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# Untitled Document

hep-th/0011170

Quantum Corrections to Noncommutative Solitons

Miao Li

Institute for Theoretical Physics

Academia Sinica, Beijing

And

Department of Physics

National Taiwan University

Taipei 106, Taiwan

mli@phys.ntu.edu.tw

Noncommutative solitons are easier to find in a noncommutative field theory. Similarly, the one-loop quantum corrections to the mass of a noncommutative soliton are easier to compute, in a real scalar theory in $`2+1`$ dimensions. We carry out this computation in this paper. We also discuss the model with a double-well potential, and conjecture that there is a partial symmetry restoration in a vacuum state.

November 2000

1. Introduction

By now there is a fairly large literature on the subject of noncommutative solitons  in field theories as well as in string theory. However, there is little study on the quantum properties of these solitons. We will take first steps in this direction.

Noncommutativity in a sense drastically simplifies the task of the search for solitons. Noncommutativity is the cause of UV/IR connection, and drastically reduces the number of degrees of freedom. Technically, the field theory is essentially replaced by an one dimensional matrix model in the large noncommutativity limit. And the essential dynamic degrees of freedom are the eigen-values of the matrix. A soliton may be called a single eigen-value soliton. In the same vein, noncommutativity also simplifies the computation of quantum corrections to the spectrum of solitons. The reason is that in the large $`\theta `$ limit, one can integrate out the angular variables in the unitary matrix, in the decomposition $`\varphi =U\mathrm{\Lambda }U^+`$, the result is a modification of the wave functions by the Vandermonde determinant with the Hamiltonian remaining unchanged. To be more accurate, excitations of angular variables will cause quantum corrections suppressed by $`g^2`$, the coupling constant in question. Thus the problem of computing quantum corrections to the spectrum of solitons boils down to a simple quantum mechanical problem. This is to be contrasted to the problem of computing one-loop correction to a conventional soliton in a usual quantum field theory, where ingenious techniques are often required to carry out the calculations. In a noncommutative field theory, solving the differential equation is reduced to solving an algebraic equation, and computing a functional determinant is reduced to computing a number. We will carry out the “one-loop” computation in the next section. We will treat the spatial kinetic term as a perturbation, since it is suppressed by $`1/\theta `$.

The same reason prompts one to suspect that the folklore of symmetry breaking is no longer valid in a noncommutative field theory. We will conjecture in sect.3 that indeed in a $`2+1`$ dimensional noncommutative scalar field theory, symmetry is partially restored in a ground state in the large $`\theta `$ limit. We will provide some evidence to this effect. For finitely many eigenvalues, the $`Z_2`$ symmetry with a double-well potential is not broken. In the spacetime picture, this corresponds to the partial symmetry restoration in a finite region whose size depends on $`\theta `$. This phase breaks translational invariance thus deserves further study.

2. One-loop corrections

We will mostly consider a noncommutative real scalar in $`2+1`$ dimensions. The action is

$$S=\frac{1}{2\pi g^2\theta }𝑑td^2x\left(\frac{1}{2}(_t\varphi )^2\frac{1}{2}(_i\varphi )^2V(\varphi )\right),$$

where all products are understood as the star product, $`V(\varphi )`$ is a polynomial in $`\varphi `$, and is assumed to be bounded from below. The coupling constant $`g^2\theta `$ is chosen to contain a factor $`\theta `$, the noncommutative parameter appearing in

$$[x_1,x_2]=i\theta .$$

This choice is purely for later convenience. We define the coupling constant in such a way that the leading power in $`V(\varphi )`$ has a dimensionless numerical coefficient. For instance, in the case of a $`\varphi ^4`$ theory, $`V(\varphi )=1/4\varphi ^4+\mathrm{}`$. The dimension of $`g^2\theta `$ can be determined as follows. First, from the kinetic terms, one finds

$$[g^2\theta ]=[\varphi ^2]L.$$

If the leading power of $`V(\varphi )`$ is $`n`$, then by comparing this leading term with the kinetic term, one finds

$$[\varphi ]=L^{\frac{2}{n2}}.$$

Of course in order to have an interacting theory and solitons, $`n>2`$. Since the dimension of $`\theta `$ is $`L^2`$, finally we have

$$[g^2]=L^{\frac{n+2}{n2}}.$$

For $`n=4`$, $`[g^2]=M^3`$, and for $`n=6`$, $`[g^2]=M^2`$. Without noncommutativity, the former theory is super renormalizable, and th latter is marginally renormalizable.

To discuss the GMS solitons, it is convenient to rescale the spatial coordinates $`x_i\sqrt{\theta }x_i`$ Furthermore, it is useful to replace the integration over $`x_i`$ by the trace using $`d^2x=2\pi \mathrm{tr}`$ after the rescaling. The Hamiltonian is written in a neat form

$$H=\frac{1}{g^2}\mathrm{tr}\left(\frac{1}{2}(_t\varphi )^2\frac{1}{2\theta }[x_i,\varphi ]^2+V(\varphi )\right).$$

In the large $`\theta `$ limit, we see that we can drop the spatial derivative terms $`[x_i,\varphi ]^2`$. The above Hamiltonian describes a matrix model, one that is a slight modification of the old familiar $`c=1`$ matrix model. To cast the Hamiltonian in the more familiar matrix form, introduce the creation and the annihilation operators

$$a=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(x_1+ix_2),a^+=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(x_1ix_2)$$

satisfying $`[a,a^+]=1`$. Field $`\varphi `$ is operator valued, thus can be written in the form

$$\varphi =\underset{m,n}{}\varphi _{mn}|mn|,$$

where $`|m`$ are the normalized eigen-states of the number operator $`a^+a`$. Apparently, the multiplication operation becomes that of matrices. The Hamiltonian (2.1) does not have a $`U(\mathrm{})`$ gauge symmetry. However, if one throws away the spatial kinetic term, which is small in the large $`\theta `$ limit, the model possesses a global $`U(\mathrm{})`$ symmetry.

In the large $`\theta `$ limit, one can always diagonalize $`\varphi `$:

$$\varphi =\underset{m}{}\lambda _m|mm|,$$

and the Hamiltonian becomes simply a sum of infinitely many decoupled terms

$$H_0=\frac{1}{g^2}\underset{m}{}\left(\frac{1}{2}(_t\lambda _m)^2+V(\lambda _m)\right).$$

For a static configuration, to minimize the energy, we need to minimize all the individual terms, so that

$$\frac{dV(\lambda _m)}{d\lambda _m}=0.$$

Thus the static dynamics is dictated by the local minima of the potential $`V`$. We shall always assume the global minimum of $`V`$ be $`0`$ in this section, so the vacuum state has a zero energy classically. GMS observed that, if there exists another local minimum $`\overline{\lambda }`$ with $`V(\overline{\lambda })`$, then there exist solitons $`\varphi =\overline{\lambda }|mm|`$ and multi-solutions as suppositions of these solitons. Although it appears that these results are rather trivial from the matrix model perspective, the solitons are nontrivial as they are truly lumps in the two dimensional space. Translated into function of $`x_i`$, $`|mm|`$ is a polynomial with a Gaussian damping factor.

It is the special feature of a noncommutative field theory that the supposition of all single eigen-value solitons give the false vacuum, since

$$\varphi =\overline{\lambda }|mm|=\overline{\lambda },$$

namely, although each soliton is well-localized around $`x_i=0`$, their supposition gives rise to a constant configuration of the scalar field.

For a single soliton, the classical energy is degenerate regardless which eigen-value $`\lambda _m`$ is excited to $`\overline{\lambda }`$:

$$E_m=\frac{1}{g^2}V(\overline{\lambda }).$$

This degeneracy is lifted by turning on the spatial kinetic energy. For the diagonal configuration (2.1), this term $`(1/g^2\theta )\mathrm{tr}[a,\varphi ][a^+,\varphi ]`$ reads

$$\frac{1}{g^2\theta }\underset{m}{}m(\lambda _m\lambda _{m1})^2.$$

Consider the more general situation when all $`\lambda _m`$ are dynamic, namely when they depend on time, the Hamiltonian is

$$H=\frac{1}{g^2}\underset{m}{}\left(\frac{1}{2}(_t\lambda _m)^2+\frac{1}{\theta }m(\lambda _m\lambda _{m1})^2+V(\lambda _m)\right).$$

Assume the global minimum of $`V`$ is at $`\lambda =0`$, then to the first order in $`1/\theta `$, the m-th soliton has an energy

$$E_m=\frac{1}{g^2}\left(V(\overline{\lambda })+\frac{2m+1}{\theta }\overline{\lambda }^2\right).$$

The degeneracy is lifted by a small term suppressed by $`1/\theta `$. We computed the above correction by simply substituting the unmodified soliton into (2.1). The exact static solution when the spatial kinetic energy is turned on is different from the simple ansatz $`\lambda _m=\overline{\lambda }`$, $`\lambda _n=0`$, $`nm`$. However, this modification does not change the result (2.1). To see this, we can expand the Hamiltonian (2.1) around the unmodified soliton configuration and find that the correction to $`\varphi `$ is suppressed by $`1/\theta `$, all terms in the expansion except for the one showing up in (2.1) are then suppressed by $`1/\theta ^2`$ upon substitution of the modified solution.

