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# References

Robustness of the inflationary perturbation spectrum

to trans-Planckian physics

A.A. Starobinsky

Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences,

117334 Moscow, Russia

and

Research Center for the Early Universe, The University of Tokyo,

113-0033 Tokyo, Japan

Abstract

It is investigated if predictions of the inflationary scenario regarding spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations generated from quantum vacuum fluctuations are robust with respect to a modification of the dispersion law for frequencies beyond the Planck scale. For a large class of such modifications of special and general relativity, for which the WKB condition is not violated at super-high frequencies, the predictions remain unchanged. The opposite possibility is excluded by the absence of large amount of created particles due to the present Universe expansion. Creation of particles in the quantum state minimizing the energy density of a given mode at the moment of Planck boundary crossing is prohibited by the latter argument, too (contrary to creation in the adiabatic vacuum state which is very small now).

PACS numbers: 98.80.Cq, 98.70.Vc, 04.62+v

Approximately flat spectrum of scalar and tensor perturbations generated from quantum vacuum fluctuations at a quasi-de Sitter (inflationary) state in the early Universe is certainly the most important prediction of the inflationary scenario since it can be directly tested and falsified using observational data. Fortunately, all existing and constantly accumulating data, instead of falsifying, confirm these predictions (within observational errors). The other observational prediction of the simplest variants of the inflationary scenario – the approximate flatness of the Universe, $`|\mathrm{\Omega }_{tot}1|1`$ – is actually a consequence of the first one since an isotropic part of the spatial curvature may be considered as a monopole perturbation with respect to the spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) background. Note that the first quantitatively correct derivation of perturbation spectra after inflation was first obtained in  in the case of tensor perturbations (gravitational waves) and in  in the case of scalar (adiabatic) perturbations. For completeness, one should mention two important intermediate steps on the way to the right answer for scalar perturbations made between 1979 and 1982: in , the first estimate of scalar perturbations after inflation was made according to which scalar and tensor perturbations are of the same order of magnitude, while in , the spectrum of scalar perturbations during inflation was calculated for the Starobinsky inflationary model  (however, the actual amplitude of scalar perturbations after inflation was still significantly underestimated in both these papers).

Therefore, it is very important to investigate the validity of assumptions on which this prediction is based 111Results of the present paper partially intersect with those obtained in the recent papers  (which appeared when this paper was prepared for publication) and are in general agreement with them whenever intersect.). All derivations of perturbation spectra use quantum field theory in classical curved space-time or semiclassical quantum cosmology. Both these approaches are valid and essentially equivalent if $`HM_P`$ where $`H\dot{a}/a`$$`a(t)`$ is the scale factor of a flat FRW cosmological model, the dot denotes time derivative, $`M_P=\sqrt{G}`$, and $`\mathrm{}=c=1`$ is put throughout the paper. On the other hand, comparison of the predicted spectrum with observational data shows that $`H`$ should be less than $`10^5M_P`$ at least during last $`70`$ e-folds of inflation. So, the assumption $`HM_P`$ is required and self-consistent, if we are speaking about inflationary models having relation to reality. Recently it was questioned if inflationary predictions are robust with respect to a change in the so-called ”trans-Planckian physics”. What is meant by this term is some ad hoc modification of special and general relativity leading to violation of the Lorentz invariance and to deviation of the dispersion law $`\omega (k)`$ for field quanta from the linear one for frequencies (energies) $`\omega >M_P`$, where $`k`$ is a particle wave number (momentum). In the absence of the Lorentz invariance, a preferred system of reference appears (in which this dispersion law is written). Usually, it is identified with the basic cosmological system of reference which is at rest with respect to spatially averaged matter in the Universe.

Initially, ”trans-Planckian physics” was introduced to obtain a new way of derivation of the Hawking radiation from black holes. In this case, it was shown that the spectrum of the Hawking radiation does not depend on a concrete form of the dispersion law $`\omega (k)`$ at $`k\mathrm{}`$ . On the other hand, an opposite result was recently claimed in  regarding the inflationary perturbation spectrum. There exists no self-consistent theory of such a modification leading to some unique dispersion law $`\omega (k)`$, but arguments showing that this possibility should not be considered as logically impossible are based either on higher-dimensional models of the Universe (see, e.g., the recent paper ), or on condensed matter analogs of gravity  which do not have too much symmetry at the most fundamental level. So, $`\omega (k)`$ should be considered as some fixed but unknown function at the present state-of-the-art.

The very possibility of trans-Planckian physics affecting the (supposedly known) sub-Planckian one is due to the expansion of the Universe. This expansion gradually shifts all modes of quantum fields from the former region to the latter one. Really, for a FRW model with the metric

$$ds^2=dt^2a^2(t)dl^2$$
(1)
where $`dl^2`$ is the 3D Euclidean space interval (spatial curvature may be always neglected), spatial dependence of a given mode of a quantum field may be taken as $`\mathrm{exp}(in_\mu x^\mu ),\mu =1,2,3`$. Then the frequency $`\omega =n/a(t),n=|𝐧|=const`$ in the ultra-relativistic (but still Lorentzian) limit. This red-shifting occurs equally well in the early and the present-day Universe. So, any effect connected with trans-Planckian physics can be observed now, too; inflation (i.e., the epoch when $`|\dot{H}|H^2`$) is not specific for that at all.

We will model metric fluctuations by a massless, minimally coupled scalar field satisfying the equation $`_i^i\varphi =0`$. This form is sufficient for both scalar perturbations for which the effective mass satisfies the condition $`|m^2|H^2`$ necessary for inflation, and for tensor perturbations since their amplitude satisfies the same wave equation in the FRW Universe filled by any matter with no non-diagonal pressure perturbations ($`\delta p_{\mu \nu }\delta _{\mu \nu }`$). Also it is assumed that $`HM_P`$. Then the equation for the time-dependent part of $`\varphi _n`$ reads

$$\ddot{\varphi }_n+3H\dot{\varphi }_n+\omega ^2\left(\frac{n}{a}\right)\varphi _n=0$$
(2)
with $`\omega (k)=k`$ for $`\omega M_P`$. Solutions of this equation have the WKB form for $`H\omega M_P`$:

$$\varphi _n=\frac{\alpha _n}{\sqrt{2n}a}e^{in\eta }+\frac{\beta _n}{\sqrt{2n}a}e^{in\eta },\eta =\frac{dt}{a(t)}$$
(3)
where $`\alpha _n,\beta _n=const`$ and $`|\alpha _n|^2|\beta _n|^2=1`$ for any quantum state, if the quantum field $`\widehat{\varphi }`$ is second quantized and $`\varphi _n\mathrm{exp}\left(in_\mu x^\mu \right)(2\pi )^{3/2}`$ is the c-number coefficient of the Fock annihilation operator $`\widehat{a}_𝐧`$. The average number of created pairs is $`N(n)=|\beta _n|^2`$. Therefore, whatever the trans-Planckian physics is (namely, what is the form of $`\omega (k)`$ and what is the initial condition for $`\varphi _n`$ for $`t\mathrm{}`$), once $`\omega M_P`$, we may say that the field mode (3) emerges from the Planck boundary $`n=M_Pa`$ in some quantum state characterized by $`\alpha _n`$ and $`\beta _n`$. In particular, the rate of growth of the average energy density of particles with $`\omega M_P`$ is

$$\frac{d(<\epsilon >a^4)}{a^4dt}=\frac{gM^4H}{2\pi ^2}N(n)|_{n=Ma}$$
(4)
where $`g=1`$ for scalars and $`g=2`$ for gravitons. $`M`$ is an auxiliary mass satisfying $`HM<M_P`$ for which $`\omega (M)=M`$ with sufficient accuracy (for estimates, we will take $`M=M_P`$). It follows from time translation invariance that $`N^{(0)}(n)`$ is independent on $`n`$. Here $`N^{(0)}`$ means the part of $`N(n)`$ which does not depend on background space-time curvature at the moment of Planck boundary crossing ($`n=M_Pa`$).

Let us first consider the case when the WKB condition for $`\varphi _n`$ is satisfied for all $`nHa`$ including the trans-Planckian region $`n>M_Pa`$. Then the natural and self-consistent choice of the initial condition for $`\varphi _n`$ is the adiabatic vacuum for $`t\mathrm{}`$:

$$\varphi _n=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\omega _na^3}}\mathrm{exp}(i\omega _n𝑑t).$$
(5)
Note that this mode is not in the minimum energy density state at finite $`t`$, in particular, at the Planck boundary crossing (we return to the discussion of this point below). Eq. (5) reduces to Eq. (3) with $`\beta _n=0,\alpha _n=1`$ in the sub-Planckian region. Then it just coincides with the initial condition for $`\varphi _n`$ used in the standard calculation of the spectrum of inflationary perturbations. Thus, no correction to the standard result arises in this case irrespective of the form of $`\omega (n/a)`$.

The necessary condition for the WKB behaviour is $`|\dot{\omega }|\omega ^2`$, or

$$\frac{H|d(1/\omega (k))|}{d\mathrm{ln}k}1,k=n/a$$
(6)
for all $`k>M_P`$. Since $`H/M_P`$ is already a small parameter and $`\omega (k)`$ presumably does not depend on $`H`$ for $`kH`$, this inequality is satisfied practically always, if $`\omega `$ does not become zero either for $`k\mathrm{}`$ or at some finite $`k_0>M_P`$ (another dangerous case is when $`d\omega /dk`$ diverges at a finite $`k=k_0`$, in particular, if $`\omega (k_0k)^\gamma `$ with $`1<\gamma <0`$ or $`\omega \omega _0+\omega _1(k_0k)^\gamma ,0<\gamma <1`$). As a consequence, $`N^{(0)}=0`$ for the dispersion law $`\omega (k)=M\mathrm{tanh}^{1/m}[(k/M)^m],m>0`$ proposed by Unruh , for $`\omega ^2=k^2[1+b_m(k/M)^{2m}]`$ with positive $`m`$ and $`b_m`$ considered in , and for the dependence $`\omega ^2=[M\mathrm{ln}(1+k/M)]^2`$ introduced in  (see also ).

Still, there exist exceptional forms of $`\omega (k)`$ for which the WKB behaviour is not valid for some $`k>M_P`$. In particular, this refers to the case $`\omega ^2=k^2[1+b_m(k/M)^{2m}]`$ with $`b_m<0`$ and to the dispersion law introduced in the recent paper  for which $`\omega (k)0`$ at $`k\mathrm{}`$. A priori, such a possibility may not be excluded. Then there is no preferred initial condition for $`\varphi _n`$, and it is not possible to define a unique initial vacuum state. So, in this case $`N^{(0)}0`$ generically, i.e., creation of pairs in the expanding Universe occurs due to trans-Planckian physics.

However, nature tells us that such an effect is infinitesimally small, if exists at all. Really, from the evident condition that created ultra-relativistic particles do not significantly contribute to the present energy density in the Universe, it follows that $`N^{(0)}\stackrel{<}{}H_0^2/M_P^210^{122}`$ where $`H_0=H(t=t_0)`$ is the Hubble constant. Thus, curvature independent particle creation in the expanding Universe due to trans-Planckian physics is very strongly suppressed in any case because of observational data. Of course, the corresponding change in the inflationary perturbation spectrum is negligible, too (the relative correction is $`|\beta _n|=\sqrt{N^{(0)}}`$).

