`\frac{p_1}{q_1}`$$`>`$$`\frac{p_2}{q_2}`$$`>`$$`\frac{p_3}{q_3}`$, then $`\frac{p_2}{q_2}=\frac{p_1+p_3}{q_1+q_3}`$.

P3. If $`\frac{p_1}{q_1}`$ and $`\frac{p_2}{q_2}`$ are consecutive fractions in the same sequence, then among all fractions
between the two, $`\frac{p_1+p_2}{q_1+q_2}`$ is the unique reduced fraction with the smallest denominator.

For example, consider the Farey series of order 6, denoted by the $`\nu `$ sequence

$`(h,\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`({\displaystyle \frac{11}{6}},{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}})({\displaystyle \frac{9}{5}},{\displaystyle \frac{1}{5}})({\displaystyle \frac{7}{4}},{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}})({\displaystyle \frac{5}{3}},{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}})`$ (38)
$`({\displaystyle \frac{8}{5}},{\displaystyle \frac{2}{5}})({\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}})({\displaystyle \frac{7}{5}},{\displaystyle \frac{3}{5}})({\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}},{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}})`$
$`({\displaystyle \frac{5}{4}},{\displaystyle \frac{3}{4}})({\displaystyle \frac{6}{5}},{\displaystyle \frac{4}{5}})({\displaystyle \frac{7}{6}},{\displaystyle \frac{5}{6}})\mathrm{}.`$
Using the fractal spectrum ( Eq.7 ), we can obtain other sequences which satisfy the Farey properties and for the classes

$`h={\displaystyle \frac{11}{6}},{\displaystyle \frac{9}{5}},{\displaystyle \frac{7}{4}},{\displaystyle \frac{5}{3}},{\displaystyle \frac{8}{5}},{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{7}{5}},{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}},{\displaystyle \frac{5}{4}},{\displaystyle \frac{6}{5}},{\displaystyle \frac{7}{6}},\mathrm{},`$

and ( note that these ones are dual classes, $`\stackrel{~}{h}=3h`$ ) we can calculate the fractal index taking into account the Rogers dilogarithm function or the partition function associated with each $`h`$.

Now, in we also considered free fractons and an equation of state at low temperatures was obtained

$$P=\frac{h\rho ^2}{2\gamma }+\gamma (KT)^2𝒞_1(h),$$
(39)
where $`\gamma =\frac{m(\nu +1)}{4\pi \mathrm{}^2}`$ ( $`\mathrm{}`$ is the Planck constant ), $`\rho `$ is the particle density and

$$𝒞_1(h)=_{1(T=0)}^{\mathrm{}(T=\mathrm{})}\frac{d𝒴}{(𝒴1)(𝒴2)}\mathrm{ln}\left\{\frac{𝒴1}{𝒴2}\right\}=\frac{\pi ^2}{6}.$$
(40)
Thus, for the fracton systems we obtain the specific heat $`C`$ as

$$\frac{C}{L^2}=\frac{m}{4\pi \mathrm{}^2}K^2T(\nu +1)\frac{\pi ^2}{3}.$$
(41)
On the other hand, the specific heat of a conformal field theory is given by

$$\frac{C}{L}=\frac{1}{2\pi \mathrm{}v}K^2T\frac{\pi ^2}{3}c[\nu ].$$
(42)
Comparing the expressions, we obtain the Fermi velocity as

$$v\frac{c[\nu ]}{\nu +1},$$
(43)
so for $`\nu =0`$,$`c[0]=1`$,$`v1`$;$`\nu =1`$,$`c[1]=\frac{1}{2}`$,$`v0.25`$; $`\nu =2`$,$`c[2]=\frac{2}{5}`$,$`v0.133`$;$`\nu =3`$,$`c[3]=0.344`$,$`v0.086`$; etc. We observe that fractons are objects defined in 2+1-dimensions ( see  for more details ).

