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# Biased EPR entanglement and its application to teleportation

## I Introduction

Entanglement is a key ingredient in many quantum communication tools . It has been studied in dichotomic regimes such as photon-counting  and electron spin  and also in continuous variable regimes . Recently many of the quantum information protocols and tools developed dichotomically have been generalised to the continuous variable regime  and new experimental measures of continuous variable entanglement have also been proposed .

The most studied and generated form of entanglement in continuous variable quantum optics is Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) entanglement . EPR entanglement is characterised by quantum correlations between conjugate quadrature amplitudes of two light beams. For example there may be quantum correlations between both the amplitude and the phase quadratures of the two beams. Usually EPR entanglement in which the correlations between conjugate quadratures are of equal strength is discussed. We will refer to this as unbiased EPR entanglement. There is no reason to restrict ourselves to this case however, and recently van Loock and Braunstein  examined entanglement with biased correlations. They evaluated the entanglement in terms of continuous variable teleportation of coherent states, studying two party and multi-party protocols.

In this paper we examine this type of entanglement in a more general way. Using a standard measure of EPR entanglement and introducing a new measure based on the number of photons present in a state, we show in what sense unbiased EPR entanglement is maximal. A key issue in our treatment is that of resources. That is, the number of photons used to produce a particular level of entanglement. Although an integral part of discrete variable discussions of quantum information, the question of resources is not always explicit in continuous variable treatments. Here we define maximal EPR states as those that use the minimum resources (photons) necessary to produce a particular degree of correlation.

We then discuss how it is possible to move between biased and unbiased states using only local operations. Using the example of continuous variable teleportation we show that an improvement in efficacy occurs with our protocol. In general unbiased entanglement provides optimum results, however we also show that there are some special situations where biased entanglement is optimal.

Protocols for manipulating entanglement are common in discrete variable quantum information. Perhaps most useful is distillation, or as it is sometimes called, concentration of entanglement . Distillation is a process involving only local operations and classical communication which takes some number of weakly entangled particles to a smaller number of more entangled particles. The total entanglement cannot be increased by such a process, only the entanglement per particle. Continuous variable distillation protocols  take some number of weakly entangled modes and produce a smaller number of more entangled modes. In contrast the operations desribed in this paper involve single mode manipulations.

The paper is arranged in the following way: Section II reviews the techniques for characterising and producing EPR entanglement and introduces EPR symmetrisation and the concept of non-maximal EPR states for continuous variables. In Section III our protocol to redistribute the quantum correlations is introduced and in Section IV we consider its application to teleportation as an example. The protocol is generalised to tri-partite entanglement in Section V and we conclude in Section VI.

## II Continuous variable entanglement

### A Characterisation

An optical beam can be expressed as a mean unchanging field plus a fluctuation term .

$$\widehat{A}(t)=\widehat{A}+\delta \widehat{A}(t)=\widehat{A}+\frac{1}{2}(\delta \widehat{X}(t)^++i\delta \widehat{X}(t)^{})$$
(1)
Here $`\widehat{A}(t)`$ is a field annihilation operator and $`\widehat{A}`$ is its expectation value. $`\delta \widehat{A}(t)`$ contains all of the fluctuations of the operator and can be split into two orthogonal hermitian operators, quadrature phase $`\delta \widehat{X}(t)^{}`$ and quadrature amplitude $`\delta \widehat{X}(t)^+`$. The superscripts $``$ and $`+`$ distinguish the phase and amplitude quadratures, respectively.

Taking the Fourier transform of $`\widehat{A}(t)`$ produces the frequency domain operator $`A(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ which we denote by removing the hat. The variance of the phase and amplitude quadratures of an optical beam are given by $`V^\pm =V^\pm (\mathrm{\Omega })=V(\delta X^\pm (\mathrm{\Omega }))=(\delta X^\pm (\mathrm{\Omega }))^2`$. Throughout this paper we will consider sidebands at frequencies $`\pm \mathrm{\Omega }`$ away from the carrier frequency and henceforth the frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ will not be shown explicitly. The Heisenberg uncertainty relationship can then be expressed in terms of these variances as $`V^+V^{}1`$.

In this paper the degree of quantum correlation between a given entangled pair of beams is measured with the product of conditional variances, $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^\pm `$, of conjugate quadratures between the two beams. This measure was first proposed by Reid and Drummond , is easily measureable, and has been used to characterise entanglement in a number of experiments . The conditional variance measures how well a quadrature amplitude of one beam can be inferred from a quadrature measurement of the other beam, or in other words it measures the variance of the noise degrading the otherwise perfect correlations between the beams. By determining the conditional variances of two conjugate quadratures between beams, we may demonstrate the EPR-paradox experimentally . This demonstration is a sufficient but not necessary condition for the states to be entangled (i.e inseparable). Limiting ourselves to the amplitude and phase quadratures, the condition for EPR entanglement becomes

$$V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}<1$$
(2)
where the conditional variances are given by $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^\pm =V_\mathrm{b}^\pm |\delta X_\mathrm{b}^\pm \delta X_\mathrm{a}^\pm |^2/V_\mathrm{a}^\pm `$  and the subscripts a and b label the two optical beams. $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}=1`$ defines a hard boundary below which the state must be entangled, the closer $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$ is to $`0`$ the stronger the entanglement. It is also possible to have rotated EPR correlations such that the conditional variance between (say) the amplitude of one beam and the phase of the other, and vice versa obey relations analogous to Eq.(2). We will only consider non-rotated states here.

A number of measures of entanglement are in useage. In particular the Duan criteria  gives neccessary and sufficient conditions for separability of Gaussian states. We use the EPR condition here because of its physical significance and links with the efficacy of continuous variable quantum information protocols . We mainly restrict ourselves in this paper to pure states and exclusively to Gaussian states. For pure Gaussian states the EPR condition is qualitatively equivalent to Duan’s criteria.

### B Production

Continuous variable entanglement of the EPR type may be produced by mixing two squeezed beams on a 50/50 beam splitter . Squeezed beams are ones for which $`V^+<1<V^{}`$ or vice versa . Throughout this paper we denote the input beams to this beam splitter by the subscripts 1 and 2, and the output beams by EPR1 and EPR2. For zero phase difference between the inputs at the beam splitter, the output quadrature amplitude relations are given by

$`\delta X_{\mathrm{EPR1}}^\pm `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(\delta X_1^\pm +\delta X_2^\pm )`$ (3)
$`\delta X_{\mathrm{EPR2}}^\pm `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(\delta X_1^\pm \delta X_2^\pm )`$ (4)
and the conditional variances between these two outputs are

$$V_{\mathrm{cv}}^\pm =\frac{2V_1^\pm V_2^\pm }{V_1^\pm +V_2^\pm }$$
(5)
If both input beams (1 and 2) are pure (minimum uncertainty) states, then

$$V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}=\frac{4}{2+V_1^+V_2^{}+V_1^{}V_2^+}$$
(6)
Now if both input beams are equally squeezed and the squeezing is in orthogonal directions (eg $`V_1^+=V_2^{}<1`$ or $`V_1^{}=V_2^+<1`$) then the output beams will be in the usual, unbiased, EPR entangled state. If the squeezing is not equal for the two beams and/or is not on orthogonal quadratures then biased entanglement will be produced. An interesting case is when only one input is squeezed (say $`V_1^+<1<V_1^{}`$ and $`V_2^\pm =1`$). From equation (6) we find that $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$ is still less than 1 and thus the outputs are still entangled in this case. In this paper we will use this entanglement as our example, however the analysis and techniques we discuss can equally be applied to general biased entanglement. Clearly, for a fixed amount of squeezing, two squeezed beams will produce stronger correlations than one. Figure 1 shows $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$ for variable squeezing in both cases. As the squeezing strength increases, the biased and unbiased entanglement both approach perfect, $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}0`$.

As well as access to stronger correlations, entanglement from two squeezed beams has another advantage. Many quantum information protocols require quantum correlations in two conjugate quadratures, $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+,V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}<1`$, which this entanglement naturally provides. Entanglement from only one squeezed beam on the other hand provides quantum correlations in only one quadrature, say $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+<1`$ but necessarily $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}>1`$. One such example, is quantum teleportation of a coherent state where perfect entanglement from one squeezed beam ($`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}=0`$) provides a fidelity of only $`F=1/\sqrt{2}`$ compared with $`F=1`$ for perfect unbiased entanglement . In section III we will show how perfect teleportation can be achieved utilising only one squeezed beam but first we would like to study the difference between biased and unbiased entanglement in more detail.

### C EPR Symmetrisation

We now use a resource argument to define and quantify the difference between a maximal EPR state and a non-maximal EPR. We will identify unbiased entanglement as maximal.

First let us consider what we mean by “maximal” EPR. Clearly the maximum EPR state is the one for which $`V_{cv}^+=V_{cv}^{}=0`$. But creating such a state would require infinite energy, an unphysical limit. Thus the idea of a maximal EPR state should be considered within some limit on resources. Let us consider the minimum number of photons required to achieve a particular value of $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$. We will define a maximal EPR state as one which achieves this particular value of entanglement with the minimum photon number. The average photon number in the sidebands of an optical beam, taken over some small range of frequencies for which the quadrature variances are constant, can be related to these variances (in suitably normalised units) via

$`n`$ $`=`$ $`\delta \widehat{A}^{}(\mathrm{\Omega })\delta \widehat{A}(\mathrm{\Omega })+\delta \widehat{A}^{}(\mathrm{\Omega })\delta \widehat{A}(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(V^+(\mathrm{\Omega })+V^{}(\mathrm{\Omega }))1`$ (8)
The quadrature variances of the individual EPR beams can be related to the conditional variances between them by invoking the uncertainty relations. If it is possible to infer the value of $`\delta X_{\mathrm{EPR1},2}^+`$ with a variance $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+`$ then the uncertainty relation requires that $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{EPR1},2}^{}1`$. Similarly if we can infer the value of $`\delta X_{\mathrm{EPR1},2}^{}`$ with a variance $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$ then the uncertainty relation requires that $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}V_{\mathrm{EPR1},2}^+1`$. Thus

$$V_{\mathrm{EPR1},2}^\pm \frac{1}{V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}}$$
(9)
For pure-state entanglement expressions (9) are true in the equality, substituting these equalities into equation (7) we obtain the average photon number of each of the EPR beams

$$n_{\mathrm{EPR1},2}=\frac{1}{2}(\frac{1}{V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+}+\frac{1}{V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}})1$$
(10)
For a given degree of quantum correlation ($`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$) the minimum value of $`n_{\mathrm{EPR1},2}`$ is obtained when

$$V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+=V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}$$
(11)
and thus when the entanglement is unbiased. Both equation (11) and the equality of equation (9) are satisfied by entanglement produced from two minimum uncertainty equally squeezed beams. This identifies such states as maximal EPR states. Because for entanglement from a single squeezed beam $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$ we can immediately identify it as a non-maximal EPR state.

We describe the maximallity of the EPR entanglement by $`\lambda `$, the ratio of the minimum number of photons necessary (for that entanglement strength) to the number of photons present,

$$\lambda =\frac{n_{\mathrm{maximal}}}{n_{\mathrm{EPR}}}$$
(12)
where $`n_{\mathrm{EPR}}`$ is the mean photon number of the EPR state being analysed and $`n_{\mathrm{maximal}}`$ is the mean photon number of the maximal EPR state with the same conditional variance product. If $`\lambda =1`$ the state is maximal, if $`\lambda <1`$ the state is non-maximal.