Finally, let us consider a more subtle effect: creation of particles due to both trans-Planckian physics and background space-time curvature in the expanding Universe. Then $`N(n)H^2/M_P^2`$ where $`H`$ is estimated at the moment of high energy boundary crossing $`n=Ma(t)`$. Certainly, corrections to the inflationary spectrum are already negligible ($`H/M_P<10^5`$) in this case. Nevertheless, even such a small effect can be significantly restricted. An example of this effect arises if we would assume that modes crossing the boundary $`n=Ma`$ are in the exactly minimum energy density state just at this moment, i.e., $`\dot{\varphi }_n=in\varphi _n/a=i\sqrt{n/2}a^2`$ and $`\epsilon _n(|\dot{\varphi }_n|^2+n^2a^2|\varphi _n|^2)/2=n/2a^4`$ for each mode at the moment $`t=t_n`$ when $`n=Ma`$. On the other hand, the adiabatic vacuum for each mode has the larger energy density

$$\epsilon _n=\frac{n}{2a^4}\left(1+\frac{H^2a^2}{2n^2}\right)$$
(7)
(see, e.g., ). Note that this excess is due to vacuum polarization only. Of course, this assumption may be immediately criticized from the logical point of view since such a state ceases to diagonalize the mode Hamiltonian and minimize its energy density for all other moments of time $`tt_n`$. Nevertheless, let us consider its implications.

Writing as, e.g., in :

$$\varphi _n(t)=(2\omega _na^3)^{1/2}\left(\alpha _n(t)\mathrm{exp}(i\omega _n𝑑t)+\beta _n(t)\mathrm{exp}(i\omega _n𝑑t)\right),$$
(8)
$$\dot{\varphi }_n(t)=i\left(\frac{\omega _n}{2a^3}\right)^{1/2}\left(\alpha _n(t)\mathrm{exp}(i\omega _n𝑑t)\beta _n(t)\mathrm{exp}(i\omega _n𝑑t)\right),$$
(9)
so that $`\alpha _n(t_n)=1,\beta _n(t_n)=0`$ for the Heisenberg quantum state of each mode $`|\psi _n>`$ which minimizes its Hamiltonian and energy density at the moment $`t=t_n`$ when $`n=Ma`$, we obtain the following system of equations for $`\alpha _n(t)`$ and $`\beta _n(t)`$:

$`\dot{\alpha }_n={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\dot{\omega }}{\omega }}+3{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\right)e^{2i{\scriptscriptstyle \omega _n𝑑t}}\beta _n,`$ (10)
$`\dot{\beta }_n={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\dot{\omega }}{\omega }}+3{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{a}}{a}}\right)e^{2i{\scriptscriptstyle \omega _n𝑑t}}\alpha _n`$ (11)
with the additional condition $`|\alpha _n|^2|\beta _n|^2=1`$. If $`\omega H`$, $`\beta _n`$ is small and $`\alpha _n1`$. For $`tt_n`$, one may take $`\omega _nn/a`$. Then $`\beta _n=\frac{iH(t_n)}{2M}\mathrm{exp}(2i\eta (t_n))`$ plus a strongly oscillating term. So,

$$N(n)=|\beta _n(\mathrm{})|^2=\frac{H^2(t_n)}{4M^2}.$$
(12)
If the cosmological constant is neglected and the present law of the Universe expansion is taken as $`a(t)t^{2/3}`$, then $`N(n)n^3`$ for particle energies close to $`M_P`$ at the present time. Integrating Eq. (4) with $`N(n)`$ from Eq. (12), we obtain $`\epsilon _g=M^2/9\pi ^2t^2`$ for gravitons. For $`MM_P`$, $`\epsilon _gH^2/G`$ that contradicts the assumption that $`a(t)t^{2/3}`$. In other words, this model of particle creation by trans-Planckian physics results in a significant part of the present total energy density of matter in the Universe being contained in gravitons with energies $`M_P`$ that is not compatible with the observed behaviour of $`a(t)`$. Similar arguments show that there may be no term

$$N(n)=N^{(1)}(n)\frac{|R(t_n)|}{M_P^2}$$
(13)
with $`N^{(1)}1`$ in Eq. (4). Here $`R`$ is the scalar curvature.

On the other hand, for the adiabatic vacuum state in the WKB regime, the quantity $`\beta _n=iH(t)a(t)\mathrm{exp}(2in\eta )/2n`$ in the leading order, so it approaches zero for $`t\mathrm{}`$. Note that creation of real gravitons does occur in the next order ($`N=N^{(2)}(n)R^2/M_P^2`$), and even without any violation of the Lorentz invariance . In the latter case, the effect is due to violation of the WKB approximation at ultra-low, not ultra-high, frequencies $`\omega H`$. Also, the notion of ”vacuum” as the state of a minimum energy density may be restored in the following non-rigorous sense: the adiabatic vacuum of each mode $`n`$ in the WKB regime has the lowest energy density compared to other quantum states, if the energy density is averaged (”coarse grained”) over a time interval $`\mathrm{\Delta }t\omega _n^1`$ in accordance with the energy uncertainty relation.

So, whatever occurs in the trans-Planckian region, observational evidence show that creation of particles due to mode transition from the trans-Planckian region to the sub-Planckian one is absent with a very high accuracy. Standard predictions about perturbations generated during inflation are not altered by this hypothetical mechanism, too.

The author is thankful to Profs. K. Sato and M. Kawasaki for hospitality in RESCEU, the University of Tokyo. This research was also partially supported by the Russian Fund for Fundamental Research, grants 99-02-16224 and 00-15-96699.


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# The Inverse Compton Emission Spectra in the Very Early Afterglows of Gamma-Ray Bursts

## 1 Introduction

The current standard model for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows is the fireball shock model (see Piran 1999 for a recent review). It involves a large amount of isotropic equivalent energy release, $`E_010^{5254}`$ ergs, within a few seconds and in a small volume with negligible baryonic load, which leads to a fireball that expands ultra-relativistically into the external medium. A substantial fraction of the kinetic energy of the baryons is transferred to a non-thermal population of relativistic electrons through Fermi acceleration in the shock (e.g. Mészáros $`\&`$ Rees 1993). The accelerated electrons cool via synchrotron emission and inverse Compton scattering in the post-shock magnetic fields and produce the radiation observed in GRBs and their afterglows (e.g. Paczyński & Rhoads 1993; Katz 1994; Sari et al. 1996; Vietri 1997; Waxman 1997a; Wijers et al. 1997). The shock could be either $`\mathrm{𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙}`$ due to collisions between fireball shells caused by outflow variability (Paczyński $`\&`$ Xu 1994; Rees $`\&`$ Mészáros 1994), or $`\mathrm{𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙}`$ due to the interaction of the fireball with the surrounding interstellar or wind media ( Mészáros $`\&`$ Rees 1993; Dai & Lu 1998; Chevalier & Li 1999).

When the relativistic ejecta encounters the external medium, a relativistic forward shock expands into the external medium and a reverse shock moves into and heats the fireball ejecta. The shocked ambient and ejecta materials are in pressure balance and separated by a contact discontinuity. The forward shock continuously heats fresh gas and accelerates electrons, producing long-term afterglows through the synchrotron emission (e.g. Waxman 1997a,b; Wijers et al. 1997; Vietri 1997; Wang et al. 2000a,b; Dai & Lu 1999, 2000; Dai et al. 1999; Huang et al. 1998, 2000; Gou et al. 2001). On the other hand, the reverse shock operates only once and after that emission from the fireball ejecta are suppressed after the reverse shock crosses the ejecta, since then the ejecta expands and cools adiabatically.

When a reverse shock crosses the shell, the shocked shell and the forward shocked external medium carry comparable amount of energy. However, the typical temperature of the shocked shell electrons is lower since the particle number density is higher. So, the typical frequency of the synchrotron radiation from the shocked shell is considerably lower. A strong prompt optical flash (Akerlof et al. 1999) and late time radio flare behavior (Kulkarni et al. 1999), accompanying GRB990123, have been attributed to the synchrotron emission process from this reverse shock (Sari & Piran 1999; Mészáros & Rees 1999).

In a recent paper (Wang, Dai & Lu 2001; hereafter WDL), we analytically study the high energy $`\gamma `$-ray emission from the SSC process in the reverse shocks. The result showed that this emission dominates over the components of the the synchrotron and IC emissions from forward shocks at high energy $`\gamma `$-ray bands from tens of Mev to tens of GeV. Furthermore, we suggest that this mechanism may explain the observations of the prompt high energy gamma-rays detected by EGRET, such as those from GRB930131.

In this work, we numerically calculate the SSC radiation components in the forward and reverse shocks. We also consider another two combined-IC processes, i.e. scatterings of reverse shock photons on the forward shocked electrons and forward shock photons on the reversely shocked electrons. For a wide range of shock parameters, the present numerical results confirm our previous suggestions that the SSC emission from reverse shocks is the most important at the energy bands to which EGRET is sensitive.

While IC emissions from afterglow forward shocks (e.g. Sari et al. 1996; Totani 1998a; Waxman 1997; Panaitescu & Mészáros 1998; Wei & Lu 1998, 2000; Chiang & Dermer 1999; Dermer, B$`\ddot{\mathrm{o}}`$ttcher & Chiang 2000; Dermer, Chiang & Mitman 2000; Panaitescu & Kumar 2000) and GRB internal shocks (Papathanassiou & Mészáros 1996; Pilla & Loeb 1998; Panaitescu & Mészáros 2000) have attracted a lot of investigation, the studies for IC process in reverse shocks and combined-IC scatterings between reverse and forward shocks (i.e. very early afterglows) are still quite preliminary (see e.g. Mészáros, Rees & Papathanassiou 1994).

In section 2, we briefly describe the hydrodynamics evolution of a fireball shell. We present in section 3 the synchrotron seed spectra and shocked electron distributions, then perform a numerical calculation of IC emissions in section 4. Finally, we give a summary and discussion.

## 2 Hydrodynamics of a fireball shell

Let’s consider an ultrarelativistic cold shell with energy $`E`$, initial Lorentz factor $`\eta `$ and a width $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in the observer frame expanding into a cold external interstellar medium (ISM). When the shell sweeps up a large volume of ISM matter, it begins to be decelerated significantly. The interaction between the shell and the ISM matter leads to two shocks: a forward shock propagating into the ISM and a reverse shock moving back into the shell. There are four regions separated by the two shocks and a contact discontinuity: the cold ISM (denoted by the subscript 1), the shocked ISM (2), the shocked shell material (3) and the unshocked shell material (4). From the shock jump conditions and the equalities of pressure and velocity along the contact discontinuity, we can evaluate the Lorentz factor $`\gamma `$, the pressure $`p`$ and the number density $`n`$ in the shocked regions in terms of three variables $`n_1`$, $`n_4`$ and $`\eta `$ (Blandford & McKee 1976; Sari & Piran 1995).

Sari & Piran (1995) showed that, if the shell is thin: $`\mathrm{\Delta }<l/2\eta ^{8/3}`$, where $`l(3E/4\pi n_1m_pc^2)^{1/3}`$ is the Sedov length, the reverse shock is Newtonian (with shell spreading, the reverse shock can be mildly relativistic), which means that the Lorentz factor of the shocked shell material $`\overline{\gamma }_3`$ is almost unity in the frame of the unshocked shell and $`\gamma _3\eta `$. On the other hand, if the shell is thick: $`\mathrm{\Delta }>l/2\eta ^{8/3}`$, the reverse shock is relativistic with $`\overline{\gamma }_3\eta /2\gamma _3`$ and it then considerably decelerates the shell material (Kobayashi 2000).

