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# Measurement of the mid-rapidity transverse energy distribution from √𝑠__{𝑁𝑁}=130 GeV Au+Au collisions at RHIC

## Abstract

The first measurement of energy produced transverse to the beam direction at RHIC is presented. The mid-rapidity transverse energy density per participating nucleon rises steadily with the number of participants, closely paralleling the rise in charged-particle density, such that $`E_T/N_{ch}`$ remains relatively constant as a function of centrality. The energy density calculated via Bjorken’s prescription for the 2% most central Au+Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=130`$ GeV is at least $`ϵ_{Bj}=4.6`$ GeV/fm3, which is a factor of 1.6 larger than found at $`\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=17.2`$ GeV (Pb+Pb at CERN).

The PHENIX detector  at RHIC, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, is designed to measure the properties of nuclear matter at the highest temperatures and energy densities. For example a transition to a quark-gluon plasma has been predicted for energy densities on the order of a few GeV/fm3 . The spatial energy density ($`ϵ`$) in a relativistic collision can be estimated (following Bjorken ) by measuring the transverse energy density in rapidity, $`dE_T/dy`$, which is effectively the co-moving energy density in a longitudinal expansion:

$$ϵ_{Bj}=\frac{dE_T}{dy}\frac{1}{\tau _0\pi R^2}$$
(1)
where $`\tau _0`$, the formation time, is usually taken as $`1`$ fm/c, and $`\pi R^2`$ is the effective area of the collision. The transverse energy ($`E_T`$) is a multiparticle variable defined as:

$$E_T=\underset{i}{}E_i\mathrm{sin}\theta _i,dE_T(\eta )/d\eta =\mathrm{sin}\theta (\eta )dE(\eta )/d\eta ,$$
(2)
where $`\theta `$ is the polar angle, $`\eta =\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{tan}\theta /2`$ is the pseudorapidity, $`E_i`$ is by convention taken as the kinetic energy for nucleons and the total energy for all other particles , and the sum is taken over all particles emitted into a fixed solid angle for each event. $`E_T`$ measurements, even in limited apertures at mid-rapidity, provide excellent characterization of the nuclear geometry of a reaction on an event-by-event basis and are sensitive to the underlying reaction dynamics .

During the RHIC run in the summer of 2000, PHENIX accumulated close to 5 million interaction triggers for Au+Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=130`$ GeV using Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDC) and Beam-Beam Counters (BBC) as triggering devices. The events were selected with a requirement on the collision vertex position along the beam axis, $`|z|20`$ cm, as in the recent PHENIX publication on mid-rapidity multiplicity distributions , where further details are given.

The present measurement uses a section of the electromagnetic calorimeter (EMCal) from the PHENIX central-spectrometer, with front face 5.1 m from the beam axis. This section is part of a sampling calorimeter, custom developed and built for PHENIX , composed of alternating Pb and scintillator tiles (PbSc) with readout of individual towers, $`5.54\times 5.54`$ cm2 in cross section, via wavelength shifting (WLS) fibers in a “shashlik” geometry. The depth of the PbSc calorimeter is $`18`$ radiation lengths ($`X_0`$) which corresponds to $`0.85`$ interaction lengths. The PbSc calorimeter has an energy resolution of 8.2%/$`\sqrt{E(\mathrm{GeV})}`$ $`1.9`$% for test beam electrons, with measured response proportional to incident electron energy to within $`\pm 2`$% over the range $`0.3E_e40.0`$ GeV .

During construction, the calibration of the calorimeter was set by simultaneously recording the response to laser excitation and to cosmic-ray muons penetrating transversely to the tower axis. The calibration was maintained in-situ during the run by monitoring relativistic charged particles from Au+Au collisions. The absolute energy scale was determined by test-beam measurements normalized to electrons with known energy. A final adjustment of the absolute energy scale was performed using in-situ identified electrons ($`p>500`$ MeV/c) by shifting the originally measured energy/momentum $`(E/p)`$ peak from 1.02$`\pm `$0.01 to 1.00. The accuracy of the absolute energy scale was cross-checked in-situ against both the minimum ionizing peak (MIP) of charged particles penetrating along the tower axis and the mass of the $`\pi ^0`$. The corrected energy distribution of EMCal clusters from $`1.0\pm 0.1`$ GeV/c charged tracks (mostly pions) measured in the Drift Chamber  exhibits a clear MIP (Fig. 1a), as well as energy due to nuclear interactions in the material of the EMCal. The MIP position is in agreement within 2% to the value obtained in the test beam (270 MeV). The mass of the $`\pi ^0`$, reconstructed from pairs of EMCal clusters (assumed to be photons ) of total energy greater than 2 GeV (Fig. 1b), is within 1.5% of the published value. This sets the systematic error of the absolute energy scale at less than $`1.5`$%.

The data sample for the present $`E_T`$ measurement is taken from the same runs used in our multiplicity measurement  (no magnetic field), and comprises about 140,000 events from the BBC trigger which detects \[$`92\pm 2(syst)`$\]% of the nuclear interaction cross section of 7.2b with a background contamination of \[$`1\pm 1(syst)`$\]% . The transverse energy was measured using the PbSc EMCal in a fiducial aperture $`|\eta |0.38`$ in pseudorapidity and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi =44.4^{}`$ in azimuth. $`E_T`$ was computed for each event (Eq. 2) using clusters of energy greater than 20 MeV, composed of adjacent towers with deposited energy of more than 3 MeV. The angle $`\theta _i`$ is computed from the centroid of the cluster of energy $`E_i`$ assuming a particle originating from the event vertex.

The raw spectrum of measured transverse energy, $`E_{T}^{}{}_{\mathrm{EMC}}{}^{}`$, in the fiducial aperture of the PHENIX EMCal for Au+Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=130`$ GeV is shown in Fig. 2, upper scale. The lower scale in Fig. 2 represents a correction of the raw $`E_{T}^{}{}_{\mathrm{EMC}}{}^{}`$ by a factor of 12.8 to correspond to the hadronic $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ in the full azimuth. The 12.8 is composed of a factor of 10.6 for the fiducial acceptance, a factor of 1.03 for disabled calorimeter towers and a factor, $`k=1.17\pm 0.01`$, which is the ratio of the hadronic $`E_T`$ in the fiducial aperture to the measured $`E_{T}^{}{}_{\mathrm{EMC}}{}^{}`$. The $`k`$ factor includes the response of the detector to charged and neutral particles emitted from the event vertex into the fiducial aperture, and additional corrections for energy in-flow from outside the fiducial aperture and for losses . These factors were calculated with a GEANT  based Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of the detector using HIJING as the event generator .

For $`E_T`$ measurements at mid-rapidity at a collider, the EMCal acts as a thin but effective hadronic calorimeter. Charged pions with $`p_T0.35`$ GeV/c, kaons ($`p_T0.64`$ GeV/c) and protons ($`p_T0.94`$ GeV/c)—$`p_T`$ values which are near or above the $`p_T`$ for all 3 cases—stop (i.e. deposit all their kinetic energy) in the EMCal. For higher $`p_T`$ hadrons, 43% leave the MIP and 57% interact, leaving an average of $`65`$% of their energy. The measured $`E_{T}^{}{}_{\mathrm{EMC}}{}^{}`$ is $`0.79\pm 0.01`$ of the total $`E_T`$ striking the EMCal, which is composed roughly of 40% produced by charged pions, 40% by photons (from $`\pi ^0`$ and other decays), and 20% by all other particles (including decay muons). The particle composition and $`p_T`$ in HIJING are close to the observed values, and furthermore, the $`k`$ factor is insensitive to reasonable variations (for instance varying the momenta of all particles by $`\pm 15`$% changes the overall $`k`$ by less than $`\pm 2`$%), leading to an estimated systematic uncertainty in $`k`$ of less than $`\pm 3`$% due to particle composition and momentum.

The main issues for the MC are the in-flow contribution and losses. The losses are due to particles which originate within the aperture but whose decay products miss the EMCal (10%), or whose energy is lost due to edge effects (6%) or clustering (2%). The in-flow, ($`24\pm 1`$)% of the $`E_T`$ striking the EMCal, is principally of two types: (1) albedo from the magnet poles; (2) particles which originate outside the aperture of the calorimeter but whose decay products hit the calorimeter. The in-flow component of $`k`$ was checked by comparing the MC and the measurements for events with a vertex outside the normal range, just at and inside a pole face of the axial central-spectrometer magnet, $`38z42`$ cm, for which the calorimeter aperture is partly shadowed. The fraction of the total energy, $`dE_{\mathrm{EMC}}/E_{\mathrm{EMC}}`$, in bins of width 2 towers along the $`z`$ coordinate of the EMCal, $`z_{\mathrm{EMC}}`$, is shown in Fig. 3a. The HIJING MC simulation agrees with the measured data everywhere except in the range $`z_{\mathrm{EMC}}>100`$ cm, which is fully shadowed by the pole, where the simulation shows $``$20% less energy than the data. In Fig. 3b, the distributions of the cluster energy, $`E_{cl}`$, for the open aperture, $`z_{\mathrm{EMC}}<50`$ cm, are shown for both HIJING and the data and are in excellent agreement. The in-flow component of HIJING is also indicated as a dotted line and falls much more sharply than the total $`E_{cl}`$ spectrum. The residual discrepancy of the energy in the shadowed region, which contributes roughly 10% of the total signal, results in a $`\pm (23)`$% systematic uncertainty in $`E_T`$ due to the uncertainty in the in-flow. Combining this with the uncertainty due to particle composition and momentum yields an overall factor $`k=[1.17\pm 0.01]\pm 4`$$`(syst)`$, which, according to the MC, is independent of centrality.

Returning to Fig. 2, the shape of the measured transverse energy spectrum shows the characteristic form of $`E_T`$ distributions in limited apertures: a peak and sharp drop-off at low values of $`E_T`$ corresponding to peripheral collisions with grazing impact; a broad, gently sloping plateau at the mid-range of impact parameters, dominated by the nuclear geometry; and then at higher values of $`E_T`$, which correspond to the most central collisions where the nuclei are fully overlapped, a ‘knee’ leading to a fall-off which is very steep for large apertures and which becomes less steep, the smaller the aperture . It should be emphasized that the correction of $`E_{T}^{}{}_{\mathrm{EMC}}{}^{}`$ to $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ by a single scale factor (predominantly acceptance) is valid up to the knee of the distribution, roughly the upper 1 percentile. Above the knee, the fall-off depends on the aperture and is sensitive to detector effects as well as statistical and dynamical fluctuations. Thus an actual measurement of $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\eta =1.0`$ and full azimuth would have a sharper fall-off above the knee. With this caveat, the uncertainty in the absolute energy scale ($`\pm 1.5`$%) and the uncertainty in $`k`$ of $`\pm 4`$% are combined to yield an overall uncertainty in the hadronic $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ of $`\pm 4.5`$$`(syst)`$, independent of $`E_T`$, where the statistical error is negligible.