The $`\lambda `$ parameter also identifies mixed states as non-maximal. Such states occur when the states used to produce the entanglement are not minimum uncertainty, or if the EPR beams suffer loss. For mixed states it is the equality of equation (9) which will not be satisfied, whilst the noise degrading the correlations may still be unbiased (i.e. $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+=V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$) . In the following discussion we will not consider mixed states further.

## III Redistributing the quantum correlations

We introduce a method to transform pure non-maximal EPR states into maximal ones. In particular we will see how biased entanglement can be transformed into unbiased entanglement using only local unitary operations. These operations keep the overall degree of quantum correlation (as measured by $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$) constant whilst increasing $`\lambda `$ (equation(12)).

Let us consider the effect of passing entangled beams produced from only one squeezed beam through two independent degenerate optical parametric amplifiers (OPAs) as shown in figure 2. In the classical pump limit OPAs effect a unitary transformation of the field . The effect of each OPA is to amplify the fluctuations of one of the input quadratures whilst de-amplifying the fluctuations of the orthogonal quadrature. The quadratures of amplification and de-amplification are controlled by the phase difference between the input and the pump field of the OPA. In our example, the amplitude quadratures of both beams are amplified. The effect of each OPA on its respective entangled beam is given by

$`\delta X_{\mathrm{para1},2}^+`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{G}\delta X_{\mathrm{EPR1},2}^+`$ (13)
$`\delta X_{\mathrm{para1},2}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{G}}}\delta X_{\mathrm{EPR1},2}^{}`$ (14)
where the gain G has been chosen identically for both OPAs and the subscripts para1,2 label each entangled beam after the optical parametric operations. As the gain terms from each quadrature cancel on multiplication, these operations leave $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$ unchanged. After the OPAs the entangled quadratures given in equations (3) and (4) become

$`\delta X_{\mathrm{para1}}^+`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{G}{2}}}(\delta X_1^++\delta X_2^+)`$ (15)
$`\delta X_{\mathrm{para1}}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2G}}}(\delta X_1^{}+\delta X_2^{})`$ (16)
$`\delta X_{\mathrm{para2}}^+`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{G}{2}}}(\delta X_1^+\delta X_2^+)`$ (17)
$`\delta X_{\mathrm{para2}}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2G}}}(\delta X_1^{}\delta X_2^{})`$ (18)
We have previously stated that entanglement generated from one squeezed beam has quantum correlations in only one quadrature; two squeezed beams generate entanglement that has equal but weaker (for the same $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$) quantum correlations in both. For pure entanglement from one squeezed beam setting a gain $`G=\sqrt{V_1^{}}`$ (i.e. equal to the standard deviation of the anti-squeezed quadrature of the squeezed input beam) spreads the quantum correlations equally over both entangled quadratures. This makes the entanglement unbiased and in fact indistinguishable from entanglement generated from two squeezed beams. More generally a gain of

$$G=\sqrt{\frac{V_1^{}}{V_2^+}}$$
(19)
will make any pure EPR entanglement unbiased and thus maximal.

The OPAs are in fact acting as deamplifiers of photon number in this situation. By choosing the optimum gains we are able to reduce the photon number in the beams to the minimum allowed for their particular level of entanglement and thereby produce maximal entanglement. A physical picture of this process can be obtained by considering weak squeezed beams. Such beams can be described approximately in the Schrodinger picture as superpositions of vacuum and photon pairs: $`|\psi _s=|0+\xi |2`$ with $`\xi <<1`$. Mixing two of these beams on a beamsplitter with the appropriate phase relationship spatially separates the pairs into the individual beams producing the maximal entangled state $`|\psi _e=|00+\xi |11`$. On the other hand splitting a single squeezed beam gives the state $`|\psi _{es}=|00+\xi /\sqrt{2}(|11+1/2(|20+|02))`$. We see that as well as the maximal component there is also a component of unseparated pairs. These do not contribute to the correlations. The effect of correctly tuned OPAs is to act as 2-photon absorbers which locally remove the 2-photon components leaving only the maximal component. A generalization of this argument to higher photon number orders can be made.

This process is similar to discrete variable concentration protocols  since the entanglement per photon is increased. Indeed there are strong similarities to the procrustean method of discrete concentration, where unentangled photons are “filtered out” whilst retaining the entangled ones . However in the discrete case the photon is the fundamental carrier of the entanglement whilst in the continuous case it is the field mode which plays this role. In recognition of this distinction we refrain from using concentration to describe the continuous variable case.

## IV Teleportation

In general the goal of quantum teleportation is to destroy a quantum state in one system and re-create it exactly in another. Many theoretical papers have been published on quantum teleportation  and it has been experimentally realised . The Heisenberg uncertainty principle limits the information attainable from any two observables with a non-zero commutator relation . Thus the perfect reproduction of an unknown input state via a direct measurment and recreation scheme is impossible. However a loophole exists if the sender, Alice, and receiver, Bob, share entanglement. This allows them to, in principle, teleport the state perfectly. The uncertainty principle is not violated as neither Alice nor Bob learn the identity of the teleported state.

Figure 3 shows a typical continuous variable teleportation experiment with the addition of two local OPAs, one at Alices detection station and one at Bobs reconstruction station. The OPAs can conveniently be thought of as a local resource forming part of the teleportation protocol. The subscripts OUT and SIG label the the output and signal beams respectively. AM and PM label the amplitude and phase modulators respectively used to reconstruct the signal state with unity gain on one of the entangled beams. The input for the amplitude (phase) modulator is from an amplitude (phase) detector with suitably chosen gain.

The overlap integral of the original and teleported state Wigner functions is a measure of how similar the states are and is conventionally termed fidelity . Other measures of teleportation quantify the disturbance (noise) introduced by the teleporter to an arbitrary teleported state under various conditions . For ease of comparison with Ref. we will use fidelity here and only consider unity gain (i.e. the teleportation gain has been chosen such that the size of the coherent displacement of the state before and after teleportation are equal).

If all noise sources are Gaussian, the fidelity of coherent state teleportation at unity gain is given by

$$F=\frac{2}{\sqrt{\left(V_{OUT}^++1\right)\left(V_{OUT}^{}+1\right)}}$$
(20)
The fidelity equals 1 when the Wigner function of the output state is a perfect replica of that of the signal state. The phase and amplitude variance of the output state of the teleporter shown in figure 3, assuming it functions perfectly, can be written as

$`V_{OUT}^+=2GV_1^++V_{SIG}^+`$ (21)
$`V_{OUT}^{}={\displaystyle \frac{2}{G}}V_2^{}+V_{SIG}^{}`$ (22)
We have assumed that the signal is coherent thus $`V_{SIG}^+=V_{SIG}^{}=1`$. This gives a fidelity of

$$F=\frac{1}{\sqrt{V_1^+V_2^{}+GV_1^++\frac{1}{G}V_2^{}+1}}$$
(23)
The maximum fidelity $`F_{\mathrm{max}}`$ for a given entanglement strength is obtained when the parametric gain $`G`$ is chosen as in equation (19) and is given by

$$F_{\mathrm{max}}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{V_1^+V_2^{}}+1}$$
(24)
This upper limit of achievable fidelity is set solely by the strength of the entanglement and, with appropriate parametric gain (dictated by equation (19)), all entanglement of equal strength (equal $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$) can in theory achieve it.

#### 1 An example: Teleportation utilising biased entanglement

Consider entanglement generated from a single squeezed beam, for ideal squeezing $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$ approaches zero and thus the entanglement becomes perfect. Without specific OPA operations however, the maximum achievable fidelity (given by equation (23) with $`G=1`$,$`V_1^+=1`$, and $`V_2^{}=0`$) is $`1/\sqrt{2}`$ . After local OPA operations with G as in equation (19) the maximum fidelity (given by equation (24)) is equal to 1. Figure 4 shows the fidelity achieved first by simply using the biased entanglement and then by beforehand utilising our protocol to redistribute the quantum correlations.

For reasonably strong squeezing substantial improvements in fidelity can be achieved via local OPA operations and indeed with just a single squeezed beam the teleportation can be perfect. In Ref. the coherent state teleportation fidelity was taken as a measure of the entanglement. Remembering that entanglement cannot be increased by local operations, we see that coherent state fidelity only gives a lower bound to the entanglement strength.

#### 2 Another example: Teleportation of a squeezed state

Here we consider teleportation of a squeezed state with an arbitrary coherent displacement. That is the orientation and dimensions of the squeezed ellipse are taken as constant and known, but the coherent displacement is unknown. We show that unbiased entanglement is not optimum in this case.

The fidelity of teleportation of a minimum uncertainty amplitude squeezed state with arbitrary coherent displacement is given by

$$F=\frac{1}{\sqrt{V_1^+V_2^{}+\frac{GV_1^+}{V_{\mathrm{sqz}}}+\frac{V_2^{}V_{\mathrm{sqz}}}{G}+1}}$$
(25)
where $`V_{\mathrm{sqz}}`$ is the variance of the squeezed quadrature of the signal. Here the maximum fidelity is achieved when $`G=V_{\mathrm{sqz}}\sqrt{V_2^{}/V_1^+}`$ and is equal to that given in equation (24); again $`F=0.5`$ defines the classical limit. If unbiased entanglement is utilised in the teleporter $`V_1^+=V_2^{}`$ and the gain simplifies to $`G=V_{\mathrm{sqz}}`$. So we see that to achieve the maximum fidelity it is now necessary to apply parametric gain to the entanglement, dependent on the strength of the signal squeezing. A comparison between the fidelity of teleportation of a squeezed state with $`V_{\mathrm{sqz}}=0.1`$, being teleported with entanglement generated from two equally squeezed beams, with and without OPA operations is shown in figure 5. Note that for unbiased entanglement as $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}1`$, $`F(2+V_{\mathrm{sqz}}^1+V_{\mathrm{sqz}})^{1/2}`$ which is less than 0.5 if $`V_{\mathrm{sqz}}<1`$. Thus quantum teleportation of a squeezed state with arbitrary coherent amplitude cannot be achieved with weak unbiased entanglement (see figure 5 for example).

This result can be thought of as redistribution of the quantum noise in such a way as to minimise the signal information gathered by the amplitude and phase quadrature measurements inside the teleporter. If the signal is strongly amplitude squeezed then the entanglement ‘noise’ must be increased in the anti-squeezed quadrature to hide its large quantum fluctuations and we can afford to decrease it in the squeezed quadrature because the squeezed fluctuations are small.

