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# Identically Distributed Pairs of Partition Statistics

## Abstract

We show that many theorems which assert that two kinds of partitions of the same integer $`n`$ are equinumerous are actually special cases of a much stronger form of equality. We show that in fact there correspond partition statistics $`X`$ and $`Y`$ that have identical distribution functions. The method is an extension of the principle of sieve-equivalence, and it yields simple criteria under which we can infer this identity of distribution functions.

Let $`𝒫(n)`$ be the set of partitions of the integer $`n`$, $`p(n)=|𝒫(n)|`$, and let $`𝒫=_{n1}𝒫(n)`$ be the set of all partitions of all positive integers. A partition statistic $`X`$ is a nonnegative-integer-valued function defined on $`𝒫`$. Two partition statistics $`X`$ and $`Y`$ are identically distributed if

$$n1,j0:\mathrm{Prob}_n(X=j)=\mathrm{Prob}_n(Y=j),$$

where

$$\mathrm{Prob}_n(X=j)=\text{def}\frac{|\{\pi 𝒫(n):X(\pi )=j\}|}{p(n)}.$$

There are a number of classical theorems of the form “The number of partitions of $`n`$ that have no …is the same as the number that have no ….” The purpose of this note is to remark that frequently in such cases there is an underlying pair of identically distributed partition statistics. For example, Euler’s famous theorem that the number of partitions of $`n`$ with distinct parts is the same as the number with odd parts can be strengthened to the following.

###### Theorem 1

The partition statistics $`X(\pi )=`$ number of even part sizes that occur in $`\pi `$, and $`Y(\pi )=`$ number of repeated part sizes that occur in $`\pi `$, are identically distributed.

That is, for every $`n`$ and $`j`$, the number of partitions of $`n`$ in which exactly $`j`$ different sizes of parts are repeated is the same as the number in which exactly $`j`$ different sizes of parts are even, and Euler’s original theorem is the case $`j=0`$. Thus a great deal more is true than is stated in the original theorem.

Let’s prove Theorem 1, for then the general idea will be clear. Imagine that a sieve-method computation is carried out in which the objects are the partitions of $`n`$. Suppose the $`r`$th property of a partition is that it contains the pair of parts $`\{r,r\}`$. Now imagine that another sieve-method calculation is carried out on the same objects, in which now the $`r`$th property of a partition is that it contains the single part $`2r`$. We claim that the output from these two sieve calculations will be the same, i.e., that the two computations are sieve-equivalent .

Indeed, we claim that the inputs are the same, so the outputs must be the same too. The input to the first sieve computation is, for every $`S`$, the number of partitions that have at least the multiset $`S`$ of repeated parts $`\{r_1,r_1,r_2,r_2,\mathrm{},r_k,r_k\}`$, and that number is $`p(n2r_12r_2\mathrm{}2r_k)`$. But this is the same as the input to the second sieve calculation. Hence both sieves give the same outputs. Among the outputs of a sieve calculation are the numbers of objects that have exactly $`j`$ properties, for each $`j`$. Hence these numbers are the same, and Theorem 1 is proved. $`\mathrm{}`$

We now give, following Cohen  and Remmel , two general theorems that imply the identical distribution of a pair of partition statistics. The first theorem is easier to work with, but the second is more general.

###### Theorem 2

Let $`\{F_1,F_2,\mathrm{}\}`$, and $`\{G_1,G_2,\mathrm{}\}`$ be two lists of multisets of positive integers. Suppose that the $`F`$’s are pairwise disjoint, the $`G`$’s are pairwise disjoint, and that for every $`i=1,2,\mathrm{}`$ we have $`_{kF_i}k=_{kG_i}k`$. Define the following two partition statistics:

$$X(\pi )=|\{i:F_i\pi \}|;Y(\pi )=|\{i:G_i\pi \}|.$$

Then $`X`$ and $`Y`$ are identically distributed.

This is the so-called “disjoint-multiset” case. Here are some other pairs of identically distributed partition statistics that follow from the theorem above.

1. $`X=`$ the number of part sizes that are perfect squares; $`Y=`$ the number of part sizes $`i`$ whose multiplicity is $`i`$.
2. $`X=`$ the number of part sizes that are $``$ 2,3,4 mod 6; $`Y=`$ the number of part sizes that are either a multiple of 3 or else repeated and not a multiple of 3.
3. Fix an integer $`d>1`$. Let $`X=`$ the number of part sizes that are multiples of $`d`$; $`Y=`$ the number of part sizes whose multiplicity is $`d`$.
4. Let $`M_1,M_2`$ be two sets of positive integers. Define $`2M_1=\{j:(j/2)M_1\}`$. Suppose that $`2M_1M_1`$ and $`M_2=M_12M_1`$. Then define the statistic $`X=`$ the number of part sizes that are not in $`M_2`$; $`Y=`$ the number of part sizes $`i`$ such that either $`iM_1`$ or $`iM_1`$ and is repeated.

These last three examples generalize theorems of Schur , Glaisher , and Andrews , respectively. They were originally used by Remmel  as examples of his elegant disjoint multisets machinery for producing partition bijections.

The hypotheses of Theorem 2, which require pairwise disjointness, can be weakened to sieve-equivalence. We state this as follows.

###### Theorem 3

Let $`\{F_1,F_2,\mathrm{}\}`$, and $`\{G_1,G_2,\mathrm{}\}`$ be two lists of multisets of positive integers. For every finite set $`S`$, put $`_S=_{jS}F_j`$, in the sense of a multiset union, and similarly for $`𝒢_S`$. Suppose that for every $`S`$ we have $`_{j_S}j=_{j𝒢_S}j`$. Then, with $`X,Y`$ defined as in Theorem 2, $`X`$ and $`Y`$ are identically distributed.

As an application of Theorem 3 which does not follow from Theorem 2 we can use the pair of lists of multisets, again taken from ,

$$\{\{2,4\},\{4,6\},\{6,8\},\mathrm{}\}\{\{1,1,2,2\},\{2,2,3,3\},\{3,3,4,4\},\mathrm{}\}$$

to deduce that the following partition statistics are identically distrbuted: $`X=`$ the number of consecutive even part sizes, and $`Y=`$ the number of consecutive repeated part sizes. This is a considerable sharpening of Corollary 2.10 of , and many other examples are easy to construct.


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# Simple computer model for the quantum Zeno effect

## I Introduction

In quantum mechanics, observations of a system generally affect the state of that system. When the system is evolving from one state to another, the effect of repeated observations may be to slow down the rate of evolution; this phenomenon was called the quantum Zeno effect by Misra and Sudarshan.

Misra and Sudarshan’s original presentation of the quantum Zeno effect made use of the projection postulate, and has been criticised (see, e. g. , ) as unphysical on these grounds; more recent discussions (e. g. , ) have tended to model the measurement device explicitly. In general these models have demonstrated a slowing due to measurement: the measurement entangles a measuring device with the system, and so causes decay of off-diagonal elements in the density matrix of the system; this decay slows, but does not halt, the evolution. A review of the Zeno effect is , which also discusses its conceptual implications (which will not concern us here).

This paper is concerned with computer models of the Zeno effect, and in particular with measurement of the position of a one-dimensional particle. This problem is interesting in that it simulates a *continuous* measurement, and has been modelled by Fearn and Lamb and by Altenmüller and Schenzle; both treated a particle in a double-well potential and investigated the effects of measurement on the time taken for the particle to tunnel between the wells. Interestingly, these two papers found opposite conclusions: Fearn and Lamb coupled the particle to a pointer, and found that this coupling actually increased the rate of penetration; Altenmüller and Schenzle used a (simulated) laser to determine which well the particle was in (without measuring its position more precisely) and found a Zeno-type slowing of the tunnelling rate.

These computer simulations are relatively complex: Altenmüller and Schenzle’s model, in particular, involves very sophisticated simulation of the measurement interaction in addition to the need to solve the Schrödinger equation numerically for the evolution of the particle. The model presented here goes to the opposite extreme: it considers the simplest possible one-particle evolution, that of a free particle. As such it is less ‘realistic’ than the models mentioned above; on the other hand, it is conceptually simple enough to avoid being bogged down by details, while being complex enough to show a wide variety of interesting behaviour in response to measurement.

