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# Structuring Business Metadata in Data Warehouse Systems for Effective Business Support

### Abstract

Large organizations today are being served by different types of data processing and informations systems, ranging from the operational (OLTP) systems, data warehouse systems, to data mining and business intelligence applications. It is important to create an integrated repository of what these system contain and do in order to use them collectively and effectively. The repository contains metadata of source systems, data warehouse, and also the business metadata. Decision support and business analysis requires extensive and in-depth understanding of business entities, tasks, rules and the environment. The purpose of business metadata is to provide this understanding. Realizing the importance of metadata, many standardization efforts has been initiated to define metadata models. In trying to define an integrated metadata and information systems for a banking application, we discover some important limitations or inadequacies of the business metadata proposals. They relate to providing an integrated and flexible inter-operability and navigation between metadata and data, and to the important issue of systematically handling temporal characteristics and evolution of the metadata itself.

In this paper, we study the issue of structuring business metadata so that it can provide a context for business management and decision support when integrated with data warehousing. We define temporal object-oriented business metadata model, and relate it both to the technical metadata and the data warehouse. We also define ways of accessing and navigating metadata in conjunction with data.
Keywords Data Warehouse, Metadata, Temporal database

## 1 Introduction

Large organizations today are served by a large number of information systems, each often built to support a specific business activity. The operational systems, also called OLTP systems, are commonly built using commercial DBMS technology for efficient processing of business transactions. These distributed, function-specific information systems form information ‘assets’ of the organization. The concept of data warehousing (DWH) has rapidly become popular to leverage the operational data for strategic decision making across the whole organization. Data warehousing is a technology \[KRRT98, MVVdf\], that provides models, tools and techniques for building integrated, subject-wise data from the operational systems. It provides flexible ways to access, aggregate and visualize integrated data (possibly from across different business functions) based on selected parameters of interest, and navigate inside the data ‘warehouse’ so that business trends can be discovered and understood for better business decisions.

In the context of large number of information systems, designed and maintained by different organizational units, operating in heterogeneous computing environments, and targeted towards different business functions, it becomes essential that ways are found to correctly and consistently understand and co-relate data from different sources in terms of formats, meaning and temporal characteristics of data. For this, we need to associate comprehensive descriptions, called ‘metadata’, with the data. As \[MDC99a\] report observes, ‘Metadata, or information about data, has become the critical enabler for the integrated management of the information assets of an enterprise’.

\[MDC99a\] defines metadata as ‘descriptive information about the structure and meaning of data and of the applications and processes that manipulate data’. The metadata has traditionally been classified into technical and business metadata. The technical metadata specifies how exactly the data is structured and stored in files or databases. This metadata allows applications and tools to access and manipulate the data. The business data, expressed through modeling concepts and data constraints, help in understanding the data and their usage. In order to achieve ‘strategic advantages of on-line access to all knowledge maintained in the distributed computing environment of an enterprise’ \[MDC99a\], a need for a centralized on-line metadata repository has been recognized by researchers (e.g., see \[SMR99\]) and standards organizations. Such a repository needs to be centrally administered for effective use by the developers and end-users.

While the technical metadata is relatively well-defined, the business metadata has posed important challenges due to the diversity of information that needs to be captured and modeled. (e.g., \[OMG99\] does not cover business metadata, and \[MDC99a\] standards are still being proposed for addressing some specific aspects such as Business Engineering Model \[MDC99c\], Business Rules \[MDC99b\], and Knowledge Management model \[MDC99d\]).

The Zachman Framework \[Hay99\] established different perspectives and dimensions for information systems within a 6 x 6 table. The perspectives cover directions and purpose (row 1), and the nature of business, including its structure, functions, organization, etc. (row 2). The dimensions include the ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘where’, ‘who’, ‘when’ and ‘why’ aspects of a perspective. Thus, these two rows can be considered as defining the business metadata. The row 3 defines information system model using data models, process models and business rules. Considering the importance of identifying and specifying the constraints of a business, the IBM user Group, GUIDE, published a standard for defining business rules \[HH97\]. The report takes an information system perspective, where business rules express constraints on creation, updating and removal of persistent data. The report does not cover many other categories of issues (such as policies, guidelines, processes, workflows, events, etc.). The business rules conceptual model permits us to define the business rules as structural assertions (using ‘terms’ and ‘facts’), action assertions (which concern system dynamics), and derivations. The GUIDE model includes a generic ‘policy’ entity for relating rules to policies.

The Business Engineering Model of OIM \[MDC99c\] proposes models for business goals (where goals are related to vision and mission), organizational elements (which define resources and structure), business processes (which describe business activities) and business rules (which define business constraints). The OIM also proposes a Knowledge Management model \[MDC99d\] by which an organization can catalogue and categorize information based on a suitable taxonomy of concepts. These various sub-models will permit users to interprete data in the proper business context. For example, an information system may contain value for currency exchange rate. This value needs to be related to the basic concepts of ‘currency’, ‘exchange rate’, time, etc. It also needs to be related to business goals (such as ‘ensure stability of exchange rate’), the organizational elements (such as Exchange Control Department) responsible for (or, interested in) the goal, the related business processes, and so on.

As we move from source application systems to the DWH applications, the granularity of metadata must also be suitably altered. The operational systems process transactions and perform activities at a detailed level, affecting individual business entities. The changes must be carried out as defined by business rules. These rules specify detailed conditions and computations. At the DWH application level, detailed business rules may not be required. It will be adequate to know (in a higher-level articulation) how the processing was done and what are the policies, so that they can be monitored and evaluated.

The business metadata, like any other data, changes over time, since organizations change their missions, goals, policies, structure and processes. The business-level changes affect the source applications, which need to evolve to reflect changes in data and processing. The evolution of source applications, which feed data to the warehouse, must be captured in the warehouse metadata so that the subsequent analysis of data takes these changes into account in evaluating trends and taking new decisions. There has been extensive research \[TCG<sup>+</sup>93\] in temporal databases, but none of the metadata standards explicitly define temporal properties for the metadata.

While the motivation for integration is obvious, there have been a very few papers that suggest such integrated approaches. The work by Stohr et al \[SMR99\] makes a contribution in this direction. They define a framework in which the business metadata is related to the technical metadata at the data warehouse level. Their business model is somewhat limited, as it is defined using a single ”business concept” class. The lowest level concepts may relate to either dimensions or measures at the warehouse level. They allows DWH queries to be generated while navigating inside the business metadata.

In defining our own framework for an integrated metadata and DWH environment, we make the following contributions:

* We structure the business metadata to reflect its many aspects, so that organizations can be guided to define the metadata systematically and consistently. We are guided in this both by the Zachman Framework and the Business Engineering submodel of OIM.
* We take into account the temporal aspects of metadata. The DWH applications invariably have Time as an important dimension. By providing ‘temporal metadata’, the historical data in DWH can be correctly related to other business changes.
* We provide an integrated and navigational access to data from metadata and vice-versa. The navigation from data to metadata is not defined in other approaches. The navigation is based on the associations between various metadata and data entities,

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we give motivating examples for structuring the metadata and for metadata evolution (so that their temporal characterization can be done). We bring out different metadata concepts, and also the requirements for metadata repository. In Section 3, we present our integrated model for metadata and data systems. In Section 4, we give scenerios to illustrate exploration of data and metadata. Finally, Section 5 contains conclusions.

## 2 Characterizing Business Metadata

In order to support the various organizational roles such as operations, monitoring, control and decision-making, the computer-based data processing and information systems are ubiquitous today. Invariably, an organization has multiplicity of such systems, each with a specific scope, purpose and functionality. The data analysis and decision support systems evaluate business performance against a set of goals, and facilitate new business decisions, policies and goals. The DWH technology \[KRRT98\] provides tools and techniques for efficiently organizing, browsing, querying and visualizing large amount of historical data for analysis and decision-making. The data in a DWH is typically organized either as a ‘star schema’ or a ‘multi-dimensional cube’ consisting of dimensions and facts or measures. The measures may represent transactional data (aggregated, if necessary) or snapshot data. The data in operational systems go through the ‘ETL step’, where the relevant data are extracted, transformed, co-related and finally loaded into the warehouse.

In today’s dynamic market conditions, organizations are placing more emphasis on shorter decision times by reducing organizational hierarchies and empowering their ‘knowledge-workers’. Consequently, a larger number of business users need access to data that might cut across the boundaries of organizational units and functions. For them, the business data needs to be readily accessible at the logical level. The technical metadata, primarily meant for the developers, administrators, and the automated tools, is of little direct use for business users.

The business metadata, besides a meaningful logical-level description of data, should also include the business context of data: purpose, relevance, potential use, past usage, etc. To some extent, such a context can be provided by including in business metadata the specifications relating to the first two rows in the Zachman Framework. However, there are limited metadata standards efforts for these levels, and possibly not sufficient experience in creating comprehensive metadata repositories at these levels.

A commendable effort in building a high-level comprehensive business metadata has been undertaken at a central bank in India. The bank is involved in monitoring, planning and regulating of financial sector in the country. It proposes to build a central DWH for supporting its activities \[BN99\]. The bank has a large number of departments, each with a specific responsibility. However, the basic financial data received from commercial banks and financial institutes is heavily cross-referenced. Many financial parameters, such as exchange rate, liquidity ratio, etc., have ramifications across functions, and are of interest to many departments. The central bank also has to prepare extensive statistics for reviewing performance and ensuring implementation of its fiscal policies. These statistics are used by the government for macro-economic planning, and by the bank for answering important parliamentary questions. The bank realizes the need not only for a single centralized DWH, but also for a metadata repository to establish clear, consistent and complete meaning of data and other important business metadata \[BN99\].

### 2.1 Business Metadata Categories

In the following, we discuss the nature of metadata with illustrating examples taken from the central Bank case study. However, the categorization of the business metadata is fairly general, and applies to most businesses. The categorization can also be seen as an elaboration of the Zachman Framework.

