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# On the nature of the superconducting gap in the cuprates

## Introduction

In this paper we comment on the nature of the superconducting gap in the cuprates. Recently, Deutscher has identified two distinct energy scales at low temperatures (in the superconducting state), which he calls the coherence energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ and the single-particle excitation energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$ . The former corresponds to the superconducting gap seen in phase-sensitive experiments (Andreev reflection, penetration depth and Raman scattering), while the later is the “pseudogap” seen in experiments that probe the one-particle spectrum (photoemission and tunnelling). In fact some experiments belonging to the later class seem to be able to detect both “gaps” simultaneously: specifically, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$ appear to have been resolved, as two distinct features in the single-particle excitation spectrum, in angle-integrated photoemission experiments on LSCO by Sato et al.  and in intrinsic c-axis tunneling spectrosopy experiments on BSCCO by Krasnov et al.  Here we address the following question: “which, if any, of these two energies is the ‘superconducting gap’, in the BCS sense?”

Since the issue that we wish to explore is fairly general, we use a minimal model which might be expected to contain the relevant physics. The basic idea is to exploit the fact that certain properties of cuprate superconductors seem to be approximately material-independent. In particular, the critical temperature $`T_c`$  as well as the two energy scales $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$ , when normalised to the critical temperature at optimal doping, $`T_{c,max}`$, appear to be fairly universal functions of the number of holes per $`\text{CuO}_2`$ unit, $`n_h`$. Thus one could expect that a very simple model which captures the essential physics in these systems can describe this behaviour. More realistic models would only be required to calculate material-specific properties, such as $`T_c`$ (as opposed to $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$) accurately. In a sense the rationale behind our approach is the same as in the BCS model which, with a very simplified description of the electronic structure and the electron-electron interaction, can nevertheless predict the isotope effect and the constant value of the “BCS ratio” $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0/k_BT_c`$ very accurately, for most of the conventional superconductors. Unfortunately our model of the electron-electron interaction in the cuprates is only pehnomenological, and hence we shall have little to say about the nature of the physical mechanism giving rise to pairing. Nevertheless, as we shall show presently the model has a number of physical features which if confirmed, by comparison with experiments, will shed some light on the central problem of the high-$`T_c`$ phenomena. In particular, the model that we shall use has been showed to describe quantitatively the rise and fall of $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ . Moreover, it facilitates the investigations of superconductivity in both the BCS and Bose-Einstein (BE) limits . The central new result, presented here, is that the prediction of the model for the superconducting gap in the single-particle excitation spectrum, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, coincides, quite accurately, with the *lower* of the two energy scales identified by Deutscher, namely the “coherence energy” $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$. On the basis of this we argue that, although the model is too simple to describe the superconducting state of the cuprates in detail, some of its properties may generically characterise these materials. In short, it provides evidence that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ can be understood as a BCS-like $`d_{x^2y^2}`$-wave gap, while the other energy scale, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$, seems to be quite unrelated to superconductivity. Interestingly similar conclusions were reached in ref.  on the basis of experimental investigations. Moreover, our approach, based on the universal properties of cuprate superconductors, complements the one recently adopted by Szotek, BLG and Temmerman , who used a detailed 8-band model of the electronic structure of a specific material (YBCO) to study the same question, reaching similar conclusions.

## The model

Our model consists of free electrons (holes) of effective mass $`m^{}`$ interacting via the attractive “delta-shell” potential (between opposite spins)

$$V\left(\left|𝐫\right|\right)=g\delta \left(\left|𝐫\right|r_0\right)$$
(1)
This is, arguably, the simplest generalisation of the BCS model that can describe exotic pairing . The four parameters of the delta-shell model are the “coupling constant” $`g`$ (which has dimensions of $`energy\times length`$), the distance at which the attraction takes place $`r_0`$, the effective mass $`m^{}`$, and the density of charge carriers, per unit volume, $`n`$.

Although formally similar to the “contact potential” of BCS theory, the physics described by the delta-shell potential are very different: it corresponds to non-retarded attraction at a finite distance $`r_0`$. In that sense, it is more similar to the Hubbard-like models with nearest-neighbour attraction . But note that in the delta-shell model the distance $`r_0`$ at which the electrons attract each other is a free parameter that can be varied continuously, and the non-interacting dispersion relation is that of free electrons with an effective mass $`m^{}`$.

A preliminary analysis of this model has been carried out using a standard functional integral technique. The details of these calculations are to be found in ref. , however some of the results will be summarised in what follows as the need arises and, for conveninence, the relevant formulae have been reproduced in the appendix.

## On the microscopic origin of the universality of the $`T_c`$ vs doping law

A remarkable feature of the experimental data on the superconducting cuprates is the dependence of $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ on the number of holes, $`n_h`$, per CuO2 unit . Namely, $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ rises and falls as $`n_h`$ increases from below optimal doping, $`n_{h,max}`$, to above, and the functional form of this relation is the same for the different materials . Explicitely, it is given by

$$T_c/T_{c,max}=\left[182.6(n_h0.16)^2\right]$$
(2)
Remarkably, in the delta-shell model, the ratio $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ does not depend on $`g`$, $`r_0`$, $`m^{}`$ and $`n`$ independently, but only on the two dimensionless quantities $`\stackrel{~}{n}n\frac{4\pi }{3}r_0^3`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{g}\frac{g}{r_0}/\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m^{}r_0^2}`$. The dimensionless density $`\stackrel{~}{n}`$ can be related to $`n_h`$ through the value of the ratio $`r_0/r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$, where the effective Cu–Cu distance, $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$, is defined in terms of the proportionality between the number of holes per CuO2 unit and their density per unit volume: $`n_h=nr_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^3`$. Thus the values of the dimensionless coupling constant $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and the rescaled range of the attraction, $`r_0/r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$, completely determine, for our model, the dependence of $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ on $`n_h`$. We find that, as in the cuprates, $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ rises and falls as a function of $`n_h`$, for fixed $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`r_0/r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$. Moreover, as we have pointed out earlier , we can choose these two parameters so that this rise–and–fall reproduces the shape of the experimental curve, an inverted parabola defined by the position of its maximum and its width. The condition that $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`r_0/r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$ are fixed to the values that produce the best fit, in the $`d`$-channel (Cooper pairs with angular momentum quantum number $`l=2`$), is equivalent to the following two relations between the four parameters $`g`$, $`r_0`$, $`m^{}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$:

$$r_0=2.2r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}$$
(3)
and

$$g/r_0=0.6\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2$$
(4)
Note that $`m^{}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$ are normal state properties independent of the attractive interaction in eq. (1). For clarity, the corresponding fit is recorded in figure 1. Evidently, the above relations determine $`g`$ and $`r_0`$ for each system: YBCO, LSCO, etc., characterised by the frankly phenomenological, but neverteless clearly material-specific, parameters $`m^{}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$. Thus although the four parameters are independent of doping, their fixed values are different for different systems. The universal character of the empirical law of eq. (2), on the other hand, is embodied in the fact that the relations (3,4) between the four quantities are the same for all systems. By fitting relative quantities like $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ and universal trends with doping we can hope to have obtained results dependent more on the overall properties of our model than on its material-specific, no doubt inadequate, details.

We would also like to stress that other, $`l2`$, singlet pairing channels could not fit the oberved dependence of $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ on the doping level. In particular, for pairs with angular momentum quantum number $`l=0`$ ($`s`$-wave), the critical temperature is finite for arbitrarily small values of the density, in contradiction with the observed behaviour, while other pairing channels are negligible in the range of densities of interest . Thus the interpretation of the observed rise-and-fall of $`T_c`$ with doping in terms of the delta-shell model implies $`d`$-wave symmetry in agreement with the current consensus .

## Pressure dependence of $`T_c`$

As a further validation of our model we will consider, briefly, the dependence of $`T_c`$ on pressure. Experimentally, there are two contributions to the variation of $`T_c`$ with applied hydrostatic pressure . The extrinsic contribution is caused by a pressure-induced change of the doping level, combined with the universal $`T_c`$ vs doping law (2). On the other hand, there is also an *intrinsic* enhancement of $`T_c`$, i.e. an increase of the value of $`T_{c,max}`$. For the values of the parameters given in eqs. (3,4), $`T_{c,max}`$ scales with $`\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2`$ and is given by

$$k_BT_{c,max}0.1\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2$$
(5)
Thus although $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ is universal, in the sense that it only depends on $`n_h`$, the absolute value of $`T_c`$ is material-specific, as one would expect in view of the experimental data , because it depends also on $`m^{}`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$. Although, along the lines set in the introduction, we do not expect this simple model to reproduce the absolute values of $`T_{c,max}`$ accurately, if it contains any of the relevant physics eq. (5) must be compatible with the values of $`T_{c,max}`$ observed experimentally. Notably, in the cuprates, $`T_{c,max}`$ can go from $`30\mathrm{K}`$ to $`150\mathrm{K}`$, which is consistent with our prediction if $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}5\mathrm{\AA }`$ and the effective masses are of the order of a few times the bare electron mass. Moreover eq. (5) provides a simple interpretation for the origin of the *intrinsic* enhancement of the critical temperature: it is due to the increase of the “localisation energy” $`\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2`$ associated with the reduction in size of $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$. By taking the derivative of $`T_{c,max}`$ with respect to the volume of the unit cell $`abc`$ (which is proportional to $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^3`$) we can obtain an estimate of such enhancement:

