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# On the Equivalence of Noncommutative Models in Various Dimensions and Brane Condensation

## 1. Introduction

Noncommutative models appear to be relevant to the description of various aspects of string theory .

An approach to noncommutative gauge theories can be developed using matrix models  in the limit of large matrices.

Compactifications of these models to noncommutative tori was shown to yield the noncommutative Yang–Mills models . The noncommutative tori correspond to matrix configurations in the IKKT model having *nondegenerate* scalar commutator in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$. Although, at infinite matrix size these configurations solve equations of motion, they do not correspond to local minima of the classical action, and therefore do not contribute at the level of perturbation theory. However, due to their large entropical factor these configurations should become important in the strong coupling regime.

In the case of finite $`N`$ one can construct a map from the matrix model to some kind of non-commutative lattice gauge model (for a recent review see  and references therein).

The limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ was studied by the author in Refs. , where it was shown that this limit is ambiguous at least in the perturbative approach. The ambiguity consists in the fact that depending on the background solution chosen one has in the $`N\mathrm{}`$ limit either ten-dimensional Yang–Mills–type model or its reductions to lower dimensions.

In what follows we will start with a particular choice from the variety of possible models arising in the $`N\mathrm{}`$ limit of the IKKT matrix model. We are going to show that in fact there is a wide universality among these models, in particular, matrix fluctuation around a $`D`$-dimensional (commutative) solution are completely equivalent to perturbations around the mentioned configuration having nondegenerate scalar commutator in $`2D`$ dimensions and corresponding to noncommutative tori. This equivalence become manifest due to the possibility to absorb the kinetic term in noncommutative gauge models.111I learned this possibility from Ref. .

Also, we explicitly build a one-to-one map from one-dimensional noncommutative gauge model to the $`D`$-dimensional one using the isomorphism of Hilbert spaces. The $`D`$-dimensional model can be implemented as a solution in the one-dimensional case while the last can be obtained through the dimensional reduction of the former.

The plan of the paper is as follows. First we review some results concerning IKKT model, after that we describe the equivalence between fluctuations around commutative/noncommutative solutions, and finally find the solution which gives the map from two- to the $`D`$-dimensional noncommutative models, and discuss the implications of this map.

For the notations and background of this work we refer the reader to the Ref. .

## 2. $`N=\mathrm{}`$ IKKT model

Start with the IKKT model at finite $`N`$. It is given by the classical Euclidean action,

(1)
$$S_{\mathrm{IKKT}}=\frac{1}{4g^2}tr[X_\mu ,X_\nu ]^2\overline{\psi }\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu [X_\mu ,\psi ],$$

where $`X_\mu `$, and $`\psi `$ are scalar and spinor matrices with large size $`N\mathrm{}`$. Note that in this paper the Greek labels always run in ten dimensions, $`\mu =1,\mathrm{},10`$. This model possesses a number of properties such as supersymmetry, SO(10)-Lorentz and SU(N)-gauge invariances .

At finite $`N`$, the only classical solutions to this model are given by sets of commuting matrices $`X_\mu ^{(0)}`$, ,

(2)
$$[X_\mu ^{(0)},X_\nu ^{(0)}]=0.$$

If eigenvalues of matrices $`X_\mu ^{(0)}`$ form a $`D`$-dimensional lattice, where $`D`$ is an arbitrary integer in the range, $`0D10`$, then they can be expressed as functions of $`D`$ independent matrices $`p_i`$, where the Latin indices run through $`D`$ dimensions, $`i=1,\mathrm{},D`$.

In the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ matrix fluctuations around such a background are described by a $`D`$-dimensional Yang–Mills type model. In particular, when $`D=10`$, and matrices $`X_\mu ^{(0)}`$ are independent one can identify them with $`p_i`$. (In this case the sets of Greek and Latin indices coincide.) The limiting $`N=\mathrm{}`$ model in this case is equivalent to one given by the following action, ,

(3)
$$S=d^Dxd^Dl\left(\frac{1}{4}_{\mu \nu }^2(x,l)+\mathrm{i}\overline{\psi }\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu _\mu \psi (x,l)\right),$$

where,

(4) $`_{\mu \nu }=_\mu 𝒜_\nu (x,l)_\nu 𝒜_\mu (x,l)+g[𝒜_\mu ,𝒜_\nu ]_{}(x,l)`$
(5) $`_\mu \psi (x,l)=_\mu \psi (x,l)g[𝒜_\mu ,\psi ]_{}(x,l).`$
Here derivatives are computed with respect to $`x`$, and they are given by,

(6)
$$_\mu 𝒜(x,l)\mathrm{i}[X_\mu ^{(0)}(l),𝒜(x,l)],$$

Commutators in eqs. (36) are computed using the star product,

(7)
$$[𝒜,]_{}=𝒜𝒜,$$

while the star product itself is defined as,

(8)
$$𝒜(x,l)=e^{\frac{\mathrm{i}}{2}\left(\frac{^2}{x^{}l}\frac{^2}{xl^{}}\right)}𝒜(x,l)(x^{},l^{})|_{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{x^{}=x}{l^{}=l}}.$$

Here $`l_i`$ (the same as $`l_\mu `$) parameterise the spectrum of $`p_i`$, while $`x^i`$ are coordinates on the (Fourier) dual space .

In the case when $`D<10`$ the model is given by the reduction of (3) to $`D`$ dimensions. In this case, $`x^i`$ and $`l_i`$ are $`D`$-dimensional and the set of Greek indices comes split in two subsets formed by Latin indices $`i,j,k\mathrm{}`$ and other one of Kaluza–Klein multiplet indices which appear upon reduction to $`D`$ dimensions from 10 dimensions. We will not introduce the last type of indices, because along this paper we do not need the this split explicitly, but keep instead the Greek letters for both space-time and Kaluza–Klein multiplets. In this case the derivative terms generalise according to (6), and the dimensional reduced action keeps the same form as given by eqs. (38), but one should keep in mind that $`𝒜_\mu (x,l)`$ in this case denote both the $`D`$-dimensional gauge field and the Kaluza–Klein scalars.

Using the Moyal correspondence, the algebra of $`(x,l)`$-functions supplied with the star product (7) can be seen as a representation of the $`D`$-dimensional Heiseberg algebra with the Weyl ordering prescription which is generated by $`l_i`$ and $`x^i`$, acting on the Hilbert space $`_D`$ and satisfying the commutation relation,

(9)
$$[l_i,x^j]=\mathrm{i}\delta _i^j.$$

In this case the integration over $`d^Dxd^Dl`$ is equivalent to taking the trace over $`_D`$. In what follows we will not distinguish between these two forms.

By a redefinition of field $`𝒜_\mu `$,

(10)
$$𝒜_\mu X_\mu ^{(0)}(l_i)+𝒜_\mu ,$$

one can absorb the kinetic term in eq. (3). As a result one has the model described by the action (in Heisenberg form),

(11)
$$S=tr__D\left(\frac{1}{4}[𝒜_\mu ,𝒜_\nu ]^2+\overline{\psi }\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu [𝒜_\mu ,\psi ]\right),$$

where $`𝒜`$ and $`\psi `$ are hermitian operators of $`D`$-dimensional Heisenberg algebra which act on $`_D`$ and are represented by noncommutative functions on $`(l_i,x^i)`$, the trace $`tr__D()`$ denotes the integration over noncommutative phase space, $`d^Dxd^Dl()`$. Once again note that $`\mu ,\nu ,\mathrm{}=1,\mathrm{},10`$, while the fields are defined on $`2D`$-dimensional noncommutative space generated by $`l`$ and $`x`$.

Let us note that in the form (11) the model is manifestly invariant with respect to reparameterisations of $`(l,x)`$ preserving the commutator (9).

Although, the action (11) or its dimensional reductions are obtained as a continuum limit of fluctuations around a commutative background ($`[X_\mu ^{(0)},X_\nu ^{(0)}]=0`$), one can show that the same model can be obtained as a continuum limit of fluctuations around a configuration with $`[X_\mu ^{(0)},X_\nu ^{(0)}]=\mathrm{i}B_{\mu \nu }0`$, in $`2D`$ dimensions. In other words, the model (11) is equivalent to the U(1) non-commutative Yang–Millls model in $`2D`$ dimensions , when $`2D=10`$, or its $`2D`$ dimensional reduction when $`2D<10`$.

Indeed, consider action (11) in the case of $`D=5`$. After shifting back the fields $`𝒜_\mu (𝒜_\mu \stackrel{~}{l}_\mu )`$, where $`\stackrel{~}{l}_\mu `$ are given by $`\stackrel{~}{l}_il_i`$ for $`\mu =i=1,\mathrm{},5`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{l}_{5+i}=x_i`$, for $`\mu =5+i=6,\mathrm{},10`$ the action (11) becomes one of the 10-dimensional noncommutative U(1) Yang–Mills model.222Or, oppositely, absorbing the kinetic term, one can bring the ten dimensional noncommutative U(1) Yang–Mills model to the form (11). This correspondence is possible since $`D`$-dimensional Heisenberg algebra coincides with $`2D`$-dimensional noncommutative space. The same trick can be made for any $`D10`$, however, the meaning of the model when $`202D>10`$ is not yet clear, but as we are going to demonstrate later this is not a problem since any $`D>1`$ model is equivalent to the $`D=1`$.

## 3. From one dimension up to $`D>1`$

In this section we consider the model given by the action (11) with $`D=1`$, which means that the fields are defined as functions on the one-dimensional Heisenberg algebra generated by $`l`$ and $`x`$, satisfying usual commutation relation,

(12)
$$[l,x]=\mathrm{i}\mathrm{},$$

which is the same as two-dimensional noncommutative space. Let us note that the one-dimensional solution is one having the largest entropical factor  in the IKKT matrix model.

For convenience consider the Heisenberg algebra to be defined on a circle: $`x+2\pi Lx`$. In this case the momentum operator $`l`$ have discrete spectrum. Its eigenvalues are given by $`n/L`$, $`n=0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\mathrm{}`$. Later one can take the limit $`L\mathrm{}`$.