Mid-rapidity $`E_T`$ distributions are a standard method of defining centrality . Thus, it is important to determine for the present data the detailed relationship of transverse energy production to $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$, the number of nucleons participating in the collision (participants), which in earlier fixed target experiments was deduced straightforwardly by measuring the energy of spectator nucleons and fragments in a Zero Degree Calorimeter at beam rapidity. Following a procedure used in our previous publication on the mid-rapidity charged multiplicity ($`N_{ch}`$) distribution, in which a clear increase of $`dN_{ch}/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ per participant with the number of participants was demonstrated , we calculate $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ as a function of centrality in upper percentile ranges of the 7.2b Au+Au interaction cross section (see Table I). Figure 4a shows that $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ per participant also increases with $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$, closely paralleling the rise in charged particle density (Table I). This is better illustrated in Fig. 4b where the ratio $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\eta =0}/dN_{ch}/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ remains constant at a value of $`0.8`$ GeV, independent of centrality. Comparison to the measurements of WA98  from Pb+Pb collisions at $`\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=17.2`$ GeV is instructive. The WA98 data for mid-rapidity $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\mathrm{mid}}`$ per participant are shown in Fig. 4a and are essentially independent of $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$ for $`N_{\mathrm{part}}>200`$ . WA98 parameterizes their data as $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\mathrm{mid}}N_{\mathrm{part}}^\alpha `$ with $`\alpha =1.08\pm 0.06`$ while the same parameterization for our data yields $`\alpha =1.13\pm 0.05`$. Fig. 4 also shows that $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ for central Au+Au collisions at $`\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=130`$ GeV is about 40% larger than found by WA98, yet, for both c.m. energies, $`dE_T/d\eta /dN_{ch}/d\eta `$ remains constant versus centrality at roughly the same value, $`0.8`$ GeV (Fig. 4b).

The Bjorken energy density for Pb+Pb collisions at $`\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=17.2`$ GeV was given by the NA49 collaboration . NA49 reported a value of mid-rapidity $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\mathrm{mid}}=405`$ GeV for the most central 2% of the inelastic cross section, in agreement with WA98. This corresponds  to a value of $`ϵ_{Bj}=2.9`$ GeV/fm3. A straightforward derivation of $`ϵ_{Bj}`$ from our measured $`dE_T/d\eta |_{\eta =0}`$ of $`578_{39}^{+26}`$ GeV for the same centrality cut, corrected to $`dE_T/dy|_{y=0}`$ by a factor of $`1.19\pm 0.01`$ from our HIJING MC, and taking $`\pi R^2=148`$ fm2 (i.e. $`R=1.18\mathrm{fm}A^{1/3}`$) gives $`ϵ_{Bj}=4.6`$ GeV/fm3, an increase of 60% over the NA49 value.

In conclusion, the mid-rapidity transverse energy density for central Au+Au collisions, and likely the spatial energy density, is at least 1.6 times larger at $`\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=130`$ GeV (RHIC) than at $`\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=17.2`$ GeV (CERN). The variation of the $`E_T`$ density per participant with centrality is very similar to the previously reported dependence of charged multiplicity density per participant at RHIC energies. These results, together with the observed constancy of $`E_T/N_{ch}`$ at a value $`0.8`$ GeV, indicate that the additional energy density at RHIC energies is achieved mainly by an increase in particle production rather than by an increase in transverse energy per particle.

We thank the staff of the RHIC project, Collider-Accelerator, and Physics Departments at BNL and the staff of PHENIX participating institutions for their vital contributions. We acknowledge support from the Department of Energy and NSF (U.S.A.), Monbu-sho and STA (Japan), RAS, RMAE, and RMS (Russia), BMBF and DAAD (Germany), FRN, NFR, and the Wallenberg Foundation (Sweden), MIST and NSERC (Canada), CNPq and FAPESP (Brazil), IN2P3/CNRS (France), DAE (India), KRF and KOSEF (Korea), and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation.


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# A Fast High Resolution Track Trigger for the H1 Experiment

## I Introduction

With the HERA collider at DESY 920 GeV protons are collided with 27.6 GeV electrons (positrons) every 96 ns. At one of the interaction points the H1 detector is located, an omni-purpose detector described in . One of its main components is the central jet chamber (CJC) which consists of two concentric drift chambers, the inner CJC1 and the outer CJC2, with 24 and 32 layers of wires, respectively. Its signals will be the basic input for the high resolution track trigger described in this paper.

H1 uses a four level multi-stage trigger system (L1-L4) of which the first level  is a fully pipelined, dead time free hardware trigger with a decision time of 2.3 $`\mu `$s, reducing the 10 MHz input rate by more than four orders of magnitude. The L1 decision is refined by L2  within a fixed time of 23 $`\mu `$s. Subsequently the detector read-out starts which in total takes about 1 ms but can be aborted by a negative decision generated in parallel by trigger level 3. To have a beneficial effect on the dead time the L3 decision should be available not more than 100 $`\mu `$s after the read-out has started.

After an event has successfully been read out at the front end pipelines are restarted. Events are collected via an optical fiber ring, sent and buffered at a filter farm (L4) where they are fully reconstructed within some 100 ms. A detailed description of the H1 data acquisition system can be found in .

To study rare interactions with high precision, the HERA ring will be upgraded providing about a factor of five larger luminosity from 2001 onwards. The increased $`ep`$ and background rates will however place a considerable strain on the H1 data acquisition. This necessitates an upgrade of the existing trigger system to provide better selectivity for the many exclusive final states exhibiting characteristic track based topologies – especially those containing heavy quarks – with rather small cross sections and low transverse momentum $`p_t`$ final state particles.

In contrast, events with a high momentum transfer $`Q^2>`$ 100 GeV2 can efficiently be triggered by calorimeter based signals with the present system also after the upgrade. No such possibility exists for events at lower $`Q^2`$ and additional selection power is needed. Hence the H1 collaboration is building a Fast Track Trigger (FTT) which is able to find and reconstruct tracks and particle resonances at the first three trigger levels and provides trigger signals derived from track based quantities. The development of such a track trigger performing these sophisticated tasks within the tight time constraints given by the H1 trigger system has only become possible with the recent improvements in size and speed of available electronic components.

## II The Fast Track Trigger

The FTT functionality is based on CJC information derived from four groups of three layers of wires each, three of them inside CJC1 and one inside CJC2 as shown in figure 1, which also displays the geometrical cell structure of both chambers. It is designed to handle up to 48 tracks which is sufficient for about 98% of the events of interest.

After digitizing the drift chamber signals a search for track segments within a group of three drift chamber hits is performed in each of the four radial trigger layers. A subsequent coarse track segment linking is completed within 2.1 $`\mu `$s to contribute to a level 1 trigger decision based on track multiplicities and coarse $`p_t`$ cuts. A positive L1 decision triggers a refined track segment search reusing the FTT L1 hardware. The result is used by the second level FTT where the track segments have to be linked and fitted within 20 $`\mu `$s including the determination of event quantities like a refined track multiplicity, momentum sums and invariant masses for low multiplicity events. The track parameters of the fitted tracks are sent to FTT L3 where a full search for particle resonances is performed within 100 $`\mu `$s and the L3 track information is either used directly or in combination with information from other trigger subsystems to generate a final L3 decision.

The different components of the FTT are schematically shown in figure 2 and will be described in detail below.

### II-A Hit and Track Segment Finding at L1

Adapter cards will be used to tap selected analog CJC signals from the existing drift chamber readout. At the analog part of the so called Front End Modules (FEM) the signals of both wire ends are digitized at 80 MHz using a common 8 bit linear dual FADC (AD9288), where 15 FADCs are mounted on one board to serve 5 neighboring drift chamber cells. The main part of the following digital signal processing is done by 5 Altera APEX 20K600E FPGAs , one for each group of wires. Hit finding is performed by looking for pulses exceeding the noise level and extracting their precise time information with a precision of 2-3 ns. For each hit the $`z`$-coordinate is obtained by a charge devision technique based on the signals from both wire ends. A resolution of $`\sigma _z`$=6 cm is expected to be achieved.

For the track segment finding hits are fed into 80 MHz shift registers implemented into the mentioned FPGAs. A first coarse track segment finding is done by logically ORing four adjacent entries effectively reducing the synchronization frequency to 20 MHz. For each HERA bunch crossing a parallel search for genuine track segments is performed in all four trigger layers and all cells consisting of three wires each. To account for tracks crossing cell boundaries the segment finding is extended using selected wires from neighboring cells. The main principle is shown in figure 3. Any track is characterized by hits in the parallel shift registers forming basically straight lines. Left-right ambiguities are resolved automatically when linking the track segments at the following stage. In order to perform the track segment finding within the limited time given by the L1 latency, the corresponding algorithms have to be implemented in a highly parallel and flexible way. The necessary resources are provided by the new high density FPGAs nowadays available and their embedded CAM functionality.

CAMs (Content Addressable Memories) can be regarded as inverse RAMs (Random Addressable Memories) where the input patterns are compared with pre-loaded values and matches are indicated by either signaling the corresponding address location bit “high” (unencoded output) or by generating a list of matching addresses (encoded output). They are commonly used for networking and computing, e.g. transformation of IP addresses, data compression and as cache tag allowing fast access to memory data. Thus CAMs open a wide field of applications, in particular in high energy physics where search tasks like track linking, cluster finding and pattern recognition are common standard.

The integration of CAMs in FPGA devices (e.g. Altera ) allows complex high speed applications running at 100 MHz frequencies and more. As an example the usage of tag fields is given. When operating a CAM in the so called encoded mode a list of addresses of valid match locations is generated. In a second step these addresses are then used to access additional information from a parallel RAM. This tag field method is implemented in the Fast Track Trigger to assign track parameters to valid hit combinations.

#### II-A1 Generation of L1 Trigger Signals

Every HERA bunch crossing a coarse track segment finding for all groups of three wires is performed in a pipelined manner. The coarse time information synchronized at 20 MHz and buffered in shift registers is presented in parallel to up to 64 CAMs implemented into a single FPGA. The inputs are compared to pre-calculated patterns of valid tracks originating from the nominal vertex. The CAMs are running in the unencoded mode with each output bit directly corresponding to a single bin in the $`\kappa `$-$`\varphi `$ track parameter space, where $`\kappa `$ represents the track curvature and $`\varphi `$ the inclination in a local coordinate system.