$$\frac{\mathrm{ln}T_{c,max}}{P}|_{P=0}\left[\frac{2}{3}+\frac{\mathrm{ln}m^{}}{\mathrm{ln}(abc)}\right]k_V$$
(6)
Here $`k_V\mathrm{ln}(abc)/P`$ is the compressibility of the material. Note that in writing (6) we have assumed that the relations (3,4) do not depend on applied pressure. This would be consistent with the universality of (3,4) if that universality were exact, but note that such universality is probably only approximate. Even so, we can easily use (6) to obtain a specific value as follows. We can employ the usual way of estimating the volume dependance of the electronic effective mass, which is of interest in many fields of solid state physics, by an appeal to the relationship between $`\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}`$ and an appropriate hopping integral, $`t`$, in the tight-binding description of the relevant band. In the simplest case of a cubic lattice with constant $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$ this is $`m^{}1/tr_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2`$. Then we use the dependance of $`t`$ on the nearest-neighbour distance to estimate the changes in $`m^{}`$ with changes in the lattice parameters. Thus we may use $`tr_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^\gamma `$ and, assuming that we are dealing with $`d`$-orbitals, take $`\gamma =5`$ . This yields

$$\frac{\mathrm{ln}T_{c,max}}{P}\frac{5}{3}k_V$$
(7)
Unfortunately, we are not aware of many measurements of the variation of the *maximum* value of the critical temperature under applied hydrostatic pressure. However Wijngaarden et al.  have studied the single layer compound $`\text{Tl}_{0.5}\text{Pb}_{0.5}\text{Sr}_2\text{Ca}_{1x}\text{Y}_x\text{Cu}_2\text{O}_7`$ and from their data we deduce $`\left(\mathrm{ln}T_{c,max}/P\right)_{P=0}\mathrm{12.3\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}10}^3\text{GPa}^1`$. Using the value of the compressibility calculated by Cornelius et al. , $`k_V=\mathrm{8.4\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}10}^3\text{GPa}^1`$, and our formula in equation (7), we predict $`\left(\mathrm{ln}T_{c,max}/P\right)_{P=0}\mathrm{14.0\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}10}^3\text{GPa}^1`$, in reasonable agreement with the experiment. Similarly, Schlachter et al.  have obtained $`\left(T_{c,max}/P\right)_{P=0}0.8\text{K}\text{GPa}^1`$ for $`\text{YBa}_2\text{Cu}_3\text{O}_x`$ which, using $`T_{c,max}92\text{K}`$, yields $`\left(\mathrm{ln}T_{c,max}/P\right)_{P=0}\mathrm{8.7\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}10}^3\text{GPa}^1`$. The theoretical prediction in this case, using the value $`k_V=\mathrm{8.1\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}10}^3\text{GPa}^1`$ quoted in ref. , is $`\left(\mathrm{ln}T_{c,max}/P\right)_{P=0}\mathrm{13.5\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}10}^3\text{GPa}^1`$. Thus the *intrinsic* enhancement of the critical temperature with applied hydrostatic pressure can be understood essentially, at the qualitative level, as the result of the change of the length $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$, and therefore of the corresponding localisation energy $`\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2`$, under pressure.111Note that in deriving this result we have used that $`k_BT_{c,max}\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2`$, which is more general than (5) and, in fact, would hold for any model for which $`\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2`$ is the relevant energy setting the scale of $`T_{c,max}`$.

We end by stressing that the results presented in this section (unlike those in the previous and following ones) refer to material-specific properties of the cuprates and therefore, in accordance with the philosophy outlined in the Introduction, one must not expect our simple model to provide a detailed description of them. For example, it can not describe the observed effect of the number of adjacent CuO2 planes per unit cell, nor of applied uniaxial stress , on $`T_c`$, since obviously the parameters $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$ and $`m^{}`$ do not describe the varying degrees of anisotropy of the normal states.

## The superconducting gap

We shall now return to the main topic of this paper. On the basis of the discussion in the previous sections, we can expect that the delta-shell model, together with the relations (3,4), can describe quantitatively other material-independent properties of the superconducting state of the cuprates. In fact it *predicts*, with no adjustable parameters, the value of any such quantities. The most interesting one is the ratio between the energy gap to one-particle excitations, at zero temperature, and the critical temperature at optimal doping: $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_0/k_BT_{c,max}`$. In the model, this quantity is universal, in the same sense as $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$, because $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ also scales with $`\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2`$.

In a very general context, there are two distinct scenarios, which we shall now briefly recall (see , and references within). In the BCS regime ($`\mu >0`$) the fermionic quasiparticles with minimum excitation energy lie on a surface in $`𝐤`$-space that is defined by $`\mathrm{}^2𝐤_{min}^2/2m^{}=\mu `$ and the corresponding gap is $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_0=2\left|\mathrm{\Delta }\left(𝐤_{min}\right)\right|`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\left(𝐤\right)`$ is the usual BCS “gap function”. The extreme case of this is the BCS *limit*, defined by $`\mu \left|\mathrm{\Delta }\left(𝐤\right)\right|`$ for all $`𝐤`$, in which the chemical potential is approximately equal to the Fermi energy, $`\mu \epsilon _F`$, and so the fermionic quasiparticles with minimum energy have wave vector $`𝐤_{min}𝐤_F`$, i.e. they lie in the Fermi surface. In the opposite, BE regime ($`\mu <0`$), quasiparticles with minimum excitation energy have $`𝐤=0`$ and the energy gap to single-particle (fermionic) excitations is $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_0=2\sqrt{\mu ^2+\left|\mathrm{\Delta }\left(0\right)\right|^2}`$, which, in the BE *limit* ($`\mu \left|\mathrm{\Delta }\left(𝐤\right)\right|`$), becomes the binding energy $`\epsilon _b`$ of a pair: $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_02\mu \epsilon _b`$. However in the BE regime the lowest-lying excitations are not fermionic, but bosonic, and therefore there is a second, smaller energy scale, which is associated with the break-up of coherence in the condensate without the dissociation of any pairs, whose value could be related to $`\mathrm{\Delta }\left(𝐤\right)`$.

The delta-shell model can display both BCS-like and BE-like behaviour, depending on the values of the dimensionless parameters $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{n}`$ introduced above. Specifically, for the values that correspond to eqs. (3,4), the model is close to the BCS limit . In fact the rise-and-fall of $`T_c`$ with the doping level that we have found in the delta-shell model is only present at low values of $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$. At higher values of the dimensionless coupling constant $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$, the critical temperature becomes a monotonic function of the density, which furthermore has a finite value for any finite value of $`n`$, as it tends towards the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature $`T_c^{BE}n^{2/3}`$. Moreover the rotational symmetry of the model is restored in this limit due to the fragmentation of the condensate. Thus on the basis of the discussion presented in the previous section we conclude the first of the above scenarios to be operating in the cuprates. Namely, we expect there to be a single energy scale $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ coming from the superconductivity, which would manifest itself both as the characteristic energy seen in phase sensitive experiments and as a gap in the single-particle excitation spectrum. In this picture, the origin of the larger “pseudogap” energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$ would be quite independent from superconductivity.

Figure 2 shows the experimental data from ref.  for the two energy scales $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$, together with our theoretical prediciton for the maximum value of the superconducting energy gap in the single-particle spectrum across the Fermi surface, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, for the purported $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ symmetry of the order parameter . All quantities are normalised to $`k_BT_{c,max}`$, which is the way in which, both in the model and, approximately, in the experiments, their values become material-independent. Remarkably, the agreement between $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ is rather good. In particular the ratio of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ to $`k_BT_{c,max}`$ is $`5`$ at optimal doping, both in the theory and the experiments. Obviously, because of the simplicity of our model it is not easy to decide what to make of the above very good agreement. Nevertheless, at the minimum we conclude that it provides evidence in favour of the BCS-like scenario. Moreover the model seems again to confirm the current consensus on the symmetry of the order parameter: for pairs with $`d_{3z^2r^2}`$ symmetry, $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_0/k_BT_{c,max}6.4`$ at optimal doping, which is too high to fit the experiments (note that, unlike at $`T_c`$, at $`T=0`$ the different $`d`$-wave channels are non-degenerate). Presumably, it is the presence of the crystal field that makes one of the $`d`$-wave symmetries preferred over the others. Since this is absent from our model all we can do is examine each of the possible symmetries independently and compare them to the experiments.

Of course, our interpretation of the data presented in ref.  differs from that of the author. In effect, it was assumed at the time that there was only one energy gap in the single-particle excitation spectrum, corresponding to the “pseudogap” energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$. This was legitimate back then because only experiments that probed the phase coherence of the condensate (Andreev, Raman, penetration depth) had been able to measure $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$. However, as we mentioned in the introduction, it has recently been shown experimentally  that there are actually two gaps in the spectrum of single-particle excitations: one of them corresponds to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$, while the other, smaller one closes in at $`T=T_c`$, very much like a BCS gap. It is this second gap that we have obtained in our calculations, and in our picture it should coincide with the coherence energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$. As regards the other energy scale, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$, we have no sign of it in our theory and hence we are inclined to conclude that its origin is not superconductivity. In particular, it can not be due to “preformed pair” fluctuations of the superconducting order parameter which, as we have discussed, are ruled out on the basis of the empirically determined values of the parameters, eqs. (3,4), and their interepretation in terms of the calculations presented in ref. .