Consider the equations of motion for this model. Vacuum solutions (with $`S=0`$), are given by the commutative sets of operators $`𝒜_\mu ^{(0)}`$. In terms of “smooth” functions and up to a gauge transformation, they are given by the arbitrary functions $`𝒜_\mu ^{(0)}(l)`$. As it is generally known, two and more *continuous* functions of one variable always form a functional dependent set, therefore, the set of $`𝒜_\mu ^{(0)}(l)`$ is a such one if $`𝒜_\mu ^{(0)}(l)`$ are continuous functions of $`l`$. This property, however does not hold for the discontinuous functions.

After the kinetic term absorption the equations of motion are no more differential equations, thus the condition imposed one the solutions of equations of motion to be smooth functions are no more justified and can be given up. Moreover, the spectrum of $`l`$ itself is discrete.

From the other hand, since the smoothness properties are strictly related to the notion of topology of the space-time, the non-smooth solution can be interpreted as the changing of the space-time topology. The space-time topology can be extracted from the set of operators $`𝒜_\mu ^{(0)}`$ in the framework of Connes’ approach .

Consider that the solution $`𝒜_\mu ^{(0)}`$ now carries the attributes of the $`D`$ dimensional space, i.e. they form a $`D`$-dimensional lattice, and can be expressed as functions of the basic set of independent operators $`l_i`$, $`i=1,\mathrm{},D`$.

In what follows let us construct an explicit solution with functionally independent (and, therefore, discontinuous) $`l_i(l)`$.

Since eigenvalues of $`l`$ and $`l_i`$ form, respectively, one-dimensional and $`D`$ dimensional lattices, the solution $`l_i(l)`$ is given explicitly by the map from the one-dimensional lattice $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$ of the eigenvalues of $`l`$ to the $`D`$-dimensional lattice $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_D`$ of eigenvalues of $`l_i`$. Due to the reparameterisation invariance one can take both lattices to be regular and rectangular ones.

The map can be constructed through the following sequence of steps (the particular case for $`D=2`$ is depicted in the figure).

1. Map the origin of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$ to the origin of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_D`$.
2. Map $`D`$ points next to origin in the positive direction and $`D`$ ones in negative direction of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$ to the nearest neighbor points to the origin of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_D`$, using e.g. lexicographic ordering.
3. Fill the the remaining points of the $`D`$-dimensional hypercube of two lattice unites size centered at origin of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_D`$ by images of $`n=\pm (D+1),\pm (D+2),\mathrm{}`$ points of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$.
4. In the same manner fill the next hyper-cubic shell of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_D`$ by images of of points of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$, etc.
5. Thus, $`(2n+1)^D`$ points around the origin of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$ fill the hyper-cube of the size $`2n`$ centered at the origin of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_D`$.

As it can be seen by the construction the map is one-to-one. However, the resulting operators $`l_i`$ are functionally independent. Under this map small momenta are transfered to small momenta, and large ones to large ones. This means that respectively low/high energy states of one model are mapped into low/high energy sector of another one.

This correspondence allows one to pass from the one dimensional Heisenberg algebra to the Heisenberg algebra in arbitrary dimension $`D>1`$ (or from two-dimensional noncommutative space to $`2D`$ dimensional one).

Indeed, using the approach of Ref.  one can introduce for each operator $`l_i`$ its canonical conjugate $`x^i`$, satisfying the Heisenberg commutation relation in $`D`$ dimensions,

(13)
$$[l_i,x^j]=\mathrm{i}\delta _i^j.$$

One can, therefore, pass from (11) with $`D=1`$ to the equivalent description as a model in a different dimension $`D>1`$.

Let us shortly describe the construction . Consider the eigenvalue problem for adjoint operators $`P_i=[l_i,]`$ and $`Q^i=[x^i,]`$. This problem is consistent since $`P_i`$ and $`Q^j`$ are commutative and self-adjoint on the space of square integrable operators with bounded $`P_i`$. The eigenvalue problem is solved by the (eigen)operators,

(14)
$$E(k,z)=e^{\mathrm{i}k_iq^i+\mathrm{i}l_iz^i},$$

where $`k_i`$ and $`z^i`$ are eigenvalues of $`P_i`$ and $`Q^i`$ respectively. Since, by the construction, both $`(l,x)`$ and $`(l_i,x^i)`$ can be represented on the same Hilbert space $`_1`$, (in fact, we introduced isomorphism between $`_1`$ and $`_D`$), one can expand an arbitrary square integrable operator $`𝒜(l,x)`$ of original model in the $`E(k,z)`$ basis, using the trace over the Hilbert space of the one-dimensional Heisenberg algebra, and get an operator $`𝒜(l_i,x^i)`$ in the $`D`$-dimensional model,

(15)
$$𝒜(l_i,x^i)=\underset{k_i,z^i}{}\stackrel{~}{𝒜}(k_i,z^i)E(k_i,z^i),$$

where,

(16)
$$\stackrel{~}{𝒜}(k_i,z^i)=\frac{1}{(2\pi )^D}tr__1E^{}(k_i,z^i)𝒜(l,x).$$

Applying this procedure to the fields in model (11) with $`D=1`$, one obtains the equivalent description in terms of a $`D`$ dimensional model with any $`D>1`$ .

Formally, we have introduced here a noncommutative (and discontinuous) change of variables. Indeed, since $`l_i`$ and $`x^i`$ are invertible functions of one-dimensional $`l`$ and $`x`$, one can find their inverse, $`l=l(l_i,x^i)`$ and $`x=x(l_i,x^i)`$, and plough this dependence in the one-dimensional operator $`𝒜(l,x)`$ to get the function $`𝒜(l_i,x^i)=𝒜(l(l_i,x^i),x(l_i,x^i))`$ which is a $`D`$ dimensional operator.

Now we can give the following physical implication of this construction.

The $`D`$-dimensional noncommutative gauge model describes, in fact, the a D$`p`$-brane where $`p=D1`$ . We constructed a solution in the two-dimensional noncommutative gauge model which has the meaning of $`2D`$ dimensional space. This solution gives the correspondence between the gauge models (gauge fields interacting with Kaluza–Klein scalars) in various even dimensions. Taking into account the brane interpretation of the noncommutative gauge models with scalar fields, this describes the condensation of D1-branes to a D$`p`$-brane, where $`p=2D1`$. From this point of view the multiple vacua of the IKKT model Ref. , are nothing else than the condensation of D(-1)-branes described by the IKKT matrices to an arbitrary IIB brane (i.e. a brane with even-dimensional world-sheet), which is the $`2D`$-dimensional reduction of the ten-dimensional noncommutative U(1) gauge model.

## 4. Conclusions

Let us briefly summarise the results of this note.

First, we have shown that the model desribing the continuum limit of fluctuations of the IKKT matrix model around a commutative background, $`[p_i,p_j]=0`$, in $`D`$ dimensions is equivalent to one describing fluctuations around a $`2D`$ dimensional background satisfying, $`[p_I,p_J]=\mathrm{i}B_{IJ}`$, where $`B_{IJ}`$ is a nondegenerate antisymmetric scalar matrix. “Physically” this means that in the singular limit $`B0`$ corresponds to doubling of the dimensionality of the noncommutative gauge model.

Second, we demonstrated that the noncommutative model in $`2`$ dimensions can be isomorphically mapped to the $`2D`$-dimensional one. The last feature may be interpreted as the noncommutative geometry counterpart of the duality relating various branes or their condensation, .

In early works on IKKT model , it was conjectured that this in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ generates the space-time as the set of expectation values of operators $`X_\mu `$. In this context it seems natural that the topology and, in particular, the space-time dimensionality are also generated by the solution $`l_i(l)`$.

### Acknowledgements

I benefited from useful discussions with many people. In particular, I would acknowledge ones with E. Kiritsis and Yu. Makeenko.

This work was made under auspices of FSA program: ICTP–BLTP with additional support from the High Energy Section of ICTP, it is a pleasure to thank its director Prof. S. Randjbar-Daemi.

This work was supported by RFBR grant no.99-01-00190, INTAS grant no.950681, Scientific School Support grant no.96-15-0628.


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# Correlations in the Lyman 𝛼 forest: testing the gravitational instability paradigm

## 1 Introduction

The study of gravitational clustering in cold dark matter (CDM) models is a well developed subject. Starting with Gaussian initial conditions, gravitational instability can produce the large scale structure we observe in the universe today. Gravity, an attractive force, tends to concentrate matter into clumps. This process creates non-Gaussian signatures and develops higher order correlations. Through numerical N-body simulation and perturbation theory it is possible to calculate the rate at which the density field develops higher order moments as gravitational evolution proceeds (Fry (1994); Goroff et al. (1986); Fry et al. (1993); Scoccimarro et al. (1998)). The non-Gaussianities induced by gravity satisfy a very definite scaling with the power spectrum (or the variance for the one point moments). When compared to the data, for example to the distribution of galaxies in the local universe, this known scaling between the variance and the higher order moments can be used to test the hypothesis that the structure we observe has been produced by gravitational instability from Gaussian initial conditions and that galaxies are unbiased tracers of the mass (Juszkiewicz et al. (1993); Bernardeau 1994a ; Bernardeau 1994b ; Scoccimarro et al. (1998)). This program has lead to interesting constraints on models for the production of initial perturbations, ruling out some models of inflation and topological defects (eg. Gaztañaga (1994); Frieman & Gaztañaga (1999)).

In the past decade a lot of progress has occurred in our understanding of the Lyman $`\alpha `$ forest. By careful comparison of the data and the numerical simulations a clear picture sometimes called fluctuating Gunn Peterson effect, has emerged (Cen et al. (1994); Hernquist et al. (1995); Zhang et al. (1995); Miralda-Escude et al. (1996); Muecket et al. (1996); Wadsley & Bond (1996); Theuns et al. (1998)). In this picture most of the absorption is produced by low density unshocked gas in the voids or mildly overdense regions in the universe. This gas is in ionization equilibrium and traces broadly the distribution of the dark matter, but is also sensitive to its equation of state. Simple semi-analytic models based on these ideas have been developed and shown to be successful in explaining the main features of numerical simulations (Bi et al. (1992); Reisenegger & Miralda-Escude (1995); Bi & Davidsen (1997); Gneidn & Hui (1996); Croft et al. (1997); Hui & Gnedin 1997a ; Hui et al. 1997b ). These approximations allow one to make simulated spectra with the correct statistical properties out of dark matter only numerical simulations, something we will exploit in this paper as well.