The track segment parameters from the 5 FPGAs at the front of each FEM are collected and sent to an I/O controller. Via intermediate Merger Cards the track segment information from 30 FEMs is transmitted to the L1 Linker Card. For data transmission a high speed LVDS Channel Link  running at 100 MHz (600 MBytes/s) is used.

In a last processing step the track segment information from the four different trigger layers are linked by a 3$`\times `$3 sliding window technique searching for coincidences in the $`\kappa `$-$`\varphi `$ track parameter space in at least 2 out of 4 trigger layers. Since most track segments can only be linked for a single bunch crossing an event $`t_0`$ can be generated looking for a maximum in the number of linked tracks. Besides such a general $`t_0`$ signal topological criteria and track multiplicities as a function of different transverse momentum thresholds may also be used to form a first level trigger decision.

#### II-A2 Refined track segment finding

After an event has been accepted by the first trigger level the shift registers are held and more refined track segments to be used at level 2 are extracted. For this the coarse track segments based on the 20 MHz digitization are serialized and expanded by restoring the original 80 MHz information. This improves the precision in $`\kappa `$ and $`\varphi `$ substantially. In addition the $`z`$-position of hits stored earlier in parallel shift register is added to obtain the full 3-dimensional track information. Before finally sending the refined track segments via the I/O controller to the second level stage a further validation has to be performed to guarantee that the more precise track parameters satisfy the criteria of a track originating from the vertex. This is done by checking for valid masks pre-loaded into an SRAM serving as look-up table (LUT). If the refined segments match pre-calculated masks a validation bit is set and the corresponding $`\kappa `$ and $`\varphi `$ values are read from a second LUT.

$`\kappa `$-$`\varphi `$ values and the $`z`$-coordinates of the corresponding hits are transferred via the “Merger Cards” to the second level of the FTT where the individual segments are combined to global tracks.

### II-B L2 Track Linking and Fitting

The level 2 stage of the FTT performs a track linking in two dimensions in $`\kappa `$-$`\varphi `$ space followed by a full 3-dimensional track fit also including the transfered $`z`$-position. About 20 $`\mu `$s after a positive L1 decision FTT L2 has to provide information to the central trigger logic. In collaboration with SCS  a generic multi-purpose FTT L2 board is developed which may be used for several purposes: data merging, track linking, track fitting and generation of trigger signals. This is realized by mounting a high density APEX 20K600E FPGA and optionally up to 4 DSPs onto the board. Flexible I/O configurations are realized by “Piggy Back” cards to interface the 100 MHz LVDS channel links.

Equipped with four Piggy Back cards Merger Cards are used to bundle the data coming from FTT level 1 onto the “Linker Card” where they are fed to the high density FPGA for linking. Track segments from the four trigger layers are buffered in RAMs and the $`\kappa `$ and $`\varphi `$ values of each layer are used to fill 2-dimensional histograms with 40 bins in $`\kappa `$ and 640 bins in $`\varphi `$. ¿From the RAM a list of track seeds in the $`\kappa `$-$`\varphi `$ plane is build starting at the first trigger layer. The list of track segments is processed and 25 parallel CAMs per layer are used to find track segment clusters in a single processing step. By a 3$`\times `$3 sliding window technique the exact peak position is then determined and in case of a valid track the full track information is restored from the parallel RAM. The basic principle of the track linking procedure is illustrated in figure 4.

The full track information of the linked tracks is sent to the “Fitter Cards” which are equipped with 4 floating point DSPs (Texas Instruments TMS320C6701 ). A load balancing algorithm is used to share the tracks among different DSPs. The procedure starts with a non-iterative fit in the $`r`$-$`\varphi `$ plane  constraining the tracks to originate from the primary vertex. Afterwards a fit in the $`r`$-$`z`$ plane is performed, using additional information on the $`z`$-position of the vertex provided by the H1 trigger system. All successfully fitted tracks are collected by the “L2 Decision Card” where track based event quantities like momentum sums are used to generate the final L2 trigger signals. If the event is accepted by the second level trigger the complete set of 3-dimensional tracks is passed on to FTT L3.

### II-C Searching for Particle Resonances

A farm of up to 16 single CPU VME boards is used to calculate an L3 trigger decision. Track information coming from FTT L2 are sent via a fast LVDS receiver-transmitter chain to special receiver boards. On these boards the data are buffered and using a 20 MHz FPDP (Front Panel Data Port ) sent via PMCs (PCI Mezzanine Cards ) to the local memory on the CPU boards. This mechanism ensures that all track data are available on each board after a maximum transmission time of $`<`$10 $`\mu `$s leaving plenty of time for sophisticated analyses. The aim is to provide an environment where analysis groups can easily implement their analysis code. This is guaranteed by the use of a commercial real time operating system including standard compiler software to allow easy implementation of e.g. C-code. The final L3 trigger decision will be primarily based on the track information received from FTT L2 and a main task will be the search for particle resonances within a high multiplicity environment of up to 48 tracks. However, additional information from other first level trigger systems can be made available allowing for a more sophisticated decision based on correlations amongst different subdetectors.

## III Simulated Performance

The different performance studies maybe categorized into (A ) timing estimates for the different algorithms to be implemented on FPGAs and DSPs done using specialized software , and (B ) tests of the FTT track reconstruction abilities based on Monte Carlo programs. For both categories extensive simulations have been done showing that the Fast Track Trigger fulfills the demands of the existing system and the upgraded HERA collider.

### III-A Timing

The FTT latencies of all three stages (L1–L3) are given in table I. The numbers in the table should be compared to the time constraints given by the H1 trigger system of 2.3 $`\mu `$s, 23 $`\mu `$s and 100 $`\mu `$s for the overal L1, L2 and L3 decision time, respectively. While time requirements for FTT L1 are rather tight mainly due to the large delay which arises from the maximum drift time to the CJC sense wires, the demands on FTT L2 are less stringent. After the track linking step the remaining time for track based calculations of $``$$`\mu `$s is long enough to even allow invariant mass sums in low multiplicity events to be completed. For the FTT L3 farm it has been checked that modern CPUs can cope with the combinatorial complexity of the search for e.g. the golden decay of $`D^{}`$ mesons ($`D^{}D^0\pi _{slow}K\pi \pi _{slow}`$) within the required time $``$100 $`\mu `$s.

### III-B Physics Return

In order to allow for detailed performance studies a software package has been developed which simulates the digital part of the first, second and third level of the FTT. It has been used to obtain track resolutions, study efficiencies and to determine the robustness of the system concerning its dependence on the chamber performance. In addition different implementations of the available track finding, linking and fitting algorithms have been compared and could be optimized.

The FTT is designed to find tracks down to a transverse momentum $`p_t`$=100 MeV. The expected resolutions relative to the nominal H1 reconstruction in $`1/p_t`$ and $`\varphi `$ can be extracted from figure 5 giving $`\sigma (1/p_t)=0.03\text{ GeV}^1`$ and $`\sigma (\varphi )=4.6`$ mrad.

To investigate the full power of the Fast Trigger up to level 3 the $`D^{}`$ channel, $`D^{}D^0\pi _{slow}K\pi \pi _{slow}`$, mentioned above has been analysed in detail revealing that overall efficiencies in excess of 80 % relative to a typical off-line selection can be achieved. The corresponding trigger rates can be kept reasonably low as needed not to incur excessive dead time at the early trigger stages.

The FTT abilities up to L2 were tested by feeding low multiplicity H1 data of $`J/\psi `$ meson candidates into the simulation followed by a full $`J/\psi `$ analysis using the FTT tracks. The outcome of the invariant $`J/\psi `$ mass spectrum is compared to the one obtained using the standard H1 reconstruction software. Figure 7 shows the corresponding mass spectra for $`J/\psi `$’s decaying into muons and electrons convincingly showing the potential of the FTT. Further physics channels have been analyzed in a similar way leading to similar results.

Finally, in order to study the influence of the potentially larger background expected after the HERA upgrade, tracks from beam-gas background have been artificially added to genuine events. Furthermore, a decreased single wire efficiency, decreased $`z`$-resolution and additional random noise were included in the simulation to test the stability of the system. No substantial performance loss has been observed for any reasonable scenario studied.

## IV Conclusion

The H1 collaboration is in the process of building a Fast Track Trigger (FTT) to cope with the demands of the high luminosity HERA upgrade planned for 2001. It is based on novel technologies of integrated circuits making extensive use of the embedded CAM functionality of modern high density FPGAs and shall supply information to the first three trigger levels of the H1 triggering system. The FTT will be capable of performing complex algorithms such as fast track segment finding, track linking and fitting. Apart from simple track based quantities to be provided after the L1 latency of 2.3 $`\mu `$s it will perform sophisticated analyses, such that momentum sums and invariant mass sums can be provided at the L2 (23 $`\mu `$s) or L3 (100 $`\mu `$s) decision time depending on event size and complexity of the calculations. Simulations show a high physics potential and a large selectivity of the new system.


text:
# Spherical Colloids: Effect of Discrete Macroion Charge Distribution and Counterion Valence

## 1 Introduction

Charged colloidal suspensions are a subject of intense experimental and theoretical work not only because of their direct application in industrial or biological processes, but also because they represent model systems for atomistic systems. The electrostatic interactions involved in such systems have a fundamental role in determining their physico-chemical properties . Theoretical description of highly charged colloidal solutions faces two challenges: (i) different typical length scales due to the presence of macroions (i. e. charged colloids of the size 10-1000 Å) and microscopic counterions and (ii) their long-range Coulomb interaction. A first simplifying assumption is to treat the solvent as a dielectric medium solely characterized by its relative permittivity $`ϵ_r`$. A second widely used approximation consists in modeling the short range ion-ion excluded volume interaction by hard spheres. These two approximations are the basis of the so-called primitive model of electrolyte solutions. The system under consideration is an asymmetrical electrolyte solution made up of highly charged macroions and small counterions. A further simplification motivated by this asymmetry can be made by partitioning the system into subvolumes (cells), each containing one macroion together with its neutralizing counterions plus (if present) additional salt. This approximation has been called accordingly the cell model . The cells adopt the symmetry of the macroion, here spherical, and are electrostatically decoupled. It is within the cell model that we present our simulation results.

For spherical macroions the structural charge is usually modeled by a central charge, which by Gauss theorem is equivalent to a uniform surface charge density as far as the electric field (or potential) outside the spherical colloid is concerned.