## Conclusion

We have addressed the question of whether the coherence energy range $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$, identified by Deutscher, at low temperatures, in cuprate superconductors, as distinct from the “pseudo-gap” energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$, can be understood as a superconducting gap in the sense of BCS theory. Capitalising on the fact that certain properties of cuprate superconductors are approximately material-independent, we have studied a simple model, obtained as the simplest generalisation of the BCS model compatible with exotic pairing. It features free electrons with a non-retarded, effective interaction potential which is attractive at a well-defined finite distance $`r_0`$ and is zero for all other separations. This “delta-shell” model provides a mechanism for the rise and fall of $`T_c`$ with doping, as a consequence of the interplay between the carrier-carrier distance or, in other words, the Fermi wavelength $`\left|𝐤_F\right|^1`$ and the new microscopic length scale $`r_0`$. Morover, it can correlate this behaviour with the $`d`$-wave symmetry of the order parameter and it provides an interpretation of its approximate universality in terms of certain relations between the parameters of the model. On this basis, the model can be used to predict, with no fitting parameters, the corresponding universal behaviour of the gap in the quasiparticle spectrum due to the superconductivity. For the empirically determined values of the parameters the model is in the BCS regime, as opposed to that of Bose-Einstein condensation of “preformed pairs”, which leads to the prediction that the gap to single-particle excitations arising from the superconductivity is equal to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$. In fact the prediction for that gap agrees quite satisfactorily with the behaviour of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$, suggesting a different origin for the pseudogap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p`$.

The above conclusion is compatible with general arguments based on the available experimental data which indicate that the descripition of the charge carriers in the Bose-Einstein limit is inappropriate . Although a model that accomodates this fact while still describing the pseudogap in terms of pairing fluctuations has been devised , it has also been suggested  that the pseudogap may follow from the spectral properties of stripe phases . More generally, a pseudogap may be a generic feature of systems that are intrinsically inhomogeneous due to the competition between ordered states separated by a first-order phase transition . Such picture becomes especially appealing in the light of recent scanning tunnelling microscope studies of BSCCO . It could be investigated in our model by evaluating the density fluctuations induced by the attractive interaction, in addition to the pairing fluctuations considered in the present work.

Our analysis complements the one carried out by Szotek, BLG and Temmerman , who also modeled $`\mathrm{\Delta }_c`$ as a BCS superconducting gap, reaching similar conclusions. The main difference between our approach and theirs is that, instead of focusing on a specific material using a detailed description of the electronic structure, we have used a very simple model to capture those features that are approximately material-independent. Specifically, our calculations are not based on a fit to the value of $`T_{c,max}`$ (which can not be predicted accurately by such a simple model), but rather to the width of the $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ vs $`n_h`$ curve, and the position of its maximum, which are determined by the values of the range of the interaction $`r_0`$ and its strength $`g/r_0`$, rescaled to the effective Cu–Cu distance $`r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}`$ and the corresponding “localisation energy” $`\mathrm{}^2/2m^{}r_{\mathrm{Cu}\mathrm{Cu}}^2`$, respectively. Our result that the model is in the BCS limit for the empirically–determined values of these parameters speaks in support of the methodology employed in ref. , where this was assumed *a priori* by using a BCS-like mean-field theory to calculate $`T_c`$.

Finally we stress that the rise and fall of the critical temperature $`T_c`$ and the superconducting gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, in the BCS limit, is probably a generic behaviour for attractive potentials with a minimum at some finite separation. Essentially, the gap function depends, in this case, on the *magnitude* of $`𝐤`$ as well as on its direction: $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐤)=\mathrm{\Delta }(\left|𝐤\right|,\widehat{𝐤})`$, and thus its value on the Fermi surface $`𝐤=𝐤_F`$ depends strongly on the size of the Fermi surface, given by $`\left|𝐤_F\right|`$. This situation is quite different from the BCS model, and its usual $`d`$-wave generalisations \[13, for example\], for which the gap function is independent of $`\left|𝐤\right|`$. Note that the present scenario for the rise and fall of $`T_c`$ is quite different from previous proposals. In particular, in our picture this rise and fall is not due to the competition of superconductivity with other kinds of order or the suppression of $`T_c`$ by fluctuations away from optimal doping. Moreover, the value of $`T_c`$ does not necessarily correlate with the DOS on the Fermi surface.222In the context of conventional, BCS superconductivity, this has usually been thought to be the primary mechanism by which $`T_c`$ can have a non-monotonic dependence on doping. Interestingly, a rise and fall of the critical temperature with doping, which does not seem to correlate to the DOS, has been observed in experiments on gate voltage-doped C60 films .  It could be tested if an experimental method to measure directly the variation of the gap function $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐤)`$ with $`𝐤`$ in the radial direction of increasing $`\left|𝐤\right|`$, rather than along the Fermi surface, e.g. one that would give the value of $`\left(\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐤)/\left|𝐤\right|\right)_{\left|𝐤\right|=\left|𝐤_F\right|}`$, were available.

## Acknowledgements

We wish to thank James Annett, Jon Wallington and Klaus Capelle for useful discussions, and Phillip Howell for detailed, constructive criticism of an earlier version of the manuscript. BLG wishes to thank the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara for hospitality during the preparation of an earlier version of the manuscript. JQ acknowledges financial support from the TMR programme (EU), via a Marie Curie fellowship (contract No. ERBFMBICT983194) and, during the final stages of the preparation of the manuscript, from FAPESP (Brazil), via a post-doctoral fellowship (process No. 01/10461-8).

Present address: Instituto de Física de São Carlos (Grupo de Física Teórica), Universidade de São Paulo, Caixa Postal 369, 13560-970 São Carlos, SP, Brazil.

Electronic address: quintanilla@if.sc.usp.br.

## Appendix

In ref.  the ground state of the delta-shell model was studied in the mean-field approximation in which the gap function $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐤)`$ and the chemical potential $`\mu `$ are determined by two coupled equations . The theory is particularly transparent in terms of their dimensionless counterparts $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_{\stackrel{~}{𝐤}}\left(\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m^{}r_0^2}\right)^1\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐤)`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }\left(\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m^{}r_0^2}\right)^1\mu `$ (where $`\stackrel{~}{𝐤}𝐤r_0`$ is the dimensionless wave vector). If $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_{\stackrel{~}{𝐤}}`$ is expanded in spherical harmonics $`Y_{lm}(\widehat{𝐤})`$, it is found to have the form

$$\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_{\stackrel{~}{𝐤}}=\underset{lm}{}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_{lm}j_l(|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|)Y_{lm}(\widehat{𝐤})$$

i.e. the radial part is given by the spherical Bessel functions $`j_l(|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|)`$, and the two equations are, for singlet pairing ($`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_{lm}=0`$ for $`l`$ odd),

$`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_{lm}`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{g}{\displaystyle \underset{l^{}m^{}}{}}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{d^3\stackrel{~}{𝐤}}{\left(2\pi \right)^3}\frac{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{lm,l^{}m^{}}(\stackrel{~}{𝐤})}{2\sqrt{(\stackrel{~}{𝐤}^2\stackrel{~}{\mu })^2+\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_𝐤^2}}}\right\}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_{l^{}m^{}}`$ (8)
$`\stackrel{~}{n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d^3\stackrel{~}{𝐤}}{6\pi ^2}\left(1\frac{\stackrel{~}{\epsilon }_{\stackrel{~}{𝐤}}}{\sqrt{(\stackrel{~}{𝐤}^2\stackrel{~}{\mu })^2+\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_𝐤^2}}\right)}`$ (9)
where $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{n}`$ are the dimensionless coupling constant and density defined in the text, and

$$\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{lm,l^{}m^{}}(\stackrel{~}{𝐤})\left(4\pi \right)^2j_l(|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|)j_l^{}(|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|)Y_{lm}^{}(\widehat{𝐤})Y_{l^{}m^{}}(\widehat{𝐤})$$
(10)
All the ground-state properties that we discuss in the text were obtained by solving the above two equations self-consistently, for “trial gound states” in which specific constraints were imposed on the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Delta }}_{lm}`$. Note that these equations are valid approximations not only in the BCS limit, encountered for large $`\stackrel{~}{n}`$ or when $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ is below the threshold to bind an isolated pair, but also in the opposite, Bose-Einstein condensation limit .

