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# A submillimetre difference between radio galaxies and radio quasars: evidence for quasar-heated dust and synchronized submillimetre and radio source activity

## 1 Introduction

Submillimetre observations provide an excellent method of detecting dusty star-forming galaxies at high redshifts: UV radiation from hot stars is absorbed by dust, re-radiated in the far-infrared and redshifted into the submillimetre. The steep submillimetre spectral index leads to large $`k`$-corrections which, at high redshifts, compensates for increasing cosmological dimming so that an object with a given submillimetre luminosity has a similar observed flux-density at $`z=1`$ to a similarly-luminous one at $`z=5`$ (Blain & Longair 1993).

Powerful radio sources can be easily identified out to high redshifts and are thought to be associated with massive elliptical galaxies, or their progenitors. The existence of this close association is well known at low-to-intermediate redshifts (e.g. Owen & Laing 1989) and it is likely to be maintained to higher redshifts by scaling relations between radio luminosity, accretion luminosity, black hole mass and (dark matter) halo mass (e.g. Rawlings & Saunders 1991; Magorrian et al. 1998). At low-redshifts, radio galaxies appear to be kinematically-relaxed massive ellipticals (McLure et al. 1999; Dunlop et al. 2001; Bettoni et al. 2001) with old stellar populations (Nolan et al. 2001). These facts, together with the small scatter in the near-infrared Hubble diagram to $`z3`$ (Jarvis et al. 2001a), suggest that most of the star formation in powerful radio galaxies occurred at early cosmic epochs.

In the first large study of the submillimetre emission of high-redshift radio galaxies, Archibald et al. (2001; hereafter A01) made sensitive (850 $`\mu `$m sensitivity $`1`$ mJy rms) submillimetre observations of 47 radio galaxies with the SCUBA array on the JCMT. Their sample covered the redshift range $`1<z<4.5`$ and they detected dust emission in 14 objects. The main result of their study was a clear difference between the detection rate at $`z<2.5`$ of 15% and the detection rate at $`z>2.5`$ of 75%. This indicates that the submillimetre luminosity of radio galaxies increases systematically with redshift, suggesting that the bulk of star formation in radio galaxies, and by inference in all massive galaxies, occurred at epochs corresponding to high redshifts.

Unified schemes for radio galaxies and radio quasars222 We will use the term ‘radio quasars’ to refer to lobe-dominated steep-spectrum radio sources associated with quasar nuclei. These are the dominant population of radio-loud quasars in low-frequency-selected samples such as 3CRR and 6CE, whereas compact flat-spectrum quasars dominate in high-frequency-selected samples. Flat-spectrum quasars often have high submillimetre fluxes simply by virtue of a continuation of their synchrotron spectra from radio to shorter wavelengths.propose they are the same objects viewed along different lines-of-sight, such that in radio galaxies the nuclear regions are obscured by a dusty torus or warped disc (Scheuer 1987; Barthel 1989). Such theories have proved remarkably successful (see Antonucci 1993 for a review), at least at high radio luminosities (Willott et al. 2000a). For objects at redshifts $`z1.5`$, the observed 850 $`\mu `$m radiation was emitted at a rest-frame wavelength of $`300\mu `$m. At these wavelengths, dust is expected to be optically thin and its thermal emission isotropic (e.g. Granato & Danese 1994; Efstathiou & Rowan-Robinson 1995). Therefore, according to the simplest type of radio-loud AGN unification scheme, the submillimetre properties of radio galaxies and radio quasars, matched in terms of low-frequency radio luminosity and redshift, should be similar. In more realistic unified schemes, however, they may not be expected to be identical. Rawlings & Saunders (1991) and Simpson (1998) have argued that samples of radio galaxies and radio quasars, matched in one orientation-independent quantity (i.e. low-frequency radio luminosity), are expected to have different distributions in a second orientation-independent quantity (i.e. \[O III\] emission line luminosity) if the two quantities are linked by a scaling relation with intrinsic scatter. The first motivation behind the work described in this paper was to explore unified schemes further by looking for significant differences between the submillimetre properties of radio galaxies and radio quasars matched in 151-MHz luminosity and redshift.

The second motivation behind this paper was to explore further the suggestion of Blundell & Rawlings (1999) that some part of the evolution in the submillimetre properties of radio galaxies with redshift is a selection effect linked to the inevitable youth of the highest-redshift radio sources from flux-limited samples. A01 have already considered this suggestion, arguing that it is not a primary driver of the observed redshift dependencies. However, with a small dynamic range in source age, and somewhat uncertain selection effects, the high-redshift sample of Archibald et al. is not ideally suited to a test of the idea that submillimetre properties might be correlated with the time since the jet-triggering event.

At $`z1.5`$ A01 have already obtained submillimetre data on an unbiased sample of 3CRR and 6CE galaxies, and we aimed to complement these with new observations of a matched sample of radio quasars. In Section 2 we describe the observations and results. In Section 3 we consider the likely contribution to the measured submillimetre fluxes from an extension of the radio synchrotron spectrum. In Section 4 we consider explanations for our results. We present our conclusions in Section 5. The convention for all spectral indices $`\alpha `$ is that flux-density $`S_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$. We assume throughout that $`H_0=70\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=0.3`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$.

## 2 Observations

We have defined a sample of radio quasars in the redshift range $`1.37<z<2.0`$ selected from two complete radio samples (3CRR – Laing, Riley & Longair 1983; 6CE – Rawlings, Eales & Lacy 2001) to compare with the radio galaxies from the same samples in the same redshift range in the study of A01. Due to scheduling reasons only 3CRR quasars within the Right Ascension range $`04^\mathrm{h}<\mathrm{RA}<22^\mathrm{h}`$ are included in our sample. These were supplemented with two quasars from the revised 3C catalogue (3CR – Spinrad et al. 1985). These two quasars, 3C 298 and 3C 280.1, are not included in the 3CRR sample due to reasons of low declination and radio flux-density just below the 3CRR limit, respectively. They are the only high galactic latitude quasars in the target redshift range in the 3CR sample which are not included in the 3CRR sample. The total sample consists of 11 quasars and the comparison sample extracted from A01 contains 12 radio galaxies (Table 1).

The sample of radio quasars was observed in photometry mode with the SCUBA bolometer array at the JCMT in March, April, October 1999, November 2000, February and April 2001. Observations were made simultaneously at 850 $`\mu `$m and 450 $`\mu `$m and the sensitivities reached at 850 $`\mu `$m are $`1`$ mJy rms. The atmospheric zenith opacity at 850 $`\mu `$m ranged from 0.16 to 0.52 with a median of 0.22. The data were reduced using the SURF package, following the same method as in A01 for consistency. The resulting flux-densities are given in Table 1 along with the data for the matched radio galaxy sample. Ten out of eleven radio quasars were detected at 850 $`\mu `$m at $`>2\sigma `$ significance (eight at $`>3\sigma `$), compared with only four $`>2\sigma `$ detections out of the twelve radio galaxies. At the shorter wavelength of 450 $`\mu `$m, three quasars have $`>2\sigma `$ detections, compared to none of the radio galaxies (although the quasar observations are generally more sensitive at 450 $`\mu `$m than those of the radio galaxies due to the introduction of new filters in October 1999). The mean quasar $`S_{850}`$ is $`6.3\pm 1.0`$ mJy and the mean radio galaxy $`S_{850}`$ is $`1.2\pm 0.6`$ mJy. Therefore the quasars are brighter than the radio galaxies in the submillimetre by a factor of 5.

Relating the observed submillimetre flux-density to a submillimetre/far-infrared luminosity is not a trivial matter, given the poor constraints on the shape of the dust spectra for most sources which have only been detected at one or two wavelengths. Therefore, we adopt a template dust spectrum as has been determined from observations of a sample of similarly luminous (submillimetre/far-infrared luminosities $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}10^{13}L_{\mathrm{}}`$) objects by Priddey & McMahon (2001). This template consists of isothermal optically-thin dust with temperature $`T=41`$ K and emissivity index $`\beta =1.95`$. For our adopted cosmological model and dust template, the observed $`850\mu `$m flux-density $`S_{850}`$ of a source with a given $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ does not change appreciably over the redshift range $`z=1`$ to $`z=5`$. The conversion between $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ and $`S_{850}`$ for our adopted dust spectrum is $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}2\times 10^{12}(S_{850}/\mathrm{mJy})L_{\mathrm{}}`$. However, for higher dust temperatures or multi-temperature models (which are required to fit the infra-red SEDs of most luminous AGN – e.g. Rowan-Robinson 2000), $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ could be up to an order of magnitude greater than this, so these values of $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ should be treated as lower limits. Therefore the radio quasars we have detected with SCUBA have lower limits on their far-infrared luminosities in the range $`4\times 10^{12}`$ to $`2\times 10^{13}L_{\mathrm{}}`$. It is likely that many of them would be classified as hyperluminous infrared sources ($`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}10^{13}L_{\mathrm{}}`$) if their far- and mid-infrared fluxes were measured. Throughout most of this paper we will use the observed submillimetre flux-density in preference to the far-infrared luminosity and thereby avoid uncertainty in $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ due to the unknown dust spectral shape.

Five of the radio quasars are also detected at wavelengths shorter than 850$`\mu `$m. 3C 191, 3C 318 and 6C 1045+3513 are detected at 450$`\mu `$m with SCUBA and 3C 268.4, 3C 298 and 3C 318 are detected in the far-infrared by ISO and/or IRAS. These objects are discussed in further detail here.

### 2.1 Notes on objects detected at $`100450\mu `$m

3C 191

The submillimetre spectral index of 3C 191 determined from the 850$`\mu `$m and 450$`\mu `$m fluxes is $`2.4\pm 0.6`$, consistent within $`2\sigma `$ with the value of $`3.2`$, expected for our assumed dust template. We find that $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}>1.2\times 10^{13}L_{\mathrm{}}`$. The optical spectral slope is $`\alpha _{\mathrm{opt}}=0.7`$ (Barthel, Tytler & Thomson 1990), quite similar to the typical radio quasar value of $`\alpha _{\mathrm{opt}}=0.5`$ (Brotherton et al. 2001). This indicates that there is little reddening of the quasar light along our line-of-sight. However, 3C 191 has very strong associated absorption lines with a C IV absorption equivalent width of 6.1 Å (Anderson et al. 1987). Hamann et al. (2001) studied these absorption systems with high-resolution spectroscopy and determined the distance of the absorbers from the nucleus to be $`30`$ kpc with a corresponding characteristic flow time of $`3\times 10^7`$ years. The distances of the radio hotspots from the nucleus are of a similar size-scale (projected linear size=41 kpc), corresponding to an approximate age of the radio source of $`3\times 10^6`$ years (see Sec. 4.2).