Most analytical concepts as well as simulations rely on the above assumptions and especially on the central charge assumption. It is well known that in the strong Coulomb coupling regime ion-ion correlations become very important, and significant deviations from mean-field approaches are expected. A counter-intuitive effect which classical mean-field theories (like Poisson-Boltzmann model) cannot explain is the phenomenon of overcharge, also called charge inversion. That is, there are counterions in excess in the vicinity of the macroion surface so that its net charge changes sign. This has recently attracted significant attention . In particular, we showed recently that this phenomenon may give rise to a strong long range attraction between like-sign charged colloids . A natural question which comes up is: does overcharge and more generally ion-ion correlations strongly depend on the way the macroion structural charge is represented (i. e. uniformly charged or discrete charges on its surface)? In a recent paper , we studied such a situation in the strong Coulomb coupling regime where the macroion charge was carried by divalent microions in the presence of divalent counterions (same ionic valence). In Ref.  we reported the important result showing that overcharge is still possible under those conditions. Moreover we showed that the intrinsic electric field solely due to the macroion surface microions (without counterions) varies strongly from point to point on the colloidal sphere .

The goal of this paper is to study by means of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations the coupled effects of macroion charge discretization and counterion valence in the primitive model for spherical colloids. A systematic comparison with the uniform macroion charge distribution (i. e. central charge) is undertaken. The paper is organized as follows. In Sec. 2 we give some details on the macroion charge discretization as well as on the MD simulation model. Section 3 is devoted to the ground state analysis where surface counterion structure and overcharge are addressed. In Sec. 4 we investigate the finite temperature situation, where counterion structure is studied for strong and weak Coulomb couplings. Finally, in Sec. 5 we provide a summary of the results.

## 2 Simulation model

### 2.1 Macroion charge discretization

The procedure is similar to the one used in a previous study . The $`discrete`$ macroion charge distribution is produced by using $`Z_m`$ $`monovalent`$ microions of diameter $`\sigma `$ (same diameter as the counterions) distributed randomly on the surface of the macroion. Then the structural charge is $`Q=Z_me=Z_mZ_de`$, where $`Z_m>0`$, $`Z_d=1`$ is the valence of these discrete microions and $`e`$ is the positive elementary charge. These discrete colloidal charges (DCC) are fixed on the surface of the spherical macroion. Figure 1 shows a schematic view of the setup. The counterions (not shown in Fig. 1) have a charge $`q=+Z_ce`$, where $`Z_c>0`$ stands for the counterion valence. In spherical coordinates the elementary surface is given by:

$$dA=r_0^2\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta d\phi =r_0^2d(\mathrm{cos}\theta )d\phi ,$$
(1)
where $`r_0`$ is the distance between the macroion center and the DCC center. Thus to produce a random discrete charge distribution on the surface we generated (uniformly) randomly the variables $`\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ and $`\phi `$. Excluded volume is taken into account by rejecting configurations leading to an overlap of microions. Phenomena such as surface chemical reactions , hydration, roughness  are not considered. For commodity we introduce the notation $`(Z_d:+Z_c)`$ to characterize the valence symmetry (asymmetry) for $`Z_c=1`$ ($`Z_c>1`$) of the ions (DCC and counterions) involved in discrete systems.

### 2.2 Molecular dynamics procedure

A MD simulation technique was used to compute the motion of the counterions coupled to a heat bath acting through a weak stochastic force W(t). The procedure is very similar to the one used in previous studies .

The motion of counterion i (DCC ions being $`fixed`$) obeys the Langevin equation

$$m\frac{d^2𝐫_i}{dt^2}=_iU(𝐫_i)m\gamma \frac{d𝐫_i}{dt}+𝐖_i(t),$$
(2)
where m is the counterion mass, U is the potential force having two contributions: (i) the Coulomb interaction and (ii) the excluded volume interaction, and $`\gamma `$ is the friction coefficient. Friction and stochastic force are linked by the dissipation-fluctuation theorem $`<𝐖_i(t)𝐖_j(t^{})>=6m\gamma k_BT\delta _{ij}\delta (tt^{^{}})`$. For the ground state simulations the stochastic force is set to zero.

Excluded volume interactions are taken into account with a pure repulsive Lennard-Jones potential given by

$$U_{LJ}(r)=\{\begin{array}{c}4ϵ_{LJ}\left[\left(\frac{\sigma }{rr_0}\right)^{12}\left(\frac{\sigma }{rr_0}\right)^6\right]+ϵ_{LJ},\hfill \\ 0,\hfill \end{array}\begin{array}{c}\text{for}rr_0<r_{cut},\hfill \\ \text{for}rr_0r_{cut},\hfill \end{array}$$
(3)
where $`r_0=0`$ for the microion-microion interaction (the microion being either a counterion or a DCC), $`r_0=7\sigma `$ for the macroion-counterion interaction and $`r_{cut}=2^{1/6}\sigma `$ is the cutoff radius. This leads to a (center-center) macroion-counterion distance of closest approach $`a=8\sigma `$ (see also Fig. 1). The macroion surface charge density $`\sigma _m`$ is defined as

$$\sigma _m=\frac{Z_m}{4\pi a^2}.$$
(4)
Energy and length units in our simulations are related to experimental units by taking $`ϵ_{LJ}=`$$`k_BT_0`$ (with $`T_0=298`$ K) and $`\sigma =3.57\mathrm{\AA }`$ respectively.

The pair electrostatic interaction of any pair ij, where i and j denote either a DCC a counterion or the central charge (for the non-discrete case), reads

$$U_{coul}(r)=k_BT_0l_B\frac{Z_iZ_j}{r},$$
(5)
where $`l_B=e^2/4\pi ϵ_0ϵ_rk_BT_0`$ is the Bjerrum length describing the electrostatic strength. For the rest of this paper, electrostatic energy will always be expressed in units of $`k_BT_0`$. This also holds for the ground state analysis where the temperature is $`T=0`$ K but $`T_0=298`$ K. From now on the pair electrostatic interaction will be written in reduced units so that Eq. (5) reads $`U_{coul}=Z_iZ_j/r`$.

The macroion and the counterions are confined in a spherical impenetrable cell of radius R. The macroion is held fixed and is located at the center of the cell. The colloid volume fraction $`f_m`$ is defined as $`a^3/R^3`$. To avoid image charge complications, the permittivity $`ϵ_r`$ is supposed to be identical within the whole cell (including the macroion) as well as outside the cell. Typical simulation parameters are gathered in Table 1.

## 3 Ground state analysis

In this section, we focus on counterion distribution exclusively governed by energy minimization, i. e. T = 0K. In such a case correlations are maximal and all the counterions lie on the macroion surface. This situation has the advantage to enable accurate computation of energy variations in processes such as overcharging and also to provide a clear description of effects which are purely correlational in nature. The method employed here was successfully carried out in Refs.  and is explained in details in Ref. . The Bjerrum length $`l_B`$ is set to $`10\sigma `$. Note that in the ground state the value of $`l_B`$, or equivalently the value of the dielectric constant $`ϵ_r`$, does not influence at all the counterion structure. Only the electrostatic energy is rescaled accordingly.

### 3.1 Neutral case

First we consider the simple case where the system \[macroion + counterions\] is globally neutral. In order to characterize the two-dimensional counterion structure we compute the counterion correlation function (CCF) $`g_c(r)`$ on the surface of the sphere defined as

$$c^2g_c(r=|r^{}r^{\prime \prime }|)=\underset{ij}{}\delta (r^{}r_i)\delta (r^{\prime \prime }r_j),$$
(6)
where $`c=N_c/4\pi a^2`$ is the surface counterion concentration ($`N_c=Z_m/Z_c`$ being the number of counterions) and $`r`$ corresponds to the arc length on the sphere. Note that at zero temperature all equilibrium configurations are identical (except for degenerate ground state), thus only one is required to obtain $`g_c(r)`$. The counterion correlation function $`g_c(r)`$ is normalized as follows

$$c_0^{\pi a}2\pi rg_c(r)𝑑r=(N_c1).$$
(7)
Because of the finite size and the topology of the sphere, $`g(r)`$ has a cut-off at $`r_{gc}=\pi a=25.1\sigma `$ and $`g(r_{gc})=0`$. Furthermore the absolute value of $`g(r)`$ can not be directly compared to the one obtained with an infinite plane.

Similarly, one can also define a surface macroion correlation function (MCF) $`g_m(r)`$ for the microions (representing the colloidal structural charge) on the surface of the macroion. The normalization of $`g_m(r)`$ is very similar to Eq. (7) and reads

$$\sigma _m_0^{\pi a}2\pi rg_m(r)𝑑r=(Z_m1),$$
(8)
where the arc length has been rescaled by a factor $`a/r_0`$ so that $`g_c(r)`$ and $`g_m(r)`$ are directly comparable (see also the setup Fig. 1) and are defined in the same $`r`$ range.

#### 3.1.1 Monovalent counterions

We first treat the systems where we have monovalent counterions, that is we have to deal with the symmetric discrete system (-1:+1). The counterion correlation functions $`g_c(r)`$ are computed for a central macroion charge \[denoted by $`g_c^{(\mathrm{CC})}(r)`$\] and for discrete macroion charge distribution \[denoted by $`g_c^{(\mathrm{DCC})}(r)`$\]. Results for three structural charges $`Z_m=60`$, 180 and 360 are given in Figs. 2(a), (b) and (c) respectively. For the continuous case (central charge) the counterion structure consists of a pseudo-Wigner crystal (WC) as was already found in Refs. . Also the higher the absolute number of counterions $`N_c`$ (i. e. the concentration $`c`$) the higher the order of counterion structure for the continuous case \[compare Fig. 2(a) with Fig. 2(c)\].

It turns out that in the case of discrete colloidal charges the counterion distribution is strongly dictated by the colloidal charge distribution and especially for low macroion surface charge density $`\sigma _m`$ ($`Z_m=60`$) \[see Fig. 2(a)\]. For $`Z_m=60`$, $`g_c^{(\mathrm{DCC})}(r)`$ and $`g_m(r)`$ are almost identical. This indicates that each counterion is exactly associated with one DCC site. The ground state structure for $`Z_m=60`$ is depicted in Fig. 3(a) where one clearly observes this ionic pairing.

This strong ionic pair association can be easily explained in terms of local correlations. Let us consider the picture sketched in Fig. 4 which holds for strong ionic pairing, where a given dipole A (ionic pair made up of a counterion and a DCC site) on the macroion surface essentially interacts with its first nearest surrounding dipoles B. Note that very similar lengths were also considered in a recent theoretical study  in the one-dimensional case (counterion adsorption on a linear polyelectrolyte).