To find the condensation temperature $`T_c`$ we went a small step beyond the mean-field theory, including quadratic fluctuations about it. In a manner similar to that reviewed in ref.  we found that $`\stackrel{~}{\beta }_c=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m^{}r_0^2}/k_BT_c`$ is determined by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\stackrel{~}{g}}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}||\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|^2j_l\left(|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{12f\left[\stackrel{~}{\beta }_c\left(|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|^2\stackrel{~}{\mu }_c\right)\right]}{2\left(|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|^2\stackrel{~}{\mu }_c\right)}}`$ (11)
$`\stackrel{~}{n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4}{3\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}||\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|^2\left\{f\left[\stackrel{~}{\beta }_c\left(|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|^2\stackrel{~}{\mu }_c\right)\right]+g\left(\stackrel{~}{\beta }_c{\displaystyle \frac{|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|^2}{2}}\right)\stackrel{~}{w}_{l,|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|}^{\stackrel{~}{\beta }_c,\stackrel{~}{\mu }_c}\right\}`$ (12)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }_c`$ is the value of $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ at the transition and $`f(z)`$ and $`g(z)`$ denote the usual Fermi and Bose distribution functions. The term containing the Bose function, times the “weight” $`\stackrel{~}{w}_{|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|}^{\stackrel{~}{\beta }_c,\stackrel{~}{\mu }_c}`$, is the contribution from the above mentioned fluctuations, described here to the lowest non-trivial order in their frequency and momentum, and it signals the presence of preformed pairs, with the same internal angular momentum quantum number $`l`$ as the condensate, above $`T_c`$ (in these expressions, the contribution from other pairs has been neglected). This contribution dominates in the Bose-Einstein limit (where its “weight” takes the form $`\stackrel{~}{w}_{l,|\stackrel{~}{𝐤}|}^{\stackrel{~}{\beta }_c,\stackrel{~}{\mu }_c}2l+1`$, and thus it simply accounts for the degeneracy of the internal state of the pairs) while being negligible in the BCS limit. Note that the critical temperature is degenerate in the magnetic quantum number $`m`$, although it still depends on $`l`$.

From the point of view of the present paper it is particularly relevant that both $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{lm}/k_BT_{c,max}`$ and $`T_c/T_{c,max}`$ depend only on the dimensionless parameters $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{n}`$, as direct consequences of eqs. (8,9) and (11,12), respectively.


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# Local field dynamics in symmetric 𝑄-Ising neural networks

## 1 Introduction

In a number of papers in the nineties (cfr. - and references therein) the parallel dynamics of $`Q`$-Ising type neural networks has been discussed for several architectures –extremely diluted, layered feedforward, recurrent– using a probabilistic approach. For the asymmetric extremely diluted and layered architectures the dynamics can be solved exactly and it is known that the local field only contains Gaussian noise. For networks with symmetric connections, however, things are quite different. Even for extremely diluted versions of these systems feedback correlations become essential from the second time step onwards, complicating the dynamics in a nontrivial way.

A complete solution for the parallel dynamics of symmetric $`Q`$-Ising networks at zero-temperature taking into account all feedback correlations, has been obtained only recently using a probabilistic signal-to-noise ratio analysis -. Thereby it is seen that both for the fully connected and the extremely diluted symmetric architectures, the local field contains a discrete and a normally distributed noise part. The difference between the two architectures is that for the diluted model the discrete part at a certain time $`t`$ does not involve the spins at all previous times $`t1,t2,\mathrm{}`$ up to $`0`$ but only the spins at time step $`t1`$. Even so, this discrete part prevents a closed-form solution of the dynamics but a recursive scheme can be developed in order to calculate the complete time evolution of the order parameters, i.e., the retrieval overlap and the activity.

In the work above the focus has been on the non-equilibrium behavior of the order parameters of the network. But, since the local field itself is a basic ingredient in the development of the relevant recursive scheme it is interesting to study also the non-equilibrium behavior of the local field distribution. The more so since this distribution does not convergence to a simple sum of Gaussians as is frequently thought, but it develops a gap structure. This is precisely one of the points studied in detail in the present communication. Moreover, the analogies and differences between the fully connected architecture and the symmetrically diluted one are highlighted. Finally, numerical simulations are presented confirming the analytic study and giving additional insight in the structure of these local field distributions.

## 2 The model

Consider a neural network $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ consisting of $`N`$ neurons which can take values $`\sigma _i`$ from a discrete set $`𝒮=\{1=s_1<s_2<\mathrm{}<s_Q=+1\}`$. The $`p`$ patterns to be stored in this network are supposed to be a collection of independent and identically distributed random variables (i.i.d.r.v.), $`\{\xi _i^\mu 𝒮\}`$, $`\mu 𝒫=\{1,\mathrm{},p\}`$ and $`i\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, with zero mean, $`E[\xi _i^\mu ]=0`$, and variance $`A=\text{Var}[\xi _i^\mu ]`$. The latter is a measure for the activity of the patterns. Given the configuration $`𝝈_\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)\{\sigma _j(t)\},j\mathrm{\Lambda }=\{1,\mathrm{},N\}`$, the local field in neuron $`i`$ equals

$$h_i(𝝈_\mathrm{\Lambda }(t))=\underset{j\mathrm{\Lambda }}{}J_{ij}(t)\sigma _j(t)$$
(1)
with $`J_{ij}`$ the synaptic coupling from neuron $`j`$ to neuron $`i`$. In the sequel we write the shorthand notation $`h_{\mathrm{\Lambda },i}(t)h_i(𝝈_\mathrm{\Lambda }(t))`$.

For the extremely diluted symmetric (SED) and the fully connected (FC) architectures the couplings are given by the Hebb rule

$`J_{ij}^{SED}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c_{ij}}{CA}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mu 𝒫}{}}\xi _i^\mu \xi _j^\mu \text{for}ij,J_{ii}^{SED}=0,`$ (2)
$`J_{ij}^{FC}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{NA}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mu 𝒫}{}}\xi _i^\mu \xi _j^\mu \text{for}ij,J_{ii}^{FC}=0,`$ (3)
with the $`\{c_{ij}=0,1\},i,j\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ chosen to be i.i.d.r.v. with distribution $`\text{Pr}\{c_{ij}=x\}=(1C/N)\delta _{x,0}+(C/N)\delta _{x,1}`$ and satisfying $`c_{ij}=c_{ji}`$.

For the diluted symmetric model the architecture is a local Cayley-tree but, in contrast with the diluted asymmetric model, it is no longer directed such that it causes a feedback from $`t2`$ onwards. In the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ the probability that the number of connections $`T_i=\{j\mathrm{\Lambda }|c_{ij}=1\}`$ giving information to the site $`i\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, is still a Poisson distribution with mean $`C=E[|T_i|]`$. Thereby it is assumed that $`C\mathrm{log}N`$ and in order to get an infinite average connectivity allowing to store infinitely many patterns one also takes the limit $`C\mathrm{}`$ .

At zero temperature all neurons are updated in parallel according to the rule

$`\sigma _i(t+1)`$ $`=`$ $`\text{g}_b(h_{\mathrm{\Lambda },i}(t))`$
$`\text{g}_b(x)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{Q}{}}}s_k\left[\theta \left[b(s_{k+1}+s_k)x\right]\theta \left[b(s_k+s_{k1})x\right]\right]`$ (4)
with $`s_0\mathrm{}`$ and $`s_{Q+1}+\mathrm{}`$. Here $`\text{g}_b()`$ is the gain function and $`b>0`$ is the gain parameter of the system. For finite $`Q`$, this gain function is a step function. The gain parameter $`b`$ controls the average slope of $`\text{g}_b()`$.

## 3 Local field dynamics

In order to measure the retrieval quality of the system one can use the Hamming distance between a stored pattern and the microscopic state of the network

$$d(𝝃^\mu ,𝝈_\mathrm{\Lambda }(t))\frac{1}{N}\underset{i\mathrm{\Lambda }}{}[\xi _i^\mu \sigma _i(t)]^2.$$
(5)
This introduces the main overlap and the arithmetic mean of the neuron activities

$$m_\mathrm{\Lambda }^\mu (t)=\frac{1}{NA}\underset{i\mathrm{\Lambda }}{}\xi _i^\mu \sigma _i(t),\mu 𝒫;a_\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)=\frac{1}{N}\underset{i\mathrm{\Lambda }}{}[\sigma _i(t)]^2.$$
(6)
The key question is then how these quantities evolve in time under the parallel dynamics specified before. For a general time step we find from eq. (2) using the law of large numbers (LLN) that in the thermodynamic limit

$`m^1(t+1)\stackrel{Pr}{=}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{A}}\xi _i^1\text{g}_b(h_i(t)),a(t+1)\stackrel{Pr}{=}\text{g}_b^2(h_i(t)),`$ (7)
where the convergence is in probability . In the above $``$ denotes the average both over the distribution of the embedded patterns $`\{\xi _i^\mu \}`$ and the initial configurations $`\{\sigma _i(0)\}`$. The average over the latter is hidden in an average over the local field through the updating rule (2).

Some remarks are in order. For the symmetric diluted model the sum over the sites $`i`$ is restricted to $`T_j`$, the part of the tree connected to neuron $`j`$. Moreover, for that model the thermodynamic limit contains the limit $`C\mathrm{}`$ besides the $`N\mathrm{}`$ limit. In this thermodynamic limit $`C,N\mathrm{}`$ all averages have to be taken over the treelike structure, viz. $`\frac{1}{N}_{i\mathrm{\Lambda }}\frac{1}{C}_{iT_j}`$, and the capacity defined by $`\alpha =p/N`$ has to be replaced by $`\alpha =p/C`$.