After the shell being decelerated, the evolution of the adiabatic forward shock follows the Blandford-McKee solution (Blandford & McKee 1976). For the shocked shell, its dynamic evolution may be complex. Kobayashi & Sari (2000) showed that if the fireball shell has relativistic temperature, the Blandford-McKee solution can be regarded as an adequate description quite early on. But for the case that the reverse shock is only mildly-relativistic, the evolution of the shocked shell may deviate the Blandford-McKee solution. This may affect the time evolution of the late-time reverse shock emission, but does not affect our computation of the peak-time emission.

## 3 Synchrotron emission spectra and electron distributions in GRB shocks

### 3.1 The synchrotron seed spectrum

The IC emissions depend on both the seed photon spectrum and the shocked electron distribution. We assume the synchrotron seed spectrum to be described by four broken power-law segments as given in Sari et al. (1998). The distributions of newly-shocked electrons in both the forward and reverse shocks are assumed to be a power law of index $`p`$ ($`N(\gamma )\gamma ^p`$), with the minimum Lorentz factor of shocked electrons in the shell rest frame being $`\gamma _m=\frac{m_p}{m_e}\frac{p2}{p1}\xi _e\gamma _{sh}`$, where $`\xi _e`$ is the fraction of thermal energy carried by electrons (Sari, Piran & Narayan 1998). Here for the forward shock $`\gamma _{sh}=\gamma _2=\gamma _3\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and $`\gamma _{sh}=\overline{\gamma }_3`$ for the reverse shock. Assuming that $`\xi _B`$ is the fraction of the thermal energy carried by the magnetic field, the magnetic field strength is $`B^{}=12\mathrm{G}\xi _{B,2}^{}{}_{}{}^{1/2}(\gamma _2/300)n_{1,0}^{1/2}`$, where $`\xi _{B,2}=\xi _B/10^2`$, and $`n_{1,0}=n_1/10^0`$. The shocked relativistic electrons cool through synchrotron emission and IC scatterings of the synchrotron photons; thus the Lorentz factor of the electrons that cool on a timescale equal to the dynamic timescale is given by

$$\gamma _c=\frac{6\pi m_ec(1+z)}{(Y+1)\sigma _T\gamma _2(B^{})^2t}=\frac{4500}{Y+1}\xi _{B,2}^1(\frac{\gamma _2}{300})^3t_1^1(\frac{1+z}{2})n_{1,0}^1,$$
(1)
where $`t_1=t/10\mathrm{s}`$ denotes the time in the observer frame, $`Y`$ is the Compton parameter, $`z`$ is the redshift of the burst source and $`\sigma _T`$ is the Thomson scattering cross section. The Compton parameter $`Y`$, defined to be the ratio between the inverse Compton luminosity of electrons and the synchrotron luminosity, can be expressed as $`Y=L_{IC}/L_{syn}=U_{rad}/U_B(1+\sqrt{1+4\eta _e\xi _e/\xi _B})/2`$, where $`U_{syn}`$ and $`U_B`$ are the energy density of synchrotron radiation and magnetic field , respectively, and $`\eta _e`$ represents the fraction of the electron energy that was radiated away ( Sari & Esin 2001; Panatescu & Kumar 2000). For fast cooling electrons, $`Y`$ is estimated to $`\sqrt{\xi _e/\xi _B}`$ and it may be smaller for slow cooling electrons. However, as the two combined-IC processes (i.e. scattering of reverse shock photons on the electrons in forward shocks and forward shock photons on the electrons in reverse shocks) are considered here, the IC cooling of the electrons in both shocks should be dominated by the larger of the two photon fields. Because both shocks have comparable energy, the magnetic filed energies in the two shocks are comparable, and therefore $`Y`$ in two shocks is almost the same and equals to $`\sqrt{\xi _e/\xi _B}`$ as long as one shock is in the fast cooling regime.

According to the shell thickness, we divided our discussion into two cases: the thin shell case and the thick shell case. The thin shell case implies that the deceleration timescale $`t_{dec}`$ (defined as the observer time at which the heated ISM energy is comparable to the initial energy $`E`$), i.e.

$$t_{dec}=\frac{r_{dec}}{2\eta ^2c}(1+z)=10(\frac{1+z}{2})E_{53}^{1/3}n_{1,0}^{1/3}\eta _{300}^{8/3}\mathrm{s},$$
(2)
is larger than the shell crossing time ($`\mathrm{\Delta }/c`$), where $`E_{53}=E/10^{53}\mathrm{erg}`$ and $`\eta _{300}=\eta /300`$, while the thick shell has $`\mathrm{\Delta }/c>t_{dec}`$. The reverse shock emission peaks at $`t_{dec}`$ for the thin shell case and at $`\mathrm{\Delta }/c`$ for the thick shell. Our following calculations of the IC spectra correspond to this peak time.

#### 3.1.1  The thin shell case

As described by Sari et al. (1998), the synchrotron radiation from the shocked electrons can be approximated by a broken power-law spectrum with three characteristic break frequencies. One is the self-absorption frequency, $`\nu _a`$. The other two are the peak frequencies of the emission from the electrons with the characteristic Lorentz factor $`\gamma _m`$ and the cooling Lorentz factor $`\gamma _c`$, denoted as $`\nu _m`$ and $`\nu _c`$, respectively. As usual, the fraction of thermal energy carried by electrons, $`\xi _e`$, and magnetic field, $`\xi _B`$, is assumed to be similar in the forward and reverse shock. At the peak time $`t_{dec}`$ of the reverse shock emission, the break frequencies $`\nu _m`$ from the two shocks are, respectively,

$$\nu _m^{rs}=\frac{1}{1+z}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\gamma _m^{rs})^2eB^{}}{2\pi m_ec}=6.4\times 10^{15}(\frac{p2}{p1})^2(\frac{\xi _e}{0.6})^2\xi _{B,2}^{1/2}\eta _{300}^2n_{1,0}^{1/2}(\frac{2}{1+z})\mathrm{Hz},$$
(3)
and

$$\nu _m^{fs}=\frac{1}{1+z}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\gamma _m^{fs})^2eB^{}}{2\pi m_ec}=5.6\times 10^{20}(\frac{p2}{p1})^2(\frac{\xi _e}{0.6})^2\xi _{B,2}^{1/2}\eta _{300}^4n_{1,0}^{1/2}(\frac{2}{1+z})\mathrm{Hz}.$$
(4)
The equipartition values are chosen to be the ones inferred for GRB970508: $`\xi _e=0.6`$ and $`\xi _B=0.01`$ (Granot et al. 1999; Wijers & Galama 1999). Similarly, the cooling break frequencies of both shocks are given by

$$\nu _c^{rs}=\nu _c^{fs}=\frac{1}{1+z}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\gamma _c)^2eB^{}}{2\pi m_ec}=\frac{10^{17}}{(Y+1)^2}E_{53}^{1/2}\xi _{B,2}^{3/2}n_{1,0}^1(\frac{t_{dec}}{10\mathrm{s}})^{1/2}(\frac{2}{1+z})^{1/2}\mathrm{Hz}.$$
(5)
The peak flux of the synchrotron radiation is given by (Wijers & Galama 1999)

$$f_m=\frac{N_e\mathrm{\Gamma }P_{\nu _m}^{}(1+z)}{4\pi D_L^2}$$
(6)
where $`P_{\nu _m}^{}`$ is the peak spectral power and $`D_L`$ is the luminosity distance of the burst. Note that for the forward shock, $`N_e`$ is the total number of swept-up ISM electrons while for the reverse one, $`N_e`$ is the total number of shocked shell electrons. Then, we obtain the peak flux of the two shocks at the time $`t_{dec}`$:

$$f_m^{rs}=4.8(\frac{1+z}{2})D_{L,28}^2\xi _{B,2}^{1/2}\eta _{300}^1n_{1,0}^{1/4}E_{53}^{5/4}(\frac{2}{1+z}\frac{t_{dec}}{10\mathrm{s}})^{3/4}\mathrm{Jy},$$
(7)
$$f_m^{fs}=26(\frac{1+z}{2})D_{L,28}^2\xi _{B,2}^{1/2}E_{53}n_{1,0}^{1/2}\mathrm{mJy},$$
(8)
where $`D_{L,28}=D_L/10^{28}\mathrm{cm}`$.

Now we derive the synchrotron self-absorption frequency of the reverse shock emission. In the comoving frame of the shocked gas (denoted with a prime), the absorption coefficient $`\alpha _\nu ^{}^{}`$ scales as $`\alpha _\nu ^{}^{}\nu _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{(p+4)/2}`$ for $`\nu ^{}>\nu _p^{}\mathrm{min}(\nu _m^{},\nu _c^{})`$ and as $`\alpha _\nu ^{}^{}\nu _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{5/3}`$ for $`\nu ^{}<\nu _p^{}`$. In this frame, the absorption coefficient for $`\nu ^{}<\nu _p^{}`$ is given by (Rybicki & Lightman 1979)

$$\alpha _\nu ^{}^{}=\frac{\sqrt{3}e^3}{8\pi m_e}\left(\frac{3e}{2\pi m_e^3c^5}\right)^{p/2}(m_ec^2)^{p1}KB^{(p+2)/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{3p+2}{12}\right)\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(\frac{3p+22}{12}\right)\nu _{p}^{}{}_{}{}^{(p+4)/2}\left(\frac{\nu ^{}}{\nu _p^{}}\right)^{5/3},$$
(9)
where $`K=(p1)n_4(4\overline{\gamma }_3+3)\gamma _p^{p1}`$, $`\gamma _p\mathrm{min}(\gamma _m,\gamma _c)`$, $`e`$ is the electron charge and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(x)`$ is the Gamma function. Noting that the shocked shell width in the comoving frame $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{}=r/\eta (4\overline{\gamma }_3+3)`$ and setting

$$\tau (\nu _a^{})\alpha _{\nu _a^{}}^{}\mathrm{\Delta }r^{}=1,$$
(10)
we get the synchrotron self-absorption frequency $`\nu _a^{rs}`$ in the observer frame,

$$\nu _a^{rs}=1.4\times 10^{13}E_{53}^{1/5}\eta _{300}^{8/5}(\frac{\xi _e}{0.6})^1\xi _{B,2}^{1/5}n_{1,0}^{9/10}(\frac{2}{1+z})\mathrm{Hz}$$
(11)
for $`p=2.5`$. Similarly, one can obtain the synchrotron self-absorption frequency of the forward shock emission,

$$\nu _a^{fs}=2.2\times 10^{11}E_{53}^{7/10}\xi _{B,2}^{6/5}n_{1,0}^{11/10}(\frac{t_{dec}}{10\mathrm{s}})^{1/2}(Y+1)(\frac{2}{1+z})^{1/2}\mathrm{Hz}.$$
(12)
Please note that because the forward shock always locates in front of the reverse shock, there will be almost no detected reverse shock emission below the self-absorption frequency of the forward shock. Thus, the synchrotron spectrum of the slow-cooling reverse shock is described by

$$f_\nu ^{rs}=f_m^{rs}\{\begin{array}{cccc}0\hfill & \nu <\nu _a^{fs}\hfill & & \\ (\nu /\nu _a^{rs})^2(\nu _a^{rs}/\nu _m^{rs})^{1/3}\hfill & \nu _a^{fs}<\nu <\nu _a^{rs}\hfill & & \\ (\nu /\nu _m^{rs})^{1/3}\hfill & \nu _a^{rs}<\nu <\nu _m^{rs}\hfill & & \\ (\nu /\nu _m^{rs})^{(p1)/2}\hfill & \nu _m^{rs}<\nu <\nu _c^{rs}\hfill & & \\ (\nu /\nu _c^{rs})^{p/2}(\nu _m^{rs}/\nu _c^{rs})^{(p1)/2}\hfill & \nu _c^{rs}<\nu \hfill & & \end{array},$$
(13)
while for the forward shock, which is in the fast cooling regime for typical shock parameters,

$$f_\nu ^{fs}=f_m^{fs}\{\begin{array}{ccc}(\nu /\nu _a^{fs})^2(\nu _a^{fs}/\nu _c^{fs})^{1/3}\hfill & \nu <\nu _a^{fs}\hfill & \\ (\nu /\nu _c^{fs})^{1/3}\hfill & \nu _a^{fs}<\nu <\nu _c^{fs}\hfill & \\ (\nu /\nu _c^{fs})^{1/2}\hfill & \nu _c^{fs}<\nu <\nu _m^{fs}\hfill & \\ (\nu /\nu _m^{fs})^{p/2}(\nu _c^{fs}/\nu _m^{fs})^{1/2}\hfill & \nu _m^{fs}<\nu \hfill & \end{array}.$$
(14)
#### 3.1.2 The thick shell case

