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# Heating of trapped ions from the quantum ground state[1]

## I Introduction

Cold trapped ions have been proposed as a physical implementation for quantum computation (QC) , and experiments on one  and two  ions have demonstrated proof of the principle. Work is currently underway to extend these results. In ion trap QC, ion-laser interactions prepare, manipulate and entangle atomic states in ways dependent on the quantum motional state of the ions. A limiting factor in the fidelity of an operation is uncontrolled heating of the motion during manipulations. Heating leads to decoherence of the quantum superposition states involved in the computation , and can ultimately limit the number of elementary gate operations which can be strung together. Speculations have been made about the mechanisms that lead to heating , but measurements are scarce since the necessary sensitivity can be achieved only through laser cooling to near the ground state of motion. Additionally, systematic studies of the dependence of heating rate on various trap properties are difficult, since often this requires the construction and operation of an entirely new trap apparatus which may have different values of properties not under study. Indeed, the data presented here pose several interpretational difficulties for this reason.

Heating of a single trapped ion (or the center-of-mass motion of a collection of trapped ions) occurs when noisy electric fields at the position of the ion couple to its charge, giving rise to fluctuating forces. If the spectrum of fluctuations overlaps the trap secular motion frequency or its micro-motion sidebands, the fluctuating forces can impart significant energy to the secular motion of the ion. Here, we express the heating rate as the average number of quanta of energy gained by the secular motion in a given time. There are several candidates worth considering for sources of the noisy fields which give rise to heating. Some of these are : Johnson noise from the resistance in the trap electrodes or external circuitry (the manifestation of thermal electronic noise or black body radiation consistent with the boundary conditions imposed by the trap electrode structure), fluctuating patch-potentials (due, for example, to randomly oriented domains at the surface of the electrodes or adsorbed materials on the electrodes), ambient electric fields from injected electronic noise, fields generated by fluctuating currents such as electron currents from field-emitter points on the trap electrodes, and collisions with background atoms. Only the first two mechanisms will be considered here since the remaining mechanisms (and others) are unlikely contributers  or can be eliminated by comparing the measured heating rates of the center-of-mass and differential modes of two ions . As will be shown below, the Johnson-noise and patch-potential mechanisms give rise to heating rates which scale differently with the distance between the ion and the trap electrodes.

## II Two models for sources of heating

### A Preliminaries

The heating rate caused by a fluctuating uniform field can be derived as in Savard, et al.  and agrees with a classical calculation . The Hamiltonian for a particle of charge $`q`$ and mass $`m`$ trapped in an harmonic well subject to a fluctuating, uniform (non-gradient) electric field drive $`ϵ(t)`$ is

$$H(t)=H_0qϵ(t)x,$$
(1)
where $`H_0=p^2/2m+m\omega _m^2x^2`$ is the usual, stationary harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian with trap frequency $`\omega _m`$. From first order perturbation theory, the rate of transition from the ground state of the well ($`|n=0`$) to the first excited state ($`|n=1`$) is

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{01}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}^2}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\tau e^{i\omega _m\tau }ϵ(t)ϵ(t+\tau )|0|qx|1|^2.$$
(2)
Evaluating the motional matrix element gives

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{01}=\frac{q^2}{m\mathrm{}\omega _m}S_E(\omega _m)$$
(3)
where $`S_E(\omega )_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\tau e^{i\omega _m\tau }ϵ(t)ϵ(t+\tau )`$ is the spectral density of electric-field fluctuations.

For an ion trapped by a combination of (assumed noiseless) static and inhomogeneous rf fields (Paul trap) the heating rate can be generalized to :

$$\dot{\overline{n}}=\frac{q^2}{4m\mathrm{}\omega _m}\left(S_E(\omega _m)+\frac{\omega _m^2}{2\mathrm{\Omega }_T^2}S_E(\mathrm{\Omega }_T\pm \omega _m)\right),$$
(4)
where $`\dot{\overline{n}}`$ is the rate of change of the average thermal occupation number, $`\omega _m`$ is now the secular frequency of the mode of motion under consideration and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_T`$ is the trap rf-drive frequency. The second term on the rhs of Eq. 4 is due to a cross-coupling between the rf and noise fields; it will not be present for the axial motion of a linear trap which is confined only by static fields. Even for motion confined by rf pondermotive forces, this second term will be negligible in the absence of spurious resonances in $`S_E(\omega )`$ or increasing $`S_E(\omega )`$ (since $`\omega _m^2/\mathrm{\Omega }_T^210^4`$) and is neglected in what follows .

We differentiate two sources of the noise that gives rise to heating. The first is thermal electronic noise in the imperfectly conducting trap electrodes and elsewhere in the trap circuitry. Though this source of noise is ultimately microscopic in origin, for our purposes here it can be treated adequately by use of lumped circuit models. Thermal noise has been considered in the context of ion-trap heating in several places . The second source of noise considered here is due to “microscopic” regions of material (small compared to the size of the trap electrodes) with fluctuating, discontinuous potentials established, for example, at the interface of different materials or crystalline domains. We call this patch-potential noise, and its microscopic origin leads to manifestly different heating behaviour from that for the thermal electronic noise case. Static patch-potentials are a well-known phenomenon, but little is known about the high-frequency (MHz) fluctuating patches which are required to account for our observed heating rates .

### B Thermal electronic noise

Heating rates in the case of thermal electronic noise (Johnson noise) can be obtained simply through the use of lumped-circuit models, which are justified by the fact that the wavelength of the relevant fields (at typical trap secular or drive frequencies) is significantly larger than the size of the trap electrodes. Such an analysis has been carried out elsewhere , and only the major results will be quoted here. Resistances in the trap electrodes and connecting circuits give rise to an electric field noise spectral density $`S_E(\omega )=4k_BTR(\omega )/d^2`$ where $`d`$ is the characteristic distance from the trap electrodes to the ion, $`T`$ is the temperature (near room temperature for all of our experiments), $`k_B`$ is Boltzmann’s constant, and $`R(\omega )`$ is the effective (lumped-circuit) resistance between trap electrodes. The heating rate is given by

$$\dot{\overline{n}}_\mathrm{R}=\frac{q^2k_BTR(\omega _m)}{m\mathrm{}\omega _md^2}.$$
(5)
A numerical estimate of the heating rate for typical trap parameters gives $`0.1`$/s $`<\dot{\overline{n}}_\mathrm{R}<1`$/s , which is significantly slower than our observed rates. As a final note, the lumped circuit approach is convenient, but not necessary. In the Appendix, we present a microscopic model that is valid for arbitrary ion-electrode distances and reproduces Eq. 5 for all the traps considered here (and for all realistic traps where $`d\delta `$, where $`\delta `$ is the skin depth of the electrode material at the trap secular frequency).

### C Fluctuating patch-potential noise

To derive the heating rate for the case of microscopic patch-potentials we use the following approximate model. We assume that the trap electrodes form a spherical conducting shell of radius $`a`$ around the ion. Each of the patches is a disc on the inner surface of the sphere with radius $`r_pa`$ and electric potential noise $`V_p(\omega )`$. Alternatively, each patch is assumed to have power noise spectral density $`S_V(\omega )`$. The electric field noise at the ion due to a single patch is $`E_p(\omega )=3V_p(\omega )r_p^2/4a^3`$ in the direction of the patch. There are $`N4Ca^2/r_p^2`$ such patches distributed over the sphere with coverage $`C1`$. Averaging over a random distribution of patches on the sphere, we find that the power spectral density of the electric field at the ion (along a single direction) is

$$S_E(\omega )=N\left(\frac{E_p(\omega )}{V_p(\omega )}\right)^2S_V(\omega )=\frac{3CS_V(\omega )r_p^2}{4a^4}.$$
(6)
This gives a heating rate

$$\dot{\overline{n}}_\mathrm{P}=\frac{3q^2Cr_p^2S_V(\omega _m)}{16m\mathrm{}\omega _md^4},$$
(7)
in which the association $`da`$ is made. Note the difference in scaling with electrode size between Eqs. 5 and 7. The thermal electronic noise model gives a scaling $`\dot{\overline{n}}_\mathrm{R}d^2`$, while the patch-potential model gives $`\dot{\overline{n}}_\mathrm{P}d^4`$. In fact, a $`d^4`$ dependence also arises from a random distribution of fluctuating charges or dipoles.

## III Measurements

### A Measuring the heating rate

To determine the heating rate, we first cool the ion to near the ground state. In sufficiently strong traps, this is achieved simply by laser cooling with light red-detuned from a fast cycling transition ($`\gamma \omega _m`$, where $`\gamma `$ is the radiative linewidth of the upper state) propagating in a direction such that its $`k`$-vector has a component along the direction of the mode of interest. In weaker traps, additional sideband Raman cooling is utilized to cool to the ground state . Typical starting values of $`\overline{n}`$, the average number of thermal phonons in the mode of interest, are between $`0`$ and $`2`$.

After cooling and optically pumping the ion to its internal ground state (denoted $`|`$), we drive Raman transitions between atomic and motional levels . Tuning the Raman difference frequency $`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega `$ to the $`k^{th}`$ motional blue sideband (bsb) at $`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega =\omega _0+k\omega _m`$ drives the transition $`||n||n+k`$ where $`|,|`$ refer to the internal (spin) states of the atom that are separated by $`\omega _0`$. The $`k^{th}`$ red sideband (rsb) at $`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega =\omega _0k\omega _m`$ drives $`||n||nk`$. The measurement utilizes asymmetry in the strengths of the red and blue motional sidebands to extract $`\overline{n}`$. The strengths of the sidebands are defined as the probability of making a transition $`||`$, which depends on the occupation number of the motional levels. The strengths are probed by a Raman pulse of duration $`t`$ tuned to either $`k^{th}`$ sideband. The probability $`P_{}`$ of remaining in $`|`$ after probing is measured and the strengths $`I_k^{\mathrm{rsb}}=1P_{,\mathrm{rsb}}`$ and $`I_k^{\mathrm{bsb}}=1P_{,\mathrm{bsb}}`$ are extracted. For thermal motional states, the strengths of the red and blue sidebands are related by

$`I_k^{\mathrm{rsb}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{m=k}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}P_m\mathrm{sin}^2\mathrm{\Omega }_{m,mk}t`$ (8)
$`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\overline{n}}{1+\overline{n}}}\right)^k{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}P_m\mathrm{sin}^2\mathrm{\Omega }_{m+k,m}t`$ (9)
$`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\overline{n}}{1+\overline{n}}}\right)^kI_k^{\mathrm{bsb}}`$ (10)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{m+k,m}=\mathrm{\Omega }_{m,m+k}`$ is the Rabi frequency of the $`k^{th}`$ sideband between levels $`m`$ and $`m+k`$, and $`P_m=\overline{n}^m/(1+\overline{n})^{m+1}`$ is the probability of the $`m^{th}`$ level being occupied for a thermal distribution of mean number $`\overline{n}`$. The ratio of the sidebands $`R_kI_k^{\mathrm{rsb}}/I_k^{\mathrm{bsb}}`$ is independent of drive time $`t`$ and immediately gives the mean occupation number $`\overline{n}`$,

$$\overline{n}=\frac{(R_k)^{1/k}}{1(R_k)^{1/k}},$$
(11)
which is valid even if the Lamb-Dicke criterion is not satisfied. In principle, $`k`$ should be chosen to be the positive integer nearest to $`\overline{n}`$ in order to maximize sensitivity. In practice we use $`k=`$1, 2, or 3 in most cases. Note that Eq. 11 is valid only for thermal states; this is adequate since Doppler cooling leaves the motion in a thermal state , as does any cooling to near the ground state.

