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# Universal quantum computation with two- and three-qubit projective measurements

## 1 Introduction

A major goal of quantum information processing is to find a minimal set of primitive quantum operations that are simple enough to be implemented easily and yet are universal for quantum computation. It has long been known that quantum circuits employing gates drawn from small families of unitary operators can efficiently simulate any “reasonable” quantum computation (on a time-bounded quantum Turing machine, say) to arbitrarily close approximation \[Yao93, BBC+95, BMPR99\].

Nielsen recently proposed a scheme for universal quantum computation where no unitary operators are used at all. Instead, an arbitrary unitary quantum gate on $`n`$ qubits is simulated by a protocol involving only projective measurements on $`2n`$ qubits, together with quantum memory, preparation of the $`|0`$ state, and classical communication \[Nie01\], thus showing that projective measurements on at most four qubits suffice for universal quantum computation. We describe his scheme in Section 2.2.

We build on Nielsen’s idea to show that only a finite set of projective measurements—each on at most three qubits—are needed for universal quantum computation. We isolate a finite set $`S`$ of projective measurements such that

* $`S`$ is universal for quantum computation (in Nielsen’s framework),
* all measurements in $`S`$ involve at most two qubits, except two which involve three qubits,
* each measurement of $`S`$ is *binary*, that is, has two possible outcomes ($`0`$ and $`1`$, say) with the same amount of degeneracy for each value, and
* each measurement in $`S`$ can be expressed as a Boolean combination of results from single-qubit projective measurements drawn from a set of cardinality four.

(See Section 4 for a summary of the measurements used.) As a corollary, three-qubit measurements suffice for universal quantum computation.

Our results follow from analyzing Nielsen’s scheme. This scheme simulates an arbitrary $`n`$-qubit unitary operation $`U`$ (for $`n\{1,2\}`$) via a series of complete (nondegenerate) projective measurements on $`2n`$ qubits. We decompose each of these measurements into a sequence of $`2n`$ pairwise commuting binary measurements—extracting one classical bit per measurement. This decomposition allows some leeway over which projections to combine for each binary measurement. By choosing the right combinations, we can express our binary measurements in a particularly elegant form: single-qubit measurement results combined with a Boolean operator. We call such measurements *pseudoseparate*. We are able to perform this decomposition into pseudoseparate measurements to simulate arbitrary one-qubit unitary operations and the two-qubit controlled NOT (C-NOT) gate. It is with C-NOT that we find that measurements on four qubits are not needed.

## 2 Preliminaries

We assume knowledge of the basic concepts and notation used in quantum computation, as found in, for example, Nielsen and Chuang \[NC00\].

If $`A`$ and $`B`$ are either both vectors or both operators, then we write $`AB`$ to mean that $`A`$ and $`B`$ are equal up to a phase factor: $`A=e^{i\theta }B`$ for some $`\theta `$.

Let $`\sigma _0=I`$, $`\sigma _1=\sigma _x`$, $`\sigma _2=\sigma _y`$, and $`\sigma _3=\sigma _z`$ be the usual one-qubit Pauli spin operators. Following standard practice, if $`\stackrel{}{n}=(n_1,n_2,n_3)`$ is a vector in $`^3`$, we let $`\stackrel{}{n}\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$ denote $`n_1\sigma _1+n_2\sigma _2+n_3\sigma _3`$. For $`i,j\{0,1,2,3\}`$, we define $`[i,j]\{0,1,2,3\}`$ to be so that $`\sigma _i\sigma _j\sigma _{[i,j]}`$. That is, $`[i,j]=[j,i]`$, $`[0,j]=j`$, $`[i,i]=0`$, and if $`i,j\{1,2,3\}`$ and $`ij`$, then $`[i,j]`$ is the unique element of $`\{1,2,3\}\{i,j\}`$.

We define

$$|\mathrm{EPR}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|00+|11),$$
(1)
and for $`i\{0,1,2,3\}`$ define the Bell states

$$|B_i=(I\sigma _i)|\mathrm{EPR}.$$
(2)
We will be informal and use $`I`$ to denote the identity operator on any Hilbert space, sometimes two different spaces in the same equation. Which identity operator is intended should be clear from the context.

Qubits will often be labeled with numbers $`1,2,3,\mathrm{}`$, and we will sometimes put numerical subscripts on quantum states (and operators) to show which qubits they refer to (or act upon). For example, the state $`|B_0_{13}|B_3_{24}`$ can be written out as

$$\frac{1}{2}(|0000|0101+|1010|1111),$$

and the operator $`U_{12}V_{34}`$ means “apply $`U`$ to qubits 1 and 2, and $`V`$ to qubits 3 and 4.”

Let $`f:\{0,1\}^n\{0,1\}`$ be an $`n`$-ary Boolean function for $`n1`$. We say that $`f`$ is *balanced* if $`f^1(0)`$ and $`f^1(1)`$ both have cardinality $`2^{n1}`$.

### 2.1 Projective Measurements

A projective measurement on a Hilbert space $``$ of $`n`$ qubits corresponds to a complete $`k`$-tuple $`(P_0,\mathrm{},P_{k1})`$ of mutually annihilating projection operators on $``$, that is, $`P_iP_j=\delta _{ij}P_i`$ and $`_iP_i=I`$. The projector $`P_i`$ corresponds to getting the classical result $`i`$. If the system is in state $`\rho `$ and the measurement is made, we will see result $`i`$ with probability $`p_i=\mathrm{tr}(P_i\rho )`$ and in such a case, the state collapses to $`P_i\rho P_i/p_i`$. We will say that the measurement is *binary* if $`k=2`$ and $`\mathrm{tr}P_0=\mathrm{tr}P_1=2^{n1}`$.

A single-qubit projector with unit trace can always be expressed in the form $`(I+\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{\sigma })/2`$ for some unit vector $`\stackrel{}{\alpha }^3`$.

Clearly, any nondegenerate projective measurement on $`n`$ qubits—that is, one where $`k=2^n`$ and $`\mathrm{tr}P_i=1`$ for all $`i`$—is *equivalent* to some sequence of $`n`$ pairwise commuting binary projective measurements, in that they yield the same classical information and resulting distribution of quantum states. For example, a nondegenerate measurement $`(P_0,P_1,P_2,P_3)`$ on two qubits is equivalent to first measuring by $`(P_0+P_1,P_2+P_3)`$ then by $`(P_0+P_2,P_1+P_3)`$.

###### Definition 1

Let $`f:\{0,1\}^n\{0,1\}`$ be a balanced Boolean function. A binary projective measurement $`(P_0,P_1)`$ on $`n`$ qubits is *$`f`$-separate* if there exist $`n`$ single-qubit binary projective measurements $`(P_0^{(1)},P_1^{(1)}),\mathrm{},(P_0^{(n)},P_1^{(n)})`$ such that for $`i\{0,1\}`$,

$$P_i=\underset{j_1,\mathrm{},j_n\{0,1\}:f(j_1\mathrm{}j_n)=i}{}P_{j_1}^{(1)}\mathrm{}P_{j_n}^{(n)}.$$

If this is the case, we denote the measurement $`(P_0,P_1)`$ as $`f[(P_0^{(1)},P_1^{(1)}),\mathrm{},(P_0^{(n)},P_1^{(n)})]`$. A binary projective measurement is *pseudoseparate* if it is $`f`$-separate for some balanced $`f`$.

All but one of the measurements in our universal set are $`f`$-separate, where $`f`$ is the parity function $``$ (exclusive OR). We can view an $`f`$-separate measurement intuitively as single-qubit measurements combined in a classical way. For example, suppose $`n=2`$ and we have two qubits $`A`$ and $`B`$ belonging to Alice and Bob, respectively. Alice performs some projective measurement $`(P_0^A,P_1^A)`$ on her qubit, getting the “classical” bit $`j_A`$, and Bob independently measures his qubit according to some $`(P_0^B,P_1^B)`$, getting $`j_B`$. Alice and Bob communicate $`j_A`$ and $`j_B`$ to a third party, Carol, who computes and outputs the classical bit $`f(j_Aj_B)`$. Thus the classical result of the whole measurement is $`f(j_Aj_B)`$, and the resulting quantum state is the projection onto the subspace consistent with this classical result.

It should be stressed that pseudoseparate measurements are not the same as truly separate single-qubit measurements. The bits $`j_A`$ and $`j_B`$ communicated by Alice and Bob are not really classical—Alice, Bob, and Carol are essentially quantum agents who must work in isolation from the environment. If Alice and Bob shared their bits with the (macroscopic) environment, as is the case with truly classical bits, then the degeneracy of the measurement would be lost, and we’d get two classical bits as a result of two completely separate measurements. This would not do for universal quantum computation, which needs to create entanglement between $`A`$ and $`B`$. It is not clear at this point whether pseudoseparate measurements are any easier to implement than other projective measurements, but their mathematical simplicity is attractive nonetheless, and gives some hope for an easier implementation.

For $`n2`$, almost all $`n`$-qubit binary projective measurements are *not* pseudoseparate. This can be seen by counting the number of continuous degrees of freedom for the two respective measurement types. The number of complex degrees of freedom for an $`n`$-qubit binary projective measurement is $`2^{2(n1)}`$, the dimension of the Grassmann manifold $`G_{2^{n1},2^n}()`$ \[Fuj01\], whereas the number of continuous degrees of freedom for an $`n`$-qubit pseudoseparate measurement is only $`n`$, i.e., one for each single-qubit measurement (the choice of $`f`$ is discrete and does not add to the continuous degrees of freedom).

### 2.2 Nielsen’s Scheme

Here we briefly review Nielsen’s protocol for simulating an arbitrary $`n`$-qubit unitary gate $`U`$ by projective measurements, for $`n\{1,2\}`$ \[Nie01\]. The scheme is a generalization of simple quantum teleportation \[BBC+93\].

We first consider the case for $`n=1`$. We are given a single qubit state $`|\psi `$ and we wish to produce $`U|\psi `$, at least up to a phase factor. First we prepare two ancilla qubits off line in one of the four states

$$|U_j=(IU\sigma _j)|\mathrm{EPR}=(IU)|B_j$$
(3)
(for some $`j\{0,1,2,3\}`$) by measuring in this basis. We then perform a Bell measurement (basis $`\{|B_0,|B_1,|B_2,|B_3\}`$) on the combined system of $`|\psi `$ and the first of the ancilla qubits, giving a classical result $`m\{0,1,2,3\}`$ corresponding to $`|B_m`$. Each $`m`$ occurs with probability $`1/4`$ independent of $`j`$, and the resulting state of the second ancilla is then $`U\sigma _j\sigma _m|\psi U\sigma _{[j,m]}|\psi `$. With probability $`1/4`$, we have $`m=j`$ and so we have succeeded in producing $`U|\psi `$ in the second ancilla. If not, then we repeat the protocol, this time with input $`U\sigma _j\sigma _m|\psi `$, attempting to simulate the gate

$$U^{}=U\sigma _m\sigma _jU^{}.$$
(4)
(We can’t start over with $`|\psi `$, since this state may be difficult to produce in quantity.) Again, we will produce $`U|\psi `$ with probability $`1/4`$, but if not, we continue to repeat the process, each time trying to undo the error of the last trial. Thus the expected number of trials before success is four.

For the case $`n=2`$, we are given a two-qubit input state $`|\psi `$ and wish to simulate a two-qubit unitary gate $`U`$. By a suitable projective measurement, we prepare four ancilla qubits off line in one of the sixteen states

$$|U_{jk}=(I_{12}(U(\sigma _j\sigma _k))_{34})|\mathrm{EPR}_{13}|\mathrm{EPR}_{24}=(I_{12}U_{34})|B_j_{13}|B_k_{24}$$
(5)
for some $`j,k\{0,1,2,3\}`$. Relabel the qubits so that $`|\psi `$ is on qubits $`1`$ and $`2`$, and the first two ancilla qubits are $`3`$ and $`4`$. We now do two separate Bell measurements, the first on qubits $`1`$ and $`3`$ giving the classical result $`m\{0,1,2,3\}`$, and the second on qubits $`2`$ and $`4`$ giving the classical outcome $`n\{0,1,2,3\}`$. (Each combination $`(m,n)`$ occurs with probability $`1/16`$.) The resulting state of the last two ancilla qubits will then be $`|\psi ^{}=U(\sigma _j\sigma _m\sigma _k\sigma _n)|\psi `$. If $`(j,k)(m,n)`$—which occurs with probability $`15/16`$—then the protocol is repeated with input state $`|\psi ^{}`$, simulating

$$U^{}=U(\sigma _m\sigma _j\sigma _n\sigma _k)U^{},$$

and so on.

For any $`ϵ>0`$, we need $`𝒪(\mathrm{log}\frac{1}{ϵ})`$ trials to get a failure rate below $`ϵ`$.

## 3 Main Results

We will now build our universal family of binary projective measurements. We consider the finite universal family of gates containing only the C-NOT gate, the one-qubit Hadamard gate

$$H=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left[\begin{array}{cc}\hfill 1& \hfill 1\\ \hfill 1& \hfill 1\end{array}\right],$$

and the one-qubit $`\pi /8`$ gate

$$T=e^{i\pi \sigma _3/8}\left[\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& e^{i\pi /4}\end{array}\right]$$

\[BMPR99, NC00\]. We only need to show that these gates can be simulated using a finite set of projective measurements. We first describe the case for single-qubit gates.

### 3.1 Simulating One-Qubit Gates

In order to run a single trial of Nielsen’s protocol to simulate a one-qubit gate $`U`$, we need a Bell measurement and the complete binary measurement in the two-qubit basis states $`|U_j`$ of Equation 3, which corresponds to projectors $`(|U_0U_0|,|U_1U_1|,|U_2U_2|,|U_3U_3|)`$. Note that the Bell measurement itself is just a special case of Equation 3 where $`U=I`$. We consider this special case first, from which the general case can easily be derived.

Noting that

$$|\mathrm{EPR}\mathrm{EPR}|=\frac{1}{4}(II+\sigma _1\sigma _1\sigma _2\sigma _2+\sigma _3\sigma _3),$$

it is routine to calculate each $`|B_jB_j|=(I\sigma _j)|\mathrm{EPR}\mathrm{EPR}|(I\sigma _j)`$:

$`|B_0B_0|`$ $`=`$ $`(I+\sigma _1\sigma _1\sigma _2\sigma _2+\sigma _3\sigma _3)/4`$
$`|B_1B_1|`$ $`=`$ $`(I+\sigma _1\sigma _1+\sigma _2\sigma _2\sigma _3\sigma _3)/4`$
$`|B_2B_2|`$ $`=`$ $`(I\sigma _1\sigma _1\sigma _2\sigma _2\sigma _3\sigma _3)/4`$
$`|B_3B_3|`$ $`=`$ $`(I\sigma _1\sigma _1+\sigma _2\sigma _2+\sigma _3\sigma _3)/4`$
Whence, for any $`i\{1,2,3\}`$ we get

$$Q_i=_{\mathrm{df}}|B_0B_0|+|B_iB_i|=\frac{I+\gamma _i(\sigma _i\sigma _i)}{2},$$

where $`(\gamma _1,\gamma _2,\gamma _3)=(1,1,1)`$.

Each pair $`(Q_i,IQ_i)`$ is a binary projective measurement which we can express in $``$-separate form ($``$ is the parity function) as follows: Let $`P^A=(I+\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{\sigma })/2`$ and $`P^B=(I+\stackrel{}{\beta }\stackrel{}{\sigma })/2`$ be arbitrary one-qubit projectors with unit trace ($`\stackrel{}{\alpha }=(\alpha _1,\alpha _2,\alpha _3)`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\beta }=(\beta _1,\beta _2,\beta _3)`$ are arbitrary unit vectors in $`^3`$). Simplifying the equation

$$P^AP^B+(IP^A)(IP^B)=Q_i=\frac{I+\gamma _i(\sigma _i\sigma _i)}{2}$$
(6)
yields the equivalent equation

$$\stackrel{}{\alpha }\stackrel{}{\sigma }\stackrel{}{\beta }\stackrel{}{\sigma }=\gamma _i(\sigma _i\sigma _i).$$
(7)
By the linear independence of the $`\sigma _j`$, there are only two possible solutions for $`\stackrel{}{\alpha }`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\beta }`$, namely, $`\alpha _j=\beta _j=0`$ for $`ji`$ and $`(\alpha _i,\beta _i)`$ equals either $`(\gamma _i,1)`$ or $`(1,\gamma _i)`$. We arbitrarily choose the latter of these. (For $`i\{1,3\}`$ these two solutions are the same.) Thus we have

$`(Q_1,IQ_1)`$ $`=`$ $`[({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _1}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _1}{2}}),({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _1}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _1}{2}})]`$ (8)
$`(Q_2,IQ_2)`$ $`=`$ $`[({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _2}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _2}{2}}),({\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _2}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _2}{2}})]`$ (9)
$`(Q_3,IQ_3)`$ $`=`$ $`[({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _3}{2}}),({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _3}{2}})].`$ (10)
Applying any two of these measurements in sequence is equivalent to a Bell measurement.

For the case of a general one-qubit gate $`U`$, we define

$$R_i=_{\mathrm{df}}|U_0U_0|+|U_iU_i|=(IU)Q_i(IU^{})$$

for $`i\{1,2,3\}`$. Similarly with Equation 6, we now solve

$$P^AP^B+(IP^A)(IP^B)=R_i=\frac{I+\gamma _i(\sigma _iU\sigma _iU^{})}{2},$$
(11)
but here we express $`P^B`$ not as before but instead as $`(I+U(\stackrel{}{\beta }\stackrel{}{\sigma })U^{})/2`$, and we get the exact same conditions on $`\stackrel{}{\alpha }`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\beta }`$ as in Equation 7. Thus,

$`(R_1,IR_1)`$ $`=`$ $`[({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _1}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _1}{2}}),({\displaystyle \frac{I+U\sigma _1U^{}}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{IU\sigma _1U^{}}{2}})]`$
$`(R_2,IR_2)`$ $`=`$ $`[({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _2}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _2}{2}}),({\displaystyle \frac{IU\sigma _2U^{}}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I+U\sigma _2U^{}}{2}})]`$
$`(R_3,IR_3)`$ $`=`$ $`[({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _3}{2}}),({\displaystyle \frac{I+U\sigma _3U^{}}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{IU\sigma _3U^{}}{2}})].`$
Applying any two of these measurements in sequence is equivalent to a measurement in the $`\left\{|U_j\right\}`$-basis. We have shown the following:

###### Theorem 2

For any one-qubit unitary operator $`U`$, the projective measurement in the $`\left\{|U_j\right\}`$-basis of Equation 3 is equivalent to the composition of the two $``$-separate measurements

$$[(\frac{I+\sigma _1}{2},\frac{I\sigma _1}{2}),(\frac{I+U\sigma _1U^{}}{2},\frac{IU\sigma _1U^{}}{2})]$$

and

$$[(\frac{I+\sigma _3}{2},\frac{I\sigma _3}{2}),(\frac{I+U\sigma _3U^{}}{2},\frac{IU\sigma _3U^{}}{2})].$$

Theorem 2 also applies to the Bell measurement, where $`U=I`$. Another special case is when $`U`$ is one of the Pauli matrices $`\sigma _i`$ for $`i\{1,2,3\}`$. For $`j\{1,3\}`$, we have $`U\sigma _jU^{}=\sigma _i\sigma _j\sigma _i=(1)^{\delta _{ij}}\sigma _j`$. This means that we are still doing essentially a Bell measurement, but we need to negate one or both of the classical bits that are input to the $``$ function (see Section 4). From now on, we will refer to these measurements also as Bell measurements.

We now consider what happens in Nielsen’s protocol when we try to simulate $`U`$ over several trials. For $`j,k,\mathrm{},\mathrm{}\{1,2,3\}`$, define the (unitary and Hermitian) operators

$`U_j`$ $`=`$ $`U\sigma _jU^{}`$
$`U_{j,k}`$ $`=`$ $`U_j\sigma _kU_{j}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$
$`U_{j,k,\mathrm{}}`$ $`=`$ $`U_{j,k}\sigma _{\mathrm{}}U_{j,k}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$
$`\mathrm{}`$
(Note that $`U_j`$ and $`|U_j`$ mean entirely different things.) Suppose for the first trial we prepare state $`|U_j`$ for some $`j\{0,1,2,3\}`$, and our Bell measurement yields some $`mj`$. Then on the second trial we must simulate $`U\sigma _m\sigma _jU^{}U_{[m,j]}`$ (cf. Equation 4). Suppose for the second trial we prepare some $`|U_j^{}`$, and our Bell measurement yields some $`m^{}j^{}`$. Then on the third trial we must simulate $`U_{[m,j],[m^{},j^{}]}`$, and so on.

To simulate an arbitrary $`U`$ there are potentially infinitely many gates $`U_{j,k,\mathrm{},\mathrm{}}`$ that we may need to try in order to succeed reliably. (For example, if $`U=e^{i\theta \sigma _3}`$ where $`\theta `$ is an irrational multiple of $`\pi `$, then $`U_2,U_{2,2},U_{2,2,2},\mathrm{}`$ are all distinct.) Fortunately, for the two gates $`H`$ and $`T`$ in our universal set, this is not the case. For the Hadamard gate, we have

$`H_1=H\sigma _1H`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _3`$
$`H_2=H\sigma _2H`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _2`$
$`H_3=H\sigma _3H`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _1`$
so if we don’t succeed in the first trial, all subsequent trials will consist *entirely* of Bell measurements (see the remark following Theorem 2). For the $`T`$ gate, we have

$`T_1`$ $`=`$ $`\left[\begin{array}{cc}0& e^{i\pi /4}\\ e^{i\pi 4}& 0\end{array}\right]`$
$`T_2`$ $`=`$ $`\left[\begin{array}{cc}0& ie^{i\pi /4}\\ ie^{i\pi /4}& 0\end{array}\right]`$
$`T_3`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _3,`$
and

$`T_{1,1}`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _2`$
$`T_{1,2}`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _1`$
$`T_{1,3}`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _3`$
$`T_{2,1}`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _2`$
$`T_{2,2}`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _1`$
$`T_{2,3}`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _3,`$
so if we don’t succeed in the first two trials, all subsequent trials will use just Bell measurements.

### 3.2 Simulating the C-NOT Gate

Let $`U`$ be an arbitrary $`2`$-qubit unitary operator, and let $`|U_{jk}`$ be as in Equation 5. We have

$$|U_{jk}U_{jk}|=(I_{12}U_{34})(|B_j_{13}B_j||B_k_{24}B_k|)(I_{12}(U^{})_{34}).$$

First we decompose the $`|U_{jk}`$ measurement into an equivalent series of four binary measurements by adding up the projectors above in various ways. For $`j\{0,1,2,3\}`$ let

$`Q_j`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{3}{}}}|U_{jk}U_{jk}|`$ (12)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{3}{}}}(I_{12}U_{34})(|B_j_{13}B_j||B_k_{24}B_k|)(I_{12}U_{}^{}{}_{34}{}^{})`$ (13)
$`=`$ $`(I_{12}U_{34})(|B_j_{13}B_j|I_{24})(I_{12}U_{}^{}{}_{34}{}^{}),`$ (14)
and for $`k\{0,1,2,3\}`$ let

$`R_k`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j=0}{\overset{3}{}}}|U_{jk}U_{jk}|`$ (15)
$`=`$ $`(I_{12}U_{34})(I_{13}|B_k_{24}B_k|)(I_{12}U_{}^{}{}_{34}{}^{})`$ (16)
$`=`$ $`I_1(I_2U_{34})(I_3|B_k_{24}B_k|)(I_2U_{}^{}{}_{34}{}^{})`$ (17)
We see that the measurement $`(R_0,R_1,R_2,R_3)`$ only involves qubits $`2`$, $`3`$, and $`4`$, and leaves qubit $`1`$ alone. Composing this measurement with $`(Q_0,Q_1,Q_2,Q_3)`$ above is equivalent to the complete (nondegenerate) measurement in the $`\left\{|U_{jk}\right\}`$-basis.

Now let $`U`$ be the C-NOT gate, i.e., $`U|ab=|a|ab`$ for $`a,b\{0,1\}`$. Evidently,

$$U=U^{}=\underset{b=0}{\overset{1}{}}|bb|\sigma _b.$$
(18)
Substituting Equation 18 into Equation 14 gives, after some calculation,

$$Q_j=I_2\underset{b=0}{\overset{1}{}}\underset{c=0}{\overset{1}{}}(\sigma _{[b,c]})_4\left[(I_1|b_3b|)|B_j_{13}B_j|(I_1|c_3c|)\right],$$

and so, after more calculation,

$`Q_0+Q_1`$ $`=`$ $`I_2(I_{134}+(\sigma _1\sigma _1\sigma _1)_{134})/2,`$ (19)
$`Q_0+Q_3`$ $`=`$ $`I_{24}(|B_0_{13}B_0|+|B_3_{13}B_3|).`$ (20)
Equation 20 describes the second Bell measurement ($`U=I`$) of Theorem 2 on qubits $`1`$ and $`3`$ (qubits $`2`$ and $`4`$ are left alone). Equation 19 describes a measurement on qubits $`1`$, $`3`$, and $`4`$ that can be expressed in $``$-separate form as

$$[(\frac{I+\sigma _1}{2},\frac{I\sigma _1}{2}),(\frac{I+\sigma _1}{2},\frac{I\sigma _1}{2}),(\frac{I+\sigma _1}{2},\frac{I\sigma _1}{2})],$$
(21)
which is clearly symmetric under permutation of qubits.

Adding the $`R_k`$ in two different pairs gives our other two binary measurements. Ignoring qubit $`1`$, Equation 17 becomes

$`\left(I_2{\displaystyle \underset{b=0}{\overset{1}{}}}|b_3b|\left(\sigma _b\right)_4\right)\left({\displaystyle \underset{c=0}{\overset{1}{}}}|c_3c||B_k_{24}B_k|\right)\left(I_2{\displaystyle \underset{d=0}{\overset{1}{}}}|d_3d|\left(\sigma _d\right)_4\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{b,c,d}{}}\left(I_2|b_3b|\left(\sigma _b\right)_4\right)\left(|c_3c||B_k_{24}B_k|\right)\left(I_2|d_3d|\left(\sigma _d\right)_4\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{c}{}}|c_3c|\left[\left(I_2\left(\sigma _c\right)_4\right)|B_k_{24}B_k|\left(I_2\left(\sigma _c\right)_4\right)\right]`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{c}{}}|c_3c||B_{[c,k]}_{24}B_{[c,k]}|.`$
So,

$`R_0+R_1`$ $`=`$ $`I_1\left[|0_30|\left(|B_0_{24}B_0|+|B_1_{24}B_1|\right)+|1_31|\left(|B_1_{24}B_1|+|B_0_{24}B_0|\right)\right]`$
$`=`$ $`I_{13}\left(|B_0_{24}B_0|+|B_1_{24}B_1|\right),`$
and thus $`(R_0+R_1,R_2+R_3)`$ is the measurement

$$[(\frac{I+\sigma _1}{2},\frac{I\sigma _1}{2}),(\frac{I+\sigma _1}{2},\frac{I\sigma _1}{2})]$$
(22)
of Equation 8 on qubits $`2`$ and $`4`$. In the same way, we get

$$R_0+R_3=I_1\left[|0_30|(|B_0_{24}B_0|+|B_3_{24}B_3|)+|1_31|(|B_1_{24}B_1|+|B_2_{24}B_2|)\right],$$

and so, using Equation 10, we see that $`(R_0+R_3,R_1+R_2)`$ is the measurement

$`[(|00|,|11|),({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _3}{2}}),({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _3}{2}})]`$ (23)
$`=`$ $`[(|00|,|11|),(|00|,|11|),(|00|,|11|)]`$ (24)
$`=`$ $`[({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _3}{2}}),({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _3}{2}}),({\displaystyle \frac{I+\sigma _3}{2}},{\displaystyle \frac{I\sigma _3}{2}})],`$ (25)
which is just the parity of qubits $`2`$, $`3`$, and $`4`$.

Just as in the one-qubit case, if one attempt to simulate $`U`$ fails, we need to simulate a gate of the form $`U(\sigma _{[j,m]}\sigma _{[k,n]})U^{}`$ on the next attempt, for some $`(m,n)(j,k)`$. In the case of C-NOT, we will always get back to simulating the tensor product of Pauli matrices:

$`U(\sigma _0\sigma _0)U`$ $`=`$ $`II`$
$`U(\sigma _0\sigma _1)U`$ $`=`$ $`I\sigma _1`$
$`U(\sigma _0\sigma _2)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _3\sigma _2`$
$`U(\sigma _0\sigma _3)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _3\sigma _3`$
$`U(\sigma _1\sigma _0)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _1\sigma _1`$
$`U(\sigma _1\sigma _1)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _1I`$
$`U(\sigma _1\sigma _2)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _2\sigma _3`$
$`U(\sigma _1\sigma _3)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _2\sigma _2`$
$`U(\sigma _2\sigma _0)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _2\sigma _1`$
$`U(\sigma _2\sigma _1)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _2I`$
$`U(\sigma _2\sigma _2)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _1\sigma _3`$
$`U(\sigma _2\sigma _3)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _1\sigma _2`$
$`U(\sigma _3\sigma _0)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _3I`$
$`U(\sigma _3\sigma _1)U`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _3\sigma _1`$
$`U(\sigma _3\sigma _2)U`$ $`=`$ $`I\sigma _2`$
$`U(\sigma _3\sigma _3)U`$ $`=`$ $`I\sigma _3.`$
Therefore, only Bell measurements will be needed after the first attempt.

## 4 Summary of Measurements

In this section we review the collection of measurements that we have shown to be universal for quantum computation. For our pseudoseparate measurements, we have used only four single-qubit measurements in various combinations:

$`X_0`$ $`=_{\mathrm{df}}`$ $`(I+\sigma _1)/2=H|00|H={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[\begin{array}{cc}1& 1\\ 1& 1\end{array}\right]`$ (26)
$`Y_0`$ $`=_{\mathrm{df}}`$ $`(I+\sigma _2)/2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[\begin{array}{cc}\hfill 1& \hfill i\\ \hfill i& \hfill 1\end{array}\right]`$ (29)
$`Z_0`$ $`=_{\mathrm{df}}`$ $`(I+\sigma _3)/2=|00|=\left[\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& 0\end{array}\right]`$ (30)
$`W_0`$ $`=_{\mathrm{df}}`$ $`(I+T_1)/2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(I+{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _1+\sigma _2}{\sqrt{2}}}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left[\begin{array}{cc}1& e^{i\pi /4}\\ e^{i\pi /4}& 1\end{array}\right].`$ (31)
Define $`X_1`$, $`Y_1`$, $`Z_1`$, and $`W_1`$ to be $`IX_0`$, $`IY_0`$, $`IZ_0`$, and $`IW_0`$, respectively.

#### Bell Measurements.

A Bell measurement is equivalent to

$$[(X_0,X_1),(X_0,X_1)]\text{ and }[(Z_0,Z_1),(Z_0,Z_1)]$$
(32)
applied in succession (cf. Theorem 2).

#### Simulating Pauli Matrices.

Off-line preparation for the first trial simulating a Pauli matrix requires

$`[(X_0,X_1),(X_0,X_1)]\text{ and }[(Z_0,Z_1),(Z_1,Z_0)]`$ for $`\sigma _1,`$ (33)
$`[(X_0,X_1),(X_1,X_0)]\text{ and }[(Z_0,Z_1),(Z_1,Z_0)]`$ for $`\sigma _2,`$ (34)
$`[(X_0,X_1),(X_1,X_0)]\text{ and }[(Z_0,Z_1),(Z_0,Z_1)]`$ for $`\sigma _3.`$ (35)
By the remark following Theorem 2, we refer to these also as Bell measurements. Any subsequent trial needed to simulate $`\sigma _i`$ then requires only Bell measurements.

#### Simulating $`H`$.

Off-line preparation for the first trial simulating $`H`$ requires

$$[(X_0,X_1),(Z_0,Z_1)]\text{ and }[(Z_0,Z_1),(X_0,X_1)],$$
(36)
applied in succession, again by Theorem 2. Subsequent trials need only Bell measurements.

#### Simulating $`T`$.

Off-line preparation for the first trial simulating $`T`$ requires

$$[(X_0,X_1),(W_0,W_1)]\text{ and }[(Z_0,Z_1),(Z_0,Z_1)],$$
(37)
by Theorem 2, using the fact that $`T\sigma _3T^{}=T_3=\sigma _3`$. The second trial simulating $`T`$ must simulate either $`T_1`$, $`T_2`$, or $`T_3`$. Simulating $`T_1`$ requires

$$[(X_0,X_1),(Y_0,Y_1)]\text{ and }[(Z_0,Z_1),(Z_1,Z_0)],$$
(38)
since $`T_1\sigma _1T_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{}=T_{1,1}=\sigma _2`$ and $`T_1\sigma _3T_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{}=T_{1,3}=\sigma _3`$. Simulating $`T_2`$ requires

$$[(X_0,X_1),(Y_1,Y_0)]\text{ and }[(Z_0,Z_1),(Z_1,Z_0)].$$
(39)
Simulating $`T_3`$ and any subsequent trials require only Bell measurements.

#### Simulating C-NOT.

Off-line preparation for the first trial simulating C-NOT requires the measurement

$$(\frac{I+\sigma _1\sigma _1\sigma _1}{2},\frac{I\sigma _1\sigma _1\sigma _1}{2})=[(X_0,X_1),(X_0,X_1),(X_0,X_1)]$$
(40)
on qubits $`1`$, $`3`$, and $`4`$ (Equations 19 and 21) and a Bell measurement on ancilla qubits $`1`$ and $`3`$ (Equation 20), together with

$$[(X_0,X_1),(X_0,X_1)]$$
(41)
on qubits $`2`$ and $`4`$ (Equation 22), and

$$[(Z_0,Z_1),(Z_0,Z_1),(Z_0,Z_1)]$$
(42)
on qubits $`2`$, $`3`$, and $`4`$ (Equation 25). All other measurements are Bell measurements.

## 5 Further Work

We have shown that three-qubit, $``$-separate measurements suffice for universal quantum computation. Do two-qubit measurements suffice?

We have also shown that two-qubit pseudoseparate measurements (to simulate arbitrary one-qubit gates), together with a fixed finite set of two- and three-qubit pseudoseparate measurements (to implement C-NOT), suffice to *exactly* simulate any unitary operator $`A`$ on $`n`$-qubits (see \[NC00\] for example). However, for a given $`A`$, it may be the case that an infinite family of measurements are needed to simulate $`A`$ exactly with probability 1, using Nielsen’s scheme. Perhaps there is an alternate scheme whereby for every $`A`$ there is a fixed finite set of measurements sufficient to simulate $`A`$ exactly with probability 1.

Another interesting avenue of research is to see whether various quantum algorithms can be made to tolerate errors in their gates of the form of a failed single trial of Nielsen’s protocol. For example, a one-qubit $`U`$-gate may actually apply $`U\sigma _j`$ for some (classically known) $`j\{0,1,2,3\}`$ with uniform probability. Perhaps useful computations can be done despite this nondeterminism, in which case, we would not need to have repeated trials of Nielsen’s protocol when implementing such algorithms.

## Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Alonso Botero, Andrei Stoica, and Shengjun Wu for several interesting and stimulating discussions.


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# Have Acoustic Oscillations been Detected in the Current Cosmic Microwave Background Data?

\[

## Abstract

The angular power spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background has been measured out to sufficiently small angular scale to encompass a few acoustic oscillations. We use a phenomenological fit to the angular power spectrum to quantify the statistical significance of these oscillations and discuss the cosmological implications of such a finding.

preprint:

\] During the past few years there has been unprecedented progress in the detection and characterization of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background on small angular scales. The TOCO, BOOMERanG and MAXIMA experiments  presented unambiguous evidence for a preferred scale (a “peak”) in the variance of temperature fluctuations as a function of scale, $`(\mathrm{\Delta }T)_{\mathrm{}}^2\mathrm{}(\mathrm{}+1)C_{\mathrm{}}/4\pi `$ (where $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$ is the angular power spectrum at a scale $`\mathrm{}180^0/\theta `$). This is a striking result, having been predicted in 1970 from simple assumptions about scale-invariance and linear perturbation theory of General Relativity. During the last six months the possible presence of peaks and troughs in $`(\mathrm{\Delta }T)_{\mathrm{}}^2`$ has been reported by the BOOMERanG , DASI  and MAXIMA  experiments. This harmonic set of features in the power spectrum could further confirm that the origin of structure was due to a primordial set of fluctuations which set the cosmological plasma “ringing” at very early times. It is the purpose of this short note to quantify the confidence with which one can claim that there are acoustic oscillations present in the current data.

We shall first outline the argument for why we expect oscillations in the power spectrum of the CMB. Let us restrict ourselves to the radiation era, where the photons and baryons are tightly coupled. Its suffices to consider the density contrast in radiation, $`\delta _\gamma `$ and (in the synchronous gauge) the trace of the spatial metric perturbations $`hh_i^i`$. The first order Einstein and continuity equations in Fourier space are:

$$\ddot{h}+\frac{1}{\eta }\dot{h}+\frac{6}{\eta ^2}\delta _\gamma =0\text{and}\ddot{\delta }_\gamma +\frac{k^2}{3}\delta _\gamma +\frac{2}{3}\ddot{h}=0$$
(1)
where $`\eta `$ is conformal time and $`k`$ labels the Fourier component. Let us restrict ourselves to adiabatic initial conditions. In this case one has that $`\delta _\gamma =\frac{2}{3}h`$. One can solve Eq. 1 on large scales $`k\eta 1`$ to find two solutions $`\delta _\gamma =A_𝐤\eta ^2,B_𝐤\eta ^2`$; if these are setup early in the radiation era, the growing dominates very rapidly and one can to as excellent approximation set $`B_𝐤=0`$. On small scales one can solve the system using a WKB approximation to find $`\delta _\gamma \mathrm{cos}(k\eta /\sqrt{3}),\mathrm{sin}(k\eta /\sqrt{3})`$. Matching the large scale solution to the small scale solution one finds that $`\delta _\gamma =A_𝐤(k\eta )^2\mathrm{cos}(k\eta /\sqrt{3}+\varphi )`$. The acoustic oscillations in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{}}^2`$ will be primarily the power spectrum of $`\delta _\gamma `$ at recombination, $`\eta _{}`$ projected until today:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{}}^2|A_𝐤|^2\mathrm{cos}^2(\frac{k\eta _{}}{\sqrt{3}}+\varphi )_{\mathrm{}=k\chi (\eta _0\eta _{})}$$
(2)
where $`\chi (r)`$ is the conformal distance corresponding to the coordinate distance $`r`$. Thus, the oscillations in the baryon-photon plasma will lead to a set of peaks and troughs in the angular power spectrum.

How general is this argument? As stated above we are considering primordial, passive, perturbations which are in effect initial conditions for the evolution of the coupled baryon/photon plasma responding to gravity and pressure . The most general class of such perturbations was classified in  where, in the context of the current menagerie of matter candidates, it is believed that there are five degrees of freedom, possibly correlated among each other (corresponding to a $`5\times 5`$ symmetric matrix of initial conditions). Although we looked at the specific case of adiabatic perturbations, the argument follows through for all other pure primordial perturbations. By pure perturbations we means perturbations in which one only picks one of these degrees of freedom to be non-zero. The key feature is that the large scale solutions to Eq. 1 have two modes, one of which is decaying and very rapidly becomes subdominant. For example for density isocurvature perturbations a different phase, $`\varphi `$ will be picked out such that the positions of the peaks will be out of phase with regards to the adiabatic models. If one considers sums of initial condition such as in , then it is conceivable that the combination of power spectra will interfere in such a way as washout the oscillations.

Clearly, the presence of oscillatory features would be strong evidence that the structure was seeded at some early time, before recombination. With the current CMB data it has been suggested that we are already seeing evidence for such features. One of the reasons for such a claim is that primordial, passive models supply a good fit to the measured angular power spectrum and, as argued above these models have acoustic oscillations. The concern is that, all models which have been compared to the data have oscillations in the $`C_{\mathrm{}}`$ and one therefore has not strictly tested for the presence of these oscillations. We propose to do this in the following: construct a phenomenological fit to the data points that can smoothly interpolate between a model with no oscillations to one which has oscillations of a well defined frequency and phase. An analogous approach was used in  to quantify the significance of the presence of a peak at $`\mathrm{}200`$. The parametrization we shall use is of the following form:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{}}^2=Ae^{\frac{(\mathrm{}\mathrm{}_p)^2}{2\sigma ^2}}+B\mathrm{cos}^2[\alpha (\mathrm{}\mathrm{}_p)+\varphi ]+C$$
(3)
This is a seven parameter family of models and we can justify it as follows. The goal is to detect the presence of prefered frequency in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{}}^2`$ so the parameters we are ultimately interested in are $`\alpha `$ and $`B`$. However we know that there is a well defined peak in the data with a well defined width, and the signal to noise of this peak is sufficiently high that it will dominate any statistical analysis; i.e. the width of the peak, $`\sigma `$ will tend to peak at a frequency of order $`\pi /\sigma `$. Given that we wish to be conservative we consider a part of the curve corresponding to the first peak (characterized by $`A`$, $`\mathrm{}_p`$ and $`\sigma `$) and marginalize over these parameters. Hopefully in this way we decrease the statistical weight of the peak. Finally we introduce an offset, $`C`$ which allows us to interpolate between a flat and oscillatory curve.

Given that we are interested in the behaviour of the power spectrum in the regime where acoustic oscillations will dominate, i.e. on scales larger than the sound horizon at last scattering, we shall not include the COBE data set. We restrict ourselves to three data sets, BOOMERanG , DASI  and MAXIMA . We shall minimize the fitting function of Eq. 3 with regards to the three data sets using a standard $`\chi ^2`$. A few comments are in order. We do not consider more refined parametrizations of the band-power distribution functions, such as the off-set log-normal or the skewed approximation. We marginalize over the calibration uncertainties quoted in . Furthermore the beam uncertainties are taken into account by adding them in quadrature to the noise covariance matrices of each experiment. All these approximations may introduce a modest degree of uncertainty in our results but do not change the essential conclusions.

In table I we summarize our results for $`\alpha `$, $`B`$ and the $`\chi ^2`$ of the best fit model to each subset of data. The different combination and subsets of the data we consider are: data from all three experiments (“All”) and for all three data experiments discarding all points with $`\mathrm{}<400`$ (“All\>400”), the data from each individual experiment (“BOOMERanG”, “MAXIMA” and “DASI”), data from DASI discarding the point at $`\mathrm{}=553`$ (“DASI-1”). We have also generated a mock realization of the best fit adiabatic model to the data with corresponding variance from sampling and noise from the combination of the three experiments (“Mock”) and finally the same realization but discarding all points with $`\mathrm{}<400`$ (“Mock\>400”). We present the mean values and the $`95\%`$ confidence limits from the integrated likelihoods. We find that the data does seem to pick out a favorite frequency of oscillation in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{}}^2`$ of $`\alpha =1.1_{0.1}^{0.2}`$, corresponding to an interpeak spacing of $`\delta \mathrm{}=\pi /\alpha =286_{44}^{+163}`$. It is interesting to note that even removing the points that lie in the region of the 1st peak, the detection persists albeit with larger error bars. The three experiments detect similar values of $`\alpha `$ with varying confidence regions. We should note that the likelihoods in $`\alpha `$ are extremely skewed and in some cases actually have two local maxima. For example the maximum of the likelihood for BOOMERanG is $`\alpha =0.01`$ while for MAXIMA there is a local maximum at $`\alpha =0.011`$. Note also the importance of the point at $`\mathrm{}=553`$ in the DASI data. If we remove this point from our analysis, the DASI confidence region for $`\alpha `$ enlarges considerably. We have listed the values of the $`\chi ^2`$ for the corresponding best fit models along with the number of data points used in each case. All of the $`\chi ^2`$ are reasonable although correlations between the data points may lead to a smaller number of degrees of freedom than simply $`N_DN_P`$ where $`N_P=6`$ is the number of parameters. The Mock data sets lead to similar values of $`\alpha `$ and corresponding confidence limits.

Our analysis indicates that there is a marginal presence of oscillations in the measured $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{}}^2`$ (at the $`2\sigma `$ level) within the context of the phenomenological model described by Eq. 3. This caveat is important. Although we have attempted to justify the functional form of our model using rough general arguments, it is conceivable that one could construct other models which interpolate between oscillatory and non-oscillatory behaviour and which reduce or enhance the significance of detection of $`\alpha `$. For example, if we consider the All\>400 combination of data and add a term of the form $`D\mathrm{}`$ to Equation 3., the mean value of $`\alpha `$ is still $`0.01`$ but now $`\alpha =0`$ lies within the $`95\%`$ confidence region. We have, of course, done this by adding yet another parameter. However this does not exclude the possibility that there are models with fewer parameters and no oscillations that may provide a better fit to the data.

Let us pursue the implications of the constrain on $`\alpha `$ within the context of models which predict oscillations. The above discussion leads us to note that the spacing between peaks $`\delta \mathrm{}`$ can be used to set a constraint on the angular-diameter distance. As noted in  the physical peak separation is set by the sound-horizon (which we know from atomic physics). Combined with the our knowledge of time of recombination and $`\delta \mathrm{}`$ (which is effectively half the angular scale subtended by the sound horizon at recombination) we can constrain the geometry of the universe. Efstathiou and Bond  have proposed a convenient parametrization using the “shift” parameter $`R=2\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_K/\mathrm{\Omega }_M}/\chi (\eta _0\eta _{})`$ where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_K=1\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M`$ ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$) are the fractional energy densities of matter (cosmological constant) today. Indeed one has that $`\delta \mathrm{}290/R`$ and one can obtain a likelihood for $`R`$: one finds that $`R=1.01_{0.37}^{+0.18}`$. This can be reexpressed into a constrain on $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1\mathrm{\Omega }_K`$ if we marginalize over $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ to obtain $`\mathrm{\Omega }1_{0.18}^{+0.24}`$. Note that this constraint is independent from the constraint obtained from the assumption of adiabaticity and the position of the first peak, $`\mathrm{}_p215/R`$ where one finds $`R=1.05_{0.04}^{+0.05}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }1_{0.12}^{+0.2}`$. These two independent constraints on $`R`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are consistent.

In summary we have attempted to assess the significance of the presence of acoustic oscillations in current CMB data using a model independent method. One could view Eq. 3 as a different class of phenomenological models which has the advantage (given the question we are attempting to answer) of smoothly interpolating between the absence and presence of acoustic oscillations. We subsequently use the interpeak separation (or acoustic oscillation frequency) to derive a constraint on the geometry of the universe. Such a constraint is independent to that derived from the position of the first peak. However it is necessarily included in any analysis which considers the full set of initial conditions put forward in . With the rapid progress of CMB experiments, such an analysis will become essential to obtain accurate, model independent constraints on the cosmological parameters.

Acknowledgments: PGF acknowledges support from the Royal Society. The authors thank F. Vernizzi, M. Kunz, A. Melchiorri and the MAXIMA collaboration for discussions and advice.


text:
# Optical SETI with Air Cerenkov Telescopes

## 1 Introduction

Optical searches for extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) were first proposed by Schwartz and Townes (1961) not long after the invention of the laser. They have been invigorated by the realization that a civilization with Earth 2000 technology and a sun similar to our own could, for a brief enough interval, outshine its sun in the optical in a sufficiently well collimated direction. For example, a 30 kilojoule pulse, lasting 1 nanosecond with a $`10^{13}`$ ster beam, gives an isotropic equivalent power along the beam axis of 10 solar (bolometric) luminosities. Thirty gigawatt-years of such pulses would fill a fair fraction of the sky. A civilization that expended an average of 30 gigawatts (roughly 1/10 of the average U.S. electrical consumption) in such pulses for, say, a star-wars type defense system, might thus become inadvertently detectable. Far less energy would be required for us to be within such a beam if the signals were deliberately directed at other stars like our Sun. Thus, a civilization might choose to broadcast its existence with brief optical pulses. OSETI programs that use modest astronomical telescopes with angular resolution of order 1 arcsec are underway (Shvartsman $`etal`$. 1993, Beskin $`etal`$. 1997, Horowitz $`etal`$. 2001). Below, we suggest that optical dishes with poorer angular resolution may offer an alternative strategy for OSETI.

The question then arises as to what sort of pulse would be required to exclude the possibility of a natural source (which, one might argue, a self-proclaiming civilization would deliberately choose in order to avoid ambiguity). At the very least, they would be sure to make the pulses outshine their sun by a comfortable margin that would allow unambiguous detection. In fact, existing OSETI teams have proposed searching for megajoule pulses that could outshine our sun by a factor of 103 or more. However, the strong constraints posed by ecological considerations and the desire to broadcast as much information as possible might cause them to opt for weaker pulses. At a distance of 100 pc, a solar luminosity, Lsolar, produces a flux at Earth of about $`10^6`$ optical photons per cm2 per nanosecond. We assume, then, that an ETI would produce the minimum signal that would stand out comfortably above this flux.

In this paper we consider the possibility of monitoring many stars at once in an OSETI program using air Cerenkov telescopes (ACT’s). These dishes, planned for ground based gamma ray astronomy, are to be outfitted with nanosecond imaging cameras. They offer the following advantages:
1) Greater sensitivity, because of their large size ($``$ 10 meter diameters)
2) Large field of view (up to $``$ 10 square degrees), which, combined with the first advantage, would allow monitoring of many stars at once for sufficiently strong pulses.
3) Since the dishes will be built for ground based gamma ray astronomy, OSETI programs could be implemented at some level by introducing appropriate data storage and processing.

A disadvantage, however, is that a significant amount of empty sky would be monitored, and this would require additional effort in noise rejection, as discussed below.

## 2 Materials and Methods

Giant optical dishes such as the planned air Cerenkov telescope (ACT) MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cerenkov telescope, 236 m2) (Barrio $`etal`$. 1998) and the recently constructed PETAL (Photon Energy Transformer and Astrophysical Laboratory, 400 m2) dish (see figure) are, as far as we know, the largest optical reflecting dishes in the world. Arrays of ACT’s, such as VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) and HESS (High Energy Stereoscopic System), will have total areas of up to $``$ 103 m2, distributed over many (4 to 10 or so) dishes. They are quite inexpensive per unit collecting area in comparison to astronomical telescopes. The MAGIC surface, diamond-turned aluminum, will cost roughly US$`\$1K`$ per square meter, and can provide angular resolution of about 1.5 arcminutes. The typical pixel size for the camera, however, will be on the order of 0.1 degree in diameter for the inner pixels and about 0.2 degree for the outer ones. The PETAL surface, backsilvered glass, has an angular resolution on the order of 0.2 degree, and costs $``$US$`\$100`$ per square meter. The surface is globally paraboloidal, so that nanosecond pulses are not smeared by significant spread in path lengths to the focus. The most expensive item in the latter case is the molds, and we believe that resurfacing the dish with polished sheet metal shaped on the existing molds could improve the angular resolution at a cost of tens of US dollars per square meter.

We now consider the required thresholds for signals. To record a small number of actual nanosecond pulses per year ($``$ 3 x 1016 nanoseconds), we assume that false signals must be reduced to one part in 1017 as a standard of confidence. The diffuse night sky background under good conditions, about 22.5 mag star per square arc second, translates to about 1.3 x 10-7 photons/cm2 nanosecond in the blue (B) band in a typical pixel size of 30 square arcminutes (somewhat greater than a solar luminosity at 100 pc, about 10th magnitude, which would give about 0.08 photons in the blue band for a standard solar spectrum). If this were the only background, assuming Poisson statistics, a 100 m2 collecting area would register a clear signal (less than one false event per year) with 11 B band photons arriving in a nanosecond bin. This would correspond to about 140 Lsolar at 100 pc. An area much lower than 100 m2 would give insufficient statistics for the large detection confidence that the problem requires. A weaker signal would require a smaller pixel size to surmount the night sky background. However, the smaller pixel size would only help if the host star of the extra-terrestrial civilization were fainter than 10th magnitude. Similarly, restricting the search to faint host stars would not help, given the diffuse background, if the pixel size is kept at about 30 square arcminutes. Altogether, it seems that typical parameters for large ACT’s are well suited for OSETI out to 100 pc.

Using a value of 1.3 x 10-7 photons/cm2 nanosecond in the blue band for the background photons rate per pixel, we have found that a clear signal from a nanosecond laser pulse with isotropic equivalent blue band luminosity of much less than 140 Lsolar at 100 pc would require many hundreds of square meters of net collecting area (i.e. factoring in quantum efficiency). We estimate that the minimum isotropic equivalent luminosity that could be detected above noise with ACT’s of three or four hundred m2 would correspond in the B band to about 50 to 70 Lsolar at 100 pc, or about a 6th magnitude star. We find that for 1000 m2, at least 26 Lsolar at 100 pc is required. We also find that the minimum detectable intensity is slightly less in the red (R) band; though the signal to noise is less in the red band, the higher photon count rate compensates for this. The (presumably) monochromatic spectrum of the laser pulse would work in favor of picking it out of the background, and the above estimates, if expressed in solar bolometric luminosities, would be about an order of magnitude lower, depending on the details of the detection scheme.

Air Cerenkov flashes produced by cosmic rays and gamma rays typically have durations of 3 to 5 nanoseconds and present a major noise problem. Although they typically produce an imageable track that covers many pixels, low energy hadronic cosmic rays (protons in the 10 to 100 GeV range) may produce individual pions that might produce quasi-pointlike clumps of optical photons. These clumps can contain on the order of 10 photons and lie within a single pixel. Though they are generally accompanied by many other photons in other pixels, it is possible that, at the energy at which pion production is marginal, single clumps would occasionally masquerade as pointlike optical flashes. The arrival rate of 30 GeV protons in the ACT field of view (some 10-3.5 of the sky with a collecting area of about 5 x 108 cm2) is about 6 x 103/second. Even if one in ten such protons produces a pointlike optical flash that gets past image selection, this amounts to a probability of nearly 10-6 per nanosecond for a chance event. Such noise events can be selected out by stereoscopic selection by using three to four suitably spaced dishes in coincidence. Arrays of ACT’s, such as VERITAS and HESS, seem suitable for this technique if appropriate trigger criteria and software are implemented.

Yet another noise source is cosmic rays passing through individual pixels. The modest angular resolution might mean that a point source triggers more than a photomultiplier, allowing for charged cosmic ray secondary particles going through individual photomultipliers to be eliminated. However, a better method might be multidish coincidence as discussed above.

The key point of this section is that area, rather than optical quality, is the relevant dish parameter that needs to be maximized. Poor angular resolution can be tolerated for OSETI because of the short pulse duration given that nanosecond time binning is used .

In the above, we have chosen a pixel size that is small enough that the diffuse night sky background is not much more of a problem than the host star of a solar luminosity at 100 pc, and this happens to be about 105 square arcseconds, the pixel size of next generation ACT cameras. The minimal signals we considered for confident detection at such a distance translates to tens of kilojoules for a nanosecond pulse of 10-13 ster. For brighter signals, such as the megajoule pulses considered by Horowitz and co-workers (2001), the minimal angular resolution is a significant fraction of a degree, and huge collecting surfaces could be made less expensively. The PETAL dish, serendipitously, is nearly ideal for such purposes.

Rather than monitoring individual stars, the dish can merely look off into space, while doing whatever else it was designed to do. With a field of view of 12 square degrees, as per the current design of the MAGIC camera, and an assumed range of order 100 parsec, such a dish would cover about 102 stars.

Most of these stars would be thought incapable of supporting life. On the other hand, it is hard to know for sure what fractions to consider and to reject. Moreover, it is hard to know a priori what strength optical pulses are worth looking for. Stronger pulses allow deeper searches, and the search volume could be larger than the 103 pc3 that we have envisioned here.

## 3 Detecting Orbital Motion

Two ACT observatories on different continents could verify that optical pulses came from a planet orbiting the star if they simultaneously detected repeated pulses over several months. Using the Earth as a baseline, and allowing for the limited number of ACT’s worldwide and the need for simultaneous observing not too close to dawn or dusk, etc., one could obtain with ns resolution an angular resolution on the order of 10-7 radians. Even at a distance of 100 pc, then, the orbital motion of an ongoing signal could be detected if the orbital radius is 1 AU or more. In contrast to Doppler and timing techniques, this would not depend on the pulses being received regularly or on the accuracy of the clocks of the ETI.

A multi-continental simultaneous observing program would increase the collecting area, enhance the capability for coincidence-based noise rejection (especially if there is concern about local and regional sources of non-Poissonian noise), and would thus ease the requirements made on each individual ACT observatory. Thus, there is added motivation for such a transcontinental OSETI effort. The discussion in this section applies as well to OSETI with smaller area and better angular resolution.

## 4 Summary and Discussion

We have argued that giant parabolic dishes with modest angular resolution and large fields of view offer an enhanced, cost effective search capability for OSETI. Their larger collecting areas and fields of view ultimately allow them to monitor many stars at once even while doing gamma ray observations. If they are dedicated to OSETI, then, unlike smaller telescopes, they could target candidate host stars with more sensitivity or those at greater distances. If, as seems probable, the number of pixels roughly equals or exceeds the number of stars monitored at once, then an individual star thought to be associated with a positive signal (or in any case a short list of suspects) could be identified for further monitoring with classical astronomical angular resolution.

The price paid for monitoring 10 or more square degrees at once is an enormous cosmic ray background. However, the next generation of ACT arrays seems capable of handling this problem in principle with suitable online software. Moreover, an ET civilization intent on self-broadcasting with laser pulses might design their time profiles to stand out above this background.

## 5 Acknowledgments

We thank Profs. Sandra Faber, David Faiman, Sergey Biryukov, Noah Brosch, Jill Tarter, Phillip Morrison, Phyllis Morrison, and Sergey Karpov for fruitful discussions. This research was supported by the Arnow Chair of Theoretical Astrophysics, ISF grant 208/98-2, the Russian Foundation of Fundamental Research (grant 01-02-17857) and the Russian Federal Program ”Astronomy”.

Figure caption: The PETAL optical reflecting dish in Sede Boqer.


text:
# Gamma-ray emission from rotation-powered pulsars

## 1 Introduction

Although only a few pulsars have so far been detected in $`\gamma `$-rays, mostly via the EGRET telescope on CGRO (Ulmer, 1994; Thompson, et al., 1997), this number should steadily grow as a new generation of $`\gamma `$-ray instruments, such as INTEGRAL and GLAST, is brought online. This should greatly assist theoretical understanding of pulsars, since the highest energy photons provide a direct window into the underlying mechanisms thought to lead to pulsar emission of all types.

The primary photon emission mechanisms important in radio pulsars are inverse Compton scattering (ICS), in both the resonant (RICS) and Klein-Nishina nonresonant (NRICS) modes, and curvature emission. The relative importance of these mechanisms is still unclear. Most $`\gamma `$-ray pulsar papers have concentrated on the curvature emission (Zhang & Harding, 2000; Romani & Yadrioglu, 1995; Daugherty & Harding, 1982), while an increasing number of polar-cap physics papers have emphasized the importance of ICS (Dermer, 1990; Sturner, 1995; Sturner, et al., 1995; Luo, 1996; Harding & Muslimov, 1998).

In the polar-cap acceleration model, particles are extracted from the polar cap and accelerated by large rotation-induced electric fields, forming the primary beam. These particles then emit primary $`\gamma `$-ray photons due to ICS and curvature emission, and these photons interact with the pulsar magnetic field to create electron-positron pairs. The density of these secondary pairs increases with height as more and more photons pair-produce, until the pair density is sufficient to short out the accelerating field.

Historically, this shorting of the accelerating field was thought to occur in a thin layer after the creation of the first pair; hence, the region of no pair creation, $`E_{}0`$, was thought to be separated from the region of copious pair creation, $`E_{}0`$, by a thin “pair formation front” (PFF). ICS photons, however, create small numbers of pairs at low altitudes, breaking the connection between the altitude of the first created pair and the altitude at which the electric field disappears. Since the altitude of the first created pair has no inherent dynamical significance, we use the term PFF in this paper always as applying to the altitude at which the accelerating field is shorted. Other effects, such as the polarization of the generated pairs, will also begin at the point of first pair creation, but these effects must likewise reach some threshold before they affect the dynamics of the beam.

Once the accelerating field has been shorted out, the primary beam coasts, continuing to emit $`\gamma `$-rays. The total $`\gamma `$-ray output of a polar cap is then a combination of the synchrotron $`\gamma `$-rays produced by the created secondary particles, the ICS radiation emitted by the secondary particles, and the primary $`\gamma `$-rays emitted by the primary beam. If the primary beam is radiation-reaction limited, this emission efficiently converts the beam energy into $`\gamma `$-rays; otherwise, only a small fraction is extracted.

We find that the $`\gamma `$-ray output of pulsars falls into two categories. For the majority of pulsars, non-resonant ICS stops the beam acceleration at small Lorentz factors where $`\gamma `$-ray emission is inefficient, leading to low luminosities. For the remaining pulsars, the beam is accelerated to high Lorentz factors, resulting in efficient $`\gamma `$-ray emission, and a high luminosity.

Using the results of Hibschman & Arons (2001a) and Hibschman & Arons (2001b), henceforth Papers I and II, we examine the boundary between these categories of pulsars, and predict the luminosities and spectral characteristics of these objects.

## 2 Model

Inverse Compton scattering depends strongly on the temperature of the neutron star polar cap, making the thermal cooling model chosen for the neutron star an important part of the theory. For simplicity, we will assume the temperature of the polar cap is entirely due to the polar cap heating discussed in Paper I. We use the acceleration model of Muslimov & Tsygan (1992); Muslimov & Harding (1997), in the simplified form described in Paper I, and neglect spatial variations across the polar cap.

This accelerating potential, expressed in units of $`mc^2/e`$ so as to give the expected particle Lorentz factor, is

$$\begin{array}{ccccc}\hfill \mathrm{\Phi }_{low}(t)& =& \mathrm{\Phi }_1t^2\hfill & mc^2e^1,\hfill & t<1\hfill \\ \hfill \mathrm{\Phi }_{high}(t)& =& \mathrm{\Phi }_1t\hfill & mc^2e^1,\hfill & t>1\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1=5.14\times 10^4B_{12}P^{5/2}`$, $`ts/s_1`$, and $`s_1=8.87\times 10^3P^{1/2}R_{}`$, while $`s`$ is the altitude above the stellar surface.

Although we use general relativity though the Muslimov and Tsygan accelerating potential, we neglect other relativistic effects, such as the changes to the magnetic field near the surface and the gravitational red-shift of the emitted photons. These effects are of order 10–15%, so including them would pretend to greater accuracy than justified. The accelerating potential is unique, as it is only the charge difference created by the relativistic contribution which creates the starvation electric field.

### 2.1 Emission rates

First, we consider the emission of a single primary beam particle, moving along the field lines above the pulsar cap. We neglect, for now, discussion of the secondary particles created by pair-production, as the total energy emitted by these particles is clearly limited by that emitted by the primaries. For this section, we effectively assume that only a negligible fraction of the energy emitted in primary $`\gamma `$-rays remains in the generated electron-positron plasma. From the results of Paper II, this naturally follows in low-$`B`$ pulsars ($`B_{12}`$ ¡ 1) and results in other pulsars due to the RICS of the secondary pair plasma.

Since NRICS is only logarithmically-dependent on the Lorentz factor of the beam, the NRICS power emitted is limited primarily by the attenuation of the background thermal photons as the beam particles move away from the star. If we assume a hot polar cap of angular radius $`\theta _c=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }R_{}/c}`$, where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the angular velocity of the pulsar, $`\mathrm{\Omega }=2\pi /P`$ and $`R_{}`$ is the radius of the neutron star, assumed to be 10 km, the total energy radiated by one particle is

$$E_{NR}=\frac{\theta _cR_{}}{c}P_{NR}=6.1\times 10^4P^{1/2}T_6^2\text{ergs}$$
(2)
The approximate form used for the NRICS power, $`P_{NR}`$, is that given in Paper I, and $`T_6`$ is the temperature of the polar cap, in units of $`10^6`$ K.

The power emitted via RICS, while only logarithmically sensitive to the decline in the thermal photon flux, decreases quickly with increasing Lorentz factor. Because of this dependence, most of the RICS power is emitted at low altitudes where the Lorentz factor is still small. The expected total output per particle is

$$E_R=\frac{s_{min}}{c}P_R(\gamma _{min})=4.5\times 10^5P^{3/4}B_{12}T_6^{3/2}\text{ergs}$$
(3)
where $`\gamma _{min}=ϵ_B/kT`$ is the minimum Lorentz factor at which thermal photons are upscattered into resonance with the beam, $`s_{min}`$ is the altitude at which the beam particles reach $`\gamma _{min}`$, and $`P_R`$ is the power emitted by RICS emission, as given in Paper I. In the acceleration model from Paper I, $`s_{min}=450P^{3/4}T_6^{1/2}`$ meters, assuming a star of radius 10 km.

The power emitted by curvature radiation is strongly dependent on the Lorentz factor of the beam, varying as $`\gamma ^4`$, so most of the energy emitted by curvature radiation is emitted as the beam coasts above the PFF. Once particle acceleration stops, the Lorentz factor of the primary beam declines according to

$$\gamma (s>s_{PFF})=\gamma _{PFF}\left(1+3\frac{P_C(\gamma _{PFF})}{\gamma _{PFF}}\frac{R_{}}{c}\mathrm{ln}\frac{1+s}{1+s_{PFF}}\right)^{1/3},$$
(4)
assuming a dipolar magnetic field. The upper limit may be estimated by finding the altitude at which the high-energy primary beam decouples from the magnetic field. Equating the energy density in the beam to the energy density in the magnetic field gives a decoupling height of $`r_{max}=4123B_{12}^{1/3}P^{1/3}\gamma _7^{1/3}R_{}`$, where $`\gamma _7`$ is the Lorentz factor of the beam in units of $`10^7`$. The PFF is close to the surface, so the logarithm above is approximately 8.3.

The total curvature energy emitted is then

$$E_C=(\gamma _{PFF}\gamma (s_{max}))mc^2=8.2(\gamma _{PFF7}\gamma _7(s_{max}))\text{ergs}.$$
(5)
Comparing the emitted energies, equations (2), (3), and (5), we find that for typical Lorentz factors of $`\gamma _{PFF}>10^5`$, only the curvature emission may radiate any appreciable fraction of the beam particle energy. The minimum Lorentz factor at which radiation reaction is important is then

$$\gamma _{RR}=2.33\times 10^7P^{1/3},$$
(6)
which is the Lorentz factor at which the primary beam particles lose half their energy to curvature radiation. Above this Lorentz factor, roughly all of the energy in the beam is lost to $`\gamma `$-rays; below, the beam propagates without significant radiation losses.

The expected curvature energy loss in these two regimes is

$$E_C\gamma _{PFF}mc^2=8.2\times 10^7\gamma _{PFF}\text{ergs}$$
(7)
if radiation reaction is important and

$$E_C\frac{8.3R_{}}{c}P_C(\gamma _{PFF})=1.51\times 10^{28}P^1\gamma _{PFF}^4\text{ergs}$$
(8)
if not.

### 2.2 Luminosity

Using the polar cap model from Paper I, we can classify pulsars according to the mechanism which sets the PFF and whether the beam is radiation reaction limited ($`\gamma _{PFF}>\gamma _{RR}`$). The pair formation model then gives the altitude of the PFF, $`s_{PFF}`$, and the Lorentz factor at that altitude, $`\gamma _{PFF}`$.

Given $`\gamma _{PFF}`$, we can compute the total expected luminosity by multiplying the total energy emitted by a single beam particle by the number of particles emitted by the polar cap, $`\dot{N}=n_{GJ}c\theta _cR_{}^2=1.37\times 10^{30}B_{12}P^2s^1`$, where $`n_{GJ}`$ is the expected Goldreich-Julian number density, $`n_{GJ}=\mathrm{\Omega }B/2\pi ce`$.

As a slight modification to the model in Paper I, we find that, in comparison with the numerical results of Paper II, the PFF from curvature emission is more accurately found by finding the altitude at which the first pair is formed. This is due to the steadily increasing intensity of curvature emission with increasing Lorentz factor.

A curvature photon emitted at altitude $`s`$ will pair produce at

$$s_\pm =s+\frac{1}{4}\frac{ϵ_a}{ϵ_C(\gamma (s))}R_{},$$
(9)
where $`ϵ_C`$ is the typical curvature photon energy, $`ϵ_C=5.8\times 10^{19}\gamma ^3\rho _8^1mc^2`$, and $`ϵ_a`$ is the scaling energy for pair production from Paper I, $`ϵ_a=2166B_{12}^1P^{1/2}f_\rho `$. Here $`f_\rho `$ is the ratio of the actual field line radius of curvature to the radius of curvature of the dipole field line which intersects the stellar surface at $`\theta _c`$; for the remainder of the paper, this is taken to be 1.

The minimum value of this is at

$$s_{PFF,C}=1.91B_{12}^1P^{7/4}f_\rho ^{1/2}R_{},$$
(10)
if the PFF takes place in the linear regime of the accelerating potential at $`s\theta _cR_{}`$, or

$$s_{PFF,C}=0.211B_{12}^{4/7}P^{11/14}f_\rho ^{2/7}R_{},$$
(11)
if in the quadratic regime at $`s\theta _cR_{}`$.

Using the semi-numerical model of Paper II, we then classify pulsars by which the emission mechanism produced the PFF, by whether the PFF occurred at low or high altitude (in comparison with the polar cap width), and by whether the beam was radiation-reaction limited. In principle, this gives 12 categories; in practice, there are only five important divisions.

Out of the 540 pulsars in the Princeton pulsar catalog with positive $`\dot{P}`$, the majority, 315, had a PFF set by NRICS at high altitude with $`\gamma _{PFF}<\gamma _{RR}`$. For all of these objects, curvature radiation is the primary energy loss mechanism in the beam drift region above the PFF. Although most of the radiated energy is curvature emission, it is the relatively sparse, but individually much higher-energy, NRICS photons that first pair produce and set the PFF.

In the model of Paper I, self-consistent cap heating produces a PFF height and final Lorentz factor of

$`s_{PFF,NR,pc}`$ $`=`$ $`0.749B_{12}^{4/3}P^{11/6}R_{}`$ (12)
$`\gamma _{PFF,NR,pc}`$ $`=`$ $`4.34\times 10^6B_{12}^{1/3}P^{1/6}`$ (13)
which corresponds, through equation (8) to a total luminosity of

$$L_{NR}=7.3\times 10^{28}B_{12}^{1/3}P^{11/3}\text{erg s}\text{-1}.$$
(14)
This is much lower than previous estimates of pulsar $`\gamma `$-ray luminosity, and is by far the most common case. However, this estimate is only strictly accurate for magnetic fields less than or on the order of $`10^{12}`$ Gauss due to the increasing fraction of particle energy left in the particles at higher values of $`B`$, as discussed in Paper II. For higher fields, the luminosity will be larger, as NRICS is less efficient, but still less than the value expected from pure curvature radiation.

The next most common case is high-altitude inertially limited RICS, accounting for 126 of the 540 pulsars. For most of these pulsars, the $`\gamma `$-ray emission in the beam drift region above the PFF is again dominated by curvature emission; the 23 of these where this is not true are among the least luminous pulsars, and so we neglect them.

From Paper I, the PFF height and final Lorentz factor in this case are

$`s_{PFF,R,pc}`$ $`=`$ $`9.66B_{12}^{16/7}P^{1/2}R_{}`$ (15)
$`\gamma _{PFF,R,pc}`$ $`=`$ $`5.60\times 10^7B_{12}^{9/7}P^{3/2}`$ (16)
which corresponds, via equation (8), to a total luminosity of

$$L_R^{high}=2.0\times 10^{33}B_{12}^{29/7}P^9\text{ergs s}\text{-1}.$$
(17)
The third category combines those pulsars where either curvature or NRICS sets the PFF at high altitude and where the beam is radiation reaction limited, for a total of 57 objects. In practice, we find that these pulsars are all well-modeled by the expected PFF for curvature emission, equation (10), and equation (7) for the energy loss. This gives a final Lorentz factor and total luminosity of

$`\gamma _{PFF,C}^{high}`$ $`=`$ $`1.10\times 10^7P^{1/4}`$ (18)
$`L_C^{high}`$ $`=`$ $`1.2\times 10^{31}B_{12}P^{9/4}\text{ergs s}\text{-1}`$ (19)
which is essentially the same as the Zhang & Harding (2000) value for their regime II. As they mentioned, this preserves the empirical $`L_\gamma L_{SD}^{1/2}`$ relation. These are among the brightest $`\gamma `$-ray pulsars, behind only category 4 in total luminosity.

The fourth category is similar to the third, in that it includes radiation reaction limited beams where the PFF is set by both curvature and NRICS emission, but at low altitudes rather than high. These are the 21 brightest, highest-potential pulsars. Using equations (11) and (7) gives a Lorentz factor and luminosity of

$`\gamma _{PFF,C}^{low}`$ $`=`$ $`2.90\times 10^7B_{12}^{1/7}P^{1/14}`$ (20)
$`L_C^{low}`$ $`=`$ $`3.3\times 10^{31}B_{12}^{6/7}P^{27/14}\text{ergs s}\text{-1}`$ (21)
which corresponds to regime I of Zhang & Harding (2000).

The final category consists of the 13 pulsars where RICS sets the PFF in the low-altitude regime, with an inertially limited beam. These are all pulsars with fields well in excess of $`10^{13}`$ Gauss, field strengths beyond the expected range of validity of this theory. The the low-altitude PFF height and Lorentz factor are

$`s_{PFF,R,pc}^{low}`$ $`=`$ $`4.03B_{12}^2P^{3/8}R_{}`$ (22)
$`\gamma _{PFF,R,pc}^{low}`$ $`=`$ $`1.06\times 10^{10}B_{12}^3P^{3/4}.`$ (23)
For these pulsars, RICS emission produced more gamma-rays than curvature, so using the emitted energy from equation (3), we find a luminosity of

$$L_R^{low}=7.2\times 10^{26}B_{12}^{5/4}P^{67/32}\text{ergs s}\text{-1}.$$
(24)
As in Paper I, the emission mechanism with the smallest PFF height is the dominant mechanism. Owing to the multiplicity of categories, generalizations are difficult, but we can derive a few formulae for the boundaries between regimes by considering only the high-altitude limits.

In this simplest appoximation, the boundary between the NRICS-dominated and curvature-dominated pulsars is at $`B_{12}=0.061P^{1/4}`$. Pulsars with weaker magnetic fields are dominated by curvature, and equation (19) is the appropriate luminosity, while pulsars with fields stronger than this are dominated by NRICS and equation (14) is appropriate. However, this ignores the weakening of NRICS with increasing magnetic field discussed in Paper II, and so should be taken as a statement that the millisecond pulsars are certainly controlled by curvature, while the higher-field, longer-period pulsars are favored by NRICS, but must be examined carefully, using either the full algebraic results from Paper I or the semi-numerical model of Paper II.

The boundary between NRICS and RICS lies at $`P_{NR,R}=6.81B_{12}^{5/7}`$, with higher periods favoring RICS, while that between RICS and curvature is at $`P_{R,C}=3.66B_{12}^{36/35}`$, again with RICS dominating at longer period. For pulsars with magnetic fields larger than approximately $`4\times 10^{12}`$ Gauss, NRICS is ineffective in setting the PFF, and the only active mechanisms are RICS and Curvature; at mid-range fields between $`3\times 10^{11}`$ Gauss and $`4\times 10^{12}`$ Gauss, NRICS sets the PFF, while at lower fields, curvature sets it.

### 2.3 Flux

Since in this model the observed $`\gamma `$-rays originate from particles moving along the field lines above the pulsar polar cap, the predicted luminosities translate directly into a predicted flux. Since the polar cap is the source of the $`\gamma `$-rays, they are beamed into a cone of opening angle $`\theta (3/2)\theta _c`$. In general, this opening angle will vary with the altitude of the emission, but for most pulsars the altitude of the PFF is small compared to the stellar radius, so simply evaluating the opening angle at the surface is sufficient. If the luminosity is spread evenly throughout this cone, this produces a peak flux of

$$\varphi _{peak}=\frac{L}{\pi \theta ^2d^2}$$
(25)
where $`d`$ is the distance to the pulsar. This is the flux seen while looking “down the barrel of the gun.” Only if the spin axis of the pulsar is nearly aligned with the line of sight will the observed flux be on this order. The average flux is reduced by $`\theta /\pi `$ if the spin axis is perpendicular to the line of sight and by approximately $`\theta /\pi \mathrm{sin}\alpha `$ in the general case, where $`\alpha `$ is the angle between the magnetic moment and the rotation axis and we have effectively assumed that the observer’s line of sight passes through the center of the emitting cone ($`\beta =0`$). This represents the fraction of the pulse period where the emitting cone is directed towards the observer.

$$\varphi _{ave}=\frac{L}{2\pi ^2\theta \mathrm{sin}\alpha d^2}.$$
(26)
This average flux is the observable, not the total luminosity. In terms of the luminosities from the previous section, this flux is

$$\varphi _{ave}=3.7\times 10^{43}P^{1/2}(\mathrm{sin}\alpha )^1d_{kpc}^2L\text{ergs cm}\text{-2}\text{ s}\text{-1}.$$
(27)
Since the $`\mathrm{sin}\alpha `$ term is a factor of order unity, and these approximations are only good to approximately a factor of 2, we simply set it to 1 for the remainder of the paper. We plot the expected observable flux as a function of the pulsar period using a fiducial pulsar distance of 1 kpc in Figure 1, to show the inherent dependencies on pulsar parameters, and using the estimated distances of each individual object in Figure 2, to show the predicted observable flux.

## 3 Spectral shape

In the previous section, we discussed the total energy output of the pulsar; here, we turn to the expected shape of the spectrum itself. In Paper II, we found that a cascade of pair creation from a single absorbed photon produces a response with a power law index of $`3/2`$, due to the reprocessing of synchrotron photons. In order to be absorbed, however, the photon must have an energy greater than $`ϵ_{min}=5134B_{12}^1P^{1/2}mc^2`$, presuming that the photon was emitted parallel to the magnetic field at the edge of the polar cap at the surface of the star.

Since most of the power emitted in $`\gamma `$-rays from pulsar polar caps is due to curvature emission, except for the few extreme high-field objects where RICS dominates, the energetics of the curvature photons determine the shape of the spectrum. The minimum Lorentz factor for curvature pair production may be found by equating $`ϵ_C(\gamma )=ϵ_{min}`$, yielding

$$\gamma _C=2.01\times 10^7B_{12}^{1/3}P^{1/3}$$
(28)
which is the Lorentz factor at which the critical curvature energy $`ϵ_C(\gamma )=5.8\times 10^{19}\rho _8^1\gamma ^3mc^2`$ equals the minimum energy to pair produce, $`ϵ_{min}`$, assuming a dipole field radius of curvature.

If $`\gamma _{PFF}>\gamma _C`$, then the copious curvature photons will pair-produce, and the observed radiation will be the synchrotron emission of the generated pairs. At low energies, $`ϵ<ϵ_a/(1+a^2)\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ in the notation of Paper II, the spectral index is the $`2/3`$ of unprocessed synchrotron radiation, while at higher energies, the spectral index is the characteristic $`3/2`$.

If $`\gamma _{PFF}<\gamma _C`$, then the curvature photons will be observed directly. The beam energy loss in this case, for all pulsars examined, is small enough that the characteristic curvature energy remains effectively unchanged. Therefore, the unmodified $`2/3`$ spectrum of curvature radiation will be seen, extending from low energies up to $`ϵ_C(\gamma )`$. This energy will clearly be lower than the traditional estimate of the cut-off energy of $`ϵ_a`$ and dependant on the mechanism which sets the PFF.

Figure 3 shows the results of dividing the pulsars into two categories, based on this division. Out of the top 20 brightest expected polar-cap $`\gamma `$-ray pulsars, only two are expected to have the $`2/3`$ power law, J0953+0755 and J1932+1059. To illustrate the difference, we plot in Figure 4 the numerically-calculated $`\gamma `$-ray spectrum of J1952+3252, which is expected to have a $`3/2`$ spectrum, and J1932+1059. The numerical method used was that described in Paper II, and the results confirm the expectations.

The maximum energies of these spectra depend on whether the beam is radiation-reaction limited or not, not on the minimum energy for pair production, $`ϵ_a`$. All photon energies higher than $`ϵ_a`$ are converted by pair production to photons of lower energy, but $`ϵ_a`$ steadily increases with altitude as $`r^3`$, eventually surpassing the maximum energy of the raw photon spectrum emitted by the beam particles. At that point, and beyond, the maximum energy of the spectrum is set by the energy of the beam itself.

Since curvature radiation is the strongest emission mechanism for all of the brightest pulsars and all but a small minority of the others, the maximum energy will be the characteristic curvature energy, evaluated at the high-altitude coasting Lorentz factor of the beam. However, the relevant Lorentz factor is slightly different from that calculated in the previous section, equation (6). Since the radius of curvature of the field steadily increases with altitude, the curvature energy of a coasting beam will steadily decrease, as $`r^{1/2}`$. The maximum energy observed will then arise from emission from an intermediate regime; high enough that the magnetic field no longer absorbs photons, but low enough that the radius of curvature is still small. In this case, the appropriate limiting Lorentz factor is where the scale height for energy loss is equal to the stellar radius, $`\gamma _{RR}^{}=3.56\times 10^7P^{1/3}`$.

If the beam is radiation-reaction limited in this sense, i.e. if $`\gamma _{PFF}>\gamma _{RR}^{}`$, then the maximum energy is the curvature energy evaluated at $`\gamma _{RR}^{}`$, or

$$ϵ_{max}^{RR}=ϵ_C(\gamma _{RR}^{})=10.2P^{1/2}\text{GeV}$$
(29)
where we have evaluated the curvature energy at a radius of $`2R_{}`$.

If the beam is not radiation-reaction limited, then the maximum energy depends on the Lorentz factor of the beam, through

$$ϵ_{max}^{coast}=ϵ_C(\gamma _{PFF})=3.2\times 10^{22}P^{1/2}\gamma _{PFF}^3\text{GeV}.$$
(30)
The expected observable fluxes and maximum energies for the 25 brightest pulsars are shown in Table 1.

## 4 Numerical model

Using the full numerical system described in Section 4 of Paper II, we have run several simulations of these objects. These results confirm our conclusions about the different regimes of pair production discussed above, with the numerically calculated luminosity remaining within approximately a factor of 3 of the simple analytic model, with the numerical model always lower, due to the effects of pair creation on the tails of the distribution. Over the 25 brightest pulsars, the numerical results are on average of a factor of 2.1 lower than the theoretical results, although the brightest pulsars show more variance.

The calculated pulsar spectra matched expectations, although in several cases a low-intensity high-energy tail due to NRICS was observed, extending up to $`\gamma _{PFF}`$ with a power law exponent of roughly -2. In general, this tail contains a negligible portion of the energy, namely the energy predicted by equation (2).

We also ran the numerical model using alternative heating models. We found that, since in the brightest objects curvature emission sets the PFF, the precise temperature model mattered little for the observed objects. Using different models of the stellar temperature only changed the expected luminosity by on the order of 20%. However, for the lower-luminosity ICS-dominated pulsars, the temperature is far more important, as the ICS process relies on the thermal photon bath, potentially allowing future $`\gamma `$-ray observations to discriminate between thermal models.

## 5 Discussion

In Table 2, we compare the observed flux, the flux by the model of Zhang & Harding (2000), the flux predicted by the semi-numerical model of this paper, and the flux computed by running the full numerical cascade model for each of the observed $`\gamma `$-ray pulsars. The flux predicted for both models was derived from the total luminosity using equation (27).

The model of Zhang & Harding (2000) assumed that $`\alpha =30`$, decreasing the expected flux, while invoking a proposed ICS instability to move the acceleration region off the surface of the star. These two effects roughly cancel, leaving the predictions of their model comparable to those of this model, which effectively uses $`\mathrm{cos}\alpha =1`$ and acceleration near the surface. Due to the small numbers of reversed particles, we find no instability in the acceleration zone, especially in the cases where, in the language of this paper, curvature radiation sets the PFF. Hence we find no reason to raise the altitude of the acceleration zone.

The numerically calculated result is substantially smaller than either the semi-numerical result or that of Zhang & Harding (2000), due to two major effects. First, the numerically-calculated PFF is lower than that predicted by the analytic model by approximately 25% on average, which, since these pulsars operate in the low-level quadratic portion of the accelerating potential, reduces the Lorentz factor of the beam to approximately 60% of its analytically calculated value. This occurs because photons on the exponential tail of the curvature spectrum pair produce and create a sufficiently dense plasma to short out the accelerating electric field at lower altitudes than expected in cruder calculations (Arons & Scharlemann, 1979).

The second reason is that some of the primary photon energy remains in the generated pairs, rather than being re-radiated. Both the analytic model of this paper and that of Zhang & Harding (2000) assume that all of the energy emitted by the primary beam is eventually re-emitted in $`\gamma `$-rays, due to the combination of synchrotron emission from the created pairs and RICS extracting any remaining energy. In the numerical model, however, we calculate the pair spectrum itself and can determine what fraction of the energy in the pairs is re-radiated by RICS.

As a quick approximation to the effects of RICS on the pair spectrum, we assume that all particles with an energy loss length scale equal to or less than the stellar radius re-emit all of their energy as lower-energy $`\gamma `$-rays. The minimum Lorentz factor is the lowest at which thermal photons could be scattered into resonance with the field, $`\gamma _{min}=ϵ_B/\mathrm{\Delta }\mu kT=134.5B_{12}T_6^1\mathrm{\Delta }\mu ^1`$. The maximum Lorentz factor is the point where the particle’s energy loss scale is a stellar radius, $`\gamma _{max}=4.05\times 10^3B_{12}T_6^{1/2}`$.

With these corrections, we see that the predictions of the polar cap model are low compared to the observations for most of the observed $`\gamma `$-ray pulsars. The difference is large for the Crab, for which the prediction is low by a factor of 10, and for the high-field object 1513-5908, which is low by three orders of magnitude. The other objects are typically low by a factor of three.

The high-field object 1513-5908 clearly deserves further examination. Not only is this magnetic field of this pulsar so large that the applicability of this model is questionable, due to high-field effects as discussed by Harding, et al. (1997), but preliminary studies of the spatial variation of $`\gamma `$-ray emission across the polar cap suggest that the core of this pulsar’s beam should be much brighter than the edge field line considered in this model.

The neglect of spatial variation across the polar cap limits the accuracy of these results; simple estimates suggest that including those effects would increase the expected flux by 50%, but more detailed study is required to be more concrete. Physically, the general-relativistic acceleration is strongest at the center of the pulsar, while the field line radius of curvature is smallest at the edge. Due to the smaller radius of curvature and gentler acceleration, pair production due to ICS processes is far easier at the edges of the polar cap than at the center, while pair production via curvature radiation is more likely on the central field lines. Together, these effects combine to place the pair formation front at a higher altitude in the center of the polar cap and lower near the edges, so that the central field lines are comparatively brighter than the edges.

These effects should help raise the predicted luminosities closer to those observed, bringing them within the expected margins of error for this study. Further work on the variation of the $`\gamma `$-ray emission across the polar cap is certainly required before any firm conclusions can be drawn.

However, the polar cap model gives specific predictions for the beaming which are not consistent with the observations. First, the $`\gamma `$-ray peaks should be in phase with the radio emission, which is not typically the case. Second, for all of the observed pulsars, the curvature emission energy loss, equation (4), predicts that 40–60% of the emitted energy for these pulsars should be emitted within the first 10 km above the surface. This energy would go into a cone of angular width $`\theta _{emit}=2(3/2)2^{1/2}\theta _c`$ or $`\theta _{emit}=3.5P^{1/2}`$ degrees. This is far more focused than the observed pulsars, which have double beam profiles spread over rotation phase 0.4, typically. If the observed pulsars were all oriented with the magnetic axis, rotation axis, and line of sight all roughly parallel, such broad profiles could be generated by a polar cap model. Specific modeling of the polar cap model’s beaming properties require the angle between the rotation axis and the magnetic axis to be less than 45 degrees and the intrinsic opening angle of the beam to be as large as 30 degrees (Harding & Daugherty, 1998). The restriction on obliquity is a priori improbable, and is known to cause difficulty with the population statistics of pulsars (Romani, 1996), while the large opening angle for the intrinsic emission beam requires adding new features to the basic dynamics of the polar cap model not supported by our calculations.

Given these beaming problems with the polar cap model, the outer gap models of Romani & Yadrioglu (1995); Yadrioglu & Romani (1995); Zhang & Cheng (1997) remain strong contenders for the EGRET pulsars. These models easily produce beam profiles which resemble the data, but are energetically more difficult. For example, recent work by Hirotani & Shibata (2001) addresses the over-abundance in TeV emission, but the emissivity in the GeV range remains an open question.

However, even if the observed $`\gamma `$-ray emission originates in the outer magnetosphere, the flux predicted to arise from the polar cap itself is not so far less than the observed fluxes as to be unobservable in the near future. With the advent of the new $`\gamma `$-ray instruments, the threshold of sensitivity should be low enough that the polar cap $`\gamma `$-rays can be observed. Detection of these gamma rays, seen when looking down the barrel of the radio gun, and comparison of their emission phase and profile with the radio counterpart, would be a firm test of the long established, but not directly tested, theory of polar cap pair creation which underlies 30 years of theorizing about the origin of pulsar radio emission.

## 6 Conclusion

The primary conclusion of this paper is that the currently observed $`\gamma `$-rays pulsars are not representative of the bulk of pulsars. Currently, only the brightest $`\gamma `$-ray pulsars are observed; these pulsars are selected to be those where curvature radiation operates efficiently, which is not true of pulsars in general.

Most pulsars have a beam energy controlled by nonresonant inverse Compton scattering (NRICS), rather than curvature emission, and will emit significantly fewer $`\gamma `$-rays. Locating examples of these objects will be a challenge to the new generation of $`\gamma `$-ray telescopes. The fainter the objects which can be seen, the stronger the differences should be between the NRICS cascades and the predictions of the curvature-based PFF models.

In these fainter objects, the separation of the mechanism producing the PFF (and thus shorting out the accelerating potential) from the mechanism producing most of the observable $`\gamma `$-rays should reveal itself through differing spectral indices. Due to the effects of inverse Compton scattering, there should exist two classes of observed $`\gamma `$-ray emission, one a raw curvature spectrum characterized by a spectral index of $`2/3`$, and the other a saturated synchrotron response with a spectral index of $`3/2`$.

For the currently observed $`\gamma `$-ray pulsars, the predicted fluxes are consistently low, although, due to the neglect of spatial variation across the polar cap, they are within the accuracy of this study. The beaming issues with the polar-cap model remain; for this reason, the outer-gap models are still strong contenders for the observed pulsars, despite the energetic problems of those models. Even if the currently observed emission is from an outer gap, improved $`\gamma `$-ray sensitivity should reveal the signal of the polar caps, which is at worst only a factor of 5 below the observed fluxes.

Further observations should also reveal the differences in the luminosity classes of polar cap $`\gamma `$-rays, according to which mechanism which creates the PFF, and the differences between the two spectral regimes, providing a straightforward test of this model.

The author would like to thank the referee for several helpful suggestions.