In a thick shell case, the reverse shock becomes relativistic before it crosses the entire shell and begins to decelerate the shell material. It crosses a thick shell at $`T\mathrm{\Delta }/c`$ and the peak time of the reverse shock emission is comparable to the GRB duration $`T`$. The Lorentz factor of the shocked shell scales with time as ( Sari 1997)

$$\gamma _3=(\frac{l}{\mathrm{\Delta }})^{3/8}(\frac{4ct}{\mathrm{\Delta }})^{1/4},$$
(15)
thus the Lorentz factor of the reverse shock at this peak time is

$$\overline{\gamma }_3=\eta /2\gamma _3=2\eta _{500}E_{53}^{1/8}(\frac{2}{1+z}\frac{T}{100\mathrm{s}})^{3/8}n_{1,0}^{1/8}.$$
(16)
The reference values of the comoving width and the initial Lorentz factor of the thick shell have been chosen to be $`\mathrm{\Delta }=3\times 10^{12}\mathrm{cm}`$ and $`\eta =500`$, respectively. The shock radius at the peak time of the reverse shock emission is

$$r=2\gamma _3^2cT/(1+z)=5\times 10^{16}E_{53}^{1/4}n_{1,0}^{1/4}(\frac{2}{1+z}\frac{T}{100}\mathrm{s})^{1/4}\mathrm{cm}.$$
(17)
Using the expressions of $`\gamma _m`$, $`\gamma _c`$, $`Y`$ parameter, and Eq.(7), we obtain the break frequencies and peak flux of the reverse shock synchrotron spectrum:

$$\nu _m^{rs}=1.8\times 10^{16}(\frac{p2}{p1})^2(\frac{\xi _e}{0.6})^2\xi _{B,2}^{1/2}\eta _{500}^2n_{1,0}^{1/2}(\frac{2}{1+z})\mathrm{Hz},$$
(18)
$$\nu _c^{rs}=\frac{7.6\times 10^{15}}{(Y+1)^2}\xi _{B,2}^{3/2}E_{53}^{1/2}n_{1,0}^1(\frac{T}{100\mathrm{s}})^{1/2}(\frac{2}{1+z})^{1/2}\mathrm{Hz},$$
(19)
$$f_m^{rs}=0.3(\frac{1+z}{2})D_{L,28}^2\xi _{B,2}^{1/2}\eta _{500}^1n_{1,0}^{1/4}E_{53}^{5/4}(\frac{2}{1+z}\frac{T}{100\mathrm{s}})^{3/4}\mathrm{Jy}.$$
(20)
Noting that the shocked shell width in the comoving frame $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{}=\mathrm{\Delta }\gamma _2/(4\overline{\gamma }_3+3)`$ and the number density $`n_3=(4\overline{\gamma }_3+3)E/(4\pi m_pc^2\eta \gamma _2\mathrm{\Delta }r^2)`$, we can also obtain the self-absorption break frequency $`\nu _a`$ using Eq.(10) for the thick shell case. Since for a thick shell, the reverse shock is generally in the fast cooling regime, the synchrotron spectrum is described in a way similar to Eq.(14).

### 3.2 Electron distribution in shocked material

The electron distribution $`N(\gamma )`$ in shocked shell or shocked external medium is determined by the initial shocked electron distribution $`N_i(\gamma )`$ and by electron cooling effect through synchrotron and IC radiation and possibly by the self-absorption of the synchrotron photons. If the newly-shocked electrons with typical Lorentz factor $`\gamma _m`$ cools faster than the shock dynamics timescale, the resulting electron distribution takes the form

$$N(\gamma )\{\begin{array}{cc}\gamma ^2\hfill & \mathrm{if}\gamma _c<\gamma <\gamma _m\hfill \\ \gamma ^{p1}\hfill & \mathrm{if}\gamma _m<\gamma <\gamma _{max}\hfill \end{array},$$
(21)
where $`\gamma _{max}`$ is the maximum Lorentz factor of shocked electron, which is determined by equating the electron acceleration timescale with the synchrotron cooling timescale (e.g. Mészáros, Laguna & Rees 1993), i.e. $`\gamma _{max}=10^8B^{1/2}`$. In the opposite case, most electrons have a random Lorentz factor $`\gamma _m`$, and the electron distribution is

$$N(\gamma )\{\begin{array}{cc}\gamma ^p\hfill & \mathrm{if}\gamma _m<\gamma <\gamma _c\hfill \\ \gamma ^{p1}\hfill & \mathrm{if}\gamma _c<\gamma <\gamma _{max}\hfill \end{array}$$
(22)
## 4  IC emissions from very early external shocks

After having obtained the seed photon spectrum and the electron distribution, now we can compute the up-scattering emissions of the synchrotron radiation by relativistic electrons in the very early external shocks. We consider only the first-order IC and neglect higher order IC processes, because a once-scattered typical photon by a typical electron with $`\gamma _e`$ has energy of order $`(h\nu )_{\mathrm{com}}\gamma _e^3m_ec^2`$ in the rest frame of the second scattering electron. Then we can no longer use Thomson limit to the scattering cross section, and the energy gained of the scattered photon in each successive scattering will be reduced due to electron recoil and to the necessity of using Klein-Nishina scattering cross section (Sari & Esin 2001).

For single scattering, the IC volume emissivity in the comoving frame for a distribution $`N(\gamma )`$ of scattering electrons is given by (Rybicki & Lightman 1979; Sari & Esin 2001)

$$j_\nu ^{}^{{}_{}{}^{}IC}=3\sigma _T_{\gamma _{min}}^{\gamma _{max}}𝑑\gamma N(\gamma )_0^1𝑑xg(x)\overline{f}_{\nu _s^{}}^{}(x),$$
(23)
where $`x\nu ^{}/4\gamma ^2\nu _s^{}`$, $`\overline{f}_{\nu _s^{}}^{}`$ is the incident specific flux at the shock front in the comoving frame, and $`g(x)=1+x+2x\mathrm{ln}(x)2x^2`$ reflects the angular dependence of the scattering cross section for $`\gamma _e1`$ (Blumenthal & Gould 1970). Noting that $`f_\nu ^{}^{{}_{}{}^{}IC}=j_\nu ^{}^{{}_{}{}^{}IC}4\pi r^2\mathrm{\Delta }r^{}/4\pi D^2`$ and the synchrotron flux $`f_\nu ^{}^{}=\overline{f}_{\nu _s^{}}^{}4\pi r^2/4\pi D^2`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }r^{}`$ is the comoving width of the shocked shell or ISM medium and $`D`$ is source distance, we obtain the IC flux in the observer frame

$$f_\nu ^{IC}=3\mathrm{\Delta }r^{}\sigma _T_{\gamma _{min}}^{\gamma _{max}}𝑑\gamma N(\gamma )_0^1𝑑xg(x)f_\nu (x)$$
(24)
by transforming Eq.(23) into the observer frame.

Apart from the SSC scattering processes in the reverse and forward shocks, another two combined-IC scattering processes are also present. Because approximately one-half of the photons arised in one shock region will diffuse into the another shock region from the point of view of the comoving frame, the IC flux Eq.(24) for the combined-IC scatterings should be divided by a factor of two. Though the scattered photons move isotropically in the comoving frame, the beaming effect makes these photons moving along the direction to the observer.

Our main calculation results are as follows:

i) The IC spectral flux from a relativistic thin shell expanding into an ISM at the deceleration time are shown in Fig. 1. Typical shock parameters are used: $`E=10^{53}\mathrm{erg}`$, $`\xi _e=0.6`$, $`\xi _B=0.01`$, $`p=2.5`$ and $`n_1=1`$. Four IC spectra are displayed in the figure, including two SSC spectra from the reverse shock (solid curve) and forward shock (dotted curve), respectively, scatterings of the reverse shock photons on the forward shocked electrons (dash-dotted curve) and the forward shock photons on the reversely shocked electrons (dashed curve). From Fig.1, it can be clearly seen that the SSC from the reverse shock dominates over the other three IC components at gamma-ray bands less than a few tens of GeV with a peak around a few MeV. At $`\epsilon 10100\mathrm{MeV}`$, the SSC component of the reverse shock exceeds other IC components by about two orders of magnitude. Although the peak location of SSC emission strongly depends on this unknown parameter $`xi_e`$, this emission dominates over other IC emissions for a wide range of shock parameters.

ii) In Fig.2, we present the energy spectra ($`\nu f_\nu ^{IC}`$) of the IC emissions with various shock parameters for the thin shell case. We find that a) for a wide range of shock parameters, the SSC component from reverse shocks is the most important at energy bands from tens of MeV to tens of GeV, to which EGRET is sensitive. It dominates over both other IC and the synchrotron emission components. b) The SSC spectra from reverse shocks above the turnover ($`\nu >\nu _p^{IC}`$) are logarithmically more flattening than that of the seed synchrotron spectrum and varying continuously . For small values of $`p`$, we even find that the IC energy output peak well above $`\mathrm{min}(\nu _c^{rs,IC},\nu _m^{rs,IC})`$, which is the peak emission frequency for the approximate power-law IC spectrum. A similar result was reached by Sari & Esin (2001) for the SSC of afterglow emission. Moreover, for small value of $`p`$ (e.g. $`p=2.2`$), the SSC emission from the reverse shock dominates over the synchrotron and IC processes even in the TeV energy bands (see Fig. 2(d)). c) Fig.2 also suggest that strong TeV emission should also be emitted from the two combined-IC and forward shock SSC processes for most GRBs. For a moderate steep distribution of the shocked electrons (e.g. $`p=2.5`$), the combined-IC and/or forward shock SSC become increasing dominated at TeV bands. However, it would only be detected from nearby, low-redshift bursts for which the attenuation due to intergalactic infrared emission is small.

iii) EGRET has detected prompt emission above $`30\mathrm{M}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$ from several bright GRBs triggered by BATSE (Catelli et al. 1998), among which GeV photons have been detected from GRB930131 (Sommer et al. 1994; Ryan et al. 1994) and GRB940217 (Hurley et al. 1994). GRB940217 even exhibits delayed GeV emission 90 minutes after the trigger. Several models have been proposed to explain the delayed and prompt GeV emissions. For example, Mészáros & Rees (1994) proposed that the impact of a relativistic wind from the central engine on the external matter may cause the delayed GeV emission; Katz (1994) suggested that the impact of the fireball on a dense clouds could produce high-energy gamma-ray emission via $`\pi ^0`$ decay process; Vietri (1997) and Totani (1998a,b) suggested that the synchrotron radiation of the protons may be responsible for the GeV emissions; etc. In a recent paper (WDL), we have suggested that the SSC emission from the reverse shock could explain both the flux level and the spectrum of the high energy gamma-rays detected by EGRET. We here compute the slope of the photon spectrum at high energy bands and plot it in Fig. 3. We can see that at energy bands from tens of MeV to tens of Gev, the photon spectrum index $`\alpha `$ (the photon number $`dn(h\nu )/d\nu \nu ^\alpha `$) ranges from 1.7 to 2.15, which is consistent with the observed high energy gamma-ray photon spectrum by EGRET from some bright GRBs (e.g. Sommer et al. 1994).