The realization that the main ingredient that determines the absorption in the forest is the distribution of the dark matter has lead to the conclusion that the forest can be a very powerful probe of cosmology. Perhaps the most important application is to measure the power spectrum of the dark matter at redshifts around $`z3`$, which places strong constraints on the cosmology and the nature of the dark matter (Croft et al. (1998, 1999); White & Croft (2000); Narayanan et al. (2000)). The probability distribution of the flux and its moments has also been computed and successfully compared with to data (McDonald et al. (1999)). It has also been shown that the moments of this distribution can be predicted analytically using the known scalings for the matter and simple ideas of local biasing (Gaztanaga & Croft et al. (1999)).

In this paper we study a particular higher order statistic of the Ly-$`\alpha `$ absorption spectrum. Gravitational instability predicts a correlation between the large scale density fluctuations and the amplitude of the density perturbations on small scales. Fluctuations grow faster in regions of higher than average density, regardless of their wavelength (as long as it is small compared to the region itself). This correlation between the large scale modes and the small scale power is thus predicted to be insensitive to the amplitude and shape of the power spectrum. If the primary ingredient that determines the absorption in the forest is gravity, then this cross correlation should also be present in the Ly-$`\alpha `$ flux. Thus this statistic can be used to test the general gravitational instability scenario of the Ly-$`\alpha `$ forest and constrain other processes that could influence it. As a example we consider contamination by fluctuations in the continuum of the quasar uncorrelated with the density fluctuations. In this paper we present the results for this new cross correlation statistic from numerical simulations and compare them to the values measured in quasar Q1422+231. We use the observed values to constrain the amount of contamination in the power spectrum on large scales.

The paper is organized as follow. In §2 we introduce our statistic and in §3 we calculate it for the flux in the Lyman $`\alpha `$ forest. We also explain its dependence on the parameters of the model. In §4 we extract this statistic from the observed spectrum of Q1422+231. Finally, in §5 we study the effect of fluctuations in the continuum of the quasar and use the measured values to constrain the first of this possibilities. We conclude in §6.

## 2 Correlations between scales in the dark matter density field

Gravity induces correlations between density perturbations on different length scales. In particular, one can define two fields, a smoothed density field where only the long wavelength modes are kept, and a field that describes the spatial distribution of the power in the small scale modes (the power here means the square of the amplitude of the modes). This two fields will be defined rigorously later. In this paper we focus on the correlation coefficient between this two fields induced by the gravitational coupling between the density modes.

Using N-body simulations it can be shown that the correlation coefficient between the large scale density and the small scale power is very close to one. The reason why there is such a large correlation can be understood with the help of the sketch in figure 1. Small scale modes in an overdense region caused by a large scale mode evolve differently than those in an underdense region. An overdense region has an effect equivalent to a universe with a higher $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ and perturbations locally grow faster. Thus in the overdense regions we expect there to be more small scale power. The opposite is true for an underdense region. The important feature of this statistic is that it is very insensitive to the cosmological parameters, since it only depends on the gravity being the driving mechanism for the growth of the structures.

In this paper we study the cross correlation statistic as applied to one dimensional data. Given a field $`f(x)`$ we compute

$`F(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑xe^{ikx}f(x)}`$
$`F_H(k)`$ $`=`$ $`F(k)W_{k_1k_2}(k)`$ (1)
where $`F_H(k)`$ is a high-pass filtered field. Fields in real space are denoted with lower case letters, while their Fourier transforms are written with upper case letters. For example, in real space the high-passed filter field is denoted, $`f_H(x)`$. For simplicity we chose a simple high-pass window,

$$W_{k_1k_2}(k)=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{if }k_1<k<k_2\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise,}\hfill \end{array}$$
(2)
but the results are quite insensitive to this choice as long as the filter is non zero over a limited range of $`k`$ and the range is sufficiently wide. We are interested in how the power on small scales (the square of the amplitudes of the small scale modes) is distributed in space and whether this distribution is correlated with the low $`k`$ modes of $`f`$. For this purpose we transform the high passed filtered field $`F_H`$ to obtain $`f_H(x)`$. We define

$`f_H(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{dk}{2\pi }F_H(k)e^{ikx}}`$
$`h(x)`$ $`=`$ $`f_H^2(x)`$
$`H(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑xe^{ikx}h(x)}.`$ (3)
The quantity $`h(x)`$ measures the amount of power in the wavelength band we chose, the square in its definition is introduced so that $`h(x)`$ indeed measures power and not just the amplitude of the small scale modes. Translational invariance ensures that if we had not introduced the square, the correlation between $`h(x)`$ and the long wavelength modes of $`f(x)`$ is zero. Since $`h(x)`$ is a field in real space it allows us to study how the small scale power depends on the position.

We may further introduce the auto and cross correlation power spectra of these quantities, as well as their cross correlation coefficient,

$`F(k_1)F(k_1)`$ $`=`$ $`(2\pi )\delta ^D(k_1+k_2)P^{FF}(k_1)`$
$`H(k_1)H(k_1)`$ $`=`$ $`(2\pi )\delta ^D(k_1+k_2)P^{HH}(k_1)`$
$`F(k_1)H(k_1)`$ $`=`$ $`(2\pi )\delta ^D(k_1+k_2)P^{FH}(k_1)`$
$`C(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{P^{FH}(k)}{\sqrt{P^{FF}(k)P^{HH}(k)}}},`$ (4)
where $``$ denote ensemble average, $`P^{FF}`$ is the usual power spectrum of $`f(x)`$, $`P^{HH}`$ is the power spectrum of $`h(x)`$ and $`P^{FH}`$ is the cross correlation power spectrum between $`f(x)`$ and $`h(x)`$. By definition the cross correlation coefficient $`C(k)`$ we introduced is a number between $`0`$ and $`1`$, $`C(k)=1`$ means that in both fields modes of wavelength $`k`$ are always identical (or they always differ by the same multiplicative constant). We also want to emphasize that $`h(x)`$ depends quadratically on $`f`$ and thus $`P^{FH}`$ can be expressed as a three point function and $`P^{HH}`$ as a four point function of $`f`$. In general these depend on the shape and amplitude of primordial power spectrum, but for the cross-correlation coefficient $`C(k)`$ this dependence is weak and $`C(k)`$ is always close to unity (figure 2). In figure 2 we show the cross correlation coefficient for the one dimensional density field measured in a dark matter simulation. We used a PM simulation (Machacek and Bertschinger (1995)) of the standard CDM model (SCDM) model with $`\sigma _8=0.6`$. We use $`16\mathrm{h}^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$ box with $`128^3`$ particles. The three panels show the results for a different choice of the window $`W_{k_1k_2}`$, the range of which is shown using a horizontal line on the top of the figures. These ranges were chosen for later comparison with the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest data. We are only interested in the cross correlation between the small and large scales and for other wavevectors the cross correlation coefficient has been set to zero in the plots. We used 500 lines of sight chosen at random from one simulation box. The three power spectra were measured by averaging the results from all the lines of sight and the cross correlation coefficient was calculated by taking the ratios of the averaged quantities. Figure 2 shows that the correlation coefficient for the 1D density is very large, approximately $`C0.80.85`$ with only a mild dependence on scale. Other cosmological models predict very similar values for the cross-correlation coefficient.

## 3 Correlations between scales in the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest

.

In the last few years a very successful model of the Lyman $`\alpha `$ forest has been developed. This model, sometimes called fluctuating Gunn Peterson effect, attributes the absorption to the smoothly distributed gas mainly in low density regions. It has been shown that a very simple model in which the gas is assumed to trace the dark matter density and to be in ionization equilibrium with the ionizing background accurately describes the relevant physics. This model has been successfully used to compute the power spectrum of fluctuations of the flux and the probability distribution function of the flux (Croft et al. (1998, 1999)). We apply this model to PM simulations to predict what should be expected for the cross correlation, but we also compare it to hydrodynamical simulations (Bryan et al. (1999)).

In order to make predictions for this model we need to follow several steps which have been extensively discussed in the literature (eg. Croft et al. (1998)). The dark matter distribution is calculated with an N-body code, for which we use a PM algorithm (Machacek and Bertschinger (1995)). Pressure smooths the gas distribution relative to that of the dark matter and we apply a filter ($`W_F(k)=e^{k^2/k_f^2}`$) to the dark matter density to mimic this effect. The smoothing scale $`k_f`$ is related to the Jeans scale and thus to the temperature of the gas, but also depends on the reionization history of the gas (Hui & Gnedin 1997a ). Thus although the order of magnitude of this length scale is known, we consider it a free parameter for the purpose of this paper (see also the method in Gnedin & Hui (1998)).

Once the simulation has been smoothed we construct simulated spectra by choosing random lines of sight in the simulation. We calculate the optical depth of a given fluid element as,

$$\tau =a_0(\rho /\overline{\rho })^\beta .$$
(5)
The constant $`a_0`$ can be related to physical parameters (eg. Croft et al. (1999); Hui et al. 1997b )

$$a_0=0.835(\frac{1+z}{4})^6(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2}{0.02})^2(\frac{T_0}{10^4K})^{0.7}(\frac{h}{0.65})^1(\frac{H(z)/H_0}{4.46})^1(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }}{10^{12}\mathrm{s}^1})^1,$$
(6)
with $`h=H_0/100\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ baryon density in units of the critical density and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the photoionization rate. The position of each fluid element in velocity space is obtained by combining the Hubble flow and the peculiar velocity of the fluid element, $`s=v_{pec}+H(z)x`$, where $`x`$ and $`s`$ are the coordinates of the element in real and redshift space, respectively, and $`v_{pec}`$ is its peculiar velocity along the line of sight. We assume that the gas temperature is given by a simple equation of state (eg. Hui & Gnedin 1997a ),

$$T=T_0(\rho /\overline{\rho })^\alpha ,$$
(7)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are related by $`\beta =20.7\alpha `$. Thermal broadening makes the optical depth produced by each fluid element to be distributed in velocity space as $`\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{\Delta }s/b)^2/b\sqrt{\pi }`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }s`$ is the displacement away from the position of the fluid element in velocity space and $`b=(2kT/m_p)^{1/2}13\mathrm{km}\mathrm{sec}^1(T/10^4\mathrm{K})`$.