## V Generalisation to Multi-partite Entanglement

We will now show that our protocol generalises to multi-party situations. In particular let us consider the continuous variable GHZ state , so-called through analogy with the dichotomic GHZ state . We can generalise the bipartite EPR condition to this tri-partite state by requiring that the amplitude and phase variances of, say, beam $`a`$, conditioned on measurements of beams $`b`$ and $`c`$, display an apparent violation of the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. The conditional variance generalised to the three beam situation is given by

$`V_{\mathrm{cv3}}^\pm `$ $`=`$ $`V_a^\pm {\displaystyle \frac{V_b^\pm |\delta X_a^\pm \delta X_c^\pm |^2+V_c^\pm |\delta X_a^\pm \delta X_b^\pm |^2}{V_b^\pm V_c^\pm |\delta X_b^\pm \delta X_c^\pm |^2}}`$ (28)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta X_a^\pm \delta X_b^\pm \delta X_a^\pm \delta X_c^\pm \delta X_b^\pm \delta X_c^\pm }{V_b^\pm V_c^\pm |\delta X_b^\pm \delta X_c^\pm |^2}}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{(\delta X_a^\pm \delta X_b^\pm \delta X_a^\pm \delta X_c^\pm \delta X_b^\pm \delta X_c^\pm )^{}}{V_b^\pm V_c^\pm |\delta X_b^\pm \delta X_c^\pm |^2}}`$
We can define a continuous variable GHZ violation as occurring when $`V_{\mathrm{cv3}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv3}}^{}<1`$. This GHZ entanglement can be produced by combining three squeezed states on beam splitters such that the output fields (labelled GHZ1, GHZ2 and GHZ3) are given by

$`\delta X_{\mathrm{GHZ1}}^\pm `$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}}\delta X_1^\pm \sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}}\delta X_2^\pm `$ (29)
$`\delta X_{\mathrm{GHZ2}}^\pm `$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}}\delta X_1^\pm +\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}}\delta X_2^\pm +\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}}\delta X_3^\pm `$ (30)
$`\delta X_{\mathrm{GHZ3}}^\pm `$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}}\delta X_1^\pm +\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}}\delta X_2^\pm \sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}}\delta X_3^\pm `$ (31)
Gorbachev and Trubilko , and van Loock and Braunstein consider GHZ states generated from three beams of equal squeezing with the squeezing of beam 1 orthogonal to that of beams 2 and 3, i.e. $`V_1^\pm =V_2^{}=V_3^{}`$. This indeed satisfies the condition for GHZ violation for all levels of squeezing. However an examination of the correlations between the beams reveals they are biased in quadrature phase. A generalisation of the argument in Section IIC shows that pure GHZ states are maximal when this noise is unbiased. This can be arranged here by requiring that the squeezing of input beam one is stronger according to

$$V_1^\pm =\frac{1V_{2,3}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+\sqrt{1V_{2,3}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+V_{2,3}^{}{}_{}{}^{4}}}{V_{2,3}^{}}$$
(32)
This then produces a maximal GHZ state in the same sense as we defined a maximal EPR state. That is, for a given strength of GHZ entanglement this state has the least number of photons.

Now consider the situation of a single squeezed beam divided equally in three. This situation is described by equation (29) with beam 1 squeezed, say $`V_1^+<1<V_1^{}`$, but beam 2 and 3 in vacuum states $`V_2^\pm =V_3^\pm =1`$. The GHZ condition is still satisfied for this state for any finite level of squeezing provided the squeezed input beam was in a minimum uncertainty state. This is in accordance with the conclusions of Ref. , though the state is clearly not maximal. However, as for the EPR case, it is possible to create a maximal GHZ state by applying OPAs, locally, to the three GHZ beams. In this case the required gain of the OPAs is

$$G=\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}\left(\frac{V_1^{}+2}{V_1^++2}\right)^{1/2}$$
(33)
resulting in a maximal GHZ state indistinguishable from that produced from three squeezed states, as described by equation (32). These techniques can similarly be generalised to four or more parties.

## VI Conclusion

We have studied pure state EPR entanglement in which the quantum correlations can be biased as a function of quadrature phase. We defined maximal EPR states as states having the most EPR entanglement for a given number of photons or equivalently as states with minimum photon number for a given value of $`V_{\mathrm{cv}}^+V_{\mathrm{cv}}^{}`$. In particular we identified standard, unbiased EPR states produced from pairs of squeezed beams as maximal.

Entanglement produced from a single squeezed beam with squeezed variance $`V^+`$ was found to have the same degree of EPR correlation as entanglement from two squeezed beams with squeezed variances $`V_1^+=V_2^{}=\sqrt{V^+}`$. Biased entanglement is non-maximal, however we identified local unitary operations which could convert it to a maximal EPR state of lower photon number but the same degree of correlation. We examined some consequences of these results as they apply to teleportation.

Finally we generalised our results to tri-partite entanglement. We identified the maximal continuous variable GHZ states. These are not produced from the superposition of three equally squeezed states. We showed that our techniques could be used to produce maximal GHZ states from the non-maximal one produced by equally dividing a single squeezed beam.


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# Microscopic Reaction Dynamics at SPS and RHIC

## 1 Transport Theory at RHIC

Transport Theory offers the unique capability of connecting experimentally observable quantities in a relativistic heavy ion collision with its time evolution and reaction dynamics, thus giving crucial insights into the possible formation of a transient deconfined phase of hot and dense matter, the Quark-Gluon-Plasma (for reviews on QGP signatures, see e.g. ).

Figure 1 provides an overview of different transport theoretical ansatzes currently on the market for the description of a relativistic heavy ion collision at RHIC energies. The timeline shows a best case scenario for what to expect: the formation of a QGP with subsequent hadronization and freeze-out. Bands with solid lines denote the safe range of applicability for the respective transport approach, whereas dashed/dotted bands refer to areas in which the approach is still applied but where the assumptions on which the approach is based upon may be questionable or not valid anymore.

The initial state and early pre-equilibrium phase are best described in Classical Yang-Mills theory (CYM)  or Lattice Gauge Transport (LGT)  calculations - only these classes of models treat the coherence of the initial state correctly, but do not provide any meaningful dynamics for the later reaction stages.

The Parton Cascade Model (PCM)  and related pQCD approaches  treat the initial state as incoherent parton configuration, but are very well suited for the pre-equilibrium phase and subsequent thermalization, leading to a QGP and hydrodynamic expansion. Microscopic degrees of freedom in this ansatz are quarks and gluons which are propagated according to a Boltzmann Equation with a collision term using leading order pQCD cross sections. Augmented with a cluster hadronization ansatz the PCM is applicable up to hadronization. The range of this model can be even further extended if it is combined with a hadronic cascade which treats the hadronic phase and freeze-out correctly .

Nuclear Fluid Dynamics (NFD, see e.g. ) is ideally suited for the QGP and hydrodynamic expansion reaction phase, but breaks down in the later, dilute, stages of the reaction when the mean free paths of the hadrons become large and flavor degrees of freedom are important. The reach of NFD can also be extended by combining it with a microscopic hadronic cascade model – this kind of hybrid approach (dubbed hydro plus micro) was pioneered in  and has been now also taken up by other groups . It is to date the most successful approach for describing the soft physics at RHIC. The biggest advantage of NFD is that it directly incorporates an equation of state as input - one of it’s largest disadvantages is that it requires thermalized initial conditions and one is not able to do an ab-initio calculation.

Last but not least string and hadronic transport models  have been very successful in the AGS and SPS energy domains. They treat the early reaction phase as a superposition of hadron-hadron strings and are thus ill suited to describe the microscopic reaction dynamics of deconfined degrees of freedom. In the later reaction stages, however, they are the best suited approach, since they incorporate the full spectrum of degrees of freedom of a hadron gas (including flavor dependent cross sections).

It is thus important to note that there is not a single transport theoretical ansatz currently available, which is able to cover the entire time-evolution of a collision at RHIC in one self-consistent approach.

## 2 Kinetic Evolution

The initial reaction dynamics are best described by partonic degrees of freedom. Figure 3 shows the time-evolution of the average squared momentum transfer $`Q^2`$ in parton-parton collisions for central Au+Au reactions at RHIC, based on a PCM calculation . Early rescatterings of incident partons occur at rather large values of $`Q^27`$ GeV2. However, between the time $`t_{\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{m}.}0.5`$ fm/c and $`t_{\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{m}.}4.5`$ fm/c the average $`Q^2`$ decreases rapidly to a value of about $`4.5`$ GeV2 until hadronization sets in. The strong time-dependence of $`Q^2`$ shows that there is no single $`Q^2`$ scale which can be chosen to unambiguously set the pQCD scale in an ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collision. The reaction dynamics in the partonic phase is dominated by gluon-gluon scattering ($`43`$%) followed gluon fusion ($`27`$%) and quark-gluon scattering ($`26`$%). Quark-quark and quark-antiquark scattering only contribute on a few % level. These numbers are fairly independent of the system size and change only marginally between proton-proton and Au+Au reactions.

While there is no doubt about the importance of partonic degrees of freedom for the initial, early, reaction stages, the crucial question is, how long the deconfined state actually existed and whether this time-span is long enough for thermalization and collective effects to occur. Balance functions offer a unique model-independent formalism to probe the time-scales of a deconfined phase and subsequent hadronization . Late-stage production of quarks could be attributed to three mechanisms: formation of hadrons from gluons, conversion of the non-perturbative vacuum energy into particles, or hadronization of a quark gas at constant temperature. Hadronization of a quark gas should approximately conserve the net number of particles due to the constraint of entropy conservation. Since hadrons are formed of two or more quarks, creation of quark-antiquark pairs should accompany hadronization. All three mechanisms for late-stage quark production involve a change in the degrees of freedom. Therefore, any signal that pinpoints the time where quarks first appear in a collision would provide valuable insight into understanding whether a novel state of matter has been formed and persisted for a substantial time.

The link between balance functions and the time at which quarks are created has a simple physical explanation. Charge-anticharge pairs are created at the same location in space-time, and are correlated in rapidity due to the strong collective expansion inherent to a relativistic heavy ion collision. Pairs created earlier can separate further in rapidity due to the higher initial temperature and due to the diffusive interactions with other particles. The balance function, which describes the momentum of the accompanying antiparticle, quantifies this correlation. The balance function describes the conditional probability that a particle in the bin $`p_1`$ will be accompanied by a particle of opposite charge in the bin $`p_2`$:

$$B(p_2|p_1)\frac{1}{2}\left\{\rho (b,p_2|a,p_1)\rho (b,p_2|b,p_1)+\rho (a,p_2|b,p_1)\rho (a,p_2|a,p_1)\right\},$$
(1)
where $`\rho (b,p_2|a,p_1)`$ is the conditional probability of observing a particle of type $`b`$ in bin $`p_2`$ given the existence of a particle of type $`a`$ in bin $`p_1`$. The label $`a`$ might refer to all negative kaons with $`b`$ referring to all positive kaons, or $`a`$ might refer to all hadrons with a strange quark while $`b`$ refers to all hadrons with an antistrange quark.

Figure 3 shows $`K^+/K^{}`$ balance functions as predicted in a simple Bjorken thermal model for two hadronization temperatures, 225 MeV and 165 MeV as well as for fragmenting strings (utilizing PYTHIA), which would represent the hadronization scenario of a hadronic/string picture similar to that of RQMD or UrQMD. Since particles from cooler systems have smaller thermal velocities, they are more strongly correlated in rapidity and result in narrower balance functions. A strong sensitivity to the hadronization temperature and time can be clearly observed.

## 3 Flavor Evolution

A central issue for the characterization of the deconfined phase on the basis of the measurable final state hadrons is how much the hadronic composition of the system changes due to hadronic rescattering: figure 5 shows the relative change (in %) of the multiplicity for various hadron species at SPS and RHIC between hadronization and freeze-out. As is to be expected, the state of rapid expansion prevailing at hadronization does not allow chemical equilibrium to hold down to much lower temperatures. The hadronic rescattering changes the multiplicities by less than a factor of two, cf. also . Thus, we have first evidence that a QGP expanding and hadronizing as an ideal fluid produces a too rapidly expanding background for a hadron-fluid with known elementary cross-sections to maintain chemical equilibrium down to much lower temperatures than $`T_C`$.