3C 268.4

3C 268.4 is detected at $`850\mu `$m ($`5.1\pm 1.2`$ mJy) but not at $`450\mu `$m. Recent detections at $`170\mu `$m and $`90\mu `$m with ISO and at 1.3 mm with IRAM ($`6.1\pm 1.6`$ mJy) indicate a high far-IR luminosity and some synchrotron contamination of the mm fluxes (Andreani et al. 2001). Estimating the millimetre contamination by synchrotron emission is not a trivial matter due to the lack of other data at frequencies higher than 15 GHz (Fig. 1). For reasons to be discussed in Sec. 3 we expect the extended radio lobe spectrum to steepen sharply at high frequencies and the main synchrotron component in the millimetre regime to be the compact core. It is also clear in Fig. 1 that the core spectrum also steepens between 15 GHz and 1.3 mm. To estimate the synchrotron contamination to the $`850\mu `$m flux-density we assume a millimetre core spectrum with $`\alpha =1`$ which gives $`S_{850}=3`$ mJy. As we will show below, the properties of the dust spectrum require a contribution to the $`850\mu `$m flux-density from dust which is in approximate agreement with this contribution from the core.

We have fitted the far-IR and sub-mm data with a range of thermal dust spectra. Using only the ISO fluxes and the $`450\mu `$m upper limit, the strongly peaked spectrum at $`170\mu `$m (observed frame) provides strong constraints on the dust temperature and emissivity index (Fig. 1). The best fitting values are $`T=48`$ K and $`\beta =2.5`$ for dust which is optically-thin at $`\lambda >50\mu `$m and this spectrum gives an expected $`850\mu `$m flux-density of 2.7 mJy. The far-IR luminosity of this dust spectrum is $`2\times 10^{13}\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{}}`$. This value for the emissivity index is larger than usually observed (Priddey & McMahon 2001; Dunne et al. 2000) but requiring $`\beta `$ to be no larger than 2.0 gives a similar far-IR luminosity and a higher expected $`850\mu `$m flux-density of 4.0 mJy. Therefore we conclude that the dust contribution to the $`850\mu `$m flux-density is significant and independent of its actual value, $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}>2\times 10^{13}\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{}}`$ and the object is classified as hyperluminous. 3C 268.4 is not heavily reddened in the rest-frame UV but does show strong C IV associated absorption (equivalent width $`>1.9`$ Å; Anderson et al. 1987).

3C 298

The source with the highest 850 $`\mu `$m flux-density in our sample is 3C 298. This quasar is extremely bright at all wavelengths from the radio through to X-rays. It was detected by IRAS at 60 $`\mu `$m and by ISO at five wavelengths ranging from 12.8 to 170 $`\mu `$m (Meisenheimer et al. 2001). 3C 298 has a strong radio core (515 mJy at 5 GHz; Akujor et al. 1991) but is lobe-dominated at GHz frequencies. The measured 1.3 mm flux-density of 14.1 mJy (Meisenheimer et al. 2001) shows that the core is still strong at millimetre wavelengths and makes a substantial contribution to the observed 850 $`\mu `$m flux-density. We have fitted the SED of 3C 298 to attempt to determine the relative contributions of dust and synchrotron emission (Figure 2). This procedure is not trivial because the core spectrum appears to be fairly flat up to a rest-frame frequency of 200 GHz and then steepens sharply to $`\alpha 2`$ at higher frequencies. However, the flux-density measurements at these high frequencies have large errors and are only $`1\sigma `$ from being consistent with $`\alpha =1`$, as is more common above the break in the core spectra of lobe-dominated quasars (e.g. Antonucci, Barvainis & Alloin 1990; van Bemmel & Bertoldi 2001). Therefore we assume a core with $`\alpha =1`$ over the observed 1300 to 850 $`\mu `$m range. We conclude that $`8`$ mJy of the 850 $`\mu `$m flux-density is due to synchrotron radiation and $`13`$ mJy is due to thermal dust emission. The reason why this quasar was not detected at 450 $`\mu `$m was due to the poor sensitivity caused by the high airmass of the observation. The submillimetre and far-infrared data can be equally well fit by thermal spectra with temperatures $`T=50`$ K (typical of starbursts) and $`T=100`$ K. The total IR luminosity of 3C 298 is $`8\times 10^{13}\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{}}`$.

3C 298 is a small radio source with projected linear size of 12.7 kpc. It shows very strong CIV associated absorption with equivalent width 4.5 Å (Anderson et al. 1987). The optical spectral slope is $`\alpha _{\mathrm{opt}}=1.5`$, which is redder than typical quasars. This reddening is most likely due to dust associated with the absorbing gas.

3C 318

In Willott, Rawlings & Jarvis (2000b) we have already studied the spectral energy distribution (SED) of 3C 318 and determined a total IR luminosity of $`>7\times 10^{13}\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{}}`$ (corrected for the cosmology used in this paper). The quasar optical spectrum is found to be reddened, indicating the presence of dust in the quasar environment. 3C 318 is a small (6.8 kpc) radio source.

6C 1045+3513

6C 1045+3513 is detected at both 850 and 450 $`\mu `$m, with a submillimetre spectral index of $`1.3\pm 0.7`$. On the basis of the 850 $`\mu `$m observations we find $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}>2\times 10^{13}L_{\mathrm{}}`$. In the Appendix we present new optical spectroscopy of this object, showing it to be a reddened quasar, similar to 3C 318. The spectrum also shows a CIV broad absorption feature. 6C 1045+3513 is the smallest radio source of the entire sample of quasars and radio galaxies with a projected linear size of just 1.7 kpc.

### 2.2 Comparison of radio quasars and radio galaxies

Fig. 3 plots the observed 850 $`\mu `$m flux-density $`S_{850}`$ against low-frequency (151 MHz) radio luminosity $`L_{151}`$ for the matched quasar and radio galaxy samples. The main point to note from Fig. 3 is that there is a clear difference in the flux-density distributions of the quasar and radio galaxy samples, with the mean quasar submillimetre flux brighter by a factor of 5.333A second point to note from Fig. 3 is that there is only marginal evidence for a correlation between $`L_{151}`$ and $`S_{850}`$. The survival analysis probability for a correlation being present is $`80`$%. Removing the outlying point of 6C 1045+3513 increases the correlation probability to $`95`$%. This matter has been discussed by Archibald et al. (2001), and we defer any further discussion to a wider investigation of the dependences of submillimetre luminosity on radio luminosity and redshift which will use new SCUBA data on radio sources from fainter samples than the 3CR and 6CE samples used here (Rawlings et al., in prep.).

Due to the large number of 850 $`\mu `$m upper limits for the radio galaxies, we use survival analysis statistical tests which can account for these limits (Feigelson & Nelson 1985; Isobe, Feigelson & Nelson 1986). Using a variety of tests to compare the 850 $`\mu `$m flux distributions of the quasars and radio galaxies (the Gehan, logrank and Peto-Prentice tests), the flux-density distributions are found to be different at $`>99.9`$% significance. Given the high fraction of upper limits for the radio galaxies, we cannot unequivocally determine the factor by which the quasars are brighter than the radio galaxies in the submillimetre. Using the above tests we find that the quasars are brighter than the radio galaxies by a factor $`2`$ at the 95% confidence level.

## 3 The synchrotron contribution to submillimetre fluxes

We have found the robust result that radio quasars have $`25`$-times higher submillimetre fluxes than radio galaxies of the same radio luminosity and redshift. If this emission is due to optically-thin dust, then this is inconsistent with the notion of radio quasars and radio galaxies being identical apart from some orientation dependence. Given that the radio sources we are discussing are some of the most powerful known, it is essential that we consider whether the observed submillimetre fluxes could be affected by an extrapolation of the nonthermal radio synchrotron emission. Radio lobes and hotspots generally have a very steep spectrum at millimetre wavelengths and are unlikely to contribute significantly for many sources. This issue is discussed in detail in A01 where they find that extended synchrotron components very rarely contribute more than 1 mJy to the 850 $`\mu `$m flux-density. However, A01 note that it is possible that two of the radio galaxy detections in our sample (3C 470 and 6C 0820+3642) become non-detections after correcting for synchrotron emission. We do not attempt to make any corrections for this in this paper, due to the large uncertainties involved in extrapolating the spectrum from radio frequencies. In Sec. 4.2 we will discuss this in terms of the angular extent of the radio sources with respect to the size of the SCUBA beam. Of course, radio quasars and radio galaxies would suffer equally from lobe or hotspot emission, so it cannot explain the difference in submillimetre properties between the two types of object.

The emission from radio cores and jets is beamed and Doppler boosting makes it highly orientation dependent. In the standard unification scheme, radio quasars have their jet axes closer to our line-of-sight and the enhanced Doppler boosting means that quasars have brighter cores than radio galaxies. Note that because the 3C and 6C radio samples were selected at low frequencies, where extended emission dominates, the quasars in our sample are lobe-dominated and not like the core-dominated blazars which are known to have fairly flat ($`0\alpha 0.7`$) spectra extending into the submillimetre regime (e.g. Gear et al. 1994). There have been few investigations of the radio–millimetre spectral indices of lobe-dominated quasar cores. This is due largely to the fact that their 5 GHz flux-densities are typically in the range $`10100`$ mJy and, given that their core spectra are not flat, most have been below the sensitivity limit of many millimetre and submillimetre telescopes. In a study of six lobe-dominated quasars, Antonucci, Barvainis & Alloin (1990) find that the typical spectral index between 22 GHz and 230 GHz is $`\alpha 1.0`$. Van Bemmel & Bertoldi (2001) found the 5–250 GHz spectral indices of three radio quasars to all be $`1`$. Athreya et al. (1997) compare radio galaxy, lobe-dominated and core-dominated quasar cores and predict that most lobe-dominated quasar cores are flat $`\alpha 0`$ at GHz frequencies, but steepen at $`30`$ GHz (rest-frame). In Sec. 2 we showed that the core spectra of 3C 268.4 and 3C 298 are also likely to have $`\alpha 1`$. Another one of our quasar sample, 3C 280.1, has an IRAM 1.25mm flux-density of $`3.5\pm 1.7`$ (Andreani et al. 2001). This suggests its core spectral index from 5 GHz to 1.25 mm is $`\alpha 0.7`$, again indicating that the $`850\mu `$m emission must contain a significant contribution from dust. The one example of a flat ($`\alpha 0.3`$) millimetre spectral index for a lobe-dominated radio source is the unusual radio galaxy 6C 0902+34 (as discussed by A01). The radio properties of this object suggest its jet axis is at a small angle to our line-of-sight and dust obscuration prevents us from observing the nuclear source and classifying it as a quasar (Carilli 1995). Therefore, the available evidence suggests that the core millimetre spectral indices of (lobe-dominated) radio quasars are mostly steep ($`1`$), but with a significant scatter such that some sources will have flatter core spectra.