In order to determine the heating rate $`\dot{\overline{n}}`$, delays with no laser interaction are added between the cooling cycle and the probing cycle. An example of a data set at a fixed trap secular frequency is shown in Fig. 1. The error bars are determined as follows: The raw data of Raman scans over the sidebands (such as is those shown in the insets of Fig. 1) are fit to Gaussians, from which the depths of the sidebands are extracted, with error on the parameter estimate calculated assuming normal distribution of the data. The errors from the rsb and bsb strengths are propagated through Equation 11 for an error on $`\overline{n}`$. The error bars shown are one-sigma, and include only statistical factors. These errors are incorporated in the linear regression to extract $`\dot{\overline{n}}`$ with appropriate error. Many such data sets are taken for various types of traps and at different secular frequencies.

### B The traps

The measurements of heating rate in this paper extend over a five year period and utilize six different traps. The traps are summarized in Table I. The traps are described in the references listed; here only a brief discussion is included. The “ring” traps are approximate quadrupole configurations consisting of a flat electrode ($`125\mu `$m thick) with a hole drilled through it (the ring) and an independent “fork” electrode ($`100\mu `$m thick) that forms endcaps on either side of the electrode, centered with the hole, similar to the trap shown in Fig. 2. In trap 1, the ring and endcap electrodes are at the same average potential; in traps 2 and 3 a static bias field could be added between the fork and ring to change the distribution of binding strengths along the three principle axes of the trap. The size of these traps is stated as the hole radius, with the endcaps spacing approximately 70% of the hole diameter. For the elliptical ring trap (trap 2) the stated size is the radius along the minor axis and the aspect ratio is 3:2; the fork tines are parallel to the major axis of the ellipse. Traps 3a and 3b were drilled into a single flat electrode with a single graded fork electrode (see Fig. 2). The rings are circular and the size stated is the radius. This was the trap used for the size-scaling measurements. The heating in all of the ring traps was measured in a direction in the plane of the ring electrode, parallel to the tines of the fork electrode. Traps 4, 5 and 6 are similar linear traps with geometry indicated in Fig. 3. Trap 6 was made slightly larger than traps 4 and 5 by increasing the space between the two electrode wafers. Heating was measured along the axial direction, which has only a static confining potential. The size quoted in Table I for the linear traps is the distance between the ion and the nearest electrode. All traps are mounted at the end of a coaxial $`\lambda `$/4 resonator for rf voltage buildup . Typical resonator quality factors are around 500 and rf voltage at the open end is approximately 500 V with a few watts of input power. In all traps except for trap 3a and 3b the resonator is inside the vacuum chamber with the trap. In traps 3a and 3b, the resonator is outside the chamber, with the high-voltage rf applied to the trap through a standard vacuum feedthrough.

Since we believe that surface effects are an important factor in heating, we cleaned the electrode surfaces before using a trap. When trap electrodes were recycled, they were first cleaned with HCl in order to remove the Be coating deposited by the atomic source. For the molybdenum traps an electro-polish in phosphoric acid was then used. For the beryllium electrodes electro-polishing in a variety of acids was ineffective, so abrasive polishing was used. Finally, the traps were rinsed in distilled water followed by methanol. The gold electrodes of the linear traps were cleaned with solvents after being evaporatively deposited on their alumina substrates. The time of exposure of clean trap electrodes to the atmosphere before the vacuum chamber was evacuated was typically less than one day. The traps were then vacuum baked at $`350^{}`$ C for approximately three days.

### C Data

Our longest-term heating measurements were made on trap 1. In Figure 4 we plot the heating rate as a function of date of data acquisition for a fixed trap frequency ($`11`$ MHz). The heating rate is on the order of 1 quantum per millisecond with a basic trend upwards of $`1`$ quantum per millisecond per year. Over this time the electrodes were coated with Be from the source ovens, but beyond this, nothing was changed in the vacuum envelope, which was closed for this entire period of time. The cause of the increase in heating rate is unknown, but may be related to increased Be deposition on the electrodes. Be plating on the trap electrodes could be a source of patch-potential noise.

Figure 5 shows heating rates in the linear traps (trap 4, 5 and 6) and the elliptical ring trap (trap 2) as a function of trap secular frequency. The frequency dependence of the heating rate is expected to scale as $`S_E(\omega _m)/\omega _m`$ (Eq. 4). For example, a trap electrode with a flat noise spectrum ($`S_E(\omega )=`$ constant) will have a heating rate that scales as $`\omega _m^1`$. The actual spectrum of fluctuations is impossible to know a priori, but in principle the data can be used to extract a spectrum over a limited frequency range given the model leading to Eq. 4. For the three linear traps, the heating rate data are most consistent with a $`\omega _m^2`$ scaling, implying $`S_E\omega ^1`$. This does not greatly assist in identifying a physical mechanism for the heating. For example, pure Johnson noise will have a flat spectrum, low-pass-filtered Johnson noise will have a spectrum that decreases with increasing frequency, and the spectrum of fluctuations in the patch-potential case is entirely unknown. In addition to the theoretical ambiguity, there is evidence in other data sets of different frequency scalings (though they are always power-law scalings). This measurement certainly cannot be used to pinpoint a heating mechanism; it is presented here only for completeness.

The data of Figure 5b provide a first indication of the scaling of the heating rate with trap size. Trap 6 is about 1.3 times larger than trap 5, while its heating rate (at 10 MHz) was a factor of 3 slower. This indicates that the dependence of heating rate on trap size is stronger than $`d^2`$, but is consistent with $`d^4`$. Of course, this comparison is to be taken with some caution, since these are two separate traps measured several weeks apart, and therefore likely had different microscopic electrode environments. However, a comparison is warranted since the traps were identical apart from their sizes. In particular, all the associated electronics was the same and the rf drive voltage was very nearly the same. In fact, the rf voltage was slightly larger for the measurements on trap 6, which showed the lower heating rate. This is important to note because we observe a slight dependence of the heating rate on the applied rf trapping voltage. Though we have only a qualitative sense of this dependence at present, it seems that heating rates increase with rf voltage, up to a point, at which the effect levels off. This rf-voltage dependence is observed along directions where the ion is confined both by static fields and by pondermotive fields. It may not be unreasonable that the increased rf voltage increases the intensity of the noise source (possibly due to an increase of temperature of the electrodes), even when it does not affect the trap secular frequency, as in the axial direction of the linear traps.

Trap 3 was designed to give a controlled measure of the heating rate as a function of trap size, while all other parameters were held fixed. The trap electrodes were made from the same substrates, the electrodes were subjected to the same pre-use cleaning, the traps were in the same vacuum envelope, driven by the same rf electronics (simultaneously) and data for both traps were acquired with minimal delay. For direct comparison at the same secular frequency in both traps, it was necessary to change the applied rf voltage since $`\omega _m1/d^2`$. (A static bias between ring and endcap can be added, as discussed above, but this was not sufficient to measure heating at identical secular frequencies for the same rf drive.) There are two data sets to be discussed for this trap, shown in Figure 6.

In the first set, shown in Figure 6a, we have data points at two different secular frequencies for the “small trap” (trap 3a) and one point for the “big trap” (trap 3b). The heating rates of the small trap are comparable to the heating rates for other traps and show a $`\omega _m^1`$ scaling of the heating rate. The single point on the big trap is at a lower secular frequency, yet has a much slower heating rate. In fact, if we extrapolate the data from the small trap to the same secular frequency (using $`\omega _m^1`$), the heating rate is over an order of magnitude lower in the big trap. The ratio of the heating rate in the small trap to that of the big trap is $`20\pm 6`$. This is a much stronger scaling than that predicted by a Johnson noise heating mechanism (Eq. 5 predicts a $`d^24.8`$ scaling), but is consistent with the scaling in the patch-potential case (Eq. 7 predicts a $`d^423`$ scaling). When these data are used to predict an exponent for the size-scaling, the result is $`d^{3.8\pm 0.6}`$.

For the second data set, shown in Figure 6b, the trap was removed from the vacuum enclosure, given the usual cleaning (as discussed above), and replaced for the measurements. In this data set, the trap behaved quite differently from all other traps, with heating rates significantly below those of other traps. Also, $`S_E`$ must have been a strong function of $`\omega `$ for this trap since the scaling with trap frequency was rather pronounced. The scaling with size was also strong: the heating rate was 16,000 times smaller in the big trap. When these data are used to predict an exponent for the size-scaling, the result is $`d^{12\pm 2}`$. Needless to say, it is difficult to draw general conclusions from the data for this particular trap, but the difference in heating rates between the two traps seems to strongly indicate, again, that Johnson noise is not the source of the heating. We cannot be sure why this trap had such anomalous heating behaviour, but we speculate that it is due to a less-than-usual deposition of Be on the trap electrodes prior to the measurements, because the trap loaded with minimal exposure to the Be source atomic beam.

At this point it is useful to compare the present results to heating rates in other experiments. There are two other measurements. The first was done with <sup>198</sup>Hg<sup>+</sup> . For that experiment $`\omega _m/2\pi 3`$ MHz and $`d450\mu `$m and the heating rate was 0.006/ms. Accounting for scalings with trap frequency ($`\omega _m^1`$)  and mass ($`m^1`$), these results are consistent with the present results for a size-scaling of $`d^4`$. Another measurement has been made with <sup>40</sup>Ca<sup>+</sup> . For that experiment $`\omega _m/2\pi 4`$ MHz and $`d700\mu `$m and the heating rate was 0.005/ms. Compared to the present experiments and the Hg experiment, this is also consistent with a $`d^4`$ scaling, although it is certainly unlikely that all systems had the same patch field environment.

## IV Conclusions and outlook

We have measured heating from the ground state of trapped ions in different traps. The magnitude of heating rates and the results of the size-scaling measurements are inconsistent with thermal electronic noise as the source of the heating. The results do not indicate any strong dependence on trap-electrode material or on the type of trap potential (pondermotive or static). The rf voltage applied to the electrodes may play a role in heating, in as much as it may have an influence on patch-potentials.

Since we have not identified the mechanism for the observed heating, it is difficult to say what path should be taken to correct it. If fluctuating patch-potentials on the surface of the electrodes are the cause, then further cleaning may be appropriate. Additionally, better masking of the the trap electrodes from the Be source ovens may help.

The results coupled with those of other experiments , strongly indicate that bigger traps have smaller heating rates. This is not a surprise, but the strength of the scaling may be. With little sacrifice in the trap secular frequency (which ultimately determines the fastest rate of coherent manipulation) a dramatic decrease in the heating rate vs. logic gate speed appears possible using larger traps.

We acknowledge support from the U. S. National Security Agency, Office of Naval Research and Army Research Office. We thank Chris Langer, Pin Chen, and Mike Lombardi for critical readings of the manuscript.