However, a closer look provides more insight into the chemical composition. The changes are most pronounced at the SPS, were the baryon-antibaryon asymmetry is highest (since the net-baryon density at mid-rapidity is highest). This manifests e.g. in a reduction of the antiproton multiplicity by 40-50% due to baryon-antibaryon annihilation. $`\overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Xi }}`$ are affected in similar fashion. It remains a matter of debate whether these changes in the hadronic yields are consistent with the assumption of chemical freeze-out at the phase-boundary.

However, despite the large amount of rescattering occuring in the hadronic phase, some hadron species may yet be sensitive to conditions at hadronization: figure 5 displays the inverse slope parameters $`T`$ obtained by an exponential fit to $`dN_i/d^2m_Tdy`$ in the range $`m_Tm_i<1`$ GeV for SPS and RHIC in a hybrid hydro+micro calculation and compares them to SPS data . The trend of the data, namely the “softer” spectra of $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$’s and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$’s as compared to a linear $`T(m)`$ relation is reproduced reasonably well. This is in contrast to “pure” hydrodynamics with kinetic freeze-out on a common hypersurface (e.g. the $`T=130`$ MeV isotherm), where the stiffness of the spectra increases linearly with mass as denoted by the lines in fig. 5. When going from SPS to RHIC energy, the model discussed here generally yields only a slight increase of the inverse slopes, although the specific entropy is larger by a factor of 4-5 ! The reason for this behavior is the first-order phase transition that softens the transverse expansion considerably.

The softening of the spectra is caused by the hadron gas emerging from the hadronization of the QGP being almost “transparent” for the multiple strange baryons. This can be seen by calculating the average number of collisions different hadron species suffer in the hadronic phase: whereas $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$’s suffer on average only one hadronic interaction, $`N`$’s and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$’s suffer approx. 5–6 collisions with other hadrons before they freeze-out.

Thus, one may conclude that the spectra of $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$’s and especially $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$’s are practically unaffected by the hadronic reaction stage and closely resemble those on the phase boundary. They therefore act as probes of the QGP expansion prior to hadronization and can be used to measure the expansion rate of the deconfined phase.

## 4 Freeze-out

Kinetic freeze-out, at which all (elastic) interactions cease, terminates the evolution of the reaction discussed in figure 1. However, the freeze-out time of the system is ill-defined, since interactions cease locally on a particle per particle basis. Fig. 7 shows the distribution of freeze-out points of pions in the forward light-cone, as well as the hadronization hypersurface from where all hadrons emerge in a hydro+micro approach. Freeze-out is seen to occur in a four-dimensional region within the forward light-cone rather than on a three-dimensional “hypersurface” in space-time. Similar results have also been obtained within other microscopic transport models  when the initial state was not a QGP. It is clear that the hadronic system disintegrates slowly (as compared to e.g. the hadronization time), rather than emitting a “flash” of hadrons (predominantly pions) in an instantaneous decay.

A first order phase transition leads to a prolonged hadronization time as compared to a cross-over or ideal hadron gas with no phase transition, and has been related to unusually large Hanbury-Brown–Twiss (HBT) radii . The phase of coexisting hadrons and QGP reduces the “explosivity” of the high-density matter before hadronization, extending the emission duration of pions . This phenomenon should then depend on the hadronization (critical) temperature $`T_c`$ and the latent heat of the transition. For recent reviews on this topic we refer to .

It has been suggested that the ratio $`R_{\mathrm{out}}/R_{\mathrm{side}}`$ should increase strongly once the initial entropy density $`s_i`$ becomes substantially larger than that of the hadronic gas at $`T_c`$ . The strong $`T_C`$ dependence of $`R_{\mathrm{out}}/R_{\mathrm{side}}`$ in such a purely hydrodynamical scenario can be seen in fig. 7 (solid and dotted lines). Here, the $`R_{\mathrm{out}}/R_{\mathrm{side}}`$ ratio at hadronization (calculated in a hydrodynamical scenario) is compared to the ratio after subsequent hadronic rescattering and freeze-out in a combined hydro+micro approach . Clearly, up to $`K_T200`$MeV $`R_{\mathrm{out}}/R_{\mathrm{side}}`$ is independent of $`T_c`$, if hadronic rescatterings are taken into account. Moreover, at higher $`K_T`$ the dependence on $`T_c`$ is even reversed: for high $`T_c`$ the $`R_{\mathrm{out}}/R_{\mathrm{side}}`$ ratio even exceeds that for low $`T_c`$. Higher $`T_c`$ speeds up hadronization but on the other hand prolongs the dissipative hadronic phase that dominates the HBT radii. This is because during the non-ideal hadronic expansion the scale of spatial homogeneity of the pion density distribution increases, as the pions fly away from the center, but the transverse flow can hardly increase to counteract. Therefore, after hadronic rescattering $`R_{\mathrm{out}}/R_{\mathrm{side}}`$ does not drop towards higher $`K_T`$ (in the range $`K_T\stackrel{<}{}3m_\pi `$).

For central collisions of Au nuclei at $`\sqrt{s}=130A`$ GeV, preliminary data from STAR gives $`R_{\mathrm{out}}/R_{\mathrm{side}}1.1`$ at small $`K_T`$ . Results from RHIC at higher $`K_T`$ will test whether a long-lived hadronic soft-rescattering stage, associated with the formation and hadronization of an equilibrated QGP state is indeed seen in heavy ion collisions at the highest presently attainable energies.

I wish to thank my collaborators A. Dumitru, P. Danielewicz, B. Müller, S. Pratt, S. Soff, D. Srivastava and the UrQMD collaboration, who have significantly contributed to the results reviewed in this article. This work was supported by DOE grant DE-FG02-96ER40945.


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# Anomalous doublets of states in a 𝒫𝒯 symmetric quantum model

## I Framework: $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric quantum mechanics

Bound states in a smooth real potential $`V(x)0`$ are most easily interpreted in the language of Sturm–Liouville theory . Its oscillation theorems imply that the $`N`$th bound state $`\psi _N(x)`$ possesses $`N`$ nodal zeros. Even the standard boundary conditions may be understood as the presence of an additional pair of zeros which are located at both ends of the interval of coordinates $`𝒥=(\mathrm{},\mathrm{})`$ in one dimension or of the radial axis $`𝒥=(0,\mathrm{})`$ in three dimensions.

A non-standard, additional constraint is only necessary for some strongly singular forces . Unfortunately, the latter, mathematically rigorous requirement of the elimination of the irregular solutions may prove fairly counterintuitive and, for this reason, it is often being forgotten in practice. For illustration, we may recollect the paper on supersymmetry  which describes a singular map of the shifted harmonic oscillator. This example (attributed to A. Khare in Acknowledgements) is marred by a subtle violation of the boundary condition in the origin. A very similar inconsistency appears in the “conditionally exact” model by A. de Souza Dutra , in some phenomenological studies in quantum chemistry  etc.

An extensive clarification of the latter point may be found elsewhere . In order to avoid similar misunderstandings, the underlying mathematics can be significantly simplified via and analytic continuation (or even re-formulation) of the physical boundary conditions . This is an innovative idea which proved unexpectedly fruitful. Recently, one of its more specific versions became a cornerstone of the so called $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric approach to quantum mechanics .

The latter formalism dispenses with the Hermiticity of the Hamiltonian $`H`$ and keeps only a weaker requirement of the commutativity of $`H`$ with the product of parity ($`𝒫x=x`$) and complex conjugation ($`𝒯i=i`$ which mimics the time reversal). The singular Schrödinger equations may be then regularized in the way which preserves the reality of the spectrum. Such a $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric non-Hermitization can be applied easily to many solvable potentials, e.g., via a constant complex shift of the coordinate axis ,

$$r=r_{(t)}=ti\epsilon ,t(\mathrm{},\mathrm{}),\epsilon >0.$$
(1)
This enables us, in essence,

* to work, more easily, with the analytic wave functions $`\psi (r)`$ which prove available within the whole complex plane of $`r`$,
* to return, whenever necessary, to the Hermitian Hamiltonian by means of the limiting transition $`\epsilon 0`$ and/or of a suitable selection of the additional constraints.

Both the one-dimensional and three-dimensional exactly solvable harmonic oscillators $`V^{(E)}(r)=\mathrm{}(\mathrm{}+1)/r^2+r^2`$ with parity $`\mathrm{}=1,0`$ or angular momentum $`\mathrm{}=0,1,\mathrm{}`$, respectively, become suddenly tractable on equal footing (details may be found in ref. ). In the three-body context of the so called Calogero’s exactly solvable model , the same singular harmonic-oscillator-like differential equation and the same limiting transition $`\epsilon 0`$ reproduce the correct Hermitian solutions in spite of the utterly different physical origin and meaning of the singular term . Via a modified transition to the Hermitian limit, another solvable model is revealed .

One can summarize that the $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric quantum mechanics offers a new approach to the explicit construction of bound states. It will be applied here to the potential

$$V(\xi )=\frac{3/4}{(1e^{2i\xi })^2}+\frac{2i\beta \mathrm{exp}(2i\xi )}{\sqrt{1e^{2i\xi }}}\frac{C}{1e^{2i\xi }}$$
(2)
with certain unusual features. Already Singh and Devi  have noticed that it does not belong to the family of the shape invariant potentials. Dutt et al  emphasized that this is the only existing nontrivial example of the conditionally exactly solvable potential. We have recently shown  that this exactly solvable potential of the Natanzon class  possesses a natural supersymmetric interpretation and offers a nontrivial opportunity of the rigorous study of its solutions near the singularity. The latter point proved in fact also the main motivation of our continuing interest in this example.

## II The method: A change of coordinates

In a way which dates back to the work of Liouville  one can change variables in the Schrödinger equation

$$\left[\frac{d^2}{dr^2}+V^{(E)}(r)\right]\psi ^{(E)}(r)=E^{(E)}\psi ^{(E)}(r)$$
(3)
using the recipe

$$r\xi =\xi (r),\psi ^{(E)}(r)\psi ^{(D)}(\xi )=\sqrt{\xi ^{}[r(\xi )]}\psi ^{(E)}[r(\xi )].$$
(4)
This generates the new differential equation of the similar form,

$$\left[\frac{d^2}{d\xi ^2}+V^{(D)}(\xi )\right]\psi ^{(D)}(\xi )=E^{(D)}\psi ^{(D)}(\xi ).$$
(5)
The explicit relationship between the two respective potentials is determined by the identity which is easily derived,

$$V^{(E)}(r)E^{(E)}=\left[\xi ^{}(r)\right]^2\left\{V^{(D)}(\xi )E^{(D)}\right\}+\frac{3}{4}\left[\frac{\xi ^{\prime \prime }(r)}{\xi ^{}(r)}\right]^2\frac{1}{2}\left[\frac{\xi ^{\prime \prime \prime }(r)}{\xi ^{}(r)}\right].$$
(6)
Once you postulate the solvability of the original equation (3) in terms of some known polynomials, it is possible to construct another exactly solvable equation by the suitable choice of the re-parametrization $`\xi (r)`$. Its special cases which mediate all the mutual canonical transformations between the real shape invariant potentials were listed in review  (cf., in particular, Figure 5.1 there).

