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# The Lennard-Jones–Devonshire cell model revisited

## I Introduction and background

Lennard-Jones–Devonshire (LJD) cell theory  is a lattice approximation to the liquid state. Historically it was the prototype microscopic model to predict the location of the liquid-vapour critical point of a simple fluid and, as such, is widely employed as an introduction to mean field theory in a number of standard texts and papers. It is still in use today for research applications .

Within the framework of the model, particles are considered to be localised in singly occupied “cells”, centred on the sites of a fully occupied lattice (of some prescribed symmetry), within which they move independently. For simplicity, cells are assumed to be spheres of volume $`v=V/N`$ (the inverse number density) and radius $`s`$. A particle is considered to interact with its $`c`$ nearest neighbours “smeared” around the surface of a further sphere of radius $`a`$ concentric with the cell. The volume of this “interaction sphere” is related to the cell volume by

$$a^3=\gamma v,$$
(1)
where $`\gamma `$ is a lattice-dependent constant, chosen so that for a primitive unit cell of volume $`v`$ the lattice parameter will be the radius of the interaction shell (see figure 1(a)).

The Helmholtz free energy of the model is given by

$$A=Nk_BT\mathrm{ln}v_f\sigma _c+\frac{NE_0}{2}.$$
(2)
Here $`E_0`$ is the “ground state energy” - the energy per particle if all occupied their lattice sites; $`\sigma _c`$ is a constant “communal entropy” term***Reference  assigns $`\sigma _c=e`$, although the exact value chosen for $`\sigma _c`$ has no impact upon phase coexistence so long as it is independent of volume., which attempts to account for the entropy lost due to the localisation of particles within cells; and $`v_f`$ is the “free volume”,

$$v_f=_ve^{\left(E(𝐫)E_0\right)/k_BT}𝑑𝐫,$$
(3)
with $`E(𝐫)`$ the “cell potential” the interaction energy of a particle at a position $`𝐫`$ within its cell.

Figure 1(b) shows the cell geometry. The radial symmetry of the system allows $`E(𝐫)`$ to be written in terms of $`E(r)`$, where $`r`$ is the radial coordinate of the particle’s position within the cell. Simple trigonometry yields the separation $`R`$ between the particle at point $`𝐏`$ within the cell and an element $`d𝐀`$ of the shell. If $`c`$ neighbouring particles are assumed to be smeared over the interaction shell and the interparticle potential is given by $`u(R)`$, the total energy of the particle $`E(r)`$ is given by

$$E(r)=c\frac{_{shell}u(R)𝑑A}{4\pi a^2},$$
(4)
where, for a prescribed cell size, the density enters through the limits on $`R`$. One would normally perform this integration numerically with further numerical integration to calculate the free volume according to eq. 3 for a given choice of number density $`\rho =v^1`$.

LJD used the model described above to calculate the phase diagram for the $`12`$$`6`$ Lennard-Jones (LJ) potential,

$$u(r)=4\epsilon \left(\frac{\sigma ^{12}}{r^{12}}\frac{\sigma ^6}{r^6}\right).$$
(5)
They assumed a face centred cubic lattice structure with coordination number $`c=12`$ and geometrical constant $`\gamma =\sqrt{2}`$. The value of $`E(r)`$ (eq. 4) was calculated using the potential of eq. 5. However for the calculation of the ground state energy $`E_0`$ (appearing in eq. 2) they used the potential

$$u(r)=4\epsilon \left(\frac{\sigma ^{12}}{r^{12}}1.2\frac{\sigma ^6}{r^6}\right).$$
(6)
Here the attractive part is increased by $`20\%`$, with respect to eq. 5, which was apparently motivated as representing the effects of next and higher nearest neighbour interactions.

For this system, LJD found a critical point at $`k_BT_c/\epsilon 1.3,P_c/\epsilon 0.6,\rho _c0.56`$. These results are to be compared with the consensus arising from a number of simulation studies of criticality in the LJ fluid, the most recent and sophisticated of which  quotes $`k_BT_c/\epsilon =1.3120(7)`$, $`P_c/\epsilon =0.1279(6),\rho _c=0.316(1)`$. That the cell theory apparently predicts the critical temperature of the LJ fluid to high accuracy has for many years been regarded as its major success . Indeed cell models remained the main method for calculation of liquid equations of state up until the advent of density functional theories .

## II Method and results

We have obtained the cell theory phase diagram of the $`12`$-$`6`$ LJ potential in order to compare with the results of LJD. Our study employed the same model parameters as used in the original study and was executed as follows.

Using the Romberg method , numerical integration was carried out to calculate the cell potential $`E(r)`$ and thence $`v_f`$ and $`H`$ (cf. eqns 24). The equation of state in the space of the pressure $`P`$, volume per particle $`v`$, and the temperature $`T`$ was obtained by using a golden section search  to minimise the Gibbs free energy per particle

$$g(v)=A/N+Pv,$$
(7)
with respect to $`v`$ across a spread of points in $`P,T`$ space. Within this scheme, first order phase transitions were located by looking for jumps in $`v`$ as $`P`$ and $`T`$ were varied Since the golden section search is vulnerable to finding local minima in $`g(v)`$, we supplemented this approach with a Newton-Raphson root-finding algorithm , which solves for the coexistence conditions $`g(v_1)=g(v_2)`$, $`P(v_1)=P(v_2)`$.. Critical points were estimated as the first point along a phase boundary where no distinct coexistence volumes could be found.

The results of implementing this procedure, are shown in figure 2. We find a critical point at $`k_BT_c/\epsilon =1.354,P_c/ϵ=0.53,\rho _c=0.57`$ which indeed appears to duplicate the original LJD critical point . However, our full phase diagram shows two lines of first order transition, meeting at a triple point, *both* terminating in critical points.

In attempting to identify the phases appearing in figure 2, it should be borne in mind that the lattice based character of the cell model precludes an accurate representation of non-crystalline phases. Accordingly it is not possible to assign unambiguously the physical nature of the phases. Nevertheless a plausible identification is suggested by the phase diagram itself which, in the region of the triple point, is reminiscent of that for a simple fluid such as Argon. Above the triple point temperature in such a system, an increase in pressure drives the system from a gas, to a liquid to a solid. That the same phase assignments are reasonable in the present model is supported by an analysis of their (radially symmetric) cell potential $`E(r)`$, evaluated at the triple point ($`k_BT_c/\epsilon =1.02,P_c/ϵ=0.025`$), which we now address.

Figure 3(a) shows the cell potential $`E(r)`$ expressed relative to the ground state energy $`E_0`$ for the low density phase. This quantity is three orders of magnitude smaller than $`k_BT`$ across the whole cell, so the low density phase can quite reasonably be interpreted as gas-like. By contrast, the cell potential for the high density phase (figure 3(b)) exhibits a very steep minimum at $`r=0`$, the centre of the cell. Away from the centre, the particles experience the hard core repulsion of their neighbours and the potential energy becomes large and positive. Thus the particle is strongly confined to its lattice site, and the phase can be considered solid-like. The cell potential energy for the intermediate density phase is shown in figure 3(c). Its form is similar to that of the gas-like phase though the scale is different–there is a broad “hump” in the middle of the cell, of height around $`k_BT`$. Thus the particle is still reasonably free within the cell and it seem reasonable to interpret this as a liquid-like phase. With these phase assignments Hill  describes the cell theory without the modified ground state term used by LJD, but quotes the critical parameters corresponding to a modified system defined in ref. . For the unmodified system we find cell potentials similar in form to those of fig. 3, so we retain our previous phase designations. However the critical temperature of the “solid-liquid”-like critical point found by LJD is reduced to $`k_BT_c/\epsilon =0.82`$. The effect on the liquid-gas transition is much less pronounced., the critical point found by LJD is between a solid-like phase and a liquid-like phase, whilst the other, lower-temperature critical point terminates a liquid-gas transition at $`k_BT_c/\epsilon =2.17,P_c/\epsilon =1.221,\rho _c=0.104`$.

## III Discussion and conclusions

We have shown that the original LJD cell theory critical point for the $`12`$-$`6`$ potential  terminates a line of pseudo solid-liquid coexistence, rather than a liquid-gas transition as originally postulated. Moreover, we find that the model exhibits a further first order transition, which we believe is a more appropriate candidate for the liquid-vapour line than that suggested by LJD. It seems likely that LJD overlooked the transition we have found because at the time of their study, numerical integration was extremely labour intensive, rendering it difficult to attain the rather low densities at which the gas-like phase appears. Presumably also, the proximity of their critical point temperature to the “real” LJ critical point (estimated at the time from experimental data for Argon), made it tempting to make the identification they did. In hindsight this agreement can only be regarded as coincidental; one would expect a crude mean field theory such as the cell model to considerably overestimate the critical temperature due to the neglect of fluctuations. The new critical point reported here does indeed do so.

Of course a critical point between a solid-like and liquid-like states (as found by LJD) is an artifact of the cell structure of the model, which imposes long ranged orientational and translational order on the liquid where none exists in reality. The inability of cell theory to accurately represent disordered phases has long been appreciated and several attempts have been made to ameliorate this and other shortcomings of the approach. These include zero- and multiple-occupancy of cells (“hole” theories) ; calculations of interactions with second- and higher nearest neighbours (see eg. ref. ); use of numerical integration to give more accurate cell shapes and free volumes ; and differing methods for calculating the cell potential (see eg. ). However, none of these extensions fully address the underlying lattice approximation which renders suspect any cell theory equation of state for a liquid - by definition, a disordered state without a lattice. Even hole theories will only be able to represent a liquid of appreciable density as a highly defective crystal.

Finally we briefly point out implications of our findings for other recent work on cell theory. In ref.  a modified cell theory is introduced with the specific intention of engineering a freezing transition. This authors state that no such transition exists in the LJD cell theory, in the apparent belief that the critical point of the bare model is liquid-gas in character.

In other recent work (which in fact motivated the present study), a cell model has been employed to study the phenomenon of the second critical point which is observed in pure fluids interacting via so-called core-softened potentials . In such systems liquid-liquid phase separation occurs in addition to liquid-gas coexistence. Clearly in view of our finding, that even the basic cell theory for the $`12`$-$`6`$ potential exhibits two critical points, the results of such studies should be interpreted with caution. We intend to report in depth on this matter in a future communication.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors thank A.D. Bruce, for helpful advice and discussions.


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# References

LMU-16/01

Why extra gauge Bosons should exist
and how to hunt them111 talk presented at the symposium “100 Years Werner Heisenberg – Works and Impact”, Bamberg, September 2001, organized by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

A. Leike,

Ludwig–Maximilians-Universität, Sektion Physik, Theresienstr. 37,
D-80333 München, Germany
E-mail: leike@theorie.physik.uni-muenchen.de

## Abstract

Werner Heisenberg’s work is the foundation for many topics of present research. This is also true for the search for extra gauge bosons. The prospects of future colliders in this search are shortly mentioned.

During the last years of his life, Werner Heisenberg tried to found a unified theory of all interactions. Today, 25 years later, this unified theory is still lacking. The minimum unification group of strong and electroweak interactions is $`SU(5)`$ . It is ruled out by several experiments. LEP has measured  $`\mathrm{sin}^2\widehat{\theta }(M_Z)(\overline{MS})=0.23117(16)`$, while $`SU(5)`$ predicts $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta (M_Z)=0.21`$. Proton decay is not observed in experiment  leading to $`\tau (pe^+\pi ^0)>1.610^{33}`$ years, while $`SU(5)`$ predicts $`\tau (pe^+\pi ^0)=10^{28}10^{30}`$ years. The observed neutrino mixing in solar and atmospheric neutrino experiments indicates that this particle must have a non-zero mass, which is not the case in $`SU(5)`$.

The next extension of the unification group is $`SO(10)`$ . It is consistent with experimental data. All unification groups larger than $`SU(5)`$ contain extra neutral and extra charged gauge bosons. Experimental signals of these particles would give interesting information about the underlying grand unified theory. The search for extra gauge bosons is therefore a part of the physical programme of every present and future collider.

In the vacuum of a quantum field theory, virtual particles are continuously emitted and absorbed. The energy needed to create these virtual particles can be “borrowed” from the vacuum due to the tunnel effect. However, these effects happen at length scales of the order of the de Broglie wavelengths of the involved particles. Therefore, one must resolve very short distances to be sensitive to heavy particles. This can be done by high energy experiments or by precision experiments.

The higher the energy of an particle the higher is its momentum. According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation , test particles with higher momentum can resolve smaller scales. This is well known from electron microscopes.

High precision measurements can also give valuable information on heavy particles because they are sensitive to rare processes. Consider, for example, atomic parity violation. In the conservative atomic model, one assumes that only photons are exchanged between the atomic nucleus and the electrons. However, the interaction between an electron and a quark of the nucleus can also be mediated by the $`Z`$ Boson. This is a rare process because the $`Z`$ Boson is heavy. Photon exchange does not violate parity but $`Z`$ Boson exchange does. Parity violating transitions are observed in experiments. They prove quantitatively that $`Z`$ Bosons are exchanged in atoms. The atomic parity violation experiments are so precise that they also set limits on extra neutral gauge bosons, although these particles must be considerably heavier than the $`Z`$ .

Extra gauge bosons are not observed. This means that they are either not existing or heavy. If extra gauge bosons are not too heavy they will show up in future experiments. I will concentrate here on limits on extra gauge bosons from a future linear $`e^+e^{}`$ collider and compare them with possible limits from LHC. The expected experimental signal of these particles in future experiments is a small deviation of observables from the Standard Model prediction. Future experiments will either see deviations from the SM or not. In the first case it must be decided whether these deviations can be due to extra gauge bosons. If yes, the corresponding constraints on their parameters must be found. In the second case, the data can be interpreted as exclusion limits to extra gauge bosons. In both cases, it is necessary to calculate the measured observables in theories with extra gauge bosons. A recent review about these calculations for extra neutral gauge bosons can be found in .

Collision experiments are calculated with the help of the S-matrix. Heisenberg founded the S-matrix theory in 1943 . The results of recent investigations on the search potential for extra gauge Bosons at a future linear $`e^+e^{}`$ collider can be found in the TESLA technical design report .

The discovery limits for extra gauge bosons are shown in tables 1 and 2. The numbers in the tables also show the dependence of the limits on the expected systematic errors. Case A and B in table 1 refer to the following assumptions on systematic errors :

$`\text{case A: }\mathrm{\Delta }P_{e^\pm }=1.0\%,\mathrm{\Delta }L=0.5\%,\mathrm{\Delta }^{sys}ϵ_{lepton}=0.5\%,\mathrm{\Delta }^{sys}ϵ_{hadron}=0.5\%`$
$`\text{case B: }\mathrm{\Delta }P_{e^\pm }=0.5\%,\mathrm{\Delta }L=0.2\%,\mathrm{\Delta }^{sys}ϵ_{lepton}=0.1\%,\mathrm{\Delta }^{sys}ϵ_{hadron}=0.1\%`$ (1)
The beam polarizations are $`P_{e^+}=0.6`$ and $`P_e^{}=0.8`$ in both tables.

The numbers in table 2 are sensitive not only to systematic errors but also to kinematical cuts, which take into account the detector acceptance. These cuts are also needed to suppress the SM background and to remove singularities arising due to soft or collinear photons. The limits from $`e\gamma `$ collisions assume backscattered laser photons. See references  for details.

As we see from the tables, hadron and lepton colliders are complementary in a search for extra gauge bosons. In the case of a positive signal, a lepton collider is especially strong in model discrimination. See references  for a discussion of that point.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for inviting me to this perfectly organized stimulating conference.


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# Viscous fingering and a shape of an electronic droplet in the Quantum Hall regime

Also at \]Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics Also at \]ITEP, Bol. Cheremushkinskaya str. 25, 117259 Moscow, Russia

## Abstract

We show that the semiclassical dynamics of an electronic droplet confined in the plane in a quantizing inhomogeneous magnetic field in the regime when the electrostatic interaction is negligible is similar to viscous (Saffman-Taylor) fingering on the interface between two fluids with different viscosities confined in a Hele-Shaw cell. Both phenomena are described by the same equations with scales differing by a factor of up to $`10^9`$. We also report the quasiclassical wave function of the droplet in an inhomogeneous magnetic field.

preprint: APS/123-QED

An important class of pattern formation on moving fronts occurs when diffusion, rather than convection, dominates the transport. In these cases a front is driven with the normal velocity proportional to the gradient of a harmonic field - a mechanism known as D’Arcy’s law or Laplacian growth (for a review see, e.g., review ). Viscous or Saffman-Taylor fingering is one of the most studied instabilities of this type. It occurs at the interface between two incompressible fluids with different viscosities when a less viscous fluid is injected into a more viscous one in a 2D geometry (typically, the fluids are confined in a Hele-Shaw cell – a thin gap between two parallel plates) or in porous media LG . The interface forms a pattern of growing fingers whose shape becomes complex at high flow rates (Fig. 1).

Instabilities on diffusion driven fronts occur in different settings ranged from geological to molecular scales. In this letter we show that similar phenomena may take place in semiconductor nanostructures. A growth of an electronic droplet in a Quantum Hall (QH) regime, while increasing the number of particles in the droplet, is similar to Laplacian growth.

We first recall the Saffman-Taylor (ST) problem. In a thin cell, the local velocity of a viscous fluid is proportional to the gradient of pressure: $`\stackrel{}{v}=p`$ (the D’Arcy law). Incompressibility implies that the pressure $`p(z)`$ is a harmonic function of $`z=x+iy`$ with a sink at infinity:

$$^2p(z)=0,p(z)\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{log}|z|,|z|\mathrm{}$$
(1)
If the difference between viscosities is large, the pressure is constant in the less viscous fluid and, if the surface tension is ignored, it is also constant (set to zero) on the interface $`𝒞`$. Thus on the interface

$$p(z)=0,v_n=_np(z),z𝒞.$$
(2)
At constant flow rate, the area of the less viscous fluid grows linearly with time $`t`$. We set the flow rate such that the area equals $`\pi t`$. The other parameters, viscosity and the width of the cell, are chosen to set pressure equal to the velocity potential. For recent advances in the studies of fingering in channel and radial geometries see F ; mwz .

It is convenient to rewrite Eqs. (1,2) in terms of the conformal map, $`w(z,t)`$, of the domain occupied by the more viscous fluid to the exterior of the unit disc $`|w|1`$ in such a manner that the source at $`z=\mathrm{}`$ is mapped to infinity. In terms of the conformal map the pressure is $`p=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{log}|w(z,t)|`$ and the complex velocity in the viscous fluid is $`v(z)=v_xiv_y=\frac{1}{2}_z\mathrm{log}w(z)`$. On the interface, it is proportional to the harmonic measure:

$$v_n(z,t)=\frac{1}{2}|w^{}(z,t)|,z𝒞.$$
(3)
The complex velocity is conveniently written using the Schwarz function, $`S(z)`$,

$$_z\mathrm{log}w(z)=_tS(z).$$

The Schwarz function is analytic in a domain containing the contour $`𝒞`$ such that $`S(z)=\overline{z}`$ on $`𝒞`$ Davis .

In the idealized settings (1,2), the Saffman-Taylor problem confronts an obstacle. As a result of the scale invariance, some fingers develop cusp-like singularities within a finite time singularities . A modification of the growth law which introduces a mechanism curbing the curvature of the interface at a microscale is necessary.

The known cut-off mechanisms (e.g., surface tension, lattice regularization, etc.) destroy the mathematical structure of the idealized problem and make it difficult for analytical analysis. It is believed, however, that once a steady fractal pattern has been developed, its fractal character does not depend on the mechanism stabilizing the singularities.

The purpose of this letter is twofold. One is to show that a natural mechanism which introduces a scale but captures the physical (and the mathematical footer ) structures of the problem is *“quantization”*. Quantization implies that a change of the area of the domain is quantized. This ensures that no physical quantity can have features on a scale less than a “Planck constant” which cuts-off singularities. The Saffman-Taylor problem (1,2) then arises as a semiclassical limit, when the scale introduced by “Planck’s constant” tends to zero.

Our second goal is to show that quantized Saffman-Taylor problem describes an electronic droplet in a special QH-regime where electrostatic forces are weak. This correspondence suggests that the edge of the QH-droplet may develop unstable features similar to the fingers observed in Hele-Shaw cell (a fingering pattern is illustrated in Fig. 1). A spatial resolution of nanoscale structures in GaAs by recently developed scanning techniques might be apt for a search for such features QH .

We will study a shape of a large electronic droplet on the fully occupied lowest Landau level of a quantizing magnetic field. The magnetic field is assumed to be nonuniform in the area away from the droplet. We show that Aharonov-Bohm forces, associated with the nonuniform part of the magnetic field shape the edge of the droplet in a manner similar to a fingering interface driven by a Laplacian field.

In order to present our argument we shall neglect the interactions among the electrons and assume that the external electrostatic potential is zero. Under these conditions we will show that the semiclassical dynamics of the QH droplet is governed by the same equations of viscous fingering scaled to a nanometer scale. By the semiclassical limit we mean a large number of electrons $`N`$, small magnetic length but a finite area of the droplet:

$$N\mathrm{},\mathrm{}\sqrt{\mathrm{}c/eB_0}0,t=2\mathrm{}^2N=\text{finite}.$$

The droplet grows when its quantized area changes by a quantum, $`\pi t\pi t+2\pi \mathrm{}^2`$, as an electron is added ($`NN+1`$) or by changing the magnetic length.

Prior to computations, we would like to give an insight why electronic droplet in magnetic field may behave similarly to viscous fingering. Equations (1, 2) imply that the harmonic moments of the viscous fluid domain,

$$t_k=\frac{1}{\pi k}_{\mathrm{visc}.\mathrm{fluid}}z^kd^2z,k=1,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2},\mathrm{}$$

do not change in time R . They are initial data of evolution. Indeed, $`\frac{d}{dt}t_k=\frac{1}{\pi k}_𝒞z^k_np(z)|dz|=\frac{1}{2\pi ik}_𝒞z^k_z\mathrm{log}w(z)dz=0`$ since $`_z\mathrm{log}w(z)`$ is analytic in the viscous domain. Conservation of the harmonic moments is an equivalent formulation of D’Arcy’s law (2).

As is shown below, the harmonic moments of the QH-droplet do not depend on the number of particles in the droplet. The moments feature the inhomogeneity of the magnetic field. A proof of this assertion would yield D’Arcy’s law for the QH droplet.

Our proof consists of two steps. First we construct the wave functions of the QH-states in a weakly nonuniform magnetic field and introduce the $`\tau `$-function - a generating function of the matrix elements. Then we determine semiclassical states - the orbits (supports of the wave functions), and study an evolution of the orbit as the area of the droplet is increased. We will consider the droplets with smooth shape, leaving analysis of the finger-tip singularities for further publications. The size of the letter forces us to rely on some formulas on the evolution of conformal maps proved in kkmwz .

Let us first recall the concept of a QH-droplet (see e.g., Laughlin ; Cappelli ). Consider spin polarized electrons comment  on a plane in the lowest level of a quantizing nonuniform magnetic field, directed perpendicular to the plane, $`B(x,y)>0`$:

$$H=\frac{1}{2m}\left((i\mathrm{}\stackrel{}{}\stackrel{}{A})^2\mathrm{}B\right).$$

The lowest level of the Pauli Hamiltonian is degenerate even for a nonuniform field. The degeneracy equals the integer part of the total magnetic flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }=𝑑x𝑑yB`$ in units of flux quanta, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=2\pi \mathrm{}`$ (we set $`e=c=1`$). The orthonormalized degenerate states, written in transversal gauge, are $`\psi _n(x,y)=P_n(z)\mathrm{exp}\frac{W}{\mathrm{}},`$ where the potential $`W(x,y)`$ obeys the equation $`B=^2W`$, and $`P_n(z)`$ are holomorphic polynomials of a degree $`n`$, which does not exceed the degeneracy of the level grstate .

We will consider the following arrangement: A strong uniform magnetic field $`B_0>0`$ is situated in a large disk of radius $`R_0`$; The disk is surrounded by a large annulus $`R_0<|z|<R_1`$ with a magnetic field $`B_1<0`$ directed opposite to $`B_0`$, such that the total magnetic flux $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ of the disk, $`|z|<R_1`$, is $`N\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$. The magnetic field outside the disk $`|z|<R_1`$ vanishes. The disk is connected through a tunneling barrier to a large capacitor that maintain a uniform small positive chemical potential slightly above the zero energy of the lowest Landau level.

In this arrangement a circular droplet of $`N`$ electrons is trapped at the center of the disk $`|z|<R_0`$. We choose the magnetic field $`B_1`$ such that its radius $`\mathrm{}\sqrt{2N}`$ is much smaller than the radius of the disk $`R_0`$.

Next we assume that a weakly nonuniform magnetic field $`\delta B`$ is placed inside the disk $`|z|<R_0`$ but well away from the droplet. The nonuniform magnetic field does not change the total flux $`\delta B𝑑x𝑑y=0`$. The droplet grows when $`B_1`$ is adiabatically increased, keeping $`B_0`$ and $`\delta B`$ fixed. Then the degeneracy of the Landau level and, consequently, the size of the droplet increase.

The wave function of the droplet is the Jastrow function

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(z_1,\mathrm{},z_N)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{N!\tau _N}}\mathrm{\Delta }(z)e^{\frac{1}{\mathrm{}}_nW(z_n)},$$
(4)
where

$`\mathrm{\Delta }(z)={\displaystyle \underset{n<m<N}{}}(z_nz_m)=\sqrt{\tau _N}det\left(P_n(z_m)\right)|_{n,m<N}`$
is the Van der Monde determinant, and the normalization factor - the $`\tau `$-function-

$$\tau _N=\frac{1}{N!}|\mathrm{\Delta }(\xi )|^2\underset{n}{}e^{\frac{2}{\mathrm{}}W(\xi _n)}d^2\xi _n.$$
(5)
depends on magnetic field.

In terms of the orthonormal one-particle states, $`\psi _n(z)`$, the density $`\rho _N(z)=N|\mathrm{\Psi }(z,\xi _1,\mathrm{},\xi _{N1})|^2d^2\xi `$ reads

$`\rho _{N+1}(z)\rho _N(z)=|\psi _N(z)|^2.`$
This formula defines a growth process. One-particle state gives the probability of adding an extra particle to a point $`z`$ of the droplet.

The integral in (5) converges in the area of the droplet, where magnetic field is uniform. In this area the annulus, $`R_0<|z|<R_1`$, does not contribute to the potential $`W`$, and the potential $`V`$ of the nonuniform part of the magnetic field $`\delta B=^2V`$ is a harmonic function

$$V(z)=Re\underset{k1}{}t_kz^k,t_k=\frac{1}{2\pi k}\delta B(z)z^kd^2z.$$

The parameters $`t_k`$ are, now, the harmonic moments of the deformed part of the magnetic field. Summing up, we have $`W(z)=|z|^2/4\mathrm{}^2+V(z)`$.

The one-particle state $`\psi _N(z)`$ can be expressed in terms of the $`\tau `$-function (further below we set $`2\mathrm{}^2=\mathrm{}`$)

$$\psi _N(z)=\frac{e^{\frac{1}{\mathrm{}}(\frac{|z|^2}{2}V(z))}}{\sqrt{(N+1)\tau _{N+1}\tau _N}}z^Ne^{\mathrm{}D(z)}\tau _N,$$
(6)
where $`D(z)=_{k1}\frac{z^k}{k}\frac{}{t_k}`$ is a generator of the deformations of the magnetic field.

The next step is a semiclassical analysis of the wave function, $`\psi _N(z)`$. In this limit the droplet has a sharp boundary (we assume that the boundary is smooth), and the semiclassical states (with large $`N`$) are localized at orbits of width of the order of $`\mathrm{}`$. Since the magnetic field in the area of the droplet is assumed to be uniform, the density is also uniform inside the droplet. The area of the droplet is quantized as $`\pi t=2\pi N\mathrm{}^2`$.

As $`\mathrm{}0`$ with $`t=\mathrm{}N`$ fixed, the integral (5) is saturated by its saddle point. At the saddle point, the $`\xi _n`$ are uniformly distributed in a domain determined by the area $`\pi \mathrm{}N`$ and the harmonic moments $`t_k`$ kkmwz . We will see that this domain determine the shape of the droplet. At the saddle point the $`\tau `$-function (5) tends to the classical $`\tau `$-function $`F=lim_\mathrm{}0\mathrm{}^2\mathrm{log}\tau _N`$, studied in kkmwz :

$$F(t;t_1,\mathrm{})=\frac{1}{\pi ^2}_{droplet}\mathrm{log}\left|\frac{1}{z}\frac{1}{z^{}}\right|d^2zd^2z^{}.$$

On expanding (6) in $`\mathrm{}`$, and defining

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(z)=\underset{k1}{}t_kz^k+t\mathrm{log}z\left(\frac{1}{2}_t+D(z)\right)F,$$

and

$$𝒜(z,\overline{z})=\frac{1}{2}|z|^2Re\mathrm{\Omega }(z),$$

one can write the amplitude of a semiclassical state, in terms of variations of the classical $`\tau `$-function:

$$|\psi _N(z)|^2\frac{e^{\frac{1}{2}\left(_t^22ReD^2(z)\right)F}}{\sqrt{2\pi ^3\mathrm{}}}e^{\frac{2}{\mathrm{}}𝒜(z,\overline{z})},t=\mathrm{}N.$$
(7)
Properties of the functions $`\mathrm{\Omega }(z)`$ and $`D^2(z)F`$ clarify the meaning of a semiclassical state. We list them below. The function $`𝒜(z)`$ is the imaginary part of the semiclassical action. It was proved in mwz ; kkmwz  that $`𝒜`$

* reaches its minimum on a closed contour (an orbit) which bounds the domain with harmonic moments $`t_k`$ and the area $`\pi t`$, and everywhere on the orbit the action vanishes:

$$𝒜(z)=0,Re\mathrm{\Omega }(z)=\frac{1}{2}|z|^2,z\text{orbit}.$$
* The first derivative of the action normal to this contour also vanishes on the orbit:

$$_z𝒜(z)=0,_z\mathrm{\Omega }(z)=\overline{z},z\text{orbit}.$$
(8)
* If the area of the contour increases, while $`t_k`$ remain fixed, the action changes as

$$_t𝒜=_tRe\mathrm{\Omega }(z,t)=\mathrm{log}|w(z,t)|.$$

Eq.(8) implies that $`S(z)_z\mathrm{\Omega }(z)`$ is the Schwarz function of the contour.

The the action $`𝒜`$ remains positive in the vicinity of the contour and everywhere in the exterior domain. Its second variation normal to the contour reads

$$𝒜(z+\delta _nz)=|\delta _nz|^2+\mathrm{},z𝒞$$

where $`\delta _nz`$ is a normal deviation from a point $`z`$ on the contour (we use the relation $`|\delta _nz|^2=S^{}(z)(\delta _nz)^2`$).

A semiclassical state is localized at the minimum of $`𝒜(z)`$, where the amplitude has a sharp maximum. A contour where the action vanishes is the orbit. We conclude that all orbits have the same harmonic moments $`t_k`$ and differ by the area. This implies the D’Arcy law.

The second variation of the classical $`\tau `$-function was also computed in Ref. kkmwz :

$$\mathrm{log}\frac{w(z)w(z^{})}{zz^{}}=D(z)D(z^{})F\frac{1}{2}_t^2F.$$

Merging the points $`z`$ and $`z^{}`$, we find that the value of the first factor in (7) is just the harmonic measure $`|w^{}(z)|`$.

Summing up, the amplitude of the semiclassical wave function in a weakly inhomogeneous magnetic field is

$$|\psi _N(z)|^2\frac{|w^{}(z)|}{\pi \sqrt{2\pi \mathrm{}}}e^{\frac{2}{\mathrm{}}𝒜(z,\overline{z})},t=N\mathrm{}.$$

The factor in front of the exponent ensures the correct normalization: $`|\psi _N|^2ds=d\varphi (2\pi ^3\mathrm{})^{1/2}e^{\frac{2}{\mathrm{}}|\delta _nz|^2}`$ (here $`ds`$ is an element of the length of the orbit, and $`d\varphi `$ is an element of the angle on the unit circle). The classical probability distribution is then $`|\psi _N|^2\frac{1}{2\pi }|w^{}(z)|\delta _𝒞(z)`$, where the $`\delta `$-function is localized on the orbit.

When a new particle is added to the droplet, the edge advances. The velocity $`v_n`$ of the advance is defined as $`_t\rho (z)=v_n_n\rho (z)`$. The normal derivative of the density is $`_n\rho =\frac{1}{\pi \mathrm{}}\delta _𝒞(z)`$, and a change of the density is $`\mathrm{}_t\rho (z)\rho _{N+1}\rho _N=|\psi _N|^2\frac{1}{2\pi }|w^{}(z)|\delta _𝒞(z).`$ This prompts D’Arcy’s law (3).

It is interesting to compare dimensionless viscosity of liquids used in viscous fingering experiments viscous\_exper , and a ”viscous” effect of quantum interference of at the first Landau level. The parameter of the dimension of length controlling viscous fingers in fluids – an effective capillary number – is $`\frac{2\pi }{q}\frac{b^2}{12\eta }\sigma `$, where $`q`$ is the flow rate, $`b`$ is the thickness of the cell, $`\eta `$ is the viscosity and $`\sigma `$ is the surface tension. In recent experiments viscous\_exper , this number stays in high hundred of nanometers, but can be easily decreased by increasing the flow rate. This length is to be compared with the magnetic length $`\mathrm{}`$. At magnetic field about 2T it is about 50 nm. At these numbers, the capillary effects are less important in electronic liquids than in classical fluids, but remarkably stay in the same range. Under conditions reducing electrostatic effects, fingering in electronic droplets may be even more dramatic than in viscous fluids. Semiconductor devices imitating a channel geometry of the original Saffman-Taylor experiment LG  may facilitate fingering instability.

We acknowledge useful discussions with A. Boyarsky, B. Davidovich, A. Gorsky, L. Levitov, A. Marshakov, M. Mineev-Weinstein, A. Cappelli, V. Kazakov, I. Kostov, L. Kadanoff, W. Kang, I. Procaccia, O. Ruchayskiy, N. Zhitenev. P.W. and A.Z. were supported by grants NSF DMR 9971332 and MRSEC NSF DMR 9808595. P. W. thanks C.Gruber for the hospitality in EPFL, where the paper was completed. The work of A. Z. was partially supported by grants CRDF RP1-2102, INTAS-99-0590 and RFBR 00-02-16477. This research was supported in part by THE ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION founded by The Israel Academy of Science and Humanities, and by Grant No. 9800065 from the USA-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF).


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Although the existing data from the Super-Kamiokande experiment  and various other corroborating experiments offer very strong indications of neutrino oscillations, the appearance experiment, i.e., the appearance of a flavor different from the original one, has not been convincingly performed. If neutrinos indeed oscillate, the oscillation parameters, including the leptonic CP phase, have to be determined with sufficient accuracy. Furthermore, the well-known MSW matter effect  has to be tested by experiments. In spite of the various ongoing and planed neutrino oscillation experiments, additional experiments with very long baseline are needed, at least for the test of the matter effect. The recently approved superbeam facility , which will be available towards the later part of this decade, offers the possibility of a very long baseline (VLBL) experiment which, in conjunction with other oscillation experiments, can test thoroughly all properties of neutrino oscillations.

Among all neutrino oscillation experiments, the long baseline (LBL) experiments are particularly attractive. Since the neutrino beams are produced in an accelerator according to definite physics criteria with the detector site chosen accordingly, the experiment can be conducted in a more controlled fashion to maximize the physics output. Hence the LBL experiments will allow us to make detailed analyses of the oscillation parameters so as to provide a complete picture of the physics of neutrino oscillation. As one example of such experiments, a project called H2B is under discussion . The neutrino super-beam for H2B would be from the newly approved high intensity 50 GeV proton synchrotron in Japan called HIPA  and the detector, tentatively called the Beijing Astrophysics and Neutrino Detector (BAND), is envisioned to be a 100 kt water Cerenkov calorimeter (WCC) with resistive plate chambers (RPC)  located in Beijing, China. The distance from HIPA to Beijing is about 2100 km. Such a very long baseline experiment would be complementary to the recently proposed J2K experiment  which will also use the neutrino beam from HIPA but with the Super-Kamiokande detector or its update. The distance from HIPA to Super-Kamiokande is about 300 km.

In this article, we will examine the prospects of investigating neutrino oscillations at H2B in conjunction with J2K so that the joint data at the two widely different baselines can be used in a complementary way to provide strong leverage to eliminate some of the ambiguities in the determination of oscillation parameters. The joint analysis can expand the capability of the parameter search that are not attainable by either of the experiments alone. The two baselines can work at their respective favorable energy ranges. The present work is to demonstrate this possibility. But we have not search for the best narrow beam energies for the two baselines. Assuming a narrow band meson beam and the above mentioned 100 kt WCC with RPC, we simulate the event rates for 5-year operation. The sensitivity of the event rates for the various oscillation parameters will be explored. The present work can be regarded partly as a continuation of the study of H2B Refs.  and an initial exploration of the idea of joint analyses of two detectors which we think is appropriate for oscillation physics. In Sec. 2, we discuss some of the fundamentals of neutrino oscillation and LBL experiments. In Sec. 3, we present some of our numerical results. We present the joint analyses of the data of two detectors in Sec. 4. Finally, in Sec. 5, we present our conclusions.

## 2 Fundamentals of neutrino oscillation and LBL experiments

If we accept all current data, there will be three distinctive mass scales provided by the five categories of experiments: long baseline, short baseline accelerator experiments such as LSND, atmospheric, solar, and reactor. If the LSND data are excluded, the three SM neutrino flavors are sufficient and no extension of the number of neutrinos beyond that of the standard model is necessary. In view of the uncertainty of the LSND data, our discussion will be restricted to the 3-flavor scenario.

The oscillation of the 3-flavor neutrinos is a system with a limited number of degrees of freedom. The system consists of 2 mass square differences (MSD), three mixing angles and one measurable CP phase. These parameters together with the matter effect determine the various survival and appearance probabilities . The unitary mixing matrix in vacuum is generally parameterized as

$`U`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{ccc}c_{12}c_{13}& c_{13}s_{12}& \widehat{s}_{13}^{}\\ c_{23}s_{12}c_{12}\widehat{s}_{13}s_{23}& c_{12}c_{23}s_{12}\widehat{s}_{13}s_{23}& c_{13}s_{23}\\ s_{12}s_{23}c_{12}c_{23}\widehat{s}_{13}& c_{12}s_{23}c_{23}s_{12}\widehat{s}_{13}& c_{13}c_{23}\end{array}\right)`$ (4)
where $`s_{jk}=\mathrm{sin}(\theta _{jk})`$, $`c_{jk}=\mathrm{cos}(\theta _{jk})`$, and $`\widehat{s}_{jk}=\mathrm{sin}(\theta _{jk})e^{i\delta }`$, $`\theta _{jk}`$ defined for $`j<k`$ is the mixing angle of mass eigenstates $`\nu _j`$ and $`\nu _k`$, and $`\delta `$ is the CP phase angle. The three mass eigenvalues are denoted as $`m_1`$, $`m_2`$, and $`m_3`$. The two independent MSD are $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{21}^2\mathrm{m}_2^2\mathrm{m}_1^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{32}^2\mathrm{m}_3^2\mathrm{m}_2^2`$.

In LBL experiments the neutrino beam has to go through matter which gives rise to the well-known MSW effect . A widely used model for the Earth, called the preliminary reference Earth model PREM, is given in  and the earth density profile can be found in . Since for a VLBL experiment the matter density can vary significantly along the path of the neutrino beam, in our calculation we perform numerical integration of the Schrödinger equation for a realistic treatment of the distance dependent matter density.

The detection of a given neutrino flavor is through its accompanying charged lepton produced by the charge current interaction of the neutrino with the nucleons in the detector mass. For a neutrino energy $`E_\nu `$, which is small compared to the mass of the W and Z bosons but large enough so that quasi-elastic effect is small, the charge current cross sections are given by $`\sigma _{\nu N}=0.67\times 10^{38}\mathrm{cm}^2E_\nu (\mathrm{GeV})`$ for electron and muon neutrinos, and $`\sigma _{\overline{\nu }N}=0.34\times 10^{38}\mathrm{cm}^2E_\nu (\mathrm{GeV})`$ for electron and muon anti-neutrinos. For the tau neutrino, the above expression is subject to a threshold suppression. The threshold for the production of the tau is $`E_T=m_\tau +\frac{m_\tau ^2}{2m_N}=3.46\mathrm{GeV}`$. A fit of $`\nu _\tau `$ to $`\nu _\mu `$ cross section as a function of the neutrino energy in terms of the ratio of two quadratic polynomials can be found in Ref. . The signal events of flavor $`\beta `$, i.e., the number of charged lepton of flavor $`\beta `$, from a neutrino beam of flavor $`\alpha `$, to be observed at a baseline L is given by

$`N_s={\displaystyle _{E_{\mathrm{min}}}^{E_{\mathrm{Max}}}}\mathrm{\Phi }(E_\nu ,L)\sigma (E_\nu )P_{\alpha \beta }(E_\nu ,L)𝑑E_\nu ,`$ (5)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }(E_\nu ,L)`$ is the total neutrino flux spectrum including the detector size and running time period, $`P_{\alpha \beta }(E_\nu ,L)`$ is the oscillation probability, $`\sigma (E_\nu )`$ the neutrino charge current cross section, and $`E_{\mathrm{Max}}`$ and $`E_{\mathrm{min}}`$ are the maximum and the minimum energies of the beam.

In a narrow band beam the neutrino flux is distributed below a given energy $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}`$. The intensity is peaked at $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}`$ and decreases rapidly below $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}`$. The wide band beam contains neutrinos with energy spread out in a significant range of energy. In our calculation we will use the realistic beam energies and profiles provided in . Some of the narrow band beams together with the wide beam are plotted in Fig. 1. Here $`dN_{cc}/dE_\nu \mathrm{\Phi }(E_\nu ,L)\sigma (E_\nu )`$ is the energy distribution of the charged-current events $`N_{cc}`$ for one year operation of a 100 kt detector at L=2100 km.

Since in oscillation experiments, especially in the case of electron neutrino appearance, the statistics are generally not large. Therefore the error is an important factor in the physics extraction. W use the approach of Ref.  to estimate the possible statistical and systematic errors and to gain a sense of the goodness of the fit. For the electron counting experiments the errors and uncertainties arise from the following sources:

* The statistical error in the measurement of the charge lepton of flavor $`\beta `$ which is as usual $`\sqrt{N_s+N_b}`$. $`N_b`$ is the number of measured background events and can be expressed as

$`N_b=f_\beta {\displaystyle _{E_{\mathrm{min}}}^{E_{\mathrm{Max}}}}\mathrm{\Phi }(E_\nu ,L)\sigma (E_\nu )𝑑E_\nu .`$ (6)
* The systematic uncertainty in the calculation of the number of background events, which can be denoted as $`r_\beta N_b`$.
* The systematic uncertainty in the beam flux and the cross section which we denote as $`g_\beta N_s`$.

The total error is the quadrature of all these uncertainties. In our calculation we will take $`r_\beta =0.1`$, $`g_\beta =0.05`$, and $`f_\beta =0.01`$.

## 3 Numerical results for individual baselines

Presently there are sizable errors in all the oscillation parameters. However, we envisage that at the H2B time, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{32}^2`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{21}^2`$, $`\theta _{23}`$, and $`\theta _{12}`$ will be fairly accurately determined. So we will not assign any specific errors to them. We focus our investigations on the following parameters and effects: matter, MSD sign, CP violation, and $`\theta _{13}`$.

### 3.1 Inputs

We present numerical results of a 5-year operation with a water Cerenkov detector. The detector size is assumed to be 100 kt for all baselines. Sizes other than 100 kt will be labeled whenever used.

The inputs of the mixing angles and MSD’s are from solar, atmospheric and CHOOZ experiments. For definiteness we take $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{12})=0.8`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{23})=1.0`$. In most of our results we use $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.05`$ for illustration and effects of larger and smaller values of $`\theta _{13}`$, $`0.01\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})0.1`$, will be investigated. The inputs of MSD $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{21}^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{32}^2`$ are respectively given by $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{sol}}^2=5\times 10^5`$ eV2 and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{atm}}^2=3\times 10^3`$ eV2.

Presently the sign of the MSD’s are unknown so there are 4 possibilities:

|  | I | II | III | IV |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{32}^2`$ | + | + | - | - |
| $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{21}^2`$ | + | - | + | - |

(7)
After showing the effects of all four sign combinations in the electron event numbers we will choose the sign I for illustration.

### 3.2 Matter effects

In Tables 1 and 2 we show the $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ event rates with and without matter effects for a narrow band beam with $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}=4`$ GeV for both baselines. It is clear that for both narrow band and wide band beams the matter effect is significant on electron event number at L=2100 km, but negligible at L=300 km. As expected, the $`\nu _\mu `$ and $`\nu _\tau `$ events show very little matter effect at either distance. The event rates at both baselines can be increased if different narrow band beams are used. For example, for L=2100 km the $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}`$=6 GeV beam has twice as many electron events as the $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}=4`$ GeV beam.

In order to look for the optimum beam energy to measure matter effects at a given baseline, we have examined the following ratio, which is approximately the statistical significance of the matter effect and is referred to in Ref.  as the figure of merit,

$$R_{\mathrm{matter}}=\frac{N_e|_{\mathrm{with}\mathrm{matter}}N_e|_{\mathrm{without}\mathrm{matter}}}{\mathrm{\Delta }N_e}.$$
(8)
Here $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_e`$ is the total error of the electron event number, as discussed at the end of Sec. 2, without the matter effect. Figure 2 shows $`R_{\mathrm{matter}}`$ versus the baseline up to 3000 km for several narrow band beams for the four MSD signs combinations. We see that for L=2100 km the optimal narrow band beams for the matter effect are with peak energies in the range of $`46`$ GeV. For example, as shown in Fig. 2 for the MSD sign I, the optimal narrow band beam has the peak energy around $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}=4`$ GeV. For L=300 km, as expected, there is very little statistical sensitivity to the matter effect at all available energies.

Given a narrow band beam with $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}=4`$ GeV for L=2100 km and $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}=0.7`$ GeV for L=300 km, Fig. 3 shows the electron event rate versus the CP phase with or without matter effect. We see that for $`\theta _{13}`$ to have a fixed value or small range of uncertainties the matter effect is experimentally measurable for L=2100 km but hardly observable for L=300 km. However in the currently fully allowed range of $`\theta _{13}`$, $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})0.1`$, it is even difficult for the 2100 km baseline to distinguish the matter effect from the vacuum for the following fact: Since the electron event rate is proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$, the electron event rates for $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.03`$ with matter effect and for $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.1`$ in the case of vacuum are the same as can be inferred from Fig. 3, it is not possible to distinguish the two. This ambiguity will be reinforced when the error is not negligible.

### 3.3 MSD sign effects

The sensitivity of the event rate to the sign of MSD for $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.05`$ is also shown in Tables 1 and 2 for $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}=4`$ GeV and $`\delta =0`$ for both baselines, and in Fig. 4 for different energies for the two baselines as functions of the CP phase. Tables 1 and 2 show that the electron event rates are sensitive to the sign of MSD at the 2100 km baseline. It is also interesting to note that for L=300 km there is sensitivity in distinguishing signs I and IV in which both MSD are positive or negative from signs II and III in which one is positive and the other negative. This general feature is valid for other values of $`\theta _{13}`$ once it is determined.

In Fig. 4, in which we take $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.05`$, it shows clearly that for L=2100 km I and II are well separated from III and IV for all values of CP phase. Hence the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{32}^2`$ should be readily determined with moderate amount of electron neutrino appearance data. However, the separation of I from II depends on the value of the CP phase. In the region of small, intermediate and large value of the CP phase, the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{\mathrm{sol}}^2`$ can be determined, but around $`\delta =130^{}`$ and $`\delta =280^{}`$ I and II are not distinguishable. The signs III and IV are almost inseparable in the whole region of $`\delta `$. Hence the sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{21}^2`$ will be very hard to determine if $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2<0`$. Then the anti-neutrino beam is needed for the determination. For L=300 km, Fig. 4 shows that it is difficult to distinguish I, II, III and IV except in very special values of the CP phase.

Unfortunately, the above result is only true if $`\theta _{13}`$ is already known. Similar to the situation discussed at the end of the preceding subsection, the significant uncertainty in $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ muddies the water. As $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ decreases the electron event rate will also be reduced. Therefore, it is difficult to distinguish the signs I and II of small $`\theta _{13}`$ with signs III and IV with a larger $`\theta _{13}`$. We demonstrate the decrease of the lepton event rate with $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ in Fig. 4. Hence when the full range of current uncertainty of $`\theta _{13}`$ is include, i.e., $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})<0.1`$, the sensitivity in distinguishing the MSD sign is lost for both baselines.

### 3.4 CP violation effects

Figures 3 and 4 show the electron event number versus the CP phase, modulo the matter effect. The typical total errors are also shown. The dominant error is found to be statistical, i.e., from the source (i) as described at the end of Sec. 2. We see that although the event rate varies significantly with the CP phase, as the electron event rate is not a single valued function of the CP phase, it is ambiguous to determine $`\delta `$ from the electron event number even for a fixed value of $`\theta _{13}`$. The caveat of the uncertainty in $`\theta _{13}`$ discussed in the two previous subsections made the ambiguity even more serious.

The sensitivity of the electron event rate to the CP phase depends on the beam energy as shown in Fig. 5. At some of the beam energies, e.g., 2 and 10 GeV for $`L`$=2100 km and 0.7 GeV for $`L`$=300 km, the curves are quite flat, indicating a poor sensitivity to the CP phase at such beam energies. Furthermore at almost no energies that one can determine a unique CP phase from the electron event number at either 300 km or 2100 km.

To investigate the sensitivity we define two ratios involving the two CP conserving phases: $`\delta =0^{}`$ and $`\delta =180^{}`$:

$`R_{\mathrm{CP}}^{(0^{})}(\delta )`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N_e(\delta )N_e(0^{})}{\mathrm{\Delta }N_e(0^{})}},`$ (9)
$`R_{\mathrm{CP}}^{(180^{})}(\delta )`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{N_e(\delta )N_e(180^{})}{\mathrm{\Delta }N_e(180^{})}},`$ (10)
where $`N_e(\delta )`$, $`N_e(0^{})`$, and $`N_e(180^{})`$ are respectively the electron event numbers for CP phases $`\delta `$, 0 and 180, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_e(0^{})`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_e(180^{})`$ are the total error at $`\delta =0^{}`$ and $`\delta =180^{}`$. We can now defined the figure of merit , i.e., the goodness of the fit, for the CP violation measurement as the smaller in magnitude of the two ratios:

$$F_{CP}[R_{\mathrm{CP}}^{(0^{})}(\delta ),R_{\mathrm{CP}}^{(180^{})}(\delta )]_{\mathrm{min}}.$$
(11)
In Fig. 6 we plot $`F_{\mathrm{CP}}(\delta )`$ versus the peak energy of the narrow band beam, separately for $`L`$=2100 and 300 km. We show six values of $`\delta `$=0, 30, 60, 90, 120, and 150. The curves satisfy approximately the relation $`F_{CP}(180^{}+\delta )F_{CP}(\delta )`$. Hence the curves for $`\delta =`$180, 210, 240, 270, 300, and 330 can be inferred as the negatives of the above corresponding curves of $`\delta `$ less than 180. The left panel is for the 100 kt detector and the right panel shows the results for a 1000 kt detector. We see that for the 100 kt detector at both baselines the effects of the finite CP phases are within 1$`\sigma `$ from each other, including the CP conserving case. If we increase the detector size to 1000 kt, the CP violation effects can reach to the $`2\sigma `$ level for the beams around $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}`$ 3-4 GeV and 6-7 GeV for $`\delta =60^{}`$-$`120^{}`$ and $`240^{}`$-$`300^{}`$ at L=2100 km, and around $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}0.7`$ GeV for the similar $`\delta `$ ranges at L=300 km.

### 3.5 Effects of the uncertainty of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$

In all the above results we have used $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.05`$. Since $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ is proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$, the latter is a sensitive parameter for the electron event number. Accordingly, the counting experiment of the electron event number may provide a good measurement for the value of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$.

In Fig. 7 we present the electron event number versus the CP phase for different $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ values. The error bars indicate the size of the estimated total errors. From the total errors, we see how precisely the $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ value can be measured. For example, for L=2100 km the curve of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.08(0.06)`$ lies about $`1.5\sigma `$ ($`3\sigma `$) away from that of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.1`$. Then it is difficult to distinguish 0.1 from 0.08 all along the curves. Furthermore without knowing the CP phase, it may be difficult to distinguishing 0.1 at one CP phase to 0.6 at another CP phase. This ambiguity is even more serious for L=300 km because there is more variation of the event number as a function of the CP phase.

## 4 Joint analysis of baselines 2100 and 300 km

We imagine that major efforts of the very long baseline experiments such as H2B are the confirmation of the matter effect, the determination of the MSD signs, the CP phase, and $`\theta _{13}`$. However, there exist difficulties in finding unique solutions for them, given the measured electron event rate, as demonstrated in the preceding section. We have discussed repeatedly in the previous section the ambiguities caused by the current wide range of uncertainty in $`\theta _{13}`$. There are other ambiguities which are caused by the multi-valueness of the oscillation probability as a function of the oscillation parameters and the possibility of overlapping parameter regions. To illustrate the latter ambiguity let us consider Fig. 4. For the simplicity of argument, let us ignore any possible errors. Suppose a measurement of the electron event rate is 60 at 300 km baseline for a narrow band beam with peak energy 0.7 GeV. Then the CP phase can be either around 0 or 150 for $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.05`$. Similarly, suppose a measurement at the 2100 km baseline gives, say, the electron event rate is 40 at 4 GeV. Then CP phase can be either 150 or 300 for $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.05`$. Further, since the value of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ is unkown, we in fact obtain a curve in the $`\delta \mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ plane for a given electron event number, as shown in Fig. 8. Hence the measurement from only one experiment, either at L=300 km or at L=2100 km, is not enough to determine CP phase or the value of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$.

To illustrate the advantage of the joint analysis of two widely different baselines, we plot in Fig. 8 $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ vs $`\delta `$ for measured electron event rates for both 300 km and 2100 km baselines at respectively 60 and 40 events for the MSD sign I. In the absence of any errors, the intersect of the curves gives unique values of both $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ and $`\delta `$. In reality the situation will be more complicated due to the presence of errors of the measurements, and hence the intersect of the two curves will cover a sizable area of the $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ vs $`\delta `$ plane. However, this example shows the possibility of extra leverages one can gain with two different baselines.

In this section we present some of our analyses of such joint measurements, taking the advantage of superbeams like HIPA, which can offer multiple narrow band beams of different energies. We use different energies at the two baselines. We will plot 2100 km baseline vs 300 baseline by simultaneously looking at two different parameters.

### 4.1 $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ and the CP phase $`\delta `$

In Fig. 9 we show electron event number at L=2100 km versus those at L=300 km for fix MSD sign I. Each curve has a fixed value of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ with the CP phase $`\delta `$ varies in the full possible range from $`0^{}`$ to $`360^{}`$. The $`\delta =0^{}`$ point is marked by a solid dot and the $`\delta =180^{}`$ point by a cross. The direction of increasing $`\delta `$ is indicated by the arrow on the curve. The curves are generally ellipses and the eccentricity of the ellipse is determined by the specific beam energies of the two baselines.

We fix 0.7 GeV for the 300 km baseline and allow the energy at 2100 km to change. The upper diagram of Fig. 9 is at 4 GeV for 2100 km. When $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ increases the ellipse moves towards the upper right, i.e., increasing the electron event rate for both baselines. This is expected from the fact that the oscillation probability $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ is proportional to $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$. Since the ellipses of neighboring values of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ overlap significantly, the value of $`\delta `$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ can not be determined uniquely, reflecting again the ambiguities discussed in the preceding section. However there are energies at which the overlap of the ellipses is minimized. The lower diagram of Fig. 9 shows that the ellipses of constant $`\theta _{13}`$ are collapsed into lines when the beam energy of the 2100 km baseline is 6.3 GeV. So in principle the joint measurement allow us to narrow down the allowed range of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$. For the lines each measurement still allows two values of $`\delta `$. But the two values of $`\delta `$ which fall on top of one another on the line segment will be separated when the line becomes an ellipse. So measurements at both 6.3 and 4 GeV will offer a better possibility to determined the values of $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ and $`\delta `$ simultaneously.

In Table 3 we present, for the case of MSD sign I, some $`E_{\mathrm{peak}}`$ values in GeV of narrow band beams where the ellipses of Ne(300) versus Ne(2100) as the CP Phase varies from $`0^{}`$ to $`360^{}`$ collapse into lines. At these energies the curves for MSD sign II are ellipses of high eccentricities which approximate lines. For MSD signs III and IV, and in the absence of matter effect the curves are ellipse of very high eccentricities. For these energies the combined measurements of electron event at L=2100 km and L=300 km can provide better measurement for the $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$.

### 4.2 MSD sign and the CP phase $`\delta `$

In Fig. 10 we present similar results, but for different MSD signs with fixed $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})=0.05`$. The results without the matter effect are also plotted, with the dotted curves denoting MSD sign II or III and dashed ones I or IV. In the absence of the matter effect MSD signs I and IV give the same results, so do the MSD signs II and III, as already shown in Tables 1 and 2. For the almost overlapped curves of MSD sign III and IV with matter effects, the solid ones denote III and dotted ones IV.

It is clear from Fig. 10 that in the lower diagram, i.e., 6.3 GeV for the 2100 km baseline, it is quite easy to differentiate MSD signs I and II from III and IV, and from the case without the matter effect. To make better measurements it is again better to take measurements with the line together with the ellipse.

## 5 Conclusion

In the above study of the event rates and the sensitivity to various oscillation parameters investigated, we found:

* At the distance L=2100 km, a narrow band beam with peak energy of about 6 GeV is optimum for measuring CP violation effects and about 5 GeV for measuring matter effects.
* To measure the CP violation effect at a shorter distance such as L=300 km, a narrow band beam with lower peak energy ($`0.7`$ GeV) is preferable. But the matter effect is hardly observable at such a shorter baseline.
* The two baselines, 300 km and 2100 km, are complementary to each other. Through the joint analysis of the two baselines, some of the ambiguities associated with the measurement at either baselines may be resolved.

With the optimum narrow band beam, a 5-year operation of a 100 kt water Cerenkov detector at a very long distance such as L=2100 km has the following physics prospects:

* The matter effects can be observed.
* The sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{32}^2`$ may be determined.
* The sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{m}_{21}^2`$ may be determined only in favorable situations.
* Evidence exceeding 2-$`\sigma `$ of a CP violating phase may be seen in favorable cases for a detector size of 1000 kt or with a much longer running time.
* Combined with the analyses of L=300 km, the parameter $`\mathrm{sin}^2(2\theta _{13})`$ may be measured and the matter effects are more clearly determined.

In this article we have focused on the $`\nu _\mu \nu _e`$ exclusively. The investigation of the $`\tau `$ appearance and the inclusion of the $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$ beam option in the analysis, which is needed in the cases of MSD signs III and IV, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2<0`$, will be taken for a future investigation. There we will also make a more complete search for the best energies of the two baselines for the various parameters.

We finally note that the statistics are generally low in all the cases discussed. Running with higher energy narrow band beam will increase the statistics. However, that may be disfavored by the figure of merit (signal to error ratio). Another way to increase the statistics is to increase the detector mass. It has been pointed out, however, that there is a saturation problem  caused by the systematic errors which are of the form of the errors of types (ii) and (iii) as discussed at the end of Sec. 2. These errors increase linearly as the number of events rather than the square root of the number of events as is in the case of the statistical error. Hence, when the mass of the detector is increased so that the number of events becomes sufficiently large, the systematical error becomes dominant. After that, further increase of the detector size may no longer be beneficial. In Fig. 11 we show the ratio of $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_e`$ to $`N_e`$ as a function of the detector mass. We see that according to our general error estimate the best $`\mathrm{\Delta }N_e`$ to $`N_e`$ ratio can be attained is 6%. When the detector reaches 1000 kt the benefit of further increasing the detector size is no long significant.

## Acknowledgment

We thank K. Hagiwara and N. Okamura for discussions. We also thank our colleagues of the H2B collaboration  for support. This work is supported in part by DOE Grant No. DE-FG02-G4ER40817.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Due to instabilities at the Fermi surface, matter composed of deconfined quarks is believed to be a color superconductor at low temperatures (see Refs.  and other reviews). While the precise value of the energy gap at astrophysical densities is yet indeterminate, calculations using models of vacuum physics generally predict a gap in the neighborhood of 100 MeV for densities at and above three times that of equilibrium nuclear matter. This implies that quark matter with a chemical potential fixed around 400 MeV undergoes a phase transition between a quark-gluon plasma state and one of paired quarks at a critical temperature near 50 MeV. In this talk I discuss how this could lead to a variation in the neutrino signal emanating from a proto-neutron star formed in the wake of a supernova.

Our current understanding of Type II (core collapse) supernovae, based on a handful of observations and quite a bit of theoretical modeling, begins with the implosion of the inner core of star of mass 8–20 solar masses (see Ref.  for a recent review). The evolution of the remnant proto-neutron star is driven by the diffusion of neutrinos, which make their way through the hot ($`T25`$ MeV) and dense ($`n_B3n_0`$) core matter before a few are eventually detected on Earth. The temporal characteristics of this signal are determined for the most part by the neutrino mean free path through this core.

For temperatures much lower than the superconducting energy gap, $`T\mathrm{\Delta }`$, quark states are replaced by diquark quasi-particles and neutrino-quark cross sections are exponentially suppressed. Thus at late times, when $`T1`$ KeV, the neutrino mean free path in quark matter is practically infinite. But within the first minute after core collapse, deleptonization heats the dense core to $`T50`$ MeV before thermal neutrino emission cools the system. It is during this time that transitions between states of strongly-interacting matter would occur. While the phase transition from hadronic matter to a quark plasma is likely first order (but poorly understood), a slightly later transition from quark to superconducting quark matter might be second order, as in BCS theory. The associated critical behavior of the latter would lead to a slowdown in cooling, followed by a burst of streaming neutrinos as the temperature eventually falls below the quark energy gap. In what follows I will discuss inelastic neutrino-quark scattering in a simplified proto-neutron star environment in order to quantify this possible phenomena and speculate on an observable signal.

We are concerned here with the period in the proto-neutron star’s evolution during which the matter is at its hottest and most dense, immediately following the Joule heating due to primordial lepton release. The ambient conditions are a temperature near 50 MeV and a density around four times that of nuclear matter, or equivalently a quark chemical potential of 400 MeV. This is the final period (Cooling) in the evolution mapped on the generic phase diagram for nuclear matter in Figure 1.

## 2 Neutrino Mean Free Path in a Color Superconductor

Thermal neutrino diffusion is the primary means of heat escape from the dense core. While noting that the neutrino production rate will also differ from that of normal matter , in the diffusive regime the dominant critical behavior will be a change in the inelastic quark-neutrino cross section, since here neutrino production rates decouple from the transport equation and depend only on the neutrino mean free path. We thus calculated the differential and total cross sections in order to compute the neutrino mean free path in two-flavor quark matter. The magnitude of the superconducting gap, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, was taken as arbitrary within a range of values found in recent literature. Closely following BCS theory, we assumed the gap to be a constant, and calculated the response functions and neutrino cross sections in the weak coupling approximation.

Details, including polarization operators, differential and total cross sections, and limiting behavior can be found in Ref. . The essential physical difference between neutrinos scattering in superconducting quark matter as opposed to free quark matter is that, in the quasi-particle phase, the incident neutrino must transfer energy greater than twice the gap, or $`E_\nu 2\mathrm{\Delta }`$, to excite a quark pair. Stated equivalently, when the gap becomes large ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{>}{}\text{ }T30`$ MeV) the spacelike response functions ($`q_0<|\stackrel{}{q}|`$) are substantially suppressed, and the inelastic cross section is greatly diminished.

The mean free path, $`\lambda =(\sigma /V)^1`$, therefore grows with energy gap. This main result is shown in Figure 2. The left panel assumes a constant energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ at a constant temperature $`T=30`$ MeV. As expected, the mean free path grows substantially when $`T<\mathrm{\Delta }`$ for all neutrino energies. In the right panel an average thermal neutrino energy of $`E_\nu =\pi T`$ has been assumed, and the superconducting gap is varied for fixed $`T`$. The expected exponential behavior is clear for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{>}{}\text{ }3T`$ and, combining information from the two plots, one can deduce that for low temperatures the neutrinos are able to pass through kilometers of superconducting quark matter with only an occasional collision. These results are essentially independent of temperature for all $`T\stackrel{<}{}\text{ }50`$ MeV.

## 3 Cooling of an Idealized Quark Star

The theoretical state of the art in modeling proto-neutron star cooling involves complex computer simulations of multi-phase environments. To explore the consequences of the onset of superconductivity in a macroscopic core of deconfined quark matter, we will simply assume the existence of such a system and approximate it by a sphere of quark matter. We furthermore consider the relatively simple case of two massless flavors with identical chemical potentials and disregard for now any non-superconducting quarks which might be present in the system. We also make the (safer) assumption that the neutrino mean free path is much smaller than the dimensions of the astrophysical object and several orders of magnitude greater than the quark mean free path, meaning that the system cools by neutrino diffusion.

In a such a sphere of quark matter, the diffusion equation for energy transport is

$`C_V{\displaystyle \frac{dT}{dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{L_\nu }{r}},`$ (1)
where $`C_V`$ is the specific heat per unit volume of quark matter, $`T`$ is the temperature, and $`r`$ is the radius. The neutrino energy luminosity for each neutrino type, $`L_\nu `$, depends on the neutrino mean free path and the spatial gradients in temperature. It is approximated by

$$L_\nu 6𝑑E_\nu \frac{c}{6\pi ^2}E_\nu ^3r^2\lambda (E_\nu )\frac{f(E_\nu )}{r},$$
(2)
where $`c`$ denotes the speed of light in vacuum. In our analysis we assume that neutrino interactions are dominated by the neutral current scattering common to all neutrino types. Consequently, we take the same neutrino and anti-neutrino mean free path for every neutrino flavor, giving rise to the factor of six in Eq. (2). The equilibrium Fermi distribution, $`f(E_\nu )`$, and the (scattering) mean free path, $`\lambda (E_\nu )`$, are integrated over all neutrino energies, $`E_\nu `$.

The solution to the diffusion equation will also depend on the size of the system, the radius $`R10`$ km. The temporal behavior is characterized by a time scale $`\tau _c`$, which is proportional to the inverse cooling rate and can hence be deduced from Eq. (1). The characteristic time

$$\tau _c(T)=C_V(T)\frac{R^2}{c\lambda (T)},$$
(3)
is a strong function of the ambient matter temperature since it depends on the matter’s specific heat and the neutrino mean free path. This applies to a system characterized by the radial length $`R`$ and the energy-weighted average of the mean free path, $`\lambda (T)`$. Following our general treatment of the superconducting gap, we assume that the temperature dependence of the specific heat is described by BCS theory. We will then use the scattering results to calculate $`\lambda (T)`$. Furthermore, since neutrinos are in thermal equilibrium for the temperatures of interest, we may assume $`\lambda (T)\lambda (E_\nu =\pi T)`$. Finally, we note that the diffusion approximation is only valid when $`\lambda R`$ and will thus fail for very low temperatures, when $`\lambda R`$.

## 4 A Signal of Color Superconductivity?

The results of our calculations are summarized in Figure 3. We have taken the temperature dependence of the gap (long dashed curve) from BCS theory, $`\mathrm{\Delta }(T)/\mathrm{\Delta }_0=\sqrt{1(T/T_c)^2}`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ is the zero-temperature gap at a given density. The specific heat (dot-dashed curve) is also taken from the mean-field result, and is peaked around $`T=T_c`$ as expected in a second-order phase transition. With our result for the neutrino mean free path (short dashed curve), we combine factors to obtain the characteristic diffusion time (solid line), shown as a ratio to that found in a system of free quarks.

The consequences of these results are interpreted as follows. The early cooling rate, around $`T_c`$, is influenced mainly by the peak in the specific heat associated with the second order phase transition (the neutrino mean free path is not strongly affected when $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$). Subsequently, as the matter cools, both $`C_V`$ and $`\lambda ^1`$ decrease in a non-linear fashion for $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$. Upon further cooling, when $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$, both $`C_V`$ and $`\lambda ^1`$ decrease exponentially. Both of these effects accelerate the cooling process at later times.

We conclude that if the core of a neutron star formed in the aftermath of a supernova contains a large amount of quark matter at sufficiently high temperature and density, and if the associated neutrino signal can be detected on Earth, a unique temporal profile would be observed. Specifically, we expect a brief interval during which the cooling would slow around $`TT_c`$, signified by a period of reduced neutrino detection. This would be followed by a brief burst of neutrinos after the temperature falls well below $`T_c`$ and the quasi-quarks decouple from the thermal neutrinos.

We note that many real-world complications would weaken or disrupt this signal, as explained in Ref. . Primary among them are the presence of strange quarks and the likely existence of a hadronic shell of nuclear matter covering the core, opaque to neutrinos, which would even out a sharp signal. Furthermore, ours is in fact a generic prediction for any second-order phase transition, applied here to color superconductivity given our understanding of proto-neutron star evolution and the phase diagram of QCD. However, given the real prospect of detecting neutrinos emitted from a future supernova event, transport processes like the ones we discuss here might someday serve as a reliable probe of the properties of extremely dense matter.

I am pleased to thank Sanjay Reddy, my collaborator in the work described here. I am also grateful to the organizers of this conference and the staff of Nordita for their hospitality and support. This work was also supported by USDOE Grant DE-FG02-88ER40388.


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# Quantum Theory finally reconciled with Special Relativity

## Abstract

In 1935 Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) pointed out that Quantum Mechanics apparently implied some mysterious, instantaneous action at a distance. This paradox is supposed to be related to the probabilistic nature of the theory, but since deterministic alternatives involving “Hidden Variables” hardly agree with the experiments, the scientific community is now accepting this “quantum nonlocality” as if it were a reality. However, I have argued recently that Quantum Electrodynamics is free from the EPR paradox, due to an indetermination on the number of the unobserved “soft photons” that can be present in any step of any experiment. Here, I will provide a more general proof, based on an approach to the “problem of measurement” that implies the full reconciliation of Quantum Field Theory with Special Relativity. I will then conclude with some considerations on the interpretation of the Quantum Theory itself.

Quantum Field Theory; Measurement Problem; Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox; Entanglement

In 1935 Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) Einstein et al. (1935) pointed out that Quantum Mechanics apparently implied some mysterious, instantaneous action at a distance. This was considered a paradox, since it made the Quantum Theory incompatible with Special Relativity, suggesting the need for a more fundamental description of Nature. For a long time, many physicists have tried to build a causal local, deterministic theory, in the belief that the probabilistic behavior of the microscopic world was only due to the non observation of some Hidden Variables. Apart from the difficulty in elaborating a satisfactory model, such a project is now considered to be undermined by the results of several experiments that have been performed in the last 20 years Aspect et al. (1982); Zeilinger (1999). This has lead a large part of the scientific community to accept the Quantum Theory, including its supposed nonlocality, that is even used as the base for Teleportation and the current theories for Quantum Information and Quantum Computers. However, in the last few decades a very beautiful and successful description of the fundamental interactions has been achieved in terms of Quantum Field Theories (QFTs) Weinberg (1995, 1996). Recently, I have argued that the most popular of these theories, Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), is free from the EPR paradox, due to an indetermination on the number of the unobserved “soft photons” (i.e. photons that carry a very low energy) that can be present in any step of any experiment Tommasini (2001). Here, I will provide a more general proof, based on an approach to the “problem of measurement” that implies the full reconciliation of QFT with Special Relativity. I will then conclude with some considerations on the interpretation of the Quantum Theory itself.

Let me first briefly describe a typical, ideal EPR experiment, following Chap. 17 of Ref. Bransden and Joachain (2000). Two particles A and B, say two electrons 111The following discussion can be generalized, e.g. to include the case, that has been studied in actual experiments Aspect et al. (1982); Zeilinger (1999), where the particles under measurement are two (or more) photons Tommasini (2001)., are emitted in coincidence by a source and travel in opposite directions. Far from the production point, some conserved observable, say the $`z`$-component of the angular momentum (spin), is measured on both of them.

To fix the ideas, suppose that we know that the total angular momentum is zero, and that each of the two particles is created without a definite value for the spin component $`S_z`$. According to ordinary Quantum Mechanics, the measurement of the spin $`S_z(A)`$ of the electron A that is produced in a given single event will yield either the value $`+\mathrm{}/2`$, or the value $`\mathrm{}/2`$. If the experiment is repeated a great number of times, each of these two results will appear with a frequency that will be an approximation for the corresponding probability. For instance, if the initial state were completely “unpolarized”, these two probabilities would be equal to $`1/2`$. Now, let me consider again a single event, and measure the spin $`S_z(A)`$ of particle A far from the source, obtaining -say- the value $`+\mathrm{}/2`$. According to the usual interpretation Bransden and Joachain (2000), the conservation of the total angular momentum would then force particle B to get the definite value $`\mathrm{}/2`$ of $`S_z(B)`$. In other words, particle B would immediately change its state, “collapsing” in the eigenstate $`|\mathrm{}/2>`$ of $`S_z(B)`$, as a mere consequence of the measurement performed on the distant particle A! Such a situation is called a violation of “local realism”, and shows an evident contradiction with Relativity, that forbids any action to propagate faster than light. This is the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.

In practice, what can be done to test locality according to the previous ideas? It is clear that it is not sufficient to measure the spins of the two electrons in a single event and check that the spin of B takes a value which is opposite to that of A. In a single event, this could just be due to a casuality. For the test to be significant, in our simple example it seems that we have to check two things: 1) each of the two electrons should not be prepared in a $`S_z`$ eigenstate before the measurement (this condition can be guaranteed a priori by the experimental settings, and can be controlled a posteriori by verifying that different single measurements do not always give the same result for the individual spins); 2) the two spins should always give opposite values, whatever event is considered. In other words, we have to check that the two spins are “maximally correlated” 222For simplicity, I will consider only such a case, that corresponds to our two electron system. Any complication of such a scheme is not relevant for the present discussion.. In fact, this seems to be a consequence of Quantum Mechanics. For a long time, the experimental study of the correlations amongst the components of the spins of A and B along two arbitrary (in general different) directions in space, was also (erroneously) believed to allow to prove (or to discard) “quantum nonlocality” 333Actually, a more elaborated test was invented by Bell Bell (1964) that allowed to evaluate just some combinations of the correlations. A set of inequalities made out of them was then argued to be satisfied by Hidden Variable Theories and violated by Quantum Mechanics..

Let me now come back to the paradox, and make some historical remarks. Since the authors of Ref. Einstein et al. (1935) considered that local realism was a necessary ingredient of any reasonable physical description of Nature, they judged that a new theory was needed. Einstein also thought that the problem was due to the intrinsically probabilistic description of Quantum Mechanics, and hoped that a solution would eventually be found in Hidden Variable Theories, that would also allow for a deterministic description of Nature (“God does not play dice”, he used to say). Was he right?

In the last few decades, there has been increasing agreement within the scientific community that he was wrong. This conclusion seemed to be justified by the actual realization of a series of experiments measuring the statistical correlations between the spin/polarizations of the two (or more) particles A, B, that were produced in coincidence in an EPR experiment. The data were considered to be incompatible with Hidden Variables Theories, while they agreed with the prediction of Quantum Mechanics. Since Einstein himself used to relate locality with determinism, it is perhaps not surprising that these results were also interpreted (erroneously!) as an experimental evidence of “quantum nonlocality”. This conclusion was then transformed in the so-called “Bell theorem”. As a consequence, instead of being concerned with that implicit violation of Special Relativity that was apparently implied by Quantum Mechanics, several physicists have decided to accept the EPR paradox, i.e. that mysterious “quantum nonlocality”, as if it were a real characteristic of Nature itself. It is then generally believed that some mysterious action at a distance continues to link the fate of distant particles that have been produced in coincidence in the past. Such a supposed “phenomenon” is also called entanglement, and it is also believed to allow for the teleportation of the state of a particle A to another distant particle B. Enormous efforts in using the EPR paradox to build Quantum Information Theories and models for Quantum Computers have then been performed. To justify the strong violation of intuition and, what is a more serious problem, of Relativity, that is implied by such applications, it is common to cite some old sentences of authorities such as Richard P. Feynman (“I think I can safely say that nobody today understands Quantum Physics”) or Roger Penrose (Quantum Theory “makes absolutely no sense”). Ironically, Feynman himself is also one of the main contributors to the construction of the QFTs that allow for the solution of the paradox and the recovery of local realism and of a good deal of intuition.

In fact, the above argument leading to the EPR paradox is based on ordinary Quantum Mechanics, with two hidden assumptions: i) before the measurement is done, only the particles A and B are supposed to exist, i.e. no additional particle is allowed to appear in coincidence with them (this implies that, when the spin of A is measured and fixed to a definite value, it can only be compensated by an opposite value of the spin of B in order to conserve the zero total angular momentum); ii) the measurement process is supposed to modify the state of particle A, forcing it to ‘collapse” nto an eigenstate of the observed magnitude (e.g. angular momentum), and the actual modifications induced in the measuring apparatus are not considered to be relevant.

However, the old Quantum Mechanics approach is not correct in QFT, and these two assumptions turn out to be wrong.

In Ref. Tommasini (2001), I have already disproved assumption i). That argument was related to a basic characteristic of QFTs: they predict a non vanishing probability for any process that does not violate any fundamental symmetry. It is important to point out that this corresponds perfectly to the behavior observed in the High Energy Physics experiments: for instance, it is well known that an electron-positron collision can produce any result (each with its own probability) that is allowed by the available energy and the conservation of momentum, angular momentum, electric and color charge, etc. It is so rare to find an “accidental cancellation” for the rate of an allowed process, that such a case would be considered as a hint for some new symmetry forbidding that channel 444This is the case e.g. of Baryon and Lepton Numbers conservations, that are often thought to be due to some Grand Unification.. In other words, all the new particles that can be created without violating the universal conservation laws can actually be produced, and any definite process involving the creation of a particular set of particles has his corresponding amplitude of probability, that can eventually be computed approximately by drawing the relevant Feynman diagrams (when perturbation theory is applicable). In particular, since photons have zero rest mass, their energy can be arbitrarily low. Since they also have zero charge and color, we can conclude that an arbitrary number of “soft” photons, with low enough total energy, can always be created in coincidence with any physical process! It is important to point out that these soft photons can exist even if they are not observed: not only are they not looked for, but they would also easily escape detection anyway, due to their very low energy.

Incidentally, this result by itself will imply very important consequences for the Theory of Measurement. For instance, according to the usual postulates, the measurement of an observable in a system that is previously in one of its eigenstates will leave the system unaltered. But we see that such a situation is not realizable as a matter of principle, since we can never exclude the possible creation of unobserved soft photons (actually, we cannot know the soft photon content of the initial state either). In other words, the ideal measurement that is used to build ordinary Quantum Mechanics is excluded due to the relativistic effects that are described by QFT. It also seems that QFT is even less deterministic than Nonrelativistic Quantum Mechanics, due to this underlying sort of Indetermination Principle on the Number of Particles. In fact, the only predictions that it allows are on probabilities and average values. I will come back later to this important point.

In Ref. Tommasini (2001), I argued that this greater indetermination allows the EPR paradox to be removed. The argument went as follows. First, I noticed that there are two sources of indetermination on the number of real particles in an EPR experiment: at the production process, or at the measuring apparatus. In Ref. Tommasini (2001), I have explicitly drawn some Feynman diagrams that predict these effects. Here, just knowing that they exist is sufficient. In our example, after the spin $`S_z(A)`$ is measured to be, say, $`+\mathrm{}/2`$ on particle A, there is now way of knowing how many soft photons there are around. At most, we could say that the rest of the world, including particle B and an undetermined number of unobserved soft photons, should get a definite value of the angular momentum, $`\mathrm{}/2`$, to compensate the result obtained on A. This means that the measurement on A does not allow for any prediction of the value of the spin (or any other conserved quantity) on B with certainty. One could even look for single events showing an apparent symmetry violation (which could be important in the case of angular momentum), due to the fact that we observe just A and B, i.e. a part of the particles involved in the process Tommasini (2001). In any case, no mysterious action at a distance can be observed.

Here, one could raise a subtle question: is any non locality implied by the fact that the rest of the world (including the soft photons) apparently “collapses” into a $`\mathrm{}/2`$ eigenstate of the angular momentum, after the measurement is made on particle A 555I thank Esther Pérez for asking me this question.? Even though such a non locality would not be observable, the question is relevant as a matter of principle. The complete answer requires a deep understanding of the process of measurement in QFT, to be interpreted as the result of a succession of elementary scattering processes. This will allow me to correct the wrong assumption (ii) (see several paragraphs above), that is usually made in the treatment of the EPR paradox. As we shall see, this will also provide a more general and complete argument against quantum nonlocality, that could even work in the absence of the soft photons (but, of course, they exist!).

First of all, let me recall that in QFT the scattering matrix respects causality, and that all the conservation laws hold locally Weinberg (1995, 1996). (In perturbation theory, this means that the conservation laws are ensured by each vertex of any Feynman graph.) Therefore, when particle A interacts with the measuring apparatus in an EPR experiment, the angular momentum is conserved locally: only the particles of the apparatus that come in interaction with A (including the ones that might be created) can change their angular momenta when the spin of A is measured! This is a prediction of QFT.

In other words, we find that assumption (ii) was wrong, and the measurement on A is not compensated by a collapse on B, but merely by a change of the angular momentum state of the measuring apparatus! After the measurement, the state of the composite system, A + measuring apparatus (including the possible soft photons that might appear there), has the same angular momentum properties than before the measurement. No instantaneous effect is implied on B or on any distant particle. Special Relativity is saved!

Therefore, when the process of measurement is interpreted correctly in QFT, no quantum nonlocality exists! Incidentally, by considering the measurement as made out of scattering processes, we are also avoiding giving the observer the magic role that he/she had in the old formulation of Quantum Mechanics.

This also implies that we will have to renounce to the direct applications of the EPR paradox, such as entanglement and teleportation. However, I hope that the views that I am presenting here might stimulate further research on the applications of QFT, and could provide a new base for the construction of Quantum Information Theory and Quantum Computers, that will eventually continue to be a theoretical and practical necessity.

As a result of the previous discussion, I can safely assume that the EPR paradox is removed in QFT. But then one could wonder: what does the known QFT of Particle Physics actually predict for the correlations that have been measured by now in EPR experiments? Is there any risk of the agreement of the old Quantum Mechanics with the data being affected? In Ref. Tommasini (2001), I have given a rough computation that shows that the correlations are generally smaller than those obtained by the usual, old “entanglement” theory, which were “maximal” in our simple example. The difference was roughly proportional to the total probability for the appearance of an odd number of soft photons. If in the considered experimental settings that probability is small enough, the correlations predicted by QFT are expected to be close to the ones that were obtained by the old, soft photons-less, entanglement theory, and that showed an agreement with the actual data. In other words, not only are QFTs locally realistic (as we have seen); they can still predict correlations that can violate Bell inequalities. Incidentally, this shows that the Bell theorem cannot be applied to QFT.

It is worth noting that such correlations are just a reminder of the common origin in the past of the particles, and are not due to any mysterious action at a distance. This is a general result in QFT, where the correlation are proven to be causal, i.e. they respect Special Relativity Weinberg (1995, 1996). This is considered to be necessary for the consistency of the theory itself, which turns out to be more intuitive (or at least less absurd) than it was thought.

At last, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen were right at least on one basic principle: nonlocality is impossible. However, the solution to their paradox does not reside in Hidden Variable Theories and determinism, but in the Quantum Field Theories that have been introduced to describe Particle Physics Weinberg (1995, 1996), and that represent one of the most beautiful and successful achievements in the History of Physics. What Einstein did not expect was the fact that it was not necessary to renounce to the indetermination to solve the paradox. In fact, QFT seems to be even less deterministic than the old Quantum Mechanics!

I am grateful to Humberto Michinel for stimulating discussions, and to him and Fernando Tommasini for encouragement and for critically reading the preliminary versions of this work. I also thank Ruth García Fernández and Rebecca Ramanathan for help.