This model of the forest is a parametrized nonlinear transformation of the dark matter density to the flux $`F=e^\tau `$ in velocity space along each line of sight. The parameters are not totally arbitrary, since they are related to physical quantities for which approximate values are known. The observation of the mean transmission can be used to fix one of the parameters, $`a_0`$. The mean transmission at redshift $`z3`$ is observed to be $`\overline{F}=0.684\pm 0.023`$ (McDonald et al. (1999)).

In the previous section we have shown that the one dimensional density field shows a very high correlation between the small scale power and the large scale density modes. The model we are considering for the observed flux in the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ forest is a complicated mapping from the dark matter density field. We investigate here the expected correlations for the observed flux. The dependence of the correlation coefficient on the choice of the smoothing scale is very weak (as long as the smoothing scale is taken to be independent of density). The reason for the small dependance on $`k_f`$ is that if the smoothing length is independant of density then it simply corresponds to multiplying the Fourier components of the density field by a fixed function of $`k`$. This fixed factor cancels when we take the ratio to compute the correlation coefficient. We use $`k_f=40\mathrm{h}\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$ throughout the paper, which is close to what is expected for reasonable reionization histories (Hui & Gnedin 1997a ). For each of the values of $`T_0`$ and $`\alpha `$ we explore, we set $`a_0`$ so that the generated spectra match the observed mean flux.

In figure 3 we show the measured cross correlation coefficient for the optical depth $`\tau `$ for different values of the temperature ($`T_0=0.12,0.36,1.2,3.3\times 10^4K`$) and several choices of the high pass filter. The left panels show the results for $`\alpha =0.6`$ while the right panels show $`\alpha =0`$, the isothermal equation of state. The temperatures we considered span the range allowed by other measurements (Schaye et al. (1999)). The cross correlation coefficient shown in the top panel is for the choice of the filter that preserves only the largest scales (smallest $`k`$) and is insensitive to the temperature regardless of $`\alpha `$. This is because these scales are larger than the thermal broadening scale and they do not depend on the amount of thermal smoothing.

When we study the smaller scale filters the results depend on $`\alpha `$. For $`\alpha =0`$ the results are independent of the temperature regardless of the scale. For $`\alpha =0.6`$ increasing the temperature reduces the cross correlation coefficient. When thermal broadening smooths the spectra with a filter independent of density ($`\alpha =0`$) the cross correlation is independent of temperature. Thermal broadening just alters the amplitude of the high $`k`$ modes, which cancels out when we compute the cross-correlation coefficient. Both the numerator and the denominator in the last line of equation (4) are changed by the same amount. This explains why for $`\alpha =0`$ the results show almost no change with $`T_0`$ (and also why the cross correlation is insensitive to $`k_f`$). For $`\alpha >0`$ the temperature depends on the density: denser regions are hotter and thermal broadening is more important there, suppressing the power on the smaller scales more than in colder regions. The higher the density, the higher the smoothing, the lower the small scale power. This effect is the opposite to what gravity does and thus decreases the cross correlation coefficient. To estimate the scale at which this should become important we note that the relation between $`\AA `$ and $`\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{sec}`$ is such that

$$k[\AA ]=61.67(\frac{4}{1+z})k[\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}]$$
(8)
A wavenumber in the last of our bands around $`k7\text{Å}^1`$ corresponds to $`k^1=10\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{sec}`$, which explains why temperatures above $`T=(10\mathrm{km}\mathrm{sec}^1)^210^4K`$ significantly reduce the cross correlation coefficient for the smallest scale filters when $`\alpha 0`$.

In figure 4 we show the cross correlation coefficient for the flux, $`F=e^\tau `$, which can be compared directly to the observations. The correlation coefficient is now negative because $`e^\tau `$ is a decreasing function of $`\tau `$. It is also significantly lower, indicating that this nonlinear transformation suppresses some of the correlations. It would be interesting to explore the cross-correlation coefficient directly in the optical depth by performing the inverse of $`F=e^\tau `$ on the data first, but for the purpose of this paper we will only use the data as observed, so we do not pursue this further. In the flux we also observe the effect of the thermal broadening as seen in the optical depth. Again for $`\alpha =0.6`$ the correlations decrease as we increase the temperature, and the effect is more important for the higher bands of $`k`$.

To test that our results on the cross correlation coefficient are not biased by using N-body simulations as opposed to hydrodynamic simulations we have measured $`C(k)`$ in the output of a hydrodynamic simulation for the same cosmological model described in Bryan et al. (1999). The results are very similar between the two outputs, specially on large scales ($`k{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}\AA ^1`$). A detailed comparison will be presented elsewhere.

## 4 An application to QSO Q1422+231

In this section we present the results of the cross-correlation analysis applied to the Keck HIRES observed spectrum of Q1422+231 Kim et al. (1997). To measure the cross correlation we split the quasar spectrum between Ly$`\alpha `$ and Ly$`\beta `$ into ten separate pieces. Each piece has a length of 3200 km/sec (16 $`h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$), the same as our simulation. This facilitates the interpretation of the results and allows us to estimate the error bars using the variance between the ten subsamples. We are effectively considering each of the ten pieces as independent, which may not be a valid assumption, so we caution that the results presented here are preliminary. We will present a larger analysis elsewhere.

We measure $`P^{FF}(k)`$, $`P^{HH}(k)`$, $`P^{HF}(k)`$ in each of the ten sections of the quasar spectrum. The (normalized) power spectra are measured from the un-continuum-fitted data using the trend-removal technique as described in Hui et al. (2000). We choose 3 high passed windows as used in the simulations. We construct the cross correlation coefficient form the ratios of these power spectra for each of the 10 sections independently and estimate the variance from the fluctuations between the subsamples. Figure 5 shows the mean of the cross correlation in the 10 subsamples. The errorbars computed using the simulations agree with those inferred from the variance between the subsamples. It should be noted that because $`C(k)`$ is a number between -1 and 1, the shape of the error distribution is not Gaussian and the error bars in the plot should only be taken as an indication of the variance. For comparison we also show the values measured in the simulation for $`\alpha =0`$ and $`T_0=\mathrm{1.2\; 10}^4K`$. The agreement between prediction and observations is quite striking, lending further support to the overall picture of the forest as being generated by gravitational instability.

To further check the agreement between the observed data and the simulations we computed the residuals from the mean of $`C(k)`$ for the different subsamples of the spectra. Figure 6 shows the histogram of these residuals, both for the data and simulations. The distribution of residuals is very similar for the two samples, so one can use the distribution observed in the simulations to constrain processes other than gravitational instability that could be affecting the observed cross correlations.

The first important conclusion to draw from figure 5 is that we observe a negative cross correlation coefficient in the range predicted by the simulations. Not only are the values of the cross correlation coefficient similar to those in our simulations but the distribution of their residuals from the mean is also very consistent. In the next section we use this measurement to constrain contamination from fluctuations in the continuum. Here we compare the smallest scale filter (the right panel in figure 5), in which we observe significant cross correlation, with the figure 4. The observed correlation argues against models with both high temperature $`T_0`$ and high $`\alpha `$ (the top lines in the bottom left panel of figure 4). More accurate constraints on these parameters from such observations will be presented elsewhere, as the details in this regime are somewhat sensitive to other parameters like the Jeans smoothing scale and numerical resolution. It seems however that this can be a promising way to study the state of the gas at high redshifts.

## 5 Testing the continuum and the optical depth fluctuations

In previous sections we have calculated what we expect for the cross correlation coefficient in the flux of the Lyman $`\alpha `$ forest in the currently accepted model for the forest and compared that with the measurements in Q1422+231. This statistic can also be used as a test of the contamination from non-gravitationally induced fluctuations in the forest and in this section we want to explore its discriminatory power.

We consider the effects of the quasar continuum and optical depth fluctuations. We can model the observed flux as,

$$F(s)=[1+c(s)]e^\tau $$
(9)
where $`c`$ is a slowly varying function of position across the spectrum. Continuum changes the overall level of the flux and so acts multiplicatively on the fluctuations produced by the neutral gas. This case also applies to any process that adds to the optical depth, such that $`\tau \tau +\delta \tau `$, if we identify $`\delta \tau =\mathrm{ln}(1+c)`$.

Let us consider the case where $`c(s)`$ has predominantly large scale power so that the fluctuations in $`c`$ dominate over the fluctuations in $`e^\tau `$ on large scales. If we consider a region where $`c(s)>0`$ the flux will be larger than the mean flux in this region, $`F(s)>\overline{F}`$. On small scales, the power in this region will be enhanced because the continuum or optical depth fluctuations enter multiplicatively in the flux. The amplitude of all the small scale fluctuations is enhanced by a factor $`[1+c(s)]`$. Thus the continuum fluctuations induce a positive cross correlation between the large scales and the small scale power. This is opposite in sign of what gravity induces and constitutes the basis for the discriminatory power of this statistic.

The detailed predictions for the effect of the continuum will depend on its level of fluctuations compared to those induced by the absorption as a function of scale. For the purpose of the study here we assume that we can describe the continuum fluctuations with a power spectrum of shape similar to that of the Lyman $`\alpha `$ forest on large scales, but with an exponential cutoff at $`k1`$ Å <sup>-1</sup>. We will let the normalization of the additional power spectrum to be a free parameter which we try to constrain. We choose this shape for the power spectrum of fluctuations so that it is the most degenerate with the expected shape of the power spectrum induced by gravity, so that the presence of continuum fluctuations cannot be revealed by a change in the shape of the measured power spectrum. We introduced an exponential cutoff so that the fluctuations are only important on large scales, where we expect them to be the largest based on the continuum fluctuations on the red side of Ly-$`\alpha `$ (figure 7; see Hui et al. (2000)).