To discuss the quantum corrections to the spectrum of solitons, again we will ignore the spatial kinetic term first. Without the presence of this term, it is well-known in the old matrix models that one can integrate out angular variables first. Decompose the full matrix as written in (2.1) into $`\varphi =U\mathrm{\Lambda }U^+`$, where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the full diagonal form as in (2.1), and $`U`$ is a unitary operator $`UU(\mathrm{})`$. To see how integrating out $`U`$ affects the resulting theory, it is better to work with the path integral:

$$[d\mathrm{\Lambda }][dU]\mathrm{exp}(iS).$$

Now if $`S`$ contains only the time kinetic term and the potential term, $`U`$ can be explicitly integrated out \[2,,3\]. Consider the propagator between states with fixed initial $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_i`$ and fixed final $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_f`$, the path integral yields

$$[d\mathrm{\Lambda }]\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Lambda }_i)\mathrm{\Delta }^1(\mathrm{\Lambda }_f)\mathrm{exp}(iS(\mathrm{\Lambda })),$$

where $`S(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ is the action by substituting $`\varphi =\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ into $`S(\varphi )`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ is the Vandermonde determinant

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Lambda })=\underset{m<n}{}(\lambda _m\lambda _n).$$

Note that in (2.1) we integrated out $`U_i`$ but not $`U_f`$, otherwise we would get a factor $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Lambda }_f)`$ instead of $`\mathrm{\Delta }^1(\mathrm{\Lambda }_f)`$. Result (2.1) can be obtained by put the matrix model on a discrete time lattice, integration of angular variables yields many Vandermonde determinants, and all the intermediate determinants cancel. We thus see that integrating out the angular variable $`U`$ merely modifies the wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }(\mathrm{\Lambda })\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Lambda })\mathrm{\Psi }(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ without changing the Hamiltonian (2.1). This antisymmetric factors comes from the phase space of the angular variables.

When the initial wave function is a nontrivial function of these variables, integrating out them is actually more subtle than described above. In any case, if one uses the arguments in the first reference in , one will see that excitations of angular variables bring in corrections only at the order $`g^2`$, one-loop higher than what we will be interested in this paper. All these angular variables are flat directions. In particular, the mode corresponding to the center of the soliton is a collection of these variables (the $`U`$ matrix is simply $`\mathrm{exp}(i(\alpha a+\overline{\alpha }a^+))`$). Since the mass of the soliton is proportional to $`g^2`$, the kinetic term of the soliton is roughly $`(g^2/\lambda ^2)p_\alpha ^2`$, we see that indeed this term also brings in correction at the order $`g^2`$, as it should be the case in general 1 The problem of treating the collective coordinates is always subtle in a commutative field theory, we see that in the noncommutative case, it is relatively simple, although the center degree of freedom $`\alpha `$ is composed of infinitely many angles and requires a careful treatment.. By freezing angular directions except taking the phase space into account, we also demand the soliton stay at rest.

It becomes important to remember that there is a spatial kinetic term in the full action breaking the $`U(\mathrm{})`$ symmetry. Without this term, we would start with a totally symmetric wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ and end up with a totally asymmetric wave function $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Lambda })\mathrm{\Psi }(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$, and each eigen-value $`\lambda _m`$ is transmutated into a fermion, as in the old matrix models. In this case the vacuum cannot be $`\lambda _m=0`$, and there are no soliton solutions at all! Thus, even though the classical perturbation introduced by the spatial kinetic term is suppressed by $`1/\theta `$ as in (2.1), its quantum correction is enormous to change the vacuum structure.

We will first ignore the spatial kinetic term in discussing the quantum corrections to the spectrum of solitons, and consider its effects later. Since there is no restriction on the wave function, all eigen-values are completely decoupled, as the Hamiltonian (2.1) clearly indicates. The canonical momentum of $`\lambda _m`$ computed from (2.1) is

$$p_m=\frac{1}{g^2}_t\lambda _m.$$

With this identification, the Hamiltonian becomes

$$H=\underset{m}{}\left(\frac{g^2}{2}p_m^2+\frac{1}{g^2}V(\lambda _m)\right).$$

Clearly, if $`\lambda _m=0`$ is the absolute minimum point of $`V(\lambda _m)`$, then the ground state $`\mathrm{\Psi }_0(\lambda _m)`$ is localized around this minimum, and the ground state of the whole system is given by $`\mathrm{\Psi }_0(\mathrm{\Lambda })=_m\psi _0(\lambda _m)`$. The classical soliton with a $`\lambda _m=\overline{\lambda }`$ is unstable against quantum tunneling. We will not be interested in this tunneling in this article. What we are interested in is the perturbative quantum corrections to the classical energy of the soliton, thus the full perturbative energy is a Taylor series in $`g^2`$. While the quantum tunneling is suppressed by a factor $`\mathrm{exp}(c/g^2)`$ with the constant $`c`$ depending on the details of the potential $`V`$.

The first order correction to the energy is of order $`O(g^0)`$ and is normally called the one-loop correction. While it is often a quite technical problem to compute this one-loop correction in a usual quantum field theory, the computation is almost trivial in the noncommutative field theory without $`U(\mathrm{})`$ symmetry. We need only expand $`V(\lambda _m)`$ around $`\overline{\lambda }`$ to the second order in $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _m=\lambda _m\overline{\lambda }`$. The Hamiltonian for $`\lambda _m`$ to this order reads

$$H_m=\frac{1}{g^2}V(\overline{\lambda })+\frac{g^2}{2}p_m^2+\frac{1}{2g^2}V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })(\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _m)^2,$$

where $`V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })`$ is the second derivative of $`V`$ at $`\overline{\lambda }`$ and is positive. Thus the wave function for $`\lambda _m`$ is that of the ground state of a harmonic oscillator, it is just

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _m)=\mathrm{exp}(\frac{\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}}{2g^2}(\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _m)^2).$$

More generally, the n-th excited state has an energy

$$E=\frac{1}{g^2}V(\overline{\lambda })+(n+\frac{1}{2})\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}.$$

We might think this is the quantum corrected energy of the soliton with $`n`$ quanta bound to it. This is not true, we need to take the energy of vacuum into account. When all eigen-values stay in their ground state, the classical energy vanishes. Quantum mechanically, to the first order in $`g^2`$, there is a correction

$$\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(0)}$$

to the energy of a single eigen-value. The sum of these corrections diverges as usual in a field theory. For a soliton excited to its n-th level, all other eigen-values still stay in their ground state around $`\lambda =0`$ except $`\lambda _m`$, thus the subtracted energy of the soliton is

$$E_m=\frac{1}{g^2}V(\overline{\lambda })+\frac{1}{2}(\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(0)})+n\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}.$$

The above is the true quantum corrected energy of a soliton bound to n quanta. When $`n=0`$, we have the one-loop corrected energy of the soliton. The condition for the one-loop correction to be much smaller than the classical result is

$$g^2\frac{V(\overline{\lambda })}{|\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(0)}|}.$$

Next we consider the correction brought about by the spatial kinetic term. When this term is present, it is impossible to integrate out the angular variables $`U`$ as before. However, since this term is suppressed by $`1/\theta `$, it is reasonable to assume that integrating out $`U`$ will result a correction to the wave function by $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{\Lambda })`$ and a small correction to the Hamiltonian. We will ignore this correction to the Hamiltonian. We have seen in (2.1) that the classical correction induced by the spatial kinetic term is suppressed by a factor $`1/\theta `$, and not surprisingly, we will see that the quantum correction induced by this term is further suppressed by a factor $`g^2`$. Denote $`H=H_0+\mathrm{\Delta }H`$, where $`H_0`$ is the Hamiltonian as in (2.1), and $`\mathrm{\Delta }H`$ is the spatial kinetic term. Let $`\mathrm{\Psi }_i`$ be the eigenstates of $`H_0`$, using the standard perturbation theory, the eigen-values of $`H`$ is determined by the following equation

$$det[\mathrm{\Psi }_i|\mathrm{\Delta }H|\mathrm{\Psi }_j\delta _{ij}(EE_i)]=0.$$

Consider $`\mathrm{\Psi }_i`$ to be the wave functions when all $`\lambda _n`$ $`nm`$ are excited around $`\lambda =0`$, and the m-th eigen-value $`\lambda _m`$ is excited around $`\overline{\lambda }`$. Since the energy-levels $`E_i`$ are not degenerate, it is rather easy to execute the perturbation calculation. We first assume that the off-diagonal elements $`\mathrm{\Psi }_i|\mathrm{\Delta }H|\mathrm{\Psi }_j`$ can be ignored, then the correction to $`E_m`$ is simply

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_m|\mathrm{\Delta }H|\mathrm{\Psi }_m=\frac{1}{g^2\theta }\underset{n}{}(2n+1)\mathrm{\Psi }_m|\lambda _n^2|\mathrm{\Psi }_m,$$

where $`\mathrm{\Psi }_m`$ is given by the product of (2.1) and the ground state wave functions of $`\lambda _n`$ centering around $`\lambda _n=0`$. In getting the above expressing we have observed that the expectation value of the nearest-neighbor coupling $`\lambda _n\lambda _{n+1}`$ vanishes. (2.1) is easy to compute, we have

$$\frac{1}{\theta }(m+\frac{1}{2})\frac{1}{\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}}+\frac{1}{\theta }\underset{n}{\overset{}{}}(n+\frac{1}{2})\frac{1}{\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(0)}},$$

where the primed sum does not include $`n=m`$. The above sum is divergent. To get a finite result, again we need to subtract the correction to the vacuum energy, thus

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_m|\mathrm{\Delta }H|\mathrm{\Psi }_m=\frac{1}{\theta }(m+\frac{1}{2})(\frac{1}{\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(0)}}).$$

Compared with the classical correction in (2.1) we see that indeed this term is further suppressed by a factor $`g^2`$.

Next we shall argue that the off-diagonal elements of $`\mathrm{\Delta }H`$ can be ignored. To see this, we use another method to get the same result as in (2.1). The spatial kinetic term can be divided into two parts. One part is a sum of the terms

$$\frac{1}{g^2\theta }(2n+1)\lambda _n^2.$$

The second part is a sum of the nearest neighbor coupling

$$\frac{1}{g^2\theta }n\lambda _n\lambda _{n1}.$$

Now treat the second part as a perturbation, while the first part is included in $`H_0`$, we see that the total one-loop quantum correction is

$$\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })+2(2m+1)/\theta }.$$

Expanding the above result we get the second term to be the one in (2.1). The higher order terms are suppressed by more factors of $`1/\theta `$. Further, it is easy to see that in the nearest neighbor coupling, the elements of $`\lambda _n`$ between the ground state and the excited states are all vanishing except the first excited state. According to the perturbation theory, the correction induced by this is proportional to

$$(\mathrm{\Psi }|1/(g^2\theta )\lambda _n\lambda _{n1}|\mathrm{\Phi })^2/(E_1E_0),$$

where $`E_1E_0`$ is the energy difference between state $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and state $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$. Due to the appearance of square of the off-diagonal element, this term is suppressed by $`1/\theta ^2`$. The off-diagonal element is independent of $`g`$.