In (7) the local field is the main ingredient. Suppose that the initial configuration of the network $`\{\sigma _i(0)\},i\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, is a collection of i.i.d.r.v. with mean $`\text{E}[\sigma _i(0)]=0`$, variance $`\text{Var}[\sigma _i(0)]=a_0`$, and correlated with only one stored pattern, say the first one $`\{\xi _i^1\}`$:

$$\text{E}[\xi _i^\mu \sigma _j(0)]=\delta _{i,j}\delta _{\mu ,1}m_0^1A$$
(8)
with $`m_0^1>0`$. By the LLN one gets for the main overlap and the activity at $`t=0`$

$`m^1(0)`$ $``$ $`\underset{(C),N\mathrm{}}{lim}m_\mathrm{\Lambda }^1(0)\stackrel{Pr}{=}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{A}}\text{E}[\xi _i^1\sigma _i(0)]=m_0^1`$ (9)
$`a(0)`$ $``$ $`\underset{(C),N\mathrm{}}{lim}a_\mathrm{\Lambda }(0)\stackrel{Pr}{=}\text{E}[\sigma _i^2(0)]=a_0`$ (10)
where the notation should be clear. In order to obtain the configuration at $`t=1`$ we have to calculate the local field (1) at $`t=0`$. To do this we employ the probabilistic signal-to-noise ratio analysis (-). Recalling the learning rule (3) we separate the part containing the signal from the part containing the noise. In the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ we then arrive at

$$h_i(0)\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}h_{\mathrm{\Lambda },i}(0)\stackrel{𝒟}{=}\xi _i^1m^1(0)+𝒩(0,\alpha a(0))$$
(11)
where the convergence is in distribution  and with $`𝒩(0,V)`$ representing a Gaussian random variable with mean $`0`$ and variance $`V`$. We note that this structure of the distribution of the local field at time zero – signal plus Gaussian noise – is typical for all architectures treated in the literature.

For a general time step $`t+1`$, a tedious study reveals that the distribution of the local field is given by ,

$$h_i(t+1)=\xi _i^1m^1(t+1)+𝒩(0,\alpha a(t+1))+\chi (t)[F(h_i(t)\xi _i^1m^1(t))+\alpha \sigma _i(t)]$$
(12)
where $`F=1`$ for the fully connected architecture and $`F=0`$ for the symmetrically diluted one. So, the local field at time $`t`$ consists out of a discrete part and a normally distributed part, viz.

$$h_i(t)=M_i(t)+𝒩(0,V(t))$$
(13)
where $`M_i(t)`$ and $`V(t)`$ satisfy the recursion relations

$`M_i(t+1)=\chi (t)[F(M_i(t)\xi _i^1m^1(t))+\alpha \sigma _i(t)]+\xi _i^1m^1(t+1)`$ (14)
$`V(t+1)=\alpha a(t+1)A+F\chi ^2(t)V(t)+2F\alpha A\chi (t)Cov[\stackrel{~}{r}^\mu (t),r^\mu (t)].`$ (15)
The quantity $`\chi (t)`$ reads

$$\chi (t)=\underset{k=1}{\overset{Q1}{}}f_{h_i^\mu (t)}(b(s_{k+1}+s_k))(s_{k+1}s_k)$$
(16)
where $`f_{h_i^\mu (t)}`$ is the probability density of $`h_i^\mu (t)`$ in the thermodynamic limit. Furthermore, $`r^\mu (t)`$ is defined as

$$r^\mu (t)\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{A\sqrt{N}}\underset{i\mathrm{\Lambda }}{}\xi _i^\mu \sigma _i(t),\mu 𝒫\{1\},$$
(17)
and $`\stackrel{~}{r}^\mu (t)`$ is given by a similar expression with $`\sigma _i(t)`$ replaced by $`\text{g}_b(h_{\mathrm{\Lambda },i}(t)\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}}\xi _i^\mu r_\mathrm{\Lambda }^\mu (t))`$. Finally, as can be read off from eq. (14) the quantity $`M_i(t)`$ consists out of a signal term and a discrete noise term, viz.

$$M_i(t)=\xi _i^1m^1(t)+\alpha \chi (t1)\sigma _i(t1)+F\underset{t^{}=0}{\overset{t2}{}}\alpha \left[\underset{s=t^{}}{\overset{t1}{}}\chi (s)\right]\sigma _i(t^{}).$$
(18)
Since different architectures contain different correlations not all terms in these final equations are present, as is apparent through $`F`$. We remark that for the asymmetric diluted and the layered feedforward architecture $`M_i(t)=\xi _i^1m^1(t)`$ so that in these cases the local field consists out of a signal term plus Gaussian noise for all time steps ,.

For the architectures treated here we still have to determine the probability density $`f_{h_i(t)}`$ in eq. (16). This can be done by looking at the form of $`M_i(t)`$ given by eq. (18). The evolution equation tells us that $`\sigma _i(t^{})`$ can be replaced by $`g_b(h_i(t^{}1))`$ such that the second and third terms of $`M_i(t)`$ are the sums of stepfunctions of correlated variables. These are also correlated through the dynamics with the normally distributed part of $`h_i(t)`$. Therefore, the local field can be considered as a transformation of a set of correlated normally distributed variables $`x_s`$, which we choose to normalize. Defining the correlation matrix $`W=\left(\rho (s,s^{})\text{E}[x_sx_s^{}]\right)`$ we arrive at the following expression for $`f_{h_i(t)}`$ for the fully connected model

$`f_{h_i(t)}(y)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑x_t\underset{s=0}{\overset{t2}{}}dx_s\delta \left(yM_i(t)\sqrt{V(t)}x_t\right)}`$ (19)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\text{det}(2\pi W)}}}\text{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}𝐱W^1𝐱^T\right)`$
with $`𝐱=\{x_s\}=(x_0,\mathrm{}x_{t2},x_t)`$. For the symmetric diluted case this expression simplifies to

$`f_{h_i(t)}(y)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{s=0}{\overset{[t/2]}{}}dx_{t2s}\delta \left(y\xi _i^1m^1(t)\alpha \chi (t1)\sigma _i(t1)\sqrt{\alpha a(t)}x_t\right)}`$ (20)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\text{det}(2\pi W)}}}\text{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}𝐱W^1𝐱^T\right)`$
with $`𝐱=(\{x_s\})=(x_{t2[t/2]},\mathrm{}x_{t2},x_t)`$. The brackets $`[t/2]`$ denote the integer part of $`t/2`$.

## 4 Gap structure

The equilibrium distribution of the local field can be obtained by eliminating the time dependence in the evolution equations (12)

$$h_i=\xi _i^1m^1+\eta 𝒩(0,\alpha a)+\alpha \chi \eta \sigma _i$$
(21)
with $`\eta =1/(1\chi )`$ for the fully connected architecture and $`\eta =1`$ for the extremely diluted one. The corresponding updating rule (2)

$$\sigma _i=g_b(\stackrel{~}{h_i}+\alpha \chi \eta \sigma _i),\stackrel{~}{h_i}=\xi _i^1m_i^1+\eta 𝒩(0,\alpha a)$$
(22)
in general admits more than one solution. A Maxwell construction (see, e.g., refs. ,,) can be made leading to a unique solution

$$\sigma _i=g_{\stackrel{~}{b}}(\stackrel{~}{h_i}),\stackrel{~}{b}=(b\frac{\alpha \eta \chi }{2})$$
(23)
such that we have

$$\sigma _i=s_k\text{if}\stackrel{~}{b}(s_k+s_{k1})+\alpha \chi \eta s_k<h_i<\stackrel{~}{b}(s_k+s_{k+1})+\alpha \chi \eta s_k.$$
(24)
for $`\stackrel{~}{b}>0`$. This unique solution can be used to obtain fixed-point equations for the main overlap and activity (7). Those equations which we choose not to write down explicitly here (see refs. ,) are equal to the equations derived from a thermodynamic replica-symmetric mean-field theory approach ,. We remark that for analog networks ($`Q\mathrm{}`$) such a Maxwell construction is not necessary because eq. (22) has only one solution.

Next, we calculate the probability density of the local field by plugging this result (22)-(24) into (21) to obtain, forgetting about the site index $`i`$ and the pattern index $`1`$

$`f(h)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{Q}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\eta \sqrt{2\pi \alpha a}}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(h\xi m\alpha \chi \eta s_k)^2}{2\alpha a\eta ^2}}\right)`$ (25)
$`\times `$ $`\left(\theta [\stackrel{~}{b}(s_k+s_{k+1})+\alpha \chi \eta s_kh]\theta [\stackrel{~}{b}(s_k+s_{k1})+\alpha \chi \eta s_kh]\right)`$
meaning that (Q-1) gaps occur respectively at $`\stackrel{~}{b}(s_k+s_{k1})+\alpha \chi \eta s_{k1}<h<\stackrel{~}{b}(s_k+s_{k+1})+\alpha \chi \eta s_k`$ with width $`\mathrm{\Delta }h=2\alpha \chi \eta /(Q1)`$. For analog networks no gaps occur. When $`\stackrel{~}{b}0`$ the effective gain function (23) becomes two-state Ising-like as in the Hopfield model such that case only one gap occurs.

For $`Q=2`$ this expression simplifies to

$`f(h)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\eta \sqrt{2\pi \alpha a}}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(h\xi m\alpha \chi \eta )^2}{2\alpha a\eta ^2}}\right)\theta (h\alpha \chi \eta )`$ (26)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\eta \sqrt{2\pi \alpha a}}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(h\xi m+\alpha \chi \eta )^2}{2\alpha a\eta ^2}}\right)\theta (h\alpha \chi \eta )`$
and for Q=3 we have

$`f(h)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\eta \sqrt{2\pi \alpha a}}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(h\xi m\alpha \chi \eta )^2}{2\alpha a\eta ^2}}\right)\theta (h\stackrel{~}{b}\alpha \chi \eta )`$ (27)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\eta \sqrt{2\pi \alpha a}}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(h\xi m)^2}{2\alpha a\eta ^2}}\right)\theta (\stackrel{~}{b}^2h^2)`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\eta \sqrt{2\pi \alpha a}}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(h\xi m+\alpha \chi \eta )^2}{2\alpha a\eta ^2}}\right)\theta (\stackrel{~}{b}\alpha \chi \eta h).`$
Similar formula can be written down for bigger values of $`Q`$. For $`Q=2`$ this result seems to be consistent with the gap in the internal-field distribution for an infinite range spin glass found by a Bethe-Peierls-Weiss approach  (see also -).

We have investigated this probability distribution numerically using the corresponding fixed-point equations mentioned before, for several values of $`Q`$ and compared them with those obtained from numerical simulations of the dynamics for networks of $`N=6000`$ neurons. Some typical results are shown in figs. 1-6.

In figs. 1-2 the local field distribution for the fully connected $`Q=2`$ network is shown for a retrieval state ($`\alpha =0.13,m_0=0.5`$) just below the critical capacity and a non-retrieval spin-glass state ($`\alpha =0.14,m_0=0.2`$) just above it. Both the first few time steps and the equilibrium result derived above are compared with numerical simulations. They are in agreement. For the retrieval state there is, typically, a small gap in the equilibrium distribution around h=0. For small $`\alpha `$ the gap is very narrow. Furthermore, in the simulations one sees that this gap shows up very quickly. For the non-retrieval state the gap is typically much bigger. Again in the simulations one quickly sees the gap but it is extremely difficult numerically to find points touching the zero axis because of finite size effects.

Figure 3 shows the gap width at equilibrium, $`\mathrm{\Delta }h`$, for the non-retrieval state as a function of $`Q`$ with $`b=0.5`$. It scales as $`\mathrm{\Delta }h1/(Q1)`$ and, hence, decreases to zero for $`Q\mathrm{}`$. This constant behaviour of $`(Q1)\mathrm{\Delta }h`$ attains already for values of $`Q20`$ and is also seen for the retrieval state. These results are insensitive to the structure of the symmetric architecture.

In figure 4 the gap boundaries in $`h`$ as a function of $`\alpha `$ are compared for retrieval and non-retrieval states in the symmetric diluted $`Q=3,b=0.2`$ model. We remark that in this case the spin-glass states do not exist for $`\alpha 0.04`$  so that there is no gap for these $`\alpha `$-values. For $`\alpha `$ large enough ($`\alpha >0.465`$ for retrieval states and $`\alpha >0.252`$ for spin-glass states) there exists one gap only since the effective gain function becomes Ising-like . More gaps with smaller widths are formed when increasing $`Q`$ for both the fully connected and diluted models. For $`Q\mathrm{}`$ the gaps disappear.

Figure 5 compares the gaps for the spin-glass states in the fully connected and symmetric diluted $`Q=3`$ models with $`b=0.5`$. For $`\alpha 0.25`$ there exist no spin-glass states in the diluted model  and for $`\alpha 0.004`$ there are none in the fully connected model . When both do exist the gap widths are almost equal. So the dilution has some influence on the existence of the gap but, again, not on its width.

Finally, fig. 6 presents the local field distribution for the symmetric diluted $`Q=3,b=0.5`$ model for a retrieval state ($`\alpha =0.6,m_0=0.7`$) just below the critical capacity. Only the distribution with pattern values $`+1`$ is shown. It is asymmetric and two gaps are found at equilibrium. For pattern values $`0`$ the distribution is symmetric and the gap locations and widths are the same (see eq. (25)) but their height is different.

In conclusion, we have studied the time evolution of the local field in symmetric $`Q`$-Ising neural networks both in the retrieval and spin-glass regime. We have found a gap structure in the local field distribution depending on the specific architecture and on the value of $`Q`$. The results agree with the numerical simulations we have performed.

## Acknowledgments

This work has been supported in part by the Fund of Scientific Research, Flanders-Belgium and the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation through the SRC program. The authors are indebted to A. Coolen, G. Jongen and V. Zagrebnov for constructive discussions.


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# Observable Effects of B fields on the Winds and Envelopes of Hot Stars

## 1. Introduction

Early type stars have several major differences from the Sun and other cool stars, and these lead to a new array of magnetic phenomena. The early type stars tend to be very luminous, and the emission line Of stars and the OB supergiants lie rather near the Eddington upper luminosity limit. Because of the strong radiation fields, the most important properties of their winds can be explained by line driven wind theory as first developed by Castor, Abbott and Klein (CAK, 1975). With the modifications of CAK theory developed by Friend & Abbott (1986) and Pauldrach, Puls, & Kudritzki (1986), we can now understand why the mass loss rates of luminous early-type stars are in the range of $`10^6`$ to $`10^5`$ $`M_{}`$yr-1, and why the terminal velocities, $`v_{\mathrm{}}`$, are generally in the range of 1500 to 3000 km s-1. However, there are some properties of hot stars that are not easily explained by line driven wind theory, and magnetic fields appear to play a role in those. For example, in line driven wind theory, one should expect that the radiation field should be axially symmetric. There could be a latitude dependence owing to polar brightening in rapidly rotating stars, however as we have heard in the paper by Henrichs, there are dependences of the winds on longitude, and this leads to the cyclic variability in UV wind diagnostics. The O, B, and A stars also tend to be rapid rotators. In the case of the emission line Be stars the rotation speeds are on average about 70 percent of the critical rotation speed at which the surface is rotating at Keplerian speed. These stars have equatorial disks, and a consensus has recently been reached that the disks are Keplerian (Smith, Henrichs, & Fabregat, 2000). So the major problem for understanding the Be stars is explaining how a star rotating at sub-Keplerian speed can produce a Keplerian disk. Co-rotating magnetic fields could lead to the needed transfer of mass and angular momentum from the star to the disk.

## 2. Evidence Across the Spectrum

Here I will briefly discuss the evidence for magnetic fields that are seen in early-type stars at wavelengths ranging from X-ray to the optical. The X-rays from early type stars are usually explained as arising from shocks that are distributed throughout the relatively dense winds. The recent launches of the Chandra and XMM satellites have led to a great improvement of our understanding of the source of the X-rays because of the high spectral resolution they provide. The X-rays in the winds are thought to be produced by instabilities in line driven winds. However, models for shock formation such as those by Lucy (1982) and Feldmeier et al (1997) and others have consistently failed to predict the high level of X-ray emission in the brightest stars such as $`\zeta `$ Pup (O4f) (Cassinelli et al 2001, Kahn et al; 2001) and $`\zeta `$ Ori (O9.5 Ia) (Cassinelli and Swank, 1983, Waldron & Cassinelli, 2001). The X-ray spectral lines allow us for the first time to determine the radius at which the X-rays are originating. In the case of the two stars mentioned, there is evidence that X-rays from the highest ion stages are originating so close to the star that the local wind and its maximal strength shocks could not produce the high ion stages such as Si xiii and S xv that are observed. Waldron & Cassinelli (2001) and Schulz et al (2000) in particular, have suggested that magnetic fields are largely responsible for the very hot gases. In the case of lower luminosity near-main sequence B stars, Cohen et al (1997) found that the X-ray luminosities are larger than could be generated by the emission measure of the entire wind. This also suggests that there could be an extra source of X-ray emitting material that is perhaps magnetically confined.

There is also indirect evidence for magnetic fields in stars observable in the extreme ultraviolet. Only two early-type stars $`ϵ`$ CMa (B2 II) and $`\beta `$ CMa (B1 II-III) could be observed with the EUVE satellite. These two stars lie in a rarefied tunnel in the ISM and the attenuation of their EUV light is unusually small. For $`ϵ`$ CMa, Cassinelli et al. (1995) found the star to have a photospheric radiation flux level in the wavelength range 500 to 700 Å that exceeds the values predicted by model atmospheres by a factor of about 30. This excess could be produced if the star were to have an outer atmospheric zone like a chromosphere, that is hotter than expected from radiative equilibrium model predictions. Such a zone is present in the solar atmosphere, but is not otherwise observed in O and B stars; nor is one expected since hot stars do not have an outer convection zone. Thus, some sort of mechanical heating seems to be required. A possible explanation is provided by observations of the other EUVE stellar source, $`\beta `$ CMa. This star shows an EUV continuum flux that exceeds model predictions by about a factor of 5 (Cassinelli et al. 1996). It is a bright pulsating variable of the $`\beta `$ Cephei class, and the star $`\beta `$ Cephei itself has been measured via the Zeeman effect methods to be an oblique rotator with a field of about 100 Gauss (Henrichs et al. 2001, and at this meeting). The connection between the heating that is needed on one bright member of this class of variables, and the magnetic field that is seen on another is not yet clear, but the possibility that a magnetic field is also present on $`\beta `$ CMa is plausible and very interesting. The results might mean that heated outer atmospheres are common among B stars.

In the ultraviolet, there are very many observations of hot star spectra. Perhaps of most interest here are the observations of cyclic behavior of the discrete absorption components (DAC’s) of moderately strong UV resonance line profiles (Prinja et al. 1992; Kaper et al. 1996). The progression of the DAC features across the line profiles has been explained by the co-rotating interaction region (CIR) model of Cranmer and Owocki (1996). CIR’s are present in the solar wind, and Mullan (1984) had proposed that they are present also in hot star winds. What is needed in the model, are sectors of fast stellar wind streams adjacent to sectors of slower moving material. This is not expected to occur in purely radiation driven winds. However, it is well known in solar work that magnetic fields can lead to fast stream - slow stream outflow. MacGregor (1988) investigated a way in which this could occur on a star with a line driven wind by magnetic channeling of the flow, and Cassinelli and Miller (1999) have suggested that there could be sectors of faster wind driven by luminous magnetic rotator forces.

In the optical, a correlation has been found by Henrichs et al. (1998) between the H $`\alpha `$ emission line variability and the wind UV lines. This links the DAC phenomena, discussed above, to something occurring at or near the surface of the stars. The H $`\alpha `$ double peaked lines are the best studied diagnostic of the Be star disks. In recent years, monitoring of the variations of the violet (V) and red (R) peaks in the H $`\alpha `$ lines has shown that there is a quasi cyclical change in the V and R components of the line on time scales of a few years, (Hanuschik et al. 1995). This has been explained with models for a one-armed spiral pattern or a “global disk oscillation” in the equatorial disk around the stars (Okazaki, 1991, 1997; Papaloizou et al. 1992) . For such a pattern to develop, the matter must have a long residence time in the disk. This would not expected in the “wind compressed disk” (WCD) model of Be stars by Bjorkman and Cassinelli (1993) that led to explanations of large equatorial density enhancements and to the IR excess and intrinsic polarization of the Be stars. In the WCD model matter from the star flows towards, and shocks at, the equatorial region as a natural consequence of equator-crossing trajectories of a wind flowing from a rapidly rotating star. However, a WCD has matter continuing to flow outwards in the equatorial plane, and would not produce the one armed spiral behavior. To achieve the large angular velocities of a Keplerian disk, the star must transmit not only mass but also angular momentum to its wind. This can be achieved by having the flow channeled by a co-rotating magnetic field.

## 3. The General Dynamical Effects of B fields on Hot star Winds

The fast rotation of hot stars leads to the most prominent effects that connect fields with the hot star outflows. Here several aspects are considered. A topic which I call Luminous Magnetic Rotator theory was developed by Friend & MacGregor (1984), and applied to Wolf Rayet stars by Poe, Friend & Cassinelli (1987). It is a combination of the well know Weber and Davis (1967) model for the solar wind, with line driven wind theory of CAK. From the perspective of the basic Weber and Davis model, there is a primary mechanism for driving an outflow, and it is amplified by the effects of the magnetic field. The primary mechanism for the solar wind would be combination of effects that could be called the the coronal mechanism, for hot stars the primary mechanism would be the CAK wind theory. The addition of a field can lead to the star being a slow, fast, or centrifugal, magnetic rotator. The Sun is an example of a slow magnetic rotator because the rotation of the field does not lead to a significant increase in the wind speed. Fast Magnetic Rotator theory as explained by Hartmann and Macgregor (1980) can lead to a fast equatorial outflow, which could be important in the production of the co-rotating interaction regions discussed above. In the centrifugal magnetic rotators the sub-sonic region is rotating at roughly solid body rotation with the star and this enhances the density at the critical point and leads to an increased mass loss rate. Also along this sequence of magnetic rotators is an increase in the angular momentum transfered from the star to the wind. It is the angular momentum addition that makes it possible to explain the formation of disks around stars.

An oblique rotator structure for the magnetic field is a particularly well studied variant of the magnetic rotator theory. Shore (1999) has shown that the B fields in oblique rotators give rise to a periodic and directed wind that explains the outflows observed in B chemically peculiar stars. It is this picture of a significant flow from the oblique rotating wind that is supported by the time variations of the Zeeman effect that has been reported by Henrichs et al. (2001). The theoretical picture for disk formation around an oblique rotator has been developed for the Ap stars by Babel and Montmerle (1997). It was used several times during this meeting to explain the observed cyclical variability of Ap stars.

In the formation of planetary nebulae, the magnetic fields have been used to explain the bipolar outflows that are commonly seen. These models are commonly called Magnetic Wind Blown Bubbles and the theory has been developed by Chevalier and Luo (1994), García-Segura et al. (1999) and others.

## 4. Timescales

In hearing the talks on early- type stars at this meeting, it occurred to me that there are some interesting stellar aging effects in hot stars that might be explainable in a straightforward way.

We have heard from Mathys that among the A-stars, the Ap phenomenon does not occur for the first 30 percent of the lives of the stars. Similarly, at the recent IAU Coll. 175 meeting on Be stars, Capilla, Fabregat & Baines, (2000) and others reported that Be stars are not found in clusters that are younger than about $`10^7`$ years, i.e. there is a delay time of about 10 - 30 percent of the life of a B stars before disks become an important feature. So both types of magnetically induced phenomena appear to have a delay of order 10 percent of the stellar life before they can occur. Stretching further to the O-stars we find from Wood & Churchwell (1989) that the stars are hidden from view for the first 10 percent of their main-sequence lifetimes. The first evidence of the O- stars are Ultra Compact HII regions, which often show very massive bi-polar outflow which seem to me to be caused by magnetic rotator forces. Churchwell (1997) tabulates several such O-stars in which the mass in the bipolar outflow exceeds the mass of the star at the center. Only magnetic forces associated with the collapse of the cloud could produce such a situation.

Thus, there are interesting magnetic phenomena occurring in the early lives of O, B, and A stars. In the case of the B and A stars, we can certainly ask what could cause the delay the start of the Be and Ap phenomena.

The time scales involved are very similar to the times mentioned in the talk by Charbonneau. He showed results from the calculations of MacGregor and Cassinelli (2001) for the rise of magnetic fields through the sub-adiabatic envelopes of hot stars. For the calculation, a torus of flux that is similar to those used in modeling the rise of magnetic fields in the Sun is considered. Assuming an initial pressure and temperature balance between the flux tube and the external medium, there is an initial buoyant force that causes the field region rise. However being in a sub-adiabatic region the rising tube finds itself cooler than the surroundings and has a tendency to stop its rise. It continues to rise at a terminal rate that is set by heating of the tube by the somewhat hotter ambient medium. This leads to a rise of the flux tubes on a time scale comparable to roughly 30% of a lifetime delay for the onset of the Ap and Be phenomena. It seems reasonable to suggest that some sort of flux tube rise scenario could produce what we see in these two classes of stars. (A somewhat similar scenario has been proposed at this meeting for the cool star dividing line on the HR diagram, by Holzwarth, Schüssler, and Solanki). If the rise time for the flux tube controls the onset of the magnetic phenomena in Ap and Be stars, it leads us to also predict a termination of the Ap and Be phenomena for the following reason. The composition of the interface region where the field is generated is changing with time as the core becomes more enriched in helium. Thus the mean molecular weight changes by about a factor of two and this extra mass per particle could inhibit the rise of the magnetic flux tubes.

## 5. Conclusions

As a closing remark, I want to say that I have found this to be an extremely useful meeting, because it has brought together astronomers with such a wide range of range of interests and expertise. We in the hot star community have relatively few actual measurements of magnetic fields, so it has been especially beneficial to discuss and hear about magnetic mechanisms, effects and diagnostics that used in solar and cool star astronomy research. I hope that the different range in phenomena that is found in hot star astronomy will continue to attract the interest of experts in the these other fields as well.

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## Discussion

MOUSCHOVIAS: You stated that magnetic fields can reverse the infall and convert it to an outflow. Is that statement a result of a calculation or is it speculation.

CASSINELLI: No, it is not a model result. However I think the idea that an infall can be reversed has already been developed. Such a reversal is calculated to occur in the Shu’s X-wind model for the formation of low mass stars. I was just suggesting that a similar thing could occur for massive stars but at a larger distance from the star because of the greater velocities and mass fluxes are involved. I made the statement because I am aware of the rate at which mass can be driven from a star by the various forces available. It would be impossible to have such a massive flow arise from the O star star itself, even by the Luminous Magnetic Rotator theory, which drive the most massive of the winds we considered in Lamers and Cassinelli (1999). The flow reversal would need to occur before the matter became too deep in the stars gravitational field, and centrifugal magnetic rotator forces would seem like the most likely ones to achieve the outflow.

BERDYGINA: Be stars appear also in binaries. What will be the difference between the Be star accreting matter from the secondary and a Be star with the magnetic field without accretion.

CASSINELLI: The answer to this question has been addressed by Geis (2000). Yes there are some Be stars that are binaries, but it is now generally agreed that what is considered to be the “Be phenomenon” is not a mass transfer process, but arises most frequently in single stars.

SCHMITT: Assume that the X-ray emission of hot stars is from confined magnetic loops. 1) What is heating the plasma? and 2) Why is Lx $``$ Lbol.

CASSINELLI: Even early-type stars can have sources of mechanical energy, The stars tend to be rapid rotators and the rotation is not solid body, but differential. In addition there are circulation currents occurring in the stars and non-radial pulsations. Also, in one well studied star, $`\tau `$ Sco B0.5 V, there seems to be an infall of matter from the stalled wind. I certainly don’t know of the mechanism that could lead to heating, but there is no lack of possibilities for sources of mechanical energy. The proportionality between Lx and Lbol holds approximately for the O- stars, but these have winds that are optically thick to X-rays. Most of the X-rays we detect are produced by shocks in the winds, which are produced by interactions of matter driven by the luminosity of the star. When we looked to the somewhat less luminous near main sequence stars in our ROSAT studies, which have optically thin winds, and so all of the X-rays that are produced can be seen (Cohen et al.1997), we found that Lx dropped sharply below the $`10^7`$ Lbol relation, i.e. Lx is not proportional to Lbol.

MOSS: The rise speed of the flux tube is a stably stratified region is proportional to $`B^2/r_T^2`$, where $`r_T`$ is the tube radius and B the field strength. I estimate (see my paper) that for $`t_{rise}10^8`$ years, $`r_T10^3`$ R for Ap star parameters. Thus the field rises as “spaghetti”, but must become organized it the surface to present the large scale (ordered) poloidal field. Can you comment on how this might occur?

CASSINELLI: In the simple picture of flux tubes that MacGregor and I have worked on, and as described in Charbonneau’s talk, it is difficult to picture how there could be the communication between the northern and southern hemispheres of the star needed for the global poloidal structure. Perhaps the rising flux tubes are primarily contributing to the quadrupolar and other higher order components that we have learned here are on present on Ap stars.

RUEDIGER: If the Ap stars are an old population among the A stars, also their slow rotation must suddenly appear during the main-sequence evolution. Or is the slow rotation of the Ap stars already present at the ZAMS, without stellar magnetism and peculiar chemistry?

CASSINELLI: I wouldn’t say that the delay of 10 to 30 would make the Ap stars an old population. But more to the point I do not see that the slow rotation and the chemical peculiarity have to appear simultaneously during the main sequence evolution. The diffusion of the elements in Ap stars could be affected either by the presence of a dipole or by higher the more localized fields associated with the rise of flux tubes.


text:
# Soliton Squeezing in a Mach-Zehnder Fiber Interferometer

## List of figures


text:
# 1 Parton level gap fractions (relative to LO QCD one-gluon exchange) in quark-quark scattering from our BFKL solution and the asymptotic MT approximation with the running coupling 𝛼_𝑠(-𝑡) in the prefactor, versus gap size 𝑦 (for the given 𝐸_𝑇-values) and versus 𝐸_𝑇 (for the given 𝑦-values). In the right-hand plot, the MT curve is multiplied by a factor of 20.

TSL/ISV-2001-0249

June 2001

Hard colour singlet exchange at the Tevatron
from the BFKL equation111Talk presented by RE at the 9th International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering, Bologna, April 2001, to appear in the proceedings. E-mail: enberg@tsl.uu.se.

R. Enberga, L. Motykaa,b, G. Ingelmana,c

a High Energy Physics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

b Institute of Physics, Jagellonian University, Cracow, Poland

c DESY, Hamburg, Germany

## Abstract

We study rapidity gaps between jets in $`p\overline{p}`$ collisions at the Tevatron by a novel solution of the nonforward BFKL equation including nonleading effects through the consistency constraint and running coupling. Results differ from earlier calculations based on the asymptotic Mueller-Tang formula, but agree with D0 data when including full event simulation using PYTHIA to model the gap survival probability.

Mueller and Tang  (MT) proposed that events with two forward-backward high-$`E_T`$ jets with a large rapidity gap (of size $`y`$) between them could provide a test of the nonforward BFKL equation, in the form of elastic parton-parton scattering by hard ($`|t|0`$) colour singlet exchange. However, the predictions obtained for the $`t`$ and $`y`$ dependence are not confirmed by DØ  and CDF  data. To crudely reproduce the $`t`$-shape of the DØ data the running of $`\alpha _s(t)`$ had to be disregarded  and the $`y`$ dependence measured by CDF remains unexplained. The MT approximation is valid only for asymptotically large energies and neglects some contributions which may be relevant for the present experimental conditions. Here, we show that a more complete solution of the BFKL equation gives a good description of the data.

The cross section $`d\widehat{\sigma }/dt`$ for elastic parton-parton scattering via BFKL pomeron exchange is dominated by the imaginary part of the amplitude

$$\mathrm{Im}A(y,t)=\frac{d^2𝐤}{\pi }\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0(𝐤,𝐐)\mathrm{\Phi }(y,𝐤,𝐐)}{[(𝐤+𝐐/2)^2+s_0][(𝐤𝐐/2)^2+s_0]},$$
(1)
where $`𝐐/2\pm 𝐤`$ denote the transverse momenta of the exchanged gluons and $`t=Q^2`$. The scale $`s_0`$ is a physical infrared cut-off that reflects the confining properties of the QCD vacuum which suppresses the propagation of gluons with small virtualities. We set $`s_0`$ to 1 GeV2, but note that the particular value affects mostly the normalisation and not the $`y`$ and $`t`$ dependence.

The impact factor $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0(𝐤,𝐐)`$ is an effective vertex between the pomeron, the proton and the final state containing the high $`E_T`$ parton(s). At large $`|t|`$ and $`y`$, the pomeron predominantly couples to individual pointlike partons , corresponding to

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_0(𝐤,𝐐)\sqrt{\alpha _s((𝐐/2+𝐤)^2+s_0)\alpha _s((𝐐/2𝐤)^2+s_0)}.$$
(2)
We assume that this is a good approximation also in the nonasymptotic region. $`\mathrm{\Phi }(y,𝐤,𝐐)`$ is the gluon distribution including full $`y`$ evolution which is found by solving the nonforward BFKL equation  with $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0(𝐤,𝐐)`$ as the input. The nonleading corrections to the BFKL kernel are taken into account in an approximate way by including the consistency constraint  and using a running coupling where the scale $`\mu ^2=k^2+Q^2/4`$ is evaluated locally in the gluon ladder.

The BFKL equation is solved numerically by expanding it in a truncated Fourier series and discretising the system by the Tchebyshev interpolation method . The resulting theoretical gap fraction is shown in fig. 1 together with the result of the MT formula which has a completely different behaviour. This is because MT corresponds to the asymptotically leading part of the scattering amplitude, which is not sensitive to the low scale details of the hadron structure and the QCD vacuum. However, the amplitude also contains a nonasymptotic part which depends on the physical cut-off scale and which dominates at small $`y`$. This part contains a $`\mathrm{log}(Q^2/s_0)`$, visible at the Born level, which gets suppressed when $`y`$ increases. This is due to gluon reggeisation , i.e., the negative virtual correction terms in the BFKL kernel. The numerical value of $`\mathrm{log}(Q^2/s_0)`$ is large and the BFKL evolution is not rapid enough to reach the high $`y`$ asymptotic limit in the currently accessible domain of $`y`$. We stress, that this $`\mathrm{log}(Q^2/s_0)`$ in not an infrared artifact, since it would also appear if we considered the analogous process of heavy onia scattering, where $`s_0`$ ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}s_0Q^2`$) would be a hard scale corresponding to the heavy onium size.

In order to compare with data, the parton level cross section discussed above must be convoluted with QCD evolved parton distributions of the incoming hadrons and the transition to final state hadrons be made. The latter is particularly important when considering rapidity gaps, which are defined in terms of a region without particles. One must then consider all additional activity in an event, such as higher order parton emissions, multiple parton scattering and hadronisation. A simple way of doing this is to multiply the cross section with an estimated gap survival probability. However, this probability cannot be independent of the subprocess, with its associated colour string topology, or of the kinematics in the event. For example, gluon-gluon scattering and a larger hard scale resulting in more parton radiation is expected to give a smaller gap survival probability.

The only way to handle these complex processes is via Monte Carlo event simulation. We have therefore implemented our cross section for elastic parton-parton scattering via colour singlet exchange as a new hard subprocess in the event generator pythia . Thus, higher order parton emissions are included through conventional parton showers and the underlying event is modelled with multiple interactions (using the best MI model MSTP(82)=4). To be consistent with our description  of rapidity gaps between a hard system ($`W`$, jets, bottom, $`J/\psi `$) and a leading proton observed at the Tevatron, we also include the soft colour interaction (SCI) model . The combination of SCI, with colour exchange probability $`P=0.25`$, and MI used here to model the underlying event is consistent with our previous study . Although SCI was introduced to explain the creation of forward rapidity gaps, it has here the opposite effect by rearranging strings to span across the gap produced at the parton level by the BFKL singlet exchange.

The gap fraction resulting from this complete model describes quite well the DØ data, as shown in fig. 2. The normalisation of the gap ratio is, however, uncertain for two reasons. The parameter $`s_0`$ affects the normalisation of the parton level cross section and the simulated survival probability depends on the SCI model parameter $`P`$. A more complete study, including CDF data, will be presented in a coming paper .

In conclusion, we have solved the nonforward BFKL equation for colour singlet exchange including nonleading corrections. The part dominating at Tevatron conditions is not the asymptotically dominating part contained in the Mueller-Tang formula, but a part governed by a large logarithm that disappears in the large-$`y`$ limit. Using pythia with full event simulation we obtain a dynamically varying gap survival probability resulting in a good description of the Tevatron data on rapidity gaps between jets.

We thank J. Kwieciński for stimulating discussions and acknowledge the support from the Swedish Natural Science Research Council. LM is supported in part by the KBN grant number 5 P P03B 144 20.