* Functions: a broad classification of functions or missions, such as Financial Supervision, Credit Management, Exchange Control, etc.
* Organization Elements : define organizational structure in terms of divisions, departments, etc. These may include Department of Banking Supervision, Rural Planning and Credit Department.
* Goal : a goal statement identifies purpose for an organizational element. These are often qualitative in nature. The monitoring and control functions of the departments in the bank have explicit goals on exchange rates, foreign exchange, interest rates, lending to priority sectors, etc.
* Business Entities : an organization deals with many entities, both internal and external. A description of these should be included in the metadata along with their relevant attributes. The examples could include different types of banks, non-banking financial institutes, and business sectors. Entities may be inter-related, and also associated with goal and other metadata categories.
* Processes : these describe at some suitable level of details how the business activities are performed. A process may be decomposed into sub-processes, and be associated with other metadata such as functions, goal, business entity, etc.
* External Events : these are important happenings (beyond the control of the organization) which have impact on some metadata, such as Policy and Functions. They may be events which affect business entities directly or indirectly (e.g., merger of two banks).
* Measures : these are quantitative parameters that measure the effects of business activities. This metadata type specifies nature of measurement, the goals, business entities, and other metadata to which they are related. There are many important measures in the banking sector, such as deposits, credits, assets, incomes, expenditures, call money rates, etc.
* Evaluation : The evaluation class represents organization’s evaluation of business measures (as obtained, after suitable filtering and aggregations, from the data warehouse) against the business goals. The evaluations may be recorded periodically. They act as records of performance of the business. These could be simple (such as ‘satisfactory foreign reserves’) or detailed (such as, ‘credit to agriculture sector in northern states is not growing at expected rate’). The evaluation metadata would be associated with organizational elements, goals and measures.
* Action : The Action metadata class permits recording in the repository any specific business actions (possibly as a consequence of evaluations and external events). The actions would relate to evaluations.
* Business Concept : The various metadata classes described above can be generalized as business concepts, which, in addition, can also be used for introducing business terminology (and other miscellaneous business concepts not captured by the above categories).

### 2.2 Metadata Characteristics

In this section, we highlight important metadata characteristics for an integrated metadata environment.

* Changes to Metadata : The business metadata, covered under different categories in the previous subsection, may change over time. A business user must be aware of these changes, as the changes may alter the consistency and comparability of data over time. The meaning of a business concept may change, or there may be changes in policies, goals, and processes. While analyzing data in a warehouse, the data must be made consistent and comparable (by suitable transformations), if possible, and the user must be proactively made aware of changes in business metadata. \[BN99\] gives many examples of metadata changes for the central bank. For instance, the definition of term ‘non-performing asset (NPA)’ has changed recently in terms of duration of non-payment of a loan that leads to its classification as NPA.

Thus, the metadata are temporal in nature. Each metadata has a time interval of validity. This interval is specified as beginning from a certain time instant (called, FROM), and ending at another time instant (called, TO). The description is effective in the real-world during this interval. As an implication, the data in the warehouse must also be temporally characterized so that the metadata and data can be temporally co-related.
* Metadata Abstraction Levels : The amount of metadata that can be defined for an organization could be extensive, even if we assume some domain background among the users. Often, the metadata are not readily available (very few organizations even have detailed ’operations and procedures’ manuals). Moreover, in many cases, the business users do not need definitions of primitive concepts, nor the details of computations and processing. Summary specifications are often adequate. The detailed specifications can be found, if required, in the source code of some application. The business metadata can provide a ‘drill-down’ into the application code for details of processes.
* Integrated Evolution : As business requirements change, the application systems need to evolve. The changes may affect database design as well as the processing logic. The requirements change is naturally a consequence of changes in business policies, goals, processes, rules, etc., and should also result in evolution of business metadata. Also, the metadata repository must contain all versions of metadata with appropriate temporal validities. To minimize disruptions and inconsistencies, organizations should plan integrated evolution of its metadata repositories and application systems. An evolution cycle may start with business metadata changes, application modifications, and end with capturing updates to technical metadata. When these steps are complete, the next ETL step will load data in DWH as per the new business and technical metadata. \[Sar99\] presents a framework for application evolution management. It defines basic application components and their temporal characteristics.
* Navigation Across Metadata and Data : An integrated system should support a flexible access to both the metadata and data. \[SMR99\] propose such an environment where the system can generate data warehouse queries while navigating within the business metadata. We propose further extension to this flexibility : it should be possible to even go from data to the temporally consistent metadata, see metadata changes, record evaluations of business activities based on analysis of the data, and also record proposed business actions.

Figure 1 depicts an integrated environment for metadata management and usage. It shows linkages between the business and technical metadata, and the metadata evolution life-cycle.

## 3 Integrated Metadata Data Model

### 3.1 The UML Representation

In the previous section, we presented different categories of business metadata and also highlighted desirable characteristics to be supported by a metadata repository. In this section, we formally introduce the data model for metadata, using Unified Modeling Language(UML)\[BRJ99\] as the representation language. We use UML class diagram to represent the business metadata classes and their inter-relationships. In UML notation, rectangles represent classes, with class names in the upper part and the main class attributes in the lower part (for clarity, we do not indicate class methods in the diagrams). Inheritance relationship is shown using an arc with arrow-head pointing to the super-class. Associations are represented by labeled arcs with an ’m’ at the ends to represent many type of associations.

The overall metadata model is shown in Figure 2. The figure, in fact, shows integration of the business metadata with DWH technical metadata as well as warehouse data. The associations across the boundaries of the three segments in the integrated model represent the navigational paths between metadata and data (in either direction). In the technical metadata segment, we only show the primary metadata classes used in structuring a warehouse with the purpose to establish important relationships with business metadat. It is not our intention to propose a new model for technical metadata. This metadata specification can use any of the proposed standards, such as OIM \[MDC99a\] or CWM \[OMG99\]. The OIM model, for example, uses technical metadata classes such as Dimension, DimHierarchy, Cube, Measure, etc. OIM also allows specifications for transformations, which can describe how data from production databases is transformed before loading data into the DWH.

### 3.2 Metadata Classes and Associations

The business metadata includes a generalized class called Business Concept. Most other specific metadata classes inherit from this class. Its main attributes are concept name and description. It also provides temporal validity attributes (FROM and TO) to its subclasses and instances, so that each metadata definition has a specific period of validity. The temporal attributes specify valid (i.e., real-world) time. Thus, by the accepted definition of temporal database classification \[TCG<sup>+</sup>93\], the metadata repository is a ‘historical’ database. This class may have instances that define basic business glossary, and that metadata which do not fall within the classifications given by its sub-classes. We next give brief description of these sub-classes (which were introduced conceptually in the previous section):

* External Event : It specifies some real-world happenings that have impact on the business in some important way. Its instances may represent both the descriptions of such events as well as their occurrences (as data within the metadata repository; this data may not be captured in the DWH). This class has associations which indicate how the events are inter-related, and what other business aspects these events impact. The valid-time primarily captures the definition time or occurrence time of these events.
* Entity : This class specifies various business entities, which may be either Internal or External. The Internal entity occurrences can also specify business’s organizational elements. Additional information about business entities can be captured by their associations with the Attribute specifications. In a more general case, it may be appropriate to define association directly between BusinessConcept and Attribute classes so that additional attributes can be defined for other metadata classes also (in our case study, this flexibility was not indicated). The SubEntity association allows us to define hierarchies among business entities. For example, for Bank entity, we may define hierarchies to represent ‘Foreign Bank’, ‘Nationalized Bank’, ‘Rural Bank’, etc. The metadata repository will allow us to specify different business processes and goals for these classes of entities.
* Process : The business process class describes business processes and their subprocess relationships that capture business activities and tasks.
* Goal : The business goal class describes objectives and goals. A goal may have sub-goals. Goals are also related to business processes and entities through the P-goal and E-goal associations.
* Measure : The measure class is used to describe business measures that are used to evaluate business performance quantitatively. A goal is associated with one or more measures, and a measure may relate to many goals. A measure instance may describe the computations and aggregations required to be performed on data contained in a DWH to understand how achievement of a business goal can be evaluated. Although not shown in the figure, the measure metadata class may relate to query or report entities in technical metadata.
* Evaluation : This metadata class specifies type of evaluations applicable to different Goal metadata, and also evaluations of measures at various times. Its instances can be associated with Goal and Measure instances. An evaluation may also affect business entities and processes. In the model, we capture these relationships using an association between Evaluation and the BusinessConcept classes.
* Action : This class represents meaningful business actions, and any specific actions undertaken as a consequence of particular evaluation. We define separate associations to capture evaluations which result in specific actions, and evaluations which are consequences of some actions. Relationships of Action with other metadata are captured by its association with the BusinessConcept super-class.

The business metadata repository explicitly captures the various dimensions of Zachman framework \[Hay99\], and even goes beyond the framework by capturing the temporal characteristics of the metadata, and also providing for recording of events, evaluations and actions, which usually have no explicit representation in business information systems. The storage of these data provides history of business achievements and decisions. We may contrast this detailed structuring of metadata with the integraged model of \[SMR99\] where a single Business Concept class is defined to capture business metadata.

### 3.3 Linkages with Other Segments

The business metadata segment has linkages with the technical metadata and DWH segments of an integrated metadata and data environment. The important linkages, as envisaged in our model, are shown in Figure 2.

The business entities in the business metadata link with the specification of dimensions in the technical metadata of the DWH. For instance, an (external) entity Bank (with a suitable set of attributes) can map onto a dimension called Bank. The same dimension may also cover BankType entity to represent classifications of banks into Nationalized, Foreign, Rural, etc. Similarly, the Business Concept ‘Liability’ may define another dimension. We have captured this linkage with the Dimension metadata class through the association with BusinessConcept class. We do not define any explicit linkage to the Time Dimension. There is an implicit linkage since the business metadata is temporal. The Time Dimension represents the valid time line and the calendar defined in the temporal data model.

Some business metadata may actually represent the data in the DWH itself. For example, the BankType business entity may have sub-entities NationalizedBank, RuralBank, etc. These sub-entities are also defined in the business metadata repository. However, these occur as rows in the dimension table Bank in the DWH. Another example: the ‘Liability’ business concept may have sub-concepts like Deposits, Barrowings, etc. These sub-concepts again appears as rows in the Liability dimension in the DWH. To capture these linkages, we define an association from BusinessConcept to rows in the dimension tables in the DWH.

The next linkage is between Measure business metadata class and the Fact technical metadata class. The quantitative information specified by a Measure is available in the associated Fact table (for aggregation, filtering, etc.).

Finally, a link is defined between Action metadata and specific entities which are target of the action. The entities, in general, are rows in a dimensional table of the DWH. For example, an action might indicate that some specific banks must reduce their assets in equities.

As discussed in the next section, the metadata and linkages across the three segments allow effective navigations for understanding of business situations for evaluations and decision-making.

### 3.4 Methods Supporting Navigations

The various metadata classes have methods for not only accessing and updating data in their instances, but also for accessing other related metadata objects. To facilitate navigation, we have defined methods to follow various associations a class has. We will illustrate the navigational methods for a few metadata classes.

Consider the InternalEntity class. It has the following methods:
getSubEntity(): to locate sub-entities of the entity
getProcesses(): to obtain process(es) in which the entity is involved
getGoals(): to obtain goals related to the entity
getAffectingEvents(): to obtain external events that affect the entity
getActionsTaken(): to obtain actions targeted towards the entity
getDimension(): to obtain entity instances (if applicable) stored in the rows of the dimension table. This method navigates from business metadata to DWH.
For the Measure class, the following methods support navigation:
getGoals() : to obtain goals which use the given measure
getEvaluation() : to obtain evaluations based on the measure
getFacts() : to obtain fact descriptions on which the measure is based.

Similar kind of methods are defined for all the classes in the integrated repository. These methods permit going from technical metadata to the business metadata and from data in the DWH to the business metadata. Temporal selection is possible with these methods by specifying time interval of interest. Also, the method getHistory() is provided for all temporal classes. This method can be used to obtain all earlier states (ie, descriptions) of the metadata component. The history, given by the past states, indicates evolution of the metadata. In a graphical user interface, the methods are available as a ‘drop- down’ menu by a mouse-click on a suitable class or instance.

## 4 Exploring Metadata and Data

In Section 2, we had highlighted importance of integrated environment for flexible access to metadata and data, as well as access to the business metadata evolution so that business activities and their performance can be understood in the context of changing business structures, processes and goals. The integrated model proposed in the previous section supports both the requirements. In this section, we briefly illustrate how the requirements are satisfied by the model.

### 4.1 Scenerio 1 : Metadata to data to metadata

This scenerio illustrates navigation within metadata, then moving to the data in the DWH (transparently supported via technical metadata by the warehouse tools) and returning back to the metadata. By default, we access current instances of the metadata classes. The steps in the scenerio could be as follows:

1. Locate a department, an organizational element represented by an internal entity (e.g., the department named ‘Banking Supervision Department’). We could go the subdivisions of the department, if required.
2. Get goals this entity is responsible for (through its association with the Goal class). There could be multiple goals such as fraud detection, financial supervision, etc.
3. Given a goal, locate how the goals are measured by following the Goal to Measure association. There may be multiple measures relevant to a goal (alternatively, the goal may have subgoals).
4. From a selected Measure, go the warehouse (cube or star schema) that records values. One may now perform various DWH operations like filtering, aggregations, comparisons, etc., and draw a conclusion about how well the goal has been achieved. The conclusion can be stored as Evaluation instance in the metadata repository.
5. From the measures visited earlier, move to other goals that the measure is relevant for.

### 4.2 Scenerio 2: Metadata evolution

Since the metadata as well as DWH data have temporal validities, the integrated model permits us to access changes that have taken place in the business environment. It may be noted that most facts recorded in the DWH have temporal validities given by the corresponding time dimension. For example, the ‘Income Interest’ is a measure recorded for every quarter for every bank. We can observe how this measure has changed over time for a bank. The metadata evolution, on the other hand, would show if the definition of the concept ‘Interest Income’ itself has changed over time. Let us illustrate this scenerio with a few steps:

1. Access and examine the data in a DWH cube.
2. Access the Measure metadata associated with the cube.
3. Access the goals associated with any of the measures encountered above. Select one of the goals (e.g., one which prescribed that NPA (non-performing assets) be less than some percentage of gross assets).
4. Display NPA of Bank entities over time (possibly in a convenient spread-sheet format).
5. Choose an NPA value, and access its metadata description.
6. For the NPA business concept, get its history (i.e., evolution) over the last 2 years. Note any major changes in NPA definition (which may explain the trend of NPA values seen in the earlier step).
7. For a selected entity, say XYZ Bank, get its history. This may show changes in the bank’s attribute values.
8. For the selected bank, get external events that might have affected it in the last 6 months. This may, for example, show that it acquired another bank.

This scenerio illustrates that the model allows to access changes in business metadata both at concepts level and at entity levels. One may explore not only the DWH data, but also business environment changes.

## 5 Conclusions

Large organizations today need flexible access to various kind of information that is present in its operational systems. The data warehousing technology facilitates creation of integrated and subject-wise history data, and provides flexible ways to access, aggregate and visualize the information in the DWH. In order for users to know the meaning and structure of the available data, we need to build ‘metadata repositories’ that contain comprehensive descriptions of the data. The metadata has been broadly classified into the business and technical metadata. It is the business metadata which provides appropriate business context for the understanding and analysis of data and for decision-support. Considering the importance of metadata, major standardization efforts, notably the OIM of MDC \[MDC99a\] and CWM of OMG \[OMG99\], have been undertaken with primary focus on the technical metadata. The business metadata poses many challenges in terms of scope, abstractions and structure. The Zachman framework \[Hay99\] has provided guidelines, and the Business Engineering Model proposals, covering business goals, organizational elements, business processes, business rules and knowledge management, of OIM emerge as a comprehensive effort in this direction.

In an attempt to build an integrated DWH environment for a central bank, the structuring of business metadata has merged as a major challenge \[BN99\]. Unlike the integrated model of \[SMR99\], where all aspects of business are generalized in a single metadata class, called Business Concept, we considered it necessary to explicitly structure the business metadata into many categories. The other challenges included changes to metadata itself over time, and navigational access between metadata and data in either direction.

The integrated metadata and DWH model proposed in this paper emerged as a solution for the bank’s requirements (although it is clear to us that a few iterations, after the initial implementation and subsequent user feedback, would be necessary to fine-tune it). The model achieves integration of the three segments, business metadata, technical metadata and the DWH, to allow the users to interpret, understand, access and analyze the data in the DWH, taking into account the temporal characteristics of both the metadata and data, and then evaluate achievement of business goals and plan future business actions. These are the essential requirements for the bank for its regulatory and planning functions. Like the most emerging metadata standards, we use object-oriented modeling using the UML representation. We define temporal validity for all classes, and navigational methods so that all related metadata and data for any entity can be obtained.

The future work consists of fine-tuning the model based on the experience, and bring it closer to the OIM’s Business Engineering Model (BEM), but at the desired level of abstractions for the application. It may be noted that BEM in some respects is too detailed (e.g., in the specification of business rules and processes), and it does not support evolution and changes. We also plan to facilitate ad-hoc query support as in \[SMR99\] from navigation and selections in the business metadata.


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# Short-coherence length superconductivity in the Attractive Hubbard Model in three dimensions

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## Abstract

We study the normal state and the superconducting transition in the Attractive Hubbard Model in three dimensions, using self-consistent diagrammatics. Our results for the self-consistent $`T`$-matrix approximation are consistent with 3D-$`XY`$ power-law critical scaling and finite-size scaling. This is in contrast to the exponential 2D-$`XY`$ scaling the method was able to capture in our previous 2D calculation. We find the 3D transition temperature at quarter-filling and $`U=4t`$ to be $`T_c=0.207t`$. The 3D critical regime is much narrower than in 2D and the ratio of the mean-field transition to $`T_c`$ is about 5 times smaller than in 2D. We also find that, for the parameters we consider, the pseudogap regime in 3D (as in 2D) coincides with the critical scaling regime.

\]

Inspired by the discovery of high-temperature superconductors there has been considerable interest for some time in understanding how the BCS picture gets modified in the case of short coherence length superconductivity. A simple model for a correlated superconductor is the Attractive Hubbard Model that allows one to tune the attraction to an intermediate regime between the BCS and Bose limits  where the fermions are still degenerate but the coherence length starts to approach the interparticle spacing. Earlier studies  of this model in 2D using Monte Carlo methods revealed the development of a pseudogap in the normal state. In this paper we employ self-consistent diagrammatics that is a variant of the Fluctuation-Exchange Approximation . Specifically, we use the self-consistent $`T`$-matrix approximation (STA) that only retains fluctuations in the particle-particle channel. These are presumably the only relevant fluctuations in the model for the densities we consider. We have found before  that quite remarkably, the STA approach in 2D captures the critical 2D-$`XY`$ fluctuations with a Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) transition temperature in good agreement with Monte Carlo . In addition we found a very broad critical regime that coincides with the development of a normal state pseudogap. It is very surprising that self-consistent diagrammatics can capture critical behaviour relatively well. In order to understand this better, and encouraged by the success in 2D, we now study this model in three dimensions where techniques like Monte Carlo are severely limited by system size constraints.

We find that the STA method indeed yields results in three dimensions that are consistent with the expected power-law scaling rather than the exponential KT-scaling we found in 2D. In addition, the success of finite-size scaling allows us to determine $`T_c`$ in 3D. In addition to observing a much narrower pseudogap regime than in 2D, we can quantify the difference in pairbreaking fluctuations by looking at the ratio of the mean-field (1-loop) $`T_c`$ to the actual transition temperature and find that this ratio drops from 12 to about 2.6 in going from 2D to 3D, for the parameters we consider. We also conclude that since the dramatic KT-scaling observed in 2D is not seen in 3D, this result is not a numerical artifact.

While superconductivity in the Attractive Hubbard Model is of course $`s`$-wave, it is fair to assume that the strong correlation effects in this model will also apply to a more realistic $`d`$-wave theory. In fact, an advantage of the STA is that one can explicitly consider models with $`d`$-wave attraction. In the context of the cuprates our work suggests that the loss of low-energy spectral weight in the pseudogap normal state can be attributed to pre-cursor pairing as observed in our calculation. By studying dimensionality, the observation then is that underdoped cuprates behave more like our 2D calculations while optimally and overdoped materials have pseudogap behaviour more in line with our 3D results. Since, within a given family of materials, the anisotropy can increase several hundred-fold upon underdoping, the implication is that this change in effective dimensionality plays an important role in enhancing the underdoped pseudogap.

Our starting point is the hamiltonian for the Attractive Hubbard Model

$$H=t\underset{ij\sigma }{}c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{j\sigma }+hc|U|\underset{i}{}n_in_i$$
(1)
where the tight-binding hopping sums over nearest neighbour pairs on a three-dimensional square lattice and the potential captures singlet pairing for a short-range potential. The standard perturbative approach is to evaluate the pair susceptibility at the 1-loop level. Such a Gaussian theory amounts to re-summing the BCS ladder diagrams yielding an RPA-like form

$$\chi _{gaus}(𝐪,i\omega _n)=\frac{\mathrm{\Pi }_0(𝐪,i\omega _n)}{1|U|\mathrm{\Pi }_0(𝐪,i\omega _n)}$$
(2)
where $`i\omega _n`$ are Matsubara frequencies and $`\mathrm{\Pi }_0`$ is the bare bubble in terms of free fermion propagators. In the limit of small $`U`$, this framework reduces to BCS-theory. We are interested in intermediate attraction where the fermions are still degenerate but the pairing is strong. The value $`U=4t`$ that we use throughout this paper is representative of such intermediate attraction. The model also deviates strongly from BCS theory near half-filling, where the Attractive Hubbard Model maps into the Hubbard Model with on-site repulsion. Since we do not wish to include the effects of the associated CDW instability at half-filling, all our results in this paper will focus on quarter-filling.

The superconducting instability signaled by the Thouless criterion that determines the transition temperature as the highest temperature that satisfies $`1/\chi _{gaus}(T=T_c)=0`$.

Our approach is to extend this framework to the self-consistent $`T`$-matrix (STA) formulation, which simply generalises the bare bubble in (2) with dressed propagators for the intermediate fermion states:

$$\mathrm{\Pi }(𝐪,i\omega _n)=\frac{1}{\beta }\underset{𝐤,ik_n}{}G(𝐪𝐤,i\omega _nik_n)G(𝐤,ik_n)$$
(3)
where the dressed Green’s function $`G(𝐤,ik_n)=[ik_nϵ_𝐤+\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }(𝐤,ik_n)]^1`$ is defined in terms of the pair susceptibility itself, through the self-energy:

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝐤,ik_n)=\frac{1}{\beta }\underset{𝐪,i\omega _n}{}G(𝐪𝐤,i\omega _nik_n)\mathrm{\Gamma }(𝐪,i\omega _n).$$
(4)
Technically, we explicitly keep only corrections of order $`U^2`$ and higher which implies that the Hartree term is already included in the unperturbed chemical potential. This higher order contribution is expressed though the effective interaction:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(𝐪,i\omega _n)=\frac{U^2\mathrm{\Pi }(𝐪,i\omega _n)}{1|U|\mathrm{\Pi }(𝐪,i\omega _n)}.$$
(5)
The self-consistent solution of equations (3) and (4) are achieved numerically, by considering a finite N$`\times `$N$`\times `$N lattice with discrete momenta and only retaining a finite number of Matsubara frequencies . We start off with the unperturbed solution and iteratively solve these equations (which are convolutions) using FFT’s until self-consistent convergence is established.

Perturbatively this of course amounts to re-summing an infinite series of diagrams. At first one may expect that the self-consistent feedback will broaden the intermediate fermion states in (3) and simply re-scale values for physical quantities resulting from a 1-loop calculation. This is in fact not the case as can be seen from the results in Fig. 1 for the inverse of the uniform static pair susceptibility $`\chi (q=0,i\omega _n=0)`$ evaluated for quarter-filling $`n_{i\sigma }=\frac{1}{4}`$ and the intermediate attraction $`U=4t`$. The results are for a 32$`\times `$32$`\times `$32 lattice. On the RHS the 1-loop result intersects the axis at $`T_c^{gaus}(3D)=0.532t`$. This result is essentially independent of lattice size and the 1-loop approximation yields a non-zero transition temperature even for finite systems. In any exact treatment, one of course only expects phase transitions in the thermodynamic limit. We also indicate the 2D transition temperature in this 1-loop approximation for the same parameters at $`T_c^{gaus}(2D)=0.611t`$.

The 3D STA results indicated by the circles show a fundamentally different behaviour. The results for the inverse susceptibility never cross zero – indicating that the self-consistent calculation reflects the fact that there is no transition for a finite system. This is of course what one would expect from an exact treatment - but is missed by 1-loop theory. Simply put, the self-energy corrections broaden the intermediate fermion propagators sufficiently to avoid the superconducting instability. Thus the STA is fundamentally superiour to 1-loop in that it captures the physical requirement that there are no phase transition in finite systems.

Is there any more to this result? Further investigation reveals that the low-temperature static uniform pair susceptibility $`\chi (T,L)`$ for the STA depends on system size as shown in Fig. 2. Just as one would expect from fundamental principles, the susceptibility increases towards a maximum that is controlled by system size and can only diverge in the thermodynamic limit. Since the formalism does not include anomalous propagators, it is limited to the disordered side of the phase diagram. This plot is quite similar to our earlier results in 2D, except that the attempt at a transition appears sharper and is at a higher temperature in 3D.

From this finite-size data we use standard scaling arguments  to extract the transition temperature in 3D. For a finite system there are two length scales namely the correlation length $`\xi `$ and the system size $`L`$. One expects from a 3D scaling hypothesis that $`\chi (T,L)=\left|TT_c\right|^\gamma f_1(L/\xi (T))`$ where $`\xi (T)`$ is the correlation length in an infinite system. From $`\xi (T)\left|TT_c\right|^\nu `$ and the scaling law $`\gamma =\nu (2\eta )`$, it follows that the following product is only a function of the ratio of the two length scales:

$$\left(\frac{1}{L}\right)^{2\eta }\chi (T,L)=f(L/\xi (T)).$$
(6)
At $`T_c`$ the correlation length diverges and the argument on the RHS becomes zero, independent of system size. Plots for this function for our STA data on different system sizes are given in Fig. 3. The numerical data is consistent with the finite-size scaling hypothesis and we can estimate $`T_c=0.207t`$ for our standard set of parameters. This value of $`T`$ is indicated by the vertical line where the plots become independent of $`L`$.

In our earlier 2D calculation, the STA yielded results that were very consistent with the Kosterlitz-Thouless scaling of the 2D-$`XY`$ model, with an estimate of $`T_{KT}=0.05t`$ in good agreement with previous Monte Carlo estimates. In addition, we found very broad critical scaling regime that coincides with the regime in which a pseudogap develops in the density of states at the Fermi level, $`N_0(T)`$. We also found very good finite-size scaling in our data. Given the difficulty of theoretically capturing the correct critical behaviour this was very surprising but one could always question whether this result was a numerical artifact.

Here we have demonstrated, that in 3D the STA data is again consistent with a finite-size scaling hypothesis – yielding the first estimate of $`T_c=0.207t`$ for the parameters in question, in a calculation that goes beyond the mean-field or 1-loop class of approaches.

It is interesting to note that while the 1-loop estimate for the transition temperature is higher in 2D than in 3D for the same parameters (due to density of states effects) the opposite holds for the actual transition temperatures. We conclude that the enhanced fluctuations in 2D overcome the density of states effect. If we consider the ratio of mean-field to actual transition temperatures $`R=T_c^{gaus}/T_c`$ we find $`R_{2D}=0.611/0.0512`$ vs. $`R_{3D}=0.532/0.2072.6`$.

Let us next consider the bulk scaling behaviour. Is this consistent with the expected 3D-$`XY`$ result

$$\chi (T)\frac{1}{\left|TT_c\right|^\gamma }$$
(7)
with $`\gamma 1.33`$? In 3D we are limited to smaller systems than in 2D and the transition itself is narrower. This limits the accuracy with which we can determine the critical scaling in the thermodynamic limit within our calculations. In Fig. 4 we plot the finite-size data $`\chi (T,L)`$ against the RHS of (7).

For each system size, the high-temperature data coincides with the scaling form in (7) and at lower temperature one observes the expected finite-size corrections. While the data is clearly consistent with power-law scaling and the fit with the exponent $`\gamma 1.33`$ does better than the mean-field $`\gamma _{MF}=1`$, our accuracy is insufficient to determine the exponent a-priori. In addition we can estimate the width of the critical regime as extending about 0.1$`t`$ above $`T_c`$, where the high-temperature results start to deviate from the asymptotic form.

While we cannot determine the power-law exponent, the 3D data is dramatically different from our previous 2D result that found data consistent with the exponential KT scaling expected in 2D. This gives some confidence that the 2D result was real and that the STA method captures the expected critical behavour in both 2D and 3D quite well. This implies that for this particular model, self-consistency introduces scaling corrections that go beyond dimensional analysis – a feat that normally requires a technique such as the renormalization group. We believe that this may be connected to the rather simple $`U(1)`$ symmetry that superconductivity breaks, and that this result does not apply to more complicated problems.

Let us finally turn to the normal state pseudogap. The density of single-electron states can be obtained from the Green’s functions dressed with our calculated self-energy corrections $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(𝐤,ik_n)`$ and continued to retarded frequencies using Padè analytic continuation. In Fig. 5 we show the temperature-dependence of the density of states at the Fermi level for our standard density and interaction strength. We show results for both 3D and 2D and indicate the respective $`T_c`$’s by the vertical lines. One can clearly see that the 3D pseudogap is significantly smaller than in 2D and again coincides with the critical regime. In earlier analytic work , we calculated the 3D pseudogap for a continuum model within the 1-loop theory and found that even at this level, the pseudogap corrections go beyond the expected results in a small energy, long-wavelength expansion.

In summary, we have shown that results for the self-consistent $`T`$-matrix approximation in 3D are consistent with the expected finite-size and power-law critical behaviour for the 3D-$`XY`$ model. At quarter-filling and for and intermediate attraction $`U=4t`$, we find in 3D $`T_c0.207t`$, about 2.6 times smaller than the mean-field transition temperature, and a narrow critical and pseudogap regime. We also find that while the mean-field transition temperature is higher in 2D than in 3D, the opposite holds for the actual $`T_c`$. Our results suggest that the previous 2D results are not a numerical artifact and that the STA formalism can distinguish between the fundamentally different nature of fluctuations in two and three dimensions.

We wish to acknowledge useful discussions with Alexander Nazarenko who contributed in a key way to our earlier work using the STA technique.


text:
# Identification of Randall-Sundrum Graviton Resonances at Linear Colliders

## I Introduction and Background

Many models of new physics beyond the Standard Model can lead to phenomena which produce similar signatures at future colliders. It will thus be necessary to have tools available with which to distinguish these models and to identify the specific new physics source. In this report we consider the set of diagnostic tools for model identification of spin-2 resonances and demonstrate that the excitation line shape can be a useful model discriminator.

One class of possible of new physics scenarios is that of extra spatial dimensions at the TeV scale which have been discussed in various contexts for some timeanton . Amongst this class of theories is the interesting and phenomenologically rich model of Randall and Sundrum(RS)rs  which predicts the existence of graviton resonances that can be produced at high energy collidersdhr . Such resonances are easily distinguishable from other new states, such as a $`Z^{}`$snow , by measurements of the angular distribution of their decay products by which one can determine the spin of the initially decaying particle. The question we would like to address below is whether RS gravitons can be distinguished from other spin-2 states which can arise in extra dimensional scenarios. Here we are interested in the particular case where only the lightest of the RS resonances is accessible to detailed accelerator study, i.e., when the other more massive graviton excitations are beyond the collider center of mass energy. (Having a visible series of resonance states would obviously make the situation easier. For example, a determination that the mass spectrum of a series of spin-2 resonances follows the pattern of the roots of the Bessel function $`J_1`$ would strongly favor the RS interpretation.) For some scenarios the model differentiation is quite straightforward, e.g., in the case of Regge-like, spin-2 excitations of the photon and $`Z`$cpp . Here one finds that the branching fractions for these spin-2 states do not match those for gravitons so that these two models are easily separable given sufficient statistics and the visibility of the relevant final states at a given collider. In other cases, however, the situation may be more difficult, particularly so if the resonance appears more graviton-like. A good example of this is provided by the work of Carena et al.(CDLPQW)cdlpqw  that is based on the model by Dvali and co-workersdvali  which predicts the existence of a single graviton-like resonance.

## II Analysis

In this class of models the propagator of the graviton obtains a rather complicated structure that arises due to novel brane interactions, including a dimensional-dependent, as well as energy-dependent, imaginary part and a real part which vanishes at a fixed value of $`s`$. Hence one produces an effective resonance which is is some sense a “collective” mode. Since this mode is constructed out of a superposition of the KK states in the graviton tower it has the same branching fractions as does an RS graviton and thus the two models cannot be distinguished using such measurements. The Dvali et al. model has three parameters: $`d2`$, the number of extra dimensions, $`M_d`$, the effective resonance mass and $`M_{}`$, the $`d`$dimensional Planck scale, which is on the order of a few TeV. Note that in the limit $`M_d\mathrm{}`$ we recover the model of Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali(ADD)nima  within this framework. For some values of the parameters the effective resonance shape looks very much like that of a relativistic Breit-Wigner(BW) RS graviton; this can easily be seen in Fig. 1. Here is shown the cross section for $`e^+e^{}\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ in both the RS and Dvali et al. models with a common value chosen for the resonance masses(500 GeV) and for various values of the other model parameters. We note that the $`d=5`$ excitation curve in the Dvali et al. model is quite similar to that for the RS model with the only remaining free parameter $`c=k/\overline{M}_{Pl}0.10.2`$. Furthermore, we note that for $`d`$ and $`M`$ fixed, increasing $`M_{}`$ leads to a narrowing of the width and an increase in the peak height for this effective graviton which also makes the resonance appear more BW-like. This can be seen by examining the curves in Fig. 2. Can the more conventional shape for the RS graviton be distinguished from that of the non-BW “effective” resonance distribution in the Dvali et al. model at a Linear Collider?

To this end we undertook a preliminary study of the two line shapes which we imagine taking place after an unfolding of the initial state radiation and beamstahlung spectra; in particular we try to fit the non-BW Dvali et al. “effective” resonance under the assumption that it is instead a BW RS graviton and perform a fit for the RS model parameter $`c=k/\overline{M}_{Pl}`$. A poor quality fit would thus indicate that the two scenarios are distinguishable. In this sample study we imagine the production of a graviton-like resonance(i.e., spin-2 and with the proper branching fractions) with a mass of 1 TeV. We next generate the excitation curves for a set of different resonances in $`e^+e^{}\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ assuming an integrated luminosity of 500 $`fb^1`$. Since the Dvali et al. resonance shape is non-BW we do not follow the usual approach for fitting a BW but instead we fit a larger $`\sqrt{s}`$ region surrounding the resonance peak. Given the rather similar shapes of the two resonances we fit the cross section over the region $`\sqrt{s}=0.801.32`$ TeV in steps of 40 GeV. Since this is merely a first pass analysis we make no attempt to optimize the luminosity and assume that the 500 $`fb^1`$ is shared equally amongst the generated data points; an overall $`0.5\%`$ luminosity uncertainty is included in this analysis. To test this approach we first try to fit two true RS model resonances with the input values $`c=k/\overline{M}_{Pl}=0.073(0.117)`$. This comparison is done by employing a series of ‘templates’ which are obtained by generating the relevant cross section data for the RS model for values of $`c=k/\overline{M}_{Pl}`$ in the range 0.010-0.210 in 200 steps of 0.001. We then perform our fits by using a large order polynomial to interpolate the values of the cross sections at other intermediate values of $`c`$ for each of the relevant values of $`\sqrt{s}`$. The fine granularity in the templates insures that the polynomial interpolation gives an extremely accurate estimate for the value of the true cross section. These RS model fits yield $`c=0.0730_{0.0040}^{+0.0035}`$ and $`c=0.1170_{0.0027}^{+0.0026}`$, respectively, with very good $`\chi ^2`$’s as shown in Fig. 3. Next, we attempt to fit the Dvali et al. model; for low values of $`M_{}`$ the fits are very poor but improve as $`M_{}`$ is increased. Fig. 3 shows the results of these fits when $`M_{}5`$ TeV. For cases where the value of $`M_{}`$ are below 5 TeV, the resulting $`\chi ^2`$’s are very large and are not shown. Note that the value of both the minimum $`\chi ^2`$ and the fitted value for $`c`$ decrease as $`M_{}`$ is increased. Clearly from this figure we see that for values of $`M_{}`$ below $`5.7`$ TeV the fit is sufficiently poor to claim that the RS hypothesis fails and the RS and Dvali et al. models are easily distinguished. In particular, for $`M_{}=5.0(5.5)`$ TeV we obtain a minimum $`\chi ^2/d.o.f`$ of 52.9/13(27.4/13) which corresponds to a confidence level of $`1.97\times 10^6(1.70\times 10^2)`$. However, as we raise $`M_{}`$ much beyond $`5.7`$ TeV we obtain an acceptable $`\chi ^2`$ and the two models are no longer distinguishable. We would expect to do somewhat better in this separation with an optimised distribution of luminosity; this is currently under investigation.

## III Summary and Conclusions

The above simplified analysis has shown that in some case the line shapes of spin-2 resonances can be a useful tool for model identification of spin-2 resonances at linear colliders. In particular, we have shown in a toy analysis that the line shape can be used to distinguish the graviton resonances of the RS model from the “collective” resonance present in the Dvali et al. model over a reasonable range of model parameters even without an optimization of the luminosity distribution in the resonance region. A detector simulation along the lines of the present analysis including such an optimization would prove useful.


text:
# Exchange-correlation effects in magnetic-field-induced superconductivity

## Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments on the organic superconductor $`\lambda (BETS)_2FeCl_4`$ we study the Jaccarino-Peter effect (JPE), the earliest example of magnetic-field-induced superconductivity, from the point of view of current-density-functional theory. It is found that both Meissner (diamagnetic) and Pauli (paramagnetic) pair breaking are suppressed by an exchange-correlation contribution to the vector potential, arising at the sites of the magnetic ions. This explains a number of otherwise puzzling experimental observations, and sheds new light on earlier theories of the JPE.

The antagonistic nature of conventional superconductivity and magnetism manifests itself via the pair breaking effect of external and internal magnetic fields. In the case of external magnetic fields this pair breaking can be due to the coupling of the field to orbital currents (i.e., the Meissner effect), or due to its coupling to the spins (i.e., Pauli pair breaking, giving rise to the Chandrasekhar-Clogston limit). In the case of internal fields, pair breaking is due to magnetic ions in the lattice. These ions, too, in general make a spin and an orbital contribution to the system’s susceptibility. On their own, both external and internal magnetic fields are normally adverse to superconductivity.

Intriguingly, under suitable circumstances these two detrimental agents, when present simultaneously, can compensate each other and give rise to superconductivity at extremely high external magnetic fields. This phenomenon, the earliest example of magnetic-field-induced superconductivity, is known as the Jaccarino-Peter effect (JPE). At the heart of the JPE is the observation that if the magnetic ions couple ferromagnetically among each other, but antiferromagnetically with the conduction electrons (via the exchange field of traditional theories of magnetism), an externally applied magnetic field acts in two ways on the spins of the paired particles: directly, by its Zeeman coupling, and indirectly, by polarizing the magnetic ions. Due to the antiferromagnetic exchange coupling between magnetic ions and conduction electrons both effects have opposite signs and can thus, under suitable circumstances, cancel each other. This cancellation is the essence of the JPE.

The present paper is devoted to a re-analysis of experimental results on the JPE. It is pointed out that the conventional JPE scenario, just outlined, does not completely account for the experimental observations. A modification of this scenario is proposed and compared with available experimental data.

The JPE has very recently been observed in the organic conductor $`\lambda (BETS)_2FeCl_4`$, for magnetic fields ranging from $`18`$ to $`41`$ T. Before that, it had already been seen in pseudoternary chalcogenides of the form $`Sn_xEu_yMo_zS_8`$, from $`423`$ T,  and there is strong experimental evidence that the JPE is also at work in chalcogenides of the form $`Pb_xEu_yMo_zS_8`$ (at up to $`70`$ T), in transition-metal systems ($`Mo_{1x}Mn_xGa_4`$ at up to $`7.6`$ T), in heavy-fermion superconductors ($`CePb_3`$ at up to $`15`$ T and $`CeCu_2Si_2`$ at about $`2`$ T), and perhaps even in high-$`T_c`$ cuprates ($`Gd_{1x}Pr_xBa_2Cu_3O_{7\delta }`$, near $`9`$ T).

It is crucially important to recognize that in the standard JPE scenario it is only the action of the external magnetic field on the electron spins that is compensated by the internal (exchange) field, not that on the currents. This imposes a severe restriction on the external magnetic field used for observation of the JPE: while it must be strong enough to cancel the exchange field arising from the magnetic ions, it must not, simultaneously, destroy superconductivity diamagnetically, by its coupling to the orbital currents. One ad hoc way to reconcile these two constraints would be to assume that in all systems in which the JPE has been observed the orbital upper critical field $`H_{c2}`$ is very much higher than the (already quite high) fields at which the JPE sets in.

In view of the recent experiments on $`\lambda (BETS)_2FeCl_4`$ it seems worthwhile to explore if this assumption is really always necessary. In fact, in these experiments the JPE region in the phase diagram begins at $`18`$ T, while $`H_{c2}`$ is about $`3.5`$ T, so that the relation between both fields is the opposite of what one would expect on the basis of the original theory of the JPE. Similarly, in the experiments on $`Sn_{1x}Eu_xMo_6S_8`$ the JPE manifests itself as a distinct phase in the temperature vs. magnetic field phase diagram that appears for external fields higher than $`4`$ T, whereas superconductivity first disappears, upon increasing the magnetic field from zero, at what appears to be a conventional orbital critical field of less than $`1`$ T. And in $`Mo_{1x}Mn_xGa_4`$ the JPE is observed at up to $`7.6`$ T,  which is not above the orbital critical field of $`8.6`$ T but sufficiently close to it that a description in terms of spin effects only becomes problematic. The question to be explored in the present paper is thus: How can spin compensation induce superconductivity at fields comparable too, or higher than, the orbital critical field?

The fact that the JPE has been observed in physically very different systems, ranging from organic conductors and ternary chalcogenides to heavy fermion and high-temperature superconductors, suggests that the answer to this question is intrinsically tied to the physics of the JPE itself, and not a special feature of one particular type of material.

To investigate these issues, we first restate the compensation between the external and the internal magnetic field in the framework of spin-density-functional theory (SDFT), which maps the many-body problem in the presence of the external field $`𝐇_{ext}(𝐫)`$ on a single-body problem subject to the effective field

$$𝐇_s(𝐫)=𝐇_{ext}(𝐫)+𝐇_d(𝐫)+𝐇_{xc}(𝐫).$$
(1)
Here the exchange-correlation (xc) magnetic field $`𝐇_{xc}(𝐫)`$, the SDFT counterpart to the internal exchange field of traditional theories of magnetism, is defined as the functional derivative

$$𝐇_{xc}(𝐫)=\frac{\delta E_{xc}[n,𝐦]}{\delta 𝐦(𝐫)},$$
(2)
where $`E_{xc}[n,𝐦]`$ is the exchange-correlation functional of SDFT. $`𝐇_d(𝐫)=\times 𝐀_d(𝐫)`$ is a Hartree-like term arising from dipolar interactions. In the language of SDFT the spin compensation in the JPE would be described by saying that, on the average,

$$𝐇_{xc}(𝐫)+𝐇_d(𝐫)=𝐇_{ext}(𝐫)+\delta 𝐇(𝐫),$$
(3)
for some range of densities and temperatures, so that the effective magnetic field $`𝐇_s`$ vanishes up to at most a small remaining field $`\delta 𝐇`$ that is not strong enough to destroy superconductivity. SDFT does not, however, provide a means to study the orbital degrees of freedom. Such a means is provided by current-density-functional theory (CDFT). CDFT is based on the many-body Hamiltonian

$`\widehat{H}=\widehat{T}+\widehat{U}+\widehat{V}{\displaystyle d^3r𝐦(𝐫)𝐇_{ext}(𝐫)}`$ (4)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{q}{c}}{\displaystyle d^3r𝐣_p(𝐫)𝐀_{ext}(𝐫)}+{\displaystyle \frac{q^2}{2mc^2}}{\displaystyle d^3rn(𝐫)𝐀_{ext}(𝐫)^2},`$ (5)
where $`\widehat{T}`$, $`\widehat{U}`$, and $`\widehat{V}`$ are the operators for the kinetic, interaction, and potential energy, respectively, $`n(𝐫)`$ is the particle density, $`𝐦(𝐫)`$ the spin magnetization, and $`𝐣_p(𝐫)`$ is the paramagnetic current density. By construction, the CDFT single-particle equations reproduce the current, particle, and spin densities of the many-body Hamiltonian (5), and this property carries over to the extension of (C)DFT to the superconducting state. In the CDFT single-particle equations enter three effective potentials: an effective magnetic field $`𝐇_s`$, defined as in Eqs. (1) and (2) up to the replacement of $`E_{xc}[n,𝐦]`$ by $`E_{xc}[n,𝐦,𝐣_p]`$; an effective scalar potential

$$V_s(𝐫)=v_s(𝐫)+\frac{q^2}{2mc^2}\left(𝐀_{ext}(𝐫)^2𝐀_s(𝐫)^2\right),$$
(6)
where $`v_s(𝐫)=v(𝐫)+v_H(𝐫)+v_{xc}(𝐫)`$ comprises the lattice potential, the Hartree potential, and the xc potential; and finally an effective vector potential,

$$𝐀_s(𝐫)=𝐀_{ext}(𝐫)+𝐀_d(𝐫)+𝐀_{xc}(𝐫),$$
(7)
whose exchange-correlation contribution is defined as

$$𝐀_{xc}(𝐫)=\frac{c}{q}\frac{\delta E_{xc}[n,𝐦,𝐣_p]}{\delta 𝐣_p(𝐫)}.$$
(8)
$`𝐀_d(𝐫)`$ describes the dipolar interactions. In general these interactions are much weaker than the xc effects, and one normally neglects $`𝐇_d(𝐫)`$ and $`𝐀_d(𝐫)`$ in Eqs. (1) and (7). However, $`𝐀_d(𝐫)`$ includes the Ampere term which describes the current-current interactions that are responsible for the selfconsistent screening of the induced currents in the Meissner phase below $`H_{c1}`$. We thus keep the dipolar terms in the equations.

Eq. (3) expresses the fact that the basis for the absence of Pauli (paramagnetic) pair breaking is a mutual cancellation between internal and external magnetic fields. It is tempting to try a similar explanation for the apparent absence of orbital pair breaking, i.e., assume that

$$𝐀_{xc}(𝐫)+𝐀_d(𝐫)=𝐀_{ext}(𝐫)+\delta 𝐀(𝐫),$$
(9)
where $`\delta 𝐀(𝐫)`$ is a small term arising from imperfect cancellation, which is not strong enough to destroy superconductivity. Indeed, Eq. (9) can be inferred from Eq. (3). To this end we recall the relation

$$𝐇_{xc}(𝐫)=\times 𝐀_{xc}(𝐫),$$
(10)
which was deduced in Ref.  within relativistic DFT and shown in Ref.  to hold under very general circumstances within CDFT, too. By integrating (3) with (10) one obtains (9), up to a physically irrelevant gauge term. Although (10) can be shown to be an identity under certain conditions, all one needs for the present purpose is that it holds to within an accuracy $`\delta `$, given by the magnitude of the imperfection in the cancellations (3) and (9).

The hypothesis put forward in the present paper is, then, that Eq. (9) is indeed the correct starting point for a single-particle desription of the JPE, including the orbital degrees of freedom, and that it explains the occurence of a JPE at fields which are close to or even above the nominal orbital critical field $`𝐇_{c2}`$.

To further explore this CDFT interpretation of the JPE we provide, in the remainder of this paper, first a simple illustration of the cancellation embodied in Eq. (9), then discuss an earlier, closely related, theory; next work out some consequences of Eqs. (9) and (10), and finally compare these consequences with experiments and earlier theory on the JPE in $`\lambda (BETS)_2FeCl_4`$ and $`Sn_{1x}Eu_xMo_6S_8`$

Illustration of Eq. (9): a London superconductor. To illustrate in a simple case how Eq. (9) explicitly implies absence of orbital pair breaking, recall the phenomenological London equation, according to which current and vector potential in a homogeneous superconductor are related by $`𝐣=qn_s𝐀_{ext}/(mc)`$, where $`n_s`$ is interpreted as the number density of superconducting electrons. Since the full physical current is $`𝐣=𝐣_pqn𝐀_{ext}/(mc)`$, where the first part is the paramagnetic current, entering the functionals of CDFT, and the second the diamagnetic current, one obtains for $`𝐣_p`$

$$𝐣_p=\frac{q(nn_s)}{mc}𝐀_{ext}.$$
(11)
From Eqs. (7) and (9) we obtain $`𝐀_s=0+O(\delta )`$, where the terms of order $`\delta `$ are by assumption not strong enough to destroy superconductivity and will be neglected below. The CDFT Kohn-Sham equations for $`𝐀_s=0`$ necessarily yield $`𝐣_p=0`$. The paramagnetic current calculated from the CDFT Kohn-Sham equations is, however, by construction identical with the many-body paramagnetic current. When substituted into Eq. (11) (with $`𝐀_{ext}0`$, since a nonzero magnetic field is applied), $`𝐣_p=0`$ implies $`n=n_s`$, which means that the magnetic field has not broken any Cooper pair via its coupling to the orbital currents. We thus see explicitly that Eq. (9) implies absence of orbital pair breaking.

Earlier theory: A cancellation of orbital effects that is similar (but not identical) to Eq. (9) has been considered already in one of the earliest papers in the field, and rejected as impossible. These investigations were performed (before the first experimental observation of the JPE) within a simplified (pre-CDFT) single-particle treatment of the orbital currents. The authors of Ref.  assume that the exchange field $`𝐀_x`$ contained in $`𝐀_{xc}`$ must cancel both, $`𝐀_d`$ and $`𝐀_{ext}`$, and assert that this is impossible since the exchange interaction is short ranged, while the dipolar interaction is long ranged. Hence, according to Ref. , no orbital cancellation can take place. From the present point of view this argument is not conclusive, because the correlation part of $`𝐀_{xc}`$ may well be long ranged since it need not arise from the exchange interaction of Ref.  (explicit examples are given below). Moreover, all dipolar interactions are suppressed by the relativistic prefactor $`(v/c)^2`$, which makes them much smaller than typical exchange effects, so that they can hardly play a decisive role for effects dominated by $`𝐀_{xc}`$ and $`𝐇_{xc}`$. Indeed, in view of the experiments listed above the assumption that no cancellation of orbital effects takes place seems untenable.

Some consequences of Eq. (9): First, note that the details of the system do not enter the arguments leading to (9) and (10), which are rather general and not tied to particular features of the system’s electronic structure. This generality may explain why the JPE could be observed in the physically very different systems listed above.

Second, one obtains Eq. (9) by integrating Eq. (3). Conversely, by taking the curl of Eq. (3) one recovers, of course, Eq. (9). The conditions for spin compensation and ‘current compensation’ are thus not independent.  In particular, once one has established spin compensation, current compensation up to some $`\delta 𝐀`$ is a consequence. In this sense JPE-type magnetic-field-induced superconductivity is easier to achieve than is commonly thought, because the orbital limitation is less critical than it appears on the basis of the original theory.

Third, the mechanism for spin compensation is located at the magnetic ions, whose exchange-correlation magnetic field cancels the external one. Relation (10) implies that the origin for compensation of the induced currents must be located at the same place. The search for a physical explanation of current compensation can thus concentrate on the magnetic ions and, in particular, their correlations.

Fourth, within CDFT $`𝐀_{xc}`$ is not a pure exchange field, but encompasses all current-related interaction effects. The search for mechanisms by means of which current-compensation can be accomplished is thus not limited to the conventional exchange interaction. This observation enables us to consider a wider range of mechanisms (see below), and partially explains the negative result of Ref.  (see discussion of earlier theory, above).

Experiments on the JPE in $`\lambda (BETS)_2FeCl_4`$: In connection with very recent experimental work on the JPE in $`\lambda (BETS)_2FeCl_4`$ a simple and explicit physical mechanism was proposed by means of which the magnetic ions ($`Fe^{3+}`$) inbetween the BETS planes in $`\lambda (BETS)_2FeCl_4`$ can simultaneously cancel the effects of the external magnetic field on the spin, and suppress the induced orbital currents. Briefly, Hund’s rule correlations imply that the polarized $`Fe^{3+}`$ ions have all spin up states of the $`Fe`$ d-shell occupied, so that these states are not available as intermediate states for transport of a singlet Cooper pair from one BETS layer to the next. Currents perpendicular to the layers are thus suppressed. Interestingly, this proposal locates the mechanism which suppresses orbital pair breaking exactly where it is to be expected on the basis of the above arguments, namely at the magnetic ions (cf. consequence three, above). It also shows clearly how the magnetic ions can suppress orbital currents by interactions different from simple exchange (cf. consequence four, above).

Experiments on the JPE in $`Sn_{1x}Eu_xMo_6S_8`$: A different mechanism for the JPE has been proposed in Ref.  for the ternary chalcogenides, where the JPE was first seen experimentally. Here the magnetic $`(Eu)`$ ions act (apart from producing spin compensation) as scattering centers, reducing the mean free path and thereby increasing $`H_{c2}`$. This allows the JPE to take place at fields above the value of $`H_{c2}`$ expected in the absence of magnetic ions. Again, we see that the magnetic atoms suppress both, paramagnetic (Pauli) and diamagnetic (Meissner) pair breaking, and again the orbital cancellation is not simply due to their exchange interaction with the conduction electron orbits.

Two of the three explicit mechanisms proposed in the literature to explain the absence of orbital pair breaking in experiments on the JPE are thus consistent with the general ideas developed here. To these two one can add the following alternative scenario for how breakdown of current compensation can imply breakdown of spin compensation: As soon as the external magnetic field is strong enough to produce spin-polarized currents in the sample, these currents will exert a torque on the magnetic ions, which will affect their polarization. In extreme cases such torques can lead to a complete magnetization reversal, but even in less extreme situations there is thus a negative feedback between the incipient currents and the magnetic ions needed to maintain spin compensation. Although it is not known at present whether this scenario is realized in nature, it provides a vivid illustration of the interplay between orbital effects and spin effects, and of how this interplay can affect the JPE.

Outlook: The main consequence of the above work is that the search for a mechanism for suppressing orbital currents in JPE-type magnetic-field-induced superconductivity is simultaneously narrower and wider than is commonly thought. Narrower, because one only needs to consider the current-related effects of the magnetic ions or impurities; wider because these effects are not limited to simple exchange, but encompass a spectrum of other possibilities.

On a more speculative note, it is worthwhile to point out that the JPE may well not be the only situation in nature in which similar cancellations take place, but might constitute a paradigm for other phenomena based on a complete or partial cancellation between $`𝐀_{ext}`$ and $`𝐀_{xc}`$. Only further research can show, for example, whether the transformation of electrons subject to huge magnetic fields into composite quasiparticles that do not feel any or only a much weaker effective field, observed in the fractional quantum Hall effect, can be understood along similar lines within CDFT.

Acknowledgments I thank L. N. Oliveira, J. Annett, B. L. Gyorffy, and G. Vignale for useful discussions, the FAPESP for financial support, and J. Quintanilla for bringing Ref.  to my attention.


text:
# Black hole production and Large Extra Dimensions

## Abstract

Black hole (BH) production at colliders is possible when the colliding energy is above the Planck scale, which can effectively be at TeV scale in models of large extra dimensions. In this work, we study the production of black holes at colliders and discuss the possible signatures. We point out the “$`ij\mathrm{BH}+`$ others” subprocesses, in which the BH and other SM particles are produced with a large transverse momentum. When the BH decays, it gives a signature that consists of particles of high multiplicity in a boosted spherical shape on one side of the event and a few number of high $`p_T`$ partons on the other side, which provide very useful tags for the event.

preprint: NSC-NCTS-011012

Introduction. Black hole (BH) has been an illusive object for decades, as we cannot directly measure any properties of it, not to mention the production of black holes in any terrestrial experiments. This is due to the fact that in order to produce black holes in collider experiments one needs a center-of-mass energy above the Planck scale ($`M_P10^{19}`$ GeV), which is obviously inaccessible at the moment.

Since the second revolution of string theories, a crop of models with extra dimensions have been proposed to solve various theoretical problems. In an attractive model of large extra dimensions or TeV quantum gravity arkani , the effective Planck scale can be as low as a few TeV. This is made possible by localizing the standard model (SM) particles on a brane (using the idea of D-branes in Type I or II string theory), while gravity is free to propagate in all dimensions.

The fact that the effective Planck scale is as low as TeV opens up an interesting possibility of producing a large number of black holes hole ; banks ; emp  at collider experiments (e.g. LHC). Reference emp  also showed that a BH localized on a brane will radiate mainly in the brane, instead of radiating into the Kaluza-Klein states of gravitons of the bulk. In this case, the BH so produced will decay mainly into the SM particles, which can then be detected in the detector. This opportunity has enabled investigation of the properties of BH at terrestrial collider experiments.

A black hole is characterized by its Schwarzschild radius $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$, which depends on the mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ of the BH. A simplified picture for BH production is as follows. When the colliding partons have a center-of-mass (c.o.m.) energy above some thresholds of order of the Planck mass and the impact parameter less than the Schwarzschild radius $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$, a BH is formed and almost stationary in the c.o.m. frame. The BH so produced will decay thermally (regardless of the incoming particles) and thus isotropically in that frame.

This possibility has been investigated in a few recent work at the LHC scott ; greg ; hoss ; volo , and at cosmic ray experiments feng ; anch ; ratt . In Refs. scott ; greg ; hoss  black hole production in hadronic collisions is calculated in $`21`$ subprocesses: $`ij\mathrm{BH}`$, where $`i,j`$ are incoming partons. The black hole so produced is either at rest or traveling along the beam pipe such that its decay products (of high multiplicity) have a zero net transverse momentum ($`p_T`$). Dimopoulos and Landsberg greg  demonstrated that a BH so produced will decay with a high multiplicity greg . Banks and Fischler banks  pointed out that one of the most striking signature of BH production would be a complete cutoff of process with $`p_T`$ larger than $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}^1`$ because the incoming partons can never get close enough to perform an extremely hard QCD scattering.

In this Letter, we point out the “$`ij\mathrm{BH}+\mathrm{others}`$” subprocesses, such that the BH is produced with a large $`p_T`$ before it decays. In such subprocesses, the “others” are just the ordinary SM particles and usually of much lower multiplicity than the decay products of the BH. Therefore, the signature would be very striking: on one side of the event there are particles of high multiplicity (from the decay of the BH), the total $`p_T`$ of which is balanced by a much fewer number of particles on the other side. Such a signature is very clean and should have very few backgrounds.

The “$`ij\mathrm{BH}+\mathrm{others}`$” subprocesses can be easily formed when the c.o.m. energy of the colliding particles are larger than the BH mass, the excess energy will be radiated as other SM particles. Thus, a picture of $`ij\mathrm{BH}+\mathrm{others}`$ is justified. Besides, such processes are of immense interests because they involve qualitatively new phenomena, e.g., violation of global quantum (lepton, baryon) numbers. The resulting cross section is large enough for detection. Even at $`p_T>500`$ GeV the production cross section is as large as 24 fb for $`n=4,M_D=1.5`$ TeV, and $`y(M_{\mathrm{BH}})_{\mathrm{min}}/M_D=5`$ (a BH with a mass $`7.5`$ TeV), which gives $`2400`$ clean events for an integrated luminosity of 100 fb-1 at the LHC, as will be shown later. The event rate is still large enough for detection. Here we have imposed a very restricted requirement on the BH entropy ($`S_{\mathrm{BH}}25`$) to ensure the validity of the classical BH description. Otherwise, if we relaxed this entropy constraint the production cross sections would be increased tremendously, but the cross sections have to be interpreted with care because of the presence of large string effects in this regime.

Production. The Schwarzschild radius $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ of a BH of mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ in $`4+n`$ dimensions is given by myers

$$R_{\mathrm{BH}}=\frac{1}{M_D}\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{M_D}\right)^{\frac{1}{n+1}}\left(\frac{2^n\pi ^{\frac{n3}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{n+3}{2})}{n+2}\right)^{\frac{1}{n+1}},$$
(1)
where $`M_D`$ is the effective Planck scale in the model of large extra dimensions defined by

$$M_D^{n+2}=\frac{(2\pi )^n}{8\pi G_{4+n}},$$
(2)
where $`G_{4+n}`$ is the gravitational constant in $`D=4+n`$ dimensions (used in the Einstein equation: $`_{AB}\frac{1}{2}g_{AB}=8\pi G_{4+n}T_{AB}`$.) The radius is much smaller than the size of the extra dimensions. BH production is expected when the colliding partons with a center-of-mass energy $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ pass within a distance less than $`R_{\mathrm{BH}}`$. A black hole of mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ is formed and the rest of energy, if there is, is radiated as ordinary SM particles. This semi-classical argument calls for a geometric approximation for the cross section for producing a BH of mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ as

$$\sigma (M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2)\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2.$$
(3)
In the $`21`$ subprocess, the c.o.m. energy of the colliding partons is just the same as the mass of the BH, i.e., $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}=M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$, which implies a subprocess cross section

$$\widehat{\sigma }(\widehat{s})=d\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2}{\widehat{s}}\right)\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2\delta \left(1M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2/\widehat{s}\right)=\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2.$$
(4)
On the other hand, for the $`2n(n2)`$ subprocesses the subprocess cross section is

$$\widehat{\sigma }(\widehat{s})=_{(M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2)_{\mathrm{min}}/\widehat{s}}^1d\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2}{\widehat{s}}\right)\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2.$$
(5)
Another important quantity that characterizes a BH is its entropy given by

$$S_{\mathrm{BH}}=\frac{4\pi }{n+2}\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{M_D}\right)^{\frac{n+2}{n+1}}\left(\frac{2^n\pi ^{\frac{n3}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{n+3}{2})}{n+2}\right)^{\frac{1}{n+1}}.$$
(6)
To ensure the validity of the above classical description of BH giddings , the entropy must be sufficiently large, of order 25 or so. We verified that that when $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}/M_D5`$, the entropy $`S_{\mathrm{BH}}25`$, below that string effects are important. Therefore, to avoid getting into the nonperturbative regime of the BH and to ensure the validity of the semi-classical formula, we restrict the mass of the BH to be $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}>yM_D`$, where $`y(M_{\mathrm{BH}})_{\mathrm{min}}/M_D`$ is of order 5.

Voloshin volo  pointed out that the semi-classical argument for the BH production cross section is not given by the geometrical cross section area, but, instead, suppressed by an exponential factor:

$$\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{S_{\mathrm{BH}}}{n+1}\right).$$
(7)
The suppression factor makes the production of BH concentrate on $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ close to $`M_D`$. Thus, if the available energy in the collision is larger than the $`M_D`$ the rest of energy is more likely to radiate as the SM particles. There are, however, counter arguments giddings ; emparan  that the simple geometric formula should be valid. 111 There is also a counter-counter argument from Voloshin volo2 . Nevertheless, before the issue is resolved we present the results with and without the suppression factor.

In this work, we first consider both forms of cross sections: (i) the naive $`\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2`$ and (ii) the $`\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}^2`$ multiplied with the exponential factor of Eq. (7). But we shall see immediately that the suppression factor renders the cross section to be too small for detection. In Fig. 1, we show the differential cross section $`d\sigma /dM_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ for the process $`pp\mathrm{BH}+1`$ parton at the LHC for $`n=4`$, $`y(M_{\mathrm{BH}})_{\mathrm{min}}/M_D=5`$ and $`M_D=1.5`$ TeV, which is consistent with the existing limit on $`M_D`$ limits . We can see that when the exponential suppression factor is used the spectrum of $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ will shift closer to $`M_D`$. The average value $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ for the geometric approximation is about $`8.0`$ TeV while using the exponential suppression factor the $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}7.8`$ TeV. However, the cross section is suppressed more than two orders of magnitude relative to the naive geometric cross section. From here on we shall not concern this suppression factor anymore. We also show the graphs for $`y=2.5`$, a less stringent requirement on the BH entropy. Obviously, the production cross section is much larger. However, careful interpretation is needed because in this BH mass region it might involve nonperturbative string corrections.

The main difference between the $`21`$ and $`2n(n2)`$ subprocesses is that in $`2n`$ the BH will have a transverse momentum. We approximate the $`2n`$ subprocess by a $`22`$ subprocess and assume the BH is produced in association with a massless parton. Since the mass of the BH is larger than the effective Planck mass, the c.o.m. energy $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ is of order of a few TeV and would give a large transverse momentum to the BH. We show in Fig. 2 the transverse momentum spectrum for the production $`pp\mathrm{BH}+1`$ parton. The average value of $`p_T`$ is about $`330`$ GeV for $`n=4,M_D=1.5`$ TeV and $`y=5`$.

Decay. The main phase of the decay of BH is via the Hawking evaporation. The evaporation rate is governed by its Hawking temperature, which is given by myers

$$T_{\mathrm{BH}}=\frac{n+1}{4\pi R_{\mathrm{BH}}}$$
(8)
which scales inversely with some powers of $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$. The heavier the BH the lower the temperature is. Thus, the evaporation rate is slower. The lifetime of the BH scales inversely with the Hawking temperature as given by

$$\tau \frac{1}{M_D}\left(\frac{M_{\mathrm{BH}}}{M_D}\right)^{\frac{n+3}{n+1}}.$$
(9)
From the above equation, it is obvious to see that the lifetime of a BH becomes much longer in models of large extra dimensions than in the usual $`4D`$ theory. However, the lifetime is still so short that it will decay once being produced and no displaced vertex can be seen in the detector. For another view point on the BH decay please see Ref. casa .

Another important property of the BH decay is the large number of particles, in accord with the large entropy in Eq. (6), in the process of evaporation. Dimopoulos and Landsberg greg  showed that the average multiplicity $`N`$ in the decay of a BH is order of $`1030`$ for $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ being a few times of $`M_D`$ for $`n=26`$. Since we are considering the BH that has an entropy of order 25 or more, it guarantees a high multiplicity BH decay. The BH decays more or less isotropically and each decay particle has an average energy of a few hundred GeV. Therefore, if the BH is stationary, the event is very much like a spherical event with many particles of hundreds of GeV pointing back to the interaction point. Moreover, the ratio of hadronic to leptonic activities in the BH decay is about $`5:1`$ scott . On the other hand, if the BH is produced in association with other SM particles (as in $`2n`$ subprocesses), the BH decay will be a boosted spherical event on one side, the transverse momentum of which is balanced by a few number of particles on the other side. A cartoon for such a typical event in the $`(y,z)`$ plane is shown in Fig. 3. This is a high $`p_T`$ event. On one side of the event is the decay products of high multiplicity of the BH in a boosted spherical shape. The original momentum of the BH in the $`(y,z)`$ plane is also shown, which is balanced by the momentum of the energetic parton, which is on the other side of the event. Such spectacular events should have negligible background.

In addition, since at the LHC multi-parton collisions and overlapping events may be likely to happen, a careful discrimination is therefore necessary, especially, in the case that the BH is produced at rest or moving along the beam-pipe (i.e. in $`21`$ subprocess). In our study, the $`22`$ subprocess affords an easier signature experimentally. The high $`p_T`$ parton emerging as a jet, a lepton, jets, or leptons provides an easy tag.

Another concern of BH production is the event rate because the higher the $`p_T`$ the smaller the cross section is. The production cross section for $`p_T>500`$ GeV is as large as 24 fb for $`n=4,M_D=1.5`$ TeV and $`y(M_{\mathrm{BH}})_{\mathrm{min}}/M_D=5`$, which corresponds to $`2400`$ events for an integrated luminosity of 100 fb-1. Such a large number of clean events should be observable at the LHC. The production cross sections for other values of $`n`$, $`M_D`$ and $`y`$ are listed in Table 1. The cross sections listed for $`y(M_{\mathrm{BH}})_{\mathrm{min}}/M_D4`$ should be interpreted with care, because the smaller the ratio $`(M_{\mathrm{BH}})_{\mathrm{min}}/M_D`$ the stronger the string effect is and the classical description for BH may not be valid. Nevertheless, the numbers listed here can be used for comparison with other published results.

In this paper, we have emphasized the importance and the advantages of using the $`22`$ subprocess for BH production, which allows a substantial transverse momentum kick to the BH, and at the same time produce an energetic high $`p_T`$ parton, which provides a critical tag to the event. The observation here serves as an interesting extension to the previous work, in which the consideration is only given to BH production with the BH at rest.

This research was supported in part by the National Center for Theoretical Science under a grant from the National Science Council of Taiwan R.O.C.