To summarize, the corrected energy of the m-th single soliton is

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill E_m& =\frac{1}{g^2}(V(\overline{\lambda })+\frac{2m+1}{\theta }\overline{\lambda }^2)+\frac{1}{2}(\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(0)})\hfill \\ & +\frac{1}{\theta }(m+\frac{1}{2})(\frac{1}{\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(0)}}).\hfill \end{array}$$

If we demand the quantum correction induced by the spatial kinetic term be much smaller than its classical counterpart, we must impose

$$g^2\frac{\overline{\lambda }^2\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })V^{\prime \prime }(0)}}{|\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })}\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(0)}|}.$$

Further, if we demand the quantum correction induced by the spatial kinetic term be much smaller than the one in the decoupled system, there must be

$$\frac{1}{\theta }\frac{\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })V^{\prime \prime }(0)}}{m+\frac{1}{2}}.$$

This condition may be violated for a sufficiently large $`m`$.

To have a feeling about the result (2.1), consider a $`\varphi ^4`$ theory. $`V^{}(\lambda )`$ is a polynomial of degree $`3`$, so it has three zeros. To have a soliton, there must be two zeros at $`\lambda =0`$ and $`\lambda =\overline{\lambda }`$. The third zero must be real too, denote it by $`\mu `$. Thus

$$V^{}(\lambda )=\lambda (\lambda \overline{\lambda })(\lambda \mu ).$$

The relevant data for quantum corrections are

$$V^{\prime \prime }(0)=\mu \overline{\lambda },V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })=\overline{\lambda }(\overline{\lambda }\mu ).$$

For both of them to be positive, $`\mu `$ and $`\overline{\lambda }`$ must have the same sign, choose them to be positive; and $`\overline{\lambda }>\mu `$. $`\lambda =\mu `$ is a local maximum of $`V`$. The potential is a deformed double-well. Integrating (2.1) to get $`V`$ and set $`V(0)=0`$, we find

$$V(\overline{\lambda })=\frac{1}{12}\overline{\lambda }^3(2\mu \overline{\lambda }).$$

This value must be positive, therefore $`2\mu >\overline{\lambda }`$. Applying this condition to (2.1), we have $`V^{\prime \prime }(0)>V^{\prime \prime }(\overline{\lambda })`$. We therefore see that the leading quantum correction in (2.1) is negative, the quantum correction due to the kinetic term is positive.

Quantum corrections to multiple solitons sitting at the same point can be readily carried out. In this case a few $`\lambda `$’s are excited to $`\overline{\lambda }`$ and there is no interaction at the classical level, since even the spatial kinetic term vanishes. Quantum mechanically, there is no correction at the one loop level to the interaction energy, since the cross terms such as $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _m\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _{m1}`$ has vanishing expectation value.

It is also interesting to study quantum correction to the energy of two separated solitons. The simplest case is a soliton localized at $`x=0`$, given by $`\overline{\lambda }|00|`$, and a soliton localized at a another point given by $`\overline{\lambda }|zz|`$. The second soliton can not be written as a diagonal matrix, so new technique is required.

3. Partial Symmetry Restoration

In this section we will consider the noncommutative $`\varphi ^4`$ theory in $`2+1`$ dimensions. We assume the potential take the form

$$V(\varphi )=\frac{1}{4}\varphi ^4\frac{\mu ^2}{2}\varphi ^2.$$

According to the dimensional analysis performed in the previous section, $`\varphi `$ has an energy dimension, so does $`\mu `$, and $`[g^2]=M^3`$. Classically, as in the ordinary commutative field theory, the vacua are degenerate at $`\varphi =\pm \mu `$. There is no soliton unlike what was studied in the previous section. Quantum mechanically, the vacua remain degenerate for the commutative field theory. What happens in the noncommutative case?

We conjecture that in a true ground state, the vacuum expectation values of the first few $`\lambda _m`$ are zero, with the largest $`m`$ determined roughly by $`\mu ^2\theta `$. The remaining infinitely many eigen-values stay in the valley of the double-well potential. Such a vacuum seems to break translational invariance, thus it is something like a “stripe phase”. We make this conjecture for the zero temperature theory, unlike what was considered recently by Gubser and Sondhi , where an Euclidean noncommutative field theory was studied.

It is well-known that for a quantum mechanical system with the double-well potential (3.1), the degeneracy of two perturbative ground states centering around $`\varphi =\pm \mu `$ is lifted nonperturbatively, due to the tunneling effects. Let the Hamiltonian of this quantum mechanics be

$$H=\frac{1}{g^2}(\frac{1}{2}(_t\varphi )^2+V(\varphi )),$$

with $`V(\varphi )`$ given in (3.1). Let $`E_0(g^2)`$ be the ground state energy computed by the perturbative expansion method. The nonperturbative effects lift the degeneracy and the two eigen-values of the Hamiltonian become $`E_\pm (g^2)`$, the difference between these two energies can be computed by the WKB method and turns out to be of the form

$$E_+(g^2)E_{}(g^2)=c_1\frac{\mu ^{5/2}}{g}e^{\frac{c_2\mu ^3}{g^2}},$$

where $`c_{1,2}`$ are positive dimensionless constants . This result is good in the limit $`g^2/\mu ^31`$. Note that the true ground state energy $`E_{}`$ is lower than the perturbative ground state energy $`E_0`$.

In a quantum field theory with potential (3.1), there are two extremal limits. In one extreme, the spatial derivative terms can be ignored, and in this case the field theory is ultra-local. At every spatial point, $`\varphi `$ fluctuates independently. If we divide space into cells with a small volume $`v`$, then the effective coupling is $`g^2/v`$, very large in the UV limit. In this limit the $`\varphi ^4`$ term dominates the dynamics, and the degeneracy is surely lifted in this limit, although the result (3.1) can no longer be trusted. In the other extremal limit, the spatial kinetic term is important, so $`\varphi `$ is forced to fluctuate collectively. Denote this zero mode by $`\varphi _0`$, its effective coupling is $`g^2/V`$ where $`V`$ to the infrared cut-off on the whole volume. Since in the large volume limit, the effective coupling is small, and the energy gap (3.1) becomes accurate in this limit:

$$E_+E_{}=c_1\frac{\sqrt{V}}{g}e^{\frac{c_2V}{g^2}}.$$

In the thermodynamic limit $`V=\mathrm{}`$, the energy gap tends to $`0`$ rapidly, the degeneracy is resumed, the $`Z_2`$ symmetry is spontaneously broken.

In the realistic case, one has to study the system carefully, taking into account the spatial kinetic energy. It turns out for a real scalar field, symmetry is always broken in 2 dimensions and above. For a complex scalar, the kinetic term does not suppress the infrared correlations of the Goldstone boson in 2 dimensions, and there is no symmetry breaking.

We now turn to our $`2+1`$ dimensional noncommutative $`\varphi ^4`$ theory. As emphasized in the previous section, it is a difficult problem to integrate out the off-diagonal modes of $`\varphi `$ when the spatial kinetic term is present. Nevertheless we assume that the correction induced by this term is smaller than its classical value when evaluated for $`\varphi =\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, a diagonal matrix. Thus the net result of integrating out $`U`$ in the decomposition $`\varphi =U\mathrm{\Lambda }U^+`$ is the Vandermonde determinant modifying the wave function. The Hamiltonian is still given by (2.1). For convenience, we write down this Hamiltonian again

$$H=\frac{1}{g^2}\underset{m}{}\left(\frac{1}{2}(_t\lambda _m)^2+\frac{1}{\theta }m(\lambda _m\lambda _{m1})^2+\frac{1}{4}\lambda _m^4\frac{1}{2}\mu ^2\lambda _m^2\right).$$

In the limit $`\theta =\mathrm{}`$, the spatial kinetic term drops out, the system becomes of a collection of $`\varphi ^4`$ quantum mechanical systems, and the vacuum state is the state when all eigen-values $`\lambda _m`$ stay in their ground state of energy $`E_{}`$, so there is no spontaneous symmetry breaking. The first excited states are degenerate: When all $`\lambda _m`$ are in their ground state except only one eigen-value in the state with energy $`E_+`$. The energy of these first excited state, after subtracted the vacuum energy, is given by $`E_+E_{}`$ as in (3.1), and curiously, is very small when $`g^2/\mu ^31`$. We conclude that in the large $`\theta `$ limit, there is no symmetry breaking, and there is an energy gap which is nonperturbative in nature. The fact that a $`2+1`$ dimensional noncommutative scalar field theory does not exhibit spontaneous symmetry breaking is due to the drastic reduction of effective number of degrees of freedom. In a way, it is similar to the ultra-local commutative field theory. It is also different from the latter, since the effective coupling constant is always $`g^2`$ and all the eigen-values $`\lambda _m`$ have the same amount of fluctuations, while in the ultra-local field theory, the fluctuations become violent in the UV limit, since the effective coupling increases in the UV limit.

When the kinetic term is turned on, the tremendous degeneracy of the first excited states is lifted. Hamiltonian (3.1) describes a chain on a half infinite line with nearest neighbor coupling. When $`\theta `$ large and $`m`$ small, the spatial kinetic term is not strong, one would imagine these eigen-values essentially behave like decoupled eigen-values, and the $`Z_2`$ symmetry is not broken for them. For $`m`$ large enough, the spatial kinetic term starts to play an role, we will argue that it will derive almost all eigen-values to their minimal point.

The one dimensional chain (3.1), although looks simple, can not be solved exactly. We will use perturbation arguments. Classically, since the kinetic term is positive definite, the minimal energy is achieved when $`\lambda _m=\pm \mu `$. Quantum mechanically, all $`\lambda _m`$ fluctuate, it is a tricky question as to what we shall take as our unperturbed Hamiltonian. We shall consider two situations separately. In one hypothetical case, $`Z_2`$ symmetry is not broken for all $`\lambda `$’s. In the other case, $`Z_2`$ symmetry is broken.

Consider the assumption that the symmetry is not broken for all eigenvalues. In this case we will not take the Hamiltonian in (2.1) as the unperturbed one, rather, we take

$$H_0=\frac{1}{g^2}\underset{m}{}\left(\frac{1}{2}(_t\lambda _m)^2+(\frac{1}{2}\mu ^2+\frac{2m+1}{\theta })\lambda _m^2+\frac{1}{4}\lambda _m^4\right)$$

as the unperturbed Hamiltonian. The perturbation is then the nearest neighbor coupling

$$H_I=\frac{2}{g^2\theta }\underset{m}{}m\lambda _m\lambda _{m1}.$$

Without perturbation (3.1), the system described by (3.1) is simple. The effective mass square for $`\lambda _m`$ is

$$\mu _m^2=\frac{2(2m+1)}{\theta }\mu ^2.$$

When this parameter is positive, the potential has a minimum at $`\lambda _m=0`$. In the following argument, we ignore the finitely many eigen-values for which $`\mu _m^2`$ is negative, since contribution of these eigenvalues to energy is always finite. Now the zero-point energy for $`\lambda _m`$ with positive $`\mu _m`$ is simply $`(1/2)\mu _m`$. Since all the wave functions of $`\lambda `$’s are even functions, the perturbation (3.1) has vanishing expectation value in this “supposed to be” vacuum, the vacuum energy is given by, ignoring higher loop corrections

$$E_0=\underset{m=M}{}\frac{\mu _m}{2},$$

where $`M`$ is the smallest $`m`$ making $`\mu _m^2`$ positive. If we introduce a cut-off $`m=N`$ on the sum, then the second sum scales roughly as

$$\frac{2}{3\sqrt{\theta }}N^{3/2}.$$

As we remarked before, if we do not take the nearest neighbor coupling as a perturbation, then there are two classical minima when all $`\lambda _m=\mu `$ or all $`\lambda =\mu `$. We now study the quantum fluctuation around one of them, say $`\lambda =\mu `$. Each eigenvalue contributes to the classical energy an amount$`\mu ^4/(4g^2)`$, and each contribute a zero point energy $`\mu /\sqrt{2}`$. The sum of these contribution diverges as

$$(\frac{\mu ^4}{4g^2}\frac{\mu }{\sqrt{2}})N.$$

We are assuming the perturbation theory is correct, so $`g^2/\mu ^31`$, the above contribution is negative. Expanding the whole Hamiltonian around $`\lambda _m=\mu `$, and denote $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _m=\lambda _m\mu `$, the Hamiltonian, for $`mM`$, is given by a Gaussian part

$$H_0=\frac{1}{g^2}\underset{m}{}\left(\frac{1}{2}(_t\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _m)^2+(\mu ^2+\frac{2m+1}{\theta })\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _m^2\right),$$

a perturbation

$$H_I=\frac{2}{g^2\theta }\underset{m}{}m\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _m\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda _{m1},$$

and a higher order sum. The zero-point fluctuation determined by (3.1) is

$$\underset{m}{}\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{2(2m+1)}{\theta }+2\mu ^2\right)^{1/2}.$$

This term also diverges as the sum (3.1) in the same fashion as in (3.1). But the difference between this sum and (3.1) is roughly

$$\frac{3}{4}\mu ^2\sqrt{\theta }\sqrt{N}.$$

Although it is positive, in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$, this term is overwhelmed by the negative energy (3.1), so the symmetry broken phase $`\lambda =\mu `$ has much smaller energy.

For $`\lambda _m`$ with $`\mu _m^2`$ negative, the story can be completely different. For these eigen-values, even in the symmetric phase, the energy is negative, and if we adopt (3.1) as perturbation, it has zero expectation value in the symmetric state. For this term to be a small perturbation, we require its element between the symmetric state with energy $`E_{}`$ and the first excited state with energy $`E_+`$ to be smaller than $`(\mathrm{\Delta }E\mu _m)^{1/2}`$. We find the condition

$$\frac{m^2}{\theta ^2}c_1g^3|\mu _m|^{1/2}\mathrm{exp}(\frac{c_2|\mu _m|^3}{g^2}),$$

it can be satisfied for small $`m`$ and large $`\theta `$.

Thus, it is likely that the one-dimension chain described by (3.1) has a zero-temperature phase in which finitely many eigen-values are in the symmetric phase. These eigen-values still have an effective negative $`\mu _m^2`$, thus $`m`$ is roughly smaller than $`\mu ^2\theta `$. As pointed out in , the corresponding state $`|mm|`$ associated with this eigen-value has a spatial size $`\sqrt{m}`$, or in terms of the original, un-rescaled coordinates, its size is $`\sqrt{m}\sqrt{\theta }`$. With the condition $`m<\mu ^2\theta `$, we find the size be smaller than $`\mu \theta `$. A more careful analysis should incorporate a condition such as (3.1). For instance, one may require that the spatial kinetic energy between the two neighboring eigen-values to be smaller than the lowering of energy due to quantum tunneling, given in (3.1). The former is roughly $`m\mu ^2/(g^2\theta )`$, for the difference $`\lambda _m\lambda _{m1}`$ is roughly $`\mu `$ in a symmetric phase. Thus,

$$m<g\sqrt{\mu }e^{\frac{c_2\mu ^3}{g^2}}\theta ,$$

so the physical size of symmetry restoration

$$\sqrt{m\theta }g^{1/2}\mu ^{1/4}e^{\frac{c_2\mu ^3}{2g^2}}\theta =f(g,\mu )\theta .$$

This result may just reflect the fact that in noncommutative space, the fluctuation of the field within size $`f(g,\mu )\theta `$ is unavoidably large due to space-space uncertainty. This size grows when $`\theta `$ is increased. There ought to be a close relation between the partial symmetry restoration and the UV/IR connection at the perturbative level found in .

It goes without saying that the above result is to be taken only as a substantiated conjecture, since we have ignored dynamic fluctuations of angular variables, and their effect introduced through the spatial kinetic term.

The partial symmetry breaking is interesting. However it raises a puzzle: In such a phase, translational invariance seems to be broken. In a sense this vacuum is similar to the stripe phase discussed in . The simple reason that the spontaneously translational symmetry-breaking is possible is that the translation generators are part of the angular variables, which are all flat directions and can spontaneously stay at a point. Further detailed study is desirable to clarify how spontaneous translational symmetry-breaking occurs. Nevertheless its occurrence is not unique. As discussed in \[16,,17\], tachyon condensation in a D-brane anti-D-brane system also spontaneously breaks translational invariance in matrix models, the condensation occurs in a finite region at the classical level. For other discussions of the noncommutative tachyon, see . The cause of this phenomenon is the opposite sign of the B field on the two D-branes. In the system discussed here, the “tachyon” field does not condense in a finite region.

4. Conclusion and Discussions

We have in this paper mainly considered a noncommutative field theory with a real scalar, in $`2+1`$ dimensions. This dimensionality is interesting in string theory, for instance in a brane-anti-brane system, lower dimensional branes are constructed as solitons of co-dimension 2 \[7--18\]. However, to get results applicable to string theory, the gauge field must be introduced. Results obtained here will be modified with the presence of the gauge field. The most important modification will be that the complete symmetry breaking will become possible again, for otherwise Sen’s tachyon condensation scenario would be wrong, this is unlikely to happen. It should also be interesting to study quantum corrections to the exact solitons discussed recently in \[19--20\] and other solitons involving the gauge field .

When there is a gauge field in the system, unlike the commutative case, a scalar can remain real and is still coupled to the gauge field in the adjoint representation. A tachyon on a unstable D-brane in a type II string theory realizes this situation. The problem of computing quantum corrections to a unstable soliton in a gauge theory is complicated by two things in a noncommutative gauged system. First, even though one can still diagonalize a real scalar in the operator representation, one is left with the problem of treating the time component of the gauge field. Second, the spatial derivative terms and the Yang-Mills term are important. To see this, recall that a covariant derivative $`D_\mu \varphi `$ is replaced by a commutator $`[X_\mu ,\varphi ]`$ in the matrix representation  . Rescaling of coordinates $`x_i\sqrt{\theta }x_i`$ is absorbed into a rescaling of the gauge field, so the Yang-Mills term $`\mathrm{tr}[X_\mu ,X_\mu ]^2`$ also receives a rescaling, the effective Yang-Mills coupling is $`g^2\theta `$ rather than $`g^2`$. Thus the Yang-Mills part is strongly coupled compared to the self coupling of the scalar. In a $`\varphi ^4`$ theory, the effective dimensionless coupling is $`g^2\theta /\mu `$.

To discuss gauge symmetry breaking, one must first understand better the Higgs mechanism in this setting . We expect no surprises here.

Acknowledgments. I would like to thank P. M. Ho, Y. C. Kao, H. S. Yang and especially P. Yi for discussions. This work was supported by a grant of NSC and by a “Hundred People Project” grant of Academia Sinica.

References

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# Complexity and Fragility in Ecological Networks

## I Introduction

Ecological research has widely demonstrated that community fragility is far from being understood. Issues as which species might be considered as specially relevant because of their strong effects on the community have lead to a heated debate since Paine’s definition of keystone species (Jordán et al.,1999). Despite this and other discussed topics, it is commonly accepted that community fragility is related to how ecological communities are structured, specifically to how trophic links are distributed throughout the community (May 1974; Pimm 1991). But both the scarcity of high-quality data (Polis, 1991; Cohen et al., 1993; Williamson and Martinez, ) and the lack of methods suitable for a detailed analysis of the complexity of food web organization (Cohen et al., 1993) leads to a lack of an unified picture of community fragility. A number of questions emerge from these studies: How are dynamic and static (graph-level) properties related?; How dependent is ecosystem fragility from graph architecture?

