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# Longitudinal Flow of Protons from 2-8 AGeV Central Au+Au Collisions

E895 Collaboration

## Abstract

Rapidity distributions of protons from central 197Au + 197Au collisions measured by the E895 Collaboration in the energy range from 2 to 8 AGeV at the Brookhaven AGS are presented. Longitudinal flow parameters derived using a thermal model including collective longitudinal expansion are extracted from these distributions. The results show an approximately linear increase in the longitudinal flow velocity, $`\beta \gamma _L`$, as a function of the logarithm of beam energy.

Experimental heavy ion programs from the Bevalac, SIS, the AGS and the CERN SPS have attempted to characterize the distributions of particles emerging from high energy collisions in terms of simple thermodynamic principles. Testing the underlying assumptions of chemical and thermal equilibrations at different stages of the collision has been attempted by comparing model expectations to many different experimental observables. Static isotropic thermal emission models applied to observed particle rapidity distributions from experiments at all beam energies consistently fail to describe the observed shape; such model predictions being too narrow. Thermal models which include collective longitudinal expansion have been much more successful at reproducing the observed rapidity distributions Schn93 ; Stac96 . The additional collective motion is attributed to intense pressure gradients which develop in the very hot, compressed nuclear matter fireballs created in heavy ion collisions.

At the AGS, rapidity distributions of multiple particle species, including pions, kaons, protons and lambda hyperons from central collisions have been simultaneously described by a thermal distribution with a common longitudinal expansion velocity Stac96 ; Brau95 . The agreement between the proton and other particle distributions suggests a high degree of stopping of the incident nucleons at the top AGS energy, which implies even more stopping at lower beam energies. However, recent investigations of the centrality dependence of the proton rapidity distributions from 6-11 AGeV Au+Au collisions by E917 suggest that the degree of nucleon stopping may be less than previously considered Back01 . Nevertheless, their flat dN/dy for central collisions at all beam energies, fitted by sources distributed uniformly in rapidity to y-ycm = 0, could also be interpreted in the manner presented herein.

For the asymptotic case at extremely high beam energies, Bjorken proposed Bjor83  that nuclear transparency would evacuate the central rapidity region of all of the initial nucleons, leaving a hot, high-energy density region in which a Quark Gluon Plasma might form. In 160 AGeV Pb+Pb collisions at the CERN SPS, observed net proton ((+)-(-)) rapidity distributions Appe99  exhibit a double-humped character which is consistent with this transparency. At SPS energies, the nucleon distributions are not describable by a simple thermal model with only collective longitudinal flow, but rather need additional theoretical consideration of transparency. However, the negative hadron (mostly pions) rapidity distributions are well-described by this model, which might be interpreted as suggesting a significant amount of collective longitudinal flow for produced particles Stac96 .

More recently, models which attempt simultaneously to characterize many of the freeze-out parameters (transverse and longitudinal flow, temperature, chemical potential and source volume) have been attempted on data at and above the top energy at the AGS Dobl99 . The data discussed in this letter are compared only to the locally thermal model with longitudinal flow.

The new data were taken by the E895 Experiment E895  at nominally 2, 4, 6, and 8 AGeV (1.85, 3.91, 6.0 and 8.0 AGeV after correction for energy loss before the target) at the Brookhaven AGS using the EOS TPC Wiem91 . Global characterization of the collisions is made possible by the nearly 4$`\pi `$ center of mass frame coverage provided by this detector. Particle identification is achieved by correlating the average ionization energy loss in the P10 drift gas with the charged particle momenta, reconstructed from the curvature of tracks bent by the Multi-Particle Spectrometer (MPS) magnet as they pass through the TPC.

The 5% most central events were selected using the distribution of primary charged particle event multiplicities. Primary tracks are required to originate within 2.5 cm of the reconstructed event vertex. This analysis is based on approximately 20,000 selected central events at each beam energy.

For particle identification My Thesis , all tracks are initially assigned the proton mass and sorted into rapidity and transverse mass bins: 0.1 unit rapidity slices from beam to target rapidity, with the mid-rapidity slice corresponding to $`|yy_{cm}|`$ $`<`$ 0.05, and 25 MeV/c2 wide transverse mass bins in the range 0 $`<`$ mt-m0 $`<`$ 1.0 GeV/c2. The mean total momentum and $`\beta \gamma `$ are computed at the center of the (mt-m0,y) bins and are used with a parameterization of the Bethe-Bloch energy loss as a function of $`\beta \gamma `$ to fit for the relative particle populations in $``$dE/dx$``$ projected for each (mt-m0,y) bin. The total yield of protons in each bin is obtained from the area under the fitted proton $``$dE/dx$``$ distribution.

Up to a total momentum, p, of 1 GeV/c, the protons are isolated in $``$dE/dx$``$ and easily identified. Above 1 GeV/c, pions and kaons begin to contaminate the proton sample. Between 6 and 8 GeV/c total momentum, the proton, deuteron and triton $``$dE/dx$``$ distributions significantly overlap each other and their individual yields cannot be resolved. Pion contamination is removed by using the observed ratio of oppositely charged pions in the momentum range up to 1 GeV/c to extrapolate to higher momenta My Thesis . The relatively cleanly observed negative pion yields, combined with the extrapolated pion ratios, are used to remove the $`\pi ^+`$ contamination from the proton distributions above 1 GeV/c. Kaon contamination is eliminated by using the measured kaon results from Ogil98 ; Dunl99  for the same beam energies. The confusion among protons, deuterons and tritons between 6 and 8 GeV/c results in a broad hole in the final proton spectra, where the proton yields cannot be extracted. Where appropriate, the reported errors for the raw proton yields include an estimate of the additional uncertainty resulting from the models used to determine the contamination from other particles.

Simulations of the detector response to protons in all regions of phase space were performed using GEANT 3.21. Small samples ($``$ 4 tracks per event) of proton tracks with momentum distributions approximating the measured data were embedded into raw events and propagated through the reconstruction chain. A correction for detector efficiency, acceptance and momentum resolution was obtained from the ratio of found GEANT tracks to the simulated input using the same track quality cuts and centrality selection as the data to be corrected. The proton corrections were largest at very backward rapidities, where detector acceptance causes significant losses, and at forward rapidities, where track density is large, and at low transverse mass. However, the corrected spectra, Fig. 1, show very good forward/backward rapidity reflection symmetry.

The transverse mass spectra of the protons in each rapidity slice are shown in Fig. 1. In order to determine yields, these spectra have been fit with the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.

$$\frac{1}{2\pi m_t}\frac{d^2N}{dm_tdy}=A(y)m_te^{(m_tm_0)/T(y)},$$
(1)
where $`A(y)m_0`$ represents the mt-m0=0 intercept and $`T(y)`$ is the inverse slope parameter. It agrees fairly well at large mt-m0, but the agreement deteriorates for very low mt-m0, where transverse flow modifies Eq. (1). However, the resulting systematic overestimate of the total integrated yields obtained from the fits are smaller than the uncertainties in the measured integrated yields, dN/dy.

The rapidity density from Eq. (1) can be obtained by integrating over $`m_t`$ with an overall normalization parameter, B, as

$$\frac{dN_{th}}{dy}(y)=BT^3(\frac{m^2}{T^2}+\frac{m}{T}\frac{2}{\mathrm{cosh}y}+\frac{2}{\mathrm{cosh}^2y})e^{(\frac{m}{T}\mathrm{cosh}y)}.$$
(2)
The width of the distribution, Eq. (2), as a function of rapidity for a given emitted particle is a function of the temperature and particle mass only. Using the mid-rapidity inverse slope parameters (uncertainty of 2 MeV) from Eq. (1) to approximate the temperature (Table 1) in Eq. (2), this distribution can be compared to the rapidity densities extracted from the integrated transverse mass spectra. The result, shown as dashed lines in Fig. 2, is clearly too narrow to describe our data.

Schnedermann, et al. Schn93  modeled this increase in the widths as the result of collective longitudinal flow. This assumes that the observed distributions arise from the superposition of multiple boosted individual isotropic, locally thermalized sources at each rapidity, $`\eta `$. This is the longitudinally boost-invariant approach Bjor83  but taken to a finite boost, $`\eta _{max}`$. The distributions are

$$\frac{dN}{dy}=\underset{\eta _{min}}{\overset{\eta _{max}}{}}𝑑\eta \frac{dN_{th}}{dy}(y\eta )$$
(3)
where $`\eta _{max}`$ = - $`\eta _{min}`$, from symmetry about the center of mass; $`dN_{th}/dy`$ is Eq. (2) with T from Table 1; and $`N`$ is the number of protons observed. An average longitudinal source velocity can be obtained by averaging over $`|\eta |`$ as $`\beta _L=tanh(\eta _{max}/2)`$.

Fits of this form have been applied to a wide array of experimental data at the AGS and the SPS Schn93 ; Stac96 ; Brau95 ; Herr99 . Although the inverse slope in Table 1 is not the true temperature, the longitudinal boost, $`\eta _{max}`$, has been observed to depend only weakly on the temperature input to the model, with the exception of nucleons at SPS energies, which are affected by transparency Schn93 . In the present data, a 50% decrease in the temperature results in a maximum change of only 15% in $`\eta _{max}`$.

Fits of Eq. (3) to the proton rapidity densities at 2, 4, 6, and 8 AGeV are also shown on Fig. 2. The fit parameter, $`\eta _{max}`$, and the corresponding average velocities, $`\beta _L`$, are listed in Table 1. $`\beta \gamma _L`$ is evaluated by computing $`\gamma =1/\sqrt{1\beta _L^2}`$.

Fig. 3 shows our results for $`\beta \gamma _L`$ as a function of beam energy. Also included are the extracted parameters from the compiled data from Schn93 ; Stac96 ; Brau95 ; Back01 ; Herr99 ; Liu98 .

A modification to a previous interpretation of the lowest energy FOPI data point is presented here. The proton longitudinal flow reported for 1.06 AGeV Au+Au in Stac96 ; Herr99 ; Wess97  is from an interpretation of the measured data from Herr96  which assumed isotropic emission from a Siemens and Rasmussen Siem79  radially boosted spherical thermal source. Good agreement between their Au+Au rapidity distributions and predictions from a Siemens-Rasmussen style model based on fits to their mid-rapidity kinetic energy spectra was reported Herr96 . A temperature of 80 MeV and an average (isotropic) flow velocity of $`\beta _r`$ = 0.41 were reported.

The resulting longitudinal flow velocity of $`\beta `$ = 0.38 attributed to the 1.06 AGeV Au+Au data by Stac96  is a factor of two larger than the value one extracts using the present prescription. The value reported in Table 1 and Fig. 3 is from our re-analysis of these FOPI 1.06 AGeV rapidity densities using their reported temperature of 80 MeV with Eq. (3). The result is $`\beta _L`$ = 0.19, which is consistent with a value obtained using the same model with Au+Au collision data measured by the EOS collaboration for Ebeam=1.15 AGeV and reported in Liu98 .

Based on the reported $`\beta _L`$ for Au+Au at 1 AGeV and 11 AGeV, a linear relation between $`\beta _L`$ and the logarithm of beam energy was suggested Stac96 ; Herr99 ; Wess97 . Extrapolated to SPS energies, it did not describe the longitudinal flow at the SPS extracted from produced particles such as pions. However, with the inclusion of the present data from E895 and our re-analysis of the 1 AGeV protons, Fig. 3 shows a linear trend, spanning 1 to 160 AGeV, for the heaviest systems, with a slope $``$ 2.5 larger than was previously concluded. The SPS Pb+Pb value (obtained from produced particles, not protons) no longer shows a significant excess above the systematic. Further study of rapidity distributions for protons as a function of centrality Back01 , and produced particles, with system size and beam energy in the range above the AGS would help to clarify the relation between stopping and longitudinal expansion of protons in heavy ion collisions.

This work was supported in part by the US National Science Foundation under Grants No. PHY-98-04672, PHY-9722653, PHY-96-05207, PHY-9601271, and PHY-9225096; by the U.S. Department of Energy under grants DE-FG02-87ER40331.A008, DE-FG02-89ER40531, DE-FG02-88ER40408, DE-FG02-87ER40324, and contracts DE-AC03-76SF00098, DE-AC02-98CH10886; and by the University of Auckland Research Committee, NZ/USA Cooperative Science Programme CSP 95/33; and by the National Natural Science Foundation of P.R. China under grant number 19875012.


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# How Do Z and Atoll X-ray Binaries Differ?

## 1 Introduction

Low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) containing weakly-magnetized neutron stars may be divided into two classes, Z and atoll sources, based upon correlations between their spectral colors and Fourier timing properties at X-ray wavelengths (Hasinger & van der Klis, 1989). Plots of a “hard” color against a “soft” color from Z sources usually form a Z shape that is traced on time scales of hours to days (bottom panels of Figure 1). Plots from atoll sources often resemble a band of points at constant hard color, with “islands” of points appearing on time scales of weeks and months (see 4U 1820-303 in Figure 1). Power spectra from both types of sources may be described with similar broad-band noise components, but Z sources exhibit strong (up to 10% rms) quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) between 1–60 Hz, while atoll sources do not (but see Wijnands & van der Klis 1999; Psaltis, Belloni, & van der Klis 1999). The exact causes of the spectral and timing variability is still unknown, but it is thought that the differences between the two classes result from a higher rate of mass transfer in Z sources than atoll sources (see van der Klis, 1995, for a review).

In this Letter, we examine the spectral changes that occur in Z and atoll sources, using the public archive of observations taken with the Proportional Counter Array (PCA; Jahoda et al., 1996) aboard the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). This unprecedented database of PCA observations, which samples the spectral variability of LMXBs on time scales from seconds to years, allows us to present a complete picture of the X-ray color changes that occur in these systems.

## 2 Data Analysis

We have obtained all of the publicly available RXTE PCA data as of 2001 September (along with some proprietary data) for twelve neutron star LMXBs (Table 1). Seven of these LMXBs have been previously classified as atoll sources and four as Z sources (van der Klis, 1995; Reig et al., 2000), while one (GS 1826$``$238) is probably an atoll source since it prolifically produces thermonuclear X-ray bursts (Ubertini et al., 1999; van der Klis, 1995). The public archive of pointed observations of these sources contains many dozens of observations between 3000 to 30,000 seconds long, spanning over five years.

We have examined data with 128 energy channels between 2–60 keV and 16 s time resolution from the PCA, and daily flux histories from the RXTE All-Sky Monitor (ASM; Levine et al., 1996). We list some basic properties of the sources in Table 1. The variability is defined as the ratio of the maximum to minimum count rate observed with the PCA between 2–18 keV, and is a lower limit to the true value. This sample of sources spans a factor of 100 in average luminosity, and a factor of 1000 in variability.

We have defined hard and soft colors as the ratio of the background-subtracted detector counts in the (3.6–5.0)/(2.2–3.6) keV and the (8.6–18.0)/(5.0–8.6) keV energy bands, respectively, to produce color-color and color-intensity diagrams (Figures 13). We have used 64 s integrations to calculate the colors when the source intensity is above 100 counts s-1, and 256 s integrations otherwise. Gain changes in the five individual proportional counter units (PCUs) of the PCA over the course of the mission cause systematic variation in these count rates (e.g., Homan et al., 2001, for a more detailed discussion). Therefore, we have normalized the count rates from the Crab Nebula in each PCU to constant values for each energy band (totaling 2440 counts s-1 PCU-1 in the 2.2–18.0 keV band) using linear trends. When this correction is applied, the hard and soft colors from the Crab Nebula have values of 1.358 and 0.679, with standard deviations of only 0.5% and 0.1% respectively.

## 3 Results

We plot the color-color diagrams in Figure 1. The most striking aspect of Figure 1 is that a Z-shape is formed in color-color diagrams from the atoll sources that vary by the widest range in X-ray intensity: Aql X-1, 4U 1608$``$522, and 4U 1705$``$44 (Table 1). It has long been suspected that the complete color-color diagram from atoll sources forms a Z-shape (e.g. Langmeier, Hasigner, & Trümper, 1989), but this is the first time that atoll sources have been adequately sampled over a wide enough range of luminosity to observe this pattern directly. Several more sources that vary by no more than a factor of 10 in X-ray intensity appear to form portions of this pattern. 4U 1820$``$303 and 4U 1728$``$34 in Figure 1 exhibit only the bottom and diagonal portions of this pattern. Ser X-1 exhibits only the bottom portion, and GS 1826$``$238 only the top (Figure 1).

The tracks from the Z sources Cyg X-2, GX 17+2, GX 5$``$1, and GX 340$`+`$0 (Figure 1) are unmistakably Z-shaped, but are somewhat different from those of the atoll sources. In general, Z sources are softer than atoll sources. Moreover, the traditional Z sources trace out a full track on time scales as short as a day, while atoll sources form their color-color diagrams on much longer time scales of 30-100 days. We have highlighted using darker symbols data spanning 20 days for the sources which trace their

Z on short time scales in Figure 1, in order to allow an easy comparison between the short and long-term spectral variability. As has been previously noted, the width of the track perpendicular to the direction of motion is much smaller in traditional Z sources than in atoll sources when observed on time scales of days (e.g van der Klis, 1995). On the five-year time scales of Figure 1, both the Z and atoll sources exhibit 10–20% variations in the colors perpendicular to the direction of motion that traces the Z (e.g. Kuulkers et al., 1994).

It is interesting to note that the color-color diagram of GX 13$`+`$1 in Figure 1 resembles that of the Z source GX 17$`+`$2 more than those of the other atoll sources. Although GX 13+1 was classified an atoll source because it lacked strong QPOs (Hasinger & van der Klis, 1989), RXTE observations have revealed weak QPOs similar to those of Z sources (Homan et al., 1998), and several observations have revealed similarities between the X-ray (Schulz et al., 1989) and IR (Bandyopadhyay et al., 1999) spectra of GX 13+1 and other Z sources. GX 13+1 appears to exhibit both Z and atoll properties, and may prove important for understanding what causes the distinctions between the two classes of source.

We next examine how these colors evolve versus intensity and, for the atoll sources, versus time. In Figure 3 we have plotted the hard and soft color as a function of the 2–18 keV PCA count rates for the atoll source Aql X-1 and the Z source GX 5$``$1. In Figure 3 we have plotted the X-ray colors and the 2-12 keV X-ray intensity from the RXTE ASM from the atoll source 4U 1705$``$440 over a span of 200 days. It is well-known that Z sources trace their color-color diagrams smoothly with time in less than a day (e.g. Kuulkers et al., 1994; van der Klis, 1995). These data are the best-sampled examples from the LMXBs in

Table 1.

Figures 3 and 3 indicate that atoll sources also trace their Z-shaped track smoothly. The horizontal portion at the top of the color-color track of the atoll sources (with a hard color of about 0.8 in Figure 1) is traced from left to right as the intensity increases by more than a factor of 10. For Aql X-1 and 4U 1608-522, it is traced on time scales of days to months as the source rises from (or decays to) below the PCA detection threshold, with a factor of 250 change in intensity. On the other hand, GS 1826$``$34 has remained in a similar faint and hard state for the six years of RXTE monitoring.

The diagonal branch is traced on time scales of days, and only has been sampled well in time in a few instances (e.g. Figure 3). As an atoll source moves down along the diagonal portion of the color-color track, the count rate usually increases by a factor of 2 (and vice versa; see Figure 3). However, during a recent unusual outburst of Aql X-1 (Bailyn et al., 2001) the count rate decreased by a factor of 2 while moving down along the diagonal branch (not shown). The overall intensity on this branch is higher in the rise of an outburst (100–300 counts s-1 PCU-1 for Aql X-1 in Figure 3) than in the decay ($`<`$100 counts s-1 PCU-1 for Aql X-1; see also Figure 3). Since the soft color increases with intensity along the top branch (Figure 3), the value of soft color at which the diagonal and top branches connect also could be smaller in the rise of an outburst than in the decay, as may be seen by comparing the soft colors near the dates indicated by dashed lines in Figure 3. Similar hysteresis has been observed from transient LMXBs containing black holes (Miyamoto et al., 1995).

The bottom portion of the color-color track from the atoll sources (hard color of 0.3) is traced from left to right as the count rate increases once again by a factor of 10 (from 70–1500 counts s-1 PCU-1 in Figure 3). This branch is traced on time scales of days to weeks in the transient sources, while Ser X-1 has remained in this soft state throughout the RXTE mission.

The color-color diagrams of Z sources are known to be traced smoothly, without jumping between branches, but the color changes are not accompanied by large variations in the X-ray intensity (right panels of Figure 3). The top portion of the color-color track from GX 5$``$1 (hard color of 0.4 in Figure 1) is traced as the count rate increases by 70% (Figure 3). On the diagonal portion of the color-color track of GX 5$``$1, the count rate returns to its lowest values. In atoll sources, the intensity is nearly constant. On the bottom of the color-color track, the count rate of GX 5$``$1 steadily increases yet again by 70%. The intensity from other Z sources changes by up to a factor of three on this track (e.g., Homan et al., 2001, for GX 17$`+`$2).

The hardness-intensity diagram of the atoll source Aql X-1 in Figure 3 also reveals important sub-structure on short time scales that is common to all of the atoll sources in Table 1. This structure is most evident in the plot of soft color against count rate, where narrow, parallel tracks are traced by observations within single days. At low intensities (less than 200 counts s-1 PCU-1), the soft color varies as the count rate remains nearly constant, while at the highest intensities, the soft color and count rate both increase significantly together. On the color-color diagram in Figure 1, these daily tracks are generally aligned perpendicular to motion along the Z, and thus broaden the color-color tracks of the atoll sources. In contrast, the parallel tracks from the Z sources are formed when the entire Z shifts (van der Klis, 2000).

## 4 Discussion

We have demonstrated that the color-color diagrams of both Z and atoll sources have similar three-branched shapes (Figures 1), but that the range of X-ray intensity and the time scale over which the diagrams are traced are one to two orders of magnitude larger in the atoll sources (Figures 3 and 3). We note that similar conclusions have been reported independently by Gierliński & Done (2002). There are also significant spectral differences between the two classes of source (Schulz et al., 1989; Christian & Swank, 1997; Barret et al., 2000). The spectra of Z sources are always soft, and can be described by the sum of a cool (1 keV) black body and Comptonized emission from warm (5 keV) optically thick electrons (e.g., Christian & Swank, 1997; Di Salvo et al., 2000). Spectral changes along the Z are quite subtle (e.g., Schulz et al., 1989). In contrast, changes in the energy spectra of atoll sources are dramatic. While soft energy spectra resembling those of Z sources are characteristic of atoll sources at the bottom of their color-color diagrams (e.g., Oosterbroek et al., 2001, for Ser X-1), a hard state with a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1.8`$ power-law energy spectrum between 2–100 keV occurs at the top of this diagram when the sources are faint (e.g., Barret et al., 2000, for GS 1826$``$238). Such a hard spectrum is not observed from Z sources, probably because they are not observed at low luminosities (Table 1 and Figure 3).

Recent work has suggested that the timing properties of Z and atoll sources also may have interesting similarities. It has long been suggested that the broad-band noise in power spectra of Z and atoll sources can probably be described by similar components (van der Klis, 1995), and detailed studies of RXTE data have shown that the frequencies of QPOs and band-limited noise exhibit similar correlations in both types of sources (Wijnands & van der Klis, 1999; Psaltis et al., 1999). However, whether the timing properties are correlated with the branches of the color-color diagrams in a similar manner in each class of source remains to be investigated.

The timing properties of neutron star LMXBs eventually may allow us to understand what drives the spectral variability. Several studies have found that the kHz QPO frequencies are well-correlated with position on the color-color diagram in both Z (e.g., Homan et al., 2001) and atoll (e.g., van Straaten et al., 2001) sources. Examining Figure 3, the short-term correlations between the colors and PCA count rate are extremely similar to the “parallel tracks” observed in comparisons of the frequencies of kilohertz quasi-periodic oscillations (kHz QPO) with the PCA count rate (van der Klis, 2000, 2001). The parallel tracks are observed from kHz QPOs both in studies of individual sources (Méndez et al., 1999), and in comparing the frequencies of QPOs from Z and atoll sources that span a wide range of luminosity (Ford et al., 2000). Based upon these parallel tracks, van der Klis (2001) has suggested that the kHz QPO frequencies are determined by a feedback process that is sensitive to deviations in the accretion rate about its value averaged over a few days. Further work is needed to determine whether the same feedback mechanism can operate to produce spectral variations in both Z and atoll sources, on widely different time scales and over ranges in luminosity that differ by factors of 100.

We are grateful for questions and comments from Michiel van der Klis and Erik Kuulkers that helped in clarifying these results. This work was supported by NASA, under contract NAS 5-30612 and grant NAG 5-9184, and has made use of data obtained from the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center


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# Printed on Electric Polarization of Heteropolar Nanotubes as a Geometric Phase

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## Abstract

The three-fold symmetry of planar boron nitride, the III-V analog to graphene, prohibits an electric polarization in its ground state, but this symmetry is broken when the sheet is wrapped to form a BN nanotube. We show that this leads to an electric polarization along the nanotube axis which is controlled by the quantum mechanical boundary conditions on its electronic states around the tube circumference. Thus the macroscopic dipole moment has an intrinsically nonlocal quantum mechanical origin from the wrapped dimension. We formulate this novel phenomenon using the Berry’s phase approach and discuss its experimental consequences.

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Physical properties of materials at the nanoscale can differ dramatically from their bulk counterparts. This is especially evident in the electronic properties, since the quantum behavior of electrons on this scale is sensitive to the size, shape and symmetry of the sample. Recent discovery of carbon nanotubes  provides a striking example, where metallic or semiconducting tubes of identical compositions have only slightly different radii . Layered BN provides a III-V analog to these materials; it can be formed in single and multiwall nanotubes that have the same Bravais lattice as their graphene counterparts, but with inequivalent atomic species on its two sublattices .

Here we show that the broken sublattice symmetry produces a macroscopic electric polarization in BN nanotubes, dependent on their topology. Remarkably, this ground state polarization is an intrinsically nonlocal quantum effect that cannot be described by a classical theory. The sign and size of the longitudinal polarization of the heteropolar tube are controlled by the boundary conditions on its electronic wave functions along its wrapped compact dimensions. We analyze this novel phenomenon by developing a quantum theory of the nanotube polarization in terms of a geometric phase .

A natural description of the electronic properties of this system is developed from an expansion of the tight binding Hamiltonian for the $`\pi `$ electrons at small wavevectors $`q`$ around the $`K`$ and $`K^{}`$ points at the corners of the Brillouin zone of the 2D hexagonal lattice . Introducing index $`\alpha =\pm 1`$ for these points then leads to the long wavelength Hamiltonians

$$H_\alpha (q,\delta ,\mathrm{\Delta })=\alpha \mathrm{}v_Fq\sigma _x+\delta _\alpha \sigma _y+\mathrm{\Delta }\sigma _z,$$
(1)
where $`\sigma _\mu `$ are the $`2\times 2`$ Pauli matrices, $`q`$ is the wavevector along the tube axis, $`v_F`$ is the Fermi velocity and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is a site diagonal potential that distinguishes the B and N sites. The crucial parameter $`\delta _\alpha =\alpha \mathrm{}v_Fq_{}`$ is a contribution to the electronic gap that comes from the quantized crystal momentum $`q_{}`$ along its azimuthal direction.

We can interpret Eqn. (1) as the Hamiltonian for an effective spin $`1/2`$ particle interacting with a “magnetic field” defined by the parameters $`(q,\delta ,\mathrm{\Delta })`$. $`H_\alpha `$ can be diagonalized by the rotation $`U_\alpha (q,\delta ,\mathrm{\Delta })=\mathrm{exp}(i\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\alpha \sigma /2)`$, which aligns the vector

$$\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\alpha =(\alpha q,\delta _\alpha ,\mathrm{\Delta })/\sqrt{q^2+\delta _\alpha ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}$$
(2)
(units $`\mathrm{}v_F=1`$) in the $`z`$ direction. The valence band eigenfunctions $`v_\alpha `$ of Eqn. (1), relevant here, have energies $`E_\alpha (q)=\sqrt{q^2+\delta _\alpha ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}`$. They are obtained by the rotation of the down spinor $`v_0=(0,1)`$ according to $`v_\alpha (q,\delta ,\mathrm{\Delta })=\mathrm{exp}(i\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\alpha \sigma /2)v_0`$, and correspond to the spin down state quantized along the local $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\alpha `$ axis.

The electric polarization of an extended system is ill defined as an intensive quantity, but its changes are well defined . For an electronic Hamiltonian containing a control parameter H($`\lambda `$), the difference in polarization $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ between initial and final states at $`\lambda _i`$ and $`\lambda _f`$ can be obtained by integrating the differential changes in $`p`$ as one adiabatically varies the control parameter $`\lambda `$

$$\mathrm{\Delta }p=_{\lambda _i}^{\lambda _f}𝑑\lambda \frac{p}{\lambda },$$
(3)
We evaluate $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ on the path from the C nanotube, which is nonpolar by symmetry, to the heteropolar BN nanotube which can have a macroscopic dipole moment. We take as a control parameter the antisymmetric site diagonal potential $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i=0`$ in the C nanotube. Therefore, integrating Eqn. (3) over the range $`0<\mathrm{\Delta }<\mathrm{\Delta }_f`$, gives an expression for the electric polarization of the heteropolar BN nanotube with the ionic strength $`\mathrm{\Delta }_f`$.

Equation (3) can be evaluated by studying the variation of $`iv_\alpha |/q|v_\alpha `$ as a function of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. Summing over $`\alpha `$ and wave vectors $`q`$, we find

$`{\displaystyle \frac{p}{e}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi i}}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha }{}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{\Delta }_f}}𝑑\mathrm{\Delta }{\displaystyle _\pi ^\pi }𝑑q`$ (4)
$`\times `$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{v_\alpha }{\mathrm{\Delta }}}|{\displaystyle \frac{v_\alpha }{q}}{\displaystyle \frac{v_\alpha }{q}}|{\displaystyle \frac{v_\alpha }{\mathrm{\Delta }}}\right).`$ (5)
The valence states $`v_\alpha `$ adiabatically follow the direction of the vector $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}_\alpha `$, so that $`v_\alpha /q=(i/2)((\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}\sigma )/q)v_\alpha `$ and $`v_\alpha /\mathrm{\Delta }=(i/2)((\widehat{\mathrm{\Omega }}\sigma )/\mathrm{\Delta })v_\alpha `$. Therefore, the polarization is

$$\frac{p}{e}=\frac{1}{4\pi }\underset{\alpha }{}_0^{\mathrm{\Delta }_f}𝑑\mathrm{\Delta }_\pi ^\pi 𝑑q\frac{v_\alpha |\sigma _y|v_\alpha }{q^2+\delta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}.$$
(6)
Equation (6) has a simple geometric interpretation. The effective “spin” representation for each valence state $`v_\alpha `$ defines a unit vector field directed inward along the radial direction at each point ($`q,\delta ,\mathrm{\Delta }`$) in the parameter space for $`_\alpha `$. The two surface integrals in (6) give the flux of a radial inverse square field in this parameter space that links through the two rectangular loops, shown in Fig. 1a. These are located at $`\delta _{\alpha =\pm 1}=\pm \mathrm{}v_Fq_{}`$, oriented parallel to the $`q\mathrm{\Delta }`$ plane and extending from $`\pi <q<\pi `$ and $`0<\mathrm{\Delta }<\mathrm{\Delta }_f`$.

This flux is related by Stokes’ theorem to the line integral of an effective vector potential $`v_\alpha |_{q(\mathrm{\Delta })}|v_\alpha `$ around the loop perimeters, shown in Fig. 1b. Thus, the electric polarization is proportional to the solid angle that is “swept out” by the effective spin as it is adiabatically transported around the loops.

Introducing an energy cutoff at the bandwidth $`W=\pi \mathrm{}v_F`$, the double integral in Eqn. (6) gives

$`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{\Delta }_f}}𝑑\mathrm{\Delta }{\displaystyle _\pi ^\pi }`$ $`dq`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha \delta }{(q^2+\delta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2)^{3/2}}}`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`2\alpha \mathrm{arctan}\left({\displaystyle \frac{W\mathrm{\Delta }}{\delta \sqrt{\delta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2+W^2}}}\right).`$ (8)
It is intuitively clear that by interchanging the B and N sublattices, i.e. negating $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, the sign of $`p`$ should change. Much more profound is the fact the dipole moment in Eqn. (8) is also odd in $`\delta `$, which thus reflects its essential quantum mechanical origin “rooted in the wrapped dimension”.

The macroscopic polarization is obtained by summing the allowed values of $`\delta `$ for each occupied subband in Eqn. (8). When a BN sheet is wrapped into a tube the transverse crystal momentum is quantized $`q_{,n}`$, and this restricts the allowed values of $`\delta `$ in the sum. The transverse momenta $`q_{,n}`$ depend on the subband index, $`n`$ and the wrapping vector $`\stackrel{}{𝒞}_{MN}=M\stackrel{}{T}_1+N\stackrel{}{T}_2`$ of the BN nanotube, where $`\stackrel{}{T}_1`$ and $`\stackrel{}{T}_2`$ are the primitive translation vectors for the hexagonal lattice . A tube with wrapping indices $`(M,N)`$ has a chiral index $`\nu =\mathrm{mod}(MN,3)`$  and its transverse momenta are quantized to the values $`q_{,n}=(2\pi /|\stackrel{}{𝒞}_{MN}|)(n+\frac{1}{3}\mathrm{sgn}\nu )`$, so the gap parameter is $`\delta _{\alpha n}=\alpha \mathrm{}v_Fq_{,n}`$. Thus summing Eqn. (8) over subbands finally gives the net electric polarization

$$\frac{p}{e}=\frac{1}{2\pi }\underset{\alpha n}{}\alpha \mathrm{arctan}\left(\frac{W\mathrm{\Delta }}{\delta _{\alpha n}\sqrt{\delta _{\alpha n}^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2+W^2}}\right).$$
(9)
Note that the summand is odd in $`\delta _{\alpha n}`$, but even under the interchange $`\alpha \alpha `$. Thus contributions to the electric polarization from states near the $`K`$ and $`K^{}`$ points are additive. However, a nonzero electric dipole moment occurs only when the momentum distribution around either point is odd in $`\delta _{\alpha n}`$. Thus the quantization of the transverse crystal momentum is the critical feature that controls the electric polarization of the BN nanotube.

Eqn. (9) predicts that BN nanotubes with crystal momentum distributions even in $`q_{}`$ are unpolarized. This happens in the limit of the flat BN sheet, for which the macroscopic dipole moment is obtained from an integral over all two-dimensional wavevectors, and for tubes with chiral indices $`\nu =0`$, for which the kinematically allowed momenta occur in $`\pm \delta _{\alpha n}`$ pairs. A simple example of the latter occurs for the “armchair” $`M=N`$ structures with the mirror symmetry (or invariance under $`MN`$) . Interestingly, Eqn. (9) predicts a zero polarization even for “nonarmchair” tubes with $`\nu =0`$.

However, for tubes with $`\nu 0`$ the $`\delta \delta `$ symmetry is broken by the fractional quantization of the transverse crystal momentum, and consequently these tubes have a net electric polarization with the sign determined by $`\nu `$. This is a remarkable result, as it implies that two nearby structures $`(M,N)`$ and $`(M+1,N)`$ can have opposing electric dipole moments, even though their structures in the tangent plane of the tube are nearly identical.

A striking illustration of this effect is given in Fig. 2, in which we plot the electric polarization (the dipole moment per unit length in one dimension), calculated as a function of the symmetry breaking potential $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, for three different “zigzag” tubes  with the nearby wrapping indices $`(M,N)`$ = $`(17,0)`$, $`(18,0)`$ and $`(19,0)`$. Skeleton lattice structures for these three tubes are shown in the insets. We use the following parameters representative of BN: $`\mathrm{}v_F=5.4\mathrm{eV}\mathrm{\AA }`$, $`W=10\mathrm{eV}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }=2.5\mathrm{eV}`$, and plot the polarization in units of the elementary charge $`e`$.

Figure 2 shows that the electric polarization is zero for the $`(18,0)`$ tube, and it is inverted for the $`(17,0)`$ and $`(19,0)`$ tubes, despite the fact that the three tubes have nearly identical local atomic structures in their surface planes. This reflects the interesting fact that the dipole moment arises as a nonlocal quantum effect that is controlled by the continuity of the electronic wavefunctions around the tube circumference and not any local property of the BN lattice. In this way, the circumferential boundary conditions for the electronic Bloch states can ultimately distinguish the three structures by their chiral indices $`\nu `$.

The polarization (when nonvanishing) for BN tubes corresponds to a dipole moment of nearly $`0.5D`$ per unit cell. Its sign, determined by the chiral index $`\nu `$, alternates with a three sublattice period as a function of the wrapping indices $`M`$ and $`N`$. This effect is the heteropolar analog of three sublattice symmetry that distinguishes conducting and semiconducting behavior of graphene nanotubes . Thus semiconducting graphene nanotubes with $`\nu 0`$ may be classified into two families that are distinguished by the sign of their gap parameters. This controls the sign of the polarization induced by adiabatic introduction of the ionicity parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in Eqn. (3).

The results derived here from the Hamiltonian (1) give the contribution to the electric polarization from the $`\pi `$ derived electronic states. In general, one can expect additional contributions to the electric dipole moment from lower lying $`\sigma `$ bands. However, these contributions are not expected to show a strong dependence on the chiral index and should be smaller than the effects derived from the more polarizable $`\pi `$ manifold. Thus the periodic dependence of the electric polarization on the wrapping vector arises from the phase matching of the $`\pi `$-derived Bloch states around the tube circumference. It will be useful to quantify the relative $`\pi `$\- and $`\sigma `$\- derived contributions to the electric polarization within a complete microsopic theory.

Experimental observation of the macroscopic dipole moment of a heteropolar tube is complicated by the possibility that extrinsic or surface charges accumulated at the tube ends could mask the predicted intrinsic effects. Nevertheless, the polarization $`p`$ in Eqn. (9) defines (modulo $`e`$) the surface charge that must appear at the ends of the $`\nu 0`$ heteropolar nanotube, independent of the atomic structure of the termination. Thus two-thirds of heteropolar single wall nanotubes should contain a universal but nonintegral surface charge, determined by the bulk electronic structure. Similarly junctions between inequivalent tube segments are predicted to localize interface charges $`0,\pm p`$ or $`\pm 2p`$ modulo $`e`$.

Multiwall heteropolar nanotubes would favor combinations which compensate the macroscopic dipole moment. For a double wall tube of outer radius $`a`$ and inner radius $`b`$, one can estimate the electrostatic contribution to the surface energy

$$U_s=\frac{2z^2e^2}{\pi |ab|}K\left(\frac{4ab}{(ab)^2}\right),$$
(10)
where $`ze`$ is the effective bound charge accumulated at the tube end and $`K`$ is the complete elliptic integral of the first kind. Taking $`z0.2`$, $`a10.4\mathrm{\AA }`$ and $`b7.0\mathrm{\AA }`$ gives $`U_s65`$ meV. Note that the structure of the double wall tubes grown under experimental conditions can be influenced by various kinetic factors as well.

Our model can be experimentally tested by measuring the change in polarization induced by varying control parameters in the Hamiltonian. Of particular interest is the effect of an elastic strain $`ϵ`$ linearly coupled to the gap parameter $`\delta \delta +\lambda ϵ`$. Thus the heteropolar tube is a molecular piezoelectric with the response constant $`z^{}=p/ϵ=\lambda p/\delta `$ given by

$$\frac{z^{}}{e}=\frac{\lambda }{2\pi }\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }W(2\delta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2+W^2)}{(\delta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2)(\delta ^2+W^2)\sqrt{\delta ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2+W^2}}.$$
(11)
The gap parameter $`\delta `$ can be linearly coupled to long wavelength compression, extension or torsion of the tube depending on the wrapping indices . These strains are the tube analogs to the orthorhombic and shear strains of an isolated graphene sheet.

In Fig. 3 we plot this piezoelectric constant as a function of the ionicity parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ for the heteropolar $`(17,0)`$, $`(18,0)`$ and $`(19,0)`$ nanotubes. Although the static dipole moments $`p/e`$ for the $`(17,0)`$ and $`(19,0)`$ tubes have opposite signs, their piezoelectric constants $`z^{}/e`$ have the same signs. This is because the couplings of the gap to strain are nearly identical for the two structures. The piezoelectric constants should be large for the BN tubes, since we expect that $`\lambda 1\mathrm{eV}`$, similar to carbon nanotubes. Note that the unstrained $`(18,0)`$ tube has no static dipole moment but it has an exceptionally large piezoelectric constant, that diverges proportional to $`1/\mathrm{\Delta }`$ as $`\mathrm{\Delta }0`$. This occurs because $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ marks a critical point, where the gap vanishes for tubes with chiral index $`\nu =0`$. Figures 2-3 also demonstrate that BN realizes the “strongly ionic” limit of this problem, in which the static dipole and its piezoelectric coefficient are essentially saturated.

The electric dipole moments of heteropolar tubes provide crucial information for understanding their structures, elementary excitations and phase behavior . They are related, for example, with an assortment of new photogalvanic effects . It is inevitable that other physical phenomena and applications will derive from the unique properties of nanotubes with controllable electric polarization. This macroscopic phenomenon also provides a beautiful and experimentally relevant illustration of the important role of the geometric phase in quantum mechanics.

The work at the University of Pennsylvania was supported by the Department of Energy under Grants DE-FG02-01ER45118 and through the NSF through the Penn MRSEC under grant DMR 00-79909. We thank J. Bernholc and C.L. Kane for useful discussions. PK would like to acknowledge M. Shapiro for support.


text:
# Quntum Dynamics in Stochastic Mechanics

## A
Introduction

The probabilistic character of Quantum Mechanics as well as the formal similarity of the Schröedinger equation to the diffusion equation raised from long ago the question of a possible stochastic justification to Quantum Mechanics . A first formal approach was developed by Nelson  and up to now many authors presented complementary or alternative works (a few of them listed in -) on the subject named usually as Stochastic Mechanics. A common goal of these theories lie on the possibility of find a stochastic process that is equivalent to Quantum Mechanics. Nevertheless no such a process was yet proposed that lent to Stochastic Mechanics, in any of its presented forms, a explicit advantage over the sophisticated epistemological structure of Quantum Theory. On another way Quantum Theory is continuously tested at deeper levels fixing its place as fundamental one although this do not invalidate the search for alternative interpretations, hopefully not subject to inconsistencies (like infinities) yet plaguing the theory. In this work we focus on a somewhat different approach where a particular kind of stochastic process is studied. We present a perturbation theory for the associated probability density function that has quantum formalism as a subjacent dynamics but still preserving the classical nature of the theory. We also discuss a possible physical origin for the noise source capable of describe the type of process we study. No full equivalence to Quantum Theory was found so this indicates that Quantum Mechanics as a fundamental theory is preserved also. Nevertheless our formulation shows explicitly that quantal aspects may appear quite naturally in a classical theory.

Once every physical process include or can generate some sort of noise the motion of a massive particle under its influence is an important subject in the study of real particle’s dynamics. For a particular class of noise - the Wiener process - a rigorous probability formalism can be obtained where a field equation - the Fokker-Planck equation (FPE) - for the probability density function of some noise-dependent variable is defined . For this case noise source has an uncorrelated stationary probability distribution and when the stochastic process under study describes specifically the motion of a particle the resulting process is the Brownian motion. Due to its generality a FPE can be considered as a fundamental although its detailed predictions are dependent of the specific Wiener process considered.

The origin of noise that a particle in Brownian motion is subject usually is thermodynamic. This is the case of a particle dispersed on a fluid at some temperature. There thermal noise gives a bit of energy to the particle and dissipative effects returns it back (randomly) to the thermal bath. The net effect is a random walk equilibrated to the bath’s temperature. Here we will consider this kind of motion but with two main differences. First the particle is in vacuum and noise is generated by vacuum fluctuations of some quantum field capable of interaction with that particle. Second the motion is not dissipative. This last hypotesis seems to be at first sight unrealistic because particle may gain energy from nothing. We accept it for simplicity since this hypotesis do not invalidate the methods we present here for the general case.

One may argue against the reality of vacuum fluctuations itself. This subject has yet some controversy but its theoretical as well as experimental grounds has been sufficiently discussed in the literature  and we can accept it in a general basis. Moreover recent careful measurements of Casimir forces  demonstrated a good agreement between observation and theoretical predictions reinforcing our belief in its physical existence. Generally we even can believe that geometry changes in a physically confined systems may induce a small violation of energy conservation principle, undetectable by today’s instrument sensitivity or be possible that during molecular conformational changes some energy comes from vacuum, involving van der Walls force. We think these arguments are sufficient to justify a possible existence of a natural noise source interacting to any elementary particle coming from vacuum properties. Besides all we must also have in mind that every charged particle is subject to the cosmic background radiation field that is real and also stochastic. Therefore we think that stochastic process are inevitable to the motion of massive particles in vacuum, coming as a intrinsic part of the reality in Nature and must be considered in any precise description of this kind of motion.

The method we give here to solve the FPE for the Brownian motion has general validity and no fundamental difficulties are present when the more general case where not only dissipative effects as well as a larger class of Wiener process are considered. Specifically for a quantum noise coming from vacuum fluctuations we understand a stationary Wiener-type source with noise intensity proportional to a ”vacuum power ” which we write as $`𝒫\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{}\omega ^2`$ and with mean energy $`\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{}\sqrt{\omega ^2}`$ and or generally

$$𝒫\mathrm{}=^2$$
(1)
Here $`\mathrm{}`$ is the Planck’s constant and $`\omega ^2`$ is the variance of the field frequencies averaged over some appropriate distribution (we assume $`\omega =0`$ since $`\omega `$ and $`\omega `$ must be considered as independent fluctuations). For example in the cosmic background case where $`T2K`$ we find $`𝒫1.15pW`$. Calculation of $`\omega ^2`$ for quantum fluctuations is not trivial because vacuum energy density diverges as $`\omega ^3`$  with (assumed) uniform probability distribution denying a simple averaging process unless a physical cutoff at high frequencies exist. This must be achieved by multiplying the instantaneous vacuum modes by the appropriate cross section (in that frequency) which falls off properly at high energies. If doing so the instantaneous momentum transferred to the particle may be calculated resulting in a noise source with zero mean and the desired power in as much as in the Casimir effect  calculation where high frequencies modes cancel out and the net effect comes from low frequencies modes only. This is analogous to the thermal effect where the enormous kinetic energy of one mol of molecules at room temperature has minimal action over the center of mass motion of a macroscopic body because the random collisions between the molecules and the body are isotropic so the net resulting effect are small fluctuations. Nevertheless if the phenomena we describe here has to be universal it is reasonable that $``$ should be a characteristic mensurable constant in Nature even though we concentrate here only on the effect on particle motion of a noise source with properties listed above and explicit in the perturbative series expansion procedure we give below. Therefore besides eqn $`\left(\text{1}\right)`$ detailed physical origin of $`𝒫`$ (or $``$) is not relevant to our calculations in the present stage of development of our reasoning.

## B
Perturbation expansion for the Fokker-Planck equation

In sequence we give the precise mathematical formulation of the kind of motion we want to describe. Particle’s dynamics arise from Hamilton equations plus a Langevin term acting as a stochastic force. We assume no explicit stochastic term for position variable meaning that any random effect on it comes indirectly through coupling with the momentum term resulting in a non-dissipative Brownian motion. More precisely we have

$`dx\left(t\right)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{H}{p}}dt`$ (3)
$`dp\left(t\right)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{H}{x}}dt+\sqrt{2m𝒫}dW\left(t\right)`$ (4)
Here $`m`$ is particle’s mass and $`dW\left(t\right)`$ a stationary Wiener-type stochastic variable with noise power $`𝒫`$ given as above. Rigorously speaking if the particle has a electric charge it radiates when accelerated which is a kind of an intrinsic unremovable dissipative effect. In this work we assume these effects as small thus leaving out any radiation reaction terms and deserving for a future work a proper inclusion of appropriate corrections.

The associated Fokker-Planck equation for the joint $`\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)`$ probability density distribution in phase space is given by

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)}{t}=\frac{H}{p}\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }}{x}+\frac{H}{x}\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }}{p}+m𝒫\frac{^2\mathrm{\Phi }}{p^2}$$
(5)
which unless a missing dissipative term has the same structure of the Kramers’ equation , orginaly written to describe the motion of a large mass particle in a fluid at thermal equilibrium with a bath in such a way that noise comes from the temperature effect cited above. As already discussed this motion is unstable against infinitesimal stochastic perturbations. In fact even if the intensity $`\sqrt{2m𝒫}`$ of the Langevin term goes to zero a smeared phase space still results. We observe that in this case the above equation reduces to the Liouville equation which admits a class of solutions concentrated along the deterministic trajectories in phase space describing particle’s classical motion. In fact if $`H_{cl}\left(t\right)\frac{P_{cl}\left(t\right)^2}{2m}+V\left(x_{cl}\left(t\right)\right)`$ is the Hamiltonian of the (deterministic) Hamilton equations one class of solutions for Liouville equation is

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)=A\mathrm{exp}(\beta \left|\frac{p^2P_{cl}\left(t\right)^2}{2m}+V\left(x\right)V\left(x_{cl}\left(t\right)\right)\right|)$$
(6)
We see that trajectories (in phase space) no longer exist any more: position and momentum variables decouple and information about the system is supplied by an ensemble of states in thermal equilibrium at temperature $`\beta ^1`$. This temperature effect is the only memory of the ghost stochastic effect and is caused by the known singular small noise expansion of the FPE . Thus there is a big difference if we take Hamilton equations without noise to get a full deterministic motion and a FPE with null noise term. In the first case the topology of phase space as represented by Poincare maps are sets of points even when the motion is chaotic whereas a probability density function continuously fills phase space in the another case.

The structure of the FPE allows easy calculation of some averages. For example time derivative of the expected value of the Hamiltonian is given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}H`$ $`={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑x𝑑p\left[{\displaystyle \frac{p^2}{2m}}+V(x,t)\right]\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)`$ (7)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}H`$ $`=𝒫{\displaystyle \frac{V}{x}}{\displaystyle \frac{p}{m}}+{\displaystyle \frac{V}{x}}{\displaystyle \frac{p}{m}}=𝒫`$ (8)
and the expected value of the momentum changes at the rate

$$\frac{d}{dt}p=\frac{V}{x}f$$
(9)
following in mean the second Newton’s law. Note that the mean exchanged momentum with stochastic source is zero but a quadratic dispersion on momentum exists being this consequence of the missing dissipative effects. This dispersion increases with time meaning that, as anticipated above, the particle gains some energy from the stochastic source . Position variable is also affected although there is no noise source acting directly on it. Its mean value and the associated fluctuations change at the rate

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}x`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{p}{m}}`$ (10)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}\left(x^2x^2\right)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{2}{m}}\left(pxpx\right)`$ (11)
Thereby classical laws of motion are satisfied only in mean no matter the value of the noise intensity as shown by eqns $`\left(\text{9}\right)`$and $`\left(\text{10}\right)`$. We must conclude that a field dynamics for the probability density should exist even for zero noise power and it will be shown bellow it follows exactly quantum dynamics when our perturbative schema is considered.

We develop in sequence the perturbative expansion. To do this we shall use $`\mathrm{}`$ in order to Fourier Transform $`\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)`$ in momentum to the adjoint space $`𝒴`$ associated to this variable. In the present formalism this space refer to wavelengths of a mode decomposition of the probability density function. Differently from Quantum Theory here position and momentum are not related by an unitary transformation between adjoint spaces. This happens for momentum and wavelengths of waves of probability density having momentum $`p=\mathrm{}y`$. It is in this space the FPE has a form suitable to the structure of the perturbative series we look for. Nextly we write

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)=\frac{1}{2\pi }_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\chi (x,y,t)e^{i\frac{py}{\mathrm{}}}𝑑y$$
(12)
so the FPE reads

$$_t\chi (x,y,t)=\frac{\mathrm{}}{im}_y_x\chi \frac{y}{i\mathrm{}}\frac{V}{x}\chi \frac{y^2}{\tau \lambda ^2}\chi $$
(13)
where $`\lambda /\mathrm{}c`$ is the mean vacuum fluctuation wavelength and $`\tau `$ the particle’s Compton length divided by the velocity of light. We stress that phase space probability density $`\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)`$ is similar but has to be not confused with the Wigner function  in Quantum Theory. The former satisfies exactly the Liouville equation for zero noise power. Wigner function satisfies it only approximately. Moreover in a Fourier transform on momentum variable of the Wigner function similar to eqn$`\left(\text{12}\right)`$ variable $`y`$ has the meaning of position. Specifically in the Wigner function the role of $`x`$ and $`y`$ are symmetric so they share the same physical meaning whereas in this work simbols $`x`$ and $`y`$ are trully indepent variables that play different role. It will be shown explicitly later that in fact both functions do not coincide.

Owing to the structure of the eqn$`\left(\text{13}\right)`$ it is natural to think in a Taylor expansion of $`\chi (x,y,t)`$ in the variable $`y`$ which should be convenient because this way we may compare probability wavelengths to vacuum wavelength (that is very big) as expressed by the fraction present in the last term of this equation. This perturbative schema has the advantage that it permits a controll of noise effects over field dynamics for $`\chi `$. Saying differently if particle’s kinetic energy is much greater than vacuum energy $``$ its typical mode wavelength $`y\mathrm{}/p`$ is very small compared to vacuum wavelength $`\lambda `$ thus making noise effects negligible. But a infinite series in powers of $`y`$ has no simple inverse Fourier representation generating a somewhat pathological phase space reconstruction. For vanishingly small noise we know from eqn$`\left(\text{6}\right)`$ that Liouville equation feels the presence of a thermal bath with temperature $`\beta ^1`$. In the present case this effect is to be replaced by a ”vacuum temperature” proportional to $`\lambda ^1`$. Thus we insert a additional gaussian term in the perturbation series in order to regularize phase space reconstrution and to provide the appropriate thermal bath effect. More precisely we look for a general series solution of the type

$$\chi (x,y,t)=\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{y^2}{2\lambda ^2}\right)\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}a_n(x,t)y^n$$
(14)
in such a way that eqn$`\left(\text{13}\right)`$ becomes

$`{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_n(x,t)}{t}}y^n`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{im}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_n(x,t)}{x}}\left[ny^{n1}{\displaystyle \frac{y^{n+1}}{\lambda ^2}}\right]`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{V}{x}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}a_n(x,t)y^{n+1}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\tau \lambda ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}a_n(x,t)y^{n+2}`$
generating the following set of differential equations for the coefficients $`\left\{a_n\right\}`$

$`{\displaystyle \frac{a_0(x,t)}{t}}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{im}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_1(x,t)}{x}}`$ (15)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{a_1(x,t)}{t}}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{im}}\left[2{\displaystyle \frac{a_2(x,t)}{x}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\lambda ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_0(x,t)}{x}}\right]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{V}{x}}a_0(x,t)`$ (16)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{a_n(x,t)}{t}}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{im}}\left[\left(n+1\right){\displaystyle \frac{a_{n+1}(x,t)}{x}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\lambda ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{a_{n1}(x,t)}{x}}\right]`$ (17)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{V}{x}}a_{n1}(x,t){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\tau \lambda ^2}}a_{n2}(x,t)`$ (18)
Before discussing solutions of the above set of equations note that a naive interpretation can be given to some of these coefficients. In fact since

$`\chi (x,y,t)={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)e^{i\frac{py}{\mathrm{}}}𝑑p`$

we have

$`a_0(x,t)`$ $`=\chi (x,0,t)={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)𝑑p\left|\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t)\right|^2`$ (19)
$`a_1(x,t)`$ $`=\left({\displaystyle \frac{\chi }{y}}\right)_{y=0}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}p\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)𝑑p{\displaystyle \frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}}\pi (x,t)`$ (20)
$`a_2(x,t)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{^2\chi }{y^2}}\right)_{y=0}+{\displaystyle \frac{a_0}{2\lambda ^2}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\mathrm{}^2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}p^2\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)𝑑p+{\displaystyle \frac{a_0}{2\lambda ^2}}`$ (21)
that is $`a_0`$ is the marginal probability distribution, $`a_1`$ is proportional to the expected value of the momentum at point $`x`$ and $`a_2`$ is proportional to the kinetic energy at $`x`$. We have also introduced the probability amplitude $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ belonging to the $`L^2`$ stuff of the $`L^1`$-based probability distribution $`a_0`$. Integrating eqns$`\left(\text{15}\right)`$-$`\left(\text{17}\right)`$ we get for $`n=2`$

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}\left|\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t)\right|^2𝑑x`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{dN}{dt}}=0`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}\pi (x,t)𝑑x`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{dp}{dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{V}{x}}a_0(x,t)=f(x,t)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{m}}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}a_2(x,t)𝑑x`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2m}}{\displaystyle \frac{dp^2}{dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{f(x,t)\pi (x,t)}{m}}+𝒫`$
The first of these equations indicates that the norm of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is time-independent. Incidentally it also shows that the Hilbert space operator $`i\mathrm{}\frac{}{t}`$ satisfy $`(i\mathrm{}_t\mathrm{\Psi },\mathrm{\Psi })=(\mathrm{\Psi },i\mathrm{}_t\mathrm{\Psi })`$ where $`(,)`$ stands for Hilbert space inner product. This does not mean at the present stage that $`i\mathrm{}_t`$ is hermitian since the relation was not proved to be valid in general, for any pair of Hilbert space vectors. However it is a necessary condition suggesting that this operator admits a Hermitian representation on an appropriate Hilbert space and in fact it will be constructed as the consistence of our calcualtions becomes closed. The second equation is similar to the Ehrenfest theorem and the third one indicates together with eqn$`\left(\text{8}\right)`$ that the rise in total particle’s energy comes from its kinetic component. It’s worthwhile note that the first two equations are independent of noise intensity so concerning the non-stochastic limit their validity has the same status as the Liouville equation. In the next step we look for a field equation for $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$. Define $`LF\left[P\right]+V(x,t)`$, where $`P\frac{\mathrm{}}{i}\frac{}{x}`$ .We then have

$`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}[L,P]\mathrm{\Psi }={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{i}}{\displaystyle \frac{V}{x}}\mathrm{\Psi }^{}\mathrm{\Psi }`$

and in consequence

$$\frac{}{t}a_1(x,t)=\frac{\mathrm{}}{im}\frac{}{x}\left[2a_2(x,t)\frac{1}{\lambda ^2}a_0(x,t)\right]+\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }^{}[L,P]\mathrm{\Psi }}{\mathrm{}^2}$$
(22)
$$\frac{d}{dt}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}a_1(x,t)𝑑x=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}^2}(\mathrm{\Psi },[L,P]\mathrm{\Psi })$$
(23)
Being $`a_1`$ pure imaginary we can write it as

$$a_1=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }B\mathrm{\Psi }^{}\mathrm{\Psi }^{}B\mathrm{\Psi }}{2}$$
(24)
where $`B`$ is necessarily a real-valued operator. Further development on defining a more specific form for this operator also generates the rules for the Hilbert space we are working on. Owing to eqn$`\left(\text{23}\right)`$ where a inner product emerges naturally we choose $`B`$ such that $`\stackrel{~}{B}\frac{\mathrm{}}{i}B`$ is Hermitian and time-independent giving the desired structure to expected value of the momentum as shown below

$`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}a_1(x,t)𝑑x={\displaystyle \frac{1}{i\mathrm{}}}(\mathrm{\Psi },\stackrel{~}{B}\mathrm{\Psi })(\mathrm{\Psi },\stackrel{~}{B}\mathrm{\Psi })=\pi \mathrm{\Pi }\left(t\right)`$

This result is to be interpreted classically even though it presents a strong resemblance to quantum mechanical rules. The average force on the particle is then equal to

$$\frac{d\mathrm{\Pi }\left(t\right)}{dt}=\frac{d}{dt}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}a_1(x,t)𝑑x=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}^2}\left[(i\mathrm{}_t\mathrm{\Psi },\stackrel{~}{B}\mathrm{\Psi })(\mathrm{\Psi },\stackrel{~}{B}i\mathrm{}_t\mathrm{\Psi })\right]$$
(25)
and when compared with eqn$`\left(\text{23}\right)`$ suggest a simple inner product structure for the above equation giving to $`i\mathrm{}_t`$ a possible Hermitian representation $``$ which in general is function of $`x`$, $`P`$, $`\stackrel{~}{B}`$ and $`t`$. This option defines simultaneously a field equation for the probability amplitude since now we select those Hilbert space vectors that satisfy the equality

$`i\mathrm{}_t\mathrm{\Psi }=(x,P,\stackrel{~}{B},t)\mathrm{\Psi }`$

When this equation is inserted in eqn$`\left(\text{25}\right)`$ and compared to eqn$`\left(\text{23}\right)`$ we get

$`(\mathrm{\Psi },[,\stackrel{~}{B}]\mathrm{\Psi })=(\mathrm{\Psi },[L,P]\mathrm{\Psi })`$

which should be valid for all $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ that satisfy the above field equation. So in an appropriate subspace we must have $`[,\stackrel{~}{B}]=[L,P]`$ with a formal solution given by

$`\stackrel{~}{B}`$ $`=`$ $`P`$
$`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ $`=`$ $`L\mathrm{\Psi }=\left[F\left[P\right]+V(x,t)\right]\mathrm{\Psi }`$
which must be simultaneously valid. This way we conclude that $`F\left[P\right]`$ is Hermitian. Now eqn$`\left(\text{15}\right)`$ should also be satisfied implying that

$`i\mathrm{}_t\left|\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t)\right|^2=\mathrm{\Psi }^{}\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }^{}={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}\left(\mathrm{\Psi }_x^2\mathrm{\Psi }^{}\mathrm{\Psi }^{}_x^2\mathrm{\Psi }\right)`$

or

$`\mathrm{\Psi }^1\left(F\left[P\right]+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}_x^2\right)\mathrm{\Psi }=\left(\mathrm{\Psi }^{}\right)^1\left(F\left[P\right]+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}_x^2\right)\mathrm{\Psi }^{}`$

an equation locally valid. Since $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}`$ are independent we have $`F\left[P\right]=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}_x^2`$ and $`=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}_x^2+V`$ or

$$i\mathrm{}_t\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t)=\left[\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}_x^2+V(x,t)\right]\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t)$$
(26)
We have found that field equation for the probability amplitude $`\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t)`$ follows quantum dynamics although the formalism used in this work be classical. This classical signature of Stochastic Mechanics as presented here is not only conceptual but has rigorous formal support as shown below.

The whole perturbative series can now be recursively calculated. Expected values of any (classical) observable $`f(x,p,t)`$ is given by

$$f=\underset{n}{}a_n(x,t)\stackrel{~}{f}(x,y,t)^{}y^n\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{y^2}{2\lambda ^2}\right)𝑑x𝑑y$$
(27)
where $`\stackrel{~}{f}(x,y,t)=f(x,p)e^{i\frac{py}{\mathrm{}}}`$. This way all predictions supported on the classical realism can be obtained although satisfying quantum dynamics exactly as present on the first two coefficients of the perturbative series. Higher order terms are also influenced by quantum dynamics but it is not clear that in the full phase space reconstruction interferences cancel out in order to recover the classical character of the theory. If this was the case averages calculated by eqn$`\left(\text{27}\right)`$ will result on the values expected by classical theories. However it is noticeable that this doesn’t happens and concerning eqn$`\left(\text{27}\right)`$ some results from Quantum Theory are equivalent to the present formulation of the Stochastic Mechanics. For example the expected value of the (classical) Hamiltonian is, using eqns$`\left(\text{27}\right)`$ and$`\left(\text{21}\right)`$

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{p^2}{2m}}+V(x,t)={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{m}}{\displaystyle a_2(x,t)𝑑x}+`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m\lambda ^2}}{\displaystyle a_0(x,t)𝑑x}+{\displaystyle V(x,t)a_0(x,t)𝑑x}`$
The value of $`a_2`$ is obtained by direct integration of eqn$`\left(\text{16}\right)`$ and use of the field equation for $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$, the Shröedinger equation. The result is

$$a_2(x,t)=\frac{1}{8}\left[\mathrm{\Psi }\frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }^{}}{x^2}+\mathrm{\Psi }^{}\frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }}{x^2}2\left|\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }}{x}\right|^2\right]+\frac{a_0(x,t)}{2\lambda ^2}$$
(28)
Using the condition that norm of the probability amplitude is equal to one the integral of eqn $`\left(\text{28}\right)`$ is

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{m}}{\displaystyle a_2(x,t)𝑑x}={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}}{\displaystyle \mathrm{\Psi }^{}\frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }}{x^2}𝑑x}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m\lambda ^2}}`$

resulting that $`H=H_{MQ}`$ exactly, where $`H_{MQ}`$ is the expected value of the Hamiltonian calculated by Quantum Mechanics for the same problem. In particular for stationary states of bound systems the classical energy becomes quantized. Consequently in the context presented here it appears that Stochastic Mechanics is a larger class of dynamical problem than Quantum Mechanics which seems be a subset of the former. In fact Stochastic Mechanics gives a maximum possible information in phase space through a true independence between position and momentum variables that is not present in Quantum Theory.

But the above results show also that we have a disagreement between both theories. Remember that Wigner function in phase space satisfies Liouville equation only approximately  whereas our probability density satisfy it exactly for zero noise power. More generally Wigner function for pure states in the adjoint space is given by $`\stackrel{~}{W}(x,y,t)=\mathrm{\Psi }(x\frac{1}{2}y,t)\mathrm{\Psi }(x+\frac{1}{2}y,t)^{}`$ and admits a series expansion of the form

$`\stackrel{~}{W}(x,y,t)={\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}a_{wn}(x,t)y^n`$

The first two coefficients of this series coincide with ours given by eqns $`\left(\text{19}\right)`$ and $`\left(\text{24}\right)`$ but the value of the second order coefficient given by

$`a_{w2}(x,t)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\left[\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t){\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t)^{}}{x^2}}+\mathrm{\Psi }^{}(x,t){\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t)}{x^2}}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Psi }(x,t)}{x}}\right|^2\right]`$

differ from the corresponding coefficient $`a_2(x,t)`$ calculated in this work, even for infinite vacuum wavelength, and shown in eqn $`\left(\text{28}\right)`$. This conclusively shows that Wigner function $`W(x,p,t)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)`$ are not equal.

Having the terms in the perturbative series next step is phase space reconstruction. This task is not trivial because involves the whole series above displayed but if momentum of the mechanical system under study is much larger than $`p_{vac}\mathrm{}/\lambda `$ the gaussian weight may induce a strong convergence in the perturbative series and truncation has some sense. Thus we expect rapid convergence for sufficiently high energy of the mechanical system compared to the mean vacuum fluctuation energy $``$. In this case the result up to second order is

$`\mathrm{\Phi }(x,p,t)`$ $`G(x,p,t)\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda p}{\mathrm{}}}\right)^2\right)`$ (29)
$`G(x,p,t)`$ $`a_0(x,t)\sqrt{2\pi \lambda }{\displaystyle \frac{i\lambda ^3p}{2\mathrm{}}}a_1(x,t)\sqrt{\pi }+`$ (30)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda ^3}{3\mathrm{}}}a_2(x,t)\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{3}}}\left[1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\lambda p}{\mathrm{}}}\right)^2\right]`$ (31)
The above result shows that as an approximation, negative phase space probability also exist in our theory as it happens with Wigner function in Quantum Mechanics. Of course exact probability distribution should be non-negative and depends on calculation of all terms in the series for $`\chi `$. It may happens that covergence be not uniform a fact that complicate experimental verification since an oscilating series presents intrinsic measurements dificulties. Interestingly more, a new effect rises out from eqn$`\left(\text{29}\right)`$ as shown in its exponential prefactor where a low energy phenomena controll a high energy cutoff in phase space, being this a solution somewhat different from those usually found to eliminate ultraviolet divergences in field theory. Even though of fundamental importance this effect will not considered here for further discussions.

## C Concluding Remarks

In this work a non-dissipative Brownian motion was considered and a perturbative series for the associated Fokker-Planck equation presented. Noise source was assumed to be vacuum fluctuations of some quantum field that couples to particle’s classical dynamics. Surprisingly the first two terms of this series accommodates quantum dynamics quite naturally with properties and structure of its Hilbert space stuff. Nevertheless our approach is purely classical, explicit in the physical meaning of all mathematical objects treated here. Moreover our probability density function and Wigner function differ suggesting that both theories can be compared at a experimental level specially if phase space tomography measurements  with massive particles becomes effectiveness.

In one line of reasoning this may indicate that our approach do not describe a truly quantal phenomena since a disagreement with Wigner function occur. But an alternative way may be given. Wigner function was originally constructed as a mathematical object without any explicit classical equivalence in what concern its (classically-defined) measurement. Its simultaneous dependence on position and momentum variables indicates it lives naturally in phase space. In addition it also satisfies approximately Liouville equation but since it can present negative values no support exists for an interpretation it is the quantum version of phase space probability density function.

Quite differently, in the formalism presented here phase space dynamics is real by construction and the interpretation of all mathematical objects are philosophically self-consistent since they satisfy all paradigms of Classical Mechanics reasoning. Even the probability waves and the associated wavelengths $`y`$ have clear physical meaning. In addition phase space reconstruction shown in eqn$`\left(\text{29}\right)`$ presents in its lower order expansion negative probability values thus disclaiming the interpretation where this phenomenon is a mark of the Quantum Theory. In fact it is known from long that small noise perturbation series of the FPE may present negative terms . These considerations demands that experiment should definitively test whether dynamics in phase space as presented in this work is correct or not.

The most serious objection against the formulation of Stochastic Mechanics we present is probably the possibility of a material body gain some energy from vacuum. This reasoning breaks the naive classical paradigms we claim to give to the rest of the theory. It is the price paid for get so smoothly quantum dynamics from a purely classical theory. We have argued that although vacuum power seems unphysical at first sight may in fact be a real phenomenon with true detection chance. If real is reasonable think that dynamcs of elementary particles are then correctly described by an appropriate FPE as discussed here. Vacuum temperature must be so small that usual quantum phenomena behave like high temperature ones and this in our interpretation means that typical wavelengths of the probability density are much smaller than vacuum wavelength so the whole perturbation series can be approximated by its stationary Liouville solution. Consequently important quantum results like atomic spectra can be understood inside our classical reasoning. Moreover our formalism open tips to think about experimental detection of alternative theories that not only embraces Quantum Mechanics as well test its foundations at a more precise level. These considerations are, in our assessment, sufficient to take account in serious way the possibility that non-dissipative Brownian motion driven by vacuum fluctuations be a real phenomena turning out Stochastic Mechanics a faithful description of Nature.