In figure 8 we show the expected cross-correlation for the lowest $`k`$ filter for several choices of the amplitude of the continuum power spectrum. As expected, increasing the amplitude drives the correlation to positive values. The effect of the fluctuations of the QSO continuum can be used to constrain the amplitude of the fluctuations using the measurements of Q1422+231. To do so we focus on the results in the lowest $`k`$ range. As we discussed in the previous section these are most insensitive to other parameters in our model and the predictions of our N-body model are in best agreement with the results of the full hydrodynamic simulations.

We can constrain the continuum fluctuations using a Monte Carlo technique. We generate random spectra with different levels of continuum contaminations to simulate the measurements of Q1422+231. We use realizations of Gaussian random field to simulate the continuum. We repeat this process many times and for several levels of contamination to measure the distribution of values for the cross correlation coefficient that we should observe in Q1422+231. We then compare these distributions with the measured values to put a constraint on the level of contamination. In figure 9 we show the distribution of measured cross-correlation coefficients in the simulations assuming that the continuum fluctuations are 10 %, 30 % and 40 % of the overall power of the flux fluctuations. We also show the distribution when there is no contamination. The upper panel is for $`C(k=0.12)`$, the lowest $`k`$ bin, and the bottom panel is for the average of the four bins. The vertical line on the x axis shows the measured value in Q1422+231. It is clear that continuum fluctuations that contribute 30 % of the measured power are ruled out and that even a 10 % contamination level is unlikely. This is in agreement with the expected level of continuum fluctuations based on the power spectrum of the red side of the Ly-$`\alpha `$ emission, which, except for the largest scales (not probed here), is significantly below the power spectrum of the blue side dominated by the Ly-$`\alpha `$ absorption (figure 7). With a larger sample of QSO it will be possible to explore also the scale dependence of the continuum contamination. Cross-correlation information can also be used to subtract out the contamination from the power spectrum, at least if it does not completely dominate the fluctuations on large scales as the results from figure 7 suggest.

We stress that as we discussed in the previous section we did not try to correct for continuum fluctuations before measuring the Fourier components of the flux. We directly measured the Fourier modes of the relative flux fluctuations in each chunk of the spectrum and did the same thing in our Montecarlo simulations. This is particularly important for our test because one can imagine that the continuum fitting procedure could introduce spurious correlations between scales that under some circumnstances could mimick the effect of gravity.

## 6 Conclusions

Gravity predicts that nonlinear evolution generates higher order correlations from an initially Gaussian density field. One of the consequences of the gravitational instability picture is that there should be a correlation between the power on small scales and the large scale modes of the density. This correlation is induced because in locally overdense regions the fluctuations grow faster, while the opposite is true for the underdense regions. While such a cross-correlation only uses a subset of all the information contained in the higher order correlations, it has the advantage of being relatively insensitive to the cosmological model and the initial spectrum of fluctuations. This allows one to separate the effects induced by gravity from those induced by other effects in a model independent way. We have presented a statistic that is sensitive to gravity and applied it to the flux measurements in the Lyman $`\alpha `$ forest.

The values of the correlation coefficient measured in Q1422+231 are in good agreement with what is found in the simulations. This is another confirmation of the overall picture of the forest based on the gravitational instability and ionization equilibrium. The agreement can also be used to constrain other processes that could contaminate large scale fluctuations in the forest and thus degrade the extraction of the dark matter power spectrum from them. If such processes unrelated to gravity were present they would suppress the cross-correlations. In this paper we estimate the level of fluctuations in the continuum of the quasar on large scales and show that even a 10% level of contamination on 10h<sup>-1</sup>Mpc scales is unlikely, assuming the continuum has the same power spectrum shape as the fluctuations induced by gravity. With a larger sample of quasars we can expect to be able to determine the level of contamination as a function of scale, which will allow one to extract the dark matter power spectrum to significantly larger scales than current estimates permit (Croft et al. (1999); McDonald et al. (1999); see also Hui et al. (2000)).

The cross-correlation analysis can also be used to set constraints on the variation of other quantities, such as the parameters of the equation of state of the gas. The preliminary comparison of the cross correlation with the simulations seems to indicate that models with both high temperature and large $`\alpha `$ are inconsistent with the data. With a larger sample one should be able to determine with higher precision parameters such as the mean temperature of the gas and its equation of state. This will provide important constraints on the thermal history of the intergalactic medium at high redshifts.

The authors wish to thank Roman Scoccimarro and Greg Bryan for very helpful discussions. We also thank Greg Bryan for providing us with the results of his hydrodynamic simulations. We are grateful to Antoinette Songaila and Len Cowie for kindly making available the spectrum for Q1422+231. Support for this work is provided by the Hubble Fellowship (M.Z.) HF-01116-01-98A from STScI, operated by AURA, Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555, the NASA grant NAG5-8084 (U.S.), the NASA grant NAG5-7047, NSF grant PHY-9513835 and the Taplin Fellowship (L.H.).


text:
# Novel criticality in a model with absorbing states

## I Introduction

Recently, non-equilibrium phase transitions have been intensively studied in variety of models. Some attempts were also made to classify possible types of phase transitions into universality classes similarly to equilibrium transitions . However, non-equilibrium transitions are much reacher and puzzling than equilibrium ones and their understanding is still far from complete.

A class of nonequlibrium models for which such a categorization seems most feasible are models with absorbing states . For example, models with unique absorbing states most likely belong to the so-called directed-percolation (DP) universality class . Moreover, models with double (symmetric) absorbing states or with some conservation law in their dynamics belong to another universality class, the so-called parity-conserving (PC) universality class . Although the above classification is best confirmed for one-dimensional models, it seems to apply to higher-dimensional models as well . Moreover, models with more than two  or even infinitely many absorbing states also fall into the above universality classes. (Typically, models with infinitely many absorbing states fall into DP universality class, however, certain symmetries  or conservation laws  might change the criticality into PC.)

In the present paper we study certain one-dimensional models with infinitely many absorbing states. In the first part we study a model defined on a ladder-like lattice (ladder model) and our Monte Carlo simulations show that this model belongs to neither DP nor PC universality classes. Critical exponents $`\delta `$ and $`z`$ of this model appear to be rational numbers (contrary to the DP or PC criticality) and can be obtained using simple random-walk-type arguments. However, the exponents $`\beta `$ and $`\nu _{}(=\beta )`$ appears to be non-universal. It turns out that their values are encoded in the singular part of the reactivation probability as was recently postulated in the context of related models by Hinrichsen .

Using certain property of our ladder model we can easily calculate the upper bound on the existence of the absorbing phase. Numerical simulations show that this bound most likely give exact location of the critical point in this model. In the final part of our paper we examine yet another but closely related model (single-chain model) for which we can obtain also the lower bound of the absorbing phase. It turns out that both bounds are the same which exactly locates the transition point in this model. The model studied in this part of our paper contains some quenched random variables and its critical behaviour is similar to that of the model studied in the main part of our paper.

## II Ladder Model

### A Definition and basic properties

Our model is a certain variant of models recently studied in some other contexts . It is defined on a one-dimensional ladder-like lattice (see Fig. 1a). For each bond between the nearest-neighbouring sites we introduce a bond variable $`w(0.5,0.5)`$. Introducing real parameters $`r`$ and $`s>0`$, we call a given site active when $`w_1w_2|w_3|^s<r`$, where $`w_1`$ and $`w_2`$ are intra-chain bond variables connected with this site and $`w_3`$ is the inter-chain bond variable (see Fig. 1a). Otherwise, this site is called non-active. The model is driven by random sequential dynamics and when the active site is selected, we assign anew, with uniform probability, three neighbouring bond variables. Nonactive sites are not updated.

First, let us notice that the model has a certain global up-down symmetry. Namely, reversing all bond variables $`ww`$ we do not change the status of any site, i.e., active (non-active) sites remains active (non-active). The same symmetry appears in a closely related model which is defined on a single chain and where activity of a site is determined by the product of two intra-chain variables  (in the following we refer to this model as model A). It was suggested that this symmetry is responsible for the fact that the model A belongs to the PC universality class . If so, the present model should also belong to this universality class. In the present paper we show, however, that the critical behaviour of this model is different. In our opinion, this result does not completely abolish the claims about the importance of the up-down symmetry. Namely, as we will show below, the change of the universality class in the present model comes from the very intricate mechanism: upon approaching the critical point the system might be regarded as composed of two weakly-interacting critical subsystems. We expect that in a generic case such a mechanism is absent and models of this kind which are endowed with the up-down symmetry should belong to the PC universality class.

This situation bears some similarity to the equilibrium statistical mechanics, where one expects that short-range interacting Ising models will generically belong to the Onsager universality class. It is known, however, that when certain additional interactions are included, the critical behaviour of an Ising model, which is then equivalent to the eight-vertex model, deviates from the generic case .

### B Monte Carlo simulations

To examine the properties of the above model we used standard Monte Carlo simulations. First, let us describe results for $`s=2`$. We calculated the steady-state density of active sites $`\rho `$. The fact that the model is defined on a one-dimensional lattice enabled us to examine systems of large size $`L`$ (up to $`510^5`$). Also the simulation time $`t_{\mathrm{MC}}`$ was rather large and typically $`t_{\mathrm{MC}}10^510^6`$ (the unit of time is defined as a single, on average, update per lattice site). Our simulations show that for $`r>0`$ the density $`\rho `$ remains positive but as soon as $`r`$ becomes negative the system quickly reaches one of the absorbing states and thus $`\rho =0`$. A simple argument, similar to the one used for related models , shows that for $`r<0`$ the model gradually generate sites which remains permanently non-active. Indeed, let $`r<0`$ and a certain inter-chain bond $`w_3`$ satisfies the condition

$$|w_3|<\sqrt{}r/(0.5),$$
(1)
then for each site connected to $`w_3`$ the absolute value of the product $`w_1w_2w_3^2`$ is smaller than $`r`$, which implies $`w_1w_2w_3^2>r`$ and these sites remain permanently non-active. Since upon updating an active site there is a finite probability to satisfy (1), there is a finite rate of creation of such sites (a similar argument can be applied to an intra-chain bond). Thus, in agreement with numerical simulations, for $`r<0`$ the system is in the absorbing phase. Combined with the computationally observed property that for $`r>0`$ the density $`\rho `$ remains positive, it implies that $`r=r_\mathrm{c}=0`$ is the transition point for that model which separates active and absorbing phases. In addition, our simulations, which are described below, show that $`r=0`$ is actually a critical point of this model and is accompanied by typical power-law characteristics.