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the organization of complex networks. These networks go from technological ones (Watts and Strogatz, 1998; Albert et al., 1999), to neural (Watts and Strogatz 1998; Amaral et al., 2000) or metabolic networks (Jeong et al 2000; Wagner and Fell, 2000). All these networks can be represented as a graph consisting of a set of nodes and the links connecting them.

Such complex networks share some topological features, as the so-called “small world” (SW) behavior (Watts and Strogatz 1998; Newman, 2000). Some of these webs also exhibit scale-free (SF) distributions of links. Specifically, the frequency of nodes with $`k`$ connections follows a power law distribution $`P(k)k^\gamma `$, where most units are connected with few nodes and very few nodes are highly connected.

Networks exhibiting SW properties and SF distributions of connections present a characteristic response to the successive removal of their nodes, related to the way removals occur (Albert et al 2000; Jeong et al 2000). When nodes are removed at random, the network exhibit high homeostasis. By contrast, if most-connected nodes are successively eliminated, the structure of the network reveals an intrinsic fragility that eventually leads to a breaking into many small subgraphs. This behaviour is not shared by other networks, such as purely random ones, where $`P(k)`$ is Poissonian. It has been demonstrated that random networks are equally fragile to the way removal of nodes is produced.

The surprising and general nature of these results immediately suggests their application to ecological networks (figure 1), which have been recently shown to display SF behavior (Montoya and Solé, 2000). Here we examine the possible consequences for ecosystem stability against different types of species loss. As we will see, these networks display the robustness expected for long-tailed distributions of connections but also a high fragility against selective species removal.

## II Food webs analysed

Because of the limitations of the available data in terms of both taxonomic resolution and size (Polis, 1991; Cohen et al., 1993; Williams and Martinez, 2000) our study is limited to the three richest and best-described food webs available in the ecological literature (figure 2). These are: Ythan estuary web (Huxman et al. 1996), Silwood Park web (Memmott et al. 2000) and Little Rock Lake web (Martinez 1991).

Ythan estuary food web has $`N_s=134`$ species, being the second largest documented web in the UK. Most nodes correspond to real species ($`88\%`$) while the rest involve lower taxonomic resolution (all the species of Acarina or of Brown Algae are lumped together in the same node). It is one of the most reviewed food webs through ecological literature and the average number of links per species is $`<k>=8.7`$.

Silwood park food web is a very detailed sub-web (all nodes but one are real species) of those species associated with the Scotch broom Cytisus scoparius in a field site of $`97`$ hectares. The average number of links per species is $`<k>=4.75`$. It includes $`154`$ species: $`60`$ predators, $`66`$ parasitoids, $`5`$ omnivores, $`19`$ herbivores and one plant.

Finally, Little Rock Lake food web corresponds to a small lake. It is the largest of the three webs analysed here ($`N_s=182`$), although it has less taxonomic resolution. Only $`31\%`$ of nodes are real species, being most of the nodes genera-level ($`63\%`$) and the rest corresponding to higher taxa. Here $`<k>=26.05`$.

By using these webs, we have a diverse representation of habitats: one food web from a terrestrial habitat (Silwood park), a freshwater habitat (Little Rock lake) and an interface environment (Ythan estuary). All of them have some features in common. In a previous study, we have shown that these networks display small-world properties (Montoya and Solé, 2000). In a graph with a small world (SW) topology, nodes are highly clustered yet the path length between them is small. In this sense a SW stands for a network whose topology is placed somewhere between a regular and a totally random distribution of connections. These networks display a number of surprising features and have been suggested to be of great relevance in different biological contexts (Watts and Strogatz, 1998; Jeong et al., 2000; Lago-Fernández et al, 2000).

In general, SW nets have been shown to provide fast responses to perturbations and thus provide a great source of homeostasis. However, two of these networks also display the power law distribution $`P(k)k^\gamma `$ (figure 2) thus belonging to the SF class of networks. Little Rock web is also fat-tailed but it displays deviations from the power law due to low taxonomic resolution (Montoya and Solé, 2000). For food webs displaying fat-tailed distributions, perturbations can have unexpected consequences, which are explored in the next section.

## III Response to species removal

We have simulated two kinds of species removals: random and directed. These correspond to removal of an arbitrary or the highest connected node, respectively. Previous studies have shown that the eventual effect of removal is network fragmentation, which takes place in very different ways depending on the type of removal used (Albert et al., 2000; Jeong et al., 2000). Community fragility has been measured in different ways in relation to the fraction of species $`f`$ that have been already removed (Figure 3). We have measured the fraction of species contained in the largest species cluster $`S`$ for each $`f`$; the average size of the rest of the species clusters $`<s>`$ as the food web is being fragmented; and the fraction of species becoming isolated due to removals of other species on whom their survival depends, which are known in the literature as secondary extinctions, and can be used as measure of extinction rate (Pimm, 1991). Here $`f_c`$ indicates the fraction of removed species at which the web becomes fragmented into many small sub-webs (figures 3a-c).

The nature of the behaviour of the three food webs is very similar despite differences in $`f_c,S`$ and $`<s>`$ between them. They exhibit high homeostasis when random species removals occurs, showing slow, linear decrease in the fraction of species contained in the largest cluster $`S`$. The graph cannot be fragmented until extremely high removal has been introduced. This can be seen in the values of $`<s>`$, which remain at 0 (no species clusters different from S), or 1 (due to very few isolated species). But what is more revealing is that extinction rates remain at low values even for high $`f`$, so secondary extinctions are almost nonexistent. In fact we can estimate the fraction of removed species required in order to get food web fragmentation from random removal (Cohen et al., 2000):

$$p_c=1\frac{1}{\kappa _01}$$
$`(1)`$
where $`\kappa _0`$ is estimated from:

$$\kappa _0=\frac{<k^2>}{<k>}=\frac{\underset{k=1}{\overset{K}{}}P(k)k^2}{_{k=1}^KP(k)k}$$
$`(2)`$
where $`K`$ indicates the maximum connectivity. This value is shown in table I, where we can see that only totally unrealistic removals break the food web.

However, what happens when most connected species are successively removed is clearly different. These webs are extremely vulnerable to such sort of removals. This fragility can be seen from: (a) the quick decay of $`S`$ up to a critical fraction of removed species $`f_c`$ (see table I); (b) the high fragmentation of the food webs into species clusters disconnected among them, giving maximum local values of $`<s>`$ at critical points $`f_c`$ where percolation takes place, and (c) the large fraction of isolated species occurring at low values of removed species, which reveal how fast secondary extinctions will occur (this is specially dramatic for our best defined web (Silwood), see figure 3.e). A measure of this phenomenon is given by $`\pi _c`$, the fraction of removed species that leads to an extinction rate of one half. Although these are estimations based on a non-directed, non-weighted graph, other ingredients will presumably worsen this scenario due to other effects derived from indirect interactions (Yodzis, 1988; Stone and Roberts, 1991; Pimm, 1991) or habitat fragmentation processes (Solé and Bascompte, 2001).

|  | Ythan E. | Silwood P. | Little Rock |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`<K>`$ | 8.71 | 4.78 | 26.15 |
| $`\gamma `$ | 1.04 | 1.13 | - |
| $`p_c`$ | 0.94 | 0.93 | 0.97 |
| $`f_c`$ | 0.29 | 0.10 | 0.23 |
| $`\pi _c`$ | 0.22 | 0.07 | 0.22 |

Table I: Summary of the average properties of the ecological networks analysed (Due to the irregular shape of $`P(k)`$, no good power-law fit for Little Rock Lake can be obtained). (Here:  (1) $`r^2=0.83;p<0.01`$; (2) $`r^2=0.79;p<0.01`$).

We can make a simple division of the trophic nature of the species for each community into three groups: top predators, intermediate species and basal species (Polis, 1991). We find differences between analysed food webs in terms of the group that contains more highly-connected species, focusing in the set of species that are removed before reaching $`f_c`$. For Ythan estuary, these are mainly intermediate species (fishes and invertebrate organisms, $`60\%`$), few top predators (birds, $`20\%`$) and parasites ($`15\%`$) that cannot be easily included in any of these three groups. For Silwood park, most of these species are herbivores ($`66\%`$), that could be considered as basal species since only one plant (Cytisus scoparius), is present. Hemipterous omnivores are also important ($`26\%`$), but, as happens with parasites at Ythan, they do not belong to any of the three trophic groups. Finally, for Little Rock no basal nodes are highly connected, being intermediate species belonging to zooplankton, benthic invertebrates ($`70\%`$) and top predators (such as fishes, $`24\%`$) the most connected ones.

Another fundamental question related to the fragility of these communities is how species removals affect the distribution of links per species under each kind of simulated attack. In other words, do food webs maintain their SF distributions as species are successively deleted? Our analysis shows that indeed, SF distributions are stable up to high values of $`f`$ (more than $`50\%`$ of species eliminated in the three food webs) when random removals occur, while those particular distributions quickly disappear under directed removal. In Figure 4 we have represented this for the Silwood web. Under random removal, the long-tailed distributions show little variation. In contrast, that SF topology is lost when just few highly connected species are removed, which is likely to promote ecosystem collapse.

## IV Discussion

The trophic organization of species-rich communities is similar to other complex network topologies (Albert et al 2000, Jeong et al 2000). They are extremely heterogeneous, being their topology dominated by few highly connected nodes around which the rest of the network is organized, with a scale-free distribution of connections. This complex organization entails some keys for ecological fragility. We have shown that SF food webs are very robust under random deletion of species. Secondary extinctions remain at low values because the probability of being removed decreases with $`k`$ according to $`P(k)k^\gamma `$, so it is unlikely that a highly connected species will be deleted. Such robustness becomes weakness under removals directed to species with many connections. We find specially significant the differences in extinction rates between random and directed attacks, raising up to $`95`$ times higher for removals of highly connected (keystone) species.