In summary, we have obtained a connection between fractons and CFT-quasiparticles. This was implemented with the notion of the fractal index associated with the universal class $`h`$ of the fractons. This way, fractons and CFT-quasiparticles satisfy a specific fractal statistics. We also have obtained an expression for the Fermi velocity in terms of the conformal anomaly and the statistical parameter. A connection between the Rogers dilogarithm function, Farey series of rational numbers and Hausdorff dimension $`h`$ also was established. The idea of fractons as quasiparticles has been explored in the contexts of the fractional quantum Hall effect, Luttinger liquids and high-$`T_c`$ superconductivity. Finally, a connection between fractal statistics and black hole entropy also was exploited in and a fractal-deformed Heisenberg algebra for each class of fractons was introduced in.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank an anonymous referee by the comments.


text:
# Magnetic Field Effect on the Supercurrent of an SNS junction

## Abstract

In this paper we study the effect of a Zeeman field on the supercurrent of a mesoscopic SNS junction. It is shown that the supercurrent suppression is due to a redistribution of current-carrying states in energy space. A dramatic consequence is that (part of the) the suppressed supercurrent can be recovered with a suitable non-equilibrium distribution of quasiparticles.

PACS numbers: 74.50.+r, 74.80.Fp, 85.25.-j

Recently, there has been a revival of interest in the proximity effect  which occurs when normal metals (N) are placed in contact with superconductors (S). This is due to the availability of submicron fabrication technology and low temperatures. One of the main lessons learnt in the study of these hybrid structures is that, at sufficiently low temperatures, due to the suppression of inelastic scattering etc., it is essential to properly understand the contribution from individual energies. . This applies to, e.g., the conductance between N and S in contact as well as supercurrent in an SNS junction

For the latter systems, it is in particular useful to understand the supercurrent being carried at each individual energy, i.e., the current-carrying density of states $`N_J(ϵ)`$. This quantity is the ordinary density of states weighted by the current that the states carry. The supercurrent is the integral over the energy $`ϵ`$ of the product of $`N_J(ϵ)`$ and the occupation number $`n(ϵ)`$.

Here we consider again an SNS junction but with an applied magnetic field. It is well-known that magnetic field in general suppresses the supercurrent. This can arise from two completely different mechanisms . First, it can be due to the coupling of the magnetic field to superconductivity via the vector potential. I shall not discuss this effect here. This effect can be suppressed in geometries where the area perpendicular to the magnetic field is sufficiently small. The second mechanism is due to the Zeeman energy. Since pairing is singlet in s-wave superconductors, a physical picture commonly used is that the Zeeman field is a pair-breaking perturbation and hence the Cooper pair amplitude decays in space faster in the presence of the field. In a dirty normal metal with diffusion coefficient $`D`$, this decay length $`\sqrt{D/h}`$  for an energy splitting $`h`$. For an SNS junction, the supercurrent thus decreases with field due to a reduction of coupling between the two superconductors.

This, however, is not entirely the full picture. As will be shown below, the main effect of the Zeeman splitting is to shift the current-carrying density of states in energy space. This is analogous to the behavior of the ordinary density of states under $`h`$ . The pairing correlation between the two superconductors remains long-ranged at appropriate energies. The supercurrent decreases ( c.f., however, below) because of this mentioned shift and the associated change in the occupation of the states (see below for details).

A dramatic consequence of the above is that, under a suitable non-equilibrium distribution of quasiparticles, one can recover the suppressed supercurrent. I shall demonstrate this using an experimental arrangement studied in ref . A suitable applied voltage can recover (partly) the supercurrent suppressed by a magnetic field.

Consider thus a quasi-one dimensional dirty metal wire (N’) of length $`L`$ connecting two superconductors. We shall always assume that the junction is in the dirty limit. The supercurrent carrying density of states can be obtained via the angular averaged retarded green’s function matrix $`\widehat{g}`$. For the present purposes it is sufficient to consider the retarded component and I shall leave out the usual superscript $`R`$. $`\widehat{g}`$ obeys the normalization condition $`\widehat{g}^2=\pi ^2\widehat{1}`$ and the Usadel equation. The latter reads, for position $`x`$ within N’ ($`0<x<L`$) and a magnetic field $`B`$ along the $`\widehat{z}`$ direction,