Once we switch our attention to the non-Hermitian examples and retain the split of the shape invariant models into the Laguerre-solvable and Jacobi-solvable subsets (cf. Figure 5.1 of ref.  once more), we can easily parallel many of the above transformations. For the Laguerre-solvable subset, all the details may be found in refs.  and . In a less exhaustive manner, the Jacobi-solvable shape invariant $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric family has been described in refs.  and . One of the most striking features of some of the complexified changes of variables lies in the characteristic bent shape of the integration contours $`\xi `$. For illustration, let us recollect the implicit definition

$$\mathrm{sinh}r=ie^{i\xi }$$
(7)
of the Hulthén-force generating function $`\xi =\xi (r)`$ as employed in ref. . Its straight-line input $`r=r_{(t)}=ti\epsilon `$ with $`\epsilon >0`$ becomes strongly deformed after the transition to $`\xi =\xi (r)=\xi (r_{(t)})`$.

In more detail, the left path could also inessentially be deformed, for the sake of simplicity, in such a way that $`\epsilon =\epsilon (t)0`$ for $`|t|\mathrm{}`$. This asymptotically modified contour of $`r=r_{(t)}`$ avoids the upwards-running cut and comfortably coincides with the real line at both its asymptotic ends. It remains parametrized by $`t(\mathrm{},\mathrm{})`$ and defines the right-hand side bent curve $`\xi =\mathrm{\Omega }iZ`$ via the pair of the real implicit equations

$$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{sinh}t\mathrm{cos}\epsilon (t)=e^Z\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Omega },\\ \mathrm{cosh}t\mathrm{sin}\epsilon (t)=e^Z\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Omega }.\end{array}$$

Their explicit solution

$$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{\Omega }_{(t)}=\mathrm{arctan}\left[\frac{\mathrm{tanh}t}{\mathrm{tan}\epsilon (t)}\right](\mathrm{\Omega }_{(\mathrm{})},\mathrm{\Omega }_{(\mathrm{})})(\frac{\pi }{2}+\epsilon (\mathrm{}),\frac{\pi }{2}\epsilon (\mathrm{})),\\ Z_{(t)}=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\left[\mathrm{sinh}^2t+\mathrm{sin}^2\epsilon (t)\right]\end{array}$$

shows that the new curve $`\xi =\xi (t)=\mathrm{\Omega }_{(t)}iZ_{(t)}`$ is arch-shaped and symmetric. It starts in a left imaginary minus infinity (at $`Z_{(\mathrm{})}1`$) and ends in its right parallel (with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{(\mathrm{})}=\pi /2\epsilon (\mathrm{})`$ and $`Z_{(\mathrm{})}1`$). Its top $`Z_{(0)}=\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{sin}\epsilon <0`$ at $`t=\mathrm{\Omega }_{(0)}=0`$ moves upwards in an inverse proportion to the decrease of the original shift $`\epsilon (0)0`$.

## III Pairs of states with the same $`N`$

In a search for a “new” solvable model $`V^{(D)}(\xi )`$, let us start from the complexified Schrödinger equation (3) defined on a complex contour $`r=r_{(t)}=ti\epsilon (t)`$. We shall apply the change of the complex contours (7) to the complexified Eckart potential

$$V^{(E)}(r)=\frac{A(A1)}{\mathrm{sinh}^2r}2i\beta \frac{\mathrm{cosh}r}{\mathrm{sinh}r},\beta >0.$$
(8)
Although our result will coincide (not surprisingly) with the above-mentioned shape-non-invariant potential (2), the mapping itself will be shown to exhibit certain very unusual and unexpected features.

In a preparatory step, the exact solvability of such a model may be most easily demonstrated via an auxiliary re-parametrization suggested in ref. ,

$$\psi ^{(E)}(r)=(y1)^u(y+1)^v\phi \left(\frac{1y}{2}\right),y=y(r)=\frac{\mathrm{cosh}r}{\mathrm{sinh}r}=12z$$

with

$$4v^2=2i\beta E,4u^2=2i\beta E.$$

This leads to the new differential equation

$$z(1z)\phi ^{\prime \prime }(z)+[c(a+b+1)z]\phi ^{}(z)ab\phi (z)=0$$
(9)
which is completely solvable in terms of the Gauss hypergeometric series,

$$\phi (z)=C_1_2F_1(a,b;c;z)+C_2z_2^{1c}F_1(a+1c,b+1c;2c;z)$$
(10)
where

$$c=1+2u,a+b=2u+2v+1,ab=(u+v)(u+v+1)+A(1A).$$

All the freedom of parameters becomes fixed by the boundary conditions $`\psi (\pm \mathrm{})=0`$ which give $`b=N`$ and $`a=b\pm (2A1)`$. Jacobi polynomials $`P^{(\alpha ,\beta )}(x)`$  enter the elementary formula for the wave functions,

$$\psi ^{(E)}(r)=\left(\frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}r}\right)^{u+v}e^{(vu)r}P_N^{(u/2,v/2)}(\mathrm{coth}r).$$
(11)
These solutions remain normalizable if and only if

$$a=2AN1,u+v=AN1>0,uv=i\frac{\beta }{AN1}.$$
(12)
The model possesses $`N_{max}<A1`$ bound states with the energies

$$E^{(E)}=\left(AN1\right)^2+\frac{\beta ^2}{(AN1)^2},N=0,1,\mathrm{},N_{max}.$$
(13)
We are prepared to transform this solution into its partner of eq. (5). It suffices to change variables via eq. (7). This replaces the Eckart problem (3) by the new Schrödinger equation (5). The implicit definition (6) of the new potential $`V^{(D)}(\xi )`$ acquires a more explicit form

$$V^{(D)}(r)E^{(D)}=\frac{3}{4\mathrm{cosh}^4r}\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}^2r}\left[N(N+1)+(2N+1)\delta _N+1+\frac{\beta ^2}{\delta _N^2}\right]+$$

$$+\left(\frac{\beta ^2}{\delta _N^2}\delta _N^2\right)+2i\beta \frac{\mathrm{sinh}r}{\mathrm{cosh}r},\delta _N=AN1>0.$$
(14)
In the domain of the large $`|r|1`$ this formula is dominated by the last two terms. Only the very last one depends on the sign of $`\mathrm{Re}r`$ so that the coupling $`\beta `$ must be independent of $`N`$ (we do not wish to have a state-dependent potential). We then determine (i.e., strictly speaking, remove the shift-ambiguity of) the energy $`E^{(D)}`$ by the convenient requirement that $`V^{(D)}(\pm \mathrm{})`$ vanishes at $`\beta =0`$. The other two asymptotically smaller components of $`V^{(D)}(\xi )`$ are of the first and second order in $`1/\mathrm{cosh}^2r(\xi )`$. Both of them must be also independent of $`N`$ of course. In the first order this gives the strict rule

$$N^2+N+1+(2N+1)\delta +\beta ^2/\delta ^2=constant(=C).$$
(15)
In the second order, the coefficient is equal to $`3/4`$ and the condition remains trivial. We just confirmed that the replacement of $`r`$ by $`r(\xi )`$ transforms the Eckart potential (8) into its exactly solvable descendant (2), indeed.

During the re-construction of the potential $`V^{(D)}(\xi )`$, energies $`E_N^{(D)}`$ and wave functions $`\psi _N^{(D)}(\xi )`$ the auxiliary, $`N`$dependent value of $`\delta =\delta _N=AN1>0`$ is to be determined as a root of the cubic equation (15). In Hermitian setting, the correct account of the physical boundary conditions makes this root unique . In the generalized, $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric setting, the exceptional boundary condition in the origin becomes redundant. This is the reason why we have chosen our particular example. A priori, one may expect that the choice of the root $`\delta _N`$ could be ambiguous.

In the light of our present construction, the latter expectation proves fulfilled. At the sufficiently large values of $`CC_{min}>0`$ there exist three real roots $`\delta _N`$. Only one of them (viz., the negative one) can be eliminated as violating the asymptotic physical boundary conditions (i.e., the normalizability of the wave function). In contrast to the Hermitian case, two of the roots $`\delta =\delta ^{(\pm )}=\delta _N^{(\pm )}(\beta ,C)>0`$ of our cubic eq. (15) remain equally acceptable. At any number of nodal zeros $`N`$, each of them defines a separate energy level,

$$E=E_N^{(D)(\pm )}=\left(\delta _N^{(\pm )}+N+\frac{1}{2}\right)^2+\frac{3}{4}C.$$
(16)
The related $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric wave functions

$$\psi =\psi _N^{(D)}(\xi )=\sqrt{\xi ^{}[r(\xi )]}\psi _N^{(E)}[r(\xi )]$$

are proportional to the same Jacobi polynomials as above,

$$\psi =e^{i\delta \xi }\left[1e^{2i\xi }\right]^{1/2}\left[\sqrt{e^{2i\xi }1}e^{i\xi }\right]^{i\beta /\delta }P_N^{([\delta i\beta /\delta ]/4,[\delta +i\beta /\delta ]/4)}\left(\sqrt{1e^{2i\xi }}\right).$$

This is the core of our present message. In the $`|t|1`$ asymptotic regions we have $`\xi iZ\pm \pi /2`$ with $`Z1`$. This re-confirms that both our series of wave functions $`\psi ^{(\pm )}`$ are asymptotically vanishing as $`\mathrm{exp}(\delta ^{(\pm )}Z)`$. For both the roots $`\delta =\delta _N^{(\pm )}>0`$, they are safely normalizable.

## IV Discussion

The use of the commutativity $`[H,𝒫𝒯]=0`$ complies with our intuitive expectations in the numerical setting  and in perturbation theory , in the WKB approximation  and in the supersymmetric context  as well as in the phenomenologically oriented field-theoretical studies . In contrast, our present results form a paradox since the change of variables mediates an utterly unusual one-to-two correspondence between the two complex potentials. For the force $`V^{(D)}(\xi )`$ this gives the two parallel series of bound states which must be distinguished by an additional, parity-type quantum number $`q=\pm 1`$. The nodal count $`N`$ itself does not suffice to characterize the energy levels (16). This is a puzzling situation since we see no obvious reason for the introduction of $`q`$. One has to assume the existence of some unknown, hidden symmetry in our problem (5), but it is still necessary to accept the fact that this symmetry has to break down during an apparently innocent change (7) of the coordinates.

We can summarize that our above conclusions are to be added to the list of the “oddities” which emerge in $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric quantum mechanics due to it weaker boundary conditions. Let us just remind the reader that this is not in fact an isolated paradox. Our traditional intuition has already had really hard times with the unavoided level crossings in ref. , with the decrease of the energy with $`N`$ in ref. , with the high excitations caused by a weak potential in refs.  etc. Thus, just another item is provided by our present example.

We may formulate our tentative conclusion that the $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric deformations of the integration paths can in fact destroy the (a priori, plausible) similarity between the complex and ordinary parity. One of the most important implications is that any future appropriate generalization of the Hermitian Sturm–Liouville oscillation theorems will be necessarily not entirely trivial. Also the closely related concept of the completeness of states  must be dealt with an exceptional care in any future development of the $`𝒫𝒯`$ symmetric quantum mechanics. We might point out that the similar words of warning have been recently issued also on the purely numerical basis .

## Acknowledgment

This research was partly carried out within the frame of TMR - Network ERB FMR XCT 96-0057, and partially supported by the grant No. A 1048004 of GA AS CR (Czech Republic) and OTKA grant No. T031945 (Hungary).


