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# Temperature dependence and anisotropy of the bulk upper critical field 𝐻_{𝑐2} of MgB2

## Abstract

The bulk upper critical field $`H_{c2}(T)`$ of superconducting MgB2 and its anisotropy are established by analyzing experimental data on the temperature and magnetic field dependences of the $`ab`$-plane thermal conductivity of a single-crystalline sample in external magnetic fields oriented both parallel ($`H_{c2}^c`$) and perpendicular ($`H_{c2}^{ab}`$) to the $`c`$ axis of the hexagonal lattice. From numerical fits we deduce the anisotropy ratio $`\gamma _0=H_{c2}^{ab}(0)/H_{c2}^c(0)=4.2`$ at $`T=0`$ K. Both the values and the temperature dependences of $`H_{c2}^c`$ and $`H_{c2}^{ab}`$ are distinctly different from previous claims based on measurements of the electrical resistivity.

Since the recent discovery of superconductivity of MgB2 with a critical temperature $`T_c40`$ K,Nagamatsu01  a large number of experimental results on different properties of this compound has been reported in the literature. Most experiments were made using powder or polycrystalline samples. The hexagonal crystal structure of MgB2, however, is expected to cause pronounced anisotropies in the electrical and magnetic properties, which can unambiguously be probed only by experiments using single crystals. In particular, the upper critical field $`H_{c2}(T)`$ is an important parameter for characterizing the superconducting state of type II superconductors.Shulga01cm ; Manske01cm ; Haas02  For anisotropic materials, such as hexagonal MgB2, the values of $`H_{c2}`$ may vary considerably for different orientations of the external magnetic field $`H`$. Choosing the field directions either perpendicular or parallel to the $`c`$-axis, the anisotropy may be expressed by a parameter $`\gamma =H_{c2}^{ab}/H_{c2}^c`$, which, in the most general case, may be temperature dependent. Earlier experimental results, mainly based on measurements of the electrical resistivity $`\rho (T,H)`$, have resulted in a broad range of values of $`\gamma `$ and of extrapolated zero-temperature values of $`H_{c2}^c(0)`$ and $`H_{c2}^{ab}(0)`$ (for a review, see Ref. Buzea01, ). Most of these experiments, also on single crystals,Lee01 ; Xu01 ; Kim01cm  indicate a positive curvature of $`H_{c2}(T)`$ in a wide range of temperature below $`T_c`$ and correspondingly, rather high critical fields at $`T=0`$. Attempts to explain these features have lead to theoretical work suggesting the existence of some soft bosonic modesShulga01cm  and even unconventional mechanisms of superconductivity have been considered.Zhao01cm

In this paper we present an evaluation of $`H_{c2}^c(T)`$ and $`H_{c2}^{ab}(T)`$ of single crystalline MgB2, based on measurements of the thermal conductivity $`\kappa (H,T)`$. Complementary results of $`\rho (T,H)`$, obtained on the same single-crystalline sample, indicate that electrical transport measurements are not well suited to probe the bulk upper critical field $`H_{c2}(T)`$ of MgB2. Inspecting the temperature dependences of both $`H_{c2}^c(T)`$ and $`H_{c2}^{ab}(T)`$ close to to $`T_c`$, our results indicate that even the zero-field critical temperature $`T_c(0)`$ of the bulk may be lower than commonly believed up to now. This indicates that, in relation with superconductivity of MgB2, surface effects must be considered.

The thermal conductivity was measured in the basal plane of hexagonal MgB2 exposed to varying magnetic fields $`H`$, oriented parallel and perpendicular to the basal $`ab`$-plane with a small misalignments of $`3.5\pm 0.5^{}`$ between the field directions and the orientation of the plane. A standard uniaxial heat flow method, as described in Ref. Gianno00, , was used for the $`\kappa (H,T)`$ measurements. The temperature difference between the two thermometers was about 1% of the absolute average temperature. The measurements of the electrical resistivity $`\rho (H,T)`$ were made using a 4-contact scheme and a $`dc`$-current of density 50 A/cm2 in the $`ab`$-plane with $`H`$ along the $`c`$-direction. The investigated single crystal has lateral dimensions of $`0.5\times 0.17\times 0.035`$ mm3 and was grown employing a high-pressure cubic anvil technique as described elsewhere.Karpinski01

Low-temperature $`\rho (T)`$ curves measured in constant external magnetic fields $`H`$ are presented in Fig. 1 for $`T<50`$ K.

The zero-field resistive superconducting transition at $`T_c=38.1`$ K is rather narrow ($`\mathrm{\Delta }T_c0.15`$ K), but the application of magnetic fields broadens the transition considerably. If the field dependence of the onset of the resistive transition, as illustrated in Fig. 1 for $`H=5`$ T, is plotted in an \[$`H,T`$\] diagram, the curve denoted as $`H_\rho ^c`$ in Fig. 4 is obtained. These $`H_\rho ^c`$ data are qualitatively and quantitatively very similar to results previously obtained on single crystals,Lee01 ; Xu01 ; Kim01cm  in particular with respect to the positive curvature of $`H_\rho ^c(T)`$. In these earlier works $`H_\rho ^c(T)`$ was associated with $`H_{c2}^c(T)`$.

The $`H`$-dependence of the thermal conductivity was measured at selected constant temperatures in the range between 2 and 50 K and in fields up to 60 kOe. Representative $`\kappa (H)`$ curves at selected temperatures are displayed in Figs. 2 and 3 for $`Hc`$ and $`Hab`$, respectively. As demonstrated in the inset of Fig. 2, a hysteretic behavior of $`\kappa (H)`$, caused by vortex pinning, is observed in the low-field regime for $`Hc`$. In order to avoid ambiguities, each new field setting at a constant temperature was achieved by heating the sample to the normal state above 50 K, and subsequently cooling it to the set temperature in the chosen field. In this way, a smooth variation of $`\kappa (H)`$, as demonstrated by the open circles (FC) in the inset of Fig. 2, was obtained. The field values $`H_{\mathrm{irr}}^\kappa `$, below which the irreversibility is discernible, are rather low. For $`T=4.03`$ K, e.g., $`H_{\mathrm{irr}}^\kappa 0.7`$ kOe. At elevated temperatures and for $`Hab`$ the irreversibilities are reduced, as demonstrated in the inset of Fig. 3.

The curves presented in Figs. 2 and 3 reveal the general features observed at all temperatures below 38.1 K. Starting at $`H=0`$, $`\kappa `$ drops with a steep slope and, after passing through a minimum, increases again until a region of very weak field dependence above some critical field, denoted as $`H_\kappa `$ is reached. It is remarkable that, for each temperature, $`H_\kappa ^c`$ is distinctly lower than $`H_\rho ^c`$ and that no distinct feature of $`\kappa (H)`$ is observed in the region of $`H_\rho ^c`$. This is explicitly demonstrated in Fig. 2. With increasing temperature, $`H_\kappa `$ decreases towards zero as $`T`$ approaches $`T_c`$. This general $`\kappa (H)`$ features are typical for type II superconductors and can be explained as follows. Vinen71  The thermal conductivity of a superconductor is due to itinerant electrons ($`\kappa _e`$) and phonons ($`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$). Enhancing $`H`$ from zero eventually causes the formation of vortices in the bulk of a type II superconductor. After zero-field cooling, the first vortices form at the lower critical field $`H_{c1}`$. Consequentially, some additional scattering of phonons by normal electrons in the cores of the vortices will reduce $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$. With further increasing field the decrease of $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$ is compensated by an enhancement of $`\kappa _e`$. Above $`H_{c2}`$, in the normal state, the field dependence of both $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$ and $`\kappa _e`$ is expected to be weak. The overall behavior of the $`\kappa (H)`$ curves shown in Figs. 2 and 3 reflects these expectations, and as may be seen, $`\kappa (H)`$ is virtually field independent for $`H>H_\kappa `$.

A more complete analysis of the $`\kappa (H)`$ data will be presented in a forthcoming paper.Sologubenko01\_c  Here, we concentrate on the opportunity that these data allow for a reliable evaluation of the bulk upper critical field $`H_{c2}(T)`$, which obviously coincides with $`H_\kappa (T)`$ as derived from our $`\kappa (H)`$ curves for both field orientations. It may be seen that $`H_{c2}^c(T)H_\kappa ^c(T)`$ is distinctly different from $`H_\rho ^c(T)`$. The solid line in Fig. 4, representing a general prediction for $`H_{c2}(T)`$ of a conventional type II superconductor in the case where the coherence length $`\xi `$ and the electron mean free path $`\mathrm{}`$ are of similar magnitude,Helfand66  is in fair agreement with the measured $`H_{c2}^c(T)`$. It is obvious that $`H_\rho ^c(T)`$ does not follow the same general $`T`$-dependence. Since thermal conductivity experiments probe the bulk of the sample, it is $`H_\kappa ^c(T)`$ rather than $`H_\rho ^c(T)`$ that ought to be identified as the upper critical field $`H_{c2}^c(T)`$. Recent magnetization measurementsAngst01cm  on single-crystals of MgB2 using a torque magnetometer result in values and a temperature dependence of $`H_{c2}^c(T)`$ that are consistent with our $`H_\kappa ^c(T)`$ and thus support our conclusion. Employing the equation given by anisotropic Ginzburg-Landau theory $`H_{c2}(\theta )=\left[(\mathrm{sin}\theta /H_{c2}^c)^2+(\mathrm{cos}\theta /H_{c2}^{ab})^2\right]^{1/2}`$, where $`\theta `$ is the angle between the magnetic field and the $`ab`$-plane,TinkhamBook  we estimate the errors in calculating $`H_{c2}`$ caused by the above mentioned misalignment of $`3.5\pm 0.5^{}`$ to be about $`3\pm 1\%`$ for $`H_{c2}^{ab}`$ and below 0.2% for $`H_{c2}^c`$.