$$[ϵ\widehat{\tau }_3+h\widehat{\sigma }_3,\widehat{g}]+\frac{D}{\pi }_x(\widehat{g}_x\widehat{g})=0$$
(1)
Here $`ϵ`$ is the energy with respect to the Fermi level, and $`h=\mu _eB`$. In order to avoid confusions I shall pretend that electrons have a positive magnetic moment and thus identify the directions of the magnetic moment and spin, with up (down) being the states with lower (higher) Zeeman energy. $`\widehat{g}`$ at the boundaries $`x=0`$ and $`L`$ are given by its corresponding values for the equilibrium superconductors. I shall assume that the magnetic field is perfectly screened in S. In this case the boundary conditions at the superconductors are given by

$$\widehat{g}=\pi \frac{ϵ\widehat{\tau }_3\widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}}{\sqrt{|\mathrm{\Delta }|^2ϵ^2}}.$$
(2)
with suitable gap matrices $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}`$ reflecting the phase difference $`\chi `$ between the two superconductors.

Eqn (1) can be simplified by noting that it is block-diagonal, since the pairing is singlet. In the usual $`4\times 4`$ notation, the elements associated with the 1st and 4th rows and columns are decoupled from those of 2nd and 3rd (as already noted in, e.g., ref ) Moreover, the matrix equations for these submatrices have the same structure as that in zero field except $`ϵϵ\pm h`$, corresponding to magnetic moment parallel and antiparallel with the external field. It is then convenient to introduce separately the current-carrying density of states for each spin direction:

$$N_J^\sigma (ϵ)=<\widehat{p}_xN^\sigma (\widehat{p},ϵ,x)>$$
(3)
where $`N^\sigma (\widehat{p},ϵ,x)`$ is the density of states for spin $`\sigma `$ ( $`=`$ or $``$), $`\widehat{p}`$ the direction of momentum. Here I have chosen to label the states with the spin direction of the particles. Note that, e.g., the up-spin particles are associated with the down-spin holes (c.f. above). For a given spin $`\sigma `$, $`N_J^\sigma (ϵ)`$ is related to the appropriate sub-matrix of the green’s function $`\widehat{g}`$ via formulas analogous to those in zero field (see, e.g. )

The total (number) current density at $`T=0`$ is given by the integration of $`N_J^{}`$ over the occupied (negative) energy states:

$$J_s=v_f_{\mathrm{}}^0𝑑ϵ[N_J^{}(ϵ)+N_J^{}(ϵ)]$$
(4)
We shall also introduce $`N_J^{av}(ϵ)=\frac{1}{2}[N_J^{}(ϵ)+N_J^{}(ϵ)]`$ as the spin averaged current-carrying density of states. $`J_s`$ is related to $`N_J^{av}(ϵ)`$ by

$$J_s=2v_f_{\mathrm{}}^0𝑑ϵ[N_J^{av}(ϵ)],$$
(5)
exactly the same formula as in zero field. Here $`v_f`$ is the Fermi velocity.

We shall confine ourselves to the case of long junctions ( $`E_D<<|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$ ), and for definiteness choose $`|\mathrm{\Delta }|=100E_D`$. Here $`E_DD/L^2`$ is the Thouless energy associated with N’. The behavior of the current-carrying density of states $`N_J(ϵ)`$ in zero field has already been studied in detail in . I shall only mention some of the more relevant features below. $`N_J(ϵ)`$ vanishes for all energies at $`\chi =0`$. A typical case for other phase differences $`0<\chi <\pi `$ (we shall always restrict ourselves to this range, the other cases can be obtained by symmetries) is as shown by full line in Fig 1. $`N_J`$ is odd in the energy variable $`ϵ`$. Its major feature consists of a positive peak (labelled by $`+`$ in Fig 1) at energies of several times the Thouless energy $`E_D`$ below the fermi energy, and a corresponding negative peak above (labelled by $``$ in Fig. 1). Also seen are the small undulations as a function of energy for larger energies. This oscillatory behavior is a result of the difference in wave-vectors for the participating particles and holes undergoing Andreev reflection at given $`ϵ`$. For one dimension and in the clean case the pairing amplitude $`f`$ (the off-diagonal elements of $`\widehat{g}`$ in particle-hole space) oscillates as $`e^{\pm 2i(ϵ/v_f)x}`$. In the present dirty three dimensional case the same physics results in e.g., $`fexp\pm [(1i)\sqrt{ϵ/D}x]`$ for the linearized Usadel equation (i.e. the limit of small pairing amplitudes) At a fixed position, the pairing amplitude and hence the coupling between the two superconductors oscillates as a function of energy. $`N_J(ϵ)`$ also vanishes for $`|ϵ|`$ below a few times $`E_D`$, where the ordinary density of states also vanishes. Both the magnitude of this ‘minigap’ and the position of peaks mentioned above decrease with increasing phase difference, vanishing as $`\chi \pi `$ (where $`N_J`$ itself also vanishes for all $`ϵ`$’s).