The first evidence of such a characteristic is shown in Fig. 2, which presents the logarithmic plot of $`\rho `$ as a function of $`r`$. The linearity of the plot for approximately three decades confirms the power-law behaviour $`\rho r^\beta `$. At the same time, it confirms the location of the critical point $`r_\mathrm{c}=0`$. From the least-square analysis of these data we estimate $`\beta =0.51(1)`$.

Another quantity which we measured was the time evolution of the density $`\rho `$ for $`r`$ close to the critical point $`r=r_\mathrm{c}`$. One expects that at criticality $`\rho t^\delta `$ and deviations from the power-law behaviour appear off the critical point. The results are presented in Fig. 3. For $`r=0`$ the clear power-law behaviour is observed and from the slope of the data we estimate $`\delta =0.50(1)`$.

Other power-law characteristics are obtained from the finite-size analysis. In Fig. 4 we present the size dependence of the characteristic time $`\tau `$ defined as an average time needed for the system to reach an absorbing state (with a random initial configuration). Again, the best linearity is seen for $`r=0`$ and in this case we obtain $`\tau L^z`$ with $`z=2.01(1)`$. Let us notice that this figure limits the allowed values of $`r_\mathrm{c}`$ to the very narrow range $`10^{12}<r_\mathrm{c}<10^8`$.

Finally, Fig 5 presents the steady-state density $`\rho `$ as a function of size $`L`$. For $`r=10^4`$ and $`10^6`$, $`\rho `$ converges to the positive value but for $`r=0`$ it decays as $`\rho L^{\beta /\nu _{}}`$ with the exponent $`\beta /\nu _{}=0.99(1)`$.

For comparison with our model, we quote the values of these exponents for the one-dimensional DP  and PC  universality classes: $`\beta =0.26486`$(DP), 0.92(PC); $`\delta =0.159464`$(DP), 0.286(PC); $`z=1.580745`$(DP), 1.74(PC) and $`\nu _{}=1.096854`$(DP), 1.83(PC). Thus, our results clearly places the model into a new universality class.

However, the obtained values of the exponents are not entirely unexpected. In the following we argue that at least the values of $`\delta ,z`$ and of the ratio $`\beta /\nu _{}`$ can be inferred from the properties of some other models. First, let us examine in more detail the model at the criticality, i.e., at $`r=0`$. Let us notice, that in this case it is only the sign of the expression $`w_1w_2w_3^2`$ which determines the state of a site. Since $`w_3^2`$ is always positive, it means that at the criticality this term is irrelevant and the state of a site is determined by the product $`w_1w_2`$, i.e., by the product of intra-chain variables. The same condition appears in model A and thus the present model at the criticality is equivalent to two non-interacting models A. Numerical evidence was already presented  that at $`r=0`$ model A is at the end-point of its critical phase which in A model appears in the range $`0<r<r_\mathrm{c}0.027`$. This critical phase is described by simple, random-walk related exponents: $`\delta =0.5,z=2`$ and $`\beta /\nu _{}=1`$ . On the basis of the above relation and in agreement with our simulations we obtain that these random-walk exponents are the critical exponents in our model. Let us emphasize that the critical phase in PC models exists in a certain range of a control parameter  and its (random-walk) criticality is described by a different set of exponents than the critical point of such models. In our model, there is only an isolated critical point which is described by the random-walk exponents.

The above relation with model A does not explain the value of the exponent $`\beta `$, which most likely equals 0.5. This is because the relation with A model holds only at $`r=0`$ while the exponent $`\beta `$ describes the off-critical singularity. One can argue, however, that when $`r`$ is positive but small, then the interaction between these two models A is also small. Let us recall now, that for such $`r`$ model A is critical and thus the present model is equivalent to two weakly-interacting critical models A. It is interesting to observe that such an interaction is sufficient to destroy the criticality and to keep the system in the active phase with $`\rho >0`$. Qualitatively, we explain the large (comparing to model A) activity as follows: In models with absorbing states a non-active domain can be reactivated only through its boundaries. However, the already mentioned weak interaction can reactivate even the interior of such domains, which dramatically increases activity of the system.

### C Reactivation probability

In a recent paper Hinrichsen has shown that for certain models the singularity of the order parameter is determined by singularity of the reactivation probability $`W`$ . His argument relies on the observation that $`W`$ usually scales linearly with the control parameter (i.e., a parameter which measures the distance from a critical point). Thus, in models where the density of active sites $`\rho `$ scales linearly with $`W`$, the singularity of $`\rho `$ as a function of the control parameter is solely a consequence of the singular behaviour of $`W`$. In this subsection we show that Hinrichsen’s results extends also to the model examined in this paper.

Let us define the reactivation probability $`W(r)`$ as a probability that a given active site remains active after an update. To compute $`W(r)`$ we first calculate the probability density $`P_s(z)`$ that $`w_1w_2|w_3|^s=z`$ where $`w_1,w_2`$ and $`w_3`$ are independent and uniformly distributed on $`(0.5,0.5)`$. Thus, we have to calculate

$$P_s(z)=_{1/2}^{1/2}𝑑w_1_{1/2}^{1/2}𝑑w_2_0^{(1/2)^s}\frac{2}{s}\stackrel{~}{w}_3^{1/s1}\delta (zw_1w_2\stackrel{~}{w}_3)𝑑\stackrel{~}{w}_3,$$
(2)
where $`\frac{2}{s}\stackrel{~}{w}_3^{1/s1}`$ is the probability density of $`\stackrel{~}{w}_3=|w_3|^s`$, where $`w_3`$ is uniformly distributed on $`(1/2,1/2)`$. The calculation of the integrals (2) is elementary. Perfoming integration over $`w_1`$, $`w_2`$ and then over $`\stackrel{~}{w}_3`$ we obtain

$$P_s(z)=\frac{4}{s}_0^{(1/2)^s}\stackrel{~}{w}_3^{1/s2}\mathrm{ln}(4|z|/\stackrel{~}{w}_3)\mathrm{\Theta }(\stackrel{~}{w}_34|z|)𝑑\stackrel{~}{w}_3=\frac{4}{s1}\{2^{s1}[\mathrm{ln}(4|z|)+s\mathrm{ln}(2)+\frac{s}{1s}]+\frac{s}{s1}(4|z|)^{1/s1}\},$$
(3)
where $`\mathrm{\Theta }(x)`$ is the unit step function. Having calculated $`P_s(z)`$, the reactivation probability $`W(r)`$ for positive $`r`$ is given as

$$W(r)=_{(1/2)^{s+2}}^rP_s(z)𝑑z=\frac{1}{2}+\frac{4}{s1}\{2^{s1}[r(\mathrm{ln}(4r)1)+sr(\mathrm{ln}(2)+\frac{1}{1s})]+\frac{s^2}{4(s1)}(4r)^{1/s}\}.$$
(4)
From (4) one can see that $`W(r)`$ is indeed singular at the critical point $`r=0`$ and for $`s>1`$ $`W(r)r^{1/s}`$. One can see that the numerically found singularity of the order parameter with the exponent $`\beta =1/2`$ for $`s=2`$ corresponds to the same singularity of $`W(r)`$. Thus, the density $`\rho `$ in the vicinity of the critical point $`r=0`$ should scale linearly with the reactivation probability $`W(r)`$ and the singular behaviour is only due to the singular behaviour of $`W(r)`$ as a function of $`r`$.

To check the above arguments we performed simulations for $`s=4`$ and 1/2. Let us notice that for $`s=1/2`$ the leading term is not $`r^{1/s}`$ but $`r\mathrm{ln}(4r)`$. In this case $`\beta `$ should be unity but the logarithmic corrections might substantially affect the scaling behaviour. The results are presented in Fig. 2. As estimated from the slope of our data, $`\beta =0.26(1)`$ for $`s=4`$ and $`\beta =1.3(2)`$ for $`s=1/2`$. For $`s=4`$ the exponent $`\beta `$ is very close to 1/4 which clearly confirms our arguments. For $`s=0.5`$ our data are less accurate mainly due to very large relaxation time. Moreover, the logarithmic corrections might be responsible for the fact that the ’true’ scaling is not clearly seen.

Let us also notice that at the critical point $`r=0`$ only the sign matters and the behaviour of the ladder model is independent on $`s`$. Thus, the remaining exponents $`\delta ,z`$ and the ratio $`\beta /\nu _{}`$ must be the same as in the $`s=2`$ case.

## III Single-Chain Model with Quenched Disorder

In this section we examine a simple model which might help us to understand the behaviour of the ladder model studied in the previous section. The model is defined on a single chain (see Fig. 1b). In addition to bond variables $`1/2<w<1/2`$ there are on-site quenched variables $`0<v<1`$. A given site is defined as active if $`w_1w_2v<r`$, where $`w_1`$ and $`w_2`$ are variables on bonds connected to this site and $`v`$ is the corresponding site variable. Once initially selected, $`v`$-variables remain unchanged during the evolution of this model (evolving variables are only bond variables). (The already discussed model A corresponds to the case $`v=1`$ on each site.)

It is elementary to prove the following properties of the this model:
(i) Similarly to the model studied in the previous section the model for $`r<0`$ generates with a finite rate sites which remain permanently non-active. It means that for $`r<0`$ the model is in the absorbing phase.
(ii) Let $`r>0`$. Let us consider a site for which $`v<4r`$. It is obvious that for any choice of bond variables attached to it this site remains permanently active. Since in the thermodynamic limit a finite fraction $`4r`$ of sites has $`v<4r`$, we obtain that for $`r>0`$ the model is in the active phase.