## V Appendix: Thermal Electric fields

We are interested in the thermal electric field power spectral density $`S_{E_i}(𝒓,\omega )`$ generated from a specified volume of conductor. The conductor can be decomposed into a web of resistors each carrying current spectral density $`S_{I_i}=4k_BT/R_i`$ (where we assume $`k_BT\mathrm{}\omega `$). The resistance along the $`ith`$ direction of an infinitesimal volume element is $`R_i=dl/(\sigma dA)`$, where $`\sigma `$ is the conductivity, $`dl`$ is the length along $`i`$ and $`dA`$ is the cross-sectional area. A Fourier component of current $`I_i(\omega )`$ through the volume $`dV=dldA`$ gives rise to an electric dipole $`P_i(\omega )=I_i(\omega )dl/\omega `$, thus the equivalent spectral density of electric dipole of the infinitesimal resistor is isotropic: $`S_{P_i}(\omega )=4k_BT\sigma dV/\omega ^2`$.

The electric field from an electric dipole $`𝑷(𝒓^{},\omega )`$ oscillating at frequency $`\omega `$ and position $`𝒓^{}`$ is

$$E_i(𝒓,\omega )=\underset{j=x,y,z}{}P_j(𝒓^{},\omega )G_{ij}(𝒓,𝒓^{},\omega ).$$
(12)
In this expression, $`G_{ij}(𝒓,𝒓^{},\omega )`$ is a Green function matrix, representing the $`ith`$ component of electric field at position $`𝒓`$ due to the $`jth`$ component of a point dipole at $`𝒓^{}`$ which satisfies the appropriate boundary conditions of the geometry. The electric field spectral density at position $`𝒓`$ is an integral over the dipoles in the conductor volume:

$$S_{E_i}(𝒓,\omega )=\frac{4k_BT}{\omega ^2}\sigma (𝒓^{})\underset{j=x,y,z}{}|G_{ij}(𝒓,𝒓^{},\omega )|^2dV^{}.$$
(13)
The Green function satisfies $`G_{ij}(𝒓,𝒓^{},\omega )=G_{ij}(𝒓^{},𝒓,\omega )`$, so the above integral can be interpreted as the Ohmic power absorbed by the conductor from the electric fields generated by a point dipole at position $`𝒓`$. By energy conservation, this must be equivalent to the time-averaged power dissipated by a point dipole at $`𝒓`$, which is related to the imaginary part of the Green function matrix $`G_{ij}(𝒓,𝒓,\omega )`$ . This simplifies Eq. (13), leaving the fluctuation-dissipation theorem

$$S_{E_i}(𝒓,\omega )=\frac{2k_BT}{\omega }\underset{j=x,y,z}{}\mathrm{}mG_{ij}(𝒓,𝒓,\omega ).$$
(14)
Agarwal solved Maxwell’s equations for $`G_{ij}(𝒓^{},𝒓,\omega )`$ for the simple geometry of an infinite sheet of conductor filling the space $`z0`$ with the conductor-vacuum interface in the $`z=0`$ plane . Although this idealized geometry is far from any real ion trap electrode structure, rough scalings of the thermal fields can be relevant to real ion trap geometries. From Ref. , the Green function matrix for this problem is diagonal with axial ($`z`$) and radial ($`\rho `$) components

$$G_{zz}(z,z,\omega )=G^{free}(\omega )+i_0^{\mathrm{}}\frac{q^3}{w_0}\left(\frac{w_0\epsilon w}{w_0\epsilon +w}\right)e^{2iw_0z}𝑑q$$
(15)
$$G_{\rho \rho }(z,z,\omega )=G^{free}(\omega )\frac{i}{2}_0^{\mathrm{}}q\left[w_0\left(\frac{w_0\epsilon w}{w_0\epsilon +w}\right)+\frac{k^2}{w_0}\left(\frac{ww_0}{w+w_0}\right)\right]e^{2iw_0z}𝑑q,$$
(16)
In the above expressions, $`\epsilon (\omega )=\epsilon _0+i\sigma /\epsilon _0\omega `$ is the dielectric function of the conductor (in the low frequency limit), $`k=\omega /c`$, and wavevectors $`w_0`$ and $`w`$ (generally complex) are defined by $`w_0^2=k^2q^2`$ and $`w^2=k^2\epsilon q^2`$ with $`\mathrm{}mw_00`$ and $`\mathrm{}mw0`$. The free space Green’s function $`G^{free}(\omega )`$ has imaginary part $`\mathrm{}mG^{free}(\omega )=k^3/6\pi \epsilon _0`$ and gives rise to the isotropic free space blackbody electric field fluctuations when substituted into Eq. (14).

The above integrals are significantly simplified in the “quasi-static” limit, where $`kz1`$ and the conductivity is sufficiently high so that $`k\delta 1`$, where $`\delta =\sqrt{2c^2\epsilon _0/\omega \sigma }`$ is the skin-depth of the conductor. Despite these conditions, no restriction is placed on the value of $`z/\delta `$. We break the above integrals into two pieces. The first piece $`_0^k`$ has $`qk`$ with $`w_0`$ real. In the quasi-static limit, this piece can be shown to cancel the free space contribution to the transverse Green function $`\mathrm{}mG_{\rho \rho }(z,z,\omega )`$ while doubling the free space contribution to the axial Green function $`\mathrm{}mG_{zz}(z,z,\omega )`$. Physically, the presence of the conductor negates the transverse free space blackbody field while it doubles the axial blackbody field due to a near-perfect reflection. The second piece of the integrals $`_k^{\mathrm{}}`$ has $`qk`$ with $`w_0`$ imaginary. These pieces of the integral can be solved to lowest order in $`kz`$ and $`k\delta `$. Combining terms and substituting the results into Eq. (14), the thermal electric field spectral density is

$$S_{E_z}(z,\omega )=\frac{2k_BT\omega ^2}{3\pi \epsilon _0c^3}+\frac{k_BT}{4\pi \sigma z^3}\sqrt{\frac{1}{2}+\sqrt{\frac{1}{4}+\frac{z^4}{\delta ^4}}}$$
(17)
$$S_{E_\rho }(z,\omega )=\frac{k_BT}{8\pi \sigma z^3}\sqrt{\frac{1}{2}+\sqrt{\frac{1}{4}+\frac{z^4}{\delta ^4}}}.$$
(18)
These expressions show that the thermal electric field noise scales as $`1/z^3`$ for $`z\delta `$ , but scales as $`1/z^2`$ for $`z\delta `$ . At large distances $`z>\sqrt{\delta /k}`$ (with $`kz1`$), the axial field noise settles toward twice the free space blackbody value while the radial field vanishes. This result is also reported in Ref. . The behavior is shown in Fig. 7, where Eqs. (17) and (18) have been substituted into Eq. 4, giving the expected thermal heating rate for a <sup>9</sup>Be ion trapped with molybdenum electrodes at room temperature. Note that the predicted heating rate at trap sizes typical in our experiments is significantly slower than the 0.1-1 quanta/s rate predicted in . This difference comes from the choice of the value of the resistance in Eq. 5, which was chosen in  as an absolute upper limit.

When interpreting these results, only the rough scaling should be considered. Realistic ion trap electrode geometries are more complicated than a single infinite conducting plane, involving a more closed electrode structure. This generally requires a full numerical solution to the relevant boundary value problem. Moreover, we are usually interested in the electric field fluctuations at the center of the trap, where these fluctuations will be substantially different from those above an infinite plate.


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# Nonuniversal mound formation in nonequilibrium surface growth

\[

## Abstract

We demonstrate, using well-established nonequilibrium limited-mobility solid-on-solid growth models, that mound formation in the dynamical surface growth morphology does not necessarily imply the existence of a surface edge diffusion bias (“the Schwoebel barrier”). We find mounded morphologies in several nonequilibrium growth models which incorporate no Schwoebel barrier. Our numerical results indicate that mounded morphologies in nonequilibrium surface growth may arise from a number of distinct physical mechanisms, with the Schwoebel instability being one of them.

Keywords: Computer simulations; Models of surface kinetics; Molecular beam epitaxy; Scanning tunneling microscopy; Growth; Surface diffusion; Surface roughening

\]

In vacuum deposition growth of thin films or epitaxial layers (e.g. MBE) it is common  to find mound formation in the evolving dynamical surface growth morphology. Although the details of the mounded morphology could differ considerably depending on the systems and growth conditions, the basic mounding phenomenon in surface growth has been reported in a large number of recent experimental publications . The typical experiment  monitors vacuum deposition growth on substrates using STM and/or AFM spectroscopies. Growth mounds are observed under typical MBE-type growth conditions, and the resultant mounded morphology is statistically analyzed by studying the dynamical surface height $`h(𝐫,t)`$ as a function of the position $`𝐫`$ on the surface and growth time $`t`$. Much attention has focused on this ubiquitous phenomenon of mounding and the associated pattern formation during nonequilibrium surface growth for reasons of possible technological interest (e.g. the possibility of producing controlled nanoscale thin film or interface patterns) and fundamental interest (e.g. understanding nonequilibrium growth and pattern formation).

The theoretical interpretation of the mounding phenomenon has often been based  on the step-edge diffusion bias  or the so-called Schwoebel barrier  effect (also known as the Ehrlich-Schwoebel , or ES, barrier). The basic idea of the ES barrier-induced mounding (often referred to as an instability) is simple : The ES effect produces an additional energy barrier for diffusing adatoms on terraces from coming “down” toward the substrate, thus probablistically inhibiting attachment of atoms to lower or down-steps and enhancing their attachment to upper or up-steps; the result is therefore mound formation because deposited atoms cannot come down from upper to lower terraces and so three-dimensional mounds or pyramids result as atoms are deposited on the top of already existing terraces.

The physical picture underlying mounded growth under an ES barrier is manifestly obvious, and clearly the existence of an ES barrier is a sufficient condition  for mound formation in nonequilibrium surface growth. Our interest in this paper is to discuss the necessary condition for mound formation in nonequilibrium surface growth morphology — more precisely, we want to ask the inverse question, namely, whether the observation of mound formation requires the existence of an ES barrier. Through concrete examples we demonstrate that the mound formation in nonequilibrium surface growth morphology does not necessarily imply the existence of an ES barrier, and we contend that the recent experimental observations of mound formation in nonequilibrium surface growth morphology should not be taken as definitive evidence in favor of an ES barrier-induced universal mechanism for pattern formation in surface growth. Mound formation in nonequilibrium surface growth is a non-universal phenomenon, and could have very different underlying causes in different systems and situations, with the Schwoebel instability being one particular mechanism (among many) for the mounded morphology.