The behavior of $`N_J^\sigma (ϵ)`$ under a finite field is also shown in Fig 1, where I have chosen an intermediate $`h`$ ( $`E_D<<h<<|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$) for clarity. As mentioned it is convenient to discuss the current-carrying density of states separately for each spin direction under the presence of $`h`$. For magnetic moment along the applied field, the current carrying density of states is roughly (c.f. below) that of zero field except shifted in energy by $`h`$. i.e. $`N_J^{}(ϵ)N_J^{h=0}(ϵ+h)`$. Correspondingly $`N_J^{}`$ for magnetic moment pointing in the opposite direction is shifted up in energy. At fields $`h`$ not too small compared with $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, there is a correction to this picture because, if we assume perfect screening of the magnetic field inside the superconductor as we are doing, the replacement $`ϵϵ\pm h`$ in the Usadel equation does not apply for the boundary condition (2) at $`x=0`$ and $`L`$. This correction is negligible if $`h<<|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$ and increases with increasing $`h`$.

In this picture, the reason that the supercurrent at finite $`h`$ is suppressed (in general) from that of zero field is not pair-breaking, at least for $`h<<|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$. Rather, it is because at finite field $`E_D`$, some of the states that have positive contributions to $`J_s`$ were orginally occupied at $`h=0`$ but are now empty ($`+`$)., whereas some which were orginally empty are now occupied ( $``$) and contribute a negative current.

By the above reasoning, the presence of the magnetic field has a non-trivial effect on the current-phase relationship. An example for a small $`h<<|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$ is shown in Fig 2. In zero field $`I(\chi )`$ is roughly like a sine function except for a small tilt towards $`\chi \pi `$. When $`h`$ increases from zero, one sees that $`I_s`$ first starts to decrease for $`\chi `$ near $`\pi `$ while $`I_s`$ at smaller $`\chi `$ is unaffected. Only at larger $`h`$ would $`I_s`$ begin to be suppressed there. This can be readily understood by considering the behavior of $`N_J`$ under $`h`$ discussed before. Recall that at zero field $`N_J`$ has a minigap of order $`E_D`$ but $`\chi `$ dependent, being smallest when $`\chi `$ is near $`\pi `$. Thus when the field $`h`$ is increased from $`0`$, $`I_s`$ at larger $`\chi `$ would be suppressed first since at these $`\chi `$’s, a smaller $`h`$ is needed to shift the antipeak $``$ (the peak $`+`$) to below (above) the fermi level.

At higher $`h`$ and near $`\chi \pi `$ the current also oscillates with $`\chi `$. (See, in particular $`h=6`$ in Fig. 2, where $`I_s`$ becomes negative for $`\chi `$ slightly less than $`\pi `$, vanishing again at $`\chi =\pi `$). These features are due to the undulatory structure of $`N_J^\sigma `$ as a function of $`ϵ`$ (see Fig 1). At these higher fields the weaker bumps and troughs of $`N_J^\sigma `$ (not labelled) cross the fermi level successively. They do so at fields which are $`\chi `$ dependent. Their amplitudes also depends on $`\chi `$.