It is important to have in mind that such a local description is physically justified due to the strong screening generated by ionic pairing. Thereby local correlations are twofold: (i) the attractive interaction between the DCC site of dipole A with its paired counterion and the counterions of dipoles B, and (ii) the repulsive interaction between the counterion of dipole A and counterions of dipoles B. The correlations between DCC sites are not relevant since they are fixed. The intra-dipole attractive interaction $`E_{pin}`$ between the DCC site and its “pinned” counterion can be written as

$$E_{pin}=\frac{Z_dZ_c}{\sigma }.$$
(9)
For the elementary nearest inter-dipole (or inter-ionic pair) interactions, one can write for the attractive interaction $`E_+`$ between the DCC site of dipole A and the counterion of dipole B:

$$E_+=\frac{Z_dZ_c}{a_{dc}}.$$
(10)
A similar expression can be written for the repulsive inter-dipole interaction $`E_{++}`$ involving counterions of dipole A and dipole B, which reads

$$E_{++}=\frac{Z_c^2}{a_{cc}}.$$
(11)
Note that the repulsive counterion-counterion term $`E_{++}`$ alone, even if space truncated111This statement holds if the cutoff is larger than the lattice constant. , drives to the long-range ordered triangular WC structure. However at zero temperature the DCC sites represent pinning centers for the counterions where the electrostatic potential is considerably lowered (due to the term $`E_{pin}`$) compared to its direct “empty” neighborhood (charge hole), which in turn prevents the counterions from adopting the ideal WC structure. This latter aspect was thoroughly discussed in Ref. . Another important quantity characterizing discrete systems is the ratio

$$\rho _{pin}=\frac{\stackrel{~}{a}_{cc}}{d_{pin}}$$
(12)
between the mean inter-dipole separation $`\stackrel{~}{a}_{cc}`$ (more exactly the mean counterion-counterion separation) and intra-dipole separation $`d_{pin}`$ of an ionic pair (in the present study $`d_{pin}=\sigma `$ as depicted in Fig. 4). The value of $`\stackrel{~}{a}_{cc}`$ can be obtained by taking the first peak position of $`g_c^{(\mathrm{CC})}(r)`$.

Obviously, for sufficiently low macroion surface charge density $`\sigma _m`$ (i. e. large $`\rho _{pin}`$) the ionic pairing term $`E_{pin}`$ will be dominant and strong ionic pairing occurs. More specifically, when the typical inter-dipole distance is large compared to the intra-dipole distance then dipole-dipole interactions are weak (i. e., $`|E_+E_{++}||E_{pin}|`$) and the DCC distribution dictates the counterion structure. This is what qualitatively explains our simulation findings for $`Z_m=60`$ \[see Fig. 2(a) and Fig. 3(a)\].

When $`\sigma _m`$ becomes sufficiently important the situation may become qualitatively different. In this case dipoles approach each other and because of excluded volume222Note that in the present model no surface dipole flip is allowed which should also be the case experimentally.  $`a_{cc}`$ becomes comparable to $`\sigma `$ (see Fig. 4)333The limiting case is where the global structure is compact, i. e. touching spherical microions. . Thereby, the counterion-counterion repulsion term $`E_{++}`$ (overcompensating $`E_+`$) induces counterion ordering compatible with the local attractive pinning potential field generated by DCC centers. This effect can be inspected in Fig. 2(b) and Fig. 2(c) where one sees that upon increasing $`\sigma _m`$, $`g_c^{(\mathrm{DCC})}(r)`$ is gradually less correlated with $`g_m(r)`$ and more correlated with $`g_c^{(\mathrm{CC})}(r)`$. As a topological consequence, some counterions will be in contact with several (two or more) DCC attractors as can be seen in Fig. 3(b).

The quasi-triangular counterion arrangement for high $`\sigma _m`$ ($`Z_m=360`$) can be inspected in Fig. 3(b). For this symmetric system in size (same diameter for the counterions and the DCC ions) one expects that for a compact amorphous DCC layer the counterion structure should become perfectly ordered. This extreme limit which would correspond to unreachable experimental charge densities has not been addressed in our simulations.

In parallel, increasing $`\sigma _m`$ induces by purely excluded volume effect a stronger local order within the DCC layer as can be checked on the $`g_m(r)`$ plots in Figs. 2(a)-(c). This is quite similar to what occurs in a system of hard spheres where the (dense) liquid phase is locally correlated and the (dilute) gaseous phase is uncorrelated.

In summary, the system depicted above is the siege of an order-disorder phase transition where upon increasing $`\sigma _m`$ (i. e. decreasing $`\rho _{pin}`$) we pass from a disordered counterion structure (imposed by the DCC layer) to a long-range ordered one which is induced by local counterion-counterion correlations.

Although results presented above concern one given random distribution (for each $`Z_m`$), we carefully checked that similar results and conclusions could be drawn for different random realizations (systematically five). This also holds for the following section below where we deal with multivalent counterions.

#### 3.1.2 Multivalent counterions

We turn to the asymmetric discrete systems $`(1:+Z_c)`$ where multivalent counterions are present ($`Z_c>1`$). The correlation functions $`g(r)`$ for two macroion charges $`Z_m=60`$ and $`Z_m=180`$ and various counterion valences $`Z_c`$ can be found in Fig. 5. One remarks that upon decreasing the number of counterions $`N_c`$ (i.e., increasing $`Z_c`$) for fixed $`Z_m`$, the first peak of $`g_c(r)`$ is gradually shifted to the right (compare also the monovalent case given in Fig. 2) whatever the nature of the macroion charge is (discrete or continuous). Furthermore, we observe for the discrete systems that upon increasing $`Z_c`$ (for fixed $`Z_m`$) the correlation between $`g_c^{(\mathrm{DCC})}(r)`$ and $`g_m(r)`$ decreases and increases between $`g_c^{(\mathrm{DCC})}(r)`$ and $`g_c^{(\mathrm{CC})}(r)`$. This effect is clearly noticeable in Fig. 2(b) and Figs. 5(c-e) corresponding to $`Z_m=180`$. The very high counterion valence $`Z_c=10`$ reported in Fig. 5(e) was undertaken in order to stress the counterion multivalence effect. These findings lead to the conclusion that the counterion valence has the effect of reducing the disorder in the counterion structure stemming from the randomness of the DCC distribution.

This related phenomenon can be theoretically explained with simple ideas. Basically, the mechanisms involved in this counterion valence induced ordering stem from two concomitant sources: (i) topological and (ii) correlational.

The topological aspect is due to the presence of $`(Z_mZ_m/Z_c)`$ unbound DCC sites (free of associated counterion) ensuring global electroneutrality \[compare for instance Fig. 3(a) and Fig. 6\]. It is to say that here, compared to the monovalent case (-1:+1), the counterions have all the more “freedom” to choose their pinning locations because $`Z_c`$ is high. To be more precise, the number of topologically accessible “pinned” configurations is given 444 Rigorously, Eq. (13) holds when each counterion is associated with one and only one DCC site (case of low $`\sigma _m`$). For high $`\sigma _m`$, it remains a good approximation to capture the essential physics.  by

$$C_{Z_m}^{\frac{Z_m}{Z_c}}=\frac{Z_m!}{\left(Z_m\frac{Z_m}{Z_c}\right)!\left(\frac{Z_m}{Z_c}\right)!}$$
(13)
which reduces to 1 for $`Z_c=1`$. In the ground state, counterions will “decide” to choose among these various possible arrangements the one which minimizes the total energy of the system. It is clear that this topological feature by itself promotes counterion valence induced ordering.

Concomitantly, there is a purely counterion correlation induced ordering which is $`Z_c`$ dependent. Indeed, using similar arguments as those previously employed for monovalent systems (-1:+1) built on Eqs. (9-11), one can infer the role of $`Z_c`$. More specifically, by assuming an ordered WC structure555From a topological point of view, it consists in replacing the current (random) Voronoi structure by the ordered WC structure.  the term $`E_{++}`$ given by Eq. (11) can be rewritten as

$$E_{++}^{WC}\frac{Z_c^{3/2}Z_m^{1/2}}{a},$$
(14)
where $`a_{cc}`$ in Eq. (11) is now given by

$$a_{cc}=\stackrel{~}{a}_{cc}c^{1/2}\left(\frac{Z_m}{Z_ca^2}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(15)
Equation (14) shows that for fixed $`Z_m`$ and $`a`$ (i. e., fixed macroion charge density) $`E_{++}^{WC}Z_c^{3/2}`$ whereas $`E_{pin}Z_c`$ (recalling that $`Z_d=1`$) and therefore for sufficiently high $`Z_c`$ the term $`E_{++}^{WC}`$ will be dominant. Thereby $`Z_c`$ induces counterion ordering so as to minimize mutual counterion-counterion repulsion merely dictated by Eq. (14). As a topological consequence, some counterions which would be in contact with several DCC sites if they were monovalent can now be in contact with less DCC sites (see Fig. 6).

In summary, these discrete multivalent systems are again the siege of an order-disorder phase transition which is counterion valence controlled.

### 3.2 Overcharge

We now investigate the charge inversion (overcharge) phenomenon. The starting equilibrium configurations correspond to neutral ground states as were previously obtained. The method employed here is very similar to the one used in Refs. . To produce a controlled overcharge, one adds successively overcharging counterions (OC) in the vicinity of the macroion surface. Thereby the resulting system is no longer neutral. Using Wigner crystal concepts , we showed that the gain in electrostatic energy (compared to the neutral state) by overcharging a single uniformly charged macroion (i.e., central charge) with $`n`$ overcharging counterions can be written in the following way :

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_n^{OC}=\mathrm{\Delta }E_n^{cor}+\mathrm{\Delta }E_n^{mon}=\frac{\alpha Z_c^2}{\sqrt{A}}\left[(N_c+n)^{3/2}N_c^{3/2}\right]+Z_c^2\frac{n^2}{2a}.$$
(16)
As before $`N_c=Z_m/Z_c`$ is the number of counterions in the neutral state, $`A`$ is the macroion area ($`4\pi a^2`$) and $`\alpha `$ is a positive constant which was determined by using simulation data for $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_1^{OC}`$. $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_n^{cor}`$, which is equal to the first term of the right member, denotes the gain in energy due to ionic correlations. The derivation of this term can be found in Refs. , and the basic idea is that each counterion interacts essentially with its neutralizing uniformly charged Wigner-Seitz cell. The second term on the right hand side, $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_n^{mon}`$, is the self-energy of the excess of charge. This repulsive term stops the overcharging for sufficiently large $`n`$. Note that the WC concept for describing energy correlations is already excellent for highly short range ordered structures (strongly correlated liquids, see Ref.  for a detailed discussion). The total electrostatic energy of the system as a function of $`n`$ is displayed Fig. 7 (for monovalent counterions) and Fig. 8 (for multivalent counterions) for two bare charges $`Z_m=60`$ and $`Z_m=180`$. The energy curves corresponding to discrete systems were produced by systematically averaging over five random DCC realizations.