All the definitions of keystone species found in ecological literature share one feature: keystone species have large effects on other species in the community. The set of effects involved in each definition are very different. Those effects have been studied mainly qualitatively by the removal or introduction of species (see Jordan et al 1999 for a review). Quantitative approximations have used simulated food webs (Pimm 1991; Jordan et al 1999). In this respect, our approximation to the fragility of real, species-rich food webs through topological changes may help to design new quantitative methods for a priori identification of keystone species. We can identify keystone species as highly connected because of the effects of their removal in terms of secondary extinctions. The quick arrival to $`f_c`$ and the high extinction rates corresponding to low values of $`f`$ when those keystone species are removed stresses the importance of identifying and protecting highly connected species that maintain the stability of ecological communities.

By using this method, it is the topology of the food web instead of the trophic position of species what determines which species are keystone. In this respect, not only top predators must be considered as keystone species but also other organisms from different trophic levels, in agreement with previous studies (Bond 1993; Davic 2000). Making a simple division of species into the three classic trophic categories, we have seen that keystone species belong to different categories in each of the analysed networks. A common feature found in the two best taxonomically described food webs is that species that feed on more than one trophic level (omnivorous species and parasites, which in most cases could be considered as a special type of omnivory, Polis and Strong 1996) are a representative group in the set of keystone species, enhancing the importance of omnivorous species in the stability of ecological communities (McCann and Hastings, 1997).

Our results suggest that there are basic principles of ecological organization (not revealed by previous analyses) underlying the assembly process of diverse communities. These principles are in fact present at other scales: when a given spatial habitat is fragmented, there is a critical percolation threshold which leads to the breakdown of the habitat available into many small patches (Bascompte and Solé, 1996; Hanski, 1999). This threshold has very important consequences for metapopulation persistence and allows to define appropriate criteria for conservation in fragmented landscapes (Keitt et al., 1997).

Small-world and SF properties allows high food web complexity in terms of biodiversity. By one side, recent studies (Solow and Beet 1998; Montoya and Solé 2000) have shown that real food webs are more clustered from what would be expected from random wiring. These evidences support the hypothesis that compartmentalization (a characteristic of SW) is a way to enhance species coexistence in species-rich communities (May 1974). Besides, species that interact with a great number of species do so weekly. Conversely, species with strong interactions interact with few species of the community (May 1974, Paine 1992). Data on interaction strengths in natural food webs show that these networks are characterized by many weak interactions and very few strong interactions (Paine 1992; Raffaeli and Hall 1996). Recent studies also suggest that the balance of nature is related with those widespread weak interactions (McCann et al., 1998; Polis 1998). Thus highly connected species are important in promoting community stability and persistence. The detailed knowledge of this particular organization could lead to an improvement in the understanding of ecological assembly rules (Drake, 1990a; Drake 1990b).

This approximation to community fragility has obvious caveats derived from a lack of dynamics and taxonomic limitations. Besides, our findings are based on a non-directed, and non-weighted graph. Top-down and bottom-up effects due to species removals are considered together. A separate knowledge of these effects has been previously reported, arguing that whole community effects were more interesting and more relevant in the determination of keystone species (Jordan et al 1999). Preliminary analysis of model ecosystems suggest that our results are robust (Solé and Montoya, unpublished).

Current estimations of extinction rates are based on species-area relations, combined with estimates of habitat loss (May et al., 1995). The addition of secondary extinctions due to removal of keystone species, together with other indirect effects are likely to increase such projections. Food webs are described at a local scale, but the estimated extinction rates obtained from our study could be important in forecasting extinction rates at regional and global scales.

Acknowledgments

We thank our friends and colleages Javier Gamarra, David Alonso, Ramon Ferrer and Miguel Angel Rodriguez for their help at different stages of this work. JMM wants to dedicate this work to the memory of his grandfather Evaristo Teran for whom nature was living. This work has been supported by a grant CICYT PB97-0693 and The Santa Fe Institute (RVS).

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# Verifying the use of supernovae as probes of the cosmic expansion

## 1. Introduction

The discovery and controlled systematic study of faint, distant type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) has transformed the prospects for constraining the time derivative of the cosmic expansion rate. Though well-measured local SNe Ia have a ‘raw’ observed dispersion in their maximum luminosity of $`0.35\mathrm{mags}`$, empirical correlations between the peak SNe luminosity and light-curve width enable this scatter to be reduced (Phillips 1993; Hamuy et al. 1996b; Riess et al. 1996; Perlmutter et al. 1999). By using such light curve shape corrections with independent samples of SNe Ia, two Hubble diagrams have been constructed by the High-Redshift Supernovae Search Team (Riess et al. 1998) and the Supernovae Cosmology Project (SCP, Perlmutter et al. 1999, hereafter P99). These data strongly exclude the hitherto popular Einstein de Sitter cosmology ($`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$). In combination with the results of recent microwave background measurements (de Bernardis et al. 2000; Jaffe et al. 2000) which indicate a spatially flat inflationary universe, the SNe Ia results suggest a significant non-zero cosmological constant ($`\mathrm{\Omega }=0.28`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.72`$).

Conclusions of this importance require excellent supporting evidence. In particular, it is appropriate to question the homogeneity, environmental trends and evolutionary behaviour of the SNe found at all redshifts. Systematic differences between high and low redshift samples might change the derived cosmological parameters without destroying the small dispersion seen in the SNe Ia Hubble diagrams. Evolutionary differences between low and high-redshift SNe Ia might arise via the progenitor composition (Höflich 1999), a differential dust extinction with greater amounts of dust in high-redshift environments, either in the host galaxy (Totani & Kobayashi 1999) or ‘grey’ dust in the IGM (Aguirre 1999), or a dependence of the SNe properties on host galaxy environments. Addressing this last possibility forms the basis of this present study.

Though SNe Ia can occur in all types of galaxies, disk and spheroidal stellar populations should sample different ranges of metallicities and dust content, and thus we might expect that SNe Ia progenitor composition and the light curve properties could be affected accordingly. By studying SNe grouped according to the mean underlying stellar population, we can directly investigate such effects.

Local studies of the environmental effects of local SNe Ia have been conducted by Hamuy et al. (1996a, 2000), Branch et al. (1996) and Riess et al. (1999). In various low-redshift samples, they find the distribution of light curve decline rates correlates with the morphological type of the host galaxy, with ellipticals hosting faster decline rate (dimmer) SNe, whereas spiral galaxies preferentially host slower decline rate (brighter) SNe. Riess et al. (1999) also find that SNe Ia with fast decline rates occur further from the host galaxy centre. Hamuy et al. (2000) present results from a larger combined SNe sample, and find that brighter SNe occur in bluer stellar environments (also noted by Branch et al. 1996), as well as some evidence to suggest that the brightest SNe occur in the least luminous galaxies. We note that no claim has yet been made that such correlations would apply in such a manner as to reduce the significance of a non-zero cosmological constant (Hamuy et al. 2000).

Here, we extend these studies to include similar comparisons between the host galaxies and properties of high-redshift SNe, where environmental effects on the determination of the cosmological parameters can be more easily explored. We present the preliminary results of our study probing the environments of high-redshift SNe Ia discovered via the SCP, and compare these high-redshift SNe/host galaxy correlations with the local sample of SNe of Hamuy et al. (1996a), the same sample previously used in P99 for the determination of cosmological parameters. Though larger local SNe Ia samples have recently become available (Riess et al. 1999), in this preliminary analysis we restrict ourselves to the above local sample for ease of comparison with the P99 cosmological results, deferring a full analysis to a later article (Sullivan et al., in prep.).

## 2. New Data and Host Galaxy Classification

### 2.1. HST imaging

The primary component of our survey is HST snapshot images of the host galaxies of 54 SNe Ia discovered via the SCP, including those 42 SNe Ia used in P99. Each galaxy is being imaged using the STIS in its 50CCD (clear aperture) mode, which approximates a broad $`V+R+I`$ bandpass. To date, 31 of the galaxies have been imaged, though in one case the target field was missed by HST. Each galaxy is imaged in a $`3\times \mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}434}\mathrm{s}`$ dithered series, and the data reduced using the standard STScI pipeline. Cosmic ray rejection and image combination was performed using the Dither II and Drizzle packages in iraf (Fruchter et al. 1997; Fruchter & Hook 1999). Of the 30 successfully targeted galaxies, 27 have an adequate S/N for visual classification within a broad E/S0:Sab:Scd/Irr scheme (see Figure 1 for examples), 20 of which were used in the Hubble diagram published by P99.

To locate the position and projected distance of the now-faded SNe from the host galaxy centre, the HST snapshot images were cross-correlated with existing deep ground-based images from the original discovery campaigns. Most of the STIS fields typically contained 4-8 objects in common with the ground-based images, which could be used to pinpoint the exact SN location on the STIS image (typically to $`0.30.4^{\prime \prime }`$) for both a visual inspection of the SN environment, and for subsequent spectroscopic campaigns.

### 2.2. Keck-II ESI spectroscopic campaign

The existing host galaxy spectra were taken during the period when SN light dominated that of the galaxy, making any studies of host galaxy properties very difficult. Using a subsample of our STIS-imaged galaxies, we have therefore begun a second round of optical spectroscopy using the Echellette Spectrograph Imager (ESI) on the Keck-II telescope. The high spatial resolution of the STIS images and the astrometric location of the SN position enables us to accurately align the $`20^{\prime \prime }\times 1^{\prime \prime }`$ ESI slit through the appropriate projected region of the galaxy. To date, 6 host galaxies have been studied in this way, of which 5 were Sc/d or irregular systems; example spectra are shown in Figure 2.

The spectra allow an accurate spectral type (and confirmatory redshift) to be assigned to each galaxy, and estimates of the spatial variation in the star-formation characteristics and dust reddening (via the H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ ratio) at different locations in the vicinity of the SN. Spectra were characterised according to local templates (c.f. Heyl et al. 1997). Whilst the spectroscopic sample is currently small, when enlarged it will permit a further characterisation of the galaxy population and the uncertainties in the adopted reddening estimates (Sullivan et al., in prep).