Since the major effect of the magnetic field is not a suppression of $`N_J^\sigma `$ (except for $`h\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{>}{}|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$) but a redistribution in energy space, the supercurrent suppression by the magnetic field can, to a certain extent, be recovered by a suitable distribution of quasiparticles. Here we consider the case of a ‘controllable Josephson Junction’, studied in  experimentally and  theoretically. The device configuration is shown schematically in the inset of Fig 3. The two superconductors S, in general with a phase difference $`\chi `$, are at zero voltage. Equal but opposite voltages $`V`$ are applied on the normal (N) reservoirs. The N and S reservoirs are connected by quasi-one dimensional normal wires as shown. We are interested in the effect of the voltage $`V`$ on the supercurrent $`I_s`$ between the S reservoirs. At $`V=0`$, the distribution function $`n(ϵ)`$ is of the usual equilibrium form and is given by $`1`$ for $`ϵ<0`$ and $`0`$ otherwise ($`T=0`$), as shown by dotted lines in Fig 3. Under a finite $`V`$, $`n(ϵ)`$ for $`|ϵ|<eV`$ becomes $`1/2`$  (full line in Fig 3), i.e. its effect is to transfer half of the quasiparticles for $`eV<ϵ<0`$ to the region $`0<ϵ<eV`$. In zero field such a non-equilibrium distribution in general leads to a decrease of the supercurrent between the S reservoirs (see ), since usually this corresponds to decreasing (increasing) the occupation of states which contribute a positive (negative) current \[ $`+`$ ($``$) in Fig 1\] (full line in Fig 4, ; see ref  for the oscillations at higher $`V`$’s)

The effect of $`V`$ on $`I_s`$ for finite $`h`$ is also shown in Fig 4. At the fields chosen ($`>>E_D`$) $`I_s`$ at zero voltages have essentially decreased to zero (see also below). As claimed, for a given $`h`$, a suitable choice of $`V`$ may ‘enhance’ the supercurrent. For the present case where $`E_D<<h<<|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$, this enhancement is particularly spectacular for $`eVh`$. These features can be understood by examining the spin-averaged current-carrying density of states $`N_J^{av}(ϵ)`$, also shown in Fig 3. $`N_J^{av}(ϵ)`$ is odd in energy. The behavior of $`N_J^{av}`$ follows directly from $`N_J^{}`$ in Fig 1. For a given $`h0`$, when $`V`$ is increased from zero, we have a transfer of the particles as described before from the states near the antipeak just below the fermi level ( due to $``$) to the peak above (arising from $`+`$). The supercurrent thus increases. The strongest enhancement of the supercurrent occurs at $`eVh`$, since the region where this transfer occurs just covers the antipeak below the fermi level. For $`E_D<<h<<|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$, roughly half of the supercurrent at zero voltage can be recovered at $`eVh`$. This is because at this voltage, the contributions from the region $`eV<ϵ<eV`$ cancel among themselves and we are left with the integral over states with $`ϵ<eV`$. The integral of $`N_J^{av}`$ over the energy in this region is roughly half that of zero field. (compare Fig 3 and Fig 1)

The above statements are not quantitatively precise due to: (i) $`N_J^{}`$ are not simple shifts of $`N_J`$ in energy and (ii) oscillatory structures of $`N_J^{}`$, both mentioned before.

For $`V=0`$, as can be seen in Fig 4, the supercurrent does not simply decay monotonicially with increasing $`h`$ but rather shows a damped oscillation. Such a behavior has already been pointed out before , and was explained in terms of the oscillation of the pair-amplitude with $`h`$ at a given distance (the separation between the two superconductors). The present work provides a slightly different but closely connected perspective. $`I_s`$ oscillates with $`h`$ because $`N_J^\sigma `$ does so as a function of energy. The field $`h`$ shifts $`N_J^\sigma `$ in energy space. The undulatory behavior results when regions of alternating signs of $`N_J^\sigma `$ shift through the fermi level.

Some of the physics discussed in this paper, such as the effect of $`h`$ on the current-phase relationship, is applicable beyond the dirty limit. I shall however defer these to a future study.

There is recently strong interest in the physics of superconductors in contact with a ferromagnetic material. Many papers have simply modelled the ferromagnet F with a Stoner field. e.g.  (c.f., however ) Within this model the Stoner field is formally equivalent to the Zeeman field here. A much discussed topic is the effect of this field $`h`$ on the number of conduction channels . This effect is important only when $`h`$ is comparable to the fermi energy of N’ and has not been included in the present calculations.

Part of the paper was written using the facilities of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I thank Profs. P. M. Hui and H. Q. Lin for their help.