The model itself is described in section II, and the conventions for showing its output are described in section III. Sections IV and V use the model to examine the effects of two very different types of measurement, qualitatively similar to Altenmüller and Schenzle’s coarse-grained measurement of position and to Fearn and Lamb’s pointer measurement, respectively. Section VI draws some tentative conclusions.

## II Description of the model

The model uses a periodic lattice to simulate a free particle. The continuum of position states is replaced by N discrete states, labelled

$`|X_0,|X_1,|X_2,\mathrm{},|X_{N1}`$

and with the distance between successive states being $`L`$. (For programming reasons N is chosen to be a power of 2; in the runs described here, 256 was used.) The analogues of the momentum states are then constructed by discrete Fourier transform:

$$|P_k=\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}}\underset{n=0}{\overset{N1}{}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{2\pi ikn}{N}\right)|X_n.$$
(1)
Those states with $`kN/2`$ are intended to represent momentum states with momentum $`2\pi \mathrm{}k/NL`$ (note that $`k`$ is dimensionless). The states with $`k>N/2`$ represent momentum states with momentum $`2\pi \mathrm{}(Nk)/NL`$.

The free particle Hamiltonian is then

$$\widehat{\text{H}}=(\mathrm{}^2/\lambda L^2)\underset{k=0}{\overset{N1}{}}E(k)|P_kP_k|$$
(2)
where

$`E(k)=\{\begin{array}{cc}k^2/2\hfill & (kN/2)\hfill \\ (Nk)^2/2\hfill & (k>N/2)\hfill \end{array}`$

and $`\lambda `$ is a parameter analogous to inverse mass. We are free to choose the length, time and mass units used to be such that $`\mathrm{}`$, $`L`$ and $`\lambda `$ are numerically equal to one, and this was done in the computer simulation.

Now we can solve the dynamics exactly: if $`|\psi (0)=|P_k`$ then

$$|\psi (t)=\mathrm{exp}(iE(k)t)|P_k.$$
(3)
So given any density operator, we may find its evolution by decomposing it into momentum states and applying Eq. (3). Formally,

$$\widehat{\rho }(0)=\underset{k,k^{}=0}{\overset{N1}{}}|P_kP_k\left|\widehat{\rho }(0)\right|P_k^{}P_k^{}|;$$
(4)
hence

$`\widehat{\rho }(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k,k^{}=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}\mathrm{exp}\{it[E(k^{})E(k)]\}`$ (5)
$`\times `$ $`|P_kP_k\left|\widehat{\rho }(0)\right|P_k^{}P_k^{}|.`$ (6)
Measurements are specified in terms of the position basis, as is the initial state of the system (which was always taken to be pure). To simulate measurement we suppose the system to have become entangled with some sort of measurement device; then we trace over the states of this device to get a reduced density matrix for the system. (Note that this is the reverse of the usual procedure, in which we would trace over the states of the system to find the probability of various measurement outcomes. Here, however, the purpose of the measurement is not to find any information about the system but simply to track the effects of measurement *on* the system.)

If measurements are to be made after $`T`$ time units the process is as follows:

1. Fourier-transform $`\widehat{\rho }`$ into the momentum basis
2. Time-evolve it by formula 6, for a time $`T`$
3. Fourier-transform $`\widehat{\rho }`$ into the position basis
4. Carry out the measurement. The method, of course, varies according to the chosen measurement, but the effect on the particle will always be to modify the density matrix (in the position basis) in some relatively simple way (for instance, a perfect measurement of position would leave the diagonal elements untouched and set the off-diagonal elements to zero).

Essentially all of the processing time was used carrying out the Fourier transforms, using the Fast Fourier Transform algorithm.

The reader may be wondering to what extent the periodic nature of momentum in the model affects its validity: after all, there is a sharp transition at $`k=N/2`$ between states intended to represent high rightwards momentum and those representing high leftwards momentum. In one sense, of course, this does not matter as the model is still a perfectly legitimate quantum system in its own right; still, much of its interest is as a simulation of a particle with continuously varying position and artifacts such as Bragg reflection could spoil the validity of this simulation. I do not believe this is a serious problem, for the following reason: we would expect the model’s behaviour to deviate from that of a real particle only when the momentum distribution has spread significantly into the $`kN/2`$ region. If the spectrum remains concentrated away from the region — as is the case throughout this paper, except for the eigenstate of ‘position’ considered at the end of section IV — we would not expect serious problems. In any case, fears that artifacts are being generated as a result of the periodicity of momentum can usually be allayed by rerunning the simulation with an increased grid size. For the measurements in this paper, this was done (increasing the grid from 256 to 512 points) for a number of test cases where the momentum distribution was significantly nonzero; no discernible differences occurred.

## III Display conventions

All of the diagrams below come in pairs. The first diagram of each pair is a graph of the probability distribution of the system across the “position” eigenstates, i. e. the $`x`$-axis shows values of the dimensionless quantity $`n`$ and the value of the graph at point $`n`$ is $`\text{Tr}(\widehat{\rho }|X_nX_n|)`$. The second diagram is the probability distribution across the “momentum” eigenstates labelled by the dimensionless quantity $`k`$; since $`k`$ is only problematically proportional to momentum (see note at end of section II) the $`x`$-axis has itself been labelled “k” rather than “momentum”. The ‘time’ variable has been multiplied by $`10^3`$ to produce manageable numbers.

It is important to remember that these graphs do not show the wavefunctions of pure states. After a measurement, the state of the system is in general a highly incoherent density operator.

Although in the sequel these graphs will often be described as being probability distributions over position space, momentum space etc. it should be kept in mind that the system is finite-dimensional and periodic, and that the probability distribution is not really a function of a continuous variable.

To save space, some of the results have been described verbally rather than shown; the text indicates whenever a diagram has been omitted.

## IV Projection-valued measurements

To begin with we treat the simplest type of measurement: a sharp measurement of position (i. e. a projection-valued measurement, or PVM). We do not measure position exactly (clearly this is unphysical in the case of a real free particle) but coarse-grain the configuration space into $`M`$ regions and project the wave-function onto states with support in individual regions. This is the original definition of measurement given by Von Neumann; in terms of the density operator, it amounts to setting to zero all elements $`\widehat{\rho }_{lm}`$ whenever $`l`$ and $`m`$ label states $`|X_l`$, $`|X_m`$ in different regions.

However, we do not need to realise this ‘magically’ by means of the projection postulate: it can be carried out physically by coupling the system to some measurement device which enters one of $`M`$ orthogonal states if the system is localised in one of the $`M`$ regions. If the system is not localised in any of the regions, this process will entangle the system with the device, and as a result when we trace over the $`M`$ orthogonal ‘detector’ states of the measurement device to get the reduced density operator of the system, this density operator will be modified as above. This sort of measurement is similar in spirit to (but much more simplistic than) the measurement modelled by Altenmüller and Schenzle.

In the example shown here, position space was divided into 6 regions of equal size (with a small leftover region). The boundaries between regions are shown on the diagrams by vertical lines.

The first choice of initial state was a Gaussian pure state located near the left***Of course, left here is arbitrary; the space is periodic. of the position space and with a moderate rightward momentum:

$`|\psi =𝒩{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{N}{}}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(nn_0)^2}{w^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi ik_0n}{N}}\right)|X_n`$

where $`𝒩`$ is a normalisation constant ($`n_0`$ was taken as 8; $`k_0`$ as 31). As expected, in the absence of measurement this packet moves rightwards and spreads out slightly; its state at time 400 is shown in figure 1. The momentum distribution is of course unchanged.

The system was now rerun with a PVM being carried out at intervals of 1 unit. So long as the packet remains within a single measurement region its evolution proceeds normally. At about time 60 (not shown) it reaches the boundary of the region, and at time 80 (not shown) small distortions have appeared at the rightmost edge of the packet. By time 100 these distortions have become magnified to large, jagged peaks (figure 2), with a sharp drop in probability density to the right of the boundary: this suggests a Zeno-type effect is retarding the packet’s motion through the boundary.

By time 140 (figure 3) the Gaussian shape has been entirely replaced by a series of jagged peaks to the left of the boundary, and a long, low tail to the right. The momentum graph also shows that a small part of the packet has effectively been reflected, and now has negative momentum. The fraction of the packet which has been reflected grows rapidly; by time 180 (figure 4) it is significantly larger than the incident part of the packet. Meanwhile, the tail to the right of the boundary has spread most of the way to the next boundary, remaining fairly smooth without the jagged structure to the left of the boundary. It is also possible at this stage to see a small tail beginning to spread back to to the left, towards the other boundary of the initial region.

