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# Fabrication of quantum point contacts by engraving GaAs/AlGaAs-heterostructures with a diamond tip

## Abstract

We use the all-diamond tip of an atomic force microscope for the direct engraving of high-quality quantum point contacts in GaAs/AlGaAs-heterostructures. The processing time is shortened by two orders of magnitude compared to standard silicon tips. Together with a reduction of the line width to below 90 nm, the depletion length of insulating lines is reduced by a factor of two with the diamond probes. The such fabricated defect-free ballistic constrictions show well-resolved conductance plateaus and the 0.7 anomaly in electronic transport measurements.

Over the last years the atomic force microscope (AFM) has been used as a flexible nanolithographic tool for the direct patterning of surfaces afm\_new . It offers not only a convenient and simple way to fabricate sub-micron devices but also permits in situ control of relevant sample parameters during the lithography process schumach99 . A successful and straightforward method is the mechanical manipulation of semiconductors surfaces by means of an AFM-tip. The feasibility of this technique has been demonstrated for various materials like GaSb magno97 , InAs cortesrosa98  and GaAs schumach99 ; hyon00 .

Here we present the application of the engraving technique to fabricate quantum point contact devices in GaAs/AlGaAs-heterostructures. We show that new all-diamond tips are ideally suitable for the manufacturing of defect-free ballistic channels in two-dimensional electron gases. We consider the importance of the AFM-tip material by comparing the device properties of samples patterned by a silicon tip and by a diamond tip. Because of its highest possible Mohs hardness of 10 diamond represents the ideal tip material for the engraving. For the patterning we use standard silicon tips tips  and all-diamond AFM-tips with force constants of more than 40 N/m. The latter were grown by hot-filament chemical vapor deposition of polycrystalline diamond onto a pre-patterned silicon substrate. Details on the fabrication technique are given in oesterschulze .

The samples presented in this experiment are based on a modulation doped GaAs/AlGaAs-heterostructure containing a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) 57 nm below the sample surface with a sheet density of 4.07$`\times 10^{15}`$ m-2 and a mobility of 107 m2/Vs, the layer sequence is shown in Fig. 1(a). We fabricated Hall bar geometries with standard photolithography, wet-chemical etching and alloyed Au/Ge-contacts. Afterwards the samples were bonded and mounted into the AFM for the controlled engraving process. For the scribing the AFM-tip is repeatedly scanned over the Hall bar with a scanning speed of 0.1 mm/s and a contact force of several tens $`\mu `$N. Due to this high loading force each scan removes some material of the cap layer which leads to a stepwise depletion of the underlying 2DEG. During the whole lithography procedure the sample resistance is monitored to control the fabrication progress. The total depopulation of the 2DEG is marked by an abrupt raise of the sample resistance to more than 3 M$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. For more details on our patterning procedure see Ref. schumach99 .

In Fig. 1(b) we show an AFM-image of an engraved line that was scribed with a Si-tip by applying 50 $`\mu `$N as loading force and scanning the tip $`100`$ times over the surface. The resulting line has a width of 250 nm. The depth $`z9`$ nm suffices for this heterostructure for the total depletion of the 2DEG underneath the groove.

We achieve much narrower lines of 90 nm width and the same depth $`z9`$ nm by using an all-diamond probe as shown in Fig. 1(c). The displayed groove was manufactured by scanning the diamond tip once over the surface with a similar contact force as for Si. Compared to the former results in Fig. 1(b) the engraving process for e.g. a 100 $`\mu `$m line is substantially reduced by nearly two orders of magnitude from minutes to a few seconds. The reduction of the line width from 250 nm to 90 nm is mainly explained by the severe tip wear of the Si-tip during the writing process. After the engraving we measured the radius of the Si-tip and the diamond tip by scanning electron microscopy. Whereas the Si-tip radius increased by a factor of 10 to more than 100 nm, images of the diamond tips yielded a radius of below 50 nm before and after the fabrication. As expected the tip wear for diamond is almost negligible. In fact, we used this diamond tip for the fabrication of more than 40 devices without any observation of tip degradation. In contrast, a silicon tip can only be utilized once in most cases.

To compare the electronic properties of the lines fabricated by the different tips we defined two 1D channels by engraving constrictions into the GaAs/AlGaAs-heterostructure. The regions separated from the constriction by an insulating groove serve as in-plane gates. The upper insets of Fig. 2(a) and Fig. 2(b) show the constrictions engraved with the diamond tip and (b) the Si-tip. Both constrictions were electrically characterized in a pumped 3He-cryostat providing a base temperature of $`T=350`$ mK.

In Fig. 2 the differential conductance $`G=dI/dV_{SD}`$ of the diamond (a) and the silicon-patterned sample (b) is shown. For the measurement we used a standard lock-in technique at an excitation voltage of $`V_{SD,ac}=60`$ $`\mu `$V at 13 Hz. The two conductance curves presented in Fig. 2 were recorded by varying only a single in-plane gate whereas the second gate was kept at a fixed potential. A constant series resistance of the contacts and the 2DEG was subtracted. A schematic picture of the measurement setup is shown in the lower inset of Fig. 2(b).

The curve in Fig. 2(a) corresponding to the diamond-patterned sample shows flat quantized plateaus at multiple integers of 2$`e^2/h`$. This indicates the formation of a ballistic quantum point contact beenakker91  formed by an adiabatic potential without any impurities. The appearance of the conductance plateaus demonstrates that the grooves scribed with the diamond tip define a smooth potential without significant fluctuations. In contrast, the conductance of the silicon-patterned sample, shown in Fig. 2(b), exhibits only a few poorly resolved conductance plateaus.

For further characterization of the diamond-patterned sample we applied an additional dc source-drain bias voltage $`V_{SD}`$ that allows us to determine the 1D-subband spacing patel91 . The transconductance $`dG/dV_{IPG}`$ derived numerically from these measurements is plotted as a function of $`V_{IPG}`$ and $`V_{SD}`$ in the grey scale plot in Fig. 3(a). The corresponding conductance is given by the numbers inside the dark regions and the diamonds for $`G=4(2e^2/h)`$ and $`G=5(2e^2/h)`$ are marked with dashed lines. The crossing of adjacent zero-bias peaks $`N`$ and $`N+1`$ at finite bias $`eV_{SD}`$ reveals the energy spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{N,N+1}=eV_{SD}`$ ranging from $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{2,3}=2.5(\pm 0.1)\mathrm{meV}`$ for the second and third subbands to $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_{4,5}=2.3(\pm 0.1)\mathrm{meV}`$. Whereas the subband spacing in split gate devices at higher subband indices drastically decreases we observe only a slight reduction for our sample at $`N>1`$. This indicates that the shape of confinement inside the constriction remains nearly unaffected by the gate voltage and is only shifted up and down. Assuming a harmonic confinement potential and a gate voltage dependent potential barrier we deduce a value of $`w`$ 160 nm for the electronic width of the constriction at zero gate voltage with $``$five occupied subbands. The depletion length for the diamond tip then can be determined to $`w_{depl}`$ 180 nm which nearly is half the length of $`w_{depl}`$ 330 nm extracted for the silicon-patterned sample. The larger depletion length of the silicon tip as well as the creation of significant potential fluctuations are probably related to an enhanced formation of surface defects caused by the increased number of scans.

By inspection of the first conductance step in the right inset of Fig. 2(a) we observe an additional shoulder close to 0.7 (2$`e^2/h`$). In the grey scale plot in Fig. 3(a) this shoulder leads to additional plateaus for finite bias voltages at $`G<2e^2/h`$ marked with arrows. This can be seen more clearly in Fig. 3(b), where we plotted $`G=dI/dV_{SD}`$ as a function of dc source-drain voltage taken at fixed gate voltages. Whereas the majority of the plateaus appear at multiples of $`2e^2/h`$, below $`2e^2/h`$ extra plateaus appear at 0.3($`2e^2/h`$) and 0.7($`2e^2/h`$) marked by the horizontal dashed line. The so-called 0.7 anomaly thomas96  is an indicator for very clean one-dimensional channels and is considered to be caused by electron-electron interactions. The exact underlying mechanism of this structure is still not clarified but it is an intrinsic property of low-disorder quantum point contacts. Together with the well-resolved plateaus the appearance of the 0.7 anomaly shows that we scribed an adiabatic-like constriction free from significant potential fluctuations with the diamond tip.

In conclusion, we fabricated quantum point contact devices by engraving a constriction into a GaAs/AlGaAs-heterostructure with the tip of an atomic force microscope. To study the influence of the tip material we engraved devices using both a silicon tip and a diamond tip. It turned out that a diamond tip is almost perfect not only on the basis of a fast and simple processing but also in forming proper potential profiles to observe ballistic electron transport. The appearance of the 0.7 (2$`e^2/h`$) conductance anomaly confirms the high-quality of diamond-engraved devices. We deduced the depletion lengths induced by the different tips yielding $`w_{depl}`$ 180 nm for diamond-engraved samples which is roughly two times smaller than typical depletion lengths in silicon-patterned devices.
We thank P. Hullmann for his assistance with the scanning electron microscope. This work was supported by the BMBF.


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# MACHO Project Analysis of the Galactic Bulge Microlensing Events with Clump Giants as Sources

## 1. Introduction

The structure and composition of our Galaxy is one of the outstanding problems in contemporary astrophysics. Microlensing is a powerful tool to learn about massive objects in the Galaxy. The amount of matter between the source and observer is typically described in terms of the microlensing optical depth, which is defined as the probability that a source flux will be gravitationally magnified by more than a factor of 1.34. Early analyses (Udalski et al. 1994; Alcock et al. 1997) of the lines of sight toward the Galactic center produced two unexpected results: 1) a very high optical depth of $`34\times 10^6`$ inconsistent with Galactic models and observations, 2) an overabundance of long events. Here we analyze a new set of events to probe these controversial issues.

Blending is a major problem in any analysis of the microlensing data involving point spread function photometry. The bulge fields are crowded, so that the objects observed at a certain atmospheric seeing are blends of several stars, of which only one is typically lensed. This complicates a determination of an event’s parameters and the analysis of the detection efficiency of microlensing events. If the sources are bright one can avoid these problems. Red clump giants are among the brightest and most numerous stars in the bulge. Therefore, this analysis concentrates on the events where the lensed stars are clump giants.

## 2. The Data and Selection of “Giant” Events

The MACHO Project observations were performed with $`1.27`$-meter telescope at Mount Stromlo Observatory, Australia. In total, we collected 7 seasons (1993-1999) of data in the 94 Galactic bulge fields. The data that are currently available for the analysis consist of 5 seasons (1993-1997) in 77 fields, and contain the photometry of about 30 million stars, including 2.1 million clump giants.

The events with clump giants as sources have been selected from the sample of all events which contains about $`280`$ candidates. The determination of which of these sources are clump giants, is investigated through the analysis of the global properties of the color-magnitude diagram in the Galactic bulge.

Using the accurately measured extinction towards Baade’s Window allows one to locate bulge clump giants on the reddening-free color-magnitude diagram. This defines the parallelogram-shaped box in the upper left corner of the left panel of Figure 1. With the assumption that the clump populations in the whole bulge have the same properties as the ones in the Baade’s Window, the parallelogram described above can be shifted by the reddening vector to mark the expected locations of clump giants in different fields. The solid lines are the boundaries of the region where one could find the clump giants in fields with different extinctions. Using this approach, we identified 52 clump events.

## 3. Field 104

There is a high concentration of long-duration events in MACHO field 104 at $`(l,b)=(3.^{}1,3.^{}0)`$ as 5 out of 10 clump events longer than 50 days are in 104. The analysis of event durations uncorrected for efficiencies provides a lower limit on the difference between field 104 and all the other fields. We use the Wilcoxon’s test on two samples: events in field 104 and all the remaining ones, and find that the events in 104 differ (are longer) at the level of $`2.55\sigma `$. In addition, field 104 also has the highest optical depth (see Figure 1). Both of these features can be explained by the concentration of mass along this particular line of sight.

## 4. Optical Depth

First, we report the average optical depth of:

$$\tau =(2.0\pm 0.4)\times 10^6\mathrm{at}(l,b)=(3.^{}9,3.^{}8),$$

which is 1.5-2 times lower than the previously obtained values. We caution that this result is only preliminary, because possible systematic errors may be a fair fraction of the statistical error. We also note that about 40% of the optical depth is in the events longer than 50 days. This is at odds with standard models of the Galactic structure and kinematics.

Second, we plot in the right panel of Figure 1 the spatial distribution of the optical depth. The variation of the optical depth is dominated by the Poisson noise. The gradient of the optical depth is stronger in $`b`$ than in $`l`$ direction. Again, we note the anomalous character of field 104. It is marked with a black square and has an optical depth of $`(1.4\pm 0.5)\times 10^5`$.

## 5. Conclusions

We presented first results from the analysis of five years of microlensing data toward the Galactic bulge collected by the MACHO Collaboration.

It is possible to select an unbiased sample of clump events based only on an event’s position on the color-magnitude diagram. Ten out of 52 clump events have durations $`>50`$ days, which implies that $`40`$% of the optical depth is in the long events. This is surprising, because long events are the most likely a result of the disk-disk lensing (Kiraga & Paczyński 1994), while clump giants trace the bar rather than the inner disk (Stanek et al. 1994). Field 104 centered on $`(l,b)=(3.^{}1,3.^{}0)`$ is anomalous: it has longer events and substantially higher optical depth. Both effects can be explained simultaneously by a concentration of mass along this line of sight. The optical depth averaged over the clump giants in 77 fields is $`\tau =(2.0\pm 0.4)\times 10^6`$ at $`(3.^{}9,3.^{}8)`$. When anomalous field 104 is removed, the optical depth drops to $`\tau =(1.4\pm 0.3)\times 10^6`$, which is fully consistent with infrared-based models of the Galactic bar.

## References

Alcock, C., et al. 1997, ApJ, 479, 119

Kiraga, M., & Paczyński, B. 1994, ApJ, 430, L101

Stanek, K.Z., et al. 1994, ApJ, 429, L73

Udalski, A., et al. 1994, Acta Astron., 44, 165


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# 3-D General Relativistic MHD Simulations of Generating Jets

## 1. Introduction

Relativistic jets have been observed in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and microquasars in our Galaxy, and it is believed that they originate from the regions near accreting black holes. To investigate the dynamics of accretion disks and the associated jet formation, we use our newly developed full 3-D GRMHD code.

Recently, Koide, Shibata, & Kudoh (1999) have investigated the dynamics of an accretion disk initially threaded by a uniform poloidal magnetic field in a non-rotating corona (either in a state of steady fall or in hydrostatic equilibrium) around a non-rotating black hole. The numerical results show that the disk loses angular momentum by magnetic braking, then falls into the black hole. The infalling motion of the disk, which is faster than in the non-relativistic case because of the general-relativistic effect below $`3r_\mathrm{S}`$ ($`r_\mathrm{S}`$ is the Schwarzschild radius), is strongly decelerated at the shock formed by the centrifugal force around $`r=2r_\mathrm{S}`$ by the rotation of the disk. Plasmas near the shock are accelerated by the $`𝐉\times 𝐁`$ force, which forms bipolar relativistic jets. Inside this magnetically driven jet, the gradient of gas pressure also generates a jet over the shock region (gas-pressure-driven jet). This two-layered jet structure is formed both in a hydrostatic corona and in a steady-state falling corona. Koide et al. (2000) have also developed a new GRMHD code in Kerr geometry and have found that, with a rapidly rotating ($`a=0.95`$) black-hole magnetosphere, the maximum velocity of the jet is 0.9 c and its terminal velocity 0.85 c. All of the previous 2-D GRMHD simulations described here were made assuming axisymmetry with respect to the $`z`$-axis and mirror symmetry with respect to the plane $`z=0`$; the axisymmetric assumption suppressed the azimuthal instabilities.

## 2. 3-D GRMHD Simulations: Equations and Numerical Techniques

Our basic equations are those of Maxwell for the fields and a set of general-relativistic equations representing the plasma, namely the equations of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy for a single-component conducting fluid (Weinberg 1972; Thorne et al. 1986). In making the simulations, we use these equations with the 3+1 formalism (for details, see Koide, Shibata, & Kudoh 1999).

## 3.  Preliminary 3-D GRMHD simulations with a Schwarzschild black hole

In order to investigate how accretion disks near black holes evolve under the influence of accretion instabilities such as the magnetorotational instability, the use of a fully 3-D GRMHD is essential.

### 3.1. Initial and boundary conditions

In the assumed initial state, the simulation region is divided into two parts: a background corona around a black hole, and an accretion disk (Fig. 1a and 1b). The coronal plasma is set in a state of transonic free-fall flow, as in the case of the transonic flows with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=5/3`$ and $`H=1.3`$; here the sonic point is located at $`r=1.6r_\mathrm{S}`$. The Keplerian disk in the corona is set in the following way. The disk region is located at $`r>r_\mathrm{D}3r_\mathrm{S},|\mathrm{cos}\theta |<\delta =1/8`$. Here the density is 100 times that of the background corona (Fig. 1a), while the orbital velocity is relativistic and purely azimuthal: $`v_\varphi =v_\mathrm{K}c/[2(r/r_\mathrm{S}1)]^{1/2}`$. (Note that this equation reduces to the Newtonian Keplerian velocity $`v_\varphi =\sqrt[]{GM/r}`$ in the non-relativistic limit $`r_\mathrm{S}/r1`$). The pressure of both the corona and the disk are assumed equal to that of the transonic solution. The initial conditions for the entire plasma around the black hole are:

$$\rho =\rho _{\mathrm{ffc}}+\rho _{\mathrm{dis}}$$
(1)
$$\rho _{\mathrm{dis}}=\{\begin{array}{cc}100\rho _{\mathrm{ffc}}& \mathtt{}(r>r_\mathrm{D}\mathtt{}\mathrm{and}\mathtt{}|\mathrm{cot}\theta |<\delta )\\ 0& \mathtt{}(rr_\mathrm{D}\mathtt{}\mathrm{or}\mathtt{}|\mathrm{cot}\theta |\delta )\end{array}$$
(2)
$$(v_r,v_\theta ,v_\varphi )=\{\begin{array}{cc}(0,0,v_\mathrm{K})& \mathtt{}(r>r_\mathrm{D}\mathtt{}\mathrm{and}\mathtt{}|\mathrm{cot}\theta |<\delta )\\ (v_{\mathrm{ffc}},0,0)& \mathtt{}(rr_\mathrm{D}\mathtt{}\mathrm{or}\mathtt{}|\mathrm{cot}\theta |\delta )\end{array}$$
(3)
where we set $`\delta =0.125`$; the smoothing length is $`0.3r_\mathrm{S}`$.

In addition, there is a magnetic field crossing the accretion disk perpendicularly. We set it to the Wald solution (Wald 1974), which represents the uniform magnetic field around a Kerr black hole: $`B_r=B_0\mathrm{cos}\theta `$, $`B_\theta =\alpha B_0\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ (where $`\alpha `$ is the lapse function, $`\alpha =(1r_\mathrm{S}/r)^{1/2}`$). At the inner edge of the accretion disk, the proper Alfvén velocity is $`v_\mathrm{A}=0.015c`$ in a typical case with $`B_0=0.3\sqrt[]{\rho _0c^2}`$, where the Alfvén velocity in the fiducial observer

$$v_\mathrm{A}B/\sqrt[]{\rho +[\mathrm{\Gamma }p/(\mathrm{\Gamma }1)+B^2]/c^2}.$$
(4)
The plasma beta of the corona at $`r=3r_\mathrm{S}`$ is $`\beta p/B^2=1.40`$. The simulation is performed in the region $`1.1r_\mathrm{S}r20r_\mathrm{S}`$, $`0\theta \pi `$, $`0\varphi 2\pi `$ with $`100\times 120\times 60`$ meshes. The effective linear mesh widths at $`r=1.1r_\mathrm{S}`$ and at $`r=20r_\mathrm{S}`$ are $`5.38\times 10^3r_\mathrm{S}`$ and $`0.97r_\mathrm{S}`$, respectively, while the angular spacings along the polar and azimuthal directions are $`5.2\times 10^2`$ rad. A radiative boundary condition is imposed at $`r=1.1r_\mathrm{S}`$ and at $`r=20r_\mathrm{S}`$:

$$u_0^{n+1}=u_0^n+u_1^{n+1}u_1^n,$$
(5)
where the superscripts $`n+1`$ and $`n`$ denote the time steps and the subscripts 0 and 1 refer to the boundary and to its neighbor meshes, respectively. The computations were made on an ORIGIN 2000 computer with 0.898 GB internal memory, and they used about 47 hours of CPU time for 10000 time steps with $`100\times 120\times 60`$ meshes.

### 3.2. Simulation results

Figure 1 shows the evolution of 3-D simulation performed in the region $`1.1r_\mathrm{S}r20r_\mathrm{S}`$, $`0\theta \pi `$, and $`0\varphi 2\pi `$ with $`100\times 120\times 60`$ meshes. The parameters used in this simulation are the same as those of the axisymmetric simulations shown in Fig. 6 of Koide, Shibata, & Kudoh (1999). In this figure, the colored shading shows the proper mass density ((a) and (c)) and the pressure ((b) and (d)) on logarithmic scales; the vector plots show the magnetic field ((a) and (c)) and flow velocity ((b) and (d)).

The black circle represents the black hole. Figures 1a and 1b present the initial conditions, which are the same as in the 2-D simulations (Koide, Shibata, & Kudoh 1999). At $`t=39.2\tau _\mathrm{S}`$ comparing with Fig. 6c ($`t=40.0\tau _\mathrm{S}`$) in Koide et al. (1999) the jet is less generated. At $`t=60.0\tau _\mathrm{S}`$ the jet is generated as 2-D simulation at the earlier time ($`t=40.0\tau _\mathrm{S}`$). At $`t=73.9\tau _\mathrm{S}`$, the jet is clearly created around $`r=4.5r_\mathrm{S}`$, which is shown by the enhanced density (Fig. 1c) and pressure (Fig. 1d). As in the 2-D simulations the jet is generated in a hollowed cylindrical form. The magnetic field is twisted by the accretion disk and pinched, which increases the magnetic field pressure and generates the jet near the black hole. The delay of jet formation seems to be due to reduction of shock formation at $`r=2r_\mathrm{S}`$ caused by the additional freedom in the azimuthal direction. Further investigation will be reported elsewhere.

## 4. Discussion

This simulation result is initial and we will perform more simulations and investigate effects of the third dimension. Further results will be reported elsewhere. K.N. is partially supported by NSF ATM 9730230, ATM-9870072, ATM-0100997, and INT-9981508. The simulations have been performed on ORIGIN 2000 at NCSA which is supported by NSF.

## References

Koide, S., Shibata, K., & Kudoh, T. 1999, ApJ, 522, 727

Koide, S., Meier, D. L., Shibata, K., & Kudoh, T. 2000, ApJ, 536, 668

Thorne, K. S., Price, R. H., & Macdonald, D. A. 1986, Black Holes: The Membrane Paradigm (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press)

Wald, R. M. 1974, Phys.Rev.D, 10, 1680

Weinberg, S. 1972, Gravitation and Cosmology (New York: Wiley)


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# Acceleration-Induced Nonlocality: Uniqueness of the Kernel

## 1 Introduction

The special theory of relativity deals with physics in Minkowski spacetime . The test observers in this theory are in general noninertial; for the results of measurements of a noninertial observer, the theory asserts that such an observer is locally inertial (“Hypothesis of Locality”). In this way, Lorentz invariance may be applied in a pointwise manner to make physical predictions regarding what accelerated observers measure. Thus Lorentz invariance and the hypothesis of locality together constitute the pillars of the special theory of relativity.

The inhomogeneous Lorentz transformations (i.e. elements of the Poincaré group) connect the physical measurements of ideal inertial observers. These have a special significance: The fundamental laws of microphysics involve quantities that are ultimately measured by such ideal inertial observers. However, all actual observers are accelerated. It is therefore necessary to specify how the measurements of an accelerated observer can be connected with the basic laws of physics; that is, a connection is needed between the accelerated and inertial observers. The hypothesis of locality provides such a connection as it postulates that an accelerated observer is at each instant equivalent—in terms of measurements of physical quantities—to an otherwise identical hypothetical inertial observer that has the same state (i.e. position and velocity) as the accelerated observer. The approximate nature of this assumption, which is natural from the standpoint of Newtonian mechanics, was discussed by Lorentz in the specific context of his electron theory . The hypothesis of locality extends to all measuring devices the assumption that the rods and clocks of the standard theory of relativity are locally inertial \[1, p. 60\].

If the duration of the basic phenomenon measured by the noninertial observer is such that its velocity vector and spatial reference frame do not change appreciably over this time interval, then the observer may be regarded as inertial and the hypothesis of locality is valid; that is, the acceleration of the observer is locally immaterial. To quantify this criterion, we note that there are certain invariant acceleration time scales $`/c`$, given typically by $`c/g`$ and $`1/\mathrm{\Omega }`$, associated with a noninertial observer. These are related to the magnitudes of the observer’s translational acceleration $`𝐠`$ and the rotational frequency $`𝛀`$ of its spatial frame, respectively . If $`𝝀\mathbf{/}𝒄`$ is the intrinsic time scale of the phenomenon under observation, then the expected deviation from the hypothesis of locality is $`\mathbf{}𝝀\mathbf{/}𝓛`$. Such a deviation turns out to be too small to be detectable in most physics experiments. To illustrate this point, let us note that experiments are typically performed in a laboratory fixed on the rotating Earth, where $`𝒄\mathbf{/}𝒈_{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}`$ year and $`\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{/}𝛀_{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟒}`$ hours, while for a laser beam $`𝝀\mathbf{/}𝒄\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}^{\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏𝟓}}`$ second. In this way, one can account for the great success of the standard theory of relativity. As a matter of principle, however, it would be interesting to construct a viable theory of accelerated observers in Minkowski spacetime that goes beyond the hypothesis of locality. Such a nonlocal theory of accelerated systems is described in section 2. For the sake of concreteness, electromagnetic radiation fields are considered throughout this paper; however, the final results in their general form would be valid for any field.

The nonlocal theory of section 2 involves a kernel that needs to be determined on the basis of physical principles discussed in section 3. In this way, a class of bounded continuous kernels is identified. In section 4, the resulting nonlocal theory is confronted with observational data regarding the measurement of electromagnetic radiation fields by a uniformly rotating observer. Thereby a unique kernel is tentatively identified. The final section contains a discussion of our results.

## 2 Nonlocality of accelerated observers

We consider a global inertial frame in Minkowski spacetime with coordinates $`𝒙^𝜶\mathbf{=}\mathbf{(}𝒄𝒕\mathbf{,}𝐱\mathbf{)}`$. This is the only coordinate system that is needed here; in particular, we avoid the use of “accelerated coordinate systems” due to their fundamental limitations associated with the measurement of distance in such systems .

The accelerated observer follows a worldline with tangent vector $`𝝀_{\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}}^𝝁\mathbf{=}𝒅𝒙^𝝁\mathbf{/}𝒅𝝉`$, where $`𝝉`$ is the proper time along the path. The observer refers its measurements to an orthonormal tetrad frame $`𝝀_{\mathbf{(}𝜶\mathbf{)}}^𝝁`$ defined along its worldline such that

$$\frac{𝒅𝝀_{\mathbf{(}𝜶\mathbf{)}}^𝝁}{𝒅𝝉}\mathbf{=}\mathit{\varphi }_𝜶^𝜷𝝀_{\mathbf{(}𝜷\mathbf{)}}^𝝁\mathbf{.}$$
(1)
Here the scalars $`\mathit{\varphi }_{𝜶𝜷}`$ form an antisymmetric acceleration tensor such that the “electric” and “magnetic” parts correspond to the acceleration $`𝐠`$ of the observer $`\mathbf{(}\mathit{\varphi }_{\mathrm{𝟎}𝒊}\mathbf{=}𝒈_𝒊\mathbf{/}𝒄\mathbf{)}`$ and the rotation frequency $`𝛀`$ of its spatial frame $`\mathbf{(}\mathit{\varphi }_{𝒊𝒋}\mathbf{=}\mathit{ϵ}_{𝒊𝒋𝒌}𝛀_𝒌\mathbf{)}`$, respectively. We note that along its worldline the accelerated observer passes through a continuous infinity of hypothetical instantaneously comoving inertial observers each with the instantaneous tetrad frame $`𝝀_{\mathbf{(}𝜶\mathbf{)}}^𝝁`$. To avoid unphysical situations involving the expenditure of an infinite amount of energy in order to keep the observer accelerated, we assume that the acceleration is turned on at $`𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and turned off at a later time $`𝝉_\mathrm{𝟏}`$.

Let $`𝒇_{𝝁𝝂}`$ be an electromagnetic radiation field in Minkowski spacetime; in fact, $`𝒇_{𝝁𝝂}`$ is the Faraday tensor as measured by the standard set of static inertial observers in the background global frame. Let $`𝑭_{𝜶𝜷}`$ be the corresponding radiation field as measured by the accelerated observer. The hypothesis of locality implies that the field as measured by the accelerated observer is given at each point along the worldline by the field as measured by the hypothetical momentarily comoving inertial observer. For such an observer the measured field is the projection of $`𝒇_{𝝁𝝂}`$ upon its tetrad frame by Lorentz invariance, i.e.

$$\widehat{𝒇}_{𝜶𝜷}\mathbf{=}𝒇_{𝝁𝝂}𝝀_{\mathbf{(}𝜶\mathbf{)}}^𝝁𝝀_{\mathbf{(}𝜷\mathbf{)}}^𝝂\mathbf{.}$$
(2)
The accelerated observer passes through an infinite sequence of such momentarily comoving inertial observers; therefore, the most general linear relationship between $`𝑭_{𝜶𝜷}`$ and $`\widehat{𝒇}_{𝜶𝜷}`$ consistent with causality is

$$𝑭_{𝜶𝜷}\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\widehat{𝒇}_{𝜶𝜷}\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}\mathbf{+}\mathbf{}_{𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}^𝝉𝑲_{𝜶𝜷}^{𝜸𝜹}\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\widehat{𝒇}_{𝜸𝜹}\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝒅𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{.}$$
(3)
It is important to recognize that this ansatz only involves spacetime scalars; moreover, the kernel $`𝑲`$ must vanish for an inertial observer. Therefore, the nonlocal ansatz (3) is physically reasonable if $`𝑲`$ is related to the acceleration of the observer.

Equation (3) has the form of a Volterra integral equation of the second kind . It follows from Volterra’s theorem that in the space of continuous functions the relationship between $`𝑭_{𝜶𝜷}`$ and $`𝒇_{𝝁𝝂}`$ is unique . This uniqueness result has been extended to the Hilbert space of square-integrable functions by Tricomi . In this sense, therefore, we assume boundedness as well as continuity throughout this paper. Further details regarding acceleration-induced nonlocality can be found in .

## 3 Determination of the kernel

The hypothesis of locality has a consequence that goes against the spirit of relativity theory: a pure radiation field can stand completely still with respect to a uniformly rotating observer. This is most easily seen for the case of an observer rotating uniformly with frequency $`𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}𝐧`$ about the direction of propagation—characterized by the unit vector $`𝐧`$—of a plane electromagnetic wave of frequency $`𝝎`$. The Fourier analysis of $`\widehat{𝒇}_{𝜶𝜷}`$ in this case reveals that $`\widehat{𝝎}\mathbf{=}𝜸\mathbf{(}𝝎\mathbf{}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$, where the upper (lower) sign refers to positive (negative) helicity incident radiation. This result differs from the transverse Doppler effect $`𝜸𝝎`$ that involves the time dilation factor $`𝜸\mathbf{=}𝒅𝒕\mathbf{/}𝒅𝝉`$; moreover, the subtraction and addition of frequencies has a simple intuitive interpretation. The electromagnetic radiation field rotates about the direction of propagation with frequency $`𝝎\mathbf{(}\mathbf{}𝝎\mathbf{)}`$ for a positive (negative) helicity wave; therefore, the rotating observer perceives radiation of definite helicity but with frequency $`𝝎\mathbf{}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{(}𝝎\mathbf{+}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$. The deviation of this result from the transverse Doppler effect provides an instance of the general phenomenon of spin-rotation coupling. Partial observational evidence for this general coupling is reviewed in . In the case of electromagnetic radiation with $`𝝎\mathbf{}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}`$, experimental results in favor of this coupling are available in the microwave and optical domains ; moreover, this effect has been observed for radio waves $`\mathbf{(}𝝂\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}\text{GHz}\mathbf{)}`$ as a phase wrap-up in the GPS system as described in . In all the experimentally viable cases at present $`𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{/}𝝎\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}`$; in this regime, the spin-rotation coupling has therefore a solid observational basis for electromagnetic radiation . On the other hand, $`𝝎^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}`$ for positive helicity radiation of frequency $`𝝎\mathbf{=}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}`$, i.e. the wave stands completely still with respect to the observer. More generally, for oblique incidence $`\widehat{𝝎}\mathbf{=}𝜸\mathbf{(}𝝎\mathbf{}𝑴𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$, where $`𝑴\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}\mathbf{\pm }\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{,}\mathbf{\pm }\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{,}\mathbf{}`$, is the multipole parameter such that $`\mathbf{}𝑴`$ is the component of the total angular momentum of the radiation field along the axis of rotation of the observer; as before, a multipole radiation field with $`𝑴\mathbf{=}𝝎\mathbf{/}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}`$ can stand completely still with respect to the rotating observer . In the case of inertial observers, this cannot occur since the speed of the observer is always less than the speed of light . Thus in the formula for the Doppler effect $`𝝎^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{=}𝜸𝝎\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{}𝐧\mathbf{}𝐯\mathbf{/}𝒄\mathbf{)}`$, $`𝝎^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}`$ implies that $`𝝎\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}`$. We demand that the same should happen for the accelerated observer in the nonlocal theory. That is, we postulate that a fundamental radiation field can never stand completely still with respect to any observer. Thus if $`𝑭_{𝜶𝜷}`$ turns out to be constant in equation (3), then $`𝒇_{𝝁𝝂}`$ should be constant as well. Expressing the Faraday tensor as a six-vector $`𝒇_{𝝁𝝂}\mathbf{}\mathbf{(}𝐄\mathbf{,}𝐁\mathbf{)}`$ and writing equation (2) in matrix notation as $`\widehat{𝒇}\mathbf{=}𝚲𝒇`$, we note that equation (3) can be written as

$$𝑭\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}𝚲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}𝒇\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}\mathbf{+}\mathbf{}_{𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}^𝝉𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝚲\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝒇\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝒅𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{,}$$
(4)
where $`𝒇\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}`$ is the restriction of the field measured by the standard static inertial observers to the worldline of the accelerated observer. Thus in equation (4) a constant $`𝑭`$ would imply a constant $`𝒇`$ only if

$$𝚲_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{=}𝚲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}\mathbf{+}\mathbf{}_{𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}^𝝉𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝚲\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝒅𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{,}$$
(5)
where $`𝚲_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{=}𝚲\mathbf{(}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$. Once the kernel is determined using equation (5), it follows from the Volterra-Tricomi uniqueness theorem that for any true radiation field $`𝒇_{𝝁𝝂}`$, the accelerated observer will never measure a constant field (cf.  and the references therein).

To determine the kernel $`𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$, equation (5) must be solved under the requirements that (i) $`𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$ exists due to the temporal variation of $`𝚲`$, so that $`𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}`$ if $`𝚲`$ is constant, since the kernel must vanish for an inertial observer and (ii) the nonlocal contribution to the field in equation (4) is always bounded. This latter requirement turns out to be crucial. To see this, let us consider two possible solutions of equation (5) assuming that $`𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$ is a function of only one variable: $`𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$ and $`𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝒌}\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$. In the first case, equation (5) is solved by simple differentiation and the result is

$$𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}\frac{𝒅𝚲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}}{𝒅𝝉}𝚲^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}\mathbf{.}$$
(6)
The second case involving a convolution kernel is more complicated; nevertheless, equation (5) is sufficient to determine $`\stackrel{\mathbf{~}}{𝒌}\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$ uniquely. Requirement (i) is satisfied in either case; moreover, they give the same kernel for uniform accelerated motion. However, for nonuniform acceleration the convolution kernel can lead to divergence  in contrast to equation (6). Thus the first case, where the kernel (6) is directly proportional to the acceleration of the observer gives an acceptable solution called the kinetic kernel .

Once an acceptable solution of equation (5) is available, such as the kinetic kernel $`𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}`$, then the general solution may be written as

$$𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{+}𝑳\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝚲^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{,}$$
(7)
where $`𝑳`$ is a $`\mathrm{𝟔}\mathbf{\times }\mathrm{𝟔}`$ matrix that vanishes for constant $`𝚲`$ and involves bounded continuous functions such that

$$\mathbf{}_{𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}^𝝉𝑳\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝒅𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{.}$$
(8)
It follows from an application of the general theory of Fourier series that over the interval $`\mathbf{[}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}𝝉\mathbf{]}`$, $`𝑳\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$ is a linear superposition of functions of the form

$$𝒂_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}𝒆^{\mathrm{𝟐}𝝅𝒊𝒌\frac{𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}{𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}}$$
(9)
for any integer $`𝒌\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟎}`$, where $`𝒂_𝒌`$ are bounded continuous matrix-valued functions. In this way, equation (8) is satisfied and all that remains is to ensure that the time dependence of $`𝒂_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ is solely due to the variation of $`𝚲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}`$.

The requirement that $`𝑳\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$ must vanish for a constant $`𝚲`$ is satisfied by expressing $`𝒂_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ as a double series

$$𝒂_𝒌\mathbf{=}\underset{𝒏\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟏}}{\overset{\mathbf{}}{\mathbf{}}}\underset{𝒎\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟏}}{\overset{\mathbf{}}{\mathbf{}}}𝑪_{𝒌𝒎}^𝒏\mathbf{\left(}\frac{𝒅^𝒎𝚲}{𝒅𝝉^𝒎}\mathbf{\right)}^𝒏\mathbf{+}𝑸_𝒌\mathbf{,}$$
(10)
where $`𝑪_{𝒌𝒎}^𝒏`$ are constants such that the double series is absolutely convergent. Here $`𝑸_𝒌\mathbf{=}𝑸_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝚲\mathbf{)}`$ is a $`\mathrm{𝟔}\mathbf{\times }\mathrm{𝟔}`$ matrix that is constant with respect to $`𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and such that $`𝑸_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝚲\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}`$ whenever $`𝚲`$ is constant. A class of such functions is given by

$$𝑸_𝒌\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}_{𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}^{\mathbf{}}𝚽_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝓠_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝚲\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{)}𝒅𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{,}$$
(11)
where $`𝚽_𝒌`$ and $`𝓠_𝒌`$ are bounded continuous functions and

$$\mathbf{}_{𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}^{\mathbf{}}𝚽_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝒅𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{.}$$
(12)
Let us note that $`𝑪_{𝒌𝒎}^𝒏`$ may also be proportional to constants of the form given by equation (11). Combining these results, we may therefore express $`𝑳\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$ as a uniformly convergent series

$$𝑳\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\text{Re}\underset{𝒌\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟎}}{\mathbf{}}𝒂_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}𝒆^{\mathrm{𝟐}𝝅𝒊𝒌\frac{𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}{𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}}\mathbf{,}$$
(13)
where $`𝒂_𝒌`$ is given by equations (10)–(12). Substituting equation (13) in equation (7), we find the general form of the kernel $`𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$ that satisfies our physical requirements.

We must next consider the physical consequences of the general kernel for the nonlocal theory. The field measured by the accelerated observer is obtained from the substitution of equation (7) in equation (4). We observe that in the calculation of $`𝑭\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}`$ beyond the kinetic kernel, all terms would involve expressions of the form

$$𝒇_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}_{𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}^𝝉𝒆^{\mathrm{𝟐}𝝅𝒊𝒌\frac{𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}{𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}}𝒇\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝒅𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{,}$$
(14)
for $`𝒌\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟎}`$. It follows that

$`𝑭\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}`$ $`\mathbf{=}\widehat{𝒇}\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}\mathbf{+}{\displaystyle \mathbf{}_{𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}}^𝝉}𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\widehat{𝒇}\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}𝒅𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{+}𝓕\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{,}`$ (15)
where
$`𝓕`$ $`\mathbf{=}\text{Re}{\displaystyle \underset{𝒌\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟎}}{\mathbf{}}}𝒂_𝒌𝒇_𝒌\mathbf{.}`$ (16)
Thus the measured field consists of a superposition of what would be expected on the basis of the kinetic kernel alone together with $`𝓕`$ that consists of the extra terms proportional to $`𝒇_𝒌`$. It would be interesting to examine the physical consequences of the presence of the extra terms in the field as measured by an accelerated observer. This is done in the next section for an observer rotating uniformly with $`𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{}𝝎`$, since excellent observational data are available in this case for the coupling of the angular momentum of the electromagnetic radiation field to the rotation of the observer .

## 4 Spin-rotation coupling

The observational results regarding spin-rotation coupling for electromagnetic radiation described in  may be used as evidence against the presence of $`𝓕`$ in equation (15). To this end, we consider a plane monochromatic wave of frequency $`𝝎`$ and definite helicity that is normally incident on an observer rotating uniformly with frequency $`𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{}𝝎`$ on a circle of radius $`𝒓`$ in the $`\mathbf{(}𝒙\mathbf{,}𝒚\mathbf{)}`$-plane. Experiments indicate that the measured frequency is $`\widehat{𝝎}\mathbf{=}𝜸\mathbf{(}𝝎\mathbf{}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$, where the upper (lower) sign refers to incident positive (negative) helicity radiation and $`𝜸`$ is the Lorentz factor corresponding to $`𝜷\mathbf{=}𝒗\mathbf{/}𝒄`$ with $`𝒗\mathbf{=}𝒓𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{}𝒄`$. We will compare and contrast this result with the predicted spectrum based on equations (15) and (16).

The uniformly rotating observer has been discussed in detail in . We assume that for $`𝝉\mathbf{<}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}`$ the observer moves along a straight line with uniform speed ($`𝜷\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}`$) such that $`𝒙\mathbf{=}𝒓`$ and $`𝒚\mathbf{=}𝜸𝒗\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ and at $`𝝉\mathbf{=}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}`$ begins uniform circular motion with $`𝒙\mathbf{=}𝒓\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝝋`$ and $`𝒚\mathbf{=}𝒓\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}𝝋`$, where $`𝝋\mathbf{=}𝜸𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$. The natural orthonormal tetrad frame of the uniformly rotating observer is given by

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill 𝝀_{\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}}^𝝁& \mathbf{=}𝜸\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{,}\mathbf{}𝜷\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}