Before presenting our results we point out that the possible nonuniversality in surface growth mound formation (i.e. mounds do not necessarily imply an ES barrier) has recently been mentioned in at least two experimental publications  where it was emphasized that the mounded patterns seen on Si  and GaAs , InP  surfaces during MBE growth were not consistent with the phenomenology of a Schwoebel instability. In two other recent experimental publications  mound formation during semiconductor surface growth (Ge, GaAs) was carefully analyzed using the prevailing Schwoebel instability phenomenology with a conclusion not very dissimilar from that in ref. . In particular, the ES barrier-based analyses of the experimental data in both the papers in refs.  produced rather weak Schwoebel effects in both experiments, leading to the conclusion in both experiments that the Schwoebel instability in all likelihood is playing a small to negligible role in the observed mound formations in refs. . Very recently, experimental observations of striking mound formation  in Au and MgO vapor deposition growth have been interpreted without invoking any ES barrier effect. Thus, the observed mound formation in the nonequilibrium surface growth in refs.  is interpreted essentially without invoking any key role being played by an ES barrier whereas the mounded growth morphologies in refs.  have mostly been interpreted as arising essentially due to a Schwoebel instability. Thus the inevitable conclusion from recent experimental observations  is that the mound formation in surface growth does not necessarily arise from the universal mechanism of a Schwoebel instability , but may be caused by different non-universal mechanisms in different experimental situations. The purpose of the current article is to explore this nonuniversality in the mound formation in some detail using simple solid-on-solid (SOS) growth models where the kinetic mechanisms leading to the mounded morphologies are explicitly obvious, and therefore compelling conclusions can be drawn about the precise physical mechanism producing the mounds. A direct comparison between experimental results and our rather simplistic limited mobility nonequilibrium SOS models, however, is unwarranted due to the extreme simplicity in the growth and diffusion rules in our models — our models do serve the purpose of explicitly demonstrating the fact that mounded morphologies can arise without any ES barriers whatsoever.

There have been two proposed mechanisms in the literature which lead to mounding without any explicit ES barrier: One of them invokes  a preferential attachment to up-steps compared with down-steps (the so-called “step-adatom” attraction), which, in effect, is equivalent to having an ES barrier because the attachment probability to down-steps is lower than that to up-steps exactly as it is in the regular ES barrier case  — we therefore do not distinguish it from the ES barrier mechanism, and in fact, within the simple growth models we study, these two energetic mechanisms are physically and mathematically indistinguishable. The second mounding alternative , which is a purely topologic-kinetic effect, is the so-called edge diffusion induced mounding, where diffusion of adatoms around cluster edges is shown to lead to mound formation during nonequilibrium surface growth even in the absence of any finite ES barrier. One of the concrete examples we discuss below, the spectacular pyramidal pattern formation (Fig. 3(c)) in the 2+1 dimensional (d) noise reduced Wolf-Villain (WV) model , arises from such a nonequilibrium edge diffusion effect (perhaps in a somewhat unexpected context). We also demonstrate, using the WV model and the Das Sarma-Tamborenea (DT) model , that mound formation during nonequilibrium surface growth is, in fact, almost a generic feature of limited mobility solid-on-solid discrete growth models , which typically have comparatively large values of the roughness exponent  ($`\alpha `$) characterizing the growth morphology. We find that a large roughness exponent coupled with atomistic solid-on-solid growth almost invariably leads to visually mounded growth morphology. Below we demonstrate that mound formation in surface morphology arising from this generic “large $`\alpha `$” effect (without any explicit ES barrier) is often qualitatively virtually indistinguishable from that in growth under an ES barrier. Mound formation in the presence of strong edge diffusion  (as in the d=2+1 WV model in Fig. 3) is, on the other hand, morphologically quite distinct from the ES barrier- or the large $`\alpha `$\- induced mound formation.

Our results are based on the extensively studied  limited mobility SOS nonequilibrium WV  and DT  growth models. Both models have been widely studied  in the context of kinetic surface roughening in nonequilibrium solid-on-solid epitaxial growth — the interest in and the importance of these models lie in the fact that these were the first concrete physically motivated growth models falling outside the well-known Edwards-Wilkinson-Kardar-Parisi-Zhang  generic universality class in kinetic surface roughening. Both models involve random deposition of atoms on a square lattice singular substrate (with a growth rate of 1 layer/sec. where the growth rate defines the unit of time) under the SOS constraint with no evaporation or desorption. An incident atom can diffuse instantaneously before incorporation if it satisfies certain diffusion rules which differ slightly in the two models. In the WV model the incident atom can diffuse within a diffusion length $`l`$ (which is taken to be one with the lattice constant being chosen as the length unit, i.e. only nearest-neighbor diffusion, in all the results shown in this paper — larger values of $`l`$ do not change our conclusions) in order to maximize its local coordination number or equivalently the number of nearest neighbor bonds it forms with other atoms (if there are several possible final sites satisfying the maximum coordination condition equivalently then the incident atom chooses one of those sites with equal random probability and if no other site increases the local coordination compared with the incident site then the atom stays at the incident site). The DT model is similar to the WV model except for two crucial differences: (1) only incident atoms with no lateral bonds (i.e. with the local coordination number of one — a nearest-neighbor bond to the atom below is necessary to satisfy the SOS constraint) are allowed to diffuse (all other deposited atoms, with one or more lateral bonds, are incorporated into the growing film at their incident sites); (2) the incident atoms move only to increase their local coordination number (and not to maximize it as in the WV model) — all possible incorporation sites with finite lateral local coordination numbers are accepted with random equal probability. Although these two differences between the DT and the WV model have turned out to be crucial in distinguishing their asymptotic universality class, the two models exhibit very similar growth behavior for a long transient pre-asymptotic regime. It is easy to incorporate  an ES barrier in the DT (or WV) model by introducing differential probabilities $`P_u`$ and $`P_l`$ for adatom attachment to an upper and a lower step respectively — the original DT model  has $`P_u=P_l`$, and an ES barrier can be explicitly incorporated  in the model by having $`P_l<P_u1`$. We call this situation  the DT-ES model (we use $`P_u=1`$ throughout with no loss of generality). We also note, as mentioned above, that within the DT-ES model the ES barrier  ($`P_l<P_u`$) and the step-adatom attraction  ($`P_u>P_l`$) are manifestly equivalent, and we therefore do not consider them as separate mechanisms. We note also that in some of our simulations below we have used the noise reduction technique  which have earlier been successful in limited mobility growth models in reducing the strong stochastic noise effect through an effective coarse-graining procedure. All three models described above are studied in both one-dimensional substrate (d=1+1) and two-dimensional substrate (d=2+1) systems with periodic boundary conditions being used in all simulations. Detailed descriptions of DT and WV models are available in the literature .

In Fig. 1 and 2 we present our d=1+1 growth simulations, which demonstrate the point we want to make in this paper. We show in Fig. 1 the simulated growth morphologies at three different times for four different situations, two of which (Fig. 1(a),(b)) have finite ES barriers and the other two (Fig. 1(c),(d)) do not.

The important point we wish to emphasize is that, while the four morphologies and their dynamical evolutions shown in Fig. 1 are quite distinct in their details, they all share one crucial common feature: they all indicate mound formation although the details of the mounded morphologies and the controlling length scales are obviously quite different in the different cases. Just the mere observation of mounded morphology, which is present in Figs. 1(c),(d), thus does not necessarily imply the existence of an ES barrier. To further quantify the mounding apparent in the simulated morphologies of Fig. 1 we show in Fig. 2 the calculated height-height correlation function, $`H(r)h(𝐱)h(𝐫+𝐱)_𝐱`$, along the surface for two different times.

All the calculated $`H(r)`$ show noisy oscillations as a function of $`r`$, which implies mound formation (corresponding to the noisy mounded morphologies of Fig. 1). It is indeed true that the presence of considerable stochastic noise associated with the deposition process in the DT, WV models make the $`H(r)`$-oscillations quite noisy, but the important feature to note in Fig. 2 is that the qualitative oscillatory nature of $`H(r)`$ in situations with or without an ES barrier is essentially the same. Thus, the mound formation, although noisy, is qualitatively similar with or without an ES barrier in Figs. 1 and 2. We have explicitly verified that such growth mounds (or equivalently $`H(r)`$ oscillations) are completely absent in the growth models  which correspond to the generic Edwards-Wilkinson-Kardar-Parisi-Zhang universality class, and arise only in the DT, WV limited mobility growth models which are known to have large value of the roughness exponent $`\alpha `$ arising from (linear or nonlinear) surface diffusion processes. In fact, the effective $`\alpha `$ in the DT, WV models is essentially  unity (in d=1+1), which is the same as what one expects in a naive theoretical description of growth under the ES barrier (although the underlying growth mechanisms are completely different in the two situations). We believe that any surface growth involving a “large” roughness exponent ( $`0.5<\alpha 1`$) will invariably show “mounded” morphology independent of whether there is an ES barrier in the system or not. We contend that this effectively large $`\alpha `$ is the physical origin for the mounded morphology in semiconductor MBE growth where one expects the surface diffusion driven linear or nonlinear conserved fourth order (in contrast to the generic second order) dynamical growth universality  class to apply which has the asymptotic exponent : $`\alpha `$ (d=1+1) $``$ 1; $`\alpha `$ (d=2+1) $``$ 0.67 (nonlinear), 1 (linear). One recent experimental paper , which reports the observation of mounded GaAs and InP growth with $`\alpha 0.50.6`$, has explicitly made this case, and other recent reported mound formations  in semiconductor MBE growth are also consistent with our contention that mounds may arise from a large effective roughness exponent rather than a Schwoebel instability. Two very recent experimental publications  have reached the same conclusion in non-semiconductor MBE growth studies — in these recent publications  spectacular mounded surface growth morphologies have been interpreted on the basis of the fourth order conserved growth equations . The crucial message of our simulated d=1+1 growth morphologies in Fig. 1 and 2 is the fact that the mound formation with \[Figs. 1 (a),(b) and 2 (a),(b)\] and without ES barrier \[Figs. 1 (c),(d) and 2 (c),(d)\] are qualitatively similar, and therefore the mere observation of a mounded morphology does not necessarily imply a Schwoebel instability.

Finally, in Figs. 3 and 4 we present our results for the physically more relevant d=2+1 nonequilibrium surface growth. In Fig. 3(a)-(c) we show the growth morphologies for the DT-ES, DT, and the noise-reduced WV model, respectively whereas in Fig. 4 we show the scaled height-height correlation function for the mounded morphologies depicted in Fig. 3. It is apparent that all three models (one with an ES barrier and the other two without) have qualitatively similar oscillations in $`H(r)`$ indicating mounded growth, and the differences in the mounding between the growth models are purely quantitative. Again, the important point is that mounded morphologies with and without ES barriers manifest similar oscillating in $`H(r)`$, indicating that such an oscillatory height-height correlation function by itself does not establish a Schwoebel instability. Thus we come to the same conclusion: mound formation, by itself, does not imply the existence of an ES barrier; the details of the morphology obviously will depend on the existence (or not) of an ES barrier.