As a conclusion, we obtain that $`r=0`$ separates active and absorbing phases of this model. Let us also notice that for $`r=0`$ the model is equivalent to the model A (i.e., $`v`$ variables are irrelevant), which was shown to be critical at that point . Moreover, the fraction $`4r`$ of permanently active sites decreases linearly to zero which suggests that in this model $`\beta =1`$ .

Monte Carlo simulations of this model strongly suggest that indeed $`\beta =1`$ (see Fig. 2). Similarly to the ladder model, at $`r=0`$ only the sign matters and $`v`$-variables are irrelevant. Thus, at criticality the behaviour of this model is the same as of the A model at $`r=0`$. Numerical simulations of the latter model show  that in this case $`z=2`$ and $`\delta =1/2`$ as in the ladder model.

## IV Conclusions

In conclusion, we examined a class of models with infinitely many absorbing states. Critical exponents $`\delta ,z`$ and $`\beta /\nu _{}`$ take random-walk values. However, the exponents $`\beta `$ and $`\nu _{}`$ are non-universal. This non-universality is related to the singular behaviour of the reactivation probability $`W(r)`$. Thus, when as a control parameter of the model we choose $`W(r)`$ rather than $`r`$, the order parameter would have the universal exponent $`\beta =1`$. It would be interesting to examine this model using, for example, field-theory methods  and to check whether some other universality classes among models with absorbing states are possible.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Haye Hinrichsen for very stimulating correspondence and the Department of Mathematics of the Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, Scotland) for allocation of computer time.


text:
# Inclusive quasielastic electron scattering on 6He: a probe of the halo structure

## 1 Introduction

Halo nuclei are the most intriguing objects among recent nuclear physics discoveries. Their small binding energies and large spatial extensions had no precedent and were totally unexpected in the realm of systems governed by the nuclear force. Borromean two–neutron halo systems show the additional peculiarity that the three–body (core+$`n`$+$`n`$) system completely falls apart when either of the three constituents drops out. Among the latter 6He ($`\alpha `$+$`n`$+$`n`$) is the one that is most stable and has been extensively studied. Since the initial discovery by Tanihata and collaborators , much progress has been made in theoretical  and experimental studies of halo nuclei. The available experimental information comes basically from nucleus–nucleus collisions . This experimental information has the inherent difficulty of disentangling nuclear reaction mechanisms from nuclear structure effects. This is why the idea of using nonhadronic probes to obtain complementary information on halo nuclei has been put forward.

The aim of this paper is to point out that, as for the case of stable nuclei, detailed information on charge density and momentum distributions in these systems can be obtained with electron beams. To this end we show theoretical results on differential cross sections and structure functions for the case of electron scattering from 6He. We do not discuss here important technical difficulties stemming from the short lives of halo nuclei and small production rates, which work against the feasibility of experiments involving measurements of cross sections for electron scattering from a halo–nucleus secondary beam. We just mention that in spite of these difficulties such experiments are in project at RIKEN , and are also being considered at GSI and Mainz.

To our knowledge, the first theoretical study of electron scattering from halo nuclei was presented in ref.. In this reference we developed the formalism focusing on elastic scattering and on exclusive $`(e,e^{}\alpha )`$ and $`(e,e^{}n)`$ coincidence experiments. In particular we studied the reactions 6He($`e,e^{}\alpha `$)$`nn`$ and 6He($`e,e^{}n`$)$`\alpha n`$ using a 6He three–body wave function that describes accurately all presently known phenomenology. The results that we present and discuss here are based on that previous work, where details of calculations can be found.

Determination of the spectral function requires coincidence measurements in exclusive experiments. Since the complexity of these experiments is high, it is natural to think that inclusive $`(e,e^{})`$ experiments, in which only the scattered electron is detected, will be the ones to be performed first. Moreover, it is difficult to select adequate kinematical conditions for exclusive experiments due to the large number of variables (energy and momentum transfer ($`\omega `$,$`q`$) and energy and direction of the knocked out particle). In this regard it is mandatory to know first what are the ($`\omega `$,$`q`$) domains where the quasielastic peaks for $`\alpha `$ knockout and halo neutron knockout dominate the total ($`e`$,$`e^{}`$) differential cross section for the halo nucleus. For the first time we show here results on inclusive scattering over an ($`\omega ,q`$) region that allows to visualize the appearance of different quasielastic $`e`$$`\alpha `$ and $`e`$$`n`$ peaks in different kinematical regions. We also show that coincidence measurements in this separate kinematical regions allow to determine the spectral functions of the core and the halo neutrons, and thus the detailed structure of the three–body wave function in momentum space.

## 2 Model and method

To probe the structure of the three–body wave function of two–neutron halo nuclei we consider the reaction sketched in fig.1. The collision between the electron and the target is taken as a process in which one of the three constituents in the target absorbs the whole energy and momentum transfer ($`\omega `$,$`𝒒`$) and is knocked out from the target. Core excitations and core breakup reactions are not considered here, and the inclusive cross section

$$\frac{d^3\sigma }{dE_0^{}d\mathrm{\Omega }_{p_0^{}}}=\sigma _M\left(V_LW_L+V_TW_T\right)$$
(1)
can then be computed as the sum of three terms corresponding to the absorption of the virtual photon by each of the three constituents in the halo nucleus. In the same way the structure functions $`W_L`$ and $`W_T`$ are given by the sum of the elementary structure functions $`W_{L,T}^{(i)}`$ corresponding to a process where the constituent $`i`$ absorbs the virtual photon. In the particular case of 6He, since the $`\alpha `$–core has zero spin, one has $`W_L=2W_L^{(n)}+W_L^{(\alpha )}`$ and $`W_T=2W_T^{(n)}`$. In the reaction shown in fig.1 the incident and scattered electrons as well as the ejected particle (constituent $`i`$) are described as plane waves (Plane Wave Impulse Approximation). Since we are dealing with a borromean target the residual two–body system made by particles $`j`$ and $`k`$ is in the continuum, and the final interaction between them is included in the calculation.

Working in the frame of the halo nucleus ($`𝒑_h=0`$) the differential cross section of the process shown in fig.1 is:

$$\frac{d^6\sigma ^{(i)}}{dE_0^{}d\mathrm{\Omega }_{p_0^{}}d\mathrm{\Omega }_{p_i^{}}dE_x^{}}=(2\pi )^3\frac{p_i^{}E_i^{}(m_j+m_k)}{M_h}f_{rec}\sigma ^{ei}(𝒒,𝒑_i)S(E_x^{},𝒑_i)$$
(2)
where the different momenta and energies are shown in the figure. $`𝒑_x^{}`$ is the relative momentum between particles $`j`$ and $`k`$ in the final state. $`m_j`$, $`m_k`$ and $`M_h`$ are the masses of the halo constituents $`j`$, $`k`$ and the total mass of the halo nucleus, respectively. $`E_x^{}=p_x^2/2\mu _{jk}`$ is the kinetic energy of the system made by particles $`j`$ and $`k`$ referred to its own center of mass and $`\mu _{jk}`$ its reduced mass. $`f_{rec}`$ is the recoil factor, $`\sigma ^{ei}(𝒒,𝒑_i)`$ is the cross section for elastic electron scattering on constituent $`i`$, and $`S(E_x^{},𝒑_i)`$ is the spectral function.

The cross section $`\sigma ^{ei}(𝒒,𝒑_i)`$ takes the general form $`\sigma ^{ei}(𝒒,𝒑_i)=\sigma _M(V_L_L^{(i)}+V_T_T^{(i)}+V_{LT}_{LT}^{(i)}+V_{TT}_{TT}^{(i)})`$, where the $`V`$’s are kinematic factors and the $`^{(i)}`$s are structure functions associated to an electron scattering process on constituent $`i`$. When this constituent has spin 0 (as the $`\alpha `$ particle in 6He) only the longitudinal structure function appears (see  for details).

$`S(E_x^{},𝒑_i)`$ is the spectral function, that is interpreted as the probability for the electron to remove a particle from the nucleus with internal momentum $`𝒑_i`$ leaving the residual system with internal energy $`E_x^{}`$. This function contains the information about the nuclear structure, in particular it contains the whole dependence on the halo nucleus wave function and on the continuum wave function of the residual two–body system. It is defined as the square of the overlap between both wave functions, which reduces to the square of the Fourier transform of the halo wave function when the final interaction between the two surviving constituents is neglected.

The cross section for an inclusive quasielastic electron scattering process is obtained from eq.(2) after integration over the unobserved quantities, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{p_i^{}}`$ and $`E_x^{}`$, and after summation over the index $`i`$, that runs over all the three constituents of the halo nucleus, the two neutrons and the core. Since the $`LT`$ and $`TT`$ terms in the cross section automatically disappear after integration over $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{p_n^{}}`$ , one immediately recovers the expression in eq.(1).