By time 200 (not shown) the incident part of the momentum distribution has become very spread out. By time 240 (not shown) the left and right tails of the distribution have grown significantly and are starting to interact with further measurement boundaries; the jagged part of the distribution shows signs of smoothing out and moving back off to the left. By time 360 (figure 5) this part has smoothed out completely into a leftwards-moving packet (presumably with the bulk of the negative-momentum part of the momentum spectrum) and is beginning to encounter the left measurement boundary. The rest of the packet has continued to spread out to left and right, and shows some signs of interaction at other measurement boundaries. Comparison of figure 5 with figure 1 shows that the state’s rightward motion has been significantly slowed.

There is a striking resemblance to the a priori totally different problem of a wave-packet incident on a potential barrier. It is very natural to interpret the diagrams as the position and momentum distributions of a pure state which collides with a barrier, is partially transmitted (the right-edge tail), mostly reflected (the negative-momentum peak), interferes with itself on reflection (the jagged region) and eventually is split up with the smaller part heading off to the right and the larger part, reformed into a rough wave-packet shape, moving to the left and eventually being incident on another barrier. This resemblance is all the more surprising when we remember that the above is a completely false description: the graphs do not refer to a pure state at all, and the “packet” moving off to the left in figure 5 is highly incoherent.

Variation of the number of measurement regions and the frequency of measurements produced no surprises: increasing either caused the Zeno freezing to increase.

As a second example — and perhaps one more akin to decay — the same type of measurement was tried using an eigenstate of position as the initial state. Such a state has no well-defined momentum but will tend to spread out fairly rapidly and to form sharp peaks which eventually soften (figures 6,7). With a measurement, this process is sharply halted at the measurement boundary. The initial region continues to be filled with jagged peaks, but a relatively smooth tail leaks out of the region on either side (not shown). This tail spreads out and in due course (figure 8) interacts with the next set of measurement barriers; it behaves very similarly to the wave packets considered previously. The bulk of the state remains confined within the initial region, and remains very unevenly distributed. This resembles the behaviour at the measurement boundary for the wave-packet above. Comparison of the measured system at time 180 (figure 8) with the unmeasured system (figure 7) shows that the system’s evolution has been sharply reduced. (It is important to note that this second example does not reliably simulate any continuous position measurement, as the momentum spectrum is completely delocalized and so there is no way to avoid the problems of Bragg reflection mentioned at the end of section II.)

## V Pointer measurements

In this section we consider an alternative model of measurement, in which a pointer is coupled to the particle’s position. This model was first constructed by Von Neumann and was developed further by Arthurs and Kelly and by Lamb and Fearn and Lamb; it is the measurement model used in their computer simulations. See also  for a discussion. The measurement process is as follows: we take the pointer as being described by a one-dimensional wave-packet, initially taken to be $`\chi (x)`$, and take the measurement dynamic to be

$`|X_n\chi (x)|X_n\chi (xn),`$

so that, for a fairly localised pointer (e. g. a sharply pointed Gaussian) if the system is in an eigenstate of position then the pointer will point out that eigenstate.

If the pointer is sufficiently sharp as to be narrower than the gap between eigenstates, this process effectively reduces to a sharp measurement of position (i. e. a PVM as in the last section, but with $`M=N`$). However, the needle can only be this narrow by exploiting the discrete nature of position in the simulation. To simulate a genuine measurement of position the pointer wave-function must be significantly wider than the gap between eigenstates. In this case, the wave-functions of pointer states corresponding to closely spaced particle-position states would overlap, leading to imprecise measurements and a reduction of decoherence.

Here we consider the special case of a Gaussian pointer, with width $`1/\alpha `$ (i. e. wave-function $`\chi (x)=\chi _0\mathrm{exp}(\alpha ^2x^2/2)`$). The effect on the density matrix $`\widehat{\rho }_{mn}`$ of the particle of coupling it to this pointer is easily shown to be

$`\widehat{\rho }_{mn}\widehat{\rho }_{mn}\mathrm{exp}(\alpha ^2(mn)^2/4).`$

As noted by Fearn and Lamb, measurements of this nature tend to cause the momentum distribution of the state to spread out (they claim that this momentum spreading increases the chance of barrier penetration in their model, and so gives the reverse of a Zeno effect). However, it is also easy to show (see appendix) that the *expected* momentum of the state is conserved by this sort of measurement interaction. As such, moving wave-packets are not ideal choices of initial state, since their evolution is dominated by bulk motion and the measurement cannot really affect this motion. This was in fact found when such states were put into the model: on measurement by a pointer, the packet spreads out but its centre-of-mass motion is not affected at allIn fact some slight slowing was eventually observed but this is an artefact of the model: when the momentum is sufficiently spread out the periodic nature of momentum space causes the high-positive-momentum states also to be high-negative-momentum states. In a periodic system like this one momentum can be defined, and is conserved, only in a pragmatic sense..

To avoid this problem, a stationary Gaussian wavepacket was used as an initial state. Such a state will evolve entirely by spread of the wave-packet; as this is a significantly slower process than bulk motion the timescale of measurement was reduced accordingly. Figure 9 shows the undisturbed evolution of this state at time 200.

A Gaussian needle of half-width 5 was then used to measure the system at intervals of 10 units. The effect is significant (figure 10): the momentum distribution is rapidly spread out and the position distribution soon follows suit, leading to a much faster evolution with measurement. Increasing the sharpness of the pointer simply intensifies this effect (figure 11).

This seems in accordance with Fearn and Lamb’s results: a pointer measurement causes momentum spread and so, far from slowing the evolution of a system, it accelerates it.

## VI Conclusions

The model presented here is a quantum system with several hundred degrees of freedom, but whose evolution — with or without measurement — is straightforwardly calculated and understood, and which can be measured in a wide variety of ways. As such it seems to be a useful half-way house between highly complex, detailed simulations on the one hand and simple, analytical models on the other.

Whether it is a *realistic* quantum system is another matter: it is intended to model a free particle but clearly cannot do so perfectly. However, provided that we are careful

1. to take the number of discrete positions large enough (see last paragraph of section II);
2. not to make measurements which distinguish adjacent positions; and
3. to avoid situations where the periodic nature of the position and momentum become relevant

there seems no reason not to treat it as realistic.

What can we learn from the model about the Zeno effect? The main conclusion I would draw is that repeated measurement of a system has dynamical effects that are far more complex than just slowing the evolution. Some sorts of measurements seem to produce slowing, while others actually accelerate the evolution; also novel effects (like the potential-barrier-like behaviour of the measurement in section IV) are observed, and changes of initial state (such as changing from a moving to a stationary packet in section V) can make the difference between significant measurement-caused effects and few or no effects.

Fearn and Lamb, and Altenmüller and Schenzle, found measurement to have opposite effects to one another in their respective computer models, and it is easy to read this as a genuine disagreement about whether the quantum Zeno effect is real. It is satisfying to observe qualitatively the same effects in our model, giving support to a more conciliatory view: quantum measurement involves entangling a measurement device with the system to be measured, and this is bound to affect the dynamics of the system; but there are many ways to measure position, and it is perfectly plausible that different sorts of measurement will have different effects.

Investigating the details of how measurements affect the dynamics of systems lies rather beyond the scope of this paper, whose purpose is simply to show the complex sorts of phenomena which can occur and to present a simple model with which to investigate them. The phenomena are clearly due to measurement-induced decoherence of the initially pure state; an obvious next step in investigating them would be to look at how rapidly the state does decohere (the separate plots of position and momentum given here are not ideal for this purpose; some sort of joint plot, such as the Wigner function(; discussed in ) would be more suited). Nonetheless there seem to be interesting effects to investigate here, which may be obscured by the details of more complex models and lost in the over-simplifications of analytic ones.

## Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Ian Aitchison for extensive discussions and constructive criticism.

## Proof that pointer measurements conserve momentum

We work in the continuum limit. Recall that we are coupling the system to a Gaussian needle of half-width $`1/\alpha `$, so that the density matrix evolves like

$`\widehat{\rho }(X,X^{})\widehat{\rho }(X,X^{})\mathrm{exp}(\alpha ^2(XX^{})^2/4).`$

Then the expected momentum is

$`<\widehat{\text{P}}>=\text{Tr}\widehat{\text{P}}\widehat{\rho }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑XX\left|\widehat{\text{P}}\widehat{\rho }\right|X}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle dXdX^{}X\left|\widehat{\text{P}}\right|X^{}X^{}\left|\widehat{\rho }\right|X}.`$
Now

$`X\left|\widehat{\text{P}}\right|\psi =i{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dX}}X|\psi `$

so

$`X\left|\widehat{\text{P}}\right|X^{}=i\delta ^{}(XX^{})`$

and therefore

$`<\widehat{\text{P}}>^{}`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle dXdX^{}\delta ^{}(XX^{})\widehat{\rho }^{}(X^{},X)}`$
$`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle dX\frac{d\widehat{\rho }^{}}{dX^{}}}|_{(X,X)}.`$
We have

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\widehat{\rho }^{}}{dX^{}}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dX^{}}}\left(\widehat{\rho }e^{\alpha ^2(XX^{})^2/4}\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d\widehat{\rho }}{dx^{}}}e^{\alpha ^2(XX^{})^2/4}`$
$`+\widehat{\rho }.{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^2}{2}}(XX^{})e^{\alpha ^2(XX^{})^2/4}`$
so

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\widehat{\rho }^{}}{dX^{}}}|_{(X,X)}={\displaystyle \frac{d\widehat{\rho }}{dX^{}}}|_{(X,X)}.`$

Hence the expected momentum is unchanged by the measurement; in fact this result holds for any pointer (not just a Gaussian one) provided it is symmetric about the centre and is differentiable. Any sensible pointer should satisfy these requirements.


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# OKHEP-00-03 Comment on Casimir energy for spherical boundaries

## I Introduction

In a recent paper, Hagen criticizes conventional, well-established techniques for computing the Casimir stress on spherical, or in general, curved boundaries . In our view this paper is full of misconceptions and incorrect assertions, and sheds no light on the subject. The point seems to be that the Green’s function method for calculating the Casimir stress on a spherical shell, as originally proposed in Ref. , is incorrect, yet, mysteriously, manages to arrive at the correct answer . The simpler, and correct conclusion, would be, on the contrary, that that method is valid. As we will demonstrate, such is the case.

Three errors are claimed to have been made in such calculations: (i) the discontinuity of the stress tensor $`T_{ij}`$ has been used to calculate the force per unit area on a spherical surface; (ii) poles are neglected in the rotation to Euclidean space; and (iii) the incorrect outgoing wave boundary conditions have been imposed on the Green’s functions. On the contrary, all of the procedures used in the criticized papers are, in fact, correct.

Let us first address the point (iii). The causal or Feynman propagator is used both in the Milton et al. papers  and in Hagen’s paper. Hagen seems not to appreciate the simple identity obeyed by the free photon propagator:

$`D_+(𝐫,t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\omega }{2\pi }}e^{i\omega t}{\displaystyle \frac{(d𝐤)}{(2\pi )^3}\frac{e^{i𝐤𝐫}}{k^2\omega ^2iϵ}}={\displaystyle \frac{i}{(2\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑k\mathrm{sin}kre^{ik|t|}={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\omega }{2\pi }}e^{i\omega t}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi r}}e^{i|\omega |r},`$ (1)
where the second form is obtained by first integrating over $`\omega `$, the third by integrating over $`𝐤`$. The last form explicitly shows that the casual propagator corresponds to outgoing-wave boundary conditions.***It is also possible to use the retarded Green’s function, which follows from a statistical mechanics argument . In general the connection between the causal and the retarded Green’s dyadics is $`\mathrm{}𝚪_+(𝐫,𝐫^{},\omega )=\mathrm{sgn}(\omega )\mathrm{}𝐆^R(𝐫,𝐫^{},\omega ).`$ The same results are obtained. A pedagogical derivation of Eq. (1) and other properties of the causal propagator is given in Problem 31.9 in Ref. .

As to point (i): There can be no doubt that the discontinuity of $`T_{rr}`$ across the spherical surface represents the stress per unit area exerted on that surface. As shown in the Appendix of Milton and Ng , this is equivalent to the form given by the stationary principle of electrostatics, the force density being $`𝐟=\frac{1}{2}E^2ϵ`$ for a dielectric body. (See for example, Ref. .) Moreover, in most of Milton’s papers, consistency was checked explicitly by rederiving the formulae by at least two different methods, either from the stress on the surface, or from the energy obtained by integrating $`T_{00}`$ over all space. In fact in the original paper  a third independent variational method was used. The stress tensor formulation of the problem is further validated in Sec. 3. The problem that Hagen addresses seems to be the result of using undefined formal expressions \[for example, the sum in his Eq. (8) does not exist\] so statements about coefficients vanishing in the limit of the enclosing sphere becoming infinite are not meaningful, for one must regulate the expressions before a limit can be taken.

The final objection (ii) concerns the existence of poles in the complex frequency plane. Indeed such poles occur in the lower half frequency plane for the exterior contribution, when the exterior volume is infinite (no large exterior sphere). But exactly this issue was dealt with in the original paper , on p. 395, and will be explained in detail in the next section.

So none of Hagen’s objections appear to be valid. Of course, it is not incorrect to enclose the sphere in question by a much larger sphere to keep the eigenvalues real, but it is not necessary, and the simplified procedure is correct.

There are many other minor misstatements and incomplete remarks that render Hagen’s paper objectionable. The recent experiments , while admittedly based on a somewhat different geometry than parallel plates, indeed confirm the theory at the 5–1% level because the correction to a spherical lens is easily done. Moreover, there can be little room for scepticism about the reality of Casimir forces, in view of the confirmation  of the closely related Lifshitz theory , and the demonstration of the equivalence of van der Waals forces with the Casimir force between and within dilute bodies . The Casimir force for cylindrical and spherical geometries has recently been confirmed by several authors using completely different zeta function techniques. These, and other methods, also give finite results for other geometries besides the “electromagnetic sphere,” namely for cylinders, for scalar and fermionic modes, for dielectric bodies when $`ϵ\mu =\mathrm{const}`$, etc. We could go on, but our point is taken.

## II On the legitimacy of rotating the integration contour

Here we readdress in more detail the issue of “rotating the contour of frequency integration.” As we will see, what is involved is a bit more sophisticated: It is a Euclidean transformation. The argument as given in  applied to the Green’s functions, either inside or outside the sphere of radius $`a`$, for which either $`r,r^{}<a`$, or $`r,r^{}>a`$. In fact, as employed in that reference and elsewhere, the “rotation” is actually applied to the expression for the Casimir energy, or the stress at the surface. To perform the transformation, it is essential that both inside and outside contributions be included. We can, however, consider the scalar (or TE) modes separately. Those give for the force per unit area on the sphere (where we have not included a large external sphere—its inclusion does not modify the argument)

$`f={\displaystyle \frac{i}{8\pi ^2a^3}}{\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left(l+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right){\displaystyle _C}𝑑\omega e^{i\omega \tau }\left(ka\left[{\displaystyle \frac{H_{l+1/2}^{(1)}(ka)}{H_{l+1/2}^{(1)}(ka)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{J_{l+1/2}^{}(ka)}{J_{l+1/2}(ka)}}\right]+1\right),`$ (2)
where $`k=|\omega |`$. (For the derivation of Eq. (2) see .) Here the sign of the additive constant has been reversed, in effect, by adding a contact term, a term proportional to $`\delta (\tau )`$, so that the resulting frequency integral be convergent. Now it may be verified that the integrand in Eq. (2) has the following analytic properties in the complex variable $`\zeta =ka`$:

* The singularities lie in the lower half plane or on the real axis. Consequently, the integration contour $`C`$ in $`\omega `$ lies just above the real axis for $`\omega >0`$, and just below the real axis for $`\omega <0`$.
* For $`\mathrm{}\zeta >0`$, the integrand goes to zero as $`1/|\zeta |^2`$. (This is a weaker condition than specified in .) This convergent behavior is the result of including both interior and exterior contributions.

Then we may write the stress on the sphere as

$`f={\displaystyle _C}{\displaystyle \frac{d\omega }{2\pi }}e^{i\omega \tau }g(|\omega |),`$ (3)
where the integrand satisfies the dispersion relation

$`g(|\omega |)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi i}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\zeta {\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{\zeta ^2\omega ^2iϵ}}g(\zeta ),`$ (4)
because the singularities of $`g(\zeta )`$ occur only for $`\mathrm{}\zeta 0`$. Now we can carry out the $`\omega `$ integral in Eq. (3) to obtain

$`f={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑\zeta {\displaystyle \frac{\zeta }{|\zeta |}}e^{i|\zeta ||\tau |}g(\zeta ).`$ (5)
Finally, we re-write the result in Euclidean space by making the Euclidean transformation $`i|\tau ||\tau _4|>0`$, so that we have the representation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2|\zeta |}}e^{|\zeta ||\tau _4|}={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dk_4}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{ik_4\tau _4}}{k_4^2+\zeta ^2}}.`$ (6)
Thus the Euclidean transform of the stress is

$`ff_E=i{\displaystyle \frac{dk_4}{2\pi }e^{ik_4\tau _4}g(i|k_4|)}.`$ (7)
In effect, then, the Euclidean transformation is given by the recipe $`\omega ik_4`$, $`|\omega |i|k_4|`$, $`\tau i\tau _4`$. In particular, the force per unit area given for a massless scalar field (2) is transformed into the expression

$`f_E={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2a^4}}{\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(2l+1){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑ye^{i\delta y}\left(x{\displaystyle \frac{K_{l+1/2}^{}(x)}{K_{l+1/2}(x)}}+x{\displaystyle \frac{I_{l+1/2}^{}(x)}{I_{l+1/2}(x)}}+1\right),`$ (8)
where we have adopted dimensionless variables, $`y=\omega a`$, $`\delta =\tau _4/a0`$, $`x=|y|`$. It is now straightforward to evaluate this expression. The result is as (surprisingly) first given in 1994 : $`f=0.0028168/(4\pi a^4)`$. Thus a careful analysis shows that the methodology in Ref.  is correct, and that, in fact, as long recognized, a finite result is only achievable if the difference between $`T_{rr}(r=aϵ)`$ and $`T_{rr}(r=a+ϵ)`$ is taken.

## III On the local interpretation of the stress tensor for a curved boundary

### A Theory

Let us readdress the issue about the relation between the change in the stress tensor $`T^{\alpha \beta }`$ across an arbitrary surface, and the resulting force density $`f^\alpha `$ on the surface. In Hagen’s paper it is argued that the well-known relation between $`f^\alpha `$ and a change in $`T_{rr}`$ across a planar surface in Cartesian coordinates is lost when one is dealing with curved surfaces, and apparently even when one is using non-Cartesian coordinates independent of the presence or non-presence of curved surfaces. Hagen bases his reasoning on the assumption that $`_\alpha T^{\alpha \beta }=0`$ holds everywhere. However, it is an almost trivial fact that this is not the case when sources for the electromagnetic field are present. It is in particular straightforward to show that one in general has

$$_\alpha T^{\alpha \beta }=F^{\beta \lambda }J_\lambda =f^\beta $$
(9)
where $`J^\lambda `$ is the source current, $`F^{\alpha \beta }`$ is the electromagnetic field strength tensor, and $`f^\beta `$ is the four-vector force density acting on the material sources in the system. Since this relation is covariant we conclude that the interpretation of $`f^\alpha `$ as a force density holds in any situation. This interpretation is in particular independent of the explicit system of coordinates employed or whether one is dealing with a curved spacetime. One can always locally recover the usual Minkowski spacetime results by transforming to a local vierbein.

The total force $`F^\beta `$ on the source is simply the volume integral of the force density in some three-dimensional spacelike hyper-surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. The total force vector field on a simply connected volume $`V`$ in $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ with boundary $`V`$ is most simply computed using Stokes’ theorem

$$F^\beta =_Vf^\beta =_V_\alpha T^{\alpha \beta }=_Vn_\alpha T^{\alpha \beta }.$$
(10)
In this expression $`n^\alpha `$ represents a unit spacelike outward normal to $`V`$. We will now specialize to the case when we are dealing with a thin conducting spherical shell, and when Maxwell’s vacuum field equations hold everywhere away from the shell. Thus $`V`$ represents the shell, and $`V`$ its inner and outer surfaces. Clearly, in general the total stress $`F`$ in the direction of a unit vector field $`u^\alpha `$ is $`F=_Vf^\beta u_\beta `$. Due to time-independence and the exact spherical symmetry of the shell, we choose $`u^\alpha `$ to point in the radial direction, and we find that the total outward stress on the shell per unit solid angle is

$$=r_{}^2T^{rr}(r_{})r_+^2T^{rr}(r_+).$$
(11)
In this expression the components of the stress tensor are to be evaluated at the inner and the outer radii of the shell, which are denoted by $`r_{}`$ and $`r_+`$ respectively. In the limit when the shell is infinitely thin ($`r_+r_{}`$) with radius $`a`$ we thus find that the force per unit area is

$$f=\frac{}{a^2}=T^{rr}(a_{})T^{rr}(a_+).$$
(12)
The same result can also be obtained by integrating the divergence of the stress tensor directly, using the fact that Tr$`(T_{\alpha \beta })=0`$. This should prove once and for all that Hagen’s critical discussion about the use of the change in $`T_{rr}`$ as a direct measure of the stress on a spherical shell is, from the theoretical side, completely wrong. Let us now turn to the experimental side.

### B Experiments

We wish to present two counterexamples from optics which demonstrate that Hagen’s claim about the use of $`T_{rr}`$ in calculating the force on a spherical shell is incorrect in this regard: The predictions obtained from local stress tensor calculations are in accordance with experimental evidence.

1. The first example concerns the oscillations of a small water droplet illuminated by a laser pulse. In 1988 Zhang and Chang  took photographs of water droplets (50 $`\mu `$m radius) at various instants after illumination by a $`\lambda `$=0.60 $`\mu `$m dye laser pulse of 0.4 $`\mu `$s duration. In the case of a 100 mJ pulse, the droplet began oscillating with surface elevations of up to 30 per cent of the equilibrium radius. Since a spherical drop acts as a lens, the maximum elevations were observed, as expected, at the rear section.

From a theoretical point of view this problem is a hybrid problem: the natural way to proceed is to calculate the electromagnetic surface force density using Eq. (12) as if the surface of the sphere were at rest. Thereafter one can calculate the hydrodynamic response of the sphere by means of the Navier-Stokes equation. The problem was studied by Lai et al. , and by Brevik and Kluge , for various polarizations in the linear approximation for the surface elevation. Wave optics was required. Although the linear approximation may appear rough at the rear section, it is clear from the figures that this kind of theory is in reasonable agreement with the observations. This example, as far as we are aware, is one of the very few cases where the observations of the radiation pressure are local. The viability of the expression (12) is quite evident.

2. Our second example is about the optical forces observed on microparticles in an evanescent laser field. There is a striking experimental demonstration of this effect, by Kawata and Sugiura : The particles are lifted up from the dielectric interface and moved parallel to the interface. Although this effect is not a local effect such as above, one has nevertheless, in order to describe it theoretically, to make use of the same formula (12) as before. The theory of the effect has been worked out by Almaas and Brevik , Lester and Nieto-Vesperinas , and others. The agreement between wave theory and observations is reasonable, again justifying the legitimacy of Eq. (12).

## Acknowledgements

The work of KAM was supported in part by a grant from the US Department of Energy. We thank Ricardo Moritz Cavalcanti for detecting a typographical error in an earlier version of this paper.


text:
# Dynamical constraints on phase transitions

## I Introduction

The collisions of heavy ions around the Fermi energy and the description of multifragmentation phenomena fills an enormous literature. Mostly the multifragmentation is attributed to a hypothetical liquid - gas phase transition which is partially supported by mean field considerations in equilibrium where the nonlinear density dependence of the interaction energy leads to a liquid - gas like first order phase transition. Therefore, the phenomena has been investigated in terms of a spinodal decomposition. However this straightforward picture is over-shadowed by at least two serious drawbacks. First we have to deal with finite systems, where the phase transition appears modified and less pronounced than in infinite bulk matter. And secondly, we have to face the fact that the process evolves under extreme nonequilibrium conditions. For a critical discussion of recent models on multifragmentation see . We want to investigate the latter two points here and will use a microscopic approach which allows one to describe the time evolution of the one-particle distribution function including binary correlations. We will suggest a possibility of analyzing phase transitions in terms of time dependent thermodynamical variables and will be able, in this way, to see signals of instability in nonequilibrium and finite systems.

The standard treatment to investigate basic features of multifragmentation processes is performed in terms of fluctuation analysis starting from the Landau equation  or BUU equations . Observing that these kinetic equations do not lead to enough fluctuations to describe multifragmentation, additional stochasticity has been assumed and incorporated resulting in Boltzmann-Langevin pictures . The large time scale of fluctuations has been analyzed in . It is found that the large time evolution of the system is guided by cooperative effects and fluctuations in a universal manner. The crucial role of collision rate has been pointed out in that it enforces the diffusive regime.

We will adopt here a straight microscopic picture of kinetic theory without additional fluctuations of Langevin sources. While this is perfectly microscopical controlled we have to leave out the possibility of describing fragment production. In contrast we will investigate the thermodynamical trajectories as arising straight from the solved kinetic equation as a Fermi liquid. Therefore no coalescence or other cluster creation mechanisms are used. This allows to restrict to the single particle distribution if the two - particle correlations are included in the collision integral. This is performed in the frame of the nonlocal kinetic theory. Since we want to study the dynamical constraints of phase transitions as necessary but not sufficient conditions we can expect already from the kinetic theory an answer whether the system will undergo spinodal decomposition or other forms of decomposition. In fact we will demonstrate that there is a dominant surface emission at higher energies than the Fermi energy while the spinodal decomposition can be accessed only for energies lower or equal the Fermi energy. For higher energies the system evolves too fast through the spinodal region to be influenced sufficiently by spinodal decomposition.

There are two experimental hints for two different regimes of instability in heavy ion collisions around Fermi energy. The first one concerns the emulsion data recorded in the experiment by F. Schussler et. al. which has been considered in . There the fragments with charge $`Z>2`$ has been grouped into two different velocities, one around $`0.16c`$ and the other with $`0.25c`$. A possible interpretation has been advocated that the higher velocity group comes from fragments emitted at an early stage from the surface. The TDHF calculations seemed to support this picture.

A second experimental signal comes from the production of hard photons as measured by the TAPS collaboration . The extracted source sizes by HBT interferometry has found to be too large if not two sources are assumed. Moreover the calculated photon spectra shows a clear prompt source of hard photons besides later thermal photons. The latter second source vanishes for incident energies larger than $`60`$MeV. This indicates already that there is a transition between two mechanisms of particle production and instability if the bombarding energy exceeds 50-60 MeV.

We will show that indeed there can be identified two mechanisms; at short times a surface dominated emission and at later times a volume dominated spinodal decomposition. For low energies we will find that the volume spinodal effects are visible while for higher energies only the surface emission survives.

## II Kinetic description

We use for the description the recently derived nonlocal kinetic equation  for the one - particle distribution function

$`{\displaystyle \frac{f_1}{t}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\epsilon _1}{𝐤}}{\displaystyle \frac{f_1}{𝐫}}{\displaystyle \frac{\epsilon _1}{𝐫}}{\displaystyle \frac{f_1}{𝐤}}=`$ (1)
$`{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩d𝐪}{(2\pi )^5\mathrm{}^7}\delta \left(\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2\epsilon _3\epsilon _4+2\mathrm{\Delta }_E\right)\left|𝒯_{ab}\right|^2}=`$ (2)
$`\left[f_3f_4\left(1f_1\right)\left(1f_2\right)\left(1f_3\right)\left(1f_4\right)f_1f_2\right],`$ (3)
with Enskog-type shifts of arguments : $`f_1f_a(𝐤,𝐫,t)`$, $`f_2f_b(𝐩,𝐫\mathrm{\Delta }_2,t)`$, $`f_3f_a(𝐤𝐪\mathrm{\Delta }_K,𝐫\mathrm{\Delta }_3,t\mathrm{\Delta }_t)`$ , and $`f_4f_b(𝐩+𝐪\mathrm{\Delta }_K,𝐫\mathrm{\Delta }_4,t\mathrm{\Delta }_t)`$ . The effective scattering measure, the $`𝒯`$-matrix is centered in all shifts. The quasiparticle energy $`\epsilon `$ contains the mean field as well as the correlated self energy.

In agreement with , all gradient corrections are given by derivatives of the scattering phase shift $`\varphi =\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{ln}𝒯_{ab}^R(\mathrm{\Omega },𝐤,𝐩,𝐪,t,𝐫)`$,

$$\begin{array}{cccccc}\mathrm{\Delta }_t\hfill & =& \frac{\varphi }{\mathrm{\Omega }}|_{\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2}\hfill & \hfill \mathrm{\Delta }_2& =& \left(\frac{\varphi }{𝐩}\frac{\varphi }{𝐪}\frac{\varphi }{𝐤}\right)_{\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2}\hfill \\ & & & & & \\ \mathrm{\Delta }_E\hfill & =& \frac{1}{2}\frac{\varphi }{t}|_{\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2}\hfill & \hfill \mathrm{\Delta }_3& =& \frac{\varphi }{𝐤}|_{\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2}\hfill \\ & & & & & \\ \mathrm{\Delta }_K\hfill & =& \frac{1}{2}\frac{\varphi }{𝐫}|_{\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2}\hfill & \hfill \mathrm{\Delta }_4& =& \left(\frac{\varphi }{𝐤}+\frac{\varphi }{𝐪}\right)_{\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(4)
After derivatives, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$’s are evaluated at the energy shell $`\mathrm{\Omega }\epsilon _3+\epsilon _4`$. Neglecting these shifts the usual BUU scenario appears.

The $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$’s in the arguments of the distribution functions in (3) remind the non-instant and non-local corrections in the scattering-in integral for classical particles. The displacements of the asymptotic states are given by $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{2,3,4}`$. The time delay enters in an equal way the asymptotic states 3 and 4. The momentum gain $`\mathrm{\Delta }_K`$ also appears only in states 3 and 4. Finally, there is the energy gain which is discussed in . These nonlocal corrections to the usual Boltzmann equation are a compact form of gradient corrections. It ensures that the conservation laws contain besides the mean-field correlations also the two particle correlations.

Despite its complicated form it is possible to solve this kinetic equation with standard Boltzmann numerical codes and to implement the shifts . Therefore we have calculated the shifts for different realistic nuclear potentials . The numerical solution of the nonlocal kinetic equation has shown an observable effect in the dynamical particle spectra of around $`10\%`$. The high energetic tails of the spectrum are enhanced due to more energetic two-particle collisions in the early phase of nuclear collision. Therefore the nonlocal corrections lead to an enhanced production of preequilibrium high energetic particles.

Besides the nonlocal shifts and cross section which has been calculated from realistic potentials we adopt here the view that the selfenergy $`\epsilon `$ is parameterized in terms of the Skyrme potential for which we use a soft potential of the form

$`\epsilon ={\displaystyle \frac{p^2}{2m}}+A\left({\displaystyle \frac{n}{n_0}}\right)+B\left({\displaystyle \frac{n}{n_0}}\right)^\sigma .`$ (5)
For a derivation of collision integrals and the Skyrme potential (5) from the same microscopic footing, see .

### A Balance equations

By multiplying the kinetic equation with $`1,𝐩,\epsilon `$ one obtains the balance for the particle density $`n`$, the momentum density $`J`$ and the energy density $``$. Without nonlocal corrections the collision integrals vanish for the density and momentum balance and we get the standard balance equations for the quasiparticle parts

$`{\displaystyle \frac{n_a(𝐫,t)}{t}}+{\displaystyle \frac{}{𝐫}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}\frac{\epsilon }{𝐩}f_a(𝐩,𝐫,t)}=0`$ (6)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{J_i(𝐫,t)}{t}}+{\displaystyle \frac{}{r_j}}𝒫_{ij}^{\mathrm{qp}}=0`$ (7)
with the quasiparticle density, the current and the momentum tensor

$`n_a`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}f_a}`$ (8)
$`𝐉(𝐫,t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}𝐩f_a(𝐩,𝐫,t)}`$ (9)
$`𝒫_{ij}^{\mathrm{qp}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}\left(p_j\frac{\epsilon _a}{p_i}+\delta _{ij}\epsilon _a\right)f_a}\delta _{ij}^{\mathrm{qp}}`$ (10)
where the quasiparticle energy is given by

$`^{\mathrm{qp}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}\frac{p^2}{2m}f_a}`$ (11)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐤d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^6}𝒯_{ab}(\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2,𝐤,𝐩,0)f_af_b}`$ (12)
and the pressure is as usual

$`P={\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}𝒫_{ii}.`$ (13)
The quasi particle energy of the system varies as

$`\delta ^{\mathrm{qp}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}\frac{\delta ^{\mathrm{qp}}}{\delta f(𝐩,𝐫,t)}\delta f(𝐩,𝐫,t)}`$ (14)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{dp}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}\epsilon \delta f(𝐩,𝐫,t)}`$ (15)
and since we adopt the parameterization of quasiparticle energy (5), the quasiparticle part of the total energy density reads

$`^{\mathrm{qp}}(𝐫,t)={\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}\frac{p^2}{2m}f_a(𝐩,𝐫,t)}`$ (16)
$`+A\frac{n^2(𝐫,t)}{2n_0}+B\frac{n(𝐫,t)^{\sigma +1}}{(\sigma +1)n_0^\sigma }+^{\mathrm{Born}}.`$ (17)
Please note that besides the mean field (5) we have also a Born correlation term $`^{\mathrm{Born}}`$ coming from the second term of (12), see ,

$`^{\mathrm{Born}}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`_F^2{\displaystyle \frac{2\mathrm{log}211}{70\pi ^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{m}{\mathrm{}^2}}\sigma +o(T^3).`$ (18)
The balance of the quasiparticle part of the energy density reads from the kinetic equation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{^{\mathrm{qp}}(𝐫,t)}{t}}+{\displaystyle \frac{}{𝐫}}{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}\epsilon _a\frac{\epsilon _a}{𝐩}f_a(𝐩,𝐫,t)}=0.`$ (19)
The correlational parts of the density, pressure and energy are coming from genuine two-particle correlations beyond Born approximation which are also derived from the balance equations of nonlocal kinetic equations . It has been shown that they establish the complete conservation laws. These $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-contributions following from the nonlocality of the scattering integral read for the energy, pressure tensor and density

$`_c`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐤d𝐩d𝐪}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^9\mathrm{}}\mathrm{\Psi }[\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2]\mathrm{\Delta }_t},`$ (20)
$`𝒫_{ij}^c`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐤d𝐩d𝐪}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^9\mathrm{}}\mathrm{\Psi }\left[(p+q)_i\mathrm{\Delta }_{4j}+(kq)_i\mathrm{\Delta }_{3j}p_i\mathrm{\Delta }_{2j}\right]},`$ (21)
$`n_c`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐤d𝐩d𝐪}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^9\mathrm{}}\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Delta }_t},`$ (22)
where $`\mathrm{\Psi }=|𝒯_{\mathrm{ab}}^R|^22\pi \delta (\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2\epsilon _3\epsilon _4)f_1f_2(1f_3f_4)`$ is the probability to form a molecule during the delay time $`\mathrm{\Delta }_t`$.

While these correlated parts are present in the numerical results and can be shown to contribute to the conservation laws we will only discuss the thermodynamical properties in terms of quasiparticle quantities to compare as close as possible with the mean field or local BUU expressions. The discussion of these correlated two - particle quantities are devoted to a separate consideration.

### B Dynamical thermodynamical variables

We want now to construct the time dependent global termodynamical variables. From the distribution function $`f(𝐩,𝐫,t)`$ the local density, current and energy densities are given by

$`n(𝐫,t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}f(𝐩,𝐫,t)}`$ (23)
$`𝐉(𝐫,t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}𝐩f(𝐩,𝐫,t)}`$ (24)
$`_K(𝐫,t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d𝐩}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^3}\frac{p^2}{2m}f(𝐩,𝐫,t)}`$ (25)
which are computed directly from the numerical solution of the kinetic equation in terms of test particles. Please note that the above kinetic energy includes the Fermi motion.

#### 1 Temperature

The global variables per particle number like kinetic energy, Fermi energy and collective energy are obtained by spatial integration

$`_K(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫_K(𝐫,t)}}{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫n(𝐫,t)}}}`$ (26)
$`_F(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫_f[n(𝐫,t)]n(𝐫,t)}}{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫n(𝐫,t)}}}`$ (27)
$`_{\mathrm{coll}}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫\frac{J(𝐫,t)^2}{mn(𝐫,t)}}}{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫n(𝐫,t)}}}`$ (28)
where we have used the local density approximation . Now we adopt the picture of Fermi liquid theory which connects the temperature with the kinetic energy as

$`_K(t)={\displaystyle \frac{3}{5}}_F(t)+_{\mathrm{coll}}(t)+{\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2}{4_F(t)}}T(t)^2`$ (29)
from which we deduce the global temperature. The definition of temperature is by no means obvious since it is in principle an equilibrium quantity. One has several possibilities to define a time dependent equivalent temperature which should approach the equilibrium value when the system approaches equilibrium. In  the definition of slope temperatures has been discussed and compared to local space dependent temperature fits of the distribution function of matter. This seems to be a good measure for higher energetic collisions in the relativistic regime. Since we restrict here to collisions in the Fermi energy domain and do not want to add coalescence models we will not use the slope temperature. Moreover we define the global temperature in terms of global energies which are obtained by local quantities rather than defining a local temperature itself. This has the advantage that we do not consider local energy fluctuations but only a mean evolution of temperature.

#### 2 Energy and pressure

The mean field part of the energy is given by

$`U(t)`$ $`=`$ $`^{\mathrm{qp}}(t)_K(t)^{\mathrm{Born}}(t)`$ (30)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫\left(A\frac{n(𝐫,t)^2}{2n_0}+B\frac{n(𝐫,t)^{s+1}}{(s+1)n_0^s}\right)}}{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫n(𝐫,t)}}}`$ (31)
from which one deduces the pressure per particle

$`P(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}(_K(t)_{\mathrm{coll}}(t))+{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3}}^{\mathrm{Born}}(t)`$ (32)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫\left(A\frac{n(𝐫,t)}{2n_0}+B\frac{sn(𝐫,t)^s}{(s+1)n_0^s}\right)}}{{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫n(𝐫,t)}}}.`$ (33)
In order to compare now the local BUU with the nonlocal BUU scenario we consider the energy which would be the total energy in the local BUU without Coulomb energy

$`(t)=_K(t)_{\mathrm{coll}}(t)+U(t).`$ (34)
This expression does not contain the two - particle correlation energy which is zero for BUU and the Coulomb energy. The reason for considering this energy for dynamical trajectories is that we want to follow the trajectories in the picture of mean field and usual spinodal plots.

#### 3 Density

To define the density exhibits to some extend a problem. To illustrate this fact we have plotted in figure 1 and 2 the density evolution. We see that depending on the considered volume sphere we obtain different global densities. We follow here the point of view that the mean square radius will be used as a sphere to define the global density. This is also supported by the observation that the mean square radius follows the visible compression. This becomes evident in figure 2 for a symmetric reaction at higher energies where at $`40`$fm/c we see a clear compression. If we define the volume by a density cut $`n>n_0/10`$ in spatial domain we will not see compression at all since the matter is evaporating and this volume increases correspondingly to compression. Therefore we think that the sphere with the mean square radius is a good compromise.

## III Iso-nothing conditions in equilibrium

Let us first recall the figures of mean field isotherms in equilibrium. The mean field Skyrme and Born correlational energy is

$`={\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}nT{\displaystyle \frac{f_{5/2}}{f_{3/2}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{A}{2n_0}}n^2+{\displaystyle \frac{B}{(s+1)n_0}}n^{s+1}+^{\mathrm{Born}}`$ (35)
with the kinetic energy in terms of standard Fermi integrals and the density

$`n={\displaystyle \frac{g}{\lambda ^3}}f_{3/2}`$ (36)
with $`g`$ the spin, isospin,… degeneracy. The corresponding pressure reads

$`P`$ $`=`$ $`n^2{\displaystyle \frac{d(/n)}{dn}}`$ (37)
$`=`$ $`nT{\displaystyle \frac{f_{5/2}}{f_{3/2}}}+{\displaystyle \frac{A}{2n_0}}n^2+{\displaystyle \frac{Bs}{(s+1)n_0}}n^{s+1}.`$ (38)
We obtain the typical van der Waals curves in figure 3. Since we have neither isothermal nor isochoric nor isobaric conditions in simulations, shortly since we have iso-nothing conditions, we have to find a representation of the phase transition curves which are independent of temperature but which reflects the main features of phase transitions. This can be achieved by the product of energy and pressure density versus energy density in figure 3 below. This plot shows that all instable isotherms exhibit a minimum in the left lower quarter. There the energy is negative denoting bound state conditions but the pressure is already positive which means the system is unstable. The first isotherm above the critical one does not touch this quarter but remains in the right upper quarter where the energy and pressure are both positive and the system is expanding and decomposing unboundly. The left upper quarter denotes negative pressure and energy indicating that the system is bound and stable.

In order to achieve now a temperature independent plot we scale both axes of figure 3 (below) with a temperature dependent polynomial and achieve that all critical isotherms are collapsing on one curve in the left lower quarter, see figure 4.

The first isotherms above the critical one does not enter the left lower quarter. We consider this scaling as adequate for iso-nothing conditions. A phase transition should be possible to observe if there occurs a minimum in the left half of this plot at negative energies.

The idea of plotting combinations of pressure and energy is similar to the one of softest point  in analyzing QCD phase transitions. There the simple pressure over energy ratio leads to a temperature independent plot due to ultrarelativistic energy - temperature relations. In our case we have a Fermi liquid behavior at low temperatures and have to scale differently. In particular we have used in figure 4 the temperature dependent polynomials

$`g[x=T/\mathrm{MeV}]`$ $`=`$ $`1.2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}10^1x+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}10^3x^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{5}}10^4x^4`$ (40)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}10^6x^6`$
$`f[x=T/\mathrm{MeV}]`$ $`=`$ $`1.2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}10^2x+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}10^2x^2+10^5x^4`$ (42)
$`+10^7x^6`$
which are producing a temperature independent plot in figure 4 for the specific used mean field potential parameterization.

## IV Nonequilibrium thermodynamics

Let us now inspect the dynamical trajectories for the above defined temperature, density and energy. In figure 5 we have plotted the dynamical trajectories for a charge - symmetric reaction of $`Xe`$ on $`Sn`$ at $`25`$MeV lab - energy. The solution of the nonlocal kinetic equation is compared to the local BUU one. One sees in the temperature versus density plane that the point of highest compression is reached around $`60`$fm/c with a temperature of $`9`$ MeV.

After this point of highest overlap or fusion phase we have an expansion phase where the density and temperature is decreasing. While the compression phase is developing similar for the BUU and for the nonlocal kinetic equation we see now differences in the development. First the temperature of the nonlocal kinetic equation is around $`2`$MeV higher than the local BUU result. This is due to the release of correlation energy into kinetic energy which is not present in the local BUU scenario. After this expansion stage until times of $`120`$fm/c we see that the BUU trajectories come to a rest inside the spinodal region while the nonlocal scenario leads to a further decay. This can be seen by the continuous decrease of density and increase of energy. Since matter is more decomposed with the nonlocal kinetic equation we also heat the system more due to Coulomb acceleration. This leads to the enhancement of temperature compared to BUU. An oscillating behavior occurs at later times which reflects an interplay between short range correlation and long range Coulomb repulsion. The decomposition leads almost to free gaseous matter after $`300`$fm/c as can be seen in the energy versus density plot.

Please note that although the trajectories seems to equilibrate inside the spinodal region when one considers the temperature versus density plane, we see that in the corresponding energy versus temperature plane the trajectories travel already outside the spinodal region. This underlines the importance to investigate the region of spinodal decomposition in terms of a three dimensional plot instead of a two dimensional one like in the recently discussed caloric curve plots. Different experimental situations lead to different curves as long as the third coordinate (pressure or density) remains undetermined.

The iso-nothing plot analog to figure 4 in the lower left corner shows that the point of highest compression is linked to a first instability seen as a pronounced minimum of the trajectory in the left quarter. This is connected with a pronounced surface emission and connected with anomalous velocity profiles . We will call this phase surface emission instability further on. At $`180`$ fm/c we see a second minimum which is taking place inside the spinodal region. This instability we might now attribute to spinodal decomposition since the trajectories developing slower and remain inside the spinodal region. The BUU shows the same qualitative minima but the matter rebounds and the trajectories move towards negative energies again. In opposition the nonlocal scenario leads to a further decomposition of matter as described above.

In the next figure 6 we have plotted the same reaction as in figure 5 but at higher energy of $`33`$MeV. We recognize a higher compression density and temperature than compared to the lower bombarding energy. Consequently the trajectories develop further towards the unbound region of positive energy after $`300`$fm/c. While the first surface emission instability is strongly pronounced we see that the second minimum in the iso-nothing plot is already weaker indicating that the role of spinodal decomposition is diminished. The trajectories in the temperature versus density plot comes still in the spinodal region at rest but travels already outside the spinodal region if the energy versus temperature plot is considered. This shows that the trajectories start to develop too fast to suffer much spinodal decomposition.

If we now plot the same reaction at $`50`$MeV in figure 7 we see that the trajectories come at rest outside the spinodal region whatever plot is used and no second minima is seen anymore in the iso-nothing plot. But, the surface emission instability is still very pronounced and is probably here the leading mechanism of matter disintegration.

We might now search for a situation where we have the opposite extreme that is we search for a reaction with as less as possible surface emission instability and as much as possible spinodal decomposition. For this reason we might think on asymmetric reactions since the different sizes of the colliding nuclei might suppress the surface emission. Indeed as can be seen in figure 8 for an asymmetric reaction of $`Ni`$ on $`Au`$ at $`25`$MeV lab-energy with nearly the same total charge as in the reaction before that the surface emission instability is less pronounced while the spinodal instability is much more important. There appears even a third minima showing that the matter suffers spinodal decomposition perhaps more than once if the bombarding energy is low enough and a long oscillating piece of matter is developing.

The higher bombarding energies now show the same qualitative effect in that it pronounces the surface emission instability and reduces the importance of the spinodal decomposition as can be seen in figures 9 and 10. Please note that much smaller compression densities and temperatures are reached in these reactions compared to the more symmetric case of $`Xe`$ on $`Sn`$.

## V Summary

The nonlocal kinetic theory leads to a different nonequilibrium thermodynamics compared to the local BUU. We see basically a higher energetic particle spectra and a higher temperature of $`2`$MeV. This is attributed to the conversion of two-particle correlation energy into kinetic energy which is of course absent in local BUU scenario.

By constructing a temperature independent combination of thermodynamical variables we are able to investigate the signals of phase transitions under iso-nothing conditions. Two mechanisms of instability have been identified: surface emission instability and spinodal decomposition. We predict for the currently investigated reactions seen in table I which effect should be the leading one for matter decomposition.

25 MeV 33 MeV 50 MeV    $`{}_{28}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{58}`$Ni + $`{}_{79}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{197}`$Au S C S C ( S)  $`{}_{54}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{129}`$Xe + $`{}_{50}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{119}`$Sn C S C ( S) C         15 MeV 33 MeV 60 MeV    $`{}_{64}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{157}`$Gd + $`{}_{92}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{238}`$U  C S C  $`{}_{73}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{181}`$Ta + $`{}_{79}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{197}`$Au C S C ( S)  C     TABLE I.: The prediction of the leading mechanisms of matter disintegration for two reactions with equal total charge but asymmetric entrance channels. Surface compression is denoted by $`C`$ and spinodal decomposition by $`S`$. In the reactions with bombarding energies higher than the Fermi energy the fast surface eruption happens outside the spinodal region. For even higher energies there is not enough time for the system to rest at the spinodal region. The trajectories simply move through the spinodal and the system decays before it comes to an equilibrium - like state inside the spinodal region.

###### Acknowledgements.

B. Tamain is thanked for reading the manuscript and helpful comments. Especially I am obliged to S. Toneev who brought the idea of softest point  to my attention. Also the discussions with R. Bougault, F. Gulminelli, M. Płoszajczak and J. P Wieleczko are gratefully acknowledged.