We note that the effective values of the roughness exponent are very similar in Fig. 3(a) and (b) i.e. with and without an ES barrier, both being approximately $`\alpha 0.5`$ (far below the asymptotic value $`\alpha 1`$ expected in the ES barrier growth — we have verified that this asymptotic $`\alpha 1`$ is achieved in our simulations at an astronomically long time of $`10^9`$ layers). The most astonishing result we show in Fig. 3 is the spectacular pyramidal mound formation in the d=2+1 noise reduced WV model (without any ES barrier), which has not earlier been reported in the literature. The strikingly regular pyramidal pattern formation (Fig. 3(c)) in our noise reduced WV model in fact has a magic slope and strong coarsening behavior. The pattern is very reminiscent of the theoretical growth model studied earlier in ref.  in the context of nonequilibrium growth under an ES barrier where very similar patterns with slope selection were proposed as a generic scenario for growth under a Schwoebel instability. In our case of the noise reduced d=2+1 WV model of Fig. 3(c), there is no ES barrier, but there is strong cluster-edge diffusion. This strong edge diffusion (which obviously cannot happen in 1+1 dimensional growth) arises in the WV model (but not in the DT model) from the hopping of adatoms which have finite lateral nearest neighbor bonds (and are therefore the edge atoms in a cluster). This edge diffusion (discussed in entirely different contexts in ) leads to an “uphill” surface current in the 111 direction, which leads to the formation of the slope-selected pyramidal patterned growth morphology. While noise reduction enhances the edge current strengthening the pattern formation (the uphill current is extremely weak in the ordinary WV model due to the strong suppression by the deposition shot noise), our results of Fig. 3 estabish compellingly that the WV model in d=2+1 is, in fact, unstable (uphill current) in contrast to the situation in d=1+1. Thus, the WV model belongs to totally different universality classes in d=1+1 and 2+1 dimensions! We mention that in (unphysical) higher (e.g. d=3+1, 4+1, etc.) dimensions, the WV model would be even more unstable, forming even stronger mounds since the edge diffusion effects will increase substantially in higher dimensions due to the possibility of many more configurations of nearest-neighbor bonding. Such unstable growth in high dimensional (d $`>`$ 2+1) WV model has earlier been reported  in the literature without any physical explanation. We have therefore provided the explanation for the long-standing puzzle of an instability in high-dimensional (d $`>`$ 2+1) WV model simulations which were reported  in the literature some years ago. More details on this phenomenon will be published elsewhere .

In conclusion, we have shown through concrete examples that, while a Schwoebel instability is certainly sufficient to cause mounded surface growth morphology, the reverse is not true : an ES barrier is by no means necessary to produce mounds, and mound formation in nonequilibrium surface growth morphology does not necessarily imply the existence of a Schwoebel instability. In particular, we show that a large roughness exponent (without any ES barrier) as in the fourth order conserved growth universality class  produces mounded growth morphologies which are indistinguishable from the ES barrier effect. Any experimentally observed mounded morphology therefore requires a careful and detailed quantitative analyses  to determine the physical mechanism (e.g. ES barrier, edge diffusion, large roughness exponent without any ES barrier) underlying its cause — in particular, the existence of a mounded growth morphology by itself may not imply the existence of any significant Schwoebel barrier.

This work is supported by the NSF-DMR-MRSEC and the US-ONR.


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# Untitled Document

An automorphic form related to cubic surfaces. First draft. 1997.

R. E. Borcherds.

(Remark added 2000: See the paper “Cubic Surfaces and Borcherds Products” by Allcock and Freitag, math.AG/0002066)

In the paper \[A-C-T\] the authors showed that the moduli space of cubic surfaces was $`(CH^4\backslash H)/G`$, where $`H`$ is the union of the reflection hyperplanes of the reflection group $`G`$. The purpose of this note is to construct an automorphic form, called the discriminant, on complex hyperbolic space $`CH^4`$ whose zeros are exactly the reflection hyperplanes of $`G`$, each with multiplicity 1.

The complex hyperbolic space of $`E^{1,4}`$ embeds naturally in the Grassmannian of 2 dimensional positive definite subspaces of the underlying even integral lattice $`M`$ of $`E^{1,4}`$. We will construct the automorphic form on complex hyperbolic space by constructing an automorphic form $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ on the Grassmannian and restricting it to complex hyperbolic space. The construction of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is similar to that of example 13.7 of \[B\]. The lattice $`M`$ is isomorphic to $`A_2A_2^4(1)`$, so it has dimension 10 and determinant $`3^5`$. We let the elements $`e_\gamma `$ for $`\gamma M^{}/M`$ stand for the obvious basis of the group ring $`C[M^{}/M]`$. We will construct a modular form of weight $`3`$ and type $`\rho _M`$ for $`SL_2(Z)`$ which is holomorphic on the upper half plane and meromorphic at cusps, by which we mean a holomorphic vector valued function $`f=_{\gamma M^{}/M}e_\gamma f_\gamma (\tau )`$ such that

$$f_\gamma (\tau +1)=e^{\pi i\gamma ^2}f_\gamma (\tau ),f_\gamma (1/\tau )=i3^{5/2}\tau ^3\underset{\delta M^{}/M}{}e^{2\pi i(\delta ,\gamma )}f_\delta (\tau )$$

Recall that if $`\gamma ,\delta M^{}/M`$ then $`\gamma ^2`$ is well defined mod 2 and $`(\gamma ,\delta )`$ is well defined mod 1. There are 4 orbits of vectors $`\gamma M^{}/M`$ under $`\mathrm{Aut}(M)`$, which we name as follows: a nonzero vector $`\gamma `$ with $`\gamma ^2/2n/3mod1`$ will be called a vector of type $`n`$ ($`n=0,1,2`$), and the zero vector will be called a vector of type $`00`$.

We will construct a modular form $`f`$ such that the components $`f_\gamma `$ of $`f`$ are given by functions $`f_{00}`$, $`f_0`$, $`f_1`$, or $`f_2`$ depending only on the type of $`\gamma `$. We now work out the conditions that these functions have to satisfy for $`f`$ to transform correctly. In order to check that $`f`$ is a modular form under $`\tau 1/\tau `$ we need to know, given some fixed vector $`u`$, how many vectors $`v`$ there are with given type and given inner product with $`u`$. These numbers are given in the following table.

$$\begin{array}{ccccccccccccccccc}\text{type of }u& 00& 00& 00& 00& 0& 0& 0& 0& 1& 1& 1& 1& 2& 2& 2& 2\\ \text{type of }v& 00& 0& 1& 2& 00& 0& 1& 2& 00& 0& 1& 2& 00& 0& 1& 2\\ (u,v)0& 1& 80& 90& 72& 1& 26& 36& 18& 1& 32& 24& 24& 1& 20& 30& 30\\ (u,v)1/3& 0& 0& 0& 0& 0& 27& 27& 27& 0& 24& 33& 24& 0& 30& 30& 21\\ (u,v)2/3& 0& 0& 0& 0& 0& 27& 27& 27& 0& 24& 33& 24& 0& 30& 30& 21\end{array}$$

Using this table we see that $`f_{00}`$, $`f_0`$, $`f_1`$, and $`f_2`$ have to satisfy the equations

$$\begin{array}{cc}& f_{00}(\tau +1)=f_{00}(\tau ),f_{00}(1/\tau )=i3^{5/2}\tau ^3(f_{00}(\tau )+80f_0(\tau )+90f_1(\tau )+72f_2(\tau ))\hfill \\ & f_0(\tau +1)=f_0(\tau ),f_0(1/\tau )=i3^{5/2}\tau ^3(f_{00}(\tau )f_0(\tau )+9f_1(\tau )9f_2(\tau ))\hfill \\ & f_1(\tau +1)=e^{2\pi i/3}f_1(\tau ),f_1(1/\tau )=i3^{5/2}\tau ^3(f_{00}(\tau )+8f_0(\tau )9f_1(\tau ))\hfill \\ & f_2(\tau +1)=e^{4\pi i/3}f_2(\tau ),f_2(1/\tau )=i3^{5/2}\tau ^3(f_{00}(\tau )10f_0(\tau )+9f_2(\tau ))\hfill \end{array}$$

One solution of these equations is given as follows.

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill f_{00}(\tau )& =24\eta (3\tau )^3\eta (\tau )^9=24(1+9q+54q^2+O(q^3))\hfill \\ \hfill f_0(\tau )& =3\eta (3\tau )^3\eta (\tau )^9=3+O(q)\hfill \\ \hfill f_1(\tau )& =0\hfill \\ \hfill f_2(\tau )& =\eta (\tau /3)^3\eta (\tau )^9+3\eta (3\tau )^3\eta (\tau )^9=q^{1/3}+14q^{2/3}+92q^{5/3}+O(q^{8/3})\hfill \end{array}$$

Most of the transformations follow formally from the functional equations $`\eta (\tau +1)=e^{2\pi i/24}\eta (\tau )`$ and $`\eta (1/\tau )=\sqrt{\tau /i}\eta (\tau )`$ of $`\eta `$. The only one which takes slightly more work is the transformation of $`f_2`$ under $`\tau \tau +1`$, and this follows from the identity $`\eta (\tau )^3=_{nZ}(4n+1)q^{(4n+1)^2/8}`$ and its consequence

$$\eta (\tau /3)^3\eta (\tau )^9+\eta ((\tau +1)/3)^3\eta (\tau +1)^9+\eta ((\tau +2)/3)^3\eta (\tau +2)^9=9\eta (3\tau )^3\eta (\tau )^9.$$

By theorem 13.3 of \[B\] there is an automorphic form $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ on the symmetric space of $`M`$ with the following properties. It has weight 12 = (coefficient of $`q^0`$ in $`f_{00}`$)/2. The zeros of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ correspond to the negative powers of $`q`$ in $`f`$, so are zeros of order 1 orthogonal to all the norm $`2/3`$ vectors of $`M^{}`$. $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is holomorphic on the symmetric space, and therefore holomorphic at cusps as well by the Koecher boundedness principle. $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is an automorphic form for some one dimensional representation of $`\mathrm{Aut}(M)`$.

By restricting $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ to complex hyperbolic space we get an automorphic form which has zeros of order 3 along the reflection hyperplanes (because $`f`$ has zeros of order 1, but every reflection hyperplane is the restriction of 3 hyperplanes of the symmetric space of $`M`$). So by taking the cube root of the restriction of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ we get an automorphic form for a one dimensional character of $`G`$ whose zeros are exactly the reflection hyperplanes with multiplicity 1.

References.

\[A-C-T\] D. J. Allcock, J. Carlson, D. Toledo, A Complex Hyperbolic Structure for Moduli of Cubic Surfaces, alg-geom/9709016

\[B\] R. E. Borcherds, Automorphic forms with singularities on Grassmannians, alg-geom/9609022, to appear in Invent. Math.


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# Cosmic Neutrinos and New Physics beyond the Electroweak Scale

## I Introduction

It has been suggested that the neutrino-nucleon cross section, $`\sigma _{\nu N}`$, can be enhanced by new physics beyond the electroweak scale in the center of mass (CM) frame, or above about a PeV in the nucleon rest frame. At ultra-high energies (UHE), neutrinos can in principle acquire $`\nu N`$ cross sections approaching hadronic levels. It may therefore be possible for UHE neutrinos to initiate air showers, which would offer a very direct means of probing these new UHE interactions. The results of this kind of experiment have important implications for both neutrino astronomy and high energy physics.