In Fig. 4 we plot $`S_{850}`$ against the radio core flux-densities at 5 GHz given in Table 1. As expected, the radio quasars have cores which are brighter than those of the radio galaxies by a factor $`10`$. In Fig. 4 we also plot lines corresponding to the expected sub-mm flux-density of the core as a function of core flux-density for a range of spectral indices between 5 GHz and 850 $`\mu `$m. 3C 298 has a core flux a factor of ten greater than any of the other quasars in our study. As we saw in the previous section, its core almost certainly makes a significant contribution to its 850 $`\mu `$m flux of $`10`$ mJy. If the five quasars on the $`\alpha =0.5`$ line all have spectra with $`\alpha 1`$ then the synchrotron contribution to their 850 $`\mu `$m fluxes is $`1`$ mJy, well below their detected fluxes with the exception of 3C 205. Flatter spectral indices of $`\alpha 0.5`$ would be necessary for the cores to be responsible for the detections of all these quasars. In reality, it is likely that there is a spread in the GHz to millimetre spectral indices of the quasar cores such that a few of these quasar submillimetre detections might well be influenced by synchrotron emission.

Five of the radio quasars (3C 191, 3C 268.4, 3C 298, 3C 318 and 6C 1045+3513) are detected at shorter far-infrared wavelengths and from their SEDs we are confident that they are dusty hyperluminous objects (Sec. 2). For the other quasars, none of the 450 $`\mu `$m non-detections are sensitive enough for us to be able to exclude the presence of a thermal dust spectrum being responsible for the observed 850 $`\mu `$m emission. 3C 181 and 3C 432 have very weak cores, which are steep ($`\alpha >0.5`$) at GHz frequencies and therefore their cores cannot be significant at 850 $`\mu `$m, so we consider these as further secure detections of dust. The IRAM 1.25mm flux of 3C 280.1 suggests that its core component cannot account for all the observed 850 $`\mu `$m flux. The remaining two submillimetre bright quasars (3C 205 and 3C 270.1) lie close to the $`\alpha =0.5`$ line in Fig. 4 and we cannot yet be certain that we have detected dust in these objects. Given the available evidence of the likely range of core spectra, we suspect that one or two of these submillimetre detections will be dominated by synchrotron emission. Sensitive millimetre observations of these sources are needed to differentiate between synchrotron and dust. We thus repeated the statistical tests performed in Section 2, now assuming, conservatively, that the submillimetre detections of both of these quasars are due solely to synchrotron emission: the detections were replaced with non-detections of $`0.0\pm 1.0`$ mJy. The mean quasar $`S_{850}`$ is now $`5.2\pm 1.3`$, still a factor of 4 greater than the mean radio galaxy $`S_{850}`$ of $`1.2\pm 0.6`$ The survival analysis tests confirm that a statistical difference between the submillimetre fluxes of radio galaxies and quasars remains at 95% significance.

## 4 Why do some radio quasars have high submillimetre luminosities?

We have shown that core synchrotron emission may make a small contribution to the $`850\mu `$m fluxes of 3C radio quasars, but cannot explain all the submillimetre difference between quasars and radio galaxies. In Fig. 3 we showed that there is no systematic difference in the radio luminosities of the two types of object. In this section we consider whether there are any other differences between radio galaxies and quasars which may help to explain the difference in their submillimetre luminosities. The key to following our arguments is that we feel that in any realistic unified scheme we must go beyond the simplest model in which the probability of viewing a quasar nucleus is unity for a viewing angle $`\theta \theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$, with $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$ constant, and zero at $`\theta >\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$.

### 4.1 The effect of the intrinsic luminosity of the quasar

As discussed in Sec. 1 the idea that radio galaxies and radio quasars with similar low-frequency radio luminosities should have similar distributions in a second orientation-independent quantity is not quite true. For example, Simpson (1998) has quantified the factor by which quasars should have higher \[O III\] line strengths than radio galaxies, matched in radio luminosity, in the context of the receding-torus model for AGN (Lawrence 1991). Considering a population of quasars with a spread in optical luminosity, those quasars with higher optical luminosities have a larger torus opening angle due to the radius at which dust is sublimated being larger. Taking into account the scatter in the correlation between radio and optical luminosity, this means that sources with higher optical luminosities can be viewed within a larger opening angle and are thus more likely to be classified as quasars. An additional effect is that the larger opening angles allow a greater fraction of the ionizing continuum to escape, however this is not the dominant effect in this case. Simpson (1998) showed that this leads to a sample of radio quasars having a mean optical luminosity, as probed by their \[O III\] line luminosity, approximately twice that of a sample of radio galaxies of the same radio luminosity.

In Fig. 5 we plot $`S_{850}`$ against the \[O III\] emission line luminosity $`L_{[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}]}`$, which is emitted isotropically, believed to be produced outside any obscuring torus, and which is a good indicator of the ionizing luminosity (Simpson 1998). Correlation tests show that $`S_{850}`$ and $`L_{[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}]}`$ for the radio quasars and radio galaxies are positively correlated at 95% significance. It is also apparent that the quasars do typically have higher $`L_{[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}]}`$ than the radio galaxies. For the quasars the mean $`\mathrm{log}(L_{[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}]}/\mathrm{W})`$ is $`36.9\pm 0.1`$ and for the radio galaxies it is $`36.2\pm 0.2`$. Thus there is a factor of five difference in the mean \[O III\] luminosities of the two types of object in our sample. A similar difference between $`L_{[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}]}`$ for the highest radio luminosity quasars and radio galaxies is also evident from Fig. 5 of Jackson & Rawlings (1997). In that study, all the objects have \[O III\] line observations made with the same wide slit, thereby eliminating uncertainties due to inhomogeneous datasets. This difference in emission line luminosity (and consequently ionizing luminosity) could explain the difference of a factor a few in the average luminosities of quasars and radio galaxies in the mid- and far-infrared in studies with IRAS and ISO (Heckman et al. 1994; Hes et al. 1995; van Bemmel, Barthel & de Graauw 2000; Meisenheimer et al. 2001), since this radiation is certainly dominated by nuclear emission reprocessed by the dust torus.

Could such an effect also be responsible for the similar factor difference in the submillimetre luminosities of radio quasars and radio galaxies? This would require a tight correlation between the submillimetre and optical continuum emission from quasars. The analysis of Simpson (1998), predicting a factor of two difference in the \[O III\] luminosities of radio quasars and radio galaxies, used the known scatter of 0.6 dex in the radio–optical correlation (Serjeant et al. 1998; Willott 2000). Therefore, we would expect the scatter exhibited in the radio–submillimetre correlation to be of the same order if the submillimetre and optical continua are tightly correlated. A power law fit to the marginal correlation between $`L_{151}`$ and $`S_{850}`$ in Fig.2 gives a linear slope with a scatter of 0.3 dex. The scatter may be slightly larger than this because of the large number (40%) of non-detections (in the above analysis non-detections were set to their 1$`\sigma `$ upper limits). However, within the limited range in $`L_{151}`$ available in our study, we find the scatter in the radio–submillimetre correlation to be no larger than that of the radio–optical correlation.

A tight correlation between submillimetre and optical luminosities could probably only come about by direct heating of the dust responsible for the submillimetre emission by the AGN (as is known to be the case for the mid-infrared emission, and has been discussed previously by Willott et al. 2000b). In this case the scatter could be as small as that seen in the correlation between optical and mid-infrared luminosities of optically-bright, low-redshift quasars, i.e. 0.2 dex from the study of Rowan-Robinson (1995). If the far-infrared emission is due to dust heated by an intense starburst rather than by the quasar, a larger scatter is predicted; indeed the larger scatter, of 0.4 dex, in the far-infrared versus optical luminosity plot from Rowan-Robinson (1995) was used as an argument that: (i) the far-infrared emission from the low-redshift quasars is dominated by starburst-heated dust; and (ii) the scaling relation between optical and far-infrared luminosities arises from both quantities being correlated with a third variable, i.e. the black hole and/or galaxy mass. However, in the quasar-heating hypothesis, the far-infrared luminosity is strongly dependent upon the extended dust distribution (e.g. Granato & Danese 1994) and would indeed be expected to show a larger scatter than the mid-infrared–optical ratio. It may seem surprising that objects with such large quantities of dust have such a small scatter in these ratios because of the effects of dust-reddening of the optical emission. However, in both the Rowan-Robinson sample and the radio-loud sample discussed in this paper, objects would not be classified as quasars if they were heavily reddened ($`A_V\stackrel{>}{}3`$).

Finally in this section, we note that despite the quantitative agreement between the predictions of the receding-torus model and the submillimetre difference between radio quasars and radio galaxies, other physical effects seem likely to be important. Note, for example, that the high submillimetre luminosity of 6C 1045+3513 is an anomaly in the receding-torus model, since it has a value of $`L_{[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}]}`$ below that of all the 3C radio galaxies.

### 4.2 The effect of the radio source age

Fig. 6 plots $`S_{850}`$ against the projected linear sizes $`D`$ of the radio sources. According to unified schemes, quasars will typically have projected linear sizes a factor of $`1.6`$ smaller than those of radio galaxies, due to the smaller angles between their jet axes and our line-of-sight. (assuming $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}=53^{}`$ from Willott et al. 2000a). Taking account of this effect, the distributions in $`D`$ for the quasars and radio galaxies are fairly similar. However, a striking feature of this plot is that the quasars appear to show an anti-correlation between $`S_{850}`$ and $`D`$. The correlation tests performed (Kendal’s Tau and Cox’s) show these quantities to be anti-correlated with significances of 95 and 99%, respectively. Including the radio galaxies as well, and accounting for projection effects, the significance of this correlation is only marginal (92% and 50%), largely because of the introduction of a large number of submillimetre upper limits.