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# The heavy baryons in the nonperturbative string approach

## 1. Introduction

The observation of $`B_c^+`$ meson by the CDF collaboration  opens a new direction in the physics of hadrons containing two heavy quarks. Presently at the LHC, $`B`$-factories, and the Tevatron with high luminosity, several experiments have been proposed, in which there is a possibility to identify and study hadrons containing two heavy quarks, like doubly-charm baryons $`\left(ccq\right)`$ or baryons $`\left(bcq\right)`$ with charm and beauty111 Here, and throughout this paper, $`q`$ denotes a light quark $`u`$ or $`d`$.. In the more distant future the next generation experiments with high bottom quark production rate will provide excellent possibilities for the study bottom baryons and their decays. In view of this project, it is important to have safe theoretical predictions for heavy baryon masses as a guide to the experimental search of these hadrons.

A number of authors - have already considered baryons containing two heavy quarks in anticipation of future experiments which may discover these particles. In most of these works, however, theoretical predictions are somewhat biased by the introduction of the additional dynamical assumptions and supplementary dynamical parameters like constituent quark masses in addition to the only one parameter really pertinent to QCD – the overall scale of the theory $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\text{QCD}}`$.

The purpose of this paper is to calculate the masses of the heavy baryons in a simple approximation within the nonperturbative QCD, developed in -. This method has been already applied to study baryon Regge trajectories  and, very recently, for computation of magnetic moments of light baryons . The essential point of this paper is that it is very reasonable that the same method should also hold for hadrons containing heavy quarks. In this work we will concentrate on the masses of doubly heavy baryons. As in  we take as the universal parameter the QCD string tension $`\sigma `$, fixed in experiment by the meson and baryon Regge slopes. We also include the perturbative Coulomb interaction with the frozen coupling $`\alpha _s\left(\text{1 GeV}\right)=0.39`$. The basic feature of the considered approach is the dynamical calculation of the quark constituent masses $`m_i`$ in terms of the quark current masses $`m_i^{\left(0\right)}`$. This is done using the einbein (auxiliary fields) formalism, which is proven to be rather accurate in various calculations for relativistic systems. The einbeins are treated as the variational parameters which are to be found form the condition of the minimum of baryon eigen energies .

## 2. Formalism

The starting point of the approach is the Feynman–Schwinger representation of the $`3q`$ Green’s function, where the role of ”time” parameter along a quark path is played by the Fock–Schwinger proper time. The final step is the derivation of the c.m. Effective Hamiltonian (EH) containing the dynamical quark masses as parameters. For many details see the original papers -.

Consider a baryon consisting of three quarks with arbitrary masses $`m_i`$, $`i=1,2,3`$. In what follows we confine ourselves to consideration of the ground state baryons without radial and orbital excitations in which case tensor and spin-orbit forces do not contribute perturbatively. Then only the spin-spin interaction survives in the perturbative approximation. The EH has the following form:

$$H=\underset{i=1}{\overset{3}{}}\left(\frac{m_i^{\left(0\right)2}}{2m_i}+\frac{m_i}{2}\right)+H_0+V,$$
(1)
where $`m_i^{\left(0\right)}`$ are the current quark masses and $`m_i`$ are the dynamical quark masses to be found from the minimum condition (see Eq. (2) below). Since $`m_im_i^{\left(0\right)}`$ for light quarks, but $`m_im_i^{\left(0\right)}`$ for heavy quarks, each light quark contributes to the baryon mass an additional mass $`m_i/2`$ (not $`m_i`$ as in the ordinary nonrelativistic quark model), whereas each heavy quark contributes an additional mass $`m_i`$. The dynamical quark masses are evaluated from the equations defining the stationary points of the baryon mass $`M_B`$ as function of $`m_i`$

$$\frac{M_B\left(m_i\right)}{m_i}=0.$$
(2)
Let $`𝒓_i`$ be the quark coordinates. The kinetic momentum operator $`H_0`$ in Eq. (1) acquires the familiar form

$$H_0=\frac{1}{2m_1}\frac{^2}{𝒓_1^2}\frac{1}{2m_2}\frac{^2}{𝒓_2^2}\frac{1}{2m_3}\frac{^2}{𝒓_3^2}.$$
(3)
$`V`$ is the sum of the perturbative Coulomb-like one gluon exchange potential and the string potential. The Coulomb-like potential is

$$V_c=\frac{2\alpha _s}{3}\underset{i<j}{}\frac{1}{\left|𝒓_{ij}\right|},$$
(4)
where the factor $`2/3`$ is the value of the quadratic Casimir operator for the group $`SU_c\left(3\right)`$. The string potential has been calculated in  as the static energy of the three heavy quarks

$$V_{\text{string}}(𝒓_1,𝒓_2,𝒓_3)=\sigma R_{\text{min}},$$
(5)
where $`R_{\text{min}}`$ is the sum of the three distances $`\left|𝒓_i\right|`$ from the string junction point, which for simplicity is chosen as coinciding with the centre-of-mass coordinate $`𝐑_{\text{cm}}`$.

## 3. Hyper Radial Approximation

We use the hyperspherical formalism approach (for detail see original papers ). In the hyperradial approximation (HRA) corresponding to the truncation of the wave function $`\psi \left(\left\{𝒓_i\right\}\right)`$ by the component with grand orbital momentum $`K=0`$ the three-quark wave function depends only on the hyperradius $`R^2=𝝆^2+𝝀^2`$, where $`𝝆`$ and $`𝝀`$ are the three-body Jacobi variables222for their definition see Appendix, and does not depend on angular variables. The confining potential (5) has a specific three-body character. However, this potential as well as the Coulomb potential in Eq. (4) is smooth in the sense that the HRA (where only the part of the potential which is invariant under rotation in the six-dimensional space spanned by the Jacobi coordinates is taken into account) is already an excellent approximation. The HRA neglects the mixed symmetry components of the three-quark wave function, which appear in the higher approximations of the hyperspherical formalism . Introducing the reduced function333In what follows we omit the value of $`K=0`$ to avoid subscripts. Note that the radially symmetric component with $`K=0`$ is the dominant one in the three-quark wave function. $`\chi \left(R\right)=R^{5/2}\psi \left(R\right)`$ and averaging $`V=V_c+V_{\text{string}}`$ over the six-dimensional sphere one obtains the Schrödinger equation

$$\frac{d^2\chi \left(R\right)}{dR^2}+2\mu \left[EW\left(R\right)\frac{15}{8\mu R^2}\right]\chi \left(R\right)=0,$$
(6)
where $`\mu `$ is an arbitrary parameter with the dimension of mass which drops off in the final expressions. The last term in (6) represents the three-body centrifugal barrier and $`W\left(R\right)`$ is the average of the three-quark potentials over the six-dimensional sphere:

$$W\left(R\right)=V=\frac{a}{R}+bR,$$
(7)
with

$$a=\frac{2\alpha _s}{3}\frac{16}{3\pi }\underset{i<j}{}\alpha _{ij},b=\sigma \frac{32}{15\pi }\underset{i,j}{}\gamma _{ij}.$$
(8)
The mass depending constants $`\alpha _{ij}`$ and $`\gamma _{ij}`$ are defined by Eqs. (A.2) and (A.13) in the Appendix.

It is convenient to introduce a new variable $`x=R\sqrt{\mu }`$, to eliminate an artificial dependence of Eq. (6) on $`\mu `$, then the equation (6) becomes

$$\chi ^{\prime \prime }\left(x\right)+2\left(EU\left(x\right)\frac{15}{8x^2}\right)\chi \left(x\right)=0,$$
(9)
where

$$U\left(x\right)=\frac{a\sqrt{\mu }}{x}+\frac{b}{\sqrt{\mu }}x.$$
(10)
Since $`a1/\sqrt{\mu }`$, $`b\sqrt{\mu }`$ (see Eqs. (A.2), (A.13)), the eigenvalue $`E`$ in (6) does not depend on $`\mu `$.

## 4. The quark dynamical masses

Equation (9) applied to the nucleon $`\left(m_q^{\left(0\right)}0\right)`$ yields the dynamical mass $`m_q`$ of the light quark, and applied to the strange hyperons gives the strange quark mass $`m_s`$. In the same manner application of this equation to the charm and beauty baryons yields the constituent masses of $`c`$\- and $`b`$-quarks. In our calculations we use the same parameters as in , namely $`\sigma =0.17`$ GeV, $`\alpha _s=0.4`$, $`m_q^{\left(0\right)}=0.009`$ GeV, $`m_s^{\left(0\right)}=0.17`$ GeV, $`m_c^{\left(0\right)}=1.4`$ GeV, and $`m_b^{\left(0\right)}=4.8`$ GeV.

We solve Eq. (9) using both the quasiclassical and variational solutions. The first approach is based on the well-known fact that interplay between the centrifugal term and the confining potential produces a minimum of the effective potential specific for the three-body problem. The numerical solution of (9) for the ground state eigen energy may be reproduced on a per cent level of accuracy by using the parabolic approximation for the effective potential , . This approximation provides an analytical expression for the eigen energy. The potential $`\stackrel{~}{U}\left(x\right)=U\left(x\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{15}{8x^2}}`$ has the minimum at a point $`x=x_0`$, which is defined by the condition $`\stackrel{~}{U}^{}\left(x_0\right)=0`$, i.e.:

$$\frac{b}{\sqrt{\mu }}x_0^3+\left(a\sqrt{\mu }\right)x_015/4=0.$$
(11)
Expanding $`\stackrel{~}{U}\left(x\right)`$ in the vicinity of $`x=x_0`$ one obtains:

$$\stackrel{~}{U}\left(x\right)\stackrel{~}{U}\left(x_0\right)+\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{~}{U}^{\prime \prime }\left(x_0\right)\left(xx_0\right)^2,$$

i.e. the potential of the harmonic oscillator with the frequency $`\omega =\sqrt{\stackrel{~}{U}^{\prime \prime }\left(x_0\right)}`$. Therefore the energy eigenvalue is

$$E_0\stackrel{~}{U}\left(x_0\right)+\frac{1}{2}\omega .$$
(12)
In Table 1 we show the dynamical masses $`m_i`$ and the ground state eigenvalues $`E_0`$ for various baryons calculated using the procedure described above. Our values of light quark mass $`m_q`$ qualitatively agree with the results of  obtained from the analysis of the heavy-light ground meson states, but $`60`$ MeV higher than those of , . This difference is due to the different treatment of the Coulomb and spin-spin interactions. In  both interactions have not been included and the light quark mass has been calculated from the fit of the mass of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\left(1232\right)`$ where the Coulomb-like potential and the spin-spin interaction seem to balance each other. In  the smeared spin-spin interaction for the light quarks has been included into Eq. (2) defining the dynamical mass of the light quark. In our calculation as in  we include the Coulomb-like term, but neglect the spin-spin interaction.

There is no good theoretical reason why dynamical quark masses need to be the same in different mesons and baryons. From the results of Table 1 we conclude that the dynamical masses of the light quarks ($`u`$, $`d`$, or $`s`$) are increased by $`100150\text{ MeV}`$ when going from the light to heavy baryons. For the heavy quarks ($`c`$ and $`b`$) the variation in the values of their dynamical masses is marginal. In Table 2 we compare the quark masses in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_Q`$ and $`\mathrm{\Xi }_Q`$ baryons with those calculated in  in $`D`$ and $`B`$ mesons. One observes that the masses of the light quarks in baryons are slightly smaller than those in the mesons. The small variations in the values of $`m_c`$ and $`m_b`$ are within the accuracy of our calculations.