As displayed in Fig. 4, at temperatures above about 27 K, $`H_{c2}^c`$ varies linearly with temperature with a slope $`dH_{c2}^c/dT=1.17`$ kOe/K. This behavior leads to an extrapolated zero-field $`T_c^{}=36.6`$ K, 1.5 K below $`T_c`$ obtained from $`\rho (T,0)`$. Using the equations which are given by the Ginzburg-Landau theory considering anisotropies, TinkhamBook  $`\xi _{ab}(T)=(\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2\pi H_{c2}^c(T))^{1/2}`$ and $`\xi _{ab}(T)=0.74(1T/T_c)^{1/2}\xi _{ab,0}`$, where $`\xi _{ab}`$ is the coherence length in the basal $`ab`$-plane, we obtain the zero-temperature value of $`\xi _{ab,0}=11.8`$ nm.

Turning to the temperature dependence of the critical field $`H_{c2}^{ab}(T)`$ for $`Hc`$, we again note a sizable temperature interval where $`H_{c2}^{ab}(T)`$ varies linearly with $`T`$. This is emphasized by the dotted line in Fig. 4. The slope $`dH_{c2}^{ab}/dT=5.15`$ kOe/K gives $`\sqrt{\xi _{ab,0}\xi _{c,0}}=5.75`$ nm and therefore, the zero-temperature value of the $`c`$-axis correlation length $`\xi _{c,0}=2.8`$ nm. Another important parameter which can be estimated from our $`\kappa (H)`$ data is the lower critical field $`H_{c1}^{ab}`$, as demonstrated in the inset of Fig. 3. In the temperature region between 28 and 35 K, where an evaluation of $`H_{c1}^{ab}`$ with reasonable accuracy of about $`\pm 10\%`$ was possible, $`H_{c2}^{ab}/H_{c1}^{ab}130`$. From this ratio, using the equation $`H_{c2}/H_{c1}=2\kappa _{\mathrm{GL}}^2/\mathrm{ln}\kappa _{\mathrm{GL}}`$,TinkhamBook  the parameter $`\kappa _{\mathrm{GL}}^{ab}`$ of the Ginzburg-Landau theory is estimated to be about 13.

As may be seen in Fig. 4, above approximately 33 K, $`H_{c2}^{ab}(T)`$ deviates from the linear in $`T`$ variation and, with increasing temperature, approaches zero also at $`T_c^{}`$ defined above. This is reflected in the temperature dependence of the anisotropy ratio $`\gamma `$, which seems to decrease with T approaching $`T_c^{}`$. The positive curvature of $`H_{c2}(T)`$ is typical for strongly anisotropic, layered superconductorsWoollam74  and has often been explained in terms of the Lawrence-Doniach model,Lawrence70  which treats a layered superconductor as a stacked array of weakly coupled two-dimensional superconducting sheets. Various other theoretical models have been proposed to explain this feature (for a critical review see, e.g., Ref. Brandow98, ). At this point we cannot commit ourselves to any of these models. It is important, however, that the anomaly is absent for $`Hc`$ and small and restricted to a rather narrow temperature region for $`Hc`$. At lower temperatures, with decreasing temperature the anisotropy ratio $`\gamma (T)`$ tends to a constant value and is approaching $`\gamma _0=H_{c2}^{ab}(0)/H_{c2}^c(0)=\xi _{ab,0}/\xi _{c,0}=4.2`$.

The extrapolation to zero-temperature gives $`H_{c2}^c(0)31`$ kOe, a considerably lower value than is typically claimed for MgB2.Buzea01  Exceptions are the reports of Refs. Budko01Hc2, ; Simon01, . The rather low value of $`H_{c2}^c(0)`$ and the observation of a Helfand-Werthamer-typeHelfand66  temperature dependence of $`H_{c2}^c(T)`$ have important consequences for possible models of the superconducting state of MgB2.

Our result obviously questions the intrinsic nature of $`H_{c2}(T)`$ derived from measurements of $`\rho (T)`$. Since the resistive transition is not manifest in $`\kappa (T)`$, which may be considered as a bulk property, $`H_\rho (T)`$ must correspond to a minor fraction of an additional phase (or phases) with enhanced $`H_{c2}`$ and $`T_c`$. The spatial extension of this phase is, however, large enough to short-circuit the electrical current path and produce a narrow superconducting transition at a temperature $`T_c`$ higher than the bulk transition temperature $`T_c^{}`$. Based on an analysis of their magnetization and $`ac`$-susceptibility data on polycrystalline samples, the authors of Ref. Fuchs01,  came to a similar conclusion. The most likely origin of the second phase with enhanced superconducting parameters seems to be related to surface effects. A considerable enhancement of the electronic density of states near the Fermi level and, therefore, an enhanced trend to superconductivity at the surface of MgB2 have been predictedKim01 ; Bascones01 ; Silkin01 , in agreement with our observations.

In conclusion, we observe a striking disagreement in the values and the temperature dependences of the upper critical field $`H_{c2}^c`$ of MgB2 evaluated from results of electrical and thermal conductivity measurements on the same sample. The shape of $`H_{c2}^c(T)`$ as established by $`\kappa (H)`$ with $`Hc`$ does not reveal an anomalous positive curvature near $`T_c`$ and therefore no exotic mechanism needs to be involved to explain the upper critical field, at least not for the bulk. Our data also indicate that the bulk transition temperature $`T_c^{}`$ is lower than $`T_c`$ obtained from results of $`\rho (T)`$ measurements.

###### Acknowledgements.

We acknowledge useful discussions with I.L. Landau, M. Angst and R. Monnier. This work was financially supported in part by the Schweizerische Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung.


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# Large-scale topological and dynamical properties of Internet

## I Introduction

The Internet is a capital example of growing complex network Strogatz (2001); Amaral et al. (2000) interconnecting millions of computers around the world. Growing networks exhibit a high degree of wiring entanglement which takes place during their dynamical evolution. This feature, at the heart of the new and interesting topological properties recently observed in growing network systems Albert and Barabási (2001); Dorogovtsev and Mendes (2001a), has triggered the attention of the research community to the study of the large-scale properties of router-level maps of the Internet nla ; cai ; luc . The statistical analysis performed so far has focused on several quantities exhibiting non-trivial properties: wiring redundancy and clustering, Govindan and Reddy (1997); Pansiot and Grad (1998); Faloutsos et al. (1999); Chou (2000), the distribution of chemical distances nla ; Faloutsos et al. (1999), and the eigenvalue spectra of the connectivity matrix Faloutsos et al. (1999). Noteworthy, the presence of a power-law connectivity distribution Govindan and Reddy (1997); Faloutsos et al. (1999); Chou (2000); Caldarelli et al. (2000); Yook et al. (2001) makes the Internet an example of the recently identified class of scale-free networks Barabási and Albert (1999); Barabási et al. (1999). This evidence implies the absence of any characteristic connectivity—large connectivity fluctuations—and a high heterogeneity of the network structure.

As widely pointed out in the literature Doar and Leslie (1993); Floyd and Paxson (2001); Yook et al. (2001), a deeper empirical understanding of the topological properties of Internet is fundamental in the developing of realistic Internet map generators, that on their turn are used to test and optimize Internet protocols. In fact, the Internet topology has a great influence on the dynamics that data traffic carries out on top of it. Hence, a better understanding of the Internet structure is of primary importance in the design of new routing Doar and Leslie (1993); Floyd and Paxson (2001) and searching algorithms Adamic et al. (2001); Puniyani et al. (2001), and to protect from virus spreading Pastor-Satorras and Vespignani (2001) and node failures Albert et al. (2000); Callaway et al. (2000); Cohen et al. (2001). In this perspective, the direct measurement and statistical characterization of real Internet maps are of crucial importance in the identification of the basic mechanisms that rule the Internet structure and dynamics.

In this work, we shall consider the evolution of real Internet maps from 1997 to 2000, collected by the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR) nla , in order to study the underlying dynamical processes leading to the Internet structure and topology. We provide a statistical analysis of several average properties. In particular, we consider the average connectivity, clustering coefficient, chemical distance, and betweenness. These quantities will provide a preliminary test of the stationarity of the network. The scale-free nature of the Internet has been pointed out by inspecting the connectivity probability distribution, and it implies that the fluctuations around the average connectivity are not bounded. In order to provide a full characterization of the scale-free properties of the Internet, we analyze the connectivity and betweenness probability distributions for different time snapshot of the Internet maps. We observe that these distributions exhibit an algebraic behavior and are characterized by scaling exponents which are stationary in time. The chemical distance between pairs of nodes, on the other hand, appears to be sharply peaked around its average value, providing a striking evidence for the presence of well-defined small-world properties Watts and Strogatz (1998). A more detailed picture of the Internet can be achieved by studying higher order correlation functions of the network. In this sense, we show that the Internet hierarchical structure is reflected in non-trivial scale-free betweenness and connectivity correlation functions. Finally, we study several quantities related to the growth dynamics of the network. The analysis points out the presence of two distinct wiring processes: the first concerns newly added nodes, while the second is related to already existing nodes increasing their interconnections. We confirm that newly added nodes establish new links with the linear preferential attachment rule often used in modeling growing networks Barabási and Albert (1999). In addition, a study of the connectivity evolution of a single node shows a rich dynamical behavior with aging properties. The present study could provide some hints for a more realistic modeling of the Internet evolution, and with this purpose in mind we provide a discussion of some of the existing growing network models in the light of our findings. A short account of these results appeared in Ref. Pastor-Satorras et al. (2001).