#### 3.2.1 Monovalent counterions

Let us first focus on the monovalent symmetric case (-1:+1) where for the neutral state each DCC site is exactly associated with one counterion as was shown above. The results in Figs. 7(a-b) show that the overcharging process occurring with a discrete macroion charge distribution is quite different from the one obtained with an uniform surface charge distribution. Especially for the smallest bare charge $`Z_m=60`$, the effect of disorder is very important in agreement with what was already found above for the neutral state in Sec. 3.1.1. The main effects of charge discretization are: (i) the reduction in gain of energy and (ii) the reduction of maximal (critical) number, $`n^{}`$, of stabilizing overcharging counterions (corresponding to a minimum in the energy curve). Both points were thoroughly discussed elsewhere  for an equivalent symmetric discrete system (-2:+2). It was shown that points (i) and (ii) can be explained in terms of ion-dipole interaction, which presently is the main driving force for overcharging. When the overcharging counterions are present, each of them will essentially interact (attractively) with its neighboring dipoles (ionic pairs). The attractive ion-dipole interaction increases with decreasing ion-dipole separation, i. e. increasing macroion charge density $`\sigma _m`$. This explains why the energy gain increases with $`Z_m`$ \[compare Fig. 7(a) and Fig. 7(b)\]. On the other hand, the repulsion between the counterions is not fully minimized since they do not adopt the ideal WC structure that is obtained with a central charge which in turn explains (i) and (ii). However for high bare charge ($`Z_m=180`$) the overcharge curve obtained with DCC \[see Fig. 7(b)\] approaches the one from the continuous case as expected for high counterion concentration. This feature is fully consistent with what was already found in Sec. 3.1.1, where it was shown that the order of the counterion structure in the neutral state (for discrete systems) increases with $`\sigma _m`$. In other terms, the WC approach through Eq. (16) is a good approximation for describing discrete systems at high $`\sigma _m`$ since stronger ordering exists.

Common features of overcharging between continuous and discrete systems are briefly given here. We note that $`n^{}`$ increases with the macroionic charge $`Z_m`$. Furthermore, for a given $`n`$, the gain in energy always increases with $`Z_m`$. Also, for a given macroionic charge $`Z_m`$, the gain in energy between two successive overcharged states is decreasing with $`n`$. Note that at $`T=0`$ K, the value of $`ϵ_r`$ acts only as a prefactor. All these features are captured by Eq. (16).

#### 3.2.2 Multivalent counterions

Now we are going to discuss the asymmetric discrete systems $`(1:+Z_c)`$ where multivalent counterions are present ($`Z_c>1`$). The results of figures 8(a-d) indicate that the energy gain in the overcharging process at fixed $`Z_m`$ and $`n`$ is higher the higher the counterion valence $`Z_c`$ for both macroion charge distributions (discrete and continuous). For the continuous case this can be directly explained in terms of WC concepts \[i. e. Eq. (16)\]. Indeed the main leading term of the correlational energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_n^{cor}`$ in Eq. (16) scales like

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_n^{cor}Z_c^{3/2}$$
(17)
for fixed $`n`$ and fixed macroion charge $`Z_m`$, and recalling that $`N_c=Z_m/Z_c`$. Equation (17) quantitatively (qualitatively) explains why overcharging is stronger with increasing counterion valence $`Z_c`$ for the continuous (discrete) case.

As far as discrete systems are concerned, the overcharging mechanisms occurring with multivalent counterions differ from those occurring with symmetric monovalent systems (-1:+1). This is again due to the presence of $`(Z_mZ_m/Z_c)`$ unbound DCC sites in the neutral state as discussed in Sec. 3.1.2. When overcharging comes into play, each overcharging counterion becomes paired with some666It can be one or more depending on the valence, surface charged density and the local DCC site arrangement.  of these free DCC sites. Figure 8 shows that the overcharging with multivalent counterions (especially the higher $`Z_m`$) is significantly less affected by colloidal charge discretization than in the monovalent case (see Fig. 7).

For $`Z_m=60`$, simulations show that overcharging in the discrete case can even be stronger than in the continuous case \[see Figs. 8(a) and (b)\]. This phenomenon can be qualitatively understood by referring to the very low macroion surface charge density limit, where the correlation term $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_n^{cor}`$ in Eq. (16) becomes negligible compared to the ionic pairing term $`E_{pin}`$ given by Eq. (9). In this limiting situation, the energy gain by overcharging is approximatively given by $`nZ_dZ_c/d_{pin}`$ so that full overcharging occurs where each monovalent DCC site is paired with one multivalent counterion.

For $`Z_m=180`$, the overcharging curves for discrete and continuous distributions are almost identical \[see Figs. 8(c-d)\]. This is consistent with what we already found in Sec. 3.1.2 for the counterion structure in the neutral state, where we showed that $`g_c^{(\mathrm{DCC})}(r)`$ approaches $`g_c^{(\mathrm{CC})}(r)`$ with increasing $`Z_c`$. However, the agreement between discrete and continuous cases is even better for overcharging than for counterion structure \[see the corresponding $`g_c(r)`$ given in Figs. 5(c) and (d)\]. This is due to the fact that, as previously mentioned, the WC approach \[Eq. (16)\] quantifying the energy gain by overcharging is already excellent for highly short-ranged ordered systems. Generally speaking, all the ordering mechanisms related in Sec. 3.1 for neutral discrete systems hold for the overcharging features: all causes leading to ordering enhance overcharging.

## 4 Finite temperature

In this part, the system is globally neutral and is brought to room temperature $`T_0`$. We are interested in determining the counterion distribution as well as the counterion motion within the counterion layer. The cell radius $`R`$ is fixed to $`40\sigma `$ so that the macroion volume fraction $`f_m`$ has the finite value $`8\times 10^3`$.

### 4.1 Strong Coulomb coupling

The Bjerrum length $`l_B`$ is set to $`10\sigma `$ as previously in the ground state study Sec. 3.1. In this section we consider two macroion bare charges $`Z_m`$ (60 and 180) and three counterion valences $`Z_c`$ (1, 2 and 3). A typical parameter for describing the Coulomb coupling strength is the so-called plasma parameter $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$  defined as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=l_BZ_c^2/\stackrel{~}{a}_{cc}`$. For our simulation parameters, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ ranges from 2.6 (for $`Z_m=60`$ and $`Z_c=1`$) up to $`23.1`$ (for $`Z_m=180`$ and $`Z_c=3`$). Under these conditions, systems are still highly energy dominated so that at equilibrium almost all (if not all depending on $`Z_m`$ and $`Z_c`$) counterions lie in the vicinity of the macroion surface (strong condensation). Therefore for the strong Coulomb coupling regime it is suitable to focus on the counterion surface properties. In the following sections we are going to study surface counterion distribution and diffusion.

#### 4.1.1 Counterion distribution

Like in the ground state analysis, we characterize the counterion distribution via its surface correlation function. At non zero temperature, correlation functions are computed by averaging $`_{ij}\delta (r^{}r_i)\delta (r^{\prime \prime }r_j)`$ over 1000 independent equilibrium configurations which are statistically uncorrelated.

The results for monovalent counterions are depicted in Fig. 9(a) and Fig. 9(b) for $`Z_m=60`$ and $`Z_m=180`$ respectively. For both charges $`Z_m`$ the counterion distributions are weakly affected by charge discretization and $`g_c^{(\mathrm{DCC})}(r)`$ and $`g_c^{(\mathrm{CC})}(r)`$ are almost identical. A closer look on Fig. 9 reveals that the agreement between discrete and continuous distributions is even better for high macroion charge density ($`Z_m=180`$) as expected. In fact for monovalent systems the pinning term $`E_{pin}`$ has its lowest magnitude so that, for sufficiently high $`\sigma _m`$, the fluctuating intra-dipole separation becomes comparable to the inter-dipole separation and discretization effects (i. e. pinning) are canceled. These pinning and unpinning aspects will be addressed in more details in the next section 4.1.2. As expected, the counterion positional order for discrete and continuous cases is much weaker at room temperature than in the ground state case (compare Fig. 9 and Fig. 2).

The results for multivalent counterions are depicted in Fig. 10. We now find that the counterion distributions are strongly affected by charge discretization, and especially the higher $`Z_c`$. This is in contrast with what was found in the ground state analysis Sec. 3.1.2 where no counterion motion occurs. This effect is of course due to the pinning (inhibition of large counterion motion) which is proportional to $`Z_c`$.

Note that all the statements above hold for the particular finite temperature $`T_0`$. However the effect of finite temperature discussed here should hold, at least qualitatively, for a large temperature range. For very low temperature one should recover all ground state properties mentioned in Sec. 3.1.

#### 4.1.2 Surface diffusion

This section is devoted to answer the following question: do the counterions only oscillate around the DCC sites or do they have also a large translational motion over the sphere?

To study this problem we introduce the following observable:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }x^2(t,t_0)=\frac{1}{tt_0}_{t_0}^t𝑑t^{^{}}[x(t^{^{}})x(t_0)]^2,$$
(18)
which is referred as the mean square displacement (MSD), where $`x(t_0)`$ represents the position of a given counterion at time $`t=t_0`$ (at equilibrium) and $`x(t,t_0)`$ is its position at later time t. All particles lying within a distance $`9.2\sigma `$ from the macroion center are radially projected on the macroion surface of radius $`a=8\sigma `$ to give $`x(t,t_0)`$. The root mean square displacement (RMSD) $`\mathrm{\Delta }x(t,t_0)`$ is defined as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }x(t,t_0)=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }x^2(t,t_0)}.$$
(19)
Like for the surface correlation function, the RMSD is measured on the spherical surface (arc length) and it has a natural upper limit $`\pi a`$. For the case of free counterions (i. e. macroion central charge without pinning) the RMSD $`\mathrm{\Delta }x_{free}`$ reads

$$\mathrm{\Delta }x_{free}=a\sqrt{\frac{\pi ^24}{2}}13.7\sigma .$$
(20)
This quantity $`\mathrm{\Delta }x_{free}`$ will be useful to refer to the “unpinned” state.

The results for discrete systems are sketched in Fig. 11 for $`Z_m=60`$ and $`Z_m=180`$. Monovalent counterions are free to move over the macroion surface for both bare charges $`Z_m`$ considered here. Moreover, our simulation data show that the counterions gradually become pinned with increasing $`Z_c`$. All these features are captured by the $`Z_c`$ dependency of the pinning term $`E_{pin}`$. For multivalent counterions, the degree of pinning increases with decreasing $`Z_m`$. This is due to the fact that the discrete charges get closer from each other by increasing $`Z_m`$ so that a counterion jump from site to site is energetically less demanding. For the continuous case, we have checked that for the same parameters counterions always have a large lateral motion and move all over the sphere.

### 4.2 Moderate Coulomb coupling

In this last part, the Bjerrum length corresponds to that of $`water`$ at room temperature ($`l_B=2\sigma =7.14`$ Å). For this moderate Coulomb coupling counterions occupy $`all`$ the cell volume. Clearly, the probability of finding counterions plainly outside the macroion surface is no more negligible (in contrast with the strong Coulomb coupling). The target quantity is the fraction $`P(r)`$ of counterions lying within a distance $`r`$ from the macroion center and is defined as

$$P(r)=N(r)/N_c$$
(21)
with

$$N(r)=_{r_0}^r4\pi r_i^2c_v(r_i)𝑑r_i,$$
(22)
where $`c_v(r)`$ is the profile of the $`volume`$ counterion concentration and $`N(r)`$ is the so-called integrated charge.

The results for $`Z_m=60`$ and $`Z_m=12`$ are sketched in Fig. 12(a) and Fig. 12(b) respectively. For the highest charge, Fig. 12(a) shows that discretization effects are canceled for any counterion valence. On the other hand, for the small charge density case, Fig. 12(b) shows that discretization effects become important for multivalent counterions. In the present situation, the Coulomb coupling is five times less important than in the strong coupling case studied in Sec. 4.1. Therefore pinning effects can only be noticeable for sufficiently low $`\sigma _m`$ (here $`Z_m=12`$) and multivalent counterions.

## 5 Conclusion

We have performed MD simulations within the framework of the primitive model to study the coupled effects of macroion charge discretization and counterion valence. The macroion bare charge is carried by monovalent microions randomly distributed over the colloidal surface. Different correlational regimes were considered: (i) ground state and (ii) finite temperature.

Concerning the ground state analysis, we were interested in the counterion structure in the neutral state and the overcharging phenomenon. We demonstrated that the order in the surface counterion structure (disorder in counterion structure induced by the discrete random macroion charge distribution) is increased (decreased) by increasing macroion surface charge density $`\sigma _m`$ and/or counterion valence $`Z_c`$. For monovalent counterions, we showed that the ratio between the intra-ion pair (made up of a discrete colloidal surface ion and a counterion) distance and the mean distance between ion pairs is a fundamental quantity to describe counterion ordering. When overcharge comes into play similar effects occur. More precisely, for sufficiently high charge density $`\sigma _m`$ the overcharging with monovalent as well as multivalent counterions is quantitatively the same as the one obtained in the continuous case. For low $`\sigma _m`$, the overcharging with multivalent counterions can even be stronger in the discrete case than in the continuous case counterions. In contrast, for monovalent counterions overcharging is always weaker than in the continuous case but approaches the latter with increasing $`\sigma _m`$.

In the finite temperature case, strong and moderate Coulomb couplings were addressed. In the strong Coulomb coupling, we showed that counterion pinning is very weak for monovalent counterions but it increases with increasing $`Z_c`$ and decreasing $`\sigma _m`$. This involves an increasing disorder in the surface counterion structure with increasing $`Z_c`$ and decreasing $`\sigma _m`$. In the moderate Coulomb coupling corresponding to an aqueous situation, the $`volume`$ counterion distribution is only affected for low $`\sigma _m`$ and multivalent counterions.

A future work will address the presence of added salts as well as the case of two interacting macroions.

I thank C. Holm, A. Johner, K. Kremer and B. Shklovskii for helpful discussions. This work is supported by Laboratoires Européens Associés (LEA).


text:
# Observation of vortex phase singularities in Bose-Einstein condensates

\[

## Abstract

We have observed phase singularities due to vortex excitation in Bose-Einstein condensates. Vortices were created by moving a laser beam through a condensate. They were observed as dislocations in the interference fringes formed by the stirred condensate and a second unperturbed condensate. The velocity dependence for vortex excitation and the time scale for re-establishing a uniform phase across the condensate were determined.

\]

Quantized vortices play a key role in the dynamics of superfluid flow . The nucleation of vortices determines the critical velocity for the onset of dissipation at zero temperature. In liquid helium, vortices are a source of friction between the normal fluid and the superfluid. Multiple interacting vortices can form a lattice or vortex tangle, depending on their geometry and charge.

Bose-Einstein condensates of dilute atomic gases offer a unique opportunity to study quantum hydrodynamics. The low density of the gas allows direct comparison with first principle theories. A condensate is characterized by a macroscopic wavefunction $`\psi (\stackrel{}{r})=\sqrt{\rho (\stackrel{}{r})}\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi (\stackrel{}{r}))`$, which satisfies a non-linear Schrödinger equation. The density $`\rho (\stackrel{}{r})`$ and the velocity field $`\stackrel{}{v}_\mathrm{s}(\stackrel{}{r})`$ in the hydrodynamic equations can now be replaced by the square of the wavefunction ($`\rho (\stackrel{}{r})=|\psi (\stackrel{}{r})|^2`$) and the gradient of the phase of the wavefunction

$$\stackrel{}{v}_\mathrm{s}(\stackrel{}{r})=\frac{\mathrm{}}{m}\varphi (\stackrel{}{r}),$$
(1)
where $`m`$ is the mass of the particle.

Recently, vortices in a Bose-Einstein condensate have been realized experimentally and are currently under intensive study . In most of this work, vortices were identified by observing the density depletion at the cores. The velocity field was inferred only indirectly, with the exception of the work on circulation in a two-component condensate . The flow field of a vortex can be directly observed when the phase of the macroscopic wavefunction is measured using interferometric techniques. In this work, we created one or several vortices in one condensate and imaged its phase by interfering it with a second unperturbed condensate which served as a local oscillator.

Interferometric techniques have previously been applied either to simple geometries such as trapped or freely expanding condensates , or to read out a phase imprinted by rf- or optical fields . Here we apply an interferometric technique to visualize turbulent flow.

The line integral of Eq. (1) around a closed path gives the quantization of circulation:

$$\stackrel{}{v}(\stackrel{}{r})𝑑\stackrel{}{r}=\frac{\mathrm{}}{m}\left(\varphi (\stackrel{}{r}_\mathrm{f})\varphi (\stackrel{}{r}_\mathrm{i})\right).$$
(2)
If the path is singly connected, there is no circulation. If the path is multiply connected (like around a vortex core) the circulation can take values $`nh/m`$ (integer multiples of $`h/m`$), since the phase is only defined modulo $`2\pi `$. As a result, the phase accumulated between two points A and B can be different depending on the path (Fig. 1). The integer quantum number $`n`$ is called the charge of the vortex. When the phase gradient is integrated along a path to the left of the vortex (path ACB), the accumulated phase differs by $`2n\pi `$ from the path to the right (ADB).

This phase difference can be visualized with interferometric techniques. When two condensates with relative velocity $`v`$ overlap, the total density shows straight interference fringes with a periodicity $`h/mv`$. If one of the condensates contains a vortex of charge $`n`$, there are $`n`$ more fringes on one side of the singularity than on the other side (Fig. 1b). The change in the fringe spacing reflects the velocity field of the vortex. An observation of this fork-like dislocation in the interference fringes is a clear signature of a vortex .

Our setup for the interferometric observation of vortices is essentially a combination of two experiments conducted in our lab in the past . Briefly, laser cooled sodium atoms were loaded into a double-well potential and further cooled by rf-induced evaporation below the BEC transition temperature. The double-well potential was created by adding a potential hill at the center of a cigar-shaped magnetic trap. For this, blue-detuned far off-resonant laser light ($`532\mathrm{nm}`$) was focused to form an elliptical $`75\mu \mathrm{m}\times 12\mu \mathrm{m}`$ (FWHM) light sheet and was aligned to the center of the magnetic trap with the long axis of the sheet perpendicular to the long axis of the condensate. The condensates produced in each well were typically $`20\mu \mathrm{m}`$ in diameter and $`100\mu \mathrm{m}`$ in length. The height of the optical potential was $`3\mathrm{kHz}`$, which was slightly larger than the chemical potential of the condensate. A more intense light sheet would have increased the distance between the condensates, thus reduced the fringe spacing .

After two condensates each containing $`1\times 10^6`$ atoms in the $`F=1,m_F=1`$ state were formed in the double-well potential, we swept a second blue-detuned laser beam through one of the condensates using an acousto-optical deflector (Fig. 2). The focal size of the sweeping laser beam ($`12\mu \mathrm{m}\times 12\mu \mathrm{m}`$, FWHM) was close to the width of the condensate. The alignment of this beam was therefore done using an expanded condensate in a weaker trap where the beam profile created a circular “hole” in the condensate density distribution.

After sweeping the beam once across the “sample” condensate, the magnetic and optical fields were switched off and the two condensates expanded and overlapped during $`41\mathrm{ms}`$ time-of-flight. The atoms were then optically pumped into the $`F=2`$ hyperfine ground state for $`80\mu s`$ and subsequently probed for $`20\mu `$s by absorption imaging tuned to the $`F=2`$ to $`F^{}=3`$ cycling transition.

Obtaining high contrast interference fringes ($`70\%`$) across the whole cloud required attention to several key factors. First, standard absorption imaging integrates along the line of sight, which was vertical in our experiment. Any bending or distortions of the interference fringes along the direction of observation would result in a loss of contrast. This was avoided by restricting the absorption of the probe light to a thin horizontal slice. The optical pumping beam was focused into a light sheet of adjustable thickness (typically $`100\mu \mathrm{m}`$, which is about 10% of the diameter of the cloud after the time-of-flight) and a width of a few millimeters. This pumping beam propagated perpendicularly to the probe light and parallel to the long axis of the trap. Second, the number of atoms in the condensates had to be reduced to about $`1\times 10^6`$ (corresponding to a chemical potential $`\mu 2.5\mathrm{kHz}`$). Higher numbers of atoms resulted in a severe loss of contrast, even if we detuned the probe beam to reduce optical density. We suspect that at high density, the two condensates do not simply interpenetrate and interfere, but interact and collide. Third, high spatial homogeneity of the probe beam was important to obtain absorption images with low technical noise. In some of our experiments, the probe beam position was actively scanned to smooth the beam profile. Fourth, the intensity of the sweeping blue-detuned beam was adjusted so that the height of the optical potential was a fraction (typically one half) of the chemical potential of the condensate. Higher intensity of the sweeping beam resulted in reduced interference fringe contrast, probably due to other forms of excitations.