iv) Then, we investigate the SSC emission from the reverse shock of a thick shell. We compute the time-integrated SSC energy spectrum for a thick shell with typical parameters as $`\mathrm{\Delta }=3\times 10^{12}`$, $`E=10^{53}\mathrm{erg}`$, $`p=2.5`$ and $`n_1=1`$, but with different values of the initial Lorentz factor $`\eta `$: $`\eta =300`$(dash-dotted curve), $`\eta =500`$(dashed curve) and $`\eta =1000`$ (dotted curve). They are plotted in Fig. 4. in comparison with the thin shell case (solid curve). As $`\eta `$ increases, the peak frequency of the time-integrated SSC energy spectrum increase accordingly. The peak frequency of SSC emission of the thick shell is not far from that of the thin shell case with the same $`\eta `$ and typical shock parameters, though the reverse shock of the thick shell is relativistic. This is because that this IC emission peaks at $`\nu _c^{rs,IC}`$ (this reverse shock is in the fast cooling regime), which is close to $`\nu _m^{rs,IC}`$ for the thin shell. Fig.4 also shows that the peak flux is much lower than the thin shell case. The reason is that at the peak time of the reverse shock emission, the shell has traveled to a larger distance, resulting a lower electron scattering optical depth in the shell.

## 5 Summary and Discussion

The fireball model for GRBs involving an ultrarelativistic fireball ejecta expanding into an external medium has two successful predictions: one is the afterglow emission from the synchrotron process in the forward shock region (Katz 1994; Mészáros & Rees 1997), and another is the prediction of bright optical emission when a reverse shock is present (Sari & Piran 1999b). Subsequent observations of multiwavelength afterglows (e.g. Wijers, Rees & Mészáros 1997) and a bright optical flash (Akerlof et al. 1999) gave basic confirmation of this model. In this paper, we calculate the SSC and combined-IC emissions from these two shock regions at very early phases. For a wide range of shock parameters, the SSC emission from the reverse shock dominates over the synchrotron and other IC emissions at energy bands from tens of MeV to tens of GeV, while the combined-IC and/or the forward shock SSC emissions become increasingly dominant at TeV energy bands.

We further compute the photon spectrum index $`\alpha `$ (viz. $`dn(h\nu )/d\nu \nu ^\alpha `$) of the reverse shock SSC emission, which is $`\alpha 2.0`$ for typical shock parameters at energy bands to which EGRET is sensitive. Based upon this and the SSC spectral flux level, we suggest that this process can provide a plausible explanation for the prompt high energy gamma-rays detected from some bright bursts, such as those from GRB930131, GRB910503 and GRB940217 etc. In WDL, we also derived the decaying light curves of SSC emission after the reverse shock peak time and found that it decays quite rapidly, regardless whether the observed band locates above or below the cooling break frequency of the inverse Compton component. The planned Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) mission will have larger effective area and field of view than EGRET, and so will likely be able to monitor the time evolution of the high energy gamma-ray flux.

At TeV energy bands, the combined-IC emissions and the SSC emission from the forward shock become dominant over the SSC from the reverse shock for intermediate values of $`p`$ (e.g. $`p=2.5`$). Nevertheless, for small values of $`p`$, the SSC from the reverse shock still dominates even in TeV energy bands. Recently the Milagro group reported evidence for TeV emission from GRB970417a, one of the 54 BATSE GRBs in the field of view of their detector, Milagrito (Atkins et al. 2000). An excess of gamma-rays above background is seen during the durations of this burst and the chance probability for detecting such an excess is estimated to be less than $`1.5\times 10^3`$. Totani (2000) suggested that proton-synchrotron model of GRBs provides a possible explanation for these observational results. Our calculation is also consistent with detection of TeV emission from GRBs that are near enough to avoid serious attenuation due to intergalactic infrared radiation field.

Two currently popular models for GRBs are the mergers of compact objects (neutron stars or black holes) and the cataclysmic collapse of massive stars. In the former model, compact objects are expected to have significant spacial velocities so that their mergers would take place at many kiloparsecs outside their birthplaces. Thus, GRBs produced by this model would occur in the interstellar medium (ISM) with density $`n1\mathrm{cm}^3`$. However, if a collapsing massive star (Woosley 1993; Paczyński 1998) is the origin of the GRBs, the circumburst medium is the wind ejected by the star prior to its collapse, whose density decreases outwards. In the wind circumburst medium case, the external medium density is much higher than the ISM case at the deceleration length-scale and the magnetic field is much higher accordingly. Therefore, from Eq.(2), we know that most of the shocked electrons cool to be sub or trans-relativistic ones ($`\gamma _c11`$) on the deceleration time $`t_{dec}`$ (also see Eq.(14) in Dai & Lu 2001). With such low values of $`\gamma _c`$, the self-absorbed cyclo-synchrotron radiation and multiple Compton scatterings of these cooled electrons may construct the low-energy part of the resulting spectrum. At the high-frequency part, the spectrum is similar to the fast-cooling spectrum of relativistic electrons, i.e. the spectrum is still in the form of $`f_\nu \nu ^{1/2}`$ extending up to $`\nu _m`$ and then $`f_\nu \nu ^p`$ upward, produced by the cooling of newly-shocked electrons. The resulting IC spectra in this case is therefore much more complicated. Also, we estimate that the IC spectra flux at GeV to TeV bands may be as high as that of the ISM case.

We wish to thank the anonymous referee for his/her constructive and careful comments that enabled us to improve the manuscript. XYW also thanks Drs D. M. Wei and Z. Li for valuable discussions. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grants 19973003 and 19825109, and the National 973 project.

FIGURE CAPTION

Figure 1. The spectra of the IC emissions at the reverse shock peak time for typical shock parameters: $`E=10^{53}\mathrm{erg}`$, $`\xi _e=0.6`$, $`\xi _B=0.01`$, $`p=2.5`$ and an ISM external medium with $`n_1=1`$. The solid  and dotted curves represent the SSC emissions from the reverse shock and forward shock, respectively. Also plotted are the IC emissions of scatterings of reverse shock photons on the forward shock electrons (dash-dotted curve) and forward shock photons on the reversely shocked electrons (dashed curve).
Figure 2.The energy spectra of synchrotron and IC emissions at the reverse shock peak time for the ISM circumburst environment case with various shock parameters: a)$`E=10^{53}\mathrm{erg}`$, $`\xi _e=0.6`$, $`\xi _B=0.01`$, $`p=2.5`$ and $`n_1=1`$; b)$`E=10^{52}\mathrm{erg}`$, $`\xi _e=0.6`$, $`\xi _B=0.01`$, $`p=2.5`$ and $`n_1=1`$; c)$`E=10^{53}\mathrm{erg}`$, $`\xi _e=0.6`$, $`\xi _B=10^4`$, $`p=2.5`$ and $`n_1=1`$; d)$`E=10^{53}\mathrm{erg}`$, $`\xi _e=0.6`$, $`\xi _B=0.01`$, $`p=2.2`$ and $`n_1=1`$. The thin dash-dotted and dashed curves  represent the synchrotron spectra of the reverse shock and forward shock, respectively. The four IC spectra are shown by the curves in the same way as in Fig. 1.
Figure 3. The high energy gamma-ray photon spectrum index $`\alpha `$ of the SSC emission from the reverse shock with shock parameters as used in Fig.1.
Figure 4. Comparison of the time-integrated energy spectrum between the thin shell case (solid curve) with shock parameters as used in Fig.1 and thick shell case with the same shock parameters $`E=10^{53}\mathrm{erg}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=3\times 10^{12}\mathrm{cm}`$, $`p=2.5`$ and $`n_1=1`$ but with different values of $`\eta `$ : $`\eta =300`$(dash-dotted curve), $`\eta =500`$(dashed curve) and $`\eta =1000`$ (dotted curve).


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

One of the most intriguing ideas that emerged in theoretical physics during the last decade was definitely the holographic principle, formulated by ’t Hooft and Susskind , whose considerations stemmed from earlier work by Bekenstein  and Hawking . According to that principle, the logarithm of the number of different possible quantum states of a physical system is bounded by its surface area in Planck units, which strongly contradicts our expectations based on quantum field theory. The precise meaning of this general statement was, however, unclear. It is because in various physical situations, there are problems with the entropy, which should be, of course, bounded by the same number as well. One of the most important examples is the case of very large regions (much larger than the Hubble scale), in cosmological models with a uniform entropy density, where the volume grows faster than the surface area, and thus at some point the coarse-grained entropy violates the holographic bound.

This motivated Fischler and Susskind to formulate their cosmological bound on entropy passing through certain light-like hypersurfaces . Their conjecture was improved and generalized by Bousso to a form  which was subsequently proven by Flanagan, Marlof and Wald  under two different sets of hypotheses about the entropy flux. Unfortunately, Bousso’s conjecture alone does not seem to have good properties for actual construction of a general holographic theory , and thus, the question of holography in general spacetimes remains open.

In the meantime, string theory went through a period of very rapid progress. Two of the most important results, Matrix theory  and especially Maldacena’s AdS-CFT correspondence , can be viewed as realizations of the holographic principle, which justifies Susskind’s claim  that string theory should be holographic. This strongly supports the hopes that it will be possible to describe gravity without changing the principles of quantum mechanics.

However, it is far from clear what should be an appropriate description of our universe within the present-day string theory. Many important stringy arguments rely on unbroken supersymmetry, which we do not observe in nature. Non-supersymmetric configurations of string theory suffer in general from the cosmological constant problem , and they may also undergo a catastrophic vacuum decay . Therefore, the holographic principle seems to be one of the very few connections between strings and the real world.

Even if we had a description of our universe of an AdS-CFT type, we should not be fully satisfied. The AdS-CFT correspondence describes the spacetime only from the point of view of observers at infinity, while we can easily imagine observers falling into black holes as well. Should we discriminate against those observers, just because the holes are black? That would certainly be against the principle of general relativity, which states that it must be possible to describe nature from the point of view of any observer.

Actually, there is a discrepancy between quantum mechanics and general relativity even on the most fundamental level. According to quantum mechanics, only quantities which are in principle observable have physical significance, whereas general relativity predicts the existence of causal horizons, and therefore not everything should be accessible to our observations. An even more striking discrepancy arises when we think about an evaporating black hole (Fig. 2) and when we assume that its evolution is unitary (at least for observers at infinity). In that case, we arrive at a paradox of duplication of quantum information. It seems that the only possible resolution to it is the black hole complementarity principle , which states that the laws of quantum mechanics are not violated, provided we consider only quantities seen by just one particular observer. Because we are interested in the possibility of having a theory of quantum gravity, we will adopt this philosophy throughout the whole paper.