An important point to consider here is whether this anti-correlation could be due to contamination of the sub-millimetre emission by synchrotron from the lobes or hotspots. This is because the SCUBA beam at 850 $`\mu `$m has a 13 arcsec FWHM, corresponding to a physical size at these redshifts of 110 kpc. Hence sources with $`D`$ less than this value will have their hotspots within the SCUBA beam. However, one should note that the five radio quasars with detections at shorter wavelengths indicated by the crosses are also mostly the smallest quasars. In these objects we have evidence for a thermal dust spectrum and high far-IR luminosities. It can also be seen that five radio galaxies have $`D<100`$ kpc and these have significantly smaller sub-millimetre fluxes than the quasars. In the orientation-based unified scheme there is no reason why quasars should have brighter extended synchrotron emission than radio galaxies. Therefore, although we cannot rule out some lobe/hotspot contamination in the smallest sources it cannot be the driving force behind the observed correlation.

3C 298, 3C 318, 6C 1045+3513, and more marginally 3C 191, are all compact steep-spectrum (CSS) radio sources, which are believed to be small due to their jets being triggered relatively recently ($`10^6`$ years; Fanti et al. 1995). Previous studies of the far-infrared properties of CSS sources have shown them to be indistinguishable from larger, presumably older, radio sources (Heckman et al. 1994; Fanti et al. 2000). However our study is quite different from these which were limited to low redshifts (and hence luminosities) due to the sensitivity limitations of IRAS and ISO, and it is plausible that the differences only occur at higher luminosities, higher redshifts and/or longer wavelengths (e.g. because the emission is dominated by starburst-heated cold-dust emission rather than AGN-heated hot-dust torus emission).

It is also interesting to note that 3C 298, 3C 318 and 6C 1045+3513 are reddened quasars, indicating significant quantities of dust in their host galaxies. Also, 3C 191, 3C 268.4 and 3C 298, show very strong CIV associated absorption and 6C 1045+3513 has a CIV broad absorption system. Baker et al. (2001) show that there is an anti-correlation between the strength of associated absorption systems and radio linear size and also that the redder quasars tend to have the strongest line absorption. It has also been noticed that, amongst radio-loud quasars, broad absorption lines are more commonly observed in the smallest radio sources (Becker et al. 2000). These observations indicate an evolutionary picture where the absorbing material is cleared as the radio sources get older (Baker et al. 2001). This is similar to the evolutionary scheme of Sanders et al. (1988) where quasars begin their lives in a dust-enshrouded phase.

The projected linear size $`D`$ of a radio quasar or radio galaxy can be related approximately to the time since the jets were triggered $`t`$, since the relationship between these variables is only weakly dependent upon the radio luminosity, and the objects under consideration span only 1.5 dex in this quantity. Using the simple model of radio source evolution in Willott et al. (1999) we can, at least approximately, transform the linear size axis in Fig. 6 to the time since the quasars were triggered (the radio galaxies have ages on average a factor of 1.6 smaller at a given $`D`$ than shown here, due to projection effects). Fig. 6, and the anti-correlation it exhibits, shows that the most submillimetre-luminous quasars had their radio sources triggered $`<10^7`$ years ago. This means that the processes controlling the submillimetre/far-infrared luminosity $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ are synchronized with the jet-triggering event and that $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ declines on a $`10^7`$ yr timescale.

Although high values of $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ for an AGN are generally interpreted as evidence for high rates of star formation, it is possible that, as explored in Sec. 4.1 (see also Willott et al. 2000b; Rowan-Robinson 2000), even the cool dust is directly heated by the AGN. Any evidence for star formation is indirect, being based on the large gas masses observed in CO in a handful of cases, but mostly deduced from the large dust masses required by any submillimetre-detected thermal source (e.g. Hughes, Dunlop, & Rawlings 1997). With a standard dusty disc model (e.g. Efstathiou & Rowan-Robinson 1995) there are difficulties in heating the cool dust at large distances from the nucleus, due to the fact the disc is optically thick and shields the distant dust from the ionizing radiation. A more efficient way of heating large amounts of cool dust by an AGN, come from models where the dust has a more isotropic distribution with a very high covering factor (e.g. Granato, Danese & Franceschini 1996). This may occur preferentially in recently-triggered AGN if the dusty gas fueling the nucleus is not in a regular torus distribution. In addition, models for shocks caused by advancing radio components suggest that dust grains cannot survive for much longer than $`10^7\mathrm{yr}`$ in such environments (De Young 1998). Jarvis et al. (2001b) summarise other evidence that expanding radio sources modify the physical conditions of their gaseous environments as the radio-emitting components expand outward after jet triggering. There are therefore two reasons why in a scenario in which quasar-heated dust dominates, one expects $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ to decline on a $`10^7\mathrm{yr}`$ timescale. Note that the fact that the brightest submillimetre sources are reddened quasars with line absorption is consistent with this picture, since with this dust distribution there is a high probability of our line-of-sight to the nucleus intercepting a dust cloud. It is of course possible that the dust distribution could be influenced by previous episodes of star-formation.

It is also possible that the submillimetre emission in the hyperluminous sources is dominated by starburst-heated dust, in which case the implication is that the jet-triggering process is accurately synchronized with an intense burst of star formation. The timescale for such star formation events would have to be $`\stackrel{<}{}10^7`$ years for the far-infrared (300 $`\mu `$m) luminosity to peak $`10^7`$ yr after the onset of the starburst (Efstathiou, Rowan-Robinson & Siebenmorgen 2000). Line ratios from mid-infrared spectroscopy of nearby starburst galaxies suggest that the duration of the bursts in such galaxies are $`10^7`$ yr (Thornley et al. 2000) and for ultraluminous infrared galaxies $`2\times 10^7`$ yr (Genzel et al. 1998). Thus the starburst timescales are quite consistent with the hypothesis that a starburst and a jet-producing AGN were triggered synchronously, and the anti-correlation seen in Fig. 6.

A starburst of such a brief duration, forming stars at $`1000\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$ yr-1 as implied by the submillimetre luminosity, would form $`10^{10}\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$ of stars over its lifetime. The total stellar mass of a powerful radio galaxy with a luminosity of $`5\mathrm{L}_{}`$ (Jarvis et al. 2001a) is $`5\times 10^{11}\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$. Therefore such a star formation episode would form only a few per cent of the total stellar mass in a massive elliptical galaxy and therefore this phase is not a major event in the star-formation histories of the quasar host galaxy. This is consistent with other evidence, such as the small scatter in the $`Kz`$ relation (Jarvis et al. 2001a) and the existence of very red radio galaxies at $`1<z<2`$ (Dunlop et al. 1996; Dunlop 1999; Willott, Rawlings & Blundell 2001), that the bulk of the stars in powerful radio galaxies were formed at higher redshifts of $`z>3`$.

Regardless of whether the dust is heated by a quasar or a starburst or a mixture of the two, it seems that Fig. 6 provides some support for the Blundell & Rawlings (1999) conjecture that radio source youth may be an important factor in explaining the high submillimetre luminosities of distant radio galaxies. An important question is how this finding relates to the properties of the more distant ($`z>2`$) systems studied by A01. We again defer a more detailed discussion to a future paper (Rawlings et al. in prep.) but note here that the fact that the submillimetre luminosities of the $`z<2`$ radio quasars are similar to the radio galaxies at $`z>2`$ is not, by itself, a strong argument that their host galaxies are in similar evolutionary states. It is certainly plausible that the higher-redshift objects are forming significant fractions of the stellar mass of a giant elliptical galaxy, requiring simply that the duration of the starburst is $`10^7`$ yr. Direct measurements of gas mass, e.g. by CO observations, would be very important for determining the evolutionary states and the main heating source of the cool dust for the $`z1.5`$ objects studied here. It is hard with submillimetre continuum measurements alone to determine the relationship between these objects and the high-redshift radio galaxies studied by A01. The discovery of huge reservoirs of molecular gas in some very high-redshift radio galaxies (Papadopoulos et al. 2000; Alloin, Barvainis & Guilloteau 2000) supports a starburst-heating model for the bulk of the submillimetre continuum in these objects, and the lack of such reservoirs at $`z1.5`$, if observed, would suggest that quasar-heating might become more prevalent at lower redshifts.

## 5 Concluding remarks

We have performed a submillimetre survey of radio quasars in the redshift range $`1.37<z<2`$ and detect ten out of eleven quasars, implying submillimetre/far-infrared luminosities $`\stackrel{>}{}4\times 10^{12}\mathrm{L}_{\mathrm{}}`$. We argue that only one or two of these detections are dominated by core synchrotron emission. For five quasars, detections at shorter wavelengths confirm the presence of a thermal continuum and a large mass ($`10^8\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{}}`$) of cool dust.

We find the radio quasars have higher submillimetre luminosities by a factor of $`5`$ than radio galaxies of the same radio luminosity and redshift, a factor which cannot be reduced below $`2`$ by accounting for possible synchrotron contamination. At $`z1.5`$ radio quasars are intrinsically brighter than radio galaxies at submillimetre wavelengths. This argues against the simplest unified scheme for radio sources in which the probability of viewing a quasar nucleus is unity for a viewing angle $`\theta \theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$, with $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$ constant, and zero at $`\theta >\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$. It is, however, in quantitative agreement with a receding-torus model in which $`\theta _{\mathrm{trans}}`$ depends on quasar optical luminosity, but only if there is a close relationship between optical luminosity and $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$. The implication is that quasar-heated dust dominates $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ for powerful radio quasars at $`z1.5`$.

There is a significant anti-correlation between $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ and radio source age in the sense that hyperluminous quasars tend to be associated with young ($`<10^7`$ yr) sources at $`z1.5`$. This means that the processes controlling $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ are synchronized with the jet-triggering event and that $`L_{\mathrm{FIR}}`$ declines on a $`10^7`$ yr timescale. There is evidence for a small amount of obscuration in the most submillimetre-luminous quasars from reddening (3C 298, 3C 318 and 6C 1045+3513) and/or prominent associated absorption (3C 191, 3C 268.4, 3C 298) or broad absorption lines (6C 1045+3513). We speculate that shortly after jet triggering, dust is more widely distributed than at later times. This distributed dust could be heated by the quasar nucleus and/or a short-lived synchronized starburst and may be destroyed by shocks associated with the expanding radio source. Any such starburst would form only a few per cent of the total stellar mass in agreement with the evidence for dominant old stellar populations in $`z1.5`$ radio galaxies.

## Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous referee for some very useful suggestions. We are very grateful to the staff at the Joint Astronomy Centre for their help with the observations. The JCMT is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the U.K. Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council. The William Herschel Telescope is operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extra-galactic Database, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. CJW thanks PPARC for support.

## Appendix A 6C 1045+3513 - A submillimetre-luminous reddened BAL quasar

In this appendix we present a new optical spectrum of 6C 1045+3513, which is one of the brightest radio quasars at submillimetre wavelengths found in this paper ($`S_{850}=9.18\pm 1.10`$ mJy). It is also detected at the $`3\sigma `$ level with the short wavelength array ($`S_{450}=21.3\pm 6.8`$ mJy).

6C 1045+3513 was observed with the ISIS double-beam spectrograph on the William Herschel Telescope on April 16 2001. Conditions were photometric with 1.0 arcsec seeing and a 1.0 arcsec slit was used giving a dispersion resolution of 8 Å. The telescope was pointed at the position of the compact radio source (10:48:34.25 +34:57:25.0 - J2000.0). The total integration time of the observation was 1200 seconds. The data were reduced in the IRAF package using the same method as in Willott et al. (1998). The red and blue arm spectra were joined together, averaging over 35 Å where the signal-to-noise ratio of the spectra were approximately equal (6200 Å).

The target is clearly identified in the two dimensional spectrum and appears to be spatially unresolved. In Figure 7 we show the optical spectrum extracted in a 1 arcsec aperture. The object has a red continuum and several strong emission lines (see Table A1). The red continuum has a spectral index of 2.3 and is well fit by a quasar spectrum reddened by $`A_\mathrm{V}=1.5`$ (assuming a Milky-Way extinction curve). The positions of the emission lines are consistent with a redshift for 6C 1045+3513 of $`z=1.604`$, extremely close to the tentative value reported by Rawlings et al. (2001). The C IV and He II emission lines are both narrow (FWHM $`2000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$). The Mg II and C III\] emission lines appear to have narrow central profiles with broad wings, which together with the weak or absent broad wings in C IV and He II, are consistent with broad-line region reddening of the same amount as the continuum fitting suggests.

There is very high equivalent width C IV absorption on the blue wing of the emission line. This feature is very broad with a width of at least $`6000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. There is no corresponding broad absorption of Mg II, so 6C 1045+3513 is classified as a high-ionization broad absorption line (BAL) quasar. Unfortunately, our data are not sensitive enough or with sufficient spectral resolution to determine the structure of the absorption trough. 6C 1045+3513 is one of the most radio-luminous quasars to show the BAL phenomenon, with a radio luminosity similar to that of the BAL QSO FIRST J101614.3+520916 (Gregg et al. 2000) .

6C 1045+3513 is thus remarkably similar to 3C 318 (Willott et al. 2000b). Both objects have a small degree of reddening which suppresses the rest-frame UV broad line strengths to below those of the narrow lines. Both are also very luminous submillimetre sources (with detections at both 850 $`\mu `$m and 450 $`\mu `$m) and both are compact ($`D<10`$ kpc) radio sources with similar estimated source ages. A possible reason for these similarities is discussed in Sec. 4.2.


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# Probing the QCD vacuum with overlap fermions Preprint FSU-CSIT-01-61, JLAB-THY-01-37. Talk given by U.M. Heller at the Workshop on Lattice Hadron Physics “LHP2001”, July 9 – 18, 2001, Cairns, Australia.

## 1 Introduction

Understanding the QCD vacuum has been a goal of lattice QCD for many years. This understanding, in turn, should illuminate the mechanisms of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking. A good candidate for the source of chiral symmetry breaking are topological fluctuations of the gauge fields associated with instantons and anti-instantons. Through mixing, the “would be zero modes” from the instantons and anti-instantons become the small modes that lead, when present with a finite density, to chiral symmetry breaking, since $`\overline{\psi }\psi =\pi \rho (0^+)`$, with $`\rho (0^+)`$ the density of the small modes. Many of the low energy properties of QCD can be explained phenomenologically by the interactions of the fermions with instantons and anti-instantons . To our knowledge, confinement, though, is not one of those properties.

There is a problem, though, with investigating the topological content of Monte Carlo generated gauge configurations. Ultraviolet fluctuations (noise) dominate these configurations. Pure gauge probes of the vacuum therefore need filters, like smearing or cooling, to get rid of the UV noise and make it possible to uncover the underlying topological fluctuations . But do such filters change the physics? Fermions, on the other hand, should provide a more physical filter, provided lattice artifacts do not impede the chiral and topological properties. Since a few years such fermions are known, the overlap fermions of Neuberger .

Global topology, i.e. the topological susceptibility $`\chi _t`$ has already been successfully computed from the number and chirality of the zero modes. This was actually done, completely equivalently, from studying the spectral flow of the underlying Wilson Dirac operator .

Here we want to address local properties. If instanton and anti-instanton like fluctuations are important, then the low-lying non-zero eigenmodes should have significant contributions from mixed “would-be zero modes”. Locally, in their peaks, these low eigenmodes should therefore be chiral, since zero modes are chiral, even though the integrated chirality of all non-zero modes is exactly zero. This can be measured with the “local chirality” parameter, $`X(x)`$, defined by

$$\mathrm{tan}\left(\frac{\pi }{4}(1+X(x))\right)=\left(\frac{\psi _L^{}(x)\psi _L(x)}{\psi _R^{}(x)\psi _R(x)}\right)^{1/2},$$
(1)
where $`\psi _L(x)`$ and $`\psi _R(x)`$ are the left- and right-handed components of the eigenmode.

It should be noted, however, that Witten pointed out an inconsistency between instanton based phenomenology and large-$`N_c`$ QCD . Instantons would produce an $`\eta ^{}`$ mass that vanishes exponentially for large $`N_c`$, while considerations based on large-$`N_c`$ chiral dynamics suggest that the $`\eta ^{}`$ mass should be of order $`1/N_c`$. The topological charge fluctuations then should be associated not to instantons but rather some other, confinement-related vacuum fluctuations. And the strong attraction produced by these confinement-related fluctuations would also induce the breaking of chiral symmetry. Then there is no reason that the low-lying modes should be chiral in their peaks. Using non-chiral Wilson fermions at a lattice spacing of $`a0.17`$ fm Horváth et al.  found that the local chirality $`X(x)`$ was not peaked near $`\pm 1`$. We use chiral overlap fermions instead to avoid the potentially large $`𝒪(a)`$ lattice artifacts from the explicit chiral symmetry breaking term of Wilson fermions.

## 2 Setup

For our study we consider the standard massless overlap-Dirac operator

$$D(0)=\frac{1}{2}\left[1+\gamma _5ϵ(H_w(M))\right]$$
(2)
with $`H_w(M)=\gamma D_w(M)`$ and $`D_w(M)`$ the usual Wilson-Dirac operator. Then, $`H^2(0)=D^{}(0)D(0)`$ commutes with $`\gamma _5`$ and can be simultaneously diagonalized . $`H^2(0)`$ can have zero eigenvalues with chiral eigenmodes, which are also eigenmodes of $`D(0)`$, due to global topology. The non-zero eigenmodes of $`H^2(0)`$ are doubly degenerate and have opposite chirality,

$$H^2(0)\psi _,=\lambda ^2\psi _,,\gamma _5\psi _{}=\psi _{},\gamma _5\psi _{}=\psi _{},$$
(3)
with $`0<\lambda 1`$. The non-zero (right) eigenmodes of $`D(0)`$ are then easily obtained as

$$\psi _\pm =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\psi _{}\pm i\psi _{}\right)$$
(4)
with eigenvalues

$$\lambda _\pm =\lambda ^2\pm i\lambda \sqrt{1\lambda ^2}.$$
(5)
The “chirality” parameter of eq. (1) is then given by

$$\mathrm{tan}\left(\frac{\pi }{4}(1+X(x))\right)=\left(\frac{\psi _{}^{}(x)\psi _{}(x)}{\psi _{}^{}(x)\psi _{}(x)}\right)^{1/2},$$
(6)
and is equal for the two related modes $`\psi _\pm `$. In the following they will be therefore counted as one mode. The exact zero modes, of course, have $`X(x)\pm 1`$.

We computed low-lying eigenmodes $`\psi _,`$ of $`H^2(0)`$ with the Ritz functional algorithm of Ref. . For the sign function $`ϵ(H_W)`$ in eq. (2) we used the optimal rational approximation of  with “projection of low-lying eigenvectors of $`H_w`$” to ensure sufficient accuracy.

## 3 Results

For a more extensive and detailed discussion of our results see . Here, we concentrate on the results obtained on gauge field configurations generated with the Iwasaki action . At comparable lattice spacing, the implementation of overlap fermions on such configurations is about a factor 3 faster than on Wilson action configurations . We computed the 20 eigenmodes $`\psi _,`$ of $`H^2(0)`$ with smallest $`\lambda `$, with the Wilson-Dirac mass in the overlap-Dirac operator set to $`M=1.65`$. Six ensembles were considered corresponding to three different lattice spacings and three different volumes, in physical units (see Table 1).

The chirality histograms of the two lowest non-zero modes at the 2.5% of sites with largest $`\psi ^{}\psi (x)`$ for all six ensembles are shown in Fig. 1. The physical volume of the systems shown in the left column are approximately the same, 2 fm4. We see that the lowest non-zero modes tend to become more chiral in their peaks as the lattice spacing is decreased. This strongly suggests that the behavior observed here will survive the continuum limit. Comparing the three histograms for $`\beta =2.2872`$ having equal lattice spacing, we see a dramatic dependence on the physical volume. In an instanton liquid picture of the vacuum, the number of instantons and anti-instantons, and hence the number of almost zero modes grows linearly with the volume. Then it is not surprising that the lowest modes become increasingly chiral in their peaks with increasing volume.

In Fig. 2 we show the chirality histogram of the lowest six non-zero modes on the two systems with physical volume of about 7 fm4 and in Fig. 3 the chirality histogram from all non-zero modes out of the 20 lowest modes that we computed (there are between 11 and 20 non-zero modes per configuration) for the system with the largest physical volume. Here we kept the 20% sites with largest $`\psi ^{}\psi (x)`$. Comparing with the histograms in the left column of Fig. 1 indicates that the number of non-zero modes with similar chirality histograms grows roughly like the physical volume so that there is a finite density of modes which are chiral in their peaks. This is good evidence that we are not observing a finite volume effect that would disappear in the infinite volume limit.

In the chirality histograms shown we typically considered the contribution from the 2.5% sites with the largest $`\psi ^{}\psi (x)`$. In Table 2 we list the sum of $`\psi ^{}\psi (x)`$ over those sites as a percentage of the sum over all sites for some low-lying eigenvectors for all the gauge field ensembles considered. The more chiral the eigenvectors are on those 2.5% sites, the higher is the percentage of the eigenvector contained on those sites.

## 4 Abelian gauge theories

To contrast the results for quenched QCD of the previous section we considered the chirality parameter also for quenched U(1) theories in two and four dimensions. In 2d topology plays a crucial role and one expects local chirality in the peaks of low-lying modes. This is clearly seen in Fig. 4, where the 10 lowest non-zero modes have been kept.

In 4d U(1), in the confined phase, chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken, and a finite density of near zero modes exists. But there are no instantons, and so one would not expect the near zero modes to be dramatically chiral even in their peak regions. There do exist exact zero modes of the overlap-Dirac operator, which again, of course, are chiral, although their origin is not completely understood . We analyzed, stored eigenmodes from Ref. . The chirality histogram for the lowest two non-zero modes is shown in Fig. 5. We note that while there is some mild indication of chirality peaking, the proportion of sites showing this behavior is much reduced compared to the SU(3) case and appears to be of a qualitatively different nature than seen before. Also, the sum of $`\psi ^{}\psi (x)`$ over the sites kept for the histograms of Fig. 5 where almost identical for all 12 lowest eigenmodes (4.0% and 1.20%, respectively; for the 2.5% of sites with largest $`\psi ^{}\psi (x)`$ the sum is about 8.4% for all eigenmodes as compared to the non-abelian case in Table 2). In the U(1) case the (near) lack of peaking could conceivably come about from the scenario outlined by Horváth, et. al. – namely from the confinement inducing vacuum fluctuations.

## 5 Conclusions

By studying the local chirality parameter, introduced in Ref. , for low-lying non-zero eigenmodes of the overlap-Dirac operator, we investigated the topological content of the QCD vacuum. Considering several volumes and lattice spacings, we found convincing evidence for chirality of the low lying modes in their peak region. Our results give evidence that the number of modes which are chiral in their peaks grows linearly with the volume so that there is a finite density of such modes, and that the chirality of the modes becomes more pronounced as the lattice spacing is decreased. Therefore, our observations should remain valid in the continuum limit. Our observations are consistent with the topological fluctuations being instanton dominated and the low-lying eigenmodes being the mixed “would be zero modes” due to the instantons and anti-instantons.

Our findings confirm the results of Ref. , where a different version of overlap fermions coupled to smoothened gauge fields were used, and extend them by a careful study of finite lattice spacing and volume effects. Our results, on the other hand, contradict the conclusions of Horváth et al.  who studied the chirality parameter with Wilson fermions at a large lattice spacing. That the results of Ref.  are strongly affected by lattice artifacts was confirmed in a recent paper of Hip et al. . These authors considered an improved chirality parameter for Wilson fermions, clover improved Wilson fermions, and lattices at smaller lattice spacing than Ref. . With these reductions of lattice artifacts, they conclude that instanton dominance of topological charge fluctuations is not ruled out by the response of (improved) Wilson fermions. Together with the results from overlap fermions presented here and the lack of significant chirality enhancement in the 4-d U(1) model where instantons should not exist, the case for instanton domination in 4-d SU(3) gauge theory, as measured by the chirality parameter, becomes even more compelling. However, for an opposite point of view see Ref. .

## Acknowledgements

We thank the organizers for an exciting workshop. RGE was supported by DOE contract DE-AC05-84ER40150 under which the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF). UMH was supported in part by DOE contract DE-FG02-97ER41022. The computations were performed on the JLab/CSIT QCDSP at JLab, the JLab/MIT workstation cluster and the CSIT workstation cluster.


text:
# 1 Normalized critical current versus energy of the resonant level at zero temperature and for equal tunnel barriers (Γ₁=Γ₂≡Γ₀). The two solid curves are the results () and () for the two regimes Γ₀≫Δ₀ (curve a) and {Γ₀,ϵ_R}≪Δ₀ (curve b). The dotted curve is the Breit-Wigner transmission probability (). The inset shows schematically the S-2DEG-S junction.

Published in: Single-Electron Tunneling and Mesoscopic Devices, edited by H. Koch and H. Lübbig (Springer, Berlin, 1992): pp. 175–179.

Resonant Josephson Current
through a Quantum Dot

C. W. J. Beenakkera,b and H. van Houtena

aPhilips Research Laboratories, 5600 JA Eindhoven, The Netherlands
bInstitute for Theoretical Physics, University of California
Santa Barbara CA 93106, USA

Abstract. We calculate the DC Josephson current through a semiconducting quantum dot which is weakly coupled by tunnel barriers to two superconducting reservoirs. A Breit-Wigner resonance in the conductance corresponds to a resonance in the critical current, but with a different (non-lorentzian) lineshape. For equal tunnelrates $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0/\mathrm{}`$ through the two barriers, the zero-temperature critical current on resonance is given by $`(e/\mathrm{})\mathrm{\Delta }_0\mathrm{\Gamma }_0/(\mathrm{\Delta }_0+\mathrm{\Gamma }_0)`$ (with $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ the superconducting energy gap).

Superconductor–two-dimensional electron gas–superconductor (S-2DEG-S) junctions derive much of their recent interest from potential applications in a three-terminal transistor based on the Josephson effect. The ability of an electric field to penetrate into a 2DEG would allow one to modulate the critical supercurrent of the Josephson junction by means of the voltage on a gate electrode, in much the same way as one can modulate the conductance of a field-effect transistor in the normal state. Of particular interest are junctions which show a quantum-size effect on the conductance, since one would then expect a relatively large field-effect on the critical current . Quantum-size effects on the conductance have been studied extensively in nanostructures such as quantum point contacts and quantum dots . The corresponding effects on the Josephson current have received less attention.

Quantum-size effects on the Josephson current through a quantum point contact have been the subject of two recent theoretical investigations . It was shown in Ref.  that, provided the point contact is short compared to the superconducting coherence length $`\xi _0`$, the critical current increases stepwise as a function of the contact width or Fermi energy, with step height $`e\mathrm{\Delta }_0/\mathrm{}`$ independent of the parameters of the junction—but only dependent on the energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ in the bulk superconductor. This discretization of the critical current is analogous to the quantized conductance in the normal state. The present paper addresses the superconducting analogue of another familiar phenomenon in quantum transport: conductance resonances in a quantum dot.

Consider a small confined region (of dimensions comparable to the Fermi wavelength), which is weakly coupled by tunnel barriers to two electron reservoirs. At low temperatures and small applied voltages (small compared to the spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ of the bound states), conduction through this quantum dot occurs via resonant tunneling through a single bound state. Let $`ϵ_\mathrm{R}`$ be the energy of the resonant level, relative to the Fermi energy $`E_\mathrm{F}`$ in the reservoirs, and let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1/\mathrm{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2/\mathrm{}`$ be the tunnel rates through the left and right barriers. We denote $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{\Gamma }_1+\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$. If $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{\Delta }E`$, the conductance $`G`$ in the case of non-interacting electrons has the form

$`G=2{\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{h}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_2}{ϵ_\mathrm{R}^2+\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{\Gamma }^2}}2{\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{h}}T_{\mathrm{BW}},`$ (1)
where $`T_{\mathrm{BW}}`$ is the Breit-Wigner transmission probability at the Fermi level. The prefactor of 2 accounts for a two-fold spin-degeneracy of the level. Eq. (1) holds for temperatures $`T\mathrm{\Gamma }/k_\mathrm{B}`$. (At larger temperatures a convolution with the derivative of the Fermi function is required.) The question answered below is: What does the Breit-Wigner lineshape for the conductance imply for the lineshape of the critical current? That problem has not been considered in earlier related work on Josephson tunnel-junctions containing resonant impurity levels in the tunnel barrier .

The geometry which we have studied is shown schematically in the inset of Fig. 1. It consists of two superconducting reservoirs \[with pair potential $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{\Delta }_0\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}\varphi _{1,2})`$\], separated via tunnel barriers from a 2DEG quantum dot (with $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$). Instead of using the conventional tunnel-Hamiltonian approach, we treat the DC Josephson effect by means of a scattering formalism (which is more generally applicable also to non-tunneling types of junctions). In order to have a well-defined scattering problem in the 2DEG, we have inserted 2DEG leads, of width $`W`$ and length $`L`$ both much smaller than $`\xi _0`$, between the tunnel barriers and the reservoirs. Since $`W\xi _0`$, the leads do not significantly perturb the uniform pair potential in the reservoirs. To obtain a simplified one-dimensional problem, we assume that the leads support only one propagating mode and are coupled adiabatically to the reservoirs. From the Bogoliubov-De Gennes equation, and using the Breit-Wigner formula, we calculate the $`4\times 4`$ scattering matrix $`S(ϵ)`$ for quasiparticles of energy $`E_\mathrm{F}+ϵ`$. (The dimension of the scattering matrix is 4, rather than 2, because for each lead we have to consider both an electron and a hole channel, coupled by Andreev reflection at the 2DEG-S interface.) The scattering matrix yields the quasiparticle excitation spectrum, hence the free energy, and finally the Josephson current .

The discrete spectrum (obtained from the poles of $`S`$) consists of a single non-degenerate state at energy $`ϵ_0(0,\mathrm{\Delta }_0)`$, satisfying

$`\mathrm{\Omega }(ϵ_0)+\mathrm{\Gamma }ϵ_0^2(\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2ϵ_0^2)^{1/2}=0.`$ (2)
The function $`\mathrm{\Omega }(ϵ)`$ is defined by

$`\mathrm{\Omega }(ϵ)=(\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2ϵ^2)(ϵ^2ϵ_\mathrm{R}^2\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{\Gamma }^2)+\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2\mathrm{\Gamma }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_2\mathrm{sin}^2(\delta \varphi /2),`$ (3)
where $`\delta \varphi \varphi _1\varphi _2`$ is the phase difference between the superconducting reservoirs . The continuous spectrum extends from $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ to $`\mathrm{}`$ with density of states

$`\rho (ϵ)=\mathrm{constant}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi \mathrm{i}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dϵ}}\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }(ϵ)+\mathrm{i}\mathrm{\Gamma }ϵ^2(ϵ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2)^{1/2}}{\mathrm{\Omega }(ϵ)\mathrm{i}\mathrm{\Gamma }ϵ^2(ϵ^2\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2)^{1/2}}}\right),`$ (4)
as follows from the relation $`\rho =\mathrm{constant}+(1/2\pi \mathrm{i})(d/dϵ)\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{Det}S)`$ between the density of states and the scattering matrix . The first “constant” term is independent of $`\delta \varphi `$. The Josephson current–phase difference relationship $`I(\delta \varphi )`$ is obtained from the excitation spectrum by means of the formula

$`I={\displaystyle \frac{2e}{\mathrm{}}}\mathrm{tanh}\left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_0}{2k_\mathrm{B}T}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{dϵ_0}{d\delta \varphi }}{\displaystyle \frac{2e}{\mathrm{}}}2k_\mathrm{B}T{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{\Delta }_0}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑ϵ\mathrm{ln}\left[2\mathrm{cosh}\left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ}{2k_\mathrm{B}T}}\right)\right]{\displaystyle \frac{d\rho }{d\delta \varphi }},`$ (5)
valid for a $`\delta \varphi `$-independent $`|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$ . To evaluate Eq. (5), one has to compute the root of Eq. (2) and to carry out an integration. These two computations are easily done numerically, for arbitrary parameter values. Analytical expressions can be obtained in various asymptotic regimes. Here we only state results for the critical current $`I_\mathrm{c}\mathrm{max}I(\delta \varphi )`$, at $`T=0`$.

In the limits of wide or narrow resonances we have, respectively,

$`I_\mathrm{c}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{e}{\mathrm{}}}\mathrm{\Delta }_0[1(1T_{\mathrm{BW}})^{1/2}],\mathrm{if}\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{\Delta }_0,`$ (6)
$`I_\mathrm{c}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{e}{\mathrm{}}}(ϵ_\mathrm{R}^2+\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{\Gamma }^2)^{1/2}[1(1T_{\mathrm{BW}})^{1/2}],\mathrm{if}\mathrm{\Gamma },ϵ_\mathrm{R}\mathrm{\Delta }_0.`$ (7)
In both these asymptotic regimes only the discrete spectrum contributes to the Josephson current. As shown in Fig. 1, the lineshapes (6) and (7) of a resonance in the critical current (solid curves) differ substantially from the lorentzian lineshape (1) of a conductance resonance (dotted curve). For $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1=\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$, $`I_\mathrm{c}`$ has a cusp at $`ϵ_\mathrm{R}=0`$ (which is rounded at finite temperatures). The cusp in $`I_\mathrm{c}`$ reflects the cusp in the dependence of $`ϵ_0`$ on $`\delta \varphi `$ at $`|\delta \varphi |=\pi `$, following from Eq. (2). On resonance, the maximum critical current $`I_{\mathrm{max}}`$ equals $`(2e\mathrm{\Delta }_0/\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Gamma })\mathrm{min}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_1,\mathrm{\Gamma }_2)`$ and $`(e/\mathrm{})\mathrm{min}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_1,\mathrm{\Gamma }_2)`$ for a wide and narrow resonance, respectively. An analytical formula for the crossover between these two regimes can be obtained for the case of equal tunnel rates, when we find that

$`I_{\mathrm{max}}={\displaystyle \frac{e}{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_0\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}{\mathrm{\Delta }_0+\mathrm{\Gamma }_0}},\mathrm{if}\mathrm{\Gamma }_1=\mathrm{\Gamma }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_0.`$ (8)
The characteristic temperature for decay of $`I_{\mathrm{max}}`$ is $`\mathrm{min}(\mathrm{\Gamma },\mathrm{\Delta }_0)/k_\mathrm{B}`$. Off-resonance, $`I_\mathrm{c}`$ has the lorentzian decay $`1/ϵ_\mathrm{R}^2`$ in the case $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ of a wide resonance, but a slower decay $`1/ϵ_\mathrm{R}`$ in the case $`\mathrm{\Gamma },ϵ_\mathrm{R}\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$. Near $`ϵ_\mathrm{R}\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ this linear decay of the narrow resonance crosses over to a quadratic decay (not shown in Fig. 1).

Since we have assumed non-interacting quasiparticles, the above results apply to a quantum dot with a small charging energy $`U`$ for double occupancy of the resonant state. Glazman and Matveev have studied the influence of Coulomb repulsion on the resonant Josephson current . The influence is most pronounced in the case of a narrow resonance, when the critical current is suppressed by a factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }/\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ (for $`U,\mathrm{\Delta }_0\mathrm{\Gamma }`$). In the case of a wide resonance, the Coulomb repulsion does not suppress the Josephson current, but slightly broadens the resonance by a factor $`\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{\Gamma }/\mathrm{\Delta }_0)`$ (for $`U,\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$). The broadening is a consequence of the Kondo effect, and occurs only for $`ϵ_\mathrm{R}<0`$, so that the resonance peak becomes somewhat asymmetric .

The scattering formulation of the DC Josephson effect presented here is sufficiently general to allow a study of more complicated systems than the two-lead geometry of Fig. 1. We are currently extending our results to include the influence on the resonant supercurrent of a third lead connecting the quantum dot to a 2DEG reservoir, motivated by Büttiker’s treatment of the influence of inelastic scattering on conductance resonances .

This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY89–04035. Valuable discussions with the participants in the “Mesoscopic Systems” program at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara are gratefully acknowledged, in particular discussions with H. U. Baranger and L. I. Glazman.


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# Geometric Manipulation of Trapped Ions for Quantum Computation

## Abstract

We propose an experimentally feasible scheme to achieve quantum computation based solely on geometric manipulations of a quantum system. The desired geometric operations are obtained by driving the quantum system to undergo appropriate adiabatic cyclic evolutions. Our implementation of the all-geometric quantum computation is based on laser manipulation of a set of trapped ions. An all-geometric approach, apart from its fundamental interest, promises a possible way for robust quantum computation.

The physical implementation of quantum computers requires a series of accurately controllable quantum operations on a set of two-level systems (qubits). These controllable quantum operations can be either of the traditional dynamical origin (1) or of a novel geometric origin (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). The all-geometric approach, proposed recently with the name of holonomic quantum computation (4, 5, 6, 7), achieves the whole set of universal quantum gates solely based on the abelian and non-abelian geometric operations (holonomies), without any contributions from dynamical gates. The holonomies are acquired when a quantum system is driven to undergo some appropriate cyclic evolutions by adiabatically changing the controllable parameters in the governing Hamiltonian (8, 9, 10). The holonomies can be either simple abelian (commutable) phase factors (Berry phases) or general non-abelian operations, depending on whether the eigenspace of the governing Hamiltonian is nondegenerate or degenerate. Besides its fundamental interest related to a general geometric global structure, the holonomic quantum computation scheme has some built-in fault-tolerant features (2, 7), which might offer practical advantages, such as being resilient to certain types of computational errors. Several schemes have been proposed for the geometric realization of the particular conditional phase shift gate with the use of the abelian Berry phase (2, 3), and one of them has been experimentally demonstrated with the NMR technique (2). For a universal quantum computation, one still need to combine this particular geometric gate together with some single-bit dynamical gates (11). Here, in contrast, we propose an experimentally feasible scheme to achieve the universal quantum computation all by the geometric means. This requires us to realize the non-abelian holonomies as well as the abelian ones since the universal set of quantum gates are necessarily non-commutable. Our scheme, which is based on laser manipulation of a set of trapped ions, fulfils all the requirements of the holonomic quantum computation and fits well the status of current technology.

For the holonomic quantum computation proposed recently (4, 5, 6, 7), the computational space $`C`$ is always an eigenspace (highly degenerate) of the governing Hamiltonian, with a trivial eigenvalue $`0`$. Though the Hamiltonian restricted to the computational space is completely trivial and there is no dynamical evolution at all, the dependence of the Hamiltonian on some controllable adiabatically changing parameters makes the space $`C`$ undergo a highly nontrivial evolution due to the global geometric structure in the parameter space. In fact, one requires any unitary operations in the space $`C`$ to be obtainable by these geometric evolutions in order to achieve universal quantum computing. It is well known that some single-qubit operations together with a non-trivial two-bit gate makes a universal set of gate operations for quantum computing (11). It is enough for us to construct some looped paths in the parameter space to achieve the desired geometric evolutions corresponding to these gate operations, and then a composition of these parameter loops suffices to obtain an arbitrary unitary evolution in the computational space $`C`$. In the following, we show how to achieve all the desired geometric gate operations using a set of trapped ions. The schemes for ion-trap quantum computers based on the conventionaldynamical evolutions have been proposed (12, 13, 14, 15), and some single-bit and multi-bit gate operations have been demonstrated experimentally (16, 17, 18). We use the same setup, but to achieve the holonomic quantum computation. We also note that an idealized scheme (19) was proposed recently for holonomic quantum computation. Up to the best of our knowledge, our proposal is the first realistic one which achieves all the elements of holonomic quantum computation and is feasible with current technology.

We choose the universal set of gate operations to be $`U_1^{\left(j\right)}=e^{i\varphi _1|1_j1|}`$, $`U_2^{\left(j\right)}=e^{i\varphi _2\sigma _j^y}`$, and $`U_3^{\left(jk\right)}=e^{i\varphi _3|11_{jk}11|}`$, where $`|0_j`$ and $`|1_j`$ constitute the computational basis for each qubit, $`\sigma _j^y=i\left(|1_j0||0_j1|\right)`$ is the Pauli operator of the $`j`$ qubit, and $`\varphi _1,\varphi _2,\varphi _3`$ are arbitrary phases. The universality of this set of gates follows directly from the proof in (11) and is well known. First we show how to realize the single-bit gates $`U_1^{\left(j\right)}`$ and $`U_2^{\left(j\right)}`$ geometrically. The system we have in mind is a set of ions confined in a linear Paul trap (12, 17, 18). Each ion has three ground (or metastable) states $`|0,|1`$ and $`|a`$, and one excited state $`|e`$ (Fig.1). The state $`|a`$ is used as an ancillary level for gate operations. The ground states could be different hyperfine levels or in the same manifold but with different Zeeman sublevels, and they are coupled to the excited state $`|e`$ separately by a resonant classical laser with a different polarization or frequency (a possible separate addressing of the three levels is shown by Fig. 1). The Hamiltonian for each ion with the laser on has the form

$$H_j=\mathrm{}\left[|e_j\left(\mathrm{\Omega }_00|+\mathrm{\Omega }_11|+\mathrm{\Omega }_aa|\right)+\text{h.c.}\right]$$
(1)
in the rotating frame, where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0,\mathrm{\Omega }_1,\mathrm{\Omega }_a`$ are Rabi frequencies serving as the controlling parameters. Note that the Hamiltonian in the rotating frame is independent of the laser frequencies since all the lasers are resonant with the corresponding level transitions. The parameters $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0,\mathrm{\Omega }_1`$ should be set to zero initially so that the computational space spanned by $`|0_j`$ and $`|1_j`$ is initially an eigenspace of the gate Hamiltonian with a zero eigenvalue. Then the three Rabi frequencies make an adiabatic cyclic evolution in the parameter space $`M`$ with the change rate significantly smaller than the typical Rabi frequencies (the adiabatic condition), and the adiabatic theorem assures that the computational space remains the eigenspace of the gate Hamiltonian with the zero eigenvalue so there is no dynamical phase contribution at all. However, we will explicitly show that the topological holonomies accompanying the adiabatic evolutions suffice for construction of the gates $`U_1^{\left(j\right)}`$ and $`U_2^{\left(j\right)}`$, which in fact shows any single-bit operation is obtainable by such holonomies.

To get the gate $`U_1^{\left(j\right)}`$, we set $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=0`$ so that the state $`|0_j`$ is decoupled, and choose $`\mathrm{\Omega }_1=\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}e^{i\phi }`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_a=\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}`$. The relative amplitude $`\theta `$ and phase $`\phi `$ of the Rabi frequencies $`\mathrm{\Omega }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_a`$ are the effective control parameters, and the absolute magnitude $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is irrelevant for the gate control as long as it is large enough to satisfy the adiabatic condition, which could be a good feature for real experiments. The dark state (the eigenstate with the zero energy eigenvalue) of the gate Hamiltonian has the form $`\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}|1_j+\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}e^{i\phi }|a_j`$, where the parameters $`\theta ,\phi `$ make a cyclic evolution with the starting and ending point to be $`\theta =0`$. Using the standard formula for the geometric phase (8, 10), we can show that this cyclic evolution achieves the gate operation $`U_1^{\left(j\right)}`$ with the acquired Berry phase $`\varphi _1=\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta d\phi `$. This evolution has a definite geometric interpretation: the acquired Berry phase is exactly the enclosed solid angle $`𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }`$ swept by the vector always pointing to the $`(\theta ,\phi )`$ direction. From this interpretation, one immediately sees that the gate operation is only determined by the global property, i.e., the swept solid angle, and does not depend on the details of the evolution path in the parameter space. This is an advantage of the holonomic quantum computation, which makes it robust against certain types of errors. For instance, the local random errors along the evolution path caused by some unwanted interaction would have very small influence on the global property.

Now we show how to achieve the gate $`U_2^{\left(j\right)}`$ geometrically. For this purpose, we choose $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\phi `$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_1=\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}\phi `$, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_a=\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ in the Hamiltonian (1), with the parameters $`\theta ,\phi `$ similarly undergoing an adiabatic cyclic evolution from $`\theta =0`$ to $`\theta =0`$.. The two degenerate dark states of this gate Hamiltonian have the form $`|D_1=\mathrm{cos}\theta \left(\mathrm{cos}\phi |0_j+\mathrm{sin}\phi |1_j\right)\mathrm{sin}\theta |a_j`$ and $`|D_2=\mathrm{cos}\phi |1_j\mathrm{sin}\phi |0_j`$, from which we can show by using the formula for holonomies (6, 9) that the cyclic evolution of $`\theta ,\phi `$ achieves the gate operation $`U_2^{\left(j\right)}`$ with the phase $`\varphi _2=𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }`$, the swept solid angle by the vector $`(\theta ,\phi )`$. The ability to obtain both of the non-commutable geometric gates $`U_1^{\left(j\right)}`$ and $`U_2^{\left(j\right)}`$ in fact shows that one constructs non-Abelian holonomies, since the composite holonomies of the $`U_1^{\left(j\right)}`$ and $`U_2^{\left(j\right)}`$ and of the $`U_2^{\left(j\right)}`$ and $`U_1^{\left(j\right)}`$ are different. Note that while the Abelian holonomies have been tested experimentally by various means (10, 20), the controllable demonstration of the non-Abelian ones is believed to be more complicated (10, 19). Here, in contrast, we introduce a simple way to test this fundamental effect by manipulating a single ion with a laser. In fact, for the demonstration of the non-Abelian holonomies we do not need to exploit any interaction between the ions, so one can also use a sample of free particles instead of a single ion for a simple test. For instance, one can experimentally verify this by laser manipulation of a cloud of atoms in a magnetic-optical trap, which is readily available in many laboratories.

A combination of the gates $`U_1^{\left(j\right)}`$ and $`U_2^{\left(j\right)}`$ permits to implement any single-bit operation, which together with the nontrivial two-bit gate $`U_3^{\left(jk\right)}`$ between the qubits $`j,k`$, are enough for universal quantum computation. To construct the gate $`U_3^{\left(jk\right)}`$ using geometric means, we need exploit the Coulomb interactions between the ions. For this purpose, we provide a scheme based on the recent dynamical proposal (14) which uses two-color laser manipulation. The transition $`|1|e`$ for the $`j,k`$ ions is driven by a red and a blue detuned laser, respectively with detunings $`\left(\nu +\delta \right)`$ and $`\nu +\delta `$ (Fig. 2), where $`\nu `$ is the phonon frequency of one oscillation mode (normally the center of mass mode) and $`\delta `$ is an additional detuning. Similarly, the transition $`|a|e`$ is also driven by a red and a blue detuned laser, but with the additional detuning $`\delta ^{}\delta `$ to avoid the direct Raman transition. For simplicity here we choose $`\delta ^{}=\delta `$ as in Fig. 2. Under the condition of strong confinement $`\eta ^21`$ (the Lamb-Dicke criterion), where $`\eta `$ is defined by the ratio of the ion oscillation amplitude to the manipulation optical wave length, the Hamiltonian describing the interaction has the form

$$H_{jk}=\frac{\eta ^2}{\delta }\left[\left|\mathrm{\Omega }_1\right|^2\sigma _{j1}^{\phi _1}\sigma _{k1}^{\phi _1}+\left|\mathrm{\Omega }_a\right|^2\sigma _{ja}^{\phi _a}\sigma _{ka}^{\phi _a}\right],$$
(2)
where $`\sigma _{j\mu }^{\phi _\mu }e^{i\phi _\mu }|e_j\mu |+`$h.c. $`\left(\mu =1,a\right)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_1,\mathrm{\Omega }_a`$ are the corresponding Rabi frequencies respectively with the phases $`\phi _1,\phi _a`$. In writing the Hamiltonian (2) we have neglected some trivial light shift terms which can be easily compensated, for instance, by another laser. To get a geometric operation, we choose the relative intensity $`\left|\mathrm{\Omega }_1\right|^2/\left|\mathrm{\Omega }_a\right|^2=\mathrm{tan}\left(\theta /2\right)`$ and phase $`\phi _1\phi _a=\phi /2`$, with the control parameters $`\theta ,\phi `$ undergoing a cyclic adiabatic evolution from $`\theta =0`$. During the evolution, the computational bases $`|00_{jk},|01_{jk}`$ and $`|10_{jk}`$ are decoupled from the Hamiltonian (2), while the $`|11_{jk}`$ component adiabatically follows as $`\mathrm{cos}\frac{\theta }{2}|11_{jk}+\mathrm{sin}\frac{\theta }{2}e^{i\phi }|aa_{jk}`$, which acquires a Berry phase after the whole loop. So we get the conditional phase shift gate $`U_3^{\left(jk\right)}`$ with the purely geometric phase $`\varphi _3=𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }`$, the swept solid angle by the vector $`(\theta ,\phi )`$. Note that this geometric two-bit gate has shared the advantages of the recently proposed and demonstrated dynamical scheme (14, 18) in the sense that: first, the ion motional modes need not be cooled to their ground states as long as the Lamb-Dicke criterion is satisfied; and second, we do not need separate addressing of the ions during the two-bit gate operation.

For experimental demonstration of the above universal set of geometric gates, we need to consider several kinds of decoherence which impose concrete conditions on the relevant parameters. Firstly, one should fulfil the adiabatic condition. This means the gate operation time should be larger than the inverse of the energy gap between the dark states and the bright and excited states. The energy gap is given by $`\mathrm{\Delta }_1=\left|\mathrm{\Omega }\right|`$ for the single-bit gates and by $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2=\eta ^2\left|\mathrm{\Omega }\right|^2/\delta `$ for the two-bit gate. So we require the single-bit and the two-bit gate operation times $`t_i^g`$ $`\left(i=1,2\right)`$ are reasonably long so that the leakage error to the bright and the excited states, which scales as $`1/\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_it_i^g\right)^2`$, is small. Secondly, we need to avoid spontaneous emission (with a rate $`\gamma _s`$) of the excited state $`|e`$. Due to the adiabatic condition the excited state is only weakly populated even though we use resonant laser coupling, and the effective spontaneous emission rate is reduced by the leakage probability $`1/\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_it_i^g\right)^2`$. As a result we only require $`\gamma _s/\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_i^2t_i^g\right)1`$ for the spontaneous emission to be negligible during the gate operation. Finally, the influence of the heating of the ion motion should be small. We assume all the manipulation lasers are copropagating so that the heating caused by the two-photon recoils is negligible. The carrier phononic states are only virtually excited during the two-bit gate, so the influence of the heating rate $`\gamma _h`$ is reduced by the phonon population probability $`\eta ^2\left|\mathrm{\Omega }\right|^2/\delta ^2`$. The effective heating rate should be much smaller than the gate speed, which requires $`\delta `$ $`\gamma _h\delta `$. Note that all the conditions discussed above in the geometric gates are exactly parallel to those in the dynamical schemes using the off resonant Raman transitions. The reason for this is that in both cases the excited state is only weakly populated and the population probability obeys the same scaling law, though the physical mechanism for the weak population is quite different. So, compared with the dynamical schemes, our requirements are not more stringent. However, the geometric proposal introduced in this paper, on the one hand, will permit us to investigate experimentally the fundamental Abelian and non-Abelian holonomies (10) , and on the other hand, may open new possibilities for robust quantum computation (21, 22).

Note added: After submission of this work, we became aware that a non-abelian holonomy has been designed for atoms by Unanyan, Shore, and Bergmann \[Phys. Rev. A 59, 2910 (1999)\].

Caption of Fig. 1:

Level structure and laser configuration for single-bit operations. A possible choice for the three ground or metastable states is that $`|1`$ and $`|a`$ are two degenerate Zeeman sublevels which are addressed by lasers with different polarizations, and $`|0`$ is the ground state (another hyperfine level) with slightly different energy so that it can be addressed by a laser with a different frequency.

Caption of Fig. 2:

Laser configuration for the two-bit operation. The same configuration for both ions.