The paper is organized as follows. In Section II we describe the Internet maps used in our study. Sec. III is devoted to the study of average quantities as a function of time. In Sec. IV we provide the analysis of the statistical distributions characterizing the Internet topology. We obtain evidence for the scale-free nature of this network as well as for the stationarity in time of this property. In Sec. V we characterize the hierarchical structure of the Internet by the statistical analysis of the betweenness and connectivity correlation functions. Sec. VI reports the study of dynamical properties such as the preferential attachment and the evolution of the average connectivity of newly added nodes. These properties, which show aging features, are the basis for the developing of Internet dynamical models. Sec. VII is devoted to a detailed discussion of some Internet models as compared with the presented real data analysis. Finally, in Sec. VIII we draw our conclusions and perspectives.

## II Mapping the Internet

Several Internet mapping projects are currently devoted to obtain high-quality router-level maps of the Internet. In most cases, the map is constructed by using a hop-limited probe (such as the UNIX traceroute tool) from a single location in the network. In this case the result is a “directed”, map as seen from a specific location on the Internet luc . This approach does not correspond to a complete map of the Internet because cross-links and other technical problems (such as multiple Internet provider aliases) are not considered. Heuristic methods to take into account these problems have been proposed (see for instance Ref. mer ). However, it is not clear their reliability and the corresponding completeness of the maps constructed this way.

A different representation of Internet is obtained by mapping the autonomous systems (AS) topology. The Internet can be considered as a collection of subnetworks that are connected together. Within each subnetwork the information is routed using an internal algorithm that may differ from one subnetwork to another. Thus, each subnet is an independent unit of the Internet and it is often referred as an AS. These AS communicate between them using a specific routing algorithm, the Border Gateway Protocol. Each AS number approximately maps to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and their links are inter-ISP connections. In this case it is possible to collect data from several probing stations to obtain complete interconnectivity maps (see Refs. nla ; cai  for a technical description of these projects). In particular, the NLANR project is collecting data since Nov. 1997, and it provides topological as well as dynamical information on a consistent subset of the Internet. The first Nov. 1997 map contains 3180 AS, and it has grown in time until the Dec. 1999 measurement, consisting of 6374 AS. In the following we will consider the graph whose nodes represent the AS and whose links represent the adjacencies (interconnections) between AS. In particular we will focus in three different snapshots corresponding to November 8th 1997, 1998, and 1999, that will be referenced as AS97, AS98, and AS99, respectively.

The NLANR connectivity maps are collected with a resolution of one day and are changing from day to day. These changes are due to the addition (birth) and deletion (death) of nodes and links, but also to the flickering of connections, so that a node may appear to be isolated (not mapped) from time to time. A simple test, however, shows that flickering is appreciable just in nodes with low connectivity. We compute the ratio $`r`$ between the number of days in which a node is observed in the NLANR maps and the total number of days after the first appearance of the node, averaged over all nodes in the maps. The analysis reveals that $`r1`$ and $`r>0.65`$ for nodes with connectivity $`k10`$, and $`k<10`$, respectively. Hence, nodes with $`k<10`$ have fluctuations that must be taken into account. In order to shed light on this point, we inspect the incidence of death events with respect to the creation of new nodes. We consider a death event only if a node is not observed in the map during a one year time interval. In Table 1 we show the total number of death events in a year, for 1997, 1998, and 1999, in comparison with the total number of new nodes created. It can be seen that the AS’s birth rate appears to be larger by a factor of two than the death rate. More interestingly, if we restrict the analysis to nodes with connectivity $`k>10`$, the death rate is reduced to a few percent of the birth rate. This clearly indicates that only poorly connected nodes have an appreciable probability to disappear. This fact is easily understandable in terms of the market competition among ISP’s, where small newcomers are the ones which more likely go out of business.

## III Average properties and stationarity

The growth rate of AS maps reveals that the Internet is a rapidly evolving network. Thus, it is extremely important to know whether or not it has reached a stationary state whose average properties are time-independent. This will imply that, despite the continuous increase of nodes and connections in the system, the network’s topological properties are not appreciably changing in time. As a first step, we have analyzed the behavior in time of several average magnitudes: the average connectivity $`k`$, the clustering coefficient $`c`$, the average chemical distance $`d`$, and the average betweenness $`b`$.

The connectivity $`k_i`$ of a node $`i`$ is defined as the number of connections of this node with other nodes in the network, and $`k`$ is the average of $`k_i`$ over all nodes in the network. Since each connection contributes to the connectivity of two nodes, we have that $`k=2E/N`$, where $`E`$ is the total number of connections and $`N`$ is the number of nodes. Both $`E`$ and $`N`$ are increasing with time but their ratio remains almost constant. The average connectivity for the 1997, 1998, and 1999 years (averaged over all the AS maps available for that year) is shown in Table 2. In average each node has three to four connections, which is a small number compared with that of a fully connected network of the same size ($`k=N110^3`$). The average connectivity gives information about the number of connections of any node but not about the overall structure of these connections. More information can be obtained using the clustering coefficient introduced in Ref. Watts and Strogatz (1998). The number of neighbors of a node $`i`$ is given by its connectivity $`k_i`$. On their turn, these neighbors can be connected among them forming a triangle with node $`i`$. The clustering coefficient $`c_i`$ is then defined as the ratio between the number of connections among the $`k_i`$ neighbors of a given node $`i`$ and its maximum possible value, $`k_i(k_i1)/2`$. The average clustering coefficient $`c`$ is the average of $`c_i`$ over all nodes in the network. The clustering coefficient thus provides a measure of how well locally interconnected are the neighbors of any node. The maximum value of $`c`$ is 1, corresponding to a fully connected network. For random graphs Bollobás (1985), which are constructed by connecting nodes at random with a fixed probability $`p`$, the clustering coefficient decreases with the network size $`N`$ as $`c_{\mathrm{rand}}=k/N`$. On the contrary, it remains constant for regular lattices. The average clustering coefficient obtained for the 1997, 1998, and 1999 years is shown in Table 2. As it can be seen, the clustering coefficient of the AS maps increases slowly with increasing $`N`$ and takes values $`c0.2`$, two orders of magnitudes larger than $`c_{\mathrm{rand}}10^3`$, corresponding to a random graph with the same number of nodes. Therefore, the AS maps are far from being a random graph, a feature that can be naively understood using the following argument: In AS maps the connections among nodes are equivalent, but they are actually characterized by a real space length corresponding to the actual length of the physical connection between AS. The larger is this length, the higher the costs of installation and maintenance of the line, favoring therefore the connection between nearby nodes. It is thus likely that nodes within the same geographical region will have a large number of connection among them, increasing in this way the local clustering coefficient.

With this reasoning one might be lead to the conclusion that the Internet topology is close to a regular two-dimensional lattice. The analysis of the chemical distances between nodes, however, reveals that this is not the case. Two nodes $`i`$ and $`j`$ are said to be connected if one can go from node $`i`$ to $`j`$ following the connections in the network. The path from $`i`$ to $`j`$ may be not unique and its distance is given by the number of nodes visited. The average chemical distance $`d`$ is defined as the shortest path distance between two nodes $`i`$ and $`j`$, $`d_{ij}`$, averaged over every pair of nodes in the network. For regular lattices, $`d_DN^{1/D}`$, where $`D`$ is the spatial dimension. Hence, if the Internet could be mapped into a two-dimensional lattice, we should observe $`d_{\mathrm{D}=2}N^{1/2}60`$. However, as it can be seen from Table 2, for the AS maps $`d3.6d_{\mathrm{D}=2}`$. The Internet strikingly exhibits what is known as the “small-world” effect Watts and Strogatz (1998); Watts (1999): in average one can go from one node to any other in the system passing through a very small number of intermediate nodes. This necessarily implies that besides the short local connections which contribute to the large clustering coefficient, there are some hubs and backbones which connect different regional networks, strongly decreasing the average chemical distance. Another measure of this feature is given by the number of minimal paths that pass by each node. To go from one node in the network to another following the shortest path, a sequence of nodes is visited. If we do this for every pair of nodes in the network, there will be a certain number of key nodes that will be visited more often than others. Such nodes will be of great importance for the transmission of information along the network. This fact can be quantitatively measured by means of the betweenness $`b_i`$, defined by the total number of shortest paths between any two nodes in the network that pass thorough the node $`i`$. The average betweenness $`b`$ is the average value of $`b_i`$ over all nodes in the network. The betweenness has been introduced in the analysis of social network in Ref. Newman (2001) and more recently it has been studied in scale-free networks, with the name of load Goh et al. (2001). Moreover, an algorithm to compute the betweenness has been given in Ref. Newman (2001). For a star network the betweenness takes its maximum value $`N(N1)/2`$ at the central node and its minimum value $`N1`$ at the vertices of the star. The average betweenness of the three AS maps analyzed here is shown in Table 2. Its value is between $`2N`$ and $`3N`$, which is quite small in comparison with its maximum possible value $`N(N1)10^7`$.