### 2.3. Galaxy Classification

We assign a host galaxy type in 3 broad categories: spheroidal (E/S0), spiral (Sa through Sc) and late (Scd/Irr), based on the synergy between three diagnostics available to us:

1. The HST-STIS morphology (20/42 SNe host galaxies from P99 have this data, Figure 1),
2. The ESI or, where useful, pre-existing spectroscopic data (6/42 SNe host galaxies from P99 have ESI spectra, Figure 2),
3. The $`RI`$ colour from the original reference SNe search images, i.e. those unaffected by SNe (35/42 SNe host galaxies from P99 have adequate data).

Our primary diagnostics are the STIS imaging and ESI spectra; in all available cases these agree. However, in cases where the STIS morphology may be ambiguous (and no ESI spectrum is available), we demand at least one of the other two diagnostics – either the colour or the pre-existing spectral type – to agree with the STIS classification. In total, 24/42 (57%) P99 high-redshift SNe Ia host galaxies have been classified according to this scheme. Useful statistics of the combined low-z and high-z sample are given in Table 1.

## 3. Current Results

Here we present our preliminary findings and results for the first 24 SNe host galaxies classified as discussed above. As the dataset continues to grow, the quantitative numerical results must be considered provisional. Moreover, only half of the high-$`z`$ SNe hosts used in the P99 analysis have so far been classified.

We first examine the Hubble diagram of P99 (their fig. 2), labelling each SN according to its host galaxy type (Figure 3). The plot suggests that SNe occurring in spheroidal galaxies show less scatter than those in early-type spirals and late-type spirals or irregulars.

This effect is quantified in Table 1, which shows for each galaxy class the mean residual from the best-fit (‘fit C’) cosmology of P99 ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.72`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=0.28`$). We also estimate the implied change in the inferred $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ when SNe originating in each class are used to establish the cosmological model (assuming a flat universe: $`\mathrm{\Lambda }+\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$). For each host galaxy class in turn, a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-dominated cosmology is preferred, though clearly the confidence level is considerably reduced, particularly for SNe in early-type spirals where the sample is smallest. Most importantly however, SNe found in late-type galaxies possess the largest scatter and show a slightly larger $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ (i.e. the SNe are on average fainter), as expected if residual dust extinction affected their measures more than in the case of spheroidal galaxies.

We also investigated the Hubble diagram with each SN plotted according to its projected distance from the host galaxy centre, but found no significant trend. Best-fit cosmologies for SNe located at both small projected distances show slightly smaller derived $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-values, but the solutions are all within $`1\sigma `$ of the P99 result.

There is evidence in local samples of SNe Ia of a correlation between host galaxy type and SNe stretch correction (Hamuy et al. 2000), where fainter (smaller stretch SNe) occur in E/S0 early-type galaxies (see also Hamuy et al. 1996a, 2000; Riess et al. 1999). In order to ensure that the effect we see in Figure 3 is not simply related to the use of inappropriate type-dependent stretch corrections, we repeat the analysis but without making the stretch corrections to the SNe peak luminosity (Table 1). We see that the quantitative result is unchanged; the SNe in late-type galaxies still posses the most scatter about the best-fit and show a slightly large value for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ than those in E/S0 galaxies.

To investigate any stretch-host galaxy trends further, we plot in Figure 4 the SN stretch as a function of morphological type for both the low and high-$`z`$ P99 sample. As shown in P99, the stretch distribution at high-redshift is narrower than that at low redshift, but even within the narrow stretch range available at high-redshift, we cannot clearly see any trends such as that which would be expected in the spheroidal galaxies (cf Figure 3). At first sight, therefore, Figure 4 suggests that SNe found at low and high redshift may be drawn from two different populations (i.e. at high-redshift we see no trend in stretch with galaxy type, whereas at low-redshift SNe with larger stretches (i.e. brighter SNe) are found in later-type galaxies). However, this result may not be that surprising. If we hypothesise that intrinsically fainter SNe are found in older (E/S0) stellar environments, then as we look to higher-redshift (i.e. viewing galaxies at an earlier stage in their evolution) we would not expect to see the fainter SNe found in local, older, E/S0 galaxies (see Hamuy et al. 2000).

Figure 5 shows the SN stretch plotted as a function of projected distance from the host galaxy. Here a weak trend is found suggesting that SNe at greater projected distances may be fainter, similar to that seen in the local sample of Riess et al. (1999). This could possibly arise if, within a distribution of luminosities, fainter SNe were systematically missed close to the galaxy core.

## 4. Conclusions

The preliminary results of our investigation continue to support the conclusions of P99. However, the Hubble diagram categorised by galaxy class offers new insight into the origin of the scatter in the diagram. We find the scatter about the best-fit cosmology is greater when determined from SNe which occurred in late-type/irregular galaxies. Minimal scatter is found for SNe drawn from E/S0 galaxies as expected if dust is largely absent in these systems. A non-zero $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is supported by SNe arising from each galaxy type individually, with late-type galaxies implying a larger $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ than E/S0 galaxies as might be expected when simple dust models are considered. Finally, little difference is found when the Hubble diagram is categorised according to SNe located at large and small projected distances from their host galaxy.

In the future, we will attempt to further subdivide our emission line galaxies into two further types according to the spectral characteristics. By using the high resolution of the ESI, we can classify emission line galaxies according to the spatial variance of their H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ ratio, describing how the dust extinction in such objects varies according to the location inside the galaxy. We will attempt to generate a subsample of these objects which posses a dust distribution that shows large variances and examine whether these objects are responsible for the significant scatter in the current Hubble plot (Figure 3) among the late-type emission line galaxies. Those with smoother dust distributions might be expected to have less intrinsic scatter in the SNe peak luminosities (due to uncertain dust corrections), typical of those SNe arising from E/S0 galaxies.

While these initial results are promising, the current sample size is only around half that used in the full Hubble diagram in P99, and it is clear that further HST imaging and spectroscopic studies of the host galaxy population are needed to confirm the initial findings presented here.

#### Acknowledgments.

We thank Saul Perlmutter, Peter Nugent, Piero Madau and the Supernovae Cosmology Project team for the many useful discussions and support offered for this work.

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# Role of quantum entanglement due to a magnetic impurity on current magnification effect in mesoscopic open rings

## Abstract

We study the current magnification effect in presence of exchange scattering of electron from a magnetic impurity placed in one arm of an open mesoscopic ring. The exchange interaction causes entanglement of electron spin and impurity spin. Earlier studies have shown that such an entanglement causes reduction or loss of interference in the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations leading to decoherence. We find however, that this entanglement, in contradiction to the naive expectation of a reduction of current magnification, leads to enhancement as well as suppression of the effect. We also observe additional novel features like new resonances and current reversals.

Research on transport in mesoscopic open rings has provided several counterintuitive results . The classic example of one such result is the observation of normal state Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect. Among other such effects in the context of mesoscopic systems, attention may be drawn upon the current amplification effect in the open ring system wherein a current flowing in the lead is amplified, after passage through the junction, in one of the ring arms and appears as a negative current in the other ring arm. Like AB effect, this effect too is purely quantum mechanical in origin. This effect has been extended to thermal currents and to spin currents in the presence of Aharonov-Casher flux.

Recently we have studied the effect of decoherence on AB oscillations in mesoscopic open ring. In the simple model that we consider, a magnetic impurity in one arm of the ring is coupled via exchange interaction to the incoming electron. Though the interaction induces spin-flip scattering there is no exchange of energy. This fact along with entanglement shows that spin-flip scattering arising due to exchange coupling with magnetic impurity reduces the AB oscillations and leads to decoherence. The study of decoherence is important to understand the evolution of quantum system towards a classical one (destruction of entanglement due to environment). It is worthwhile to note that coupling to a single impurity or single degree of freedom is enough to suppress the quantum effect. In our case the impurity does not dynamics of its own. Generally, it is believed that only coupling with infinite degrees of freedom (a thermal bath) could induce dephasing. We know that the current magnification effect, to be discussed below, is a quantum effect. Hence one would like to study whether quantum entanglement arising due to spin-impurity coupling can reduce this effect. The answer seems to be no, and the effect depends sensitively on the details of the geometry and other physical parameters of the problem.

In the case of a mesoscopic loop with unequal arms connected to two electron reservoirs at chemical potentials $`\mu _1`$ and $`\mu _2`$ via ideal leads currents $`I_{low}`$ and $`I_{up}`$ flow in the lower and upper arm of the loop such that total current $`I=I_{low}+I_{up}`$ is conserved in accordance with Kirchoff’s law. In general these two currents differ in magnitude and are individually smaller than the total current $`I`$. However, in certain range of Fermi energies the current $`I_{low}`$ or $`I_{up}`$ may become larger than the total current $`I`$. This is the current magnification effect. To conserve the total current at the junctions, the current in the other arm becomes negative i.e., flows against the applied external field. This negative current continues to flow in the loop as a circulating current. The magnitude of the circulating current is the same as that of the negative current. The circulating current here arises in the absence of magnetic field. The effect of a simple impurity (an impurity without any internal structure) in one arm of the ring on the current magnification property has been studied earlier. It was found that the impurity could not only suppress but also enhance the current magnification depending on the Fermi energy. Thus the impurity plays a dual role as far as current magnification is concerned. The experimental possibility of the observation of this current magnification effect by looking at the orbital magnetic response of the loop is mentioned in Refs. .