For the lowest partial wave contribution to the cross section of a point-like particle, this new physics would violate unitarity . However, two major possibilities have been discussed in the literature for which unitarity bounds need not be violated. In the first, a broken SU(3) gauge symmetry dual to the unbroken SU(3) color gauge group of strong interaction is introduced as the “generation symmetry” such that the three generations of leptons and quarks represent the quantum numbers of this generation symmetry. In this scheme, neutrinos can have close to strong interaction cross sections with quarks. In addition, neutrinos can interact coherently with all partons in the nucleon, resulting in an effective cross section comparable to the geometrical nucleon cross section. This model lends itself to experimental verification through shower development altitude statistics, as described by its authors . The present paper will not affect the plausibility of this possibility, which largely awaits more UHE cosmic ray (UHECR) events to compare against.

The second possibility consists of a large increase in the number of degrees of freedom above the electroweak scale . A specific implementation of this idea is given in theories with $`n`$ additional large compact dimensions and a quantum gravity scale $`M_{4+n}`$TeV that has recently received much attention in the literature  because it provides an alternative solution (i.e., without supersymmetry) to the hierarchy problem in grand unifications of gauge interactions. For parameters consistent with measured cross sections at electroweak energies and below, at $`10^{20}`$eV, the $`\nu N`$ cross section can approach $`10^410^2`$ times a typical strong cross section . Therefore, in these models the mean free path for $`\nu N`$ interactions at these energies is on the order of kilometers to hundreds of kilometers in air. Experimentally, this would be reflected by a specific energy dependence of the typical column depth at which air showers initiate. As we will show, this leads to a useful signature, deriving from zenith angle variations with shower energy. Comparison with observations would either support these scenarios or constrain them in a way complementary to studies in terrestrial accelerators  or other laboratory experiments that have recently appeared in the literature.

Both scenarios for increasing $`\nu N`$ cross sections raise the question of how far UHE neutrinos can travel in space. In the first case, due to the coherent nuclear interactions, the cross section approaches the nucleon-nucleon cross section, and so intergalactic matter becomes the greatest threat to the neutrino traveling long distances unimpeded. However, an order of magnitude calculation shows that the mean free path for such a neutrino is $`10^2`$ Gpc, if we simply assume the matter density of the Universe is its critical density. Within a galaxy with similar interstellar density to the Milky Way, the mean free path is $``$Mpc; the UHE neutrino is not attenuated before reaching Earth’s atmosphere. For the extra dimension model, the cross sections are lower, so interaction with matter is not a problem. With Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) photons, the CM energy is too low to give rise to a significant interaction probability. If neutrinos are massive, then the relic neutrino background is more of a threat. But assuming the neutrino mass is below 92 eV, as conservatively required to prevent over-closing the Universe for a stable species , the mean free path is $`10^4`$ Gpc at a CM energy of $`100`$GeV, corresponding to a $`10^{20}`$eV neutrino. The cosmological horizon is only $`15`$ Gpc, so for both scenarios the neutrinos can reach Earth unhindered from arbitrarily great distances.

A major motivation for attempts to augment the $`\nu N`$ cross section at ultra-high energies derives from the paradox of UHECRs. Above $`10^{20}`$ eV, protons and neutrons see CMB photons doppler shifted to high energy gamma rays, and encounters generate pions, thereby reducing the resulting nucleon’s energy by at least the pion rest mass. One therefore expects the Greisen-Zatespin-Kuzmin (GZK) cutoff , wherein cosmic rays above $`E_{\mathrm{GZK}}7\times 10^{19}`$ eV would lose their energy within $`50`$Mpc. However, since we observe cosmic rays at super-GZK energies, it has been proposed that these UHECRs might really be neutrinos rather than nucleons (for example, see ). While this is a strong motivation to explore new UHE neutrino interactions, we will not need to assume that UHECRs are neutrinos.

The paper is outlined as follows: In Section II we derive a constraint on the neutrino-nucleon cross section resulting from the non-observation of horizontal air showers induced by neutrinos produced by interactions of the highest energy cosmic rays with the cosmic microwave background. In Section III we discuss potential improvements of this constraint including other hypothesized neutrino sources and next generation experiments. In Section IV we narrow the discussion to the case of a $`\nu N`$ cross section scaling linearly with CM energy, as an example. A zenith angle profile is presented as a signature of this scaling, and a means of constraining it. We conclude in Section V.

## II A Bound from the “Cosmogenic” Neutrino Flux

The easiest way to distinguish extensive air showers (EAS) caused by neutrinos from those caused by hadrons is to look for nearly horizontal electromagnetic showers. As pointed out in Ref. , the Earth atmosphere is about 36 times thicker taken horizontally than vertically. A horizontally incident UHE hadron or nucleus has a vanishingly small chance of descending to sufficiently low altitudes to induce air showers detectable by ground instruments. As a consequence, a horizontal shower is a very strong indication of a neutrino primary.

The two major techniques for observing extensive air showers produced by UHECRs or neutrinos are the detection of shower particles by an array of ground detectors, and the detection of the nitrogen fluorescence light produced by the shower. The largest operating experiment utilizing the first technique is the AGASA which covers about $`100\mathrm{km}^2`$ in area . The second technique was pioneered by the Fly’s Eye instrument  and produced a total exposure similar to the AGASA instrument. For cosmic neutrino detection, the fluorescence technique may provide somewhat more detailed information, because it can readily measure the position of the shower maximum and possibly the first interaction, which are important in distinguishing neutrino primaries. Also, fluorescence detectors are equipped to see horizontal showers that do not intersect the ground near the detector.

The main backgrounds consist of muon bremsstrahlung and tau lepton decays, as these could occur very deep in the atmosphere. The flux of these particles is several orders of magnitude below the CRs and predicted neutrinos of the same energy, but if UHE neutrinos interact with matter only through Standard Model channels, then the rate of neutrino-induced triggers will still be dwarfed by these background events. The backgrounds for high zenith angle events differ somewhat between fluorescence detectors and ground arrays , but both detector classes have remedies for the high background. For example, one interesting benefit with air fluorescence is the possibility of seeing a separate primary CR shower associated with the event, thus identifying it as a muon- or tau-induced secondary . Ground arrays would not see this sign, but they should be able to discriminate between neutrinos and secondaries by the shape of the shower front .

The strategy here is to use observations (or non-observation) of horizontal showers to place limits on the UHE neutrino flux incident on the Earth. Comparing that against a reliably predicted flux permits us to bound the cross section.

Fig. 1 summarizes the high energy neutrino fluxes expected from various sources, where the shown flavor summed fluxes consist mostly of muon and electron neutrinos in a ratio of about 2:1. Shown are the atmospheric neutrino flux , a typical flux range expected for “cosmogenic” neutrinos created as secondaries from the decay of charged pions produced by collisions between UHE nucleons and CMB photons , a typical prediction for the diffuse flux from photon optically thick proton blazars  that were normalized to recent estimates of the blazar contribution to the diffuse $`\gamma `$ray background , and a typical prediction by a scenario where UHECRs are produced by decay of particles close to the Grand Unification Scale  (for a review see also Ref. ).

Apart from the atmospheric neutrino flux, only the cosmogenic neutrinos are nearly guaranteed to exist due to the known existence of UHECRs, requiring only that these contain nucleons and be primarily extragalactic in origin. This is an assumption, since Galactic sources can not be wholly ruled out . However, if the charge of the primary UHECR satisfies $`Z𝒪(1)`$ (which will be tested by forthcoming experiments), an extragalactic origin is favored on the purely empirical grounds of the observed nearly isotropic angular distribution which rules out Galactic disk sources. The reaction generating these cosmogenic neutrinos is well known, depending only on the existence of UHE nucleon sources more distant than $`\lambda _{\mathrm{GZK}}`$ 8 Mpc and on the relic microwave photons known to permeate the Universe. The two cosmogenic lines in Fig. 1 were computed for a scenario where radiogalaxies explain UHECRs between $`3\times 10^{18}`$eV (i.e. above the “ankle”) and $`10^{20}`$eV , with source spectra cutoffs at $`3\times 10^{20}`$ eV (lower curve) and $`3\times 10^{21}`$ eV (upper curve) . Since events were observed above $`3\times 10^{20}`$eV, this may be used as a conservative flux estimate (see also Sect. III below).

The non-observation of horizontal showers by the neutrino fluxes indicated in Fig. 1 can now be translated into an upper limit on the total neutrino-nucleon cross section. The total charged current Standard Model $`\nu N`$ cross section can be approximately represented by

$$\sigma _{\nu N}^{SM}(E)2.36\times 10^{32}(E/10^{19}\mathrm{eV})^{0.363}\mathrm{cm}^2(10^{16}\mathrm{eV}E10^{21}\mathrm{eV}).$$
(1)
In any narrow energy range and as long as the neutrino mean free path is larger than the linear detector size, the neutrino detection rate scales as

$$\mathrm{Event}\mathrm{Rate}A\varphi _\nu \sigma _{\nu N},$$
(2)
where $`A`$ is the detector acceptance (in units of volume times solid angle) in that energy band, and $`\varphi _\nu `$ is the neutrino flux incident on the Earth. In our case, the non-observation of neutrino-induced (horizontal) air showers limits the event rate, and thereby sets the experimental upper bounds given in Fig. 1. On the other hand, the gap between the best current experimental flux bound and the predicted cosmogenic flux specifies a bounding cross section in the presence of new interactions. Representing the experimental bounds in Fig. 1 with an approximate expression, and letting $`\overline{y}`$ be the average fraction of the neutrino’s energy deposited into the shower, the cross section limit becomes

$$\sigma _{\nu N}(E)10^{28}\left(\frac{10^{18}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{sr}^1}{\varphi _c(E)}\right)\left(\frac{10^{19}\mathrm{eV}}{\overline{y}E}\right)^{1/2}\mathrm{cm}^2,$$
(3)
where $`\varphi _c(E)`$ is the cosmogenic neutrino flux, and the exponent 1/2 reflects the approximate energy dependence of the Fly’s Eye upper limit on the rate of horizontal air showers. For electron neutrinos and atmospheric detectors, charged current (CC) interactions correspond to $`\overline{y}=1`$ since all of the neutrino energy goes into “visible” energy, either in the form of an electron or of hadronic debris. In this case, using the conservative lower estimate of the cosmogenic flux in Fig. 1 yields

$`\sigma _{\nu N}^{CC}(10^{17}\mathrm{eV})`$ $``$ $`1\times 10^{29}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (4)
$`\sigma _{\nu N}^{CC}(10^{18}\mathrm{eV})`$ $``$ $`8\times 10^{30}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (5)
$`\sigma _{\nu N}^{CC}(10^{19}\mathrm{eV})`$ $``$ $`5\times 10^{29}\mathrm{cm}^2,`$ (6)
and a severely degraded limit outside this energy range. The bounds Eq. (6) probe CM energies

$$\sqrt{s}1.4\times 10^5\left(\frac{E}{10^{19}\mathrm{eV}}\right)^{1/2}\mathrm{GeV}$$
(7)
that are about 3 orders of magnitude beyond the electroweak scale.

In the case of neutral currents, one needs a model for computing $`\overline{y}`$. As an example, if $`\overline{y}=0.1`$ at these energies, then the best limit becomes $`\sigma _{\nu N}(10^{18}\mathrm{eV})2\times 10^{29}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. So as long as $`\overline{y}`$ doesn’t depart too far from $`0.1`$, as indicated in , neutral currents won’t change the bounds dramatically. In Section IV, we discuss the neutral current case with respect to extra dimension models.

Note that this bound does not challenge the model of Ref. . That option relies on neutrinos acquiring larger, hadron-scale cross sections. As such, shower development will occur vertically, not horizontally, and our argument does not apply. We therefore specify a sub-hadron-size cross section above which our bound is inapplicable because horizontal air showers could not develop in column depths $`3000\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{cm}^2`$ as used by the Fly’s Eye bound :

$$\sigma _{\nu N}(E10^{19}\mathrm{eV})10^{27}\mathrm{cm}^2.$$
(8)
The bound derived here is independent of the type of interaction enhancing physics, stemming directly from attempts to observe deeply penetrating air showers. To summarize, Eq. (3) applies to the cosmogenic neutrino flux as long as $`\sigma _{\nu N}`$ does not reach hadronic levels.

We note that our allowed range, Eqs. (6) and (8), is complementary to and consistent with the interpretation of UHECRs as neutrino primaries, as considered in Ref. . In this case, $`\sigma _{\nu N}(E)2\times 10^{26}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, which is in the larger cross section regime, Eq. (8). This is because for $`\sigma _{\nu N}(E)10^{28}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, the first interaction point would have a flat distribution in column depth up to large zenith angles $`\theta 80^{}`$, whereas observed events appear to peak at column depths $`450\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{cm}^2`$ . For an individual event, a $`0.2`$% probability exists for interacting by $`450\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{cm}^2`$ with cross sections as small as $`10^{29}\mathrm{cm}^2`$.

We also note in this context that Goldberg and Weiler  have related the $`\nu N`$ cross section at UHEs to the lower energy $`\nu N`$ elastic amplitude in a model independent way, only assuming $`3+1`$ dimensional field theory. Consistency with accelerator data then requires

$$\sigma (E)3\times 10^{24}\left(\frac{E}{10^{19}\mathrm{eV}}\right)\mathrm{cm}^2,$$
(9)
otherwise deviations of neutrino cross sections from the Standard Model should become visible at the electroweak scale .

## III Future Prospects for Improvement

EAS detection will be pursued by several experiments under construction or in the proposal stage. As an upscaled version of the original Fly’s Eye Cosmic Ray experiment, the High Resolution Fly’s Eye detector  has recently begun operations and has preliminary results of several super-GZK events , but no official limit on horizontal showers thus far. The effective aperture of this instrument is $`350(1000)\mathrm{km}^2\mathrm{sr}`$ at $`10(100)`$EeV, on average about 6 times the Fly’s Eye aperture, with a threshold around $`10^{17}`$eV. This takes into account a duty cycle of about 10% which is typical for the fluorescence technique. Another project utilizing this technique is the proposed Japanese Telescope Array . If approved, its effective aperture will be about 10 times that of Fly’s Eye above $`10^{17}`$eV. The largest project presently under construction is the Pierre Auger Giant Array Observatory  planned for two sites, one in Argentina and another in the USA for maximal sky coverage. Each site will have a $`3000\mathrm{km}^2`$ ground array. The southern site will have about 1600 particle detectors (separated by 1.5 km each) overlooked by four fluorescence detectors. The ground arrays will have a duty cycle of nearly 100%, leading to an effective aperture about 30 times as large as the AGASA array. The corresponding cosmic ray event rate above $`10^{20}`$eV will be 50–100 events per year. About 10% of the events will be detected by both the ground array and the fluorescence component and can be used for cross calibration and detailed EAS studies. The energy threshold will be around $`10^{18}`$eV, with full sensitivity above $`10^{19}`$eV.

NASA recently initiated a concept study for detecting EAS from space  by observing their fluorescence light from an Orbiting Wide-angle Light-collector (OWL). This would provide an increase by another factor of $`50`$ in aperture compared to the Pierre Auger Project, corresponding to a cosmic ray event rate of up to a few thousand events per year above $`10^{20}`$eV. Similar concepts being proposed are the AirWatch  and Maximum-energy Air-Shower Satellite (MASS)  missions. The energy threshold of such instruments would be between $`10^{19}`$ and $`10^{20}`$eV. This technique would be especially suitable for detection of almost horizontal air showers that could be caused by UHE neutrinos. As can be seen from Fig. 1, with an experiment such as OWL, the upper limit on the cross section Eq. (6) could improve by about 4 orders of magnitude. In addition, for such showers the fluorescence technique could be supplemented by techniques such as radar echo detection .

The study of horizontal air showers nicely complements the more traditional technique for neutrino detection in underground detectors. In these experiments, muons created in charged current reactions of neutrinos with nucleons either in water or in ice are detected via the optical Cherenkov light emitted. Due to the increased column depth (see also Fig. 3), this technique would be mostly sensitive to cross sections smaller by about a factor of 100, in a range $`10^{31}10^{29}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. For an event rate comparable to the one discussed above for ground based instruments, the effective area of underground detectors needs to be comparable and thus significantly larger than $`1\mathrm{km}^2`$, with at least some sensitivity to downgoing events. The largest pilot experiments in ice (AMANDA ) and in water (Lake Baikal  and the now defunct DUMAND ) are roughly $`0.1`$km in size. Next generation deep sea projects such as the ANTARES  and NESTOR  projects in the Mediterranean, and ICECUBE  in Antarctica will significantly improve the volume studied but may not reach the specific requirements for the tests discussed here. Also under consideration are techniques for detecting neutrino induced showers in ice or water acoustically or by their radio emission . Radio pulse detection from the electromagnetic showers created by neutrino interactions in ice  could possibly be scaled up to an effective area of $`10^4\mathrm{km}^2`$ and may be the most promising option for probing the $`\nu N`$ cross section with water or ice detectors. A prototype is represented by the Radio Ice Cherenkov Experiment (RICE) experiment at the South Pole .

The bounds we derived here can be even more constraining if the UHE neutrino fluxes are higher than the conservative estimates we used. For instance, the cosmogenic flux was computed  by assuming a cosmic ray spectral dependence of $`N(E)E^\gamma `$ with $`\gamma =3`$, consistent with the overall cosmic ray spectrum above $`10^{15}`$ eV. However, at $`10^{19.5}`$ eV, the spectrum appears to flatten down to $`1\gamma 2`$, probably suggestive of a new cosmic ray component at these energies. Once more UHECR events are observed, the trend hinted by the AGASA data may be confirmed, giving the source of the UHECRs that generate the cosmogenic neutrinos a much harder spectral index than we assumed. The UHE cosmogenic neutrino flux computed for this flattened spectrum would yield a higher flux and a stronger bound will result. For example, assuming a rather strong source evolution and an $`E^{1.5}`$ injection spectrum  would increase the cosmogenic flux up to 100 fold, and consequently yield a 100 fold improvement of the constraint Eq. (6). See also Ref.  for an estimate more optimistic by a factor 10-20 than our conservative one.

Concerning sources of primary UHE neutrinos, current estimates on the flux from the proton blazar model , wherein AGN accelerate protons which interact with the local thick photon field, producing pions and therefore neutrinos, could potentially improve the bound by a factor of $`50`$ at $`10^{17}`$ eV. The topological defect model shown in Fig. 1  could improve the bound by a factor of $`75`$ at $`10^{19}`$ eV. These improvements would be realized if either model were to become as strongly motivated as the cosmogenic flux. Furthermore, any mechanism predicting fluxes approaching the experimental flux limits would exclude a new contribution to the $`\nu N`$ cross section beyond the Standard Model at corresponding energies. Particularly high UHE neutrino fluxes are predicted in scenarios where the highest energy cosmic rays are produced as secondaries from Z bosons resonantly produced in interactions of these neutrino primaries with the relic neutrino background . In general, any confirmed increase in flux over cosmogenic as currently estimated  would improve the bound presented here.

We also consider Markarian 421 as an example of how a point source can impact the bound. Its calculated neutrino flux is $`50\mathrm{eV}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ at its peak energy of $`10^{18}`$ eV . This is about an order of magnitude shy of the cosmogenic flux at the same energy, and therefore it will not serve to improve the bound. However, should some new evidence arise against the existence of a cosmogenic flux, point source estimates like this may become the fallback means to constrain $`\sigma _{\nu N}`$.

## IV Energy Dependence Signatures and Extra Dimension Models

In extra dimension scenarios, the virtual exchange of bulk gravitons (Kaluza-Klein modes) leads to extra contributions to any two-particle cross section. For CM energy such that $`sM_{4+n}^2`$, where possible stringy effects are under control , these cross sections can be well approximated perturbatively. In contrast, for $`sM_{4+n}^2`$ model dependent string excitations can become important and in general one has to rely on extrapolations which can be guided only by general principles such as unitarity . Naively, the exchange of spin 2 bulk gravitons would predict an $`s^2`$ dependence of the cross section . However, more conservative arguments consistent with unitarity  suggest a linear growth in $`s`$, and in what follows we will assume the following cross section parameterization in terms of $`M_{4+n}`$:

$$\sigma _g\frac{4\pi s}{M_{4+n}^4}10^{28}\left(\frac{\mathrm{TeV}}{M_{4+n}}\right)^4\left(\frac{E}{10^{19}\mathrm{eV}}\right)\mathrm{cm}^2,$$
(10)
where the last expression applies to a neutrino of energy $`E`$ hitting a nucleon at rest. It should be stressed that this cross section is only one example among a few proposed in the literature. We further note that within a string theory context, Eq. (10) can only be a good approximation for $`sM_s^2`$. Above the string scale, there is currently no agreement in the literature about the behavior of $`\sigma _g`$ with energy. Amplitudes for single states may be exponentially suppressed $`\mathrm{exp}[s/M_s^2]`$ above the string scale $`M_sM_{4+n}`$ , which can be interpreted as a result of the finite spatial extension of the string states, in which case the number of states may grow exponentially . This is currently unclear, and which effect dominates the total cross section may be model dependent. For example, domination by the amplitude suppression would result in $`\sigma _g4\pi /M_s^210^{32}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, conservatively assuming $`M_s100`$GeV. Thus, an experimental detection of the signatures discussed in this section could lead to constraints on some string-inspired models of extra dimensions.

Fig. 2 shows the neutrino-nucleon cross section based on the Standard Model , and three curves for enhanced cross sections, given by the sum

$$\sigma _{tot}=\sigma _{SM}+\sigma _g.$$
(11)
These three curves are given for different values of the scale $`M_{4+n}`$. An increase in this mass scale brings the total cross section closer to that of the Standard Model, Eq. (1). For electron neutrinos, the Standard Model contribution is well approximated (within about 10%) by the charged current cross section Eq. (1), whereas the other flavors are harder to observe . Of course, experimentally speaking, what counts for observing an interaction is the total cross section weighted by the average energy fraction transferred to the shower.

Following a format used previously in the literature , we can express these cross sections in a more useful manner. The interaction lengths of neutrinos through various kinds of matter can be directly compared if they are specified in terms of the corresponding interaction lengths in a particular medium. In Fig. 3, the interaction length for neutrinos is plotted in centimeters of water equivalent (cmwe), indicating the appropriate energy range necessary for detection underground and in our atmosphere. The interaction length in cmwe is computed from

$$L_{int}=\frac{1}{\sigma _{\nu N}N_A}\mathrm{cmwe},$$
(12)
where $`N_A`$ is Avogadro’s number, since the density of water is 1 g/cm<sup>3</sup>. In the particular case of extra dimension models with the cross section scaling Eq. (10), Fig. 3 shows that a neutrino becomes unlikely to create a shower below $`5\times 10^{18}`$ eV, since $`M_{4+n}`$ can’t be pushed much below about 1 TeV without its effects contradicting current experiments .

The total neutrino-nucleon cross section is dominated by a contribution of the form Eq. (10) at neutrino energies $`EE_{\mathrm{th}}`$, where, for $`M_{4+n}1`$ TeV, the threshold energy can be approximated by

$$E_{\mathrm{th}}2\times 10^{13}\left(\frac{M_{4+n}}{\mathrm{TeV}}\right)^{6.28}\mathrm{eV}.$$
(13)
Provided that $`M_{4+n}`$ is low enough, the effects of these new interactions should be observable in UHE neutrino interactions. The upper bound Eq. (3) we derived on $`\sigma _{\nu N}`$ by merit of current non-observation of horizontal air showers immediately implies a corresponding bound on the mass scale within the context of Eq. (10):

$$M_{4+n}\overline{y}^{1/8}\left(\frac{\varphi _c(E)}{10^{18}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{sr}^1}\right)^{1/4}\left(\frac{E}{10^{19}\mathrm{eV}}\right)^{3/8}\mathrm{TeV},$$
(14)
where $`\overline{y}`$ enters because the bound derives from observational limits at various shower energies. Since $`M_{4+n}`$ is a new constant of nature (that is, the value of $`M_{4+n}`$ doesn’t actually scale with $`E`$), Eq. (14) should be evaluated at the energy which generates the best limit. The strongest bound that can emerge from this formula with the lower cosmogenic curve in Fig. 1 occurs at $`E=10^{18}`$ eV and $`\overline{y}=1`$, giving $`M_{4+n}1.2\mathrm{TeV}`$. But for the exchange of Kaluza-Klein gravitons considered here, we can give a very rough estimate $`\overline{y}0.1`$ by noting similarity to massive boson exchange within the Standard Model . In this case the best bound is $`M_{4+n}(\overline{y}=0.1)0.9\mathrm{TeV}`$.

The bound Eq. (14) is consistent with the best current laboratory bound, $`M_{4+n}1.26`$ TeV, which is from Bhabha scattering at LEP2 . The fact that laboratory bounds are in the TeV range can be understood from Fig. 2 which shows that for smaller mass scales $`\sigma _{tot}`$ would already be dominated by $`\sigma _g`$ at electroweak scales. Eq. (14) can be improved beyond this level through more data from the continued search for horizontal showers and independently by any increase in the theoretically expected UHE neutrino flux beyond the conservative cosmogenic flux estimate shown in Fig. 1. We stress again that Eq. (14) derives from the more general bound Eq. (3) valid for CM energies about 3 orders of magnitude above the electroweak scale if $`\sigma _{\nu N}s`$ in this energy range, and is thus complementary to laboratory bounds.

It is interesting to note that Eq. (14) does not depend on the number $`n`$ of extra dimensions, assuming the cross section in Eq. (10). This is in contrast to some other astrophysical bounds which depend on the emission of gravitons causing energy loss in stellar environments . The best lower limit of this sort comes from limiting the emission of bulk gravitons into extra dimensions in the hot core of supernova 1987A . In order to retain the agreement between the energy released by the supernova, as measured in neutrinos, and theoretical predictions, the energy flow of gravitons into extra dimensions must be bounded. The strongest contribution to graviton emission comes from nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung . The resulting constraints read $`M_650`$TeV, $`M_74`$TeV, and $`M_81`$TeV, for $`n=2,3,4`$, respectively, and, therefore, $`n4`$ is required if neutrino primaries are to serve as a candidate for the UHECR events observed above $`10^{20}`$eV (but see ). We calculated this bound for the case $`n=7`$ extra dimensions, as motivated by superstring theory. We find the lower bound drops to $`M_{11}0.05`$TeV, so for higher numbers of extra dimensions, the cosmic ray bound derived here could be stronger than type II supernova bounds, if the scaling assumed in Eq. (10) were widely accepted.

This assumes that all extra dimensions have the same size given by

$$r_nM_{4+n}^1\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{Pl}}}{M_{4+n}}\right)^{2/n}2\times 10^{17}\left(\frac{\mathrm{TeV}}{M_{4+n}}\right)\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{Pl}}}{M_{4+n}}\right)^{2/n}\mathrm{cm},$$
(15)
where $`M_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ denotes the Planck mass. The SN1987A bounds on $`M_{4+n}`$ mentioned above translate into the corresponding upper bounds $`r_63\times 10^4`$mm, $`r_74\times 10^7`$mm, and $`r_82\times 10^8`$mm. With the cosmogenic bound and 7 extra dimensions, we have $`r_{11}6\times 10^{12}`$mm.

A specific signature of the linear scaling with energy of the cross section Eq. (10) consists of the existence, for a given zenith angle $`\theta `$, of two critical energies. First, there is an energy $`E_1(\theta )`$ below which the first interaction point has a flat distribution in column depth, whereas above which this distribution will peak above the ground. This energy is independent of any experimental attributes of the detector, apart from its altitude.

Second, there is an energy $`E_2(\theta )>E_1(\theta )`$ below which a large enough part of the resulting shower lies within the sensitive volume to be detectable, and above which the event rate cuts off because primary neutrinos interact too far away from the detector to induce observable showers. This energy is specific to the detector involved.

We show the zenith angle dependence of these two critical energies in Fig. 4, where we have assumed approximate experimental parameters for the Fly’s Eye experiment given in , at an atmospheric depth of 860 g/cm<sup>2</sup>; both Auger sites are within a few hundred meters of this altitude as well. For simplicity, we have assumed that the Fly’s Eye detects showers above $`10^{19}`$ eV, provided that they initiate and touch ground within 20 km of the detector. Following , we assume a standard exponential atmosphere of scale height 7.6 km, and a spherical (rather than planar) Earth.

These zenith angle plots can be expressed in terms of cross sections instead of energies, and be generalized to other energy dependences. They have two purposes. First, upon adding UHECR data on such a plot, a resemblance to the arcing curves shown would give strong support to the respective energy scaling. Second, in the specific case of Eq. (10), owing to the 4th power dependence on the quantum gravity scale $`M_{4+n}`$, Fig. 4 serves as a good means for determining this mass scale by comparing the data curves to those predicted. Of course, this will only work in directions in which the neutrino-induced EAS rate is not dominated by the ordinary UHECR induced rate. This restriction may necessitate additional discriminatory information such as the shower depth at maximum. Furthermore, in a detailed analysis the observed shower energy has to be corrected by the distribution of fractional energy transfer $`y`$ in order to obtain the primary neutrino energy.

This approach requires more data, which will likely come from the HiRes Fly’s Eye and the Pierre Auger observatories. Because these facilities can see nitrogen fluorescence shower trails in the sky, they are better equipped to see horizontal showers than ground arrays alone. In addition, they utilize more than one “eye” so their angular resolution is $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta 2^{}`$ . On the other hand, these detectors are biased toward horizontal events because of their long track lengths, and this bias will need to be treated properly in order to interpret the zenith angle data.

As mentioned above, “traditional” neutrino telescopes based on water and ice as detector medium could be used similarly to probe a range of smaller $`\nu N`$ cross sections $`10^{31}10^{29}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, if their size significantly exceeds 1 km and if they are sensitive to at least a limited range of zenith angles $`\theta <90^{}`$, i.e. above the horizon. For example, the ratio of upgoing to downgoing events in the $`10100`$PeV range could be a measure of the absolute $`\nu N`$ cross section at these energies . However, the detection method and flavor sensitivity are different in this case.

It is worth considering whether enhanced cross sections in extra dimensions significantly raise detector backgrounds. Here, the most important background for UHE neutrino detection is from muons created in decays of collision products of UHECR interactions in the atmosphere (and to a lesser degree, from tau lepton decays). The muon range in centimeters of water equivalent, with only Standard Model interactions, is approximately

$$L_\mu ^{SM}2.5\times 10^5\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{2E}{\mathrm{TeV}}+1\right)\mathrm{cmwe}.$$
(16)
Therefore, the UHE muon range is larger than the depth of the atmosphere (see Fig. 3). But with $`M_{4+n}`$ TeV extra dimension models, the muon acquires a cross section given by Eq. (10), and therefore has the same interaction rate in the atmosphere as the neutrinos we wish to detect. However, even if we conservatively estimate the atmospheric muon flux , it is more than 350 times smaller than the cosmogenic neutrino flux at $`E=10^{18}`$ eV, and more than $`10^3`$ times smaller for $`E10^{19}`$ eV. So with extra dimensions, atmospheric muons may lead to interesting signatures in atmospheric and underground detectors, but they do not hinder cosmic UHE neutrino shower identification.

UHECRs and neutrinos together with other astrophysical and cosmological constraints thus provide an interesting testing ground for new interactions beyond the Standard Model, as suggested for example in scenarios involving additional large compact dimensions. In the context of these scenarios we mention that Newton’s law of gravity is expected to be modified at distances smaller than the length scale given by Eq. (15). Indeed, there are laboratory experiments measuring the gravitational interaction at smaller distances than currently measured (for a recent review of such experiments see Ref. ), which also probe these theories. Thus, future UHECR experiments and gravitational experiments in the laboratory together have the potential to provide rather strong tests of these theories. These tests complement constraints from collider experiments .

## V Conclusions

A direct measurement approach has been presented here for bounding the extent to which UHE neutrinos acquire greater interactions with matter than the Standard Model prescribes. By looking for nearly horizontal air showers, we can limit the UHE neutrino flux striking Earth. When this is combined with a natural source of cosmogenic UHE neutrinos, a model-independent upper limit on the cross section results. Air shower experiments can also test for the energy dependence of cross sections in the range $`10^{29}10^{27}\mathrm{cm}^2`$; we have discussed the specific case of a linear energy dependence, as motivated by some large extra compact dimensions models that have enjoyed much recent attention in the community. In such scenarios, fundamental quantum gravity scales in the $`110`$TeV range can be probed. This could also be relevant for testing string theory scenarios with string scales in the TeV range, however reliable theoretical predictions for the relevant cross sections in such scenarios are not yet available.

If this method proves beneficial, knowledge will be gained about new interactions at ultra-high energies. Should the data support extra dimensions, our understanding of UHE interactions between all particles (not just $`\nu N`$) will be changed because changes in gravity affect every particle. In general, cosmic neutrinos and UHECRs will probe interactions at energies a few orders of magnitude beyond what can be achieved in terrestrial accelerators in the forseeable future.

## Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Pierre Binetruy, Sean Carroll, Cedric Deffayet, Emilian Dudas, Gia Dvali, and Michael Kachelriess for valuable conversations, and Mary Hall Reno and Ren-Jie Zhang for their timely correspondence. We also thank Murat Boratav, Shigeru Yoshida, and Tom Weiler for comments on the manuscript.