Images of interfering condensates show a qualitative difference between stirred (Fig. 3(b-d)) and unperturbed states (Fig. 3(a)). Fork-like structures in the fringes were often observed for stirred condensates, whereas unperturbed condensates always showed straight fringes. The charge of the vortices can be determined from the fork-like pattern. In Fig. 3(b), vortices were excited in the condensate on top, and the higher number of fringes on the left side indicates higher relative velocity on this side, corresponding to counterclockwise flow. Fig. 3(c) shows a vortex of opposite charge. The double fork observed in Fig. 3(d) represents the phase pattern of a vortex pair. Multiply charged vortices, which are unstable against the break-up into singly charged vortices, were not observed.

Theoretical studies of the superfluid flow around moving objects predict dissipationless flow below a critical velocity . Above this velocity, vortices of opposite circulation are created on the two sides of the moving object and give rise to a drag force . A recent experiment in our group found the onset of dissipation at a critical Mach number of $`v_c/c_s0.1`$ . Dissipation at low velocities can not only occur by vortex shedding, but also by the creation of phonons in the low density regions of the condensate . The direct observation of vortices at similar Mach numbers (Fig. 3) provides strong evidence that vortices play a major role in the onset of dissipation at the critical velocity.

By varying the speed of the laser beam sweep, we determined the velocity dependence of the vortex nucleation process. Due to the turbulent nature of the flow, every image was different even if they were taken under the same experimental conditions. Thus the images were classified by counting the number of vortices and the fractions were plotted versus the speed of the sweep (Fig. 4). The classification was done after putting images in random order to eliminate a possible “psychological bias.” The plot suggests that the nucleation of vortices requires a velocity of $`0.5\mu \mathrm{m}/\mathrm{ms}`$, corresponding to a Mach number $`v_c/c_s0.08`$, consistent with our previous measurement . However, a direct comparison is not possible due to different geometries—in the present experiment, the stirrer was swept along the radial direction of the condensate and almost cut the cloud completely, whereas in the previous experiment, the stirrer moved along the axial direction of an expanded condensate.

Previous experiments have dramatically demonstrated the robustness of the long-range coherence of the condensate . The interferometric technique used here is a sensitive way to assess whether a condensate has the assumed ground state wave function which is characterized by a uniform phase. Sweeping through the condensate excites turbulent flow. By delaying the release of the atoms from the trap by a variable amount of time, we can study the relaxation of the condensate towards its ground state. Fig. 5 shows that the condensate completely recovers its uniform phase after $`50100\mathrm{ms}`$. Vortices have disappeared after $`30\mathrm{ms}`$. Of course, these measurements depend crucially on the specific geometry of the cloud, but they do indicate typical time scales. The sensitivity of this method was illustrated by the following observation: in a weaker trap, we saw an oscillation in time between images with straight high contrast fringes and images with low contrast fringes. This was probably due to the excitation of a sloshing motion along the weak axis of the condensate.

For interferometric detection of vortices, two different techniques have been discussed. The one employed here uses a separate condensate as a local oscillator. The other alternative is to split, shift and recombine a single condensate with vortices. In this case, the interference pattern is more complicated because all singularities and distortions appear twice. The simulations in Ref.  show that the self-interference technique produces more complicated fringe patterns. After completion of this work, we learned that this second technique was used in ENS, Paris to observe the phase pattern of a single vortex .

In conclusion, we have studied vortex excitation in Bose-Einstein condensates using an interferometric technique. This technique is suited for the study of complicated superfluid flows, e.g., when multiple vortices with opposite charges are present. We have obtained a clear visualization of vortices as topological singularities, confirmed the role of vortices in the onset of dissipation near the critical velocity, and observed the relaxation of a stirred condensate towards a state with uniform phase.

The field of Bose-Einstein condensation combines atomic and condensed matter physics. This aspect is illustrated by this work where an atomic physics technique, matter wave interferometry, was used to probe the nucleation of vortices, a problem of many-body physics. There are many issues of vortex physics which remain unexplored, including vortices in two-dimensional condensates (condensates in lower dimensions were recently realized in our laboratory ), pinning of vortices by additional laser beams, and interactions between vortices.

This work was supported by NSF, the ONR, ARO, NASA, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. A.E.L. and A.P.C. acknowledge additional support by fellowships from NSF, and JSEP, respectively.


text:
# Comment on ‘Quantum-Anti-Zeno Paradox’

One can reduce the involved derivation of Balachandran and Roy of their ‘anti-Zeno’ effect \[Phys.Rev.Lett. 84, 4019 (2000)\] to the derivation of standard Zeno-effect. The mechanism of what the authors call ‘anti-Zeno’ effect is a dynamic version of Zeno effect.

In a recent Letter , the well-known quantum-Zeno paradox is re-derived. The authors obtain the correct effect in a complicated form. Furthermore, they suggest as if the quantum-Zeno effect were only related to the continuous measurement of a constant projection operator $`E`$. The Letter then exposes the issue of continuous measurement of the time-dependent projection $`E_t=U_tEU_t^{}`$, derives equations of state evolution, and interpretes the result as anti-Zeno paradox. The Letter claims that the time-dependent case has a new, even an opposite, physical consequence in comparison with the case of constant $`E`$. This is a misleading suggestion, I am afraid. The central purpose of my Comment is to correct the author’s interpretation. I think the Zeno-mechanism itself is the same whether $`E`$ is time-dependent or not. This is a most productive starting point. I derive the Letter’s main result from the equations of common quantum-Zeno effect (where $`E=const.`$), using elementary transformations. The elegance of this method as well as the transparency of the resulting equation will be convincing.

The standard quantum-Zeno effect means in fact the constancy of the measured value ($`1`$ or $`0`$) of the continuously measured projector $`E`$. The constancy of the quantum state follows from the constancy of $`E`$. If $`E`$ depends on time in a smooth enough way, the standard Zeno effect survives perfectly: The value of a continuously measured time-dependent projector $`E_t`$ remains constant ($`0`$ or $`1`$), independently of the self-dynamics of the system. Correspondingly, Zeno effect means in its full generality that the quantum state $`\psi _t`$ remains confined in the subspaces belonging to $`E_t`$ for all time $`t`$ during the continuous measurement. If $`E_t`$ projects on a one-dimensional subspace then, provided the first measurement gives $`1`$, i.e. $`\psi _0\psi _0^{}=E_0`$, the continuous measurement will be dragging the state $`\psi _t`$ with itself and, independently of the Hamiltonian, the identity $`\psi _t\psi _t^{}=E_t`$ remains valid during the continuous measurement. This dragging-mechanism (known already to von Neumann and to others  as pointed out in Refs. ) is the veriest quantum-Zeno mechanism. It is misleading to interprete it as a new anti-Zeno effect. \[The author’s twist to the old metafore is a bit artificial. The watched kettle “boils” iff the path $`\{E_t;t(0,T)\}`$ reaches a boiling state. This is not necessarily sure for “most ways of watching”.\]

To support my viewpoint, I present an elementary derivation of the Letter’s result, starting from the equations of standard Zeno effect. So, consider a system whose unitary evolution $`\dot{\psi }_t=iH_t\psi _t`$ is governed by an arbitrarily given Hamiltonian (maybe of smooth time-dependence). Let the constant projector $`E`$ be continuously measured and let us assume that the initial measured value is $`1`$, i.e., $`\psi _0=E\psi _0`$. Then, the state will unitarily evolve with the effective Hamiltonian:

$$\dot{\psi }_t=iEH_tE\psi _t.$$
(1)
As a consequence, the identity $`E\psi _t=\psi _t`$ will hold during the measurement; this is the standard Zeno effect. Eq. (1), which I take here granted, follows from common treatment of Zeno effect . A smooth time-dependence of the Hamiltonian makes no difference . Now we switch to the general case. Following the Letter, the smooth time-dependence of the measured projector $`E_t`$ will be described by unitary rotations $`E_t=U_tEU_t^{}`$, we set $`U_0=1`$. Note that the rotations $`U_t`$ are not unique while the projectors $`E_t`$ are. It is trivial to inspect that this case goes back to the standard one in a frame rotated by $`U_t`$. Accordingly, I transform the state space as well as the observables: $`\psi _tU_t^{}\psi _t`$, $`O_tU_t^{}O_tU_t`$. Also the self-Hamiltonian transforms: $`H_tU_t^{}H_tU_t+i\dot{U}_t^{}U_t`$. Obviously, the projector to be observed becomes the constant $`E`$ itself. We can therefore apply the Eq. (1) of standard quantum-Zeno. Then we return from the rotating frame to the original one, this equation takes the following ultimate form:

$$\dot{\psi }_t=iE_tH_tE_t\psi _t+[\dot{E}_t,E_t]\psi _t,$$
(2)
leading to the general Zeno effect: $`E_t\psi _t=\psi _t`$. We see that the evolution (2) is always unitary since the effective Hamiltonian $`E_tH_tE_t+i[\dot{E}_t,E_t]`$ is hermitian. This Hamiltonian evolution applies to the general case when the state is described by density matrix. Another advantage of the above form is that, contrary to the Letter’s Eq.(34), the unphysical unitary operators $`U_t`$ do not at all appear in it. Only the projectors $`E_t`$ do. The simplicity of Eq. (2) is remarkable as compared to the Letter’s Eq. (34).

It is worthwile to add that the term ‘anti-Zeno’ had already been reserved for environmental acceleration of quantum transitions, see, e.g., Ref. and references therein.

This work is supported by the Hungarian OTKA Grant T032640.

 A.P. Balachandran and S.M. Roy, Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4019 (2000).

 J. von Neumann, Matematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik (Springer, Berlin, 1932); Y. Aharonov and M. Vardi, Phys. Rev. D21, 2235 (1980).

 D. Giulini, E. Joos, C. Kiefer, J.Kupsch, I.-O. Stamatescu and H.D. Zeh: Decoherence and the Appearance of a Classical World in Quantum Theory (Springer, Berlin, 1996).

 A. Peres, Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1993).

 To verify the effective Hamiltonian $`EH_tE`$, consider the infinitesimal unitary evolution of $`\psi _t=E\psi _t`$ broken by the measurement of $`E`$ at time $`t+dt`$ which amounts in $`Ee^{idtH_t}\psi _t`$. This we can re-write as $`e^{idtEH_tE}\psi _t`$.

 O.V. Prezhdo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 4413 (2000).