The present analysis makes clear that the Internet is not dominated by a very few highly connected nodes similarly to star-shaped architectures. As well, simple average measurements rule out the possibility of a random graph structure or a regular grid architecture. This evidence hints towards a peculiar topology that will be fully identified by looking at the detailed probability distributions of several quantities. Finally, it is important to stress that despite the network size is more than doubled in the three years period considered, the average quantities suffer variations of a few percent (see Table 2). This points out that the system seems to have reached a fairly well-defined stationary state, as we shall confirm in the next Section by analyzing the detailed statistical properties of the Internet.

## IV Fluctuations and scale-free properties

In order to get a deeper understanding of the network topology we look at the probability distributions $`p_k(k)`$ and $`p_b(b)`$ that any given node in the network has a connectivity $`k`$ and a betweenness $`b`$, respectively. The study of these probability distributions will allow us to probe the extent of fluctuations and heterogeneity present in the network. We shall see that the strong scale-free nature of the Internet, previously noted in Refs. Faloutsos et al. (1999); Caldarelli et al. (2000), results in power-law distributions with diverging fluctuations for these quantities. The analysis of the maps reveals, in fact, an algebraic decay for the connectivity distribution,

$$p_k(k)k^\gamma ,$$
(1)
extending over three orders of magnitude. In Fig. 1 we report the integrated connectivity distribution

$$P_k(k)=_k^{\mathrm{}}p_k(k^{})𝑑k^{}$$
(2)
corresponding to the AS97, AS98, and AS99 maps. The integrated distribution, which expresses the probability that a node has connectivity larger than or equal to $`k`$, scales as

$$P_k(k)k^{1\gamma },$$
(3)
and it has the advantage of being considerably less noisy that the original distribution. In all maps we find a clear power-law behavior with slope close to $`1.2`$ (see Fig. 1), yielding a connectivity exponent $`\gamma =2.2\pm 0.1`$. The distribution cut-off is fixed by the maximum connectivity of the system and is related to the overall size of the Internet map. We see that for more recent maps the cut-off is slightly increasing, as expected due to the Internet growth. On the other hand, the connectivity exponent $`\gamma `$ seems to be independent of time and in good agreement with previous measurements Faloutsos et al. (1999).

The betweenness distribution $`p_b(b)`$ (i.e. the probability that any given node is passed over by $`b`$ shortest paths) shows also scale-free properties, with a a power-law distribution

$$p_b(b)b^\delta $$
(4)
extending over three decades. As shown in Fig. 2(a), the integrated betweenness distribution measured in the AS maps is evidently stable in the three years period analyzed and follows a power-law decay

$$P_b(b)=_b^{\mathrm{}}p_b(b^{})𝑑b^{}b^{1\delta },$$
(5)
where the betweenness exponent is $`\delta =2.1\pm 0.2`$. The connectivity and betweenness exponents can be simply related if one assumes that the number of shortest paths $`b_k`$ passing over a node of connectivity $`k`$ follows the scaling form

$$b_kk^\beta .$$
(6)
By inserting the latter relation in the integrated betweenness distribution Eq. (5) we obtain

$$P_k(k)k^{\beta (1\delta )}.$$
(7)
Since we have that $`P_k(k)k^{1\gamma }`$, we obtain the scaling relation

$$\beta =\frac{\gamma 1}{\delta 1}.$$
(8)
The measured $`\gamma `$ and $`\delta `$ have approximately the same value for the AS maps data and we expect to recover $`\beta 1.0`$. This is corroborated in Fig. 2(b), where we report the direct measurement of the average betweenness of a node as a function of its connectivity $`k`$. It is also worth remarking that it has been recently argued Goh et al. (2001) that the betweenness distribution of scale-free networks with $`2<\gamma 3`$ is an universal quantity not depending on $`\gamma `$. From a numerical study of two scale-free network models Goh et al. (2001), it was found that the betweenness distribution follows a universal power-law decay with an exponent $`\delta 2.2`$, in fair agreement with our findings.

Another quantity of interest is the probability distribution of the clustering coefficient of the nodes. In our analysis we don’t find definitive evidence for a power-law behavior of this distribution. However, still useful information can be gathered from studying the clustering coefficient $`c_k`$ as a function of the node connectivity. In this case the local clustering coefficient of each node $`c_i`$ is averaged over all nodes with the same connectivity $`k`$. The plots for the AS97, AS98 and AS99 maps are shown in Fig. 3. Also in this case, measurements yield a power-law behavior $`c_kk^\omega `$ with $`\omega =0.75\pm 0.03`$, extending over three orders of magnitudes. This implies that nodes with a small number of connections have larger local clustering coefficients than those with a large connectivity. This behavior is consistent with the picture previously described in Sec. III of highly clustered regional networks sparsely interconnected by national backbones and international connections. The regional clusters of AS are probably formed by a large number of nodes with small connectivity but large clustering coefficients. Moreover, they also should contain nodes with large connectivities that are connected with the other regional clusters. These large connectivity nodes will be on their turn connected to nodes in different clusters which are not interconnected and, therefore, will have a small local clustering coefficient. This picture also shows the existence of some hierarchy in the network that will become more evident in the next Section.

A different behavior is followed by the chemical distance $`d`$ between two nodes, which does not show singular fluctuations from one pair of nodes to another. This can be shown by means of the probability distribution $`p_d(d)`$ of chemical distances $`d`$ between pairs of nodes, reported in Fig. 4(a). This distribution is characterized by a sharp peak around its average value and its shape remains essentially unchanged from the AS97 to the AS99 maps. Associated to the chemical distance distribution we have the hop plot introduced in Ref. Faloutsos et al. (1999). The hop plot is defined as the average fraction of nodes $`M(d)/N`$ within a chemical distance less than or equal to $`d`$ from a given node. At $`d=0`$ we find the starting node and, therefore, $`M(0)=1`$. At $`d=1`$ we found the starting node plus its neighbors and thus $`M(1)=k+1`$. If the network is made by a single cluster, for $`d=d_M`$, where $`d_M`$ is the maximum chemical distance, $`M(d_M)=N`$. For regular $`D`$-dimensional lattices, $`M(d)d^D`$, and in this case $`M`$ can be interpreted as the mass. The hop plot is related to the distribution of chemical distances through the following relation:

$$\frac{M(d)}{N}=\underset{d^{}=0}{\overset{d}{}}p_d(d^{}).$$
(9)
The hop plots for the AS97, AS98 and AS99 maps are shown in Fig. 4(b). In this case the chemical distance barely spans a decade ($`d_M=11`$). Most importantly, $`M(d)`$ practically reaches its maximum value $`N`$ at $`d=5`$. Hence, the chemical distance does not show strong fluctuations, as already noticed from the chemical distance distribution. In Ref. Faloutsos et al. (1999) it was argued that the increase of $`M(d)`$ for small $`d`$ follows a power-law distribution. This observation is not consistent with the present data, that yield a very abrupt increase taking place in a very narrow range.

Finally, it is important to stress again that all the measured distributions are characterized by scaling exponents or behaviors which are not changing in time. This implies that the statistical properties characterizing the Internet are time independent, providing a further test to the network stationarity; i.e. the Internet is self-organized in a stationary state characterized by scale-free fluctuations.

## V Hierarchy and correlations

Due to installation costs, the Internet has been designed with a hierarchical structure. The primary known structural difference between Internet nodes is the distinction between stub and transit domains. Nodes in stub domains have links that go only through the domain itself. Stub domains, on the other hand, are connected via a gateway node to transit domains that, on the contrary, are fairly well interconnected via many paths. This hierarchy can be schematically divided into international connections, national backbones, regional networks, and local area networks. Nodes providing access to international connections or national backbones are of course on top level of this hierarchy, since they make possible the communication between regional and local area networks. Moreover, in this way, a small average chemical distance can be achieved with a small average connectivity.

Very likely the hierarchical structure will introduce some correlations in the network topology. We can explore the hierarchical structure of the Internet by means of the conditional probability $`p_c(k^{}|k)`$ that a link belonging to node with connectivity $`k`$ points to a node with connectivity $`k^{}`$. If this conditional probability is independent of $`k`$, we are in presence of a topology without any correlation among the nodes’ connectivity. In this case, $`p_c(k^{}|k)=p_c(k^{})k^{}p_k(k^{})`$, in view of the fact that any link points to nodes with a probability proportional to their connectivity. On the contrary, the explicit dependence on $`k`$ is a signature of non-trivial correlations among the nodes’ connectivity, and the presence of a hierarchical structure in the network topology. A direct measurement of the $`p_c(k^{}|k)`$ function is a rather complex task due to large statistical fluctuations. More clear indications can be extracted by studying the quantity

$$k_{nn}=\underset{k^{}}{}k^{}p_c(k^{}|k),$$
(10)
i.e. the nearest neighbors average connectivity of nodes with connectivity $`k`$. In Fig. 5(a) we show the results obtained for the AS97, AS98, and AS99 maps, that again exhibit a clear power-law dependence on the connectivity degree,

$$k_{nn}k^{\nu _k},$$
(11)
with an exponent $`\nu _k=0.5\pm 0.1`$. This observation clearly implies that the connectivity correlation function has a marked dependence upon $`k`$, suggesting non-trivial correlation properties for the Internet. In practice, this result indicates that highly connected nodes are more likely pointing to less connected nodes, emphasizing the presence of a hierarchy in which smaller providers connect to larger ones and so on, climbing different levels of connectivity.

Similarly, it is expected that nodes with high betweenness (that is, carrying a heavy load of transit), and consequently a large connectivity, will be connected to nodes with smaller betweenness, less load and, therefore, small connectivity. A simple way to measure this effect is to compute the average betweenness $`b_{nn}`$ of the neighbors of the nodes with a given betweenness $`b`$. The plot of $`b_{nn}`$ for the AS97, AS98, and AS99 maps, represented in Fig. 5(b), shows that the average neighbor betweenness exhibits a clear power-law dependence on the node betweenness $`b`$,

$$b_{nn}b^{\nu _b},$$
(12)
with an exponent $`\nu _b=0.4\pm 0.1`$, evidencing that the more loaded nodes (backbones) are more frequently connected with less loaded nodes (local networks).

These hierarchical properties of the Internet are likely driven by several additional factors such as the space locality, economical resources and the market demand. An attempt to relate and study some of these aspects can be found in Ref. Yook et al. (2001), where the geographical distribution of population and Internet access are studied. In Sec. VII we shall compare a few of the existing models for the generation of scale-free networks with our data analysis, in an attempt to identify some relevant features in the Internet modeling.

## VI Dynamics and growth

In order to inspect the Internet dynamics, we focus our attention on the addition of new nodes and links into the maps. In the three-years range considered, we keep track of the number of links $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{new}}`$ appearing between a newly introduced node and an already existing node. We also monitor the rate of appearance of links $`\mathrm{}_{\mathrm{old}}`$ between already existing nodes. In Table 3 we can observe that the creation of new links is governed by these two processes at the same time. Specifically, the largest contribution to the growth is given by the appearance of links between already existing nodes. This clearly points out that the Internet growth is strongly driven by the need of redundancy in the wiring and an increased need of available bandwidth for data transmission.

A customarily measured quantity in the case of growing networks is the average connectivity $`k_i(t)`$ of new nodes as a function of their age $`t`$. In Refs. Barabási et al. (1999); Krapivsky et al. (2000); Krapivsky and Redner (2001) it is shown that $`k_i(t)`$ is a scaling function of both $`t`$ and the absolute time of birth of the node $`t_0`$. We thus consider the total number of nodes born within an small observation window $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_0`$, such that $`t_0\mathrm{const}.`$ with respect to the absolute time scale that is the Internet lifetime. For these nodes, we measure the average connectivity as a function of the time $`t`$ elapsed since their birth. The data for two different time windows are reported in Fig. 6, where it is possible to distinguish two different dynamical regimes: At early times, the connectivity is nearly constant with a very slow increase ($`k_i(t)t^{0.1}`$). Later on, the behavior approaches a power-law growth $`k_i(t)t^{0.5}`$. While exponent estimates are affected by noise and limited time window effects, the crossover between two distinct dynamical regimes is compatible with the general aging form obtained in the context of growing networks in Ref. Krapivsky et al. (2000); Krapivsky and Redner (2001).

A very important issue in the modeling of growing networks concerns the understanding of the growth mechanisms at the origin of the developing of new links. As we shall see more in detail in the next Section, the basic ingredients in the modeling of scale-free growing networks is the preferential attachment hypothesis Barabási and Albert (1999). In general, all growing network algorithms define models in which the rate $`\mathrm{\Pi }(k)`$ with which a node with $`k`$ connections receives new links is proportional to $`k^\alpha `$ (see Ref. Barabási and Albert (1999) and Sec. VII). The inspection of the exact value of $`\alpha `$ in real networks is an important issue since the connectivity properties strongly depend on this exponent Krapivsky et al. (2000); Krapivsky and Redner (2001); Jeong et al. (2001). Here we use a simple recipe that allows to extract the value of $`\alpha `$ by studying the appearance of new links. We focus on links emanating from newly appeared nodes in different time windows ranging from one to three years. We consider the frequency $`\mu (k)`$ of links that connect to nodes with connectivity $`k`$. By using the preferential attachment hypothesis, this effective probability is $`\mu (k)k^\alpha p_k(k)`$. Since we know that $`p_k(k)k^\gamma `$, we expect to find a power-law behavior $`\mu (k)k^{\alpha \gamma }`$ for the frequency. In Fig. 7 we report the obtained results for the integrated frequency $`\mu _{\mathrm{cum}}(k)=_k^{\mathrm{}}\mu (k^{})𝑑k^{}`$, which shows a behavior compatible with an algebraic dependence $`\mu (k)k^{1.2}`$. By using the independently obtained value $`\gamma =2.2`$ we find a preferential attachment exponent $`\alpha 1.0`$, in good agreement with the result obtained with a different analysis in Ref. Jeong et al. (2001). We performed a similar analysis also for links emanated by existing nodes, recovering the same form of preferential attachment (see Fig. 7). The present analysis confirms the validity of the preferential attachment hypothesis, but leaves open the question of the interplay with several other factors, such as the nodes’ hierarchy, space locality, and resource constraints.

## VII Modeling the Internet

In the previous Section we have presented a thorough analysis of the AS maps topology. Apart from providing useful empirical data to understand the behavior of the Internet, our analysis is of great relevance in order to test the validity of models of the Internet topology. The Internet topology has a great influence on the information traffic carried on top of it, including routing algorithms Doar and Leslie (1993); Floyd and Paxson (2001), searching algorithms Adamic et al. (2001); Puniyani et al. (2001), virus spreading Pastor-Satorras and Vespignani (2001), and resilience to node failure Albert et al. (2000); Callaway et al. (2000); Cohen et al. (2001). Thus, designing network models which accurately reproduce the Internet topology is of capital importance to carry out simulations on top of these networks.

Early works considered the Erdös-Rényi Erdös and Rényi (1960) model or hierarchical networks as models of Internet Zegura et al. (1997). However, they yield connectivity distributions with a fast (exponential) decay for large connectivities, in disagreement with the power-law decay observed in real data. Only recently the Internet modeling benefited of the major advance provided in the field of growing networks by the introduction of the Barabási-Albert (BA) model Barabási and Albert (1999); Barabási et al. (1999); Dorogovtsev et al. (2000a), which is related to 1955 Simon’s model Simon (1955); Bornholdt and Ebel (2001); Dorogovtsev et al. (2000b). The main ingredients of this model are the growing nature of the network and a preferential attachment rule, in which the probability of establishing new links toward a given node grows linearly with its connectivity. The BA model is constructed using the following algorithm Barabási and Albert (1999): We start from a small number $`m_0`$ of disconnected nodes; every time step a new node is added, with $`m`$ links that are connected to an old node $`i`$ with probability

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mathrm{BA}}(k_i)=\frac{k_i}{_jk_j},$$
(13)
where $`k_i`$ is the connectivity of the $`i`$-th node. After iterating this procedure $`N`$ times, we obtain a network with a connectivity distribution $`p_k(k)k^3`$ and average connectivity $`k=2m`$. In this model, heavily connected nodes will increase their connectivity at a larger rate than less connected nodes, a phenomenon that is known as the “rich-get-richer” effect Barabási and Albert (1999). It is worth remarking, however, that more general studies Krapivsky et al. (2000); Krapivsky and Redner (2001); Dorogovtsev and Mendes (2001a) have revealed that nonlinear attachment rates of the form $`\mathrm{\Pi }(k)k^\alpha `$ with $`\alpha 1`$ have as an outcome connectivity distributions that depart form the power-law behavior. The BA model has been successively modified with the introduction of several ingredients in order to account for connectivity distribution with $`2<\gamma <3`$ Albert and Barabási (2000); Krapivsky et al. (2000); Krapivsky and Redner (2001), local geographical factors Medina et al. (2000), wiring among existing nodes Dorogovtsev and Mendes (2000), and age effects Dorogovtsev and Mendes (2001b).

In the previous Section we have analyzed different measures that characterize the structure of AS maps. Since several models are able to reproduce the right power law behavior for the connectivity distribution, the analysis obtained in the previous sections can provide the effective tools to scrutinize the different models at a deeper level. In particular, we perform a data comparison for three different models that generate networks with power-law connectivity distributions. First we have considered a random graph constructed with a power-law connectivity distribution, using the Molloy and Reed (MR) algorithm Molloy and Reed (1995, 1998). Secondly, we have studied two variations of the BA model, that yield connectivity exponents compatible with the one measured in Internet: the generalized Barabási-Albert (GBA) model Albert and Barabási (2000), which includes the possibility of connection rewiring, and the fitness model Bianconi and Barabási (2001), that implements a weighting of the nodes in the preferential attachment probability.

The models are defined as follows:

MR model: In the construction of this model Molloy and Reed (1995, 1998); Newman et al. (2001); Dorogovtsev and Mendes (2001a) we start assigning to each node $`i`$ in a set of $`N`$ nodes a random connectivity $`k_i`$ drawn from the probability distribution $`p_k(k)k^\gamma `$, with $`mk_i<N`$, and imposing the constraint that the sum $`_ik_i`$ must be even. The graph is completed by randomly connecting the nodes with $`_ik_i/2`$ links, respecting the assigned connectivities. The results presented here are obtained using $`m=1`$ and a connectivity exponent $`\gamma =2.2`$, equal to that found in the AS maps. Clearly this construction algorithm does not take into account any correlations or dynamical feature of the Internet and it can be considered as a first order approximations that focuses only in the connectivity properties.

GBA model: It is defined by starting with $`m_0`$ nodes connected in a ring Albert and Barabási (2000): At each time step one of the following operations is performed:

* With probability $`q`$ we rewire $`m`$ links. For each of them, we randomly select a node $`i`$ and a link $`l_{ij}`$ connected to it. This link is removed and replaced by a new link $`l_{i^{}j}`$ connecting the node $`j`$ to a new node $`i^{}`$ selected with probability $`\mathrm{\Pi }(k_i^{})`$ where

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mathrm{GBA}}(k_i)=\frac{k_i+1}{_j(k_j+1)}.$$
(14)
* With probability $`p`$ we add $`m`$ new links. For each of them, one end of the link is selected at random, while the other is selected with probability as in Eq. (14).
* With probability $`1qp`$ we add a new node with $`m`$ links that are connected to nodes already present with probability as in Eq. (14).

The preferential attachment probability Eq. (14) leads to a power-law distributed connectivity, whose exponent depends on the parameters $`q`$ and $`p`$. In the particular case $`p=0`$, the connectivity exponent is given by Albert and Barabási (2000)

$$\gamma =1+\frac{(1q)(2m+1)}{m}.$$
(15)
Hence, changing the value of $`m`$ and $`q`$ we can obtain the desired connectivity exponent $`\gamma `$. In the present simulations we use the values $`m=2`$ and $`q=13/25`$, that yield the exponent $`\gamma =2.2`$. The GBA model embeds both the rich-get-richer paradigm and the growing nature of the Internet; however, it does not take into account any possible difference or hierarchies in newly appearing nodes.

Fitness model: This network model introduces an external competence among nodes to gain links, that is controlled by a random (fixed) fitness parameter $`\eta _i`$ that is assigned to each node $`i`$ from a probability distribution $`\rho (\eta )`$. In this case, we also start with $`m_0`$ nodes connected in a ring and at each time step we add a new node $`i^{}`$ with $`m`$ links that are connected to nodes already present on the network with probability

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mathrm{fitness}}(k_i)=\frac{\eta _ik_i}{_j\eta _jk_j}.$$
(16)
The newly added node is assigned a fitness $`\eta _i^{}`$. The results presented here are obtained using $`m=2`$ and a probability $`\rho (\eta )`$ uniformly distributed in the interval $`[0,1]`$, which yields a connectivity distribution $`p_k(k)k^\gamma /\mathrm{ln}k`$ with $`\gamma 2.26`$ Bianconi and Barabási (2001). The fitness model adds to the growing dynamics with preferential attachment a stochastic parameter, the fitness, that embeds all the properties, other than the connectivity, that may influence the probability of gaining new links.

We have performed simulations of these three models using the parameters mentioned above and using sizes of $`N4000`$ nodes, in analogy with the size of the AS map analyzed. In each case we perform averages over $`1000`$ different realizations of the networks. It is worth remarking that while the fitness model generates a connected network, both the GBA and the MR model yield disconnected networks. This is due to the rewiring process in the GBA model, while the disconnect nature of the graph in the MR model is an inherent consequence of the connectivity exponent being larger that $`2`$ Newman et al. (2001). In these two cases we therefore work with graphs whose giant component (that is, the largest cluster of connected nodes in the network Bollobás (1985)) has a size of the order $`N`$. It is important to remind the reader that we are working with networks of a relatively small size, chosen so as to fit the size of the Internet maps analyzed in the previous Sections. In this perspective, all the numerical analysis that we shall perform in the following serve only to check the validity of the models as representations of the Internet as we know it, and do not refer to the intrinsic properties of the models in the thermodynamic limit $`N\mathrm{}`$.

As a first check of the connectivity properties of the models, in Fig 8 we have plotted the integrated connectivity distributions. For the MR model we recover the expected exponent $`\gamma _{\mathrm{MR}}2.20`$, since it was imposed in the very definition of the model. For the GBA model we obtain numerically $`\gamma _{\mathrm{GBA}}2.19`$ for the giant component, in excellent agreement with the value predicted by Eq. (15) for the asymptotic network. For the fitness model, on the other hand, a numerical regression of the integrated connectivity distribution yields an effective exponent $`\gamma _{\mathrm{fitness}}2.4`$. This value is larger than the theoretical prediction $`2.26`$ obtained for the model Bianconi and Barabási (2001). The discrepancy is mainly due to the logarithmic corrections present in the connectivity distribution of this model. These corrections are more evident in the relatively small-sized networks used in this work and become progressively smaller for larger network sizes.

In Table 4 we report the average values of the connectivity, clustering coefficient, chemical distance, and betweenness for the three models, compared with the respective values computed for Internet during 1998. From the examination of this Table, one could surprisingly conclude that the MR model, which neglects by constructions any correlation among nodes, yields the average values in better agreement with the Internet data. As we can observe, the fitness model provides a too small value for the average clustering coefficient, while the GBA model clearly fails for the average chemical distance and the betweenness. A more crucial test about the models is however provided by the analysis of the full distribution of the various quantities, that should reproduce the scale-free features of the real Internet.

The betweenness distribution $`p_b(b)`$ of the three models give qualitatively similar results. The integrated betweenness distribution $`P_b(b)`$ obtained is plotted in Fig. 9(a). Both the MR and the fitness models follow a power-law decay $`P_b(b)b^\delta `$ with an exponent $`\delta 2`$, in agreement with the value obtained from the AS maps. The GBA model shows an appreciable bending which, nevertheless, is compatible with the experimental Internet behavior. These results are in agreement with the numerical prediction in Ref. Goh et al. (2001) and support the conjecture that the exponent $`\delta 2.2`$ is a universal quantity in all scale-free networks with $`2<\gamma <3`$. In order to further inspect the betweenness properties, we plot in Fig. 9(b) the average betweenness $`b_k`$ as a function of the connectivity. In this case, the MR and GBA models yield an exponent $`\beta 1`$, compatible with the AS maps, while the fitness model exhibits a somewhat larger exponent, close to $`1.4`$. Also in this case, we have that the finite size logarithmic corrections present in the fitness model could play a determinant role in this discrepancy.

While properties related to the betweenness do not appear to pinpoint a major difference among the models, the most striking test is provided by analyzing the correlation properties of the models. In Figs. 10 and 11, we report the average clustering coefficient as a function of the connectivity, $`c_k`$, and the average connectivity of the neighbors, $`k_{nn}`$, respectively. The data from Internet maps show a nontrivial $`k`$ structure that, as discussed in previous Sections, is due to scale-free correlation properties among nodes. These properties depend on their turn upon the underlying hierarchy of the Internet structure. The only model that renders results in qualitative agreement with the Internet maps is the fitness model. On the contrary, the MR and GBA models completely fail, producing quantities which are almost independent on $`k`$. The reason of this striking difference can be traced back to the lack of correlations among nodes, which in the MR model is imposed by construction (the model is a random network with fixed connectivity distribution), and in the GBA model it is due to the destruction of correlations by the random rewiring mechanism implemented. The general analytic study of connectivity correlations in growing networks models can be found in Ref. Krapivsky and Redner (2001), and it is worth noticing that a $`k`$-structure in correlation functions, as probed by the quantity $`k_{nn}`$, does not arise in all growing network models. In this perspective we can use correlation properties as one of the discriminating feature among various models that show the same scale-free connectivity exponent.

The fitness model is able to reproduce the non trivial correlation properties because of the fitness parameter of each node that mimics the different hierarchical, economical, and geographical constraints of the Internet growth. Since the model is embedding many features in one single parameter, we have to consider it just as a very first step towards a more realistic modeling of the Internet. In this perspective, models in which the attachment rate depends on both the connectivity and the real space distance between two nodes has been studied in Medina et al. (2000); Yook et al. (2001). These models seem to give a better description of the Internet topology. In particular, the model of Ref. Yook et al. (2001), includes geographical constraints, obtaining that, on average, the probability to connect to a given node scales linearly with its connectivity and it is inversely proportional to the distance to that node. A comparison with real data is, in this case, more difficult because Internet maps generally lack geographical and economical information.