In what follows we discuss results for 6He, that is described as a system made by an $`\alpha `$-particle and two neutrons. Compared to other halo nuclei 6He has the advantage that the interactions between the constituents are well known, and that the $`\alpha `$–core is tightly bound. Since the spin of the core is zero we get for 6He

$$W_L=2W_L^{(n)}+W_L^{(\alpha )};W_T=2W_T^{(n)}$$
(3)
where

$$W_\kappa ^{(i)}=(2\pi )^4\frac{m_j+m_k}{M_h}𝑑\theta _{p_i^{}}𝑑E_x^{}p_i^{}E_i^{}f_{rec}\mathrm{sin}\theta _{p_i^{}}_\kappa ^{(i)}(𝒒,𝒑_i)S(E_x^{},𝒑_i)$$
(4)
The neutron structure functions $`_L^{(n)}`$ and $`_T^{(n)}`$ are computed using the CC1 prescription for the nucleon current , and their analytic expressions are given in . The structure function $`_L^{(\alpha )}`$ is the square of the Fourier transform of the $`\alpha `$–particle charge density. We use the experimental $`\alpha `$ charge density parameterized as a sum of two gaussians as in table V of . Explicit expressions of the spectral functions $`S(E^{},𝒑_n)`$ and $`S(E^{},𝒑_\alpha )`$ are given by eqs.(33) and (56) of . We use a three–body 6He wave function obtained by solving the Faddeev equations in coordinate space. The procedure is shown in detail in . The continuum wave function of the residual two–body system in the final state is written as a partial wave expansion  whose radial functions are obtained by solving the Schrödinger equation with the corresponding neutron–neutron or neutron–$`\alpha `$ potential. For the $`n`$-$`n`$ interaction we use a simple potential with gaussian shape including a central, spin–orbit, spin–spin, and tensor terms, whose parameters are adjusted to reproduce low energy neutron–neutron scattering data. For the $`n`$-$`\alpha `$ interaction we use a potential with central and spin–orbit terms also with gaussian shapes and parameters adjusted to reproduce the phase shifts for $`s`$, $`p`$, and $`d`$ waves up to 20 MeV. These potentials provide an accurate description of the available information on 6He. Details about these potentials are given in .

## 3 Results

In the upper part of fig.2 we show the longitudinal and transverse structure functions $`W_L`$ and $`W_T`$ for varying energy transfer $`\omega `$ at fixed values of the momentum transfer ($`q`$=90, 150 and 200 MeV/c). Note that for each $`q`$ the accessible $`\omega `$ values are constrained to be less than $`q`$ ($`\omega ^2q^2<`$0). In the upper–left part of fig.2 we see that $`W_L`$ is dominated by the contribution of the $`\alpha `$–knockout. The latter is seen as a strong peak centered at $`\omega q^2/2m_\alpha `$, to which we refer as the $`\alpha `$–peak. The contribution from the halo neutrons to $`W_L`$ is not visible at the ($`\omega `$,$`q`$) values considered in this figure. For $`q>200`$ MeV/c the $`\alpha `$–peak decreases while the contribution from the halo neutrons increases with increasing $`q`$ as the $`\alpha `$ and neutron form factors, respectively. For $`q`$–values beyond 250 MeV/c the $`\alpha `$–peak gets shorter and shorter and the contribution to $`W_L`$ from halo neutrons shows up at $`\omega 30`$ MeV. However, at this energy and momentum transfer this contribution may have a large overlap with the contribution from core breakup, i.e., from one–nucleon knockout from the $`\alpha `$–particle. We have indicated with vertical arrows the $`\omega `$–values where core breakup contributions may show up more. For $`\omega `$–values to the left of the arrows $`W_L`$ is dominated by the $`\alpha `$–peak.

The structure function $`W_T`$ is shown in the upper–right part of fig.2. As already announced, only the halo neutrons contribute to these peaks (we refer to them as halo–neutron peaks) which are seen to increase with increasing $`q`$–values and are centered at $`\omega `$$``$$`q^2/2m_n`$. Again we indicate by arrows the $`\omega `$–values where core breakup contributions to $`W_T`$ will show up more. Core breakup contributions to both $`W_L`$ and $`W_T`$ are expected to be more sizeable at $`q`$$`>`$250 MeV/c and $`\omega `$$`>`$25 MeV. Typically data on one nucleon knockout from a free $`\alpha `$–particle are available at larger $`q`$–values than those considered in fig.2 . An estimate of the core breakup contributions to the $`W_L`$ and $`W_T`$ structure functions for inclusive 6He($`e,e^{}`$) can be obtained from this reference for 280 MeV/c $`\stackrel{_<}{_{}}q\stackrel{_<}{_{}}`$ 720 MeV/c. The maximum values of $`W_L`$ and $`W_T`$ for 4He($`e,e^{}`$) extracted from this reference are $`W_L`$$``$1.5 fm and $`W_T`$$``$2 fm, which take place at $`q`$$``$360–380 MeV/c and $`\omega `$$``$70–80 MeV.

Therefore the low ($`\omega `$,$`q`$) domain shown in the upper plots of fig.2 appears to be optimal to obtain independent and reliable measurements of the $`\alpha `$ and the halo neutron peaks, and thus on the momentum distributions of the different components of the three–body system. Indeed, as seen in fig.2, $`W_L`$ provides information about the spectral function $`S(E_x^{},p_\alpha )`$, corresponding to an $`\alpha `$–knockout process, while $`W_T`$ contains information about the spectral function $`S(E_x^{},p_n)`$, corresponding to a halo neutron knockout process. Both spectral functions are shown in the lower part of the figure. From the plots one could naively think that $`W_T`$ is wider than $`W_L`$ because of the different widths of the corresponding spectral functions in the lower part of the figure. However the main reason for this is the different mass of core and neutron. The heavier the particle giving rise to a structure function, the narrower the structure function. Since the $`\alpha `$-particle is four times heavier than the neutron one has that $`W_L`$ is narrower than $`W_T`$. More details of the spectral functions are discussed in ref.. They could be measured by coincidence experiments 6He $`(e,e^{}\alpha )2n`$ and 6He$`(e,e^{}n)^5`$He in the low ($`\omega `$,$`q`$) region explored here.

To show that indeed we can get separately information of the $`\alpha `$ and halo–neutron peaks, we show in fig.3 how $`W_L`$ and $`W_T`$ enter in the inclusive differential cross section for incoming energies ($`E_0`$) and scattering angles ($`\theta _e`$) adequate to explore the low ($`\omega `$,$`q`$) domain discussed above. In this figure we show the inclusive 6He($`e,e^{}`$) cross section for $`E_0`$=100 MeV, and four different values of $`\theta _e`$. There is a clean separation of longitudinal and transverse contributions as one goes from forward angles ($`\theta _e`$=10, 60) to backward angles ($`\theta _e`$=120, 170). The results are plotted as a function of $`\omega `$. For fixed $`E_0`$ and $`\theta _e`$ values $`\omega `$ and $`q`$ are linked by the relation $`q^2=\omega ^2+4E_0(E_0\omega )\mathrm{sin}^2(\theta _e/2)`$. To guide the reader $`q`$–values are indicated in the upper horizontal axes. Similar plots are obtained if one varies the incoming energy in the range 70 MeV $`\stackrel{_<}{_{}}E_0\stackrel{_<}{_{}}`$ 150 MeV. At forward angles only the $`\alpha `$–peak ($`W_L`$) contributes, while as $`\theta _e`$ increases beyond 90 the halo neutron contribution ($`W_T`$) starts to increase till it becomes the dominant contribution to the differential cross section. At 180 there is no contribution from the longitudinal structure function and the only contribution remaining is the transverse one. This is a general property that is well known and prevails for electron scattering from any target (see for instance ref. and references therein). Not included in these figures is the contribution from elastic electron–6He scattering, that was considered in  and contributes only at forward angles and $`\omega 0`$. We can see in fig.3 that, in each plot, the peak of the differential cross section falls in an ($`\omega `$,$`q`$) range that is expected to be free from core breakup: $`q\stackrel{_<}{_{}}`$ 200 MeV/c and $`\omega <q^2/2M_N+`$$`S_N`$, where $`M_N`$ is the nucleon mass and $`S_N`$$``$20 MeV is the nucleon separation energy in the $`\alpha `$–particle. The latter process will be considered subsequently. In the calculations only the final interaction between particles $`j`$ and $`k`$ (see fig. 1) is included. The important role that this interaction plays can be appreciated in fig.3 by comparison to PWIA results (dotted line), where this interaction is switched off. The difference between both calculations is due to the structure that the two–body spectator resonances create in the spectral functions. It would be interesting to study the effect caused by the final state interaction between the knocked out particle and the spectators. The treatment of three–body interactions in the final state is highly non–trivial and deserves further work. In particular this requires knowledge of the three–body resonance states. Experimental knowledge of three–body resonances is scant, but progress along these lines is being made .

## 4 Conclusion

In summary, we have investigated inclusive electron scattering on two-neutron halo nuclei, and particularly on 6He, to explore kinematical regions where the quasielastic processes 6He$`(e,e^{}n)\alpha n`$ and 6He$`(e,e^{}\alpha )nn`$ are favored. Considering the halo nucleus as a three–body (core+$`n`$+$`n`$) system, the differential cross section is calculated as the sum of terms coming from halo–neutron knockout and core knockout. It is then desirable to determine under what conditions the behavior of the different observables, cross section and structure functions, is dominated either by the halo neutrons or by the $`\alpha `$–core.

At forward scattering angles, for low $`q`$ and $`\omega `$ ($`q`$$`\stackrel{_<}{_{}}`$200 MeV/c, $`\omega `$$``$$`q^2/m_\alpha `$) the behavior of the differential cross section and of the longitudinal structure function is dictated by the $`\alpha `$–knockout process. In this domain the cross sections are large and dominated by the $`\alpha `$–peak. It is therefore in this region where coincidence $`(e,e^{}\alpha )`$ measurements should be performed to determine the spectral function $`S(E_x^{},𝒑_\alpha )`$ that carries the information on the $`\alpha `$–momentum distribution in the halo nucleus, or equivalently on the dineutron residual system. Furthermore, in the $`\omega 0`$ limit elastic scattering from 6He will provide the most stringent test of the charge distribution in 6He. If the present halo picture is correct the charge distribution in 6He must be dictated by that in the $`\alpha `$–core.

On the contrary, backward scattering is more favorable to measure the halo–neutron peak. In particular, $`\theta _e\stackrel{_>}{_{}}160^{}`$, 50 $`\stackrel{_<}{_{}}E_0\stackrel{_<}{_{}}`$ 100 MeV and $`\omega <`$ 40 MeV define a region where the inclusive cross section is sizeable and dominated by the halo neutron peak. Thus coincidence $`(e,e^{}n)`$ measurements in this region will allow to determine the spectral function $`S(E_x^{},𝒑_n)`$ that carries the information on the halo neutron momentum distribution, or equivalently on the unbound 5He residual system.

The procedure used here will be extended to other halo nuclei in the near future.

This work was supported by DGESIC (Spain) under contract number PB98–0676.