## 5. Correlation functions for the baryons

For many applications the quantities $`\psi \left|\delta ^{\left(3\right)}\left(𝒓_j𝒓_i\right)\right|\psi `$ are needed. To estimate effects related to the baryon wave function we solve Eq. (9) by the variational method. We introduce a simple variational ansätz for $`\chi \left(x\right)`$

$$\chi \left(x\right)=2\sqrt{2}p^3x^{5/2}e^{p^2x^2},$$
(13)
where $`p`$ is the variational parameter, and the numerical factor is chosen so that $`\chi ^2\left(x\right)𝑑x=1`$. The trial three-quark Hamiltonian admits explicit solutions for the energy, the wave function, and the density matrix:

$$E_0\underset{p}{\mathrm{min}}E\left(p\right),$$
(14)
where

$$E\left(p\right)=\chi \left|H\right|\chi =3p^2\left(a\sqrt{\mu }\right)\frac{3}{4}\sqrt{\frac{\pi }{2}}p+\left(b/\sqrt{\mu }\right)\frac{15}{16}\sqrt{\frac{\pi }{2}}p^1.$$
(15)
The density matrix (the correlation function) $`f_{ijk}\left(𝒓_{ij}\right)`$ in a baryon {ijk} is defined as:

$$f_{ijk}\left(𝒓_{ij}\right)=\alpha _{ij}^3\left|\psi (\alpha _{ij}𝒓_{ij},𝝀_{ij})\right|^2d^3𝝀_{ij}$$
(16)
so that

$$f_{ijk}\left(𝒓_{ij}\right)d^3𝒓_{ij}=\left|\psi (𝝆_{ij},𝝀_{ij})\right|^2d^3𝝀_{ij}d^3𝝆_{ij}=1.$$
(17)
For the trial function (13) $`f_{ijk}\left(𝒓_{ij}\right)`$ are evaluated explicitly:

$$f_{ijk}\left(𝒓_{ij}\right)=\left(\frac{\xi _{ij}}{\pi }\right)^{3/2}e^{\xi _{ij}\left|𝒓_{ij}\right|^2},$$
(18)
with

$$\xi _{ij}=2p_0^2\mu _{ij},$$
(19)
where $`\mu _{ij}`$ is the reduced mass of the quarks $`i`$ and $`j`$, and $`p_0`$ is to be found from the condition

$$\frac{dE}{dp}|_{p=p_0}=0.$$

The expectation values $`f_{ijk}\left(𝒓_{ij}\right)`$ depend on the third or ‘spectator’ quark through the three-quark wave function.

Let us define the quantities

$$R_{ijk}=f_{ijk}\left(0\right)=\left(\frac{\xi _{ij}}{\pi }\right)^{3/2}$$
(20)
The corresponding quantity for a meson is denoted as $`R_{ij}`$. The results of the variational calculations are given in Table 3 where for each baryon we show the variational parameters $`p_0`$, the quantities $`R_{ijk}`$ (in units of GeV3), and the average distances $`\overline{r}_{ij}=\sqrt{𝒓_{ij}^2}`$ (in units of fm). The variational estimations of $`E_0`$ and quark dynamical masses do not differ from those shown in Table 1.

Comparing the results of Table 3 with those of  we obtain (see Table 4)444 Inequalities (21) and (22) were first suggested in  from the observed mass splitting in mesons and baryons.

$$R_{ijk}<\frac{1}{2}R_{ij},$$
(21)
and

$$R_{ijk}R_{ijl},\text{if}m_km_l$$
(22)
Note, however, that if $`i,j`$ are the light quarks, and the quarks $`k`$ and $`l`$ are the heavy, then $`R_{ijk}R_{ijl}`$ (e.g., $`R_{qqc}R_{qqb}`$) in agreement with the limit of the heavy quark effective theory.

Our estimations for the ratios $`R_{ijk}/R_{ij}`$ agree with the results obtained using the nonrelativistic quark model or the bag model - or QCD sum rules  which are typically in the range $`0.10.5`$. On the other hand, our result for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_b`$ disagrees with the one by Rosner  who estimated the heavy-light diquark density at zero separation in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_b`$ from the ratio of hyperfine splittings between $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_b`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_b^{}`$ baryons and $`B`$ and $`B^{}`$ mesons and found $`R_{qbu}/R_{\overline{b}d}0.9\pm 0.1`$, if the baryon splitting is taken to be $`m_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_b^{}}^2m_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_b}^2m_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_c^{}}^2m_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_c}^2=\left(0.384\pm 0.035\right)\text{GeV}^2`$, or even to $`R_{ubd}/R_{\overline{b}d}1.8\pm 0.5`$, if the surprisingly small and not confirmed yet DELPHI result $`m_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_b^{}}m_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_b}=\left(56\pm 16\right)\text{MeV}`$ is used.

From the results of Table 3 it follows that the correlation between two quarks depends on the third one. Note also that the wave function calculated in HRA shows the marginal diquark clustering in the doubly heavy baryons. This is principally kinematic effect related to the fact that in the HRA the difference between the various $`\overline{r}_{ij}`$ in a baryon is due to the factor $`\sqrt{1/\mu _{ij}}`$ which varies between $`\sqrt{2/m_i}`$ for $`m_i=m_j`$ and $`\sqrt{1/m_i}`$ for $`m_im_j`$.

In Table 5 we compare the short-range correlation coefficients in the doubly heavy baryons with those calculated in  using the pair-wise quark interaction with the power-law potential, and in  using the non-relativistic model with the Buchmüller–Tye potential.

## 6. Masses of doubly heavy baryons

To calculate hadron masses we, as in , first renormalise the string potential

$$V_{\text{string}}V_{\text{string}}+\underset{i}{}C_i,$$
(23)
where the constants $`C_i`$ take into account the residual self-energy (RSE) of quarks. In principle, these constants can be expressed in terms of the two scalar functions entering covariant expansion of the bilocal cumulants of gluonic fields in the QCD vacuum . In the present work we treat them phenomenologically. To find $`C_i`$ in (23) we assume, first, that the spin splittings of hadrons with a given quark content arise from the colour-magnetic interaction in QCD. Indeed, for the ground state hadrons the hadron wave functions have no orbital angular momentum, so tensor and spin-orbit forces do not contribute. The second assumption is that the colour-magnetic interaction can be treated perturbatively :

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E_{\text{spin}}=\frac{16\pi \alpha _s}{9}\underset{i<j}{}\frac{𝒔_i𝒔_j}{m_im_j}R_{ijk}.$$
(24)
Because the colour-magnetic interaction between two quarks goes inversely as the product of their masses, the perturbative approximation improves as the quark mass increases. However, this approximation may not be good for the baryons containing light quarks555Note that $`1/m_im_j`$ dependence in Eq. (24), if treated literally in the EH method, results in a collapse both in the pseudoscalar $`q\overline{q}`$ channel and the proton. That may be a signal of the Nambu–Goldstone phenomenon.. In what follows we adjust the RSE constants $`C_i`$ to reproduce the centre-of-gravity for baryons with a given flavour. To this end we consider the spin-averaged masses, such as:

$$\frac{M_N+M_\mathrm{\Delta }}{2}=1.085\text{GeV},\text{and}\frac{M_\mathrm{\Lambda }+M_\mathrm{\Sigma }+2M_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}}{4}=1.267\text{GeV},$$
(25)
and analogous combinations for $`qqc`$ and $`qqb`$ states. Then we obtain

$$C_q=0.34\text{GeV},C_s=0.19\text{GeV},C_cC_b0.$$
(26)
We keep these parameters fixed to calculate the masses given in Table 6, namely the spin-averaged masses (computed without the spin-spin term) of the lowest doubly heavy baryons. Our results are very similar to those obtained in  using the pair-wise power-law potential.

## 7. Conclusions

In this paper we employ the general formalism for the baryons, which is based on nonperturbative QCD and where the only inputs are the string tension $`\sigma `$, the strong coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$, and two additive constants, $`C_q`$ and $`C_s`$, the residual self-energies of the light quarks. We present some piloting calculations of the dynamical quark masses for various baryons (see Table 1). The latters are computed solely in terms of $`\sigma `$ and $`\alpha _s`$ and depend on a baryon.

The second important point of our investigation is the calculation of the correlation functions for baryons. They are given, among the other things, in Table 3. We have also performed the calculations of the spin-averaged masses of baryons with two heavy quarks. One can see from Table 6 that our predictions are especially close to those obtained in  using a variant of the power-law potential adjusted to fit ground state baryons.

Evaluation of the spin-spin interactions requires inclusion of the $`K=2`$ hyperspherical components and/or more sophisticated treatment of the colour-magnetic interaction. We shall consider these calculations in the next publication.

## Acknowledgements

We thank Yu.S.Kalashnikova and Yu. A. Simonov for useful discussions. We also thank K.A.Ter-Martirosian for his interest in this work. This work was supported in part by RFBR grants ## 00-02-16363 and 00-15-96786.

## Appendix

Consider three quarks with arbitrary masses $`m_i`$, $`i=1,2,3`$, and coordinates $`𝒓_i`$. The problem is conveniently treated using Jacobi coordinates $`𝝆_{ij}`$ and $`𝝀_{ij}`$:

$$𝝆_{ij}=\alpha _{ij}\left(𝒓_i𝒓_j\right),𝝀_{ij}=\beta _{ij}\left(\frac{m_i𝒓_i+m_j𝒓_j}{m_i+m_j}𝒓_k\right),$$
(A.1)
where

$$\alpha _{ij}=\sqrt{\frac{\mu _{ij}}{\mu }},\beta _{ij}=\sqrt{\frac{\mu _{ij,k}}{\mu }}.$$
(A.2)
Here $`\mu _{ij}`$ and $`\mu _{ij,k}`$ are the reduced masses

$$\mu _{ij}=\frac{m_im_j}{m_i+m_j},\mu _{ij,k}=\frac{\left(m_i+m_j\right)m_k}{m_i+m_j+m_k}.$$
(A.3)
Altogether with the centre-of-mass coordinate $`𝐑_{\text{cm}}`$ Jacobi coordinates determine completely the position of the system. The Jacobian of the transformation for the differential volume elements is 1, i.e.,

$$d^3𝝆_{12}d^3𝝀_{12}=d^3𝝆_{32}d^3𝝀_{32}=d^3𝝆_{13}d^3𝝀_{13}.$$
(A.4)
The inverse transformations for the relative coordinates $`𝒓_{ij}=𝒓_i𝒓_j`$ and $`𝒓_k𝐑_{\text{cm}}`$ are

$$𝒓_{ij}=\frac{1}{\alpha _{ij}}𝝆_{ij},𝒓_k𝐑_{\text{cm}}=\sqrt{\frac{\mu \left(m_i+m_j\right)}{m_k\left(m_1+m_2+m_3\right)}}𝝀_{ij}.$$
(A.5)
The hyperradius $`R^2`$ is defined as $`R^2=𝝆_{ij}^2+𝝀_{ij}^2`$ and does not depend on the order of the quark numbering:

$$R^2=𝝆_{12}^2+𝝀_{12}^2=𝝆_{32}^2+𝝀_{32}^2=𝝆_{13}^2+𝝀_{13}^2.$$
(A.6)
Written in terms of $`𝒓_{ij}`$ Eq. (A.6) reads:

$$R^2=\underset{i<j}{}\frac{m_im_j}{\mu \left(m_1+m_2+m_3\right)}𝒓_{ij}^2.$$
(A.7)
In the centre-of-mass frame $`𝐑_{\text{cm}}=0`$ the invariant kinetic energy operator (3) is written in terms the Jacobi coordinates (A.1) as

$$H_0=\frac{1}{2\mu }\left(\frac{^2}{𝝆^2}+\frac{^2}{𝝀^2}\right)=\frac{1}{2\mu }\left(\frac{^2}{R^2}+\frac{5}{R}\frac{}{R}+\frac{K^2\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\right)}{R^2}\right),$$
(A.8)
where $`K^2\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\right)`$ is angular momentum operator whose eigen functions (the hyperspherical harmonics) are

$$K^2\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\right)Y_{\left[K\right]}=K\left(K+4\right)Y_{\left[K\right]},$$
(A.9)
with $`K`$ being the grand orbital momentum. In terms of $`Y_{\left[K\right]}`$ the wave function $`\psi (𝝆,𝝀)`$ can be written in a symbolical shorthand as

$$\psi (𝝆,𝝀)=\underset{K}{}\psi _K\left(R\right)Y_{\left[K\right]}\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\right).$$

In the HRA $`K=0`$ and $`\psi =\psi \left(R\right)`$. Note that the centrifugal potential in the Schrödinger equation for the radial function $`\psi _K\left(R\right)`$ with a given $`K`$

$$\frac{\left(K+2\right)^21/4}{R^2}$$

is not zero even for $`K=0`$. For the reduced function $`\chi \left(R\right)=R^{5/2}\psi \left(R\right)`$ one obtains after averaging the interaction over the six-dimensional sphere Eq. (6) with

$$W\left(R\right)=V(𝝆,𝝀)=\left(V_c+V_{\text{string}}\right)\frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{\pi ^3}$$
(A.10)
One can easily see that the definition of $`V(𝝆,𝝀)`$ does not depend on the order of the quark numeration.

In terms of the Jacobi coordinates the Coulomb and string potentials read:

$$V_c=\frac{2}{3}\alpha _s\underset{i<j}{}\frac{\alpha _{ij}}{\left|𝝆_{ij}\right|},$$
(A.11)
$$V_{\text{string}}=\sigma \underset{i<j}{}\gamma _{ij}\left|𝝀_{ij}\right|,$$
(A.12)
where

$$\gamma _{ij}=\sqrt{\frac{\mu \left(m_i+m_j\right)}{m_k\left(m_1+m_2+m_3\right)}}.$$
(A.13)
Using the relations

$$\frac{1}{\left|𝝆_{ij}\right|}=\frac{16}{3\pi }\frac{1}{R},\left|𝝀_{ij}\right|=\frac{32}{15\pi }R,$$

valid for any pair (ij), one obtains Eqs. (8).

Table 1. The constituent quark masses $`m_i`$ and the ground state eigen energies $`E_0`$ (in units of GeV) for the various baryon states. (The results obtained from the quasiclassical solution and from the variational one practically coincide.)

| baryon | $`m_1`$ | $`m_2`$ | $`m_3`$ | $`E_0`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\left(qqq\right)`$ | 0.446 | 0.446 | 0.446 | 1.438 |
| $`\left(qqs\right)`$ | 0.451 | 0.451 | 0.485 | 1.414 |
| $`\left(qss\right)`$ | 0.457 | 0.490 | 0.490 | 1.392 |
| $`\left(sss\right)`$ | 0.495 | 0.495 | 0.495 | 1.370 |
| $`\left(qqc\right)`$ | 0.519 | 0.519 | 1.502 | 1.176 |
| $`\left(qsc\right)`$ | 0.522 | 0.555 | 1.505 | 1.157 |
| $`\left(ssc\right)`$ | 0.589 | 0.589 | 1.507 | 1.138 |
| $`\left(qqb\right)`$ | 0.564 | 0.564 | 4.836 | 1.057 |
| $`\left(qsb\right)`$ | 0.567 | 0.601 | 4.837 | 1.038 |
| $`\left(ssb\right)`$ | 0.604 | 0.604 | 4.838 | 1.019 |
| $`\left(qcc\right)`$ | 0.569 | 1.555 | 1.555 | 0.926 |
| $`\left(scc\right)`$ | 0.604 | 1.557 | 1.557 | 0.908 |
| $`\left(qcb\right)`$ | 0.606 | 1.616 | 4.866 | 0.783 |
| $`\left(scb\right)`$ | 0.642 | 1.618 | 4.867 | 0.765 |
| $`\left(qbb\right)`$ | 0.636 | 4.931 | 4.931 | 0.582 |
| $`\left(sbb\right)`$ | 0.673 | 4.931 | 4.931 | 0.565 |

Table 2. The dynamical quark masses for the ground state $`(qc)`$, $`(sc)`$, $`(qb)`$, $`(sb)`$ mesons  and for the corresponding ground state baryons.

| State | $`m_q`$ | $`m_s`$ | $`m_c`$ | $`m_b`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\left(qc\right)`$ | 0.529 |  | 1.497 |  |
| $`\left(sc\right)`$ |  | 0.569 | 1.501 |  |
| $`\left(qqc\right)`$ | 0.519 |  | 1.502 |  |
| $`\left(qsc\right)`$ | 0.522 | 0.555 | 1.505 |  |
| $`\left(qb\right)`$ | 0.619 |  |  | 4.84 |
| $`\left(sb\right)`$ |  | 0.658 |  | 4.842 |
| $`\left(qqb\right)`$ | 0.564 |  |  | 4.836 |
| $`\left(qsb\right)`$ | 0.567 | 0.601 |  | 4.838 |

Table 3. $`R_{ijk}`$ in units of GeV3 and $`\overline{r}_{ij}=\sqrt{𝒓_{ij}^2}`$ in units of fm. (The results are obtained from the trial functions (13) with the variational parameters $`p_0`$ given in units of GeV(1/2) in the first column. The results for light baryons are presented for completeness.)

| baryon | $`p_0`$ | $`R_{123}`$ | $`R_{231}`$ | $`R_{312}`$ | $`\overline{r}_{12}`$ | $`\overline{r}_{23}`$ | $`\overline{r}_{31}`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\left(qqq\right)`$ | 0.472 | 0.00564 | 0.00564 | 0.00564 | 0.777 | 0.777 | 0.777 |
| $`\left(qqs\right)`$ | 0.470 | 0.00567 | 0.00598 | 0.00598 | 0.775 | 0.762 | 0.762 |
| $`\left(qss\right)`$ | 0.469 | 0.00600 | 0.00633 | 0.00600 | 0.760 | 0.747 | 0.760 |
| $`\left(sss\right)`$ | 0.467 | 0.00636 | 0.00636 | 0.00636 | 0.746 | 0.746 | 0.746 |
| $`\left(qqc\right)`$ | 0.454 | 0.00626 | 0.0113 | 0.0113 | 0.750 | 0.615 | 0.615 |
| $`\left(qsc\right)`$ | 0.452 | 0.00656 | 0.0121 | 0.0113 | 0.738 | 0.601 | 0.615 |
| $`\left(ssc\right)`$ | 0.451 | 0.00688 | 0.0121 | 0.0121 | 0.727 | 0.602 | 0.602 |
| $`\left(qqb\right)`$ | 0.447 | 0.00681 | 0.0163 | 0.0163 | 0.729 | 0.545 | 0.545 |
| $`\left(qsb\right)`$ | 0.446 | 0.00711 | 0.0176 | 0.0163 | 0.719 | 0.531 | 0.545 |
| $`\left(ssb\right)`$ | 0.445 | 0.00742 | 0.0176 | 0.0176 | 0.708 | 0.531 | 0.531 |
| $`\left(qcc\right)`$ | 0.439 | 0.0116 | 0.0296 | 0.0116 | 0.611 | 0.447 | 0.611 |
| $`\left(scc\right)`$ | 0.438 | 0.0123 | 0.0294 | 0.0123 | 0.599 | 0.448 | 0.599 |
| $`\left(qcb\right)`$ | 0.436 | 0.0123 | 0.0562 | 0.0166 | 0.599 | 0.361 | 0.541 |
| $`\left(scb\right)`$ | 0.435 | 0.0130 | 0.0559 | 0.0178 | 0.587 | 0.361 | 0.529 |
| $`\left(qbb\right)`$ | 0.438 | 0.0181 | 0.165 | 0.0181 | 0.527 | 0.252 | 0.527 |
| $`\left(sbb\right)`$ | 0.437 | 0.0194 | 0.165 | 0.0194 | 0.515 | 0.252 | 0.515 |

Table 4. The ratios of the squares of the wave functions determining the probability to find a light quark at the location of the heavy quark inside the heavy baryon and the corresponding meson. (The meson wave functions are taken from .)

| $`R_{ucd}/R_{uc}`$ | $`R_{scu}/R_{sc}`$ | $`R_{ubd}/R_{\overline{b}d}`$ | $`R_{sbu}/R_{sb}`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 0.436 | 0.405 | 0.373 | 0.340 |

Table 5. Short-range correlation coefficients $`R_{ijk}`$. In the parentheses are shown the corresponding quantities calculated using the power-law potential . In the square brackets are shown correlation coefficients calculated using non-relativistic model with Buchmüller-Tye potential.

| State | $`R_{123}`$ | $`R_{231}`$ | $`R_{312}`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\left(ccq\right)`$ | 0.030 (0.039) \[0.022\] | 0.012 (0.009) | 0.012 (0.009) |
| $`\left(ccs\right)`$ | 0.030 (0.042) \[0.022\] | 0.012 (0.019) | 0.012 (0.019) |
| $`\left(bbq\right)`$ | 0.165 (0.152) \[0.144\] | 0.018 (0.012) | 0.018 (0.012) |
| $`\left(bbs\right)`$ | 0.165 (0.162) \[0.144\] | 0.019 (0.028) | 0.019 (0.028) |
| $`\left(bcq\right)`$ | 0.056 (0.065) \[0.042\] | 0.012 (0.010) | 0.017 (0.011) |
| $`\left(bcs\right)`$ | 0.056 (0.071) \[0.042\] | 0.013 (0.021) | 0.018 (0.025) |

Table 6. Masses of baryons containing two heavy quarks

| State | present | (a) | (b) | (c) |  | (d) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | work |  |  |  |  |  |
| $`\mathrm{\Xi }\left\{qcc\right\}`$ | 3.69 | 3.70 | 3.71 | 3.66 | 3.61 | 3.48 |
| $`\mathrm{\Omega }\left\{scc\right\}`$ | 3.86 | 3.80 | 3.76 | 3.74 | 3.71 | 3.58 |
| $`\mathrm{\Xi }\left\{qcb\right\}`$ | 6.96 | 6.99 | 6.95 | 7.04 |  | 6.82 |
| $`\mathrm{\Omega }\left\{scb\right\}`$ | 7.13 | 7.07 | 7.05 | 7.09 |  | 6.92 |
| $`\mathrm{\Xi }\left\{qbb\right\}`$ | 10.16 | 10.24 | 10.23 | 10.24 |  | 10.09 |
| $`\mathrm{\Omega }\left\{sbb\right\}`$ | 10.34 | 10.30 | 10.32 | 10.37 |  | 10.19 |

(a) The additive nonrelativistic quark model with the power-law potential.
(b) Relativistic quasipotential quark model.
(c) The Feynman-Hellmann theorem.
(d) Approximation of doubly heavy diquark.