## VIII Summary and conclusions

In summary, we have shown that the Internet maps exhibit a stationary scale-free topology, characterized by non-trivial connectivity correlations. An investigation of the Internet dynamics confirms the presence of a preferential attachment behaving linearly with the nodes’ connectivity and identifies two different dynamical regimes during the nodes’ evolution. We have compared several models of scale-free networks to the experimental data obtained from the AS maps. While all the models seem to capture the scale-free connectivity distribution, correlation and clustering properties are captured only in models that take into account several other ingredients, such as the nodes’ hierarchy, resource constraints and geographical location. Other ingredients that should be included in the Internet modeling concern the possibility of including the wiring among existing nodes and age effects that our analysis show to be an appreciable feature of the Internet evolution. The results presented in this work show that the understanding and modeling of Internet is an interesting and stimulating problem that need the cooperative efforts of data analysis and theoretical modeling.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work has been partially supported by the European Network Contract No. ERBFMRXCT980183. R.P.-S. acknowledges financial support from the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Spain) and from the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), where part of this work was done.


text:
# References

Long-range Effects on the Pyroelectric Coefficient and Dielectric Susceptibility of a Ferroelectric Bilayer
Dong-Lai Yao,b) Yin-Zhong Wu,b),c) Wen Dong,b) and Zhen-Ya Lia),b)

a) CCAST(World Laboratory), P.O.Box 8730,Beijing 100080, People’s Republic of China
b) Department of Physics, Suzhou University, Suzhou 215006, China
c) Department of Physics, Changshu College, Changshu 215500, China

## Abstract

Long-range effects on the pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility of a ferroelectric bilayer with a ferroelectric interfacial coupling are investigated by use of the transverse Ising model within the framework of mean-field theory. The effects of the interfacial coupling and the transverse field on the pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility of the bilayer are investigated by taking into account the long-range interaction. It is found that the pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility increase with the decrease of the magnitude of the long-range interaction and the interfacial coupling when the temperature is lower than the phase transition temperature. We also find that the strong long-range interaction, the large transverse field and weak interfacial coupling can lead to the disappearance of some of the peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility of the ferroelectric bilayer. The phase transition temperature increases with the increase of the strength of the long-range interaction, which is similar to the results obtained in ferroelectric multi-layers or superlattice.

Keywords: Pyroelectric coefficient, dielectric susceptibility, ferroelectric bilayer.
PACS: 77.20, 77.80B, 77.70

$``$ Mailing Address in China
Electronic mail: dlyao$`\mathrm{@}`$pub.sz.jsinfo.net or zyli$`\mathrm{@}`$suda.edu.cn

I. INTRODUCTION

Ferroelectric, pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties of ferroelectric thin film have been extensively studied for their potential applications experimentally and theoretically\[1-3\]. Many experiments showed that the interfacial coupling may have nontrivial effects on the properties of ferroelectric thin films, such as \[4-5\], $`Pb`$ was used as an interfacial layer to improve the ferroelectric property of the lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thin film. The properties of the ferroelectric superlattice depend sensitively on the interfacial coupling and the thicknesses of the components. Ma et al. considered a superlattice consisting of two kinds of ferroelectric materials within the framework of Landau phenomenological theory. They assumed that the interfacial coupling between two ferroelectric materials was ferroelectric or antiferroelectric, and investigated the effects of the interfacial coupling on the polarization and the phase transition temperature of the ferroelectric superlattice. Sepliarsky et al. described a atom-scale simulation about the ferroelectric film and showed that the long-range effect in the ferroelectric film is important.

Recently, the study of the pyroelectric effects of ferroelectric materials was active in both experiments\[10-13\] and theory\[14-17\]. Xin et al. studied the pyroelectric coefficient of ferroelectric superlattice with ferroelectric interfacial coupling by use of transverse Ising Model. The long-range interaction in the ferroelectric film is thought to be unneglectable. As is known, the bilayer structure is one of the basic models in the ferroelectric film. While the pyroelectric properties and the dielectric susceptibility of a ferroelectric bilayer with long-range coupling interaction have not been investigated so far. In this paper, the long-range interaction is taken into account in studying the pyroelectric coefficient and the dielectric susceptibility of the bilayer. The effects of the long-range interaction, the interfacial coupling, the transverse field and the temperature on the pyroelectric coefficient and dielectric susceptibility of a bilayer are investigated in detail. We find the geometric size effect on the pyroelectric coefficient and dielectric susceptibility under the strong long-range interaction coupling. The size-dependence of the phase transition temperature of the bilayer is also examined.

II. MODEL AND FORMULATION

We consider a bilayer structure composed of two different ferroelectric slabs(A and B) with different number of layers, each layer is defined on the x-y plane and pseudo spins site on a square lattice(see Fig. 1). The system is described by the Ising Hamiltonian in the presence of a transverse field:

$$H=\underset{<ij>}{}J_{ij}S_i^zS_j^z\underset{i}{}\mathrm{\Omega }_iS_i^x2\mu E\underset{i}{}S_i^z,$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_i`$ is the transverse field at site $`i`$. $`S_i^z`$ and $`S_i^x`$ are components of spin-1/2 operator at site $`i`$, $`\mu `$ is the dipole moment on site $`i`$, and $`E`$ is the applied electric field. The long-range interaction parameter $`J_{ij}`$ and the transverse field $`\mathrm{\Omega }_i`$ are described as

$$J_{ij}=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma },\hfill & \mathrm{for}i,jslabA,\hfill \\ \frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma },\hfill & \mathrm{for}islabA,jslabB,\hfill \\ \frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma },\hfill & \mathrm{for}i,jslabB,\hfill \end{array}$$

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_i=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{\Omega }_a,\hfill & \mathrm{for}islabA,\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Omega }_b,\hfill & \mathrm{for}islabB,\hfill \end{array}$$

where $`J_a`$, $`J_b`$ and $`J_{ab}`$ are the nearest neighbor coupling constants in slab $`A`$, slab $`B`$ and between slab $`A`$ and $`B`$ respectively. $`r_{ij}`$ is the distance between site $`i`$ and $`j`$, $`\sigma `$ is introduced to describe the magnitude of the long-range interaction. $`\mathrm{\Omega }_a`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b`$ are the transverse fields in Slab A and Slab B, respectively. If $`\sigma \mathrm{}`$, all the interactions in the bilayer will recover the short-range interactions. The magnitude of the long-range interaction will increase as $`\sigma `$ decreases. $`\sigma =0`$ is corresponding to the infinite-range coupling. But considering the Coulomb-interaction nature of ferroelectric materials and that the phase transition temperature will diverge at $`\sigma =0`$. Thus, in our work, we take $`\sigma =3.0,6.0`$, and $`\mathrm{}`$ to study the long-range interaction effect. It must be emphasized that the interactions of the pseudo spins in slab $`A`$, slab $`B`$ and the interfacial coupling considered here are all long-range. Considering the environment of the sites at the same layer is identical, we assume that the average value of the pseudo spins in the same layer have the same value. We use an improved mean field theory, which take the correlation of the pseudo spins within the range of 8-th neighbor pseudo spins into consideration. Within such approximation, the average pseudo spin along $`z`$ direction in the $`ith`$ layer can be expressed as following:\[20-21\]

$$R_i=<S_i>=\frac{<H_i^z>}{2|H_i|}\mathrm{tanh}\frac{|H_i|}{2k_BT},$$
(2)
where

$$<H_i^z>=\underset{j}{}J_{ij}R_j+2\mu E,$$
(3)
$$|H_i|=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_i^2+(<H_i^z>)^2},$$
(4)
where $`R_i`$ stand for the average polarization of $`ith`$ layer, which is equivalent to the average value of pseudo spins, and $`j`$ runs over all the sites within the two slabs. In order to make the computation practicable, the long-range interactions are cut off at the eighth-neighbor in our calculations, we will discuss the practicability of the cut-off approximation in Sec. III. When $`i`$ runs over all the layers in the structure, the above Eq. (4) forms a set of simultaneous nonlinear equations from which $`R_i`$ can be calculated numerically.

For instance, we take $`L_a=3,L_b=3`$. And the long-range interaction is cut off at the eighth-neighbor, which indicates that we take $`r_{ij}`$ as $`1`$, $`\sqrt{2}`$, $`\sqrt{3}`$, 2, $`\sqrt{5}`$, $`\sqrt{6}`$, $`2\sqrt{2}`$, and $`3`$. In such approximation, if $`|r_ir_j|3`$, the simultaneous nonlinear equations will be:

$$H_1^z=\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i1}{j1}}{}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_1+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i1}{j2}}{}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_2+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i1}{j3}}{}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_3+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i1}{j4}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_4+2\mu E,$$

$$H_2^z=\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i2}{j1}}{}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_1+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i2}{j2}}{}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_2+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i2}{j3}}{}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_3+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i2}{j4}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_4+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i2}{j5}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_5+2\mu E,$$

$$H_3^z=\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i3}{j1}}{}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_1+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i3}{j2}}{}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_2+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i3}{j3}}{}\frac{J_a}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_3+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i3}{j4}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_4+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i3}{j5}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_5+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i3}{j6}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_6+2\mu E,$$

$$H_4^z=\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i4}{j1}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_1+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i4}{j2}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_2+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i4}{j3}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_3+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i4}{j4}}{}\frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_4+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i4}{j5}}{}\frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_5+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i4}{j6}}{}\frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_6+2\mu E,$$

$$H_5^z=\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i5}{j2}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_2+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i5}{j3}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_3+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i5}{j4}}{}\frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_4+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i5}{j5}}{}\frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_5+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i5}{j6}}{}\frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_6+2\mu E,$$

$$H_6^z=\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i6}{j3}}{}\frac{J_{ab}}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_3+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i6}{j4}}{}\frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_4+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i6}{j5}}{}\frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_5+\underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{i6}{j6}}{}\frac{J_b}{r_{ij}^\sigma }R_6+2\mu E.$$

From the above equations, we can see that the mean field (or local field) of pseudo-spin $`S_1^z`$ is related to the mean value of $`R_1`$, $`R_2`$, $`R_3`$ and $`R_4`$ (according to our cut-off approximation). Therefore, the correlation between the pseudo spins has been partially considered in our calculation.

The polarization of the $`ith`$ layer is

$$P_i=2n\mu R_i,$$
(5)
where $`n`$ is the number of pseudo spins in a unit volume. The average polarization of the bilayer is obtained:

$$P_{av}=\frac{1}{N}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}P_i,$$
(6)
where $`N`$ is the total layers of the two slabs.

The pyroelectric coefficient of the bilayer structure is defined as:

$$p(T)=\frac{P_{av}(T)}{T}=\frac{1}{N}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{P_i(T)}{T}=\frac{1}{N}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}2n\mu \frac{R_i(T)}{T}.$$
(7)
The dielectric susceptibility of the bilayer structure is defined as:

$$\chi (T)=\frac{P_{av}(E,T)}{E}|_{E=0}=\frac{1}{N}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}2n\mu \frac{R_i(E,T)}{E}|_{E=0}.$$
(8)
The deviations $`\frac{R_i}{T}`$ and $`\frac{R_i}{E}|_{E=0}`$ can be obtained by numerical differential calculation, then $`p(T)`$ and $`\chi (T)`$ are obtained numerically. By changing the values of $`J_{ab}`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`\sigma `$, the effects of the interfacial coupling and the transverse field on the pyroelectric coefficient and dielectric susceptibility of the bilayer structure are investigated under the long-range interactions.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

In order to make our computational simulation close to a real case, we hope we can include all the neighbors to our calculations. In Fig. 2, we plot the polarization of the ferroelectric bilayer as a function of the temperature at different cut-off approximation. The parameters, selected in Fig. 2, are $`L_a=L_b=3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_a/J_b=\mathrm{\Omega }_b/J_b=1.0`$, $`\sigma =3.0`$, $`J_a/J_b=0.5`$, $`J_{ab}/J_b=2.0`$. $`J_b`$ is taken as the unit energy and $`J_a`$ is fixed as $`0.5J_b`$ in the whole calculation. From Fig. 2, we find that all the curves of different cut-off approximations trend to a limit. Therefore, we believe that the eighth-neighbor cut-off approximation will make our calculation reliable and practicable.

The effects of the strength of the interfacial coupling on the pyroelectric coefficient and dielectric susceptibility of the bilayer$`(L_a=L_b=8)`$ are given in Fig. 3(a) and Fig. 3(b), respectively. The transverse field and the parameter of the long-range interaction are fixed as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_a/J_b=\mathrm{\Omega }_b/J_b=1.0`$ and $`\sigma =3.0`$ in Fig. 3, respectively. It is shown that the phase transition temperature of the bilayer increases with the increase of the magnitude of the long-range interfacial coupling. From Fig. 3(a), we can see that there exist two peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient with the increase of the temperature for weak interfacial coupling. The first is a round peak, while the second is a sharp peak. This is different from the pyroelectric coefficient of the ferroelectric superlattice, where two peaks are found only for large-period superlattice, in which the long-range effect is not investigated. This show that long-range interaction should be considered in study dielectric properties of ferroelectric materials. For strong interfacial coupling, three peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient are found, which correspond to the phase transition of slab A, slab B and the interface respectively. For weak interfacial coupling, the peak of the pyroelectric coefficient of the interface is merged into the peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient of slab A and slab B. In Fig. 3(b), there also exist two and three peaks of the susceptibility for weak and strong interfacial interaction, respectively. We believe that the reason is the same as the case of the pyroelectric coefficient.

The sharp peak mostly occurs at a higher temperature (the last peak from the low temperature to high temperature). This phenomenon is reasonable because the peak indicates the transition point of the whole thin film. The broad and round peak occurs at a low temperature (not the last peak). When one layer transfers to be disordered, the other layer, which is still in the ordered state, will affect it due to long-range interaction effect.

The effects of the transverse field on the pyroelectric coefficient and the susceptibility of the bilayer are shown in Fig. 4. The parameters in Fig. 4 are selected as: $`L_a=L_b=8`$, $`J_{ab}/J_b=4.0`$, $`\sigma =3.0`$. From Fig. 4, we can conclude that the phase transition temperature decreases with the increase of the transverse field, which is similar to the case of ferroelectric interfacial coupling in superlattice. The peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient and the susceptibility at low temperature will disappear at a large transverse field. Slab $`A`$ will be disordered and slab $`B`$ remains ferroelectric at zero temperature as the increase of the transverse field. Therefore, the system will behavior as a single ferroelectric slab when the transverse field is large enough, and the peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient and the susceptibility at low temperature, which corresponding to the phase transition of slab $`A`$, will disappear naturally. These results show that the quantum effect cannot be neglected when the long-range interaction is taken into account.

We present the effects of the long-range interaction on the pyroelectric coefficient and the susceptibility of the bilayer for $`L_a=L_b=8`$ in Fig. 5(a) and Fig. 5(b), respectively. The interfacial coupling and the transverse field are chosen as $`J_{ab}/J_b=4.0`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_a/J_b=\mathrm{\Omega }_b/J_b=1.0`$. Three peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient and the susceptibility appear, which correspond to the phase transition of slab $`A`$, slab $`B`$ and the interface respectively are found. From Fig. 5, we find that the position of the last peak for smaller $`\sigma `$ is on the right side of the position of that for larger $`\sigma `$, which indicates that the phase transition temperature of the bilayer increase with the increase of the long-range interaction. The pyroelectric coefficient and the susceptibility decrease with the increase of the magnitude of the long-range interaction before the phase transition. For thin ferroelectric bilayer($`L_a=L_b=3`$) in Fig. 6, the long-range interaction will lead to the disappearance of some peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility, and there is only one sharp pyroelectric and susceptibility peak for strong long-range interactions($`\sigma =3.0`$). The results above show that, when the film coupled with the larger long-range interaction (smaller $`\sigma `$), the size-effect become apparent under certain conditions ($`J_{ab}=4.0,\mathrm{\Omega }=1.0`$). When the film become thinner and thinner, the pyroelectric coefficient and dielectric susceptibility peaks tends to be smoothen down. Until the film thickness decreases to a certain values, the two peaks disappear. We believe that the long-range interaction couple makes Slab A, Slab B and the interface of the thinner film combined into a whole body, which will contribute to a single effect. But when the film is considered with the weak long-range interaction(larger $`\sigma `$, or $`\sigma \mathrm{}`$), the size-effect is not so obvious. This may be the reason why, in some certain experiments, the two or three peaks do not appear.

The phase transition temperatures as a function of the thickness $`m`$ ($`L_a=L_b=m`$) of the bilayer are shown in Fig. 7 for different values of $`\sigma `$. With the increase of the thickness $`m`$, the phase transition temperature will first increase, then keep invariable. At the same thickness of the bilayer, the long-range interaction will heighten the phase transition temperature, which is similar to the results of ferroelectric film.

In summary, we investigate the effects of the interfacial coupling and the transverse field on the pyroelectric and dielectric properties of the ferroelectric bilayer structure with the long-range interaction. The calculated results show that the interfacial coupling plays an important role on a ferroelectric bilayer structure. We obtain that: (1) When the long-range interaction is taken into consideration, with the increase of the magnitude of the interfacial coupling and the decrease of the transverse field, the phase transition temperature increases. (2) There exist three peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility for strong interfacial interaction, weak long-range interactions and low transverse field. With the increase of temperature for weak interfacial coupling one of the three peaks of the pyroelectric coefficient and the susceptibility will be merged into the other two peaks. (3) Under strong long-range interaction and a given transverse field and interfacial coupling, we find an obvious size effect on the pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility. The pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility peaks are more smooth and lower than those of the thicker film. (4) The phase transition temperature will increase with the thickness of the bilayer firstly, then keep almost invariable with the increase of the thickness, and the long-range interaction will cause the increase of the phase transition temperature.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under the Grant No.10174049 and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Education Committee of China.

CAPTION OF FIGURES

Fig. 1:
The schematic representation of a ferroelectric bilayer composed of two different ferroelectric slabs with a ferroelectric interfacial coupling.
Fig. 2:
The polarization of the bilayer as a function of temperature for different cut-off approximations.
Fig. 3
The pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility of the bilayer as a function of temperature for different strength of the interfacial couplings.
Fig. 4
The pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility of the bilayer as a function of temperature for different transverse fields.
Fig. 5
The pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility of the bilayer ($`L_a=L_b=8`$) as a function of temperature for different values of the parameter of the long-range interactions.
Fig. 6
The pyroelectric coefficient and susceptibility of the thin bilayer ($`L_a=L_b=3`$) as a function of temperature for different values of the parameter of the long-range interactions.
Fig. 7
The plots of the phase transition temperature versus the thickness $`m`$ of the $`A_mB_m`$ bilayer structure for selected values of the parameter of the long-range interaction.