Overview

The main idea of this paper stems from the fact that in most inflationary cosmological models, an overwhelming majority of the coarse-grained entropy was created after inflation or at the end of it. Therefore, we do not need any volume-extensive entropy to be present in the universe before inflation in order to be consistent with observations. If we now use Occam’s razor, we can even say that ‘at the beginning of time,’ there was no volume-extensive entropy at all. (Actually, this is a natural assumption of Linde’s chaotic inflation .) If this is really true, it has interesting consequences: in this case, we can conjecture that there is a ‘holographic’ bound on the entanglement entropy inside (or outside) closed space-like surfaces. These surfaces should be observable (i.e. there must be a spacetime-point in the causal future of the whole surface), and they should satisfy the generalized convexity condition of Section 4.1, by which we mean a certain condition of the Bousso type (saying that the expansion of any light-like hypersurface orthogonal to the surface of interest should not change its sign as we go from one point of the surface to another). The conjecture itself then states, roughly speaking, that the entanglement entropy inside (or outside) any region bounded by such a surface is not larger than the surface area $`A`$ (in Planck units). Here, the entropy can be the entanglement entropy with respect to any other physical system.

Presumably, there are two sources of the entanglement entropy: entanglement in the vacuum and the presence of ‘real particles’, which can be possibly entangled. It is impossible to clearly distinguish these two contributions, but it will not be crucial for our further discussion. We can expect that the entanglement entropy due to quantum fluctuations in the vacuum should not exceed the surface area (see Section 3.1), but we are unable to make any more precise statement about it. On the other hand, the contribution of ‘real particles’ should be nicely bounded by $`A/4`$, as we can argue using Bousso’s bound .

In addition, we present a very radical interpretation of this bound (which can be wrong even if the conjecture itself is correct). According to it, the surface area bounds not only the entanglement entropy, but also the logarithm of the dimension of the Hilbert space which is capable of describing all the possible quantum states of the respective region. This is in spite of the fact that the coarse-grained entropy can be many orders of magnitude larger than $`A`$. We argue that the coarse-grained entropy is not relevant for the dimension of the true Hilbert space in quantum gravity, because it ignores subtle quantum correlations between the state of matter in cosmologically large regions, which must be (and actually are) according to inflationary cosmology really present.

Finally, we mention a possible weaker form of the conjecture, where we restrict ourselves just to those surfaces for which there exists at least one event in the causal past of the whole surface. The validity of such a formulation of the conjecture does not depend on any particular cosmological assumption.

## 2  Entropy and its properties

In this section we will review some properties of entropy which we will need in the rest of the paper.

### 2.1  Entropy, coarse-grained entropy, and entanglement entropy

The fine-grained entropy (von Neumann entropy or simply entropy) of a quantum mechanical system which is in a mixed state described by a density matrix $`\rho `$ is defined as111 Strictly speaking, this is the definition of entropy in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. In quantum field theory, we must also specify a regularization scheme, and to make this quantity finite, we have to discard the contribution of quantum fluctuations, which is for localized systems nonzero and ultraviolet divergent (as discussed in Section 3.1). However, we expect that this divergence will be resolved in the theory of quantum gravity. Also note that in this paper we will use extensively the Planck units $`\mathrm{}=c=G=k_B=1`$.

$$S=\text{Tr}(\rho \mathrm{ln}\rho ).$$
(2.1)
If the density matrix $`\rho `$ is thermal, then this definition coincides with what is called ‘entropy’ in phenomenological thermodynamics. However, when the system is in a pure state $`|\psi `$, the definition (2.1) gives us zero, in spite of the fact that the pure state can be without any problems a typical representative of a thermal ensemble. This contradicts our thermodynamical intuition, and that is why we usually introduce the procedure called coarse-graining. One of the ways to think about coarse-graining is as follows: We divide the whole system with Hilbert space $``$ into a lot of local subsystems with Hilbert spaces $`_i`$,

$$=_1_2\mathrm{}_n.$$
(2.2)
Then, we compute the reduced density matrices

$$\rho _i=\text{Tr}_{_1,_2\mathrm{}_n\mathrm{except}_i}|\psi \psi |$$
(2.3)
and the corresponding entropies

$$S_i=\text{Tr}__i(\rho _i\mathrm{ln}\rho _i).$$
(2.4)
When we add these entropies together,

$$S^{\mathrm{cg}}=\underset{i}{}S_i,$$
(2.5)
we obtain the desired answer,222Here, we have to discard the contribution of quantum fluctuations (discussed in Section 3.1) even if we believe that the ultraviolet divergence will be resolved in the theory of quantum gravity. This is because the entropy due to quantum fluctuations is proportional to the surface area of the physical system, and thus for a large number of small systems, we would get a quantity without any physical meaning. which we call coarse-grained entropy. It is this kind of entropy the second law talks about. Note that the coarse-grained entropy (2.5) can never be smaller than the fine-grained entropy (2.1),

$$SS^{\mathrm{cg}}.$$
(2.6)
This is because of the triangle inequality

$$|S_1S_2|SS_1+S_2,$$
(2.7)
which holds in the case of dividing a system into two subsystems.

Let us focus on the case of two subsystems a little bit more. From (2.7) it follows that if the overall system is in a pure state, $`\rho =|\psi \psi |`$, the entropy $`S_1`$ must be equal to $`S_2`$. We refer to it as entanglement entropy. Now, suppose that the first subsystem is a physical system we want to study and the second one corresponds to its surroundings, which include some measuring apparatus. Also suppose that the overall system is completely isolated and that it is in a pure state.333This is without loss of generality, because a mixed state can be thought of as an ensemble of pure states with different probabilities, and we will not consider performing a measurement on the overall system with an external apparatus. After a measurement of the system of interest (i.e. of the first subsystem), it will be in general entangled with its surroundings (i.e. the apparatus and other parts of the second subsystem, for example some particles escaping to infinity). If there was any limitation on the maximum degree of entanglement we could produce, there would also be a limitation on the number of states we could distinguish with our apparatus. With an ideal apparatus, we would be able to distinguish all the states of the studied system. In that case, the maximum entanglement entropy which could be in principle produced by the measurement would coincide with the logarithm of the dimension of $`_1`$.

### 2.2  Troubles with coarse-grained entropy in general relativity

In order to compute the coarse-grained entropy of a certain region of spacetime, we always have to specify the time-slice on which the entropy should live. Specifying only the boundary is not sufficient, since the coarse-grained entropy can grow in time, and in the situation on Fig.1, $`S_2^{\mathrm{cg}}`$ can be greater then $`S_1^{\mathrm{cg}}`$. It certainly cannot be less then $`S_1^{\mathrm{cg}}`$, because we expect the second law of thermodynamics to hold in this situation.

This works well, but for example in the case of an evaporating black hole , we encounter serious problems with coarse-grained entropy. Fig. 2 shows a collapsing star forming a black hole, which finally evaporates. On the first time-slice, the coarse-grained entropy $`S_1^{\mathrm{cg}}`$ is just the entropy of the collapsing star. On the second time-slice, the coarse-grained entropy $`S_2^{\mathrm{cg}}`$ corresponds to the entropy of the collapsing star plus the entropy of the Hawking radiation. Finally, the coarse-grained entropy $`S_3^{\mathrm{cg}}`$ on the third time-slice is the entropy of the Hawking radiation only. $`S_2^{\mathrm{cg}}`$ can be easily greater than $`S_3^{\mathrm{cg}}`$, so a simple application of the second law is impossible in this case. Clearly, there is an overcounting on the second time-slice. The same entropy contributes to $`S_2^{\mathrm{cg}}`$ twice - once in the form of the matter of the star and once in the form of the Hawking radiation. If we want some kind of second law to be valid (for an observer at infinity), we must not think about what is happening inside the horizon, but instead, we should treat the whole black hole as one object. This is actually the philosophy of the generalized second law .

In fact, there is an even more serious problem with this example, which we mentioned already in the Introduction. It arises when we assume that the evolution is unitary for the observer at infinity. (And we will do so in this paper.) Not only does the coarse-grained entropy (2.5) not have much physical significance here, but even the factorization of the Hilbert space $``$ describing the situation from the point of view of an observer at infinity into local Hilbert spaces (2.2) is impossible. If we thought that on the second time-slice in Fig. 2, the quantum information can be objectively localized, we would have to conclude that the quantum state of the collapsing star is duplicated. It should be there once in the form of the matter of the star, and it should also be encoded in the state of the Hawking radiation. This would definitely violate linearity of quantum mechanics . However, the black hole complementarity principle  can solve this apparent paradox very nicely. According to the considerations in , no single observer can ever see such a duplication, and the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics are perfectly valid from the point of view of any of them. Therefore, only quantities which can be actually measured by an observer have any physical significance. We will return to the discussion of the subjectivity of physics also in Section 4.4.

### 2.3 Bousso’s holographic bound

Since we will need Bousso’s holographic bound  in Sections 3.2 and 4.3, it will be convenient to describe it shortly here.

Bousso’s conjecture  applies to any smooth open or closed space-like surface in any space-time with reasonable energy conditions. First, we have to construct four null hypersurfaces spanned by a congruence of null geodesics which are orthogonal to the surface. (See Fig. 3.)

Then, at every point of the surface and for each hypersurface, we have to calculate the expansion $`\theta `$, which is defined as

$$\theta =_\mu k^\mu ,$$
(2.8)
where $`k^\mu `$ are tangent vectors of the light-rays. This quantity measures how much a small cross-sectional area $`\delta A`$ changes when we follow the light rays a little bit (see Fig. 4),

$$\theta =\frac{1}{\delta A}\frac{d}{d\lambda }\delta A.$$
(2.9)
Here, $`\lambda `$ denotes the affine parameter of the light-ray congruence. It is chosen to increase in the direction from the surface. Now, we have to split the original surface into pieces, in which the $`\theta `$s do not change their sign as we go from one point to another. Let us focus on one such piece, which we will denote $``$. At least two of the corresponding hypersurfaces will have initially a non-positive expansion,

$$\theta 0.$$
(2.10)
Due to the focusing theorem of general relativity , $`d\theta /d\lambda `$ must be non-positive, and therefore the expansion cannot increase before we reach possible caustics (i.e. points where $`\theta \mathrm{}`$). When we truncate the hypersurfaces at the caustics, we obtain Bousso’s light-sheets $`()`$. Bousso’s conjecture then tells us that the coarse-grained entropy passing through any light-sheet $`()`$ is bounded by one quarter of the area of $``$,

$$S^{\mathrm{cg}}\frac{A}{4}.$$
(2.11)
In paper , a convenient generalization of Bousso’s bound was formulated. It states that if we terminate the light-sheets at any (connected or disconnected) space-like surface $`^{}`$ of area $`A^{}`$ before reaching singularities or caustics (see Fig. 4), we can strengthen the bound to

$$S^{\mathrm{cg}}\frac{AA^{}}{4}.$$
(2.12)
## 3 Motivation for the conjecture

### 3.1 Entanglement in the vacuum

When the fields of a quantum field theory are in some vacuum state and when we divide the whole space into two parts, the fields in each part separately will be in a mixed state. Then we can ask how large the corresponding entanglement entropy $`S`$ is. Although we do not know the answer to this question for a general case, in some examples it was shown that the leading term will be proportional to the surface area $`A`$ of the boundary of the two regions .

$$SM_{_{\mathrm{UV}}}^2A$$
(3.13)
Here, $`M_{_{\mathrm{UV}}}`$ represents the ultraviolet cut-off in the field theory, and we implicitly assume three spatial dimensions. The entropy (3.13) is infrared finite (as opposed to the case of just one spatial dimension ), but clearly, it is ultraviolet divergent. If quantum field theory was a correct description of our world at all energies, it would be really infinite. However, we expect that at least at the Planck scale, the field theory description breaks down. Therefore, the field-theoretic contribution to the entanglement entropy should be at most of order $`A`$ (since the Planck mass is equal to one in our units),

$$SA.$$
(3.14)
Note that if the quantum field theory breaks down at some lower scale than the Planck scale, this inequality can only become sharper. Because the main field-theoretic contribution to the entanglement entropy comes from short-wavelength modes near the surface, it should not depend much on the spacetime curvature. For this reason we can assume in the rest of the paper that (3.14) is valid in general at least for surfaces satisfying the generalized convexity condition of Section 4.1. The question is, of course, if considering also the physics above the scale where the field theory breaks down could change the approximate inequality (3.14). However, it is natural to expect that it can not, because otherwise the usual black hole entropy $`A/4`$ would seem to be less than the entropy of its thermal atmosphere.

### 3.2 Entropy in Linde’s theory of chaotic inflation

Inflationary cosmology  is now a standard cosmological scenario which is used to explain the flatness and the large scale homogeneity of our universe and which successfuly passed several observational tests . It assumes that just after the ‘beginning of time’, there was an extremely rapid expansion of the universe, called inflation.

After the earliest papers on inflation , a very nice and simple cosmological model was proposed , which is now referred to as the old inflationary scenario. It assumed that the universe was initially very hot, which led to symmetry restoration, and after that, when it cooled down sufficiently, the symmetric state no longer had the lowest possible energy and therefore started to decay. However, as pointed out already in , this model produced unacceptably large density perturbations. This was resolved in the new inflationary scenario  (also assuming a hot early universe), but this suffered from its own difficulties. A short time after it was proposed, it was realized that in such a scenario, the theory of high temperature symmetry restoration was not applicable, and that inflation would start so late that the universe could easily collapse or become too inhomogeneous during such a long time. Also, it would be necessary to assume homogeneity of the corresponding region from the early beginning. The modern inflationary models  which are called ‘chaotic inflation’ in a generalized sense have the beautiful property that they can assume that inflation started at the Planck time and that all parts of our universe originated from a region of the Planck size (which is Linde’s assumption). Possible alternatives to this assumption are to expect that inflation started later or in a larger region and to use for example the anthropic principle to explain why it actually happened, or to expect some exotic physics at sub-Planckian energies. The assumption itself is however very attractive, and therefore it might be interesting to discuss its consequences for the fine-grained entropy in our universe:

If our universe really originates from a region of the Planck size, then we expect that at the beginning, there were no particles in the universe at all. The coarse-grained entropy we observe now was then produced during the evolution of the universe, mostly during and after the so called reheating444Originally, reheating used to be modeled only as a perturbative decay of the inflaton field into different particles. However, the temperatures produced in such models cannot be very high, and that is why cosmologists consider now a more efficient non-linear process, referred to as ‘preheating’ . period at the end of inflation, when particles were created at the cost of the energy of the inflaton field (a scalar field, or maybe fields, driving the dynamics of inflation).

Let us now think about a spherical region $``$ larger than the observable universe (by which we mean the region from which we can get any information in the form of particles, i.e. a region roughly of the size of the inverse Hubble constant). As is clear from Fig. 5, the (fine-grained) entropy $`S_{}`$ of the region $``$ is certainly less than or equal to the sum of the entropy $`S_{^{}}`$ of the region $`^{}`$ and the entropy $`S_𝒮`$ that passed through the light-like hypersurface $`𝒮`$,

$$S_{}S_{^{}}+S_𝒮.$$
(3.15)
(See also Fig. 1.) For the ‘semiclassical part’555 The distinction between the ‘semiclassical’ entropy of ‘real particles’ and the entropy due to quantum fluctuations is merely our choice of point of view. However, it is often convenient to make it.  of $`S_𝒮`$, we can use Bousso’s bound , which here coincides with the Fischler–Susskind bound . Therefore, the semiclassical part of $`S_𝒮`$ must be bounded by $`A_{}/4`$. (Strictly speaking, Bousso’s conjecture talks only about the coarse-grained entropy passing through the light-like hypersurface $`𝒮`$, but it obviously cannot be smaller than the contribution we are interested in.) Because $`A_{^{}}A_{}`$, we can also say that the contribution of quantum fluctuations is presumably at most of order of $`A_{}`$ (according to Section 3.1). Putting these two estimates together,

$$S_𝒮A_{}.$$
(3.16)
The entropy $`S_{^{}}`$ does not have any ‘semiclassical’ part at all, because at the beginning of reheating, all the entropy was just in the form of quantum fluctuations of fields. According to Section 3.1, we can assume that it was not larger than of order $`A_{^{}}`$, which is much less than $`A_{}`$,

$$S_{^{}}A_{^{}}A_{}.$$
(3.17)
(If we decided to extend the light-like hypersurface $`𝒮`$ up to the big bang singularity, the corresponding entropy $`S_{^{}}`$ would essentially vanish, since as we said, in this section, we are interested in the consequences of the whole universe stemming from a region of the Planck size. This way of expressing the idea is somewhat simpler, and that is why we will use a similar one in Section 4.3) Now, we can combine (3.16) and (3.17) to obtain

$$S_{}A_{}.$$
(3.18)
For extremely large regions $``$, the entropy $`S_{}`$ could be many orders of magnitude less than the corresponding coarse-grained entropy, because of subtle quantum correlations between the states of the particles produced during reheating666The significance of quantum correlations between particles in cosmologically large regions for the holographic principle was discussed in .. From the point of view of the holographic principle, we should not be interested in the maximum possible coarse-grained entropy, but in the maximum fine-grained entropy. The result (3.18) is therefore very encouraging.

### 3.3 The Heisenberg story

The holographic principle, which we would like to discuss in this paper, is roughly speaking the statement that quantum field theory overestimates the number of possible states in nature and that in a theory of quantum gravity, this number should be much lower. In fact, such a radical reduction of possible states already appeared in the history of physics in the transition from classical to quantum mechanics, and it might be interesting to discuss it a little bit closer in an example.

Consider a microcanonical ensemble for a dilute gas which can be described very well within the framework of classical mechanics. We could ask what the number of different microstates for a given macroscopic state is. If we took the formulation of this question seriously, we would conclude that it is infinity, because there is an infinite number of points in the phase space which correspond to the same values of macroscopic observables. This is why in classical mechanics, entropy can be defined only up to an additive constant. On the other hand in quantum mechanics, where we have to take Heisenberg’s uncertainity relations into account, we find that although the number of accessible states even for a narrow energy interval is huge, it is definitely finite. For this reason, entropy in quantum mechanics can be defined without using an arbitrary additive constant.

We see that it is possible to have a physical system within the range of validity of an approximate description, and to calculate correctly almost all its properties within that framework, but when the number of different states comes into question, the approximate description can give us a wrong answer.

### 3.4 Quantum states in quantum gravity

Most of the discussion in this section is relevant just for the speculative interpretation of the entropy conjecture. However, it is one of the main motivations for proposing it.

We have seen in Section 2.2 that when strong gravitational effects are taken into account, it does not always make sense to localize quantum information in the volume of spacetime regions, because some part of it can be hidden behind a causal horizon and thus irrelevant for the observer we are interested in. However, there is one more possibility. We can associate quantum states with the boundaries of the regions. If the boundaries themselves are accessible to the observer, we should not arrive at any paradox. In fact, a very similar approach was adopted already in the considerations related the black hole complementarity principle (mentioned in Section 2.2), when the concept of ‘stretched horizon’ was introduced .

To respect this principle, we will always be interested only in those regions which are ‘observable’. By this we will mean regions for which there exists at least one spacetime point in the causal future of their whole boundary. When we talk about ‘systems’ or ‘regions’, we will always assume that they are observable in the above sense, unless otherwise noted.

Let us be a little bit more concrete about associating quantum states with the boundaries of regions. With each boundary geometry (and other boundary conditions), we would like to associate a Hilbert space $``$, describing the quantum states that can be inside the boundary. Presumably, some vectors in this Hilbert space could correspond to states with different inside geometries, or to linear superpositions of them, whenever the term ‘inside geometry’ makes sense. In those cases, when we can use the semiclassical approximation for the geometry, there should be just one inside geometry which dominates. Consider now a quantum state that corresponds to a definite geometry of a certain surface $`𝒮`$ which can be used to cut the region into two pieces. This situation is depicted in Fig. 6.

The possible quantum states inside the pieces should be described by some Hilbert spaces $`_1`$ and $`_2`$. Note however, that the product $`_1_2`$ does not necessarily have to be contained in $``$, although our intuition tells us something different. This is just intuition based on quantum field theory, and presumably, it can be wrong when both gravity and quantum theory must be taken into account. We have seen in the example of an evaporating black hole how crazy quantum theory can be when it enters the realm of general relativity. In fact, there is really no quantum-mechanical principle requiring $`_1_2`$ (and therefore the maximum entropy does not necessarily have to be an extensive quantity). The only thing we need is the possibility to write any state $`|\psi _{}`$ which ‘contains’ the given surface $`𝒮`$ as

$$|\psi _{}=\underset{ij}{}c_{ij}|i__1|j__2,$$
(3.19)
where $`|i__1`$ and $`|j__2`$ form the bases of $`_1`$ and $`_2`$.

It is important to note that it does not make any sense to define some Hilbert space for a region whose boundary is not fixed. If we change the geometry of spacetime, then its absolutely unclear what still belongs into the region of interest and what does not. Therefore, the only sensible Hilbert spaces in curved spacetime might be those which would describe possible quantum states inside some definite boundary geometry (maybe also with some other boundary conditions). If we want to talk about the evolution of a region whose boundary is not fixed, we should use different Hilbert spaces for different time-slices of the boundary.

Also, it seems to be inconsistent with the original meaning of quantum states to assign some Hilbert space to the whole universe, which would not exclude any region where the observer should be. If we had to do so, then the original principles of quantum mechanics would have to be modified. In this paper, we do not expect that such a modification is necessary. The ‘Hilbert space of the whole universe’ should be trivial.

## 4 The conjecture

### 4.1 Condition on holographic surfaces

Motivated by our previous discussion, we will attempt to formulate a holographic bound on the entropy inside closed space-like surfaces. However, there is one obstruction pointed out in . If we take any two-surface that encloses a given world-tube, we can always find another two-surface which is arbitrarily close to the original surface, encloses the same world-tube and which has an arbitrarily small area. (It can be obtained by ‘wiggling’ the original surface suitably in spacetime.) To overcome this difficulty, we have to impose an appropriate condition on the holographic surfaces. Since we want our bound to be covariant, it is natural to impose the following condition of the Bousso type.

Generalized convexity condition. For any given closed space-like two-surface777 Here, as well as in the other parts of the paper, we implicitly assume that the surface is smooth. , $``$ we construct null hypersurfaces $`_1(),_2(),_3()`$ and $`_4()`$ orthogonal to this two-surface. For each hypersurface $`_i()`$, we calculate the expansion $`\theta _i`$ at each point of the two-surface. Now, we require that $`\theta _i`$ does not flip its sign as we go from one point of $``$ to another. In other words, for each particular $`_i()`$, we require $`\theta _i0`$ at all points of $``$ or $`\theta _i0`$ at all points of $``$.

If this is satisfied, we will consider this two-surface $``$ in the entropy bound we will formulate. Note that this condition is defined locally in the neighborhood of $``$ and does not involve quantities deep inside or far outside of $``$, as well as quantities in the distant past or future. Also, note that this requirement automatically excludes the problematic surfaces with almost vanishing area. For surfaces in Minkowski space lying in hypersurfaces of constant Minkowski time, the condition above is just the requirement that the region inside $``$ should be convex.

The conjecture we will formulate is side-symmetric, and therefore there is no need to distinguish ‘inside’ from ‘outside’ in a general spacetime. Only for convenience, when we talk about some specific region, will we refer to it as ‘inside’ of its boundary, with the rest of the space ‘outside.’

### 4.2 Formulation

Assumption. Let us assume that the initial conditions for the universe were such that there was no volume-extensive entropy at all at the ‘beginning of time.’ If this is true, the following conjecture should be correct.

Conjecture. Consider any two observable888 In the sense of Section 3.4. subsystems forming together an observable system. Suppose that the boundary of the first subsystem has area $`A`$ and satisfies the generalized convexity condition of Section 4.1. Then the entanglement entropy of the first subsystem with respect to the second subsystem cannot be larger than of order $`A`$.

### 4.3 Support for the conjecture

The entanglement entropy we were talking about should presumably come from two contributions999 As said in a footnote in Section 3.2, the distinction is only our choice of point of view.. One of them is the entropy of quantum fluctuations in the ‘vacuum’. Even though it is difficult to make any precise statement about it, according to our discussion in Section 3.1 we expect this contribution to be at most of order the surface area. About the other contribution, entropy due to ‘real particles’, we can say much more, because whenever the semiclassical approximation is appropriate, we can apply Bousso’s bound , as we did in Section 3.2.

Let us then discuss the semiclassical entropy of ‘real particles’:

For any surface $``$, with area $`A`$, satisfying the generalized convexity condition of Section 4.1, we can construct four null hypersurfaces $`_1(),_2(),_3()`$ and $`_4()`$ orthogonal to this surface and terminated at caustics or singularities. At least two of them have a non-positive expansion $`\theta _j`$, so they are light-sheets in Bousso’s terminology. Then, we truncate these light-sheets whenever non-neighboring light-rays intersect (as in ), and also whenever they reach a black hole horizon. In this way, we obtain at least two truncated light-sheets $`\stackrel{~}{}_j()`$. Now, at least one of the following possibilities must apply. (‘Inside’ here corresponds to the first subsystem.)

$``$ At least one truncated light-sheet $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$ is simply connected, past directed, and ingoing.

In this case, we can think of $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$ as the limit of a certain series of time slices through the inside of $``$. The coarse-grained entropy on this limiting time-slice is according to Bousso less than or equal to $`A/4`$. Since the entropy (2.1) can never exceed the coarse-grained entropy (2.6), the contribution of ‘real particles’ to the fine-grained entropy must be bounded by $`A/4`$ as well. Putting the estimates for the two contributions (of ‘real particles’ and quantum fluctuations) together, we see that the entanglement entropy of the region inside $``$ with respect to any other physical system cannot be larger than of order $`A`$.

$``$ At least one truncated light-sheet $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$ is simply connected, past directed, and outgoing.

We can use the reasoning of the previous case to show that the entanglement entropy with respect to the whole outside is bounded by $`A`$. It is then natural to expect that the entanglement entropy with respect to only some part of the outside cannot be larger than this bound. $``$ At least one truncated light-sheet $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$ is non-simply connected, past directed, and ingoing.

The fact that $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$ is not simply connected means that it is terminated at the big bang singularity101010As mentioned in Section 3.2, this formulation is just a shorthand for saying that we are free to truncate the light-sheet at sufficiently early times, when the universe was ‘empty.’, as in Fig. 7. (This is because we do not expect any white holes in our universe. Some time reversed black hole evaporation would be an extremely improbable event.) We can construct a series of time-slices through the inside of $``$, whose limit is $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$ plus a certain part of the big bang singularity. Using Bousso’s bound, we see that the coarse-grained entropy on $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$ is bounded by $`A/4`$. The contribution of the part of the limiting time-slice which lies on the big bang singularity is, according to the assumption of this paper, zero. (Remember that here, we were discussing only the entropy of what we call ‘real particles’. We assume the entropy of quantum fluctuations to be less than $`A`$.) Thus, we see that the entanglement entropy of the region inside $``$ with respect to any other region is not larger than of order $`A`$.

$``$ At least one truncated light-sheet $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$ is non-simply connected, past directed, and outgoing.

We can use the argument of the previous case to show that the entanglement entropy with respect to the whole outside is bounded by $`A`$. Again, we can expect that the entanglement entropy with respect to only some part of the outside cannot be larger than of order $`A`$.

$``$ At least one truncated light-sheet $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$ is future directed, ingoing, and punctured only by black holes.

Here, we can make essentially the same argument as in the very first case, since the only difference would be accounting for the black hole entropy (see Fig. 8). To obtain the same result, we have to use the strengthened form  of Bousso’s bound, mentioned at the end of Section 2.3. When we add the black hole entropies and the bound on the entropy passing through $`\stackrel{~}{}_k()`$, we get $`A/4`$. Therefore, the conjecture seems to be correct also in this case.

$``$ All (i.e. both) truncated light-sheets $`\stackrel{~}{}_j()`$ are future directed and punctured by the final singularity, as well as possibly by some black holes.

In this case, the surface $``$ is not observable and we should not even have listed this possibility here.

### 4.4 Speculative interpretation: Holographic virtual reality

If we think of the second subsystem in the conjecture as a measuring apparatus, then the conjecture gives us a bound on the effective number of states we can distinguish with that apparatus. We know that in quantum mechanics it does not make any sense to describe a physical system with a Hilbert space whose dimension exceeds the number of states we can in principle  distinguish. If such a Hilbert space was necessary for the description of some system, there would be no limit of an ideal apparatus and the meaning of the concept of quantum states would be completely unclear. Therefore, we might interpret the conjecture as that the maximum possible entanglement entropy is equal to the logarithm of the dimension of the Hilbert space which describes the first subsystem.

Note that usually people think that the maximum coarse-grained entropy is directly related to the dimension of the Hilbert space. This assumption is usually correct. Let us consider for example a lattice of spins in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. In general, if the spins are correlated, the fine-grained entropy is not equal to the coarse-grained entropy. However, we can always flip the spins and remove the correlations to obtain a mixed state whose fine-grained entropy is equal to the coarse-grained entropy and also to the logarithm of the dimension of the Hilbert space. Therefore, the maximum coarse-grained entropy is really equal to the logarithm of the dimension of the Hilbert space. The case we are discussing in this paper is completely different. If we assume no volume-extensive entropy at the beginning of time, there is in principle no way to remove the correlations between the particles produced during reheating and afterwards. The maximum fine-grained entropy (which should be by definition the logarithm of the dimension of the Hilbert space) no longer coincides with the maximum coarse-grained entropy. This might be the overcounting holographic principle talks about.

If the conjecture and this interpretation are correct, there are very interesting consequences when applied to the case of a small region containing the observer with measuring apparatuses which are used to study the rest of the universe. It is no surprise that the entropy of the small region is bounded by the surface area. However, this quantity bounds also the number of different possible results of the observations done by the observer. According to our interpretation of the conjecture, this is precisely the dimension of the Hilbert space which should be used by the observer to describe the rest of the universe. Here we should stress that by ‘description’ of a physical system in quantum mechanics, we always mean nothing else but the description of possible results of our experiments. With this in mind, we can say that in spite of the huge amount of coarse-grained entropy, the number of possible states of the universe can be very small, depending on the size of the region occupied by the observer. This strongly contadicts our every-day concept of objective reality. However, we should not be so much surprised, since it breaks down already on the level of quantum field theory. Let us discuss this issue a little bit closer.

Consider a macroscopic object (for example a pet of a famous physicist), which is initially in a pure state and which can evolve into two very distinct macroscopic states after some time. Suppose that the ‘choice’ of the final state depends on some quantum-mechanical process. Because of unitarity of the evolution, the whole system will remain in a pure state. However, when we observe the object after a while, we will find it in one of the possible macroscopic states and never in a quantum superposition of them. How is this possible? The answer is easy: During the evolution, the object emits photons and other particles, which are correlated with the subsequent state of the object. The whole system remains in a pure state, but now, it consists not only of the object itself, but also of the particles emitted. The reduced density matrix of the object itself now corresponds to a mixed state, which we naturally expect. This mechanism gives rise to what we perceive as reality, i.e. it makes things ‘really happen’ instead of being in some quantum superposition of different possibilities.

Let us illustrate the discrepancy between different concepts of reality of different observers on a not too scientific example. Consider an observer 2060 light-years from us, who has just started its111111We do not specify if the observer is male or female, since these terms have been defined only for some organisms with terrestrial origin. long-term program of observing the Earth. Because the photons from the year 44 B.C. still have not reached it, there is a non-zero probability for the observer to see that Julius Caesar was warned against the attempt on his life, defeated the conspirators and had two more children with Cleopatra. However, it does not make any sense for us to ask such a question. We live in a different reality, because the state of things around us is already influenced by the history we know. To be more precise, it corresponds just to a small fraction of the many possible states of the photons going to the observer. If we decided to ask the observer what it saw, it would definitely say that Caesar was murdered on March 15, 44 B.C., if it is honest.

We see that the concept of reality is observer-dependent already in quantum field theory. When we take general relativity into account, the lack of objective reality becomes even more striking. An observer falling into a black hole can cross the horizon, perform physical experiments and finally reach the singularity. On the other hand for an outside observer, no spacetime points under the horizon exist. If there is enough time, the mass of the black hole will be finally converted into Hawking radiation above the horizon and the whole black hole will disappear. For the outside observer, the history the infalling observer experienced inside the black hole did not actually happen in the above sense. If it did, the outside observer would have to detect particles going from inside of the black hole, which is clearly impossible. Thus, no objective reality exists.

The interpretation of the conjecture, if correct, tells us about an attractive possibility of ‘describing all of nature’ by a relatively small Hilbert space from the point of view of any particular observer. It is not important if the observer falls into a black hole or not. Such a description would deal only with the physics relevant to the observer of interest, and it would be an explicit realization of the black hole complementarity principle . In this approach, the observer would be surrounded by a holographic screen representing the rest of the universe, and nothing else would exist. This would resemble virtual reality from the world of computer technology. However, our holographic virtual reality would be so advanced that it could easily compete with the one in .

### 4.5 A weaker form of the conjecture

The conjecture we have formulated relies on the assumption that ‘at the beginning of time,’ there was no volume-extensive entropy in the universe. Note however, that if we formulated its weaker form where we would restrict ourselves just to regions inside some ‘causal diamond’ as in , the corresponding entanglement entropy bound would follow from Bousso’s bound almost immediately, without any special assumptions about the early cosmology. (By a causal diamond we mean a spacetime region which is in the causal past of some event as well as in the causal future of some other event.) Its interpretation in terms of the number of quantum states would be nevertheless more difficult.

## 5 Conclusion

We have proposed a holographic bound on entanglement entropy inside (or outside) closed space-like surfaces. Also, we have discussed a speculative interpretation of it in terms of holographic properties of a hypothetical theory of quantum gravity. If these thoughts are correct, they support our hopes that it will be possible to describe nature by a theory which would be directly or indirectly related to superstrings, since string theory is known to incorporate holography at least in certain examples.

## 6 Acknowledgements

I have benefited from useful discussions with Raphael Bousso, Simeon Hellerman, Petr Hořava, Shamit Kachru, Andrei Linde, Liam McAllister, Luboš Motl, Steve Shenker, Lenny Susskind, Nick Toumbas and Herman Verlinde. This work was supported in part by an undergraduate fellowship at Charles University, by the Stanford Graduate Fellowship, and by the Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic under Grant No. GA-AV ČR A1010711.