In the following we study the current magnification effect in presence of a magnetic impurity in one arm of the ring. Consider a single channel loop of circumference $`L`$ coupled to two electron reservoirs by two ideal leads (see Fig. 1). We introduce a magnetic impurity atom (referred to as spin-flipper, or the flipper, for short) in one arm (upper) of the ring at length $`l_3`$ from junction J1 and $`l_4`$ from J2. The lower arm is of length $`l_2`$ and $`L=l_2+l_3+l_4`$. The spin of the electron ($`\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$) is thus coupled to the spin of the flipper ($`\stackrel{}{S}`$) via the exchange interaction $`J\stackrel{}{\sigma }\stackrel{}{S}\delta (xl_3)`$. This leads to scattering of the electron in which both the spin states of the electron and the impurity could change without any exchange of energy. This interaction conserves the total spin ($`\stackrel{}{\sigma }+\stackrel{}{S}`$) as well as the $`z`$-component of the total spin. The two reservoirs are kept at chemical potentials $`\mu _1`$ and $`\mu _2`$ respectively. When $`\mu _1`$ is greater than $`\mu _2`$, a net current flows from reservoir 1 on the left to the reservoir 2 on the right. Details of the ring geometry with the impurity are indicated in Fig. 1.

We follow the standard quantum waveguide theoryto study this problem. The wavefunctions ($`\psi ^{}s`$) for the individual segments, as indicated in Fig. 1, can be written as below

$`\psi _1`$ $`=`$ $`(e^{ikx}+r_ue^{ikx})\chi _m\alpha +`$ (2)
$`r_de^{ikx}\chi _{m+1}\beta ,`$
$`\psi _2`$ $`=`$ $`(A_ue^{ikx}+B_ue^{ikx})\chi _m\alpha +`$ (4)
$`(A_de^{ikx}+B_de^{ikx})\chi _{m+1}\beta ,`$
$`\psi _3`$ $`=`$ $`(C_ue^{ikx}+D_ue^{ikx})\chi _m\alpha +`$ (6)
$`(C_de^{ikx}+D_de^{ikx})\chi _{m+1}\beta ,`$
$`\psi _4`$ $`=`$ $`(E_ue^{ikx}+F_ue^{ikx})\chi _m\alpha +`$ (8)
$`(E_de^{ikx}+F_de^{ikx})\chi _{m+1}\beta ,`$
$`\psi _5`$ $`=`$ $`t_ue^{ikx}\chi _m\alpha +t_de^{ikx}\chi _{m+1}\beta .`$ (9)
where, $`k`$ is the wave-vector of incident electron. The subscripts $`u`$ and $`d`$ represent “up” and “down” spin states of the electron with the corresponding spinors $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ respectively (i.e., $`\sigma _z\alpha =\frac{1}{2}\alpha `$, $`\sigma _z\beta =\frac{1}{2}\beta `$) and $`\chi _m`$ denotes the wave function of the impurity  with $`S_z=m`$ (i.e., $`S_z\chi _m=m\chi _m`$). The wavefunctions in equation (2) is a correlated function of the electron and impurity spins which takes into account the fact that the exchange interaction conserves the $`z`$-component of the total spin ($`\stackrel{}{\sigma }+\stackrel{}{S}`$). The incident electron is taken to be spin-up polarized. The reflected (transmitted) waves have amplitudes $`r_u`$ ($`t_u`$) and $`r_d`$ ($`t_d`$) corresponding to the “up” and “down” spin components respectively. Continuity of the wave functions and the current conservation at the junctions J1 and J2 imply the following boundary conditions.

$`\psi _1(x=0)=\psi _2(x=0)=\psi _3(x=0),`$ (10)
$`\psi _1^{}(x=0)=\psi _2^{}(x=0)+\psi _3^{}(x=0),`$ (11)
$`\psi _4^{}(x=l_3)\psi _3^{}(x=l_3)=G(\stackrel{}{\sigma }\stackrel{}{S})\psi _3(x=l_3),`$ (12)
$`\psi _3(x=l_3)=\psi _4(x=l_3),`$ (13)
$`\psi _4(x=l_3+l_4)=\psi _5(x=0)=\psi _2(x=l_2),`$ (14)
$`\psi _2^{}(x=l_2)+\psi _4^{}(x=l_3+l_4)=\psi _5^{}(x=0).`$ (15)
Here $`G=2mJ/\mathrm{}^2`$ is the dimensionless coupling constant indicative of the “strength” of the spin-exchange interaction. The primes denote the spatial derivatives of the wave functions. Equations (2) along with the boundary conditions (10) were solved to obtain the amplitudes, with these we evaluate the current densities in each arm of the ring. We have taken the flipper to be a spin-half object ($`M=2`$) situated symmetrically at the center of the upper arm, i.e., we consider the case in which $`l_3=l_4`$. Now, depending upon the initial state of the flipper we have possibility of either spin-flip scattering ($`\sigma _z=1/2`$, $`S_z=1/2`$) or no spin-flip scattering ($`\sigma _z=1/2`$, $`S_z=1/2`$), as demanded by the conservation of the total spin and its $`z`$-component. In the former case the problem reduces to that of a simple potential scattering from the impurity as studied earlier.

We have set $`\mathrm{}=m=1`$ and the value of interaction strength $`G`$ is given in dimensionless units throughout. The dimensionless current density $`I_2`$ in the small energy interval $`dE`$ (see Refs. ) flowing in lower arm of the ring is defined as $`I_2=I_{2u}+I_{2d}`$, wherein $`I_{2u}=A_u^2B_u^2`$ and $`I_{2d}=A_d^2B_d^2`$. The current densities $`I_3`$ and $`I_4`$ flowing in the upper arm are similarly defined. Current conservation at the impurity site demands $`I_3=I_4`$ which we have verified. The total current flowing through the arms can be calculated by integrating the corresponding current densities over the Fermi energy interval $`\mu _1`$ to $`\mu _2`$. In the present work we confine ourselves to the effect of the flipper on the circulating current density $`I_c`$. We have studied the behaviour of the current densities $`I_{low}=I_2`$ and $`I_{up}=I_3`$ in the lower and the upper arms of the ring, as a function of $`kL`$. In any range of Fermi energy, if any one of these is negative, the magnitude of the negative current density can be identified with that of the circulating current density $`I_c`$. When $`I_{low}`$ is negative the direction of the circulating current density is clockwise and when $`I_{up}`$ is negative then it is anti-clockwise. A clockwise circulating current density is taken to be positive and an anti-clockwise one, negative according to the usual convention. It has been seen earlier that there is an enhancement in current magnification in presence of a simple impurity(no spin-flip). In the following paragraphs we describe our results graphically.

Figure 2 shows the plot of circulating current density ($`I_c`$) versus $`kL`$ for the two separate cases of spin-flip scattering and no-spin-flip scattering. When the impurity spin is “up” the interaction does not allow spin-flip for a spin-up incident electron due to conservation laws mentioned above. For this case problem reduces to that of simple impurity studied earlier as mentioned above. On the other hand when the impurity spin is “down” a spin-flip scattering takes place. We compare the circulating current densities for these two cases in order to see the role of entanglement induced by the spin-flipper. Given the fact that the entanglement reduces AB-oscillations we study whether it also reduces the current magnification. The solid curve is for the no-flip case while the dashed one is for the spin-flip case with all other parameters kept identical. The impurity strength ($`G`$) for both the cases is $`4.0`$. In both the cases we take $`l_2/L=0.6`$ and $`l_3/L=l_4/L=0.2`$. The figure shows that , the circulating current for spin-flip case is significantly less than that of the no-flip case in the range $`12<kL<16`$. Thus one is led to believe that the flipper acting as a dephasor suppresses the quantum phenomena of current magnification.

However, this naive expectation turns out to be incorrect. This is substantiated in Fig. 3 which shows circulating current densities for the spin-flip and no-flip cases in the range $`16<kL<19`$ for the same lengths as mentioned above. From this figure we see that in this range of Fermi energies the amplitude of the circulating current is actually enhanced in spite of the spin-flip scattering.

Thus the flipper can not only suppress the current magnification effect but can also enhance it in some other range of Fermi energies. This effect can be ascribed to multiple reflections induced by the flipper and the junctions. The fact that entanglement due to exchange interaction between the electron and the flipper does not eliminate multiple reflections due to scattering at the impurity (and at the junctions) seems to be the reason behind the aforesaid features. Thus far we have discussed how the flipper affects well known features of the impurity current magnification effect. However, the flipper induces some new features which we discuss below. The plot of circulating current density ($`I_c`$) versus $`kL`$ for $`l_3/L=l_4/L=0.25`$ and $`l_2/L=0.5`$ in the range $`5.6<kL<6.6`$ shows an additional peak in the circulating current density arising at a point corresponding to a minimum of spin-up transmission (which is same as the maximum of the spin-down transmission). This is indicative of the spin-flip process. This effect is unique for the flipper having no counterpart in case of a simple impurity, i.e., in this region ($`5.6<kL<6.2`$) no-flip scattering case does not show any circulating current. This can be ascribed to the additional phase shifts caused by spin-flip scattering along-with multiple reflections. In the range $`6.2<kL<6.6`$ spin-flip scattering suppresses the current magnification.

Further, we see yet another interesting feature, namely the phenomenon of current reversal. This is depicted in Fig.5. In this figure we plot the circulating current density ($`I_c`$) versus $`kL`$ for $`l_3/L=l_4/L=0.3125`$ and $`l_2/L=0.375`$ in the wave vector range $`10<kL<15`$ in which we see that the spin-flip circulating current reverses its direction as compared to the no-flip case, i.e., an anti-clockwise circulating current for the no-flip case is converted into a clockwise one in the spin-flip case.

In conclusion we have shown that presence of the spin-flipper which suppresses the AB oscillations, need not suppress the amplitude of current magnification. In fact, in certain range of Fermi energies the flipper enhances the current magnification. Apart from this it leads to current reversals and current magnification in additional Fermi energy ranges. We believe that non-suppression of this quantum effect is peculiar to elastic scattering in presence of exchange interaction leading to entanglement between the different degrees of freedom of the electron (space and spin) and the impurity spin state. This model can also be extended to study the phenomenon of quantum erasure with appropriate modifications. Only the presence of inelastic scattering, leading to irreversible loss of phase memory, can dephase AB oscillations and reduce current magnification simultaneously.

###### Acknowledgements.

One of us (DS) would like to thank Professor S. N. Behera for extending hospitality at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar.