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# Speculations on a Unified Theory of Matter and Mind11footnote 1Based on the talk: Is Consciousness An Accident? in the International Conference: Science and Metaphysics: A Discussion on Consciousness and Genetics at Bangalore, India, (June 2001).

## 1 Introduction

Most of the physicists today believe that we are very close to a unified theory of matter (UTM) based on p-brane theory (a variant of String \[1-brane\] theory) . This theory has been well motivated by the successes (from microchips to satellites) and the difficulties (the presence of infinities) of Quantum Gauge Field Theories (QED, Electro-Weak theory, GUT and SUSY GUT etc.) most of which are based on solid experimental evidences (measuring Lande g-factor of electron up to 10 significant places, prediction of Z boson etc.). This ‘theory of everything ‘ tells us that all carbon atoms (after they are born out of nucleosynthesis in the core of stars) in this universe are the same in space and in time, and thus is unable to explain why the carbon atoms present in a lump of roughly three pound of ordinary matter the human brain – give rise to such ineffable qualities as feeling, thought, purpose, awareness and free will that are taken to be evidence for ‘consciousness’!

Is Consciousness an accident caused by random evolutionary processes in the sense that it would not evolve again had the present universe to undergo a ‘big crunch’ to start with another ‘big bang’? NO! It is a fundamental property that emerges as a natural consequence of laws of nature. Are these laws of nature different from laws of physics? Is there a way to expand the UTM to incorporate consciousness? In this paper I make an attempt to point out a possible direction for such an expansion to achieve a unified theory of matter and mind by considering ‘information’ to be more fundamental than matter and energy.

Nature manifests itself not only at the gross level of phenomena (accessible to direct senses) but also at the subtle level of natural laws (accessible to ‘refined ‘ senses). Consciousness is the ability to access nature at both these levels. Hence everything in nature is conscious, but there is a hierarchy in the level of consciousness. Although animals, plants and few machines today can access to the gross level of nature, access to the subtle level seems to be purely human. In this sense a layman is less conscious compared to a scientist or an artist. (Is it possible that a level of consciousness exists compared to which a scientist or an artist of today may appear a layman?) Once everything (both matter and mind) is reduced to information it is possible to define consciousness as the capability to process information. Because any form of our access to nature is based on processing information with varying degree of complexity. The words process and complexity will be defined in the following. Now I proceed to elaborate the claims (italicized above) but due to the constraint of printing space I will be brief here and the details of this scheme will be given elsewhere.

## 2 Matter

### 2.1 Phenomena

Some animals like dogs (in listening to ultrasound) and bats (in sensing prey through echo technique) are better equipped than humans when it comes to direct sense experiences. But unlike animals, humans have found out methods to extend their sense experiences through amplification devices like telescopes, microscopes etc. The summary  of such sense experiences (direct and extended) acquired over the last five hundred years (equivalent to one second in a time-scale where the age of the universe is equal to a year) is that our universe extends in space from the size of an electron (1017 cm as probed at LEP colliders at CERN, Geneva) to size of galactic super-clusters (1030 cm as probed by high redshift measurements). The theoretical possibility of Planck length (1033 cm) allows for further extension in space.

Our grand universe extending over more than 60 orders of magnitude in space has been constantly changing over the last 12 billion years! Living systems seem to have evolved out of non-living systems. Consciousness seems to have evolved out of living systems. Is the dramatic difference between animate and inanimate, conscious and unconscious simply a difference in their ability to process information? At the level of phenomena nature is so vast and diverse compared to the size and comprehension of human beings that one wonders how the collective inquiring human minds over the centuries could at all fathom the unity behind this diversity. This simply testifies the triumph of human mind over the physical limitations of its body. Because the human mind is capable of reaching a synthesis (an advanced form of information processing) based on careful observations of diverse phenomena.

### 2.2 Inanimate

#### 2.2.1 Manifold

Till Einstein, everybody thought ‘absolute space’ is the arena (mathematically, a manifold) on which things change with ‘absolute time’. In special theory of relativity (STR) he redefined the manifold to be flat space-time (3 + 1) by making both space and time relative with respect to inertial observers but keeping space-time (SpT) absolute. In general theory of relativity (GTR) he propounded this manifold to be curved space-time that can act on matter unlike the flat space-time. Then the Quantum Theory (QT, the standard version, not the Bohmian one) pointed out this manifold to be an abstract mathematical space called Hilbert space since the space-time description of quantum processes is not available. Quantum Field Theory (QFT) that originated in a successful merge of QT and STR requires this manifold to be the Quantum Vacuum (QV). Unlike the ordinary vacuum, QV contains infinite number of ‘virtual’ particles that give rise to all matter and interactions . Every quantum field has its own QV and a successful amalgamation of QT and GTR (called Quantum Gravity, and yet to be achieved) may connect the curved space-time with the QV of gravitational field. Finally, String (or p-brane) theory demands all fundamental entities to be strings (or p-branes) in ten-dimensional space-time. This evolution in our understanding clearly shows the necessity and importance of a background manifold to formulate any scientific theory.

#### 2.2.2 Basic Constituents

Energy and matter were considered to be the two basic constituents of our universe till Einstein showed their equivalence through E=mc2. All forms of energy are interconvertible. Matter in all its forms (solid, liquid, gas and plasma) consists of atoms. The simplest of all atoms is the hydrogen atom that contains an electron and a proton. If one considers the (now outdated) Bohrian picture of hydrogen atom being a miniature solar system where the electron revolves around the proton in circular orbit then one realizes that most of the hydrogen atom is empty space. This means that if one blows up the hydrogen atom in imagination such that both electron and proton acquire the size of a football each then they need to be separated by 100 km or more! Hence one would think that even if 99.99 % of the hydrogen atom consists of vacuum the point-like electron and proton are material particles. But that is not so.

The elementary particle physics tells us that all the visible matter (composition of dark matter is not yet surely known) in the universe is made of six leptons and six quarks along with their antiparticles. Although they are loosely called particles they are not like the ordinary particles we experience in daily life. A ‘classical’ particle is localized and impenetrable whereas a ‘classical’ wave can be extended from minus infinity to plus infinity in space and many wave modes can simultaneously occupy the same space (like inside the telephone cable). But with the advent of quantum mechanics this seemingly contradictory differences between particle and wave lost their sharpness in the quantum world. A quantum object can simultaneously ‘be’ a particle and a wave until a measurement is made on it. According to QFT all fundamental entities are quantum fields (not material in the conventional sense) that are neither particle nor wave in the classical sense.

#### 2.2.3 Evolution

Despite various specializations, all physical sciences share a common goal: given the complete specification of a physical system at an initial time (called the initial conditions) how to predict what will it be at a later time. To predict with exactness one needs the accurate initial conditions and the laws that govern the evolution of the system (called the dynamical laws). Either the lack of exact specifications of initial conditions or the intractability of huge number of equations (that express dynamical laws) can lead to a probabilistic description rather than a deterministic one. However, there are chaotic systems that can be both deterministic yet unpredictable because of their extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Apart from dynamical laws there are other laws like E=mc2 etc., which do not involve time explicitly. Could there be laws at the level of initial conditions that guide us to choose a particular set over another?

A physical law is like the hidden thread (unity) of a garland with various flowers representing diverse natural phenomena. Its character seems to depend on characteristic scales (denoted by fundamental constants like Planck length, Planck’s constant, and speed of light etc). Why should there be different set of laws at different scales? Most physicists believe that quantum mechanics is universal in the applicability of its laws like Schr dinger’s equation and classicality of the everyday world is a limiting case. But there exists no consensus at present regarding the emergence of this limiting case.

#### 2.2.4 Guiding Principles

How does one formulate these physical laws? The principle of relativistic causality helps. Do physical laws change? Is there a unity behind the diversity of laws? Is it possible to understand nature without laws? The concept of symmetry (invariance) with its rigorous mathematical formulation and generalization has guided us to know the most fundamental of physical laws. Symmetry as a concept has helped mankind not only to define ‘beauty’ but also to express the ‘truth’. Physical laws tries to quantify the truth that appears to be ‘transient’ at the level of phenomena but symmetry promotes that truth to the level of ‘eternity’.

#### 2.2.5 Interactions

The myriad mosaic of natural phenomena is possible because, not only each fundamental entity evolves with time but also it can interact with the other basic constituents. All the physical interactions (known so far) can be put into four categories: (i) gravitational interaction (the force that holds the universe), (ii) electromagnetic interaction (the force that holds the atom, and hence all of us), (iii) strong nuclear interaction (the force that holds the nucleus), and (iv) weak nuclear interaction (the force that causes radioactive decay). At present (ii) and (iv) are known (observationally) to be unified to a single force called ElectroWeak. Grand unified theories (GUT) and their extensions (SUSY GUT) for (ii), (iii) and (iv) do exist. Ongoing research aims to unify (i) with such theories.

According to QFT the basic matter fields interact by exchanging messenger fields (technically called gauge fields) that define the most fundamental level of communication in nature. Both matter fields and gauge fields originate in the fluctuations of QV and in this sense everything in universe including consciousness is, in principle, reducible to QV and its fluctuations . Communication in nature can happen either via the local channel mediated by gauge fields or by the nonlocal EPR  type channels (through entanglement) as was demonstrated by recent quantum teleportation experiments.

#### 2.2.6 Composite Systems

Till the importance of quantum entanglement was realized in recent times the whole was believed to be just the sum of parts. But the whole seems to be much more than just the sum of parts in the ‘quantum’ world as well as classical systems having complexity. It makes quantum entanglement a very powerful resource that has been utilized in recent times for practical schemes like quantum teleportation, quantum cryptography and quantum computation. Quantum nonlocality indicates that the universe may very well be holographic in the sense that the whole is reflected in each part.

### 2.3 Animate

#### 2.3.1 Manifold

Space-time (3 + 1) is the manifold for all biological functions at the phenomenal level that can be explained by classical physics. If one aims to have a quantum physical explanation of certain biological functions then the manifold has to be the Hilbert Space.

#### 2.3.2 Basic Constituent

Cell is the basic constituent of life although the relevant information seems to be coded at the subcell (genetic) level. Neuron (or Microtubules and Cytoskeletons) could be the physical substratum of brain depending on classical (or quantum) viewpoint.

#### 2.3.3 Evolution

Does biological evolution happen with respect to the physical time? If yes, then will the physical laws suffice to study biological evolution in the sense they do in chemistry? If no, then is the biological arrow of time different from the various arrows of physical time (say, cosmological or the thermodynamical arrow of time)? Is there a need for biological laws apart from physical laws to understand the functioning of biological systems?

#### 2.3.4 Guiding Principles

Survivability is the guiding principles in biological systems. Organisms constantly adapt to each other through evolution, and thus organizing themselves into a delicately tuned ecosystem. Intentionality may also play a very important role in the case of more complex biosystems.

#### 2.3.5 Interactions

The interaction occurs by exchange of chemicals, electric signals, gestures, and language etc. at various levels depending upon the level of complexity involved.

#### 2.3.6 Composite Systems

Composite systems are built out of the basic constituents retaining the relevant information in a holographic manner. The genetic information in the zygote is believed to contain all the details of the biology to come up later when the person grows up. The genes in a developing embryo organize themselves in one way to make a liver cell and in another way to make a muscle cell.

### 2.4 Discussions

#### 2.4.1 How ‘material’ is physical?

Anything that is physical need not be ‘material’ in the sense we experience material things in everyday life. The concept of energy is physical but not material. Because nobody can experience energy directly, one can only experience the manifestations of energy through matter. Similarly the concept of a ‘classical field’ in physics is very abstract and can only be understood in terms of analogies. Still more abstract is the concept of a ‘quantum field’ because it cannot be understood in terms of any classical analogies. But at the same time it is a wellknown fact in modern physics that all fundamental entities in the universe are quantum fields. Hence one has to abandon the prejudice that anything ‘physical’ has to be ‘material’.

#### 2.4.2 Is reductionism enough?

The reductionist approach: observing a system with an increased resolution in search of its basic constituents has helped modern science to be tremendously successful. The success of modern science is the success of the experimental method that has reached an extreme accuracy and reproducibility. But the inadequacy of reductionism in physical sciences becomes apparent in two cases: emergent phenomena and quantum nonlocality. Quantum nonlocality implies a holographic universe that necessitates a holistic approach .

Though it is gratifying to discover that everything can be traced back to a small number of quantum fields and dynamical laws it does not mean that we now understand the origin of earthquakes, weather variations, the growing of trees, the fluctuations of stock market, the population growth and the evolution of life? Because each of these processes refers to a system that is complex, in the sense that a great many independent agents are interacting with each other in a great many ways. These complex systems are adaptive and undergo spontaneous self-organization (essentially nonlinear) that makes them dynamic in a qualitatively different sense from static objects such as computer chips or snowflakes, which are merely complicated. Complexity deals with emergent phenomena. The concept of complexity is closely related to that of understanding, in so far as the latter is based upon the accuracy of model descriptions of the system obtained using condensed information about it .

In this sense there are three ultimate frontiers of modern physics: the very small, the very large and the very complex. Complex systems cease to be merely complicated when they display coherent behaviour involving collective organization of vast number of degrees of freedom. Wetness of water is a collective phenomenon because individual water molecules cannot be said to possess wetness. Lasers, super-fluidity and super-conductivity are few of the spectacular examples of complexity in macroscopic systems, which cannot be understood alone in terms of the microscopic constituents. In every case, groups of entities seeking mutual accommodation and self-organization somehow manage to transcend the individuality in the sense that they acquire collective properties that they might never have possessed individually. In contrast to the linear, reductionist thinking, complexity involves nonlinearity and chaos and we are at present far from understanding the complexity in inanimate processes let alone the complexity in living systems.

#### 2.4.3 Emergence of Life

Is life nothing more than a particularly complicated kind of carbon chemistry? Or is it something subtler than putting together the chemical components? Do computer viruses have life in some fundamental sense or are they just pesky imitations of life? How does life emerge from the quadrillions of chemically reacting proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids that make up a living cell? Is it similar to the emergence of thought out of the billions of interconnected neurons that make up the brain? One hope to find the answer to these questions once the dynamics of complexity in inanimate systems is well understood.

## 3 Mind

### 3.1 Phenomena

Mind is having three states: awake, dream, dream-less sleep. Mind is capable of free-will, self-perception (reflective) and universal perception (perceptual) in its ‘awake’ state. Can it be trained to have all these three attributes in the states of dream and dream-less sleep? Can there be a fourth state of mind that transcends all the above three states? Where do the brain end and the mind begin? Due to its global nature, mind cannot lie in any particular portion of the brain. Does it lie everywhere in the brain? This would require nonlocal interactions among various components of the brain. If there were no such nonlocal communication then how does the mind emerge from the brain?

Can anybody think of anything that transcends space-time? Is mind capable of thinking something absolutely new that has not been experienced (directly or indirectly) by the body? Nobody can think of anything absolutely new. One can only think of a new way of arranging and/or connecting things that one has ever learnt. In this sense intellect is constrained by reason whereas imagination is not. But imagination is not acceptable to intellect unless it is logically consistent with what is already known. Imagination helps to see a new connection but intellect makes sure that the new connection is consistent with the old structure of knowledge. This is the way a new structure in knowledge is born and this process of acquiring larger and larger structure (hence meaning or synthesis) is the learning process. Science is considered so reliable because it has a stringent methodology to check this consistency of imagination with old knowledge.

Can one aspire to study the mind using methodology of (physical) sciences? Seeing the tremendous success of physical sciences in the external world one would think its methodology to work for understanding the inner world. It is not obvious a priori why should not QT work in this third ontology when it has worked so successfully with two different ontologies? We aim to understand nature at a level that transcends the inner and the outer worlds by synthesizing them into a more fundamental world of quantum information.

### 3.2 Formalism

#### 3.2.1 Manifold

A physical space-time description of mind is not possible because thoughts that constitute the mind are acausal: it does not take 8 minutes for me to think of the sun although when I look at the sun I see how it was 8 minutes ago. We will assume that it is possible to define an abstract manifold for the space of thoughts (say, T-space). An element of T-space is a thought-state (T-state) and the manifold allows for a continuous change from one T-state to another. I presume that T-space is identical with mind but it need not be so if mind can exist in a thoughtless but awake state, often called turiya.

#### 3.2.2 Basic Constituent

How does one define a T-state? That requires one to understand what is a ‘thought’? A thought always begins as an idea (that could be based on self and universal perception) and then undergoes successive changes in that idea but roughly remaining focused on a theme. Change from one theme to another is triggered by a new idea. Hence I would suggest that the basic constituent of T-state is idea. An idea is like a ‘snapshot’ of experience complete with all sense data whereas a thought (T-state) is like an ensemble (where each element is not an exact replica of the other but has to be very close copy to retain the focus on the theme) of such snapshots.

#### 3.2.3 Evolution

There are two types of evolution in T-space. First, the way an ensemble of ideas evolves retaining a common theme to produce a thought. To concentrate means to linger the focus on that theme. This evolution seems to be nonlinear and nondeterministic. Hence the linear unitary evolution of QT may not suffice to quantify this and will be perhaps best described in terms of the mathematics of self-organization and far-from-equilibrium phenomena. \[On the practical side the time-tested techniques of Yoga teach us how to linger the focus on a theme through the practice of dharana, dhyan and samadhi. \] The second type involves a change from one particular thought into another and this evolution could be linear and perhaps can be calculated through a probability amplitude description in the line of QT. Given the complete description of a thought at an initial time the refutability of any theory of mind amounts to checking how correctly it can predict the evolution of that thought at a later time.

#### 3.2.4 Guiding Principles

If the guiding principle for evolution in biological world is survivability then in T-space it is happiness-ability. A constant pursuit of happiness (although its definition may vary from person to person) guides the change in a person’s thoughts. Each and every activity (begins as mental but may or may not materialize) is directed to procure more and more happiness in terms of sensual pleasures of the body, emotional joys of the imagination and rational delights of the intellect.

#### 3.2.5 Interactions

Can a thought (mind) interact with another thought (mind)? Can this interaction be similar to that between quantum fields? Perhaps yes, only if both thought and quantum fields can be reduced to the same basic entity. Then it will be possible for thought (mind) to interact with matter. What will be the messenger that has to be exchanged between interacting minds or between interacting mind and matter? This ultimate level of communication has to be at the level of QV and hence it may amount to silence in terms of conventional languages. But can any receiver (either human mind or any other mind or equipment) be made so sensitive to work with this ultimate level of communication? Interaction with the environment is believed to decohere a quantum system that causes the emergence of classicality in physical world. A completely isolated system remains quantum mechanical. Can a completely isolated mind exhibit quantum mechanical behaviour in the sense of superposition and entanglement?

#### 3.2.6 Composite Systems

In the T-Space a thought is an ensemble of ideas and a mind-state is composed of thoughts. Behaviour, feeling and knowledge of self and universe are in principle reducible to composite subsets in the T-space.

### 3.3 Discussions

#### 3.3.1 Working definition of Consciousness

Consciousness (at the first level) is related to one’s response $`R`$ to one’s environment. This response consists of two parts: habit $`H`$ and learning $`L`$. Once something is learnt and becomes a habit it seems to drop out of consciousness. Once driving a bicycle is learnt one can think of something else while riding the bicycle. But if the habit changes with time then it requires conscious attention. We have defined learning earlier as a process to find commensurability of a new experience with old knowledge. One has to learn anew each time there is a change in the environment. Hence consciousness is not the response to the environment but is the time of rate of change of the response i.e.

$$C=dR/dt$$
(1)
where, $`R=H+L`$.

The hierarchy in consciousness depends on the magnitude of this time derivative. Everything in the universe can be fit in a scale of consciousness with unconscious and super-conscious as the limit points. It is obvious that all animals show response to their environment, so does some of the refrigerators, but there is a hierarchy in their response. Through the use of ‘cresco-graph’ and ‘resonant cardio-graph’ of J. C. Bose one can see the response of botanical as well as inanimate world. We cannot conclude that a stone is unconscious just because we cannot communicate with it using our known means of communication. As technology progresses, we will be able to measure both the response function R and its time derivative. If this is the definition what can it tell about the future evolution of humans? My guess is that we would evolve from conscious to super-conscious in the sense that genes will evolve to store the cumulative learning of the human race.

#### 3.3.2 Emergence of Consciousness

The first step in understanding consciousness consists of using reductionist method to various attributes of consciousness. A major part of the studies done by psychologists (and their equivalents doing studies on animals) and neuro-biologists falls under this category. Such studies can provide knowledge about mind states (say M1, M2,…) but cannot explain the connection between these mind states with the corresponding brain states (say B1, B2, …). Because this kind of dualistic model of Descarte would require to answer a) where is mind located in the brain, and b) if my mind wants me to raise my finger, how does it manage to trigger the appropriate nerves and so on in order for that to happen without exerting any known forces of nature?

To find out how the mind actually works one needs to have a theory of mind, that will relate the sequence of mental states M1, M2, M3,…by providing laws of change (the dynamical laws for the two types of evolution discussed above) that encompass the mental realm after the fashion of the theory of matter that applies to the physical realm, with its specific laws. Such a theory of mind is possible if we synthesize the results of studies on attributes of consciousness to define the exact nature of the manifold and the basic entities of the T-space (or Mind-Space). Once this is achieved then one can attempt to explain the emergence of consciousness taking clues from complexity theory in physical sciences. But such an extrapolation will make sense provided both M-states and B-states can be reduced to something fundamental that obeys laws of complexity theory. We propose in the next section that information is the right candidate for such a reduction.

#### 3.3.3 Role of Indian Philosophy (IP)

(1) Unlike the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and body some schools of IP like Vaisheshika and Yoga treat both mind and body in a unified manner. Since (western) science is based on Cartesian paradigm it cannot synthesize mind and body unless it takes the clue from oriental philosophies and then blend it with its own rigorous methodology.

(2) In terms of sense awareness, awake, dream and dream-less sleep states are often called as conscious, subconscious and unconscious states. A great conceptual step taken by IP in this regard is to introduce a fourth state of mind called turiya that is defined to be none of the above but a combination of all of the above states. This state is claimed to be the super-conscious state where one transcends the limitations of perceptions constrained by space-time (3 +1). Patanjali has provided very scientific and step by step instructions to reach this fourth state through samyama (dharana, dhyana and samadhi are different levels of samyama). The scientific validity of this prescription can be easily checked by controlled experiments. Nobody can understand the modern physics without going through the prerequisite mathematical training. It will be foolish for any intelligent lay person to doubt the truth of modern physics without first undergoing the necessary training. Similarly one should draw conclusion about yogic methods only after disciplined practice of the eight steps of yoga.

(3) IP can provide insights regarding the role of mind in getting happiness and thus a better understanding of mind itself. Happiness lies in what the mind perceives as pleasurable and hence the true essence of happiness lies in mind and not in any external things. Once the body has experienced something mind is capable of recreating that experience in the absence of the actual conditions that gave rise to the experience in the first place. One can use this capacity of mind to create misery or ecstasy depending on one’s ability to guide one’s mind.

(4) There is a concept of anahata nada (the primordial sound) in IP. Sometimes the possibility of having a universal language (like Sandhya bhasa etc.) to communicate with everything in the universe is also mentioned. Modern physics tells us that the only universal language is at the level of gauge bosons and QV. Is there any connection between these two? Can a (human) mind be trained to transmit and receive at the level of QV?

(5) It is said that whole body is in the mind whereas the whole mind is not in the body. How does mind affect the body? If one believes in the answer given by IP then the results obtained in this regard by the western psychology appears to be the tip of the iceberg only. Can science verify these oriental claims through stringently controlled experiments?

## 4 Unification

### 4.1 Information

Information seems to be abstract and not real in the sense that, it lies inside our heads. But information can, not only exist outside the human brain (i.e. library, a CD, internet etc.) but also can be processed outside human brain (i.e. other animals, computers etc.). Imagine a book written in a dead language, which nobody today can decipher. Does it contain information? Yes. Information exists. It does not need to be perceived or understood to exist. It requires no intelligence to interpret it. In this sense information is as real as matter and energy when it comes to the internal structure of the universe . But what we assume here is that information is more fundamental than matter and energy because everything in the universe can be ultimately reduced to information.

Information is neither material nor non-material. Both, quantum fields and thoughts can be reduced to information. If the human mind is not capable (by the methods known at present) of understanding this ultimate information then it is the limitation of the human mind. This may not remain so as time progresses. The whole of physical world can be reduced to information . Is information classical or quantum? There are enough indications from modern physics that although it can be classical at the everyday world it is quantum at the most fundamental level. The quantum information may have the advantage of describing the fuzziness of our experiences.

### 4.2 Formalism

#### 4.2.1 Manifold

The manifold is an information field (I-field) for classical information (like that of Shannon or Fisher etc.) Hilbert space of QT is the manifold to study quantum information. But if quantum information has to be given an ontological reality then it may be necessary for the manifold to be an extended Hilbert space.

#### 4.2.2 Basic Constituent

A bit or a qubit is the basic entity of information depending on whether it is treated as classical or quantum respectively. Information can be of two types: kinetic and structural, but they are convertible to each other .

#### 4.2.3 Evolution

All organized systems contain information and addition of information to a system manifests itself by causing the system to become more organized or reorganized. The laws for evolution of information are essentially laws of organization. Are these laws different from the physical laws? Is there an equivalent in the world of information of fundamental principles like principle of least action in physical world?

#### 4.2.4 Guiding Principles

Optimization seems to be the guiding principle in the world of information. What gives rise to the structure in the information such that we acquire an understanding or meaning out of it? Is there a principle of least information to be satisfied by all feasible structures?

#### 4.2.5 Interactions

The interaction at the level of information has to be the ultimate universal language. What could be that language? The only fundamental language known to us is that of the gauge fields that communicate at the level of QV. Could the gauge fields serve as quanta of information? How far is this language from the conventional language? Can this help us to communicate with not only with other creatures incapable of our conventional language but also with the inanimate world? Time is not yet ripe to answer these questions.

#### 4.2.6 Composite Systems

How can every composite system of information (like a gene or a galaxy) be expressed in terms of bits or qubits? Does the holographic principle also apply to information?

### 4.3 Discussions

#### 4.3.1 Consciousness and Information

There is no doubt that sooner or later all attributes of consciousness can be reduced to information. This is just a matter of time and progress in technology. That will complete the understanding of consciousness at the gross level of phenomena but will harbinger the understanding of consciousness at the subtle level of laws. The synthesis of the phenomenological studies of consciousness will be possible by treating information as the most basic ontological entity, which can unify mind and matter. The emergence of consciousness will be understood in terms of nonlinear, far-from-equilibrium complex processes that lead to spontaneous self-organization and adaptation of structures in the manifold of quantum information.

Consciousness will be seen as the ability to process quantum information in an effective way. Depending on the degree of complexity involved the processing would encompass activities starting from the way a planet knows which is the path of least action to the way modern supercomputers do simulations of reality to the way a scientist makes a discovery or an artist traps beauty on a canvass through the nuances of truth. The limit points of unconscious and super-conscious would correspond to the limiting cases of no information processing and infinite information processing respectively. Subconscious will be interpreted as partial information processing.

Every entity in the universe has to take a decision at every moment of time for its existence although the word existence may mean different things to different entities. The chance for continuation of existence is enhanced if the best decision on the basis of available information is taken. This is a process of optimization and the more conscious an entity is more is its ability to optimize.

#### 4.3.2 Limitations of understanding

Is there any fundamental principle (or theorem) that puts limit on the understanding of both mind and matter by reducing them to information and then applying methodology of physical sciences to understand life and consciousness as emergent phenomena? Since this approach heavily relies on mathematics the limitations of deductive logic as pointed out by Gödel in his famous incompleteness theorem may put the first limit. The second constraint may come from QT if it turns out (after having rigourous information theoretic formulation of both matter and mind) that the information related to mind is complementary to the information found in matter. I personally feel that this is quite unlikely because I believe that information at the fundamental level cannot be dualistic.

## 5 Conclusions

Unlike the Cartesian duality between mind and body, understanding consciousness requires first to understand matter and mind in a unified way. This can be achieved by giving information the most primary status in the universe. Then a generalized theory of quantum information dynamics has to be formulated (see the table (in the last page): The World Matrix, for a summary). The line of attack involves three steps: 1) understanding emergent phenomena and complexity in inanimate systems, 2) understanding life as emergent phenomena, and 3) understanding consciousness as emergent phenomena. The attributes of consciousness can be understood only by a prudent application of both reductionism and holism. But the emergence of consciousness will be understood as an emergent phenomenon in the sense of structural organizations in the manifold of information to yield feasible structures through which we attribute meaning and understanding to the world.

## 6 Acknowledgement

I am thankful to the organizers of the conference, especially Prof. B. V. Sreekantan and Dr. Sangeetha Menon, for providing the local hospitality and intellectual support.

## 7 References

 Sarkar U., 2001, New Dimensions New Hopes; arXiv: hep-ph/0105274

 Davies P., 1989,The New Physics, Cambridge University Press.

 Sreekantan B. V., 2001, this conference proceeding

 Sreekantan B. V., 1999, Scientific Explanations and Consciousness , Proceedings of the national conference on Scientific and Philosophical Studies on Consciousness, held at NIAS, Bangalore.

 Einstein A, Podolsky B., Rosen N (EPR), 1935, Quantum theory and Measurement, edt. By Zurek, W. H. and Wheeler, J. A.

 Bohm D. and Hiley B.,1993, The Undivided Universe, Routledge, London.

 Badii, R and Politi, A, 1997, Complexity: Hierarchical Structures and Scaling in Physics, Cambridge University Press.

 Stonier, T., 1990, Information and the internal structure of the Universe, SpringerVerlag.

 Roy Frieden B., 1999, Physics from Fisher Information: A Unification, Cambridge University Press.

The World Matrix: (Summary of various Worlds)

| Character | Physical | Biological | Mental | Information |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Manifold | SpT (3 + 1), | SpT (3 + 1), | M-Space | I-Field, |
|  | Hilbert Space | Hilbert Space | (Abstract | Extended |
|  | QV, SpT (10) |  | Mathematical | Hilbert Space |
|  |  |  | Space) |  |
| Basic | Wave-function | Cell, Neuron, | Idea (based | Bit |
| Constituents | Quantum fields | Micro-tubule | on self or | (classical) |
|  | Strings | Cyto-skeleton | universal | Qubit |
|  | p-branes |  | perception | (quantum) |
| Evolution | Phys. Laws | Phys. Laws | Laws for | Laws for |
|  | ( mostly diff. | Bio. Laws | evolution of | evolution of |
|  | equations) |  | thought | organization |
| Guiding | Symmetry | Survivability | Happiness- | Optimization |
| Principles | (Group | Intentionality | Ability |  |
|  | Theoretical) |  |  |  |
| Interactions | Gravity, | Chemicals, | Primordial | Local, and |
|  | Electro-weak, | Electric | Sound or | Non-local |
|  | Strong | Signals, | Vibrations | (EPR) |
|  | Nuclear | Language, |  | channels |
|  | Interaction | Gesture |  |  |
| Composite | Many-body | Plants, | Thought | Complex |
| Systems | Systems with | Animals | (Ensemble of | Systems with |
|  | or without |  | Ideas with | Hierarchy in |
|  | interactions |  | ordering) | Organization |


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# Hard QCD: some results

## 1 Hard QCD studies

QCD studies have produced successful results, specially for observables involving short distance regions, for over a quarter of century. High accuracy calculations of hard distributions are possible and often one is able to make quantitative predictions which are strongly constrained. Calculations are often difficult but there are constant improvements in techniques and this is always associated to a better understanding of QCD features. A consequence of these successful results is that QCD is often considered an established and understood theory. Actually, there are a variety of unsolved theoretical and experimental questions in QCD. They range from the two extreme regions. On one side we still need to understand how quark and gluon elementary fields change into hadrons at large distances. Since we think we almost dominate the short distance regions by perturbative (PT) methods, there are attempts to extend these methods and even the language to the study of non perturbative (NP) corrections. This is an approach to large distances from the “short distance window”. Going in the other extreme region, the standard understanding is that in the ultraviolet region the theory becomes free and no structures are present. But, again, this is based on PT studies. Actually, it has been argued that short distance structures could be present in QCD .

Hard QCD is systematically and analytically studied by resummation of the PT expansion. This procedure starts from free quarks and gluons and reconstructs their interaction by using the point-like vertices in the QCD Lagrangian. It is reassuring to discover afterwards that quarks and gluons cannot be free at large distances, although this region it is not accessible to PT methods. In order to resumm PT expansions for physical observables one needs in general to know multi-parton distributions. Of course we need approximations. I recall that the present PT status of the art for multi-parton distributions concerns: collinear singularities, soft singularities, fixed order exact matrix elements.

1. Collinear singularities. In general, all leading and next to leading contributions to the multi-parton distributions are obtained by generalizing of the DGLAP evolution equation  (for a generalization to “exclusive” multi-parton distributions see ). They are given in terms of the anomalous dimensions which are known to leading and next-to-leading order. Recently there are attempts to compute NNNL contributions . Singular contributions to multi-parton distributions require a collinear cutoff. Universality of collinear singularities allows a unified description of hard distributions for all processes such as lepton-lepton, lepton-hadron and hadron-hadron collisions.

2. Soft singularities. Also in this case all leading (and some next-to-leading) contributions to the multi-parton distributions are known. They are given in terms of factorized soft radiation from hard emitters . In the case of two or three emitters it is possible to factorize the soft radiation at two-loop . For more emitters the two soft parton factorization requires the planar approximation (leading order in $`1/N_c`$). I recall the most important results and features of QCD we learned in the 80th and 90th:

* coherence of soft radiation;
* colour connection and angular ordering;
* gluon multiplication and hadron multiplicity;
* hump-backed plateau;
* jet-finding algorithms in $`e^+e^{}`$, DIS and hadron collisions;
* LHPD and colour preconfinement;
* heavy quark distribution and radiation;
* jet-shape distribution.

All these results, together with the known leading (and next-to-leading) contributions allows one to formulate multi-parton distributions in terms of a coherent-branching algorithms. This is the bases of most of the present Monte Carlo simulations for hard QCD (and beyond QCD) processes, see .

An other area in which soft physics is involved is the small-$`x`$ region in DIS and hadron collisions . Here soft “exchanged” gluon are involved rather than the soft emitted ones, as in the previous item. Enormous progresses have been made recently. These results are however less constrained by PT analysis since NP effects enter at all hard scales . Further progresses in this area definitively requires further developments in our QCD understanding beyond PT expansions.

3. Exact matrix element results. Large technical progresses have been made both in analytical calculations  and in numerical programs . These results are essential in order to make quantitative predictions away from the soft or collinear regions of phase space. This is achieved by matching these exact fixed order results with the ones from resummations described in the previous two items . Similar matching procedure are now developed on a systematically bases in Monte Carlo simulations .

In the following I will illustrate the QCD calculations of jet-shape observables which are collinear and infrared safe (CIS). They are expressed as linear combinations of the momenta of emitted hadrons so that their values do not change if two momenta are replaced by their sum when the two are collinear or when one is soft. For these CIS distributions one reaches the highest accuracy available in PT calculations. This is due to the fact that the cutoff of collinear and infrared singularities cancels and all PT terms are finite. Near the phase space boundary the cancellation are partial and logarithmically enhanced contributions enter the PT terms which needs to be resummed. The particular interest of these distributions is not only that they can be computed at the highest PT accuracy, but that they have large $`1/Q`$-power corrections which are of NP origin. These corrections are phenomenologically important. Once we have a reliable PT estimate, with the help of data we can then constrain the size and hopefully the nature of these NP corrections.

After a brief review of the results for event shapes in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation, I discuss how these results can be extended to jet shape distributions in hadron-hadron and lepton-hadron collisions. This will open the way to the study of further multi-jet observables.

## 2 Hadron emission in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation

Two-jet event shapes (such as thrust $`T`$, broadening $`B`$, heavy-jet mass $`M_H`$ and $`C`$-parameter) have been intensively studied both theoretically and experimentally. The state-of-the-art level of PT analysis of two-jet observables consists of : resummation of all double- (DL) and single-logarithmic (SL) enhanced contributions (due to multiple radiation of soft and collinear partons); matching of the resummed result with the exact fixed order result. To reach such an accuracy one needs: soft matrix elements at two-loop order  and reconstruction of the running coupling at the proper scale; factorization and exponentiation of observable and kinematical constraints; proper treatment of hard intra-jet and soft inter-jet radiation.

Besides the pure PT contributions, experimental data (see for instance ) have revealed the presence of power suppressed $`1/Q`$ corrections ($`Q`$ is the $`e^+e^{}`$ center-of-mass energy), which emerge as a shift both to mean values and differential distributions. It is widely believed  that such contributions are of NP origin and arise from the running of the coupling into the infrared domain.

A systematic way to deal with power corrections is provided by the dispersive approach , in which a prescription is given to extend the QCD coupling into the confinement region. In terms of this dispersive coupling, the typical large distance contribution to an event shape $`V`$ can be factorized in an observable dependent coefficient $`c_V`$ and a universal NP parameter $`\alpha _0`$. More precisely, in any ‘linear’ shape variable $`V`$ the dependence on the rapidity $`\eta _i`$ and transverse momentum $`k_{ti}`$ of emitted hadron $`i`$ factorizes,

$$V=\underset{i}{}k_{ti}f_V(\eta _i),$$
(1)
so that the NP contribution to $`V`$ becomes

$`\delta V=C_Fc_V\lambda ^{\text{NP}},c_V={\displaystyle 𝑑\eta f_V(\eta )},`$
$`\lambda ^{\text{NP}}={\displaystyle \frac{\mu _I}{Q}}{\displaystyle \frac{4}{\pi ^2}}\left(\alpha _0(\mu _I)+O(\alpha _s(Q))\right),\alpha _0(\mu _I)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mu _I}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mu _I}}𝑑k\alpha _s(k).`$ (2)
Here $``$ is a known coefficient, the Milan factor , which takes into account the non complete inclusiveness of the observable. The NP parameter $`\alpha _0`$ is the average of the running coupling in the region $`k\mu _I`$ and measures the interaction strength in the confinement region. The $`O(\alpha _s(Q))`$ piece in 2 is needed in order to merge PT and NP results in a renormalon free manner and ensures that the final answer is independent of the infra-red matching scale $`\mu _I`$. The NP parameter $`\alpha _0(2\text{GeV})`$ has been measured and appears to be consistent with the universality hypothesis within a 10-20% accuracy, see .

Only very recently these techniques have been extended to the case of three-jet observables in the near-to-planar region. In particular the mean values and distributions of the thrust minor $`T_m`$  and the $`D`$-parameter  have been computed. Both of them are a measure of QCD radiation out of the event plane. This study has revealed an unexpectedly rich geometry and colour dependence both of the PT result and of the NP corrections. The crucial point is the rapidity dependence of the observables. Actually, $`T_m`$ is independent of rapidity, while $`D`$ is exponentially damped. On the PT side, this implies that hard parton recoil affects the observable in the $`T_m`$ case, while it does not contribute to $`D`$. Therefore the $`T_m`$ distribution is sensitive not only to the underlying hard event geometry (the angles between the jets), but also on its colour configuration through the kinematical constraints which define the event plane.

As far as NP corrections are concerned, one finds that the shift to the $`D`$ distribution is simply geometry dependent, while the $`T_m`$ distribution is also squeezed, since the shift depends logarithmically on $`T_m`$. This behaviour (already encountered for the $`B`$ in two-jet events) results from a complicated interplay between PT and NP effects.

The same physical features appearing in the NP shift to the $`T_m`$ distribution are also present in hadron-hadron and lepton-hadron collisions, as we are going to discuss in the following.

## 3 Out-of-plane radiation in hadron collisions

We consider hadron collisions and study an observable similar to $`T_m`$ . We select events in which a $`Z_0`$ is produced with large transverse momentum. We can then define an ‘event plane’ as the one containing the $`Z_0`$ momentum and the beam axis and introduce a measure of out-of-plane radiation

$$K_{\text{out}}=\underset{h}{}|p_h^{\text{out}}|.$$
(3)
Here $`p_h^{\text{out}}`$ is the out-of-plane momentum of the hadron $`h`$ and the sum extends to all hadrons with rapidity in the range $`|\eta _h|<\eta _0`$, in order to avoid measurements in the beam region. At Born level one has two incoming partons $`p_1`$ and $`p_2`$ and an additional hard parton $`p_3`$ recoiling against the vector boson $`q`$. The event-plane definition gives rise to the conservation law

$$p_3^{\text{out}}+\underset{i}{}k_i^{\text{out}}=0,$$
(4)
so that only $`p_3`$ can take an out-of-plane recoil, while the remaining hard momenta are fixed in the event plane.

The main difference between hadronic and $`e^+e^{}`$ collisions is the presence of initial state radiation. Due to coherence of QCD radiation, its contribution can be factorized giving rise to the standard parton density function for the incoming partons $`p_2,p_3`$. However, while in the total cross section the hard scale is the $`Z_0`$ hardness, here the scale is $`K_{\text{out}}`$. The PT distribution is essentially given by the product of the initial state parton distributions $`P_{in}(K_{\text{out}})`$ and a CIS “radiation factor”

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(K_{\text{out}})P_{in}(K_{\text{out}})e^{R(K_{\text{out}})}S(R^{}).$$
(5)
The radiator $`R`$ is the same as that of $`T_m`$ in $`e^+e^{}`$, it resums all DL contributions and accounts for SL effects due to hard intra-jet and soft inter-jet radiation. It is given in terms of three hard parton ‘antennae’, each one proportional to the colour charge $`C_a`$ of emitting parton $`p_a`$ ($`C_a`$ equals $`C_F`$ for a quark and $`C_A`$ for a gluon)

$$R(K_{\text{out}})=\underset{a=1}{\overset{3}{}}C_a_{K_{\text{out}}}^{Q_a}\frac{dk}{k}\frac{2\alpha _s(2k)}{\pi }\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_a}{2k}\underset{a}{}C_a\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }\mathrm{ln}^2\frac{Q_a}{2K_{\text{out}}}.$$
(6)
The hard scales $`Q_a`$ are determined essentially by soft radiation at large angles, which is a characteristic of multi-jet observables. In particular, apart from a factor due to hard collinear splitting, the scale for the quarks is the invariant mass of the $`q\overline{q}`$ system, for the gluon is its invariant transverse momentum with respect to the $`q\overline{q}`$ pair. The SL function $`S`$ depends on the logarithmic derivative of the radiator $`R^{}`$ and accounts for all effects coming from multiple secondary radiation.

The NP correction is proportional to the same parameter $`\lambda ^{\text{NP}}`$ which enters the power corrections to $`e^+e^{}`$ event shapes in 2 and is given by

$$\delta K_{\text{out}}=\frac{2}{\pi }\lambda ^{\text{NP}}\left(C_1(\eta _0\eta _3)+C_2(\eta _0+\eta _3)+C_3\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_t}{|p_3^{\text{out}}|}\right),$$
(7)
where $`Q_t`$ is the transverse momentum of the emitted boson. Such a shift arises from integration over the rapidity of emitted gluons (see eq. 2). Since $`K_{\text{out}}`$ is independent of rapidity, one has to carefully consider the effective rapidity cutoff. For radiation from the incoming partons $`p_1`$ and $`p_2`$ it is given by the distance between $`\eta _3`$ (the rapidity of $`p_3`$) and the experimental resolution $`\eta _0`$. On the contrary, for a NP gluon emitted from $`p_3`$, it is the hard parton recoil momentum $`p_3^{\text{out}}`$ which provides the needed cutoff. Moreover, since $`p_3`$ always takes recoil, one has $`p_3^{\text{out}}K_{\text{out}}`$. This interplay between PT and NP emissions makes the shift logarithmically dependent on $`K_{\text{out}}`$.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. In hadronic collisions one has to add a soft contribution due to the beam remnant interactions. This is the so-called ‘soft underlying event’, which was systematically studied and introduced for the first time in the analysis of the ‘pedestal height’ in hadronic jet production . Therefore the analysis of $`K_{\text{out}}`$ is also important to understand the physics of soft collisions.

## 4 Out-of-plane radiation DIS

Even in DIS one can define an event plane and measure the out-of-plane radiation. In the Breit frame, we define the thrust major $`T_M`$ in analogy with $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation

$$T_MQ=\underset{\stackrel{}{n}_M\stackrel{}{n}=0}{\mathrm{max}}\underset{h}{}|\stackrel{}{p}_h\stackrel{}{n}_M|,$$
(8)
where $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ and $`Q^2=q^2`$ are the Breit axis and the virtuality of the exchanged boson $`q`$ respectively. As in the previous case, the sum extends to all hadrons not in the beam direction (with $`\eta <\eta _0`$). At Born level, we have one incoming parton $`p_1`$ which is struck by a vector boson $`q`$ and produces two hard large angle partons $`p_2`$ and $`p_3`$ recoiling one against each other. We define $`K_{\text{out}}`$ again as the cumulative out-of-event-plane momentum, where the event plane is the one containing $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ and the $`T_M`$ axis. The event-plane definition implies the following kinematical constraint

$$p_2^{\text{out}}+\underset{iU}{}k_i^{\text{out}}=p_3^{\text{out}}+\underset{iD}{}k_i^{\text{out}},$$
(9)
with U (D) the region containing parton $`p_2`$ ($`p_3`$).

The PT $`K_{\text{out}}`$ distribution has the same form as 5, with $`P_{inc}(K_{\text{out}})`$ the structure function of the incoming parton, again at the scale $`K_{\text{out}}`$. The radiator turns out to be the same as in $`e^+e^{}`$ and in hadron-hadron collisions, due to universality of soft and collinear radiation. However the exact functional form of the SL function $`S`$ differs between these, due to different event-plane kinematics.

The NP shift is similar to the one in 7

$$\delta K_{\text{out}}=\frac{2}{\pi }\lambda ^{\text{NP}}\left(C_1\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_1^{\text{NP}}e^{\eta _0}}{Q}+C_2\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_2^{\text{NP}}}{|p_2^{\text{out}}|}+C_3\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_3^{\text{NP}}}{|p_3^{\text{out}}|}\right),$$
(10)
with $`Q_a^{\text{NP}}`$ the proper NP hard scales, which are proportional to the ones entering the PT radiator. The crucial difference is that here both $`p_2`$ and $`p_3`$ are not fixed in the event plane. This implies that the way the NP correction in 10 affects the PT distribution is very different according to which phase space region is considered. Namely one has the two regimes

* $`\alpha _s\mathrm{ln}^2K_{\text{out}}/Q1`$: one has well developed QCD radiation, so that all $`p_a(a=2,3)`$ take recoil and $`p_a^{\text{out}}K_{\text{out}}`$. This gives rise to a logarithmically enhanced shift

$$\delta K_{\text{out}}C_1\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_1^{\text{NP}}e^{\eta _0}}{Q}+C_2\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_2^{\text{NP}}}{K_{\text{out}}}+C_3\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_3^{\text{NP}}}{K_{\text{out}}}.$$
(11)
* $`\alpha _s\mathrm{ln}^2K_{\text{out}}/Q1`$: radiation from one hard parton dominates. According to the event-plane kinematics in 9, when PT radiation comes from the U region (which happens with probability $`(\frac{1}{2}C_1+C_2)/(2C_F+C_A)`$), only $`p_2`$ takes recoil, so that that $`p_2^{\text{out}}K_{\text{out}}`$, while $`p_3^{\text{out}}p_2^{\text{out}}`$. The part of the shift proportional to $`C_2`$ gets logarithmically enhanced as in the previous case, while the one proportional to $`C_3`$ gives rise to a very singular contribution proportional to $`1/\sqrt{\alpha _s}`$, coming from the average of $`\mathrm{ln}Q/p_3^{\text{out}}`$ over its DL Sudakov form factor $`\mathrm{exp}\left\{(\frac{1}{2}C_1+C_3)\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }\mathrm{ln}^2Q/p_3^{\text{out}}\right\}`$. This gives

$$\delta K_{\text{out}}C_1\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_1^{\text{NP}}e^{\eta _0}}{Q}+C_2\mathrm{ln}\frac{Q_2^{\text{NP}}}{K_{\text{out}}}+C_3\frac{\pi }{2\sqrt{(\frac{1}{2}C_1+C_3)\alpha _s}}.$$
(12)
The converse argument holds for an emission in the D region.

In conclusion, we have now a promising theoretical method to deal with multi-jet observables. Not only are we able to identify all sources of SL contributions, but we can also relate the NP $`1/Q`$ power-suppressed corrections with the ones which affect $`e^+e^{}`$ two-jet shapes. A next step will be the extension of the above results to event shapes involving any number of jets. We hope that this analysis will greatly improve the understanding of confinement physics, especially at hadron colliders.

## Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Andrea Banfi, Yuri Dokshitzer, Gavin Salam, Graham Smye, Bryan Webber and Glulia Zanderighi which share the responsibility for the results discussed on jet-shape analysis.


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# Untitled Document

On the Restricted Lie Algebra Structure

for the Witt Lie Algebra in Finite Characteristic

Tyler EVANS and Dmitry FUCHS

Department of Mathematics

University of California

Davis, CA 95616 USA

1. Introduction. Let $`p`$ be a prime, $`F`$ be a field of characteristic $`p`$, and $`\overline{F}`$ be the algebraic closure of $`F`$. Let $`A=F[x]/(x^p1)`$. Notice that $`F[x]/(x^p1)F[x]/(x^p)`$, an isomorphism may be established be the formula $`xx1`$. Notice also that $`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dx}}(x^p1)(x^p1)`$ and $`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dx}}(x^p)(x^p)`$, hence, the operator $`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dx}}`$ is also defined in $`A`$; the isomorphism described above commutes with $`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dx}}`$. Below, we abbreviate the notation $`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dx}}`$ to $``$.

The Lie algebra $`W=DerA`$ is called the Witt algebra. It consists of “vector fields” $`f,fA`$. In particular, $`dim_FW=dim_FA=p.`$

As any Lie algebra of derivations of a commutative algebra over $`F`$, $`W`$ has a canonical structure of a restricted Lie algebra. Recall that a restricted Lie algebra is a Lie algebra over $`F`$ with an additional unary (in general, non-linear) operation $`gg^{[p]}`$ satisfying the conditions

$$(\lambda g)^{[p]}=\lambda ^pg^{[p]}(\lambda F),ad(g^{[p]})=(adg)^p,$$

$$(g+h)^{[p]}=g^{[p]}+h^{[p]}+\underset{i=1}{\overset{p1}{}}s_i(g,h)$$

where $`s_i(g,h)`$ is the coefficient of $`\lambda ^{i1}`$ in $`(ad(\lambda g+h))^{p1}(h)`$ times $`i^1`$ modulo $`p`$; in particular, $`[g^{[p]},g]=0`$ for any $`g`$ (see details in ). In $`DerA`$, $`g^{[p]}=g^p`$ (obviously, if $`gDerA`$, then $`g^p=g\mathrm{}gDerA`$.)

Although the operation $`gg^{[p]}`$ does not need to be linear, it is fully determined by its values on any basis of the Lie algebra. In particular, in $`W`$,

$$(x)^{[p]}=x,(x^k)^{[p]}=0\mathrm{for}k=0,2,3,\mathrm{},p1$$

(these formulas hold whether $`A`$ is regarded as $`F[x]/(x^p1)`$ or $`F[x]/(x^p)`$; the same is true for Theorem 1 below). We will give, however, a more detailed description of the operation $`gg^{[p]}`$ in $`W`$.

Theorem 1. (a) For any $`fA`$, $`(f)^{[p]}=C(f)f`$, where $`C(f)`$ is a constant (depending on $`f`$).

(b) For any $`fA`$, $`(f(\mathrm{}(ff)\mathrm{}))`$ with $`p1`$ $``$’s (and $`p1`$ $`f`$’s) is a constant, and this constant is equal to $`C(f)`$.

(c) For any $`fA`$, $`^{p1}(f^{p1})`$ is a constant, and this constant is equal to $`C(f)`$.

Since Parts (a) and (b) of Theorem 1 are very simple (see Section 2), it is Part (c), or rather the equivalence between (b) and (c), that is the main result of this paper. Moreover, this result is majorated by three (actually equivalent) combinatorial theorems. We state these theorems in Section 3 and prove them in Section 4.

2. Proof of Parts (a) and (b) of Theorem 1. The Lie algebra $`W`$ has rank one, in the sense that there exists a non-empty Zariski open subset $`UW`$ such that if $`gU`$ and $`[h,g]=0`$, then $`hFg`$. Since $`[g^{[p]},g]=0`$, $`g^{[p]}Fg`$, at least for $`gU`$. But since $`gg^{[p]}`$ is an algebraic map, this implies that $`g^{[p]}Fg`$ for all $`gW`$. (Strictly speaking, for this purpose $`F`$ should be infinite, but, if necessary, we can extend $`F`$ to $`\overline{F}`$ and take $`U`$ in the extended $`W`$.) This proves (a): $`(f)^{[p]}=C(f)f`$ for some algebraic function $`C:WF`$. To prove (b), apply the both sides of this equality to $`xA`$. We have: $`f(f(\mathrm{}(ff)\mathrm{}))=C(f)f`$, which shows that $`(f(\mathrm{}(ff)\mathrm{}))=C(f)`$, at least if $`fA`$ is not a zero divisor. Hence, the last equality holds for any $`f`$ in a non-empty Zariski open subset of $`A`$ (for example, if $`\stackrel{~}{f}F[x]`$ has a non-zero constant term, then the image of $`\stackrel{~}{f}`$ under the projection $`F[x]F[x]/(x^p)=A`$ is not a zero divisor in $`A`$). Since the set of those $`fA`$ for which our equality does not hold is also open, it should be empty: any two non-empty Zariski open subsets of an affine space over an infinite field overlap, and $`\overline{F}`$, if not $`F`$ itself, is infinite. Thus, the equality holds for all $`fA`$, which is the statement of (b).

3. Three combinatorial theorems. In this section, we state Theorems 2,3, and 4, and show that each of them implies Theorem 1 (c). In addition to that, Theorems 2 and 3 are equivalent to each other and imply Theorem 4.

First, we consider arbitrary finite words in a two-letter alphabet $`(,f)`$ ending with $`f`$. (We do not specify, what $`f`$ and $``$ are; for example, $`f`$ may be a $`C^{\mathrm{}}`$ function in one variable and $``$ the derivative.) This word may be regarded as an integral linear combination of differential monomials $`f^{(k_1)}\mathrm{}f^{(k_m)}`$. For example, $`ff=(ff^{\prime \prime })^{}=f^{}f^{\prime \prime }+ff^{\prime \prime \prime }`$.

Theorem 2. For any prime $`p`$,

$$(f)^{p1}^{p1}f^{p1}modp.$$

Example:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill (f)^4& =ffff=(f^{})^4+11f(f^{})^2f^{\prime \prime }+4f^2(f^{\prime \prime })^2+7f^2f^{}f^{\prime \prime \prime }+f^3f^{(4)},\hfill \\ \hfill ^4f^4& =24(f^{})^4+144f(f^{})^2f^{\prime \prime }+36f^2(f^{\prime \prime })^2+48f^2f^{}f^{\prime \prime \prime }+4f^3f^{(4)}.\hfill \end{array}$$

We see that $`(f)^4^4f^4mod5`$, as stated in Theorem.

Theorem 2 (with Theorems 1(a), (b)) implies Theorem 1(c): take $`fF[x],={\displaystyle \frac{d}{dx}}`$, and project the equality $`(f)^{p1}=^{p1}f^{p1}`$ (which holds if $`charF=p`$) onto $`A`$.

Theorem 2 may be reformulated as a congruence of symmetric polynomials, in the following way.

Theorem 3. In $`Z[t_1,\mathrm{},t_{p1}]`$,

$$\underset{\sigma S_{p1}}{}t_{\sigma (1)}(t_{\sigma (1)}+t_{\sigma (2)})\mathrm{}(t_{\sigma (1)}+\mathrm{}+t_{\sigma (p1)})(t_1+\mathrm{}+t_{p1})^{p1}modp,$$

where $`p`$, as usual, is a prime.

(No minus sign is this congruence, it is not a misprint!)

Obviously, if

$$t_1(t_1+t_2)\mathrm{}(t_1+\mathrm{}+t_{p1})=n_{k_1\mathrm{}k_{p1}}t_1^{k_1}\mathrm{}t_{p1}^{k_{p1}},$$

then

$$f_{p1}f_{p2}\mathrm{}f_1=n_{k_1\mathrm{}k_{p1}}f_1^{(k_1)}\mathrm{}f_{p1}^{(k_{p1})}.$$

Similarly, if

$$(t_1+\mathrm{}+t_{p1})^{p1}=m_{k_1\mathrm{}k_{p1}}t_1^{k_1}\mathrm{}t_{p1}^{k_{p1}},$$

then

$$^{p1}(f_1\mathrm{}f_{p1})=m_{k_1\mathrm{}k_{p1}}f_1^{(k_1)}\mathrm{}f_{p1}^{(k_{p1})}.$$

Hence, the congruence in Theorem 3 is equivalent to

$$\underset{\sigma S_{p1}}{}f_{\sigma (p1)}f_{\sigma (p2)}\mathrm{}f_{\sigma (1)}^{p1}(f_1\mathrm{}f_{p1})modp$$

which becomes, after substituting $`f_1=\mathrm{}=f_{p1}=f`$,

$$(p1)!(f)^{p1}^{p1}f^{p1}modp$$

(the last two congruences are, actually, equivalent.) Since $`(p1)!1modp`$, the last congruence is that of Theorem 2. Thus, Theorems 2 and 3 are equivalent.

Our last combinatorial theorem concerns a certain function on Young diagrams. To avoid drawing, we use the term Young diagram for a finite sequence $`(j_1,\mathrm{},j_m)`$ of integers with $`j_1\mathrm{}j_m>0`$. The sequence may be empty ($`m=0`$). For a Young diagram $`J=(j_1,\mathrm{},j_m)`$, we put $`N(J)=j_1+\mathrm{}+j_m,m(J)=m`$, and $`n_k(J)=\mathrm{\#}\{sj_s=k\}`$. Define a function $`d`$ on Young diagrams recursively: $`d(\mathrm{})=1`$, and if $`J=(j_1,\mathrm{},j_m),N(J)=N`$, and $`d(K)`$ has been already defined for all Young diagrams $`K`$ with $`N(K)=N1`$, then

$$d(J)=\underset{s,j_s>j_{s+1}}{}(Nj_s+1)n_{j_s}(J)d(j_1,\mathrm{},j_{s1},j_s1,j_{s+1},\mathrm{},j_m).$$

(Here we put $`j_{m+1}=0`$ and if $`s=m`$ and $`j_s=1`$, then $`j_s1`$ is zero, and we simply delete this zero.)

Theorem 4. If $`N(J)=p1`$ (where $`p`$ is prime), then

$$d(J)1modp.$$

Examples:

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill d(\mathrm{})& =1;\hfill \\ \hfill d(1)& =11d(\mathrm{})=1;\hfill \\ \hfill d(1,1)& =22d(1)=4,d(2)=11d(1)=1;\hfill \\ \hfill d(1,1,1)& =33d(1,1)=36,d(2,1)=21d(1,1)+31d(2)=11,\hfill \\ & d(3)=11d(2)=1;\hfill \\ \hfill d(1,1,1,1)& =44d(1,1,1)=576,d(2,1,1)=31d(1,1,1)+42d(2,1)=196,\hfill \\ & d(2,2)=32d(2,1)=66,d(3,1)=21d(2,1)+41d(3)=26,\hfill \\ & d(4)=11d(3)=1.\hfill \end{array}$$

We see that if $`N(J)=2`$, then $`d(J)=4,11mod3`$, and if $`N(J)=4`$, then $`d(J)=576,196,66,26,11mod5`$.

Theorem 4 is equivalent to Theorem 2 restricted to the case, when $`f`$ is a monic polynomial of degree $`p1`$ (this case of Theorem 2 is sufficient for proving Theorem 1(c)).

Indeed, let $`f(x)=(x\alpha _1)\mathrm{}(x\alpha _{p1})`$ (where $`\alpha _1,\mathrm{},\alpha _{p1}\overline{F}`$). We put $`x\alpha _i=u_i`$; thus, $`f=u_1\mathrm{}u_{p1}`$ and $`u_i=1`$. Let $`np1`$. Then $`(f)^n=ff\mathrm{}f`$ is a symmetric polynomial in $`u_1,\mathrm{},u_{p1}`$ of total degree $`n(p2)`$ and of degree $`p1`$ with respect to each variable $`u_i`$. Let $`J=(j_1,\mathrm{},j_m)`$ be a Young diagram with $`N(J)=n`$. Then an obvious induction based on the equality $`(f)^n=(u_1\mathrm{}u_{p1}(f)^{n1})`$ shows that the coefficient at

$$u_1^{nj_1}\mathrm{}u_m^{nj_m}u_{m+1}^n\mathrm{}u_{p1}^n$$

in the polynomial $`(f)^n`$ is $`d(J)`$.

On the other hand, the coefficient at the same monomial in the polynomial $`^n(f^n)`$ is

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \frac{n!}{j_1!\mathrm{}j_m!}\underset{i=1}{\overset{m}{}}n(n1)\mathrm{}(nj_i+1)=\frac{n!}{j_1!\mathrm{}j_m!}\frac{n!}{(nj_1)!}& \mathrm{}\frac{n!}{(nj_m)!}\hfill \\ & =n!\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{j_1}\right)\mathrm{}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{j_m}\right).\hfill \end{array}$$

Since $`(p1)!1modp`$ and $`\left({\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{p1}{j}}\right)(1)^jmodp`$, the last quantity for $`n=p1`$ is

$$(p1)!\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{p1}{j_1}\right)\mathrm{}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{p1}{j_m}\right)(1)(1)^{j_1}\mathrm{}(1)^{j_m}modp,$$

and $`(1)(1)^{j_1}\mathrm{}(1)^{j_m}=(1)^p=1`$ (if $`p`$ is odd; if $`p=2`$, then $`11modp`$). Thus, Theorem 2 with $`f=u_i\mathrm{}u_{p1}`$ is equivalent to Theorem 4.

We conclude this section with three remarks concerning Theorem 4. First, we will never mention this theorem again; certainly, it follows from the other theorems of this section, but we do not have any direct proof for it. Still we think that it deserves to be stated as one of the results of this paper. Second, this Theorem may have some meaning in the representation theory of symmetric groups, but this meaning evades us. Third, it is not hard to deduce from Theorem 4 that the congruence $`d(J)1modp`$ holds also if $`N(J)=p2`$ (check this for $`p=3`$ and 5 using the example after the statement of Theorem 4). We leave this to the reader as an exercise.

4. Proofs. We will prove Theorem 3 (using its relations to propositions similar to Theorems 1 and 2). As we know, this will imply all the other theorems of this paper.

Let $`\stackrel{~}{W}=DerF[x]`$. This is an infinite dimensional restricted Lie algebra. Elements of $`\stackrel{~}{W}`$ are “vector fields” $`f,fF[x]`$. The $`p`$-th power of a derivation $`f`$ is also a derivation: $`(f)^p=F,FF[x]`$. Raising $`f`$ to the power $`p`$, we get

$$F_1+F_2^2+\mathrm{}+F_p^p=F$$

(where $`F_1=f((f(\mathrm{}(ff)\mathrm{}))),F_p=f^p`$). Applying both sides of this equality to $`(xa)^k`$, where $`1<k<p`$ and $`a\overline{F}`$, and then setting $`x=a`$, we get

$$F_k(a)k!=0,$$

which shows that $`F_2=\mathrm{}=F_{p1}=0`$. Since $`^p=0`$ on $`F[x]`$, we see that

$$F=F_1=fg,g=(f)^{p1}=ff\mathrm{}f.$$

But $`[(f)^{[p]},f]=0`$; hence, $`[fg,f]=(fgf^{}ff^{}gf^2g^{})=f^2g^{}=0`$, that is, $`g^{}=0`$ (for $`f0`$, and therefore for any $`f`$). (Actually, this means that $`g`$ is a polynomial in $`x^p`$, but we will not need this.)

Consider differential expression

$$g(f)=ff\mathrm{}f(p{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{s},p1f{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{s}).$$

Polarize the restriction of the form $`f(g(f))(a),a\overline{F}`$ of degree $`p1`$ to the vector space of polynomials of degree $`<p`$. We get a symmetric $`(p1)`$-linear form

$$G(f_1,\mathrm{},f_{p1})=\underset{\sigma S_{p1}}{}(f_{\sigma (1)}f_{\sigma (2)}\mathrm{}f_{\sigma (p1)})(a)$$

which is equal to 0, since $`g^{}(f)=0`$. As a differential expression, the right hand side of the last equality is a linear combination of monomials $`f_1^{(j_1)}f_2^{(j_2)}\mathrm{}f_{p1}^{(j_{p1})}(a)`$ with $`j_1+j_2+\mathrm{}+j_{p1}=p`$, but plugging $`f_1=(xa)^{i_1},\mathrm{},f_{p1}=(xa)^{i_{p1}}`$ with all $`i_1,\mathrm{},i_{p1}`$ between 0 and $`p1`$ and equating the results to 0, we see that all the monomials with $`j_1<p,\mathrm{},j_{p1}<p`$ have zero coefficients in $`F`$ (that is, they are 0 modulo $`p`$). Since the coefficient at $`f_1\mathrm{}f_{s1}f_s^{(p)}f_{s+1}\mathrm{}f_{p1}`$ is obviously $`(p2)!1modp`$, we arrive at the conclusion:

$$\underset{\sigma S_{p1}}{}f_{\sigma (1)}\mathrm{}f_{\sigma (p1)}\underset{s=1}{\overset{p1}{}}f_1\mathrm{}f_{s1}f_s^{(p)}f_{s+1}\mathrm{}f_{p1}modp,$$

which may be rewritten as

$$\underset{\sigma S_{p1}}{}t_{\sigma (1)}(t_{\sigma (1)}+t_{\sigma (2)})\mathrm{}(t_{\sigma (1)}+\mathrm{}+t_{\sigma (p1)})(t_1+\mathrm{}+t_{p1})t_1^p+\mathrm{}+t_{p1}^pmodp$$

(the last factor in the left hand side of the last formula arises from the first $``$ in the left hand side of the previous formula). But $`t_1^p+\mathrm{}+t_{p1}^p(t_1+\mathrm{}+t_{p1})^pmodp`$. Canceling $`t_1+\mathrm{}+t_{p1}`$, we obtain the congruence of Theorem 3.

References

 Jacobson N. Lie Algebras. John Wiley, NY, 1962.


text:
# Criticality in strongly correlated fluids

## Abstract

In this brief review I will discuss criticality in strongly correlated fluids. Unlike simple fluids, molecules of which interact through short ranged isotropic potential, particles of strongly correlated fluids usually interact through long ranged forces of Coulomb or dipolar form. While for simple fluids mechanism of phase separation into liquid and gas was elucidated by van der Waals more than a century ago, the universality class of strongly correlated fluids, or in some cases even existence of liquid-gas phase separation remains uncertain.

Over a century ago van der Waals has provided a basic explanation of what drives the liquid-gas phase separation in simple molecular fluids Waa73 . This work had its lasting value not because of its quantitative accuracy, which has since been surpassed by more accurate empirical equations of state, but because of a simple physical picture of criticality that it provided. The fundamental insight of van der Waals was to modify the ideal gas equation of state by including two fundamental effects:

1. The hardcore for each molecule.
2. The short ranged intermolecular interaction.

Thus, van der Waals suggested to modify the ideal gas equation of state by replacing the total volume $`V`$ in the $`PV=nRT`$ by an effective volume available to a given molecule, $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}=VbN`$, where $`b`$ is a factor proportional to molecular volume and $`N`$ is the total number of particles. This means that because of a hardcore repulsion, each particle moves not inside the total volume $`V`$ but in the reduced volume $`V_{\mathrm{eff}}`$, which excludes the space occupied by other particles. Furthermore, he realized that in order to keep cohesiveness of the fluid, molecules must attract one another. Not, knowing the precise nature of intermolecular forces, but based on a physical insight and understanding of thermodynamics, van der Waals argued that the forces must be short ranged. Actually the idea of hard impenetrable atoms interacting by short ranged attractive forces can be traced all the way to Newton. However, in his writings Newton was never fully committed to this position. Depending of the subject he switched between the atoms which interacted with short ranged attractive forces New52  to atoms which repel their nearest neighbors New87  with a force proportional to $`1/r`$. The first clear commitment to short ranged attractive interatomic forces appeared in the work of Laplace Lap22  in 1822. He used the existence of these forces to account for the surface tension and capillarity of liquids. Laplace believed that attractive forces acted when the atoms were close together — as in solid or liquid — while the repulsive forces dominated in gases. Notion that the nature of atoms and the forces with which they interact depends on the thermodynamic phase, i.e. solid, liquid, or gas, seems to have dominated much of the early 19th century atomic theory Bru99 . The idea that all three states of matter should be explained with the same atomic model, did not take hold until the work of van der Waals in 1873 Bru99 .

Of course, if the attraction between particles exists, it must reduce the pressure $`P`$ bellow that of an ideal gas at the same density, so that $`P=P_{id}\mathrm{\Delta }P`$. Based on kinetic theory introduced earlier by Clausius Cla57  and Maxwell Max67 , Van der Waals suggested that the ideal gas equation of state still applies, but in the form $`P_{\mathrm{id}}V_{\mathrm{eff}}=nRT`$. The question, however remained: what is $`\mathrm{\Delta }P`$?

To answer this question van der Waals proposed what is now called the “ mean-field field approximation”. Since forces between particles are short ranged, each molecule interacts only with its neighbors, i.e. with the particles which are within some radius $`\delta `$ from it. Now, how many molecules are within distance $`\delta `$ of any given particle? Since on average particles are uniformly distributed with density $`\rho =N/V`$, the number of molecules within radius $`\delta `$ of a given particle is $`\rho 4\pi \delta ^3/3`$. It is reasonable to think of $`\mathrm{\Delta }P`$ as an effective energy density of interaction. Therefore, we conclude that

$$\mathrm{\Delta }P=\frac{ϵN\rho }{2V}\frac{4\pi \delta ^3}{3}.$$
(1)
In this formula $`ϵ`$ is the energy of ”pair interaction” and the factor $`1/2`$ is to account for the double counting. Substituting this into the modified ideal gas equation we are led to the celebrated van der Waals equation of state $`(vdW)`$,

$$P+\frac{a}{v^2}=\frac{k_BT}{(vb)},$$
(2)
where $`v`$ is the volume per particle, $`a=2\pi ϵ\delta ^3/3`$, and $`k_B`$ is the Boltzmann constant.

The derivation above also makes it clear what are the main effects omitted on the way to Eq.(2). By concentrating only on the average distribution of particles, we have neglected the role of correlations. It is evident that if we fix one particle and look at the distribution of other molecules around it, due to attractive forces there will be an enhanced probability of finding another molecule in the vicinity of the fixed particle. Certainly this kind of effect is not accounted for in the $`vdW`$ equation of state. For a class of ”simple” fluids the correction due to positional correlations between particles, however, is not very important and does not change, beyond quantitative, the basic predictions of the theory.

The $`vdW`$ equation provides us with an insight into the mechanism of liquid-gas phase separation. The phase transition, appears as a violation of thermodynamic inequality $`P/\rho 0`$ bellow some critical temperature $`T_c`$. Also the free energy must be a convex function of density. If convexity is violated it leads to appearance of two phases — liquid and gas — which together have the free energy lower than the ”anomalous” homogeneous state. It took further work of Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Gibbs Gib28  to clarify the details of this seemingly simple observation. The basic picture of fluid criticality, however, remained unchallenged for seventy years. This situation changed when the work of Onsager showed that there was a significant flaw in the mean-field picture based on the $`vdW`$ equation. Onsager was able to solve exactly a related model of appearance of magnetization in ferromagnetic materials Ons44 . What he found was that near the critical point, magnetization behaved very differently from the prediction of a mean-field theory. The situation remained unclear until the pioneering work of Wilson, Fisher and the others, in the early 1970’s, almost exactly hundred years after the original work of van der Waals Wil71 ; Wil72 . These authors showed the essential role played by thermal fluctuations in the vicinity of a critical point, and provided an explanation for the existence of various universality classes of critical behavior. These universality classes are characterized by the numerical value of critical exponents associated with the second order phase transitions. It was found that very different systems can belong to the same universality class. In particular, it was demonstrated that the liquid-gas criticality belongs to the same universality class as the paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition in metals. This universality class is now called Ising. Furthermore, all systems in which interactions between the particles are short ranged, and the Hamiltonian does not posses specific symmetries, belong to the same Ising universality class. Recently, however, something very surprising has happened. A new universality class of critical behavior has been observed. It was first noticed in the critical behavior of solutions containing organic salts Pit90 . Thus, it was found experimentally that the criticality of systems in which the Coulomb force plays the dominant role appeared to exhibit mean-field critical behavior. At first this observation might not sound very surprising, after all the Coulomb force is extremely long ranged, while the Ising universality class is specifically for systems in which the interactions are short ranged. On second thought the situation does not appear so clear. Although the bare Coulomb force is extremely long ranged, the effective interaction between any two particles of an electrolyte is dynamically screened by the other ions and is short ranged Deb23 . Furthermore, all the theoretical arguments appear to converge to conclusion that criticality in a Coulomb fluid should not be any different than in systems dominated by short ranged forces Fis93 ; Lev96 ; Lee96 . Specifically, it is possible to characterize the width of a critical region, in which scaling is observed, by a so called Ginsburg parameter. All theoretical arguments suggest that the critical region of a Coulomb fluid should be comparable to that of a simple van der Waals fluid Fis93 ; Lee96 . Experimentally, however, if one insists on fitting the data to Ising universality class, one finds that the Ising critical region is at least two orders of magnitude narrower than the critical region for a simple fluid with short ranged interactions Fis94 . Outside this region the the critical behavior appears completely mean-field-like. The theoretical challenge is to account for the mean-field criticality observed in organic electrolytes, or if the critical behavior is convincingly proven to be Ising, to justify the narrowness of the Ising critical region.

There is a striking difference between the mechanism of phase separation in a van der Waals fluid and that in a Coulomb fluid. Recall that the phase separation in a $`vdW`$ fluid is driven by the competition between hardcore repulsion and interparticle attraction. Contrary to this, the hardcore repulsion plays only a small role in coulombic criticality Fis93 . The reason for this is that for electrolytes and molten salts the critical point is located at very low reduced density and temperature, about a factor of ten lower than these values for a $`vdW`$ fluid Val91 . Clearly at such large separations, hardcore is only a marginal perturbation. Based on the pioneering ideas of Debye, Hückel, and Bjerrum Deb23 ; Bje26 , it is possible to construct a theory which accounts quantitatively for the location of critical point in a Coulomb fluid Fis93 ; Lev96 . Within this theory one can explicitly see that the hardcore, free volume term, which is so essential to the understanding of criticality in simple fluids, is completely negligible for Coulomb systems. In fact the phase separation in these systems is purely the result of an electrostatic instability Fis93 . If one studies coulombic criticality, one also notices another striking difference from systems with isotropic short ranged attractions. Let us consider a simple model of an electrolyte idealized by the restricted primitive model $`(RPM)`$. Within the $`RPM`$, ions are treated as an equal-sized hard spheres of positive and negative charge, and solvent as a uniform dielectric background. We shall restrict our attention to charge neutral systems. The condition of charge neutrality is essential in order to have thermodynamic limit. Since on average the particles of an electrolyte are uniformly distributed throughout the volume, it is evident that the average electrostatic potential is zero. This means that the mean-field correction to ideal gas pressure is also zero! The fact that the $`RPM`$ does have liquid-gas phase transition must, therefore, be attributed to the effects not present at the mean-field level. These effects are the correlations between positive and negative ions, neglected within the mean-field approximation. At very low reduced temperatures, at which phase separation occurs, $`RPM`$ is a strongly correlated fluid. It is precisely these correlations which drive the liquid-gas phase separation Fis93 ; Lev96 .

Another very interesting example of a highly correlated fluid is a system of dipolar hard spheres $`(DHS)`$ Gen70 ; Wer71 ; Rus73 ; Gro96 ; Sea96 ; Roi96 ; Tav97 ; Lev99 ; Lev01 . This is probably the simplest model of a polar fluid. Indeed, it was expected that as the temperature is lowered, the $`DHS`$ should phase separate into coexisting high density liquid and low density gas phases Gen70 ; Wer71 ; Rus73 . It came, therefore, as a big surprise when the simulations in the early $`90^{}s`$ could not locate the anticipated liquid-gas transition Wei93 ; Lee93 ; Ste94 . Instead, as the temperature was lowered, the dipolar spheres aligned forming weakly interacting polymer-like chains. It was argued that formation of these chains prevented condensation of $`DHS`$ Lev99 .

In fact, it is once again easy to see that the dominant correction to the ideal gas behavior is due to correlations between particles. Evidently in a fluid phase, all the particles are uniformly distributed throughout the system, with dipolar orientation not having any preferred direction. This implies that the average electric field inside a dipolar fluid is zero, and the mean-field contribution to pressure is, once again, zero. The dominant contribution to the excess free energy is due to correlations between the particles and not due to mean-field, as was the case for a simple van der Waals fluids. In fact, we find that the correlations, in this case, are so strong as to wash out the phase separation altogetherLev99 . That is the dipoles align forming weakly interacting chains, instead of phase separating into coexisting high and low density phases. What is even more interesting is that the usual liquid-gas phase stransition can be restored by adding to the $`DHS`$ some dispersion interaction of the van der Waals, $`1/r^6`$, form Lee93 ; Lev01 . It can be shown that depending on the amplitude of dispersion, as compared to dipole-dipole interaction, a liquid-gas phase transition can either be absent or present. We shall denote the relative strength of dispersion force as it compares to the dipole-dipole interaction by a parameter $`\lambda `$. Thus, when $`\lambda `$ is near unity, the two interactions are more or less comparable in strength. When $`\lambda =0`$ the usual $`DHS`$ model is recovered. When $`\lambda =1`$ we find that there is a phase transition, location of which can be predicted, with about $`30\%`$ accuracy, using a “correlated mean-field theory” Lev99 ; Lev01 . This theory combines into a single free energy contributions from both the isotropic van der Waals force and from the dipolar correlations. The critical point is obtained from the study of convexity of this free energy. It is important to stress that the correlated mean-field theory still does not take into account the thermal fluctuations important near the critical point.

As the relative strength of the dispersion force decreases, and the net interaction between particles becomes dominated by the long ranged dipole-dipole force, we find that the accuracy of the theory improves dramatically. In fact for $`0.3<\lambda <0.5`$ the values for the critical temperature predicted by the theory are in perfect agreement with the Monte Carlo simulations Lev01 . At $`\lambda 0.3`$ the phase separation disappears both in the simulations and in theory Lee93 ; Lev01 .

The fact that a theory which does not take into account thermal fluctuations can predict location of a critical point with a high degree of accuracy, carries some very profound implications. We note that the accuracy of the theory increases as $`\lambda `$ decreases. As mentioned already, for $`\lambda =1`$ disagreement between the theory and the simulations is about $`30\%`$. This value is very much comparable to the accuracy of a mean-field theory for fluids with short ranged dispersion force, such as argon. It is well known that the thermal fluctuations tend to depress the critical temperature by about this amount. What is interesting is that as the weight of an isotropic short ranged interaction is decreased — by diminishing the value of $`\lambda `$ — and the effective interaction becomes longer ranged, the agreement between simulations and theory improves significantly Lev01 . In fact it is known that for infinitely long ranged interactions of a Kac form, the critical fluctuations are not important and the mean-field theory becomes exact. Apparently something very similar happens in the case of Stockmayer fluids ($`DHS`$ plus dispersion interaction). As the net interaction between the particles becomes more and more dominated by the long ranged dipole-dipole force, the critical fluctuations become less and less important. For $`0.3<\lambda <0.5`$, this should also lead to a mean-field-like scaling in the neighborhood of the critical point, with Ising-like behavior appearing only very close to the critical point. In fact the width of the Ising-like critical region should be a very strongly decreasing function of $`\lambda `$. It would be nice to see how these predictions compare with the Monte Carlo simulations.

We have discussed two models of strongly correlated fluids: the restricted primitive model of electrolyte and the dipolar hard sphere model of polar fluid. In both cases the bare interactions between particles are long ranged, and the excess free energy is dominated by the electrostatic correlations, with the mean-field contribution being identically zero. These are but two examples of an infinite number of strongly correlated fluids. In spite of their ubiquity, the critical behavior or even the existence of phase transition in this important class of systems remains uncertain Cam00 ; Tlu00 ; Pin00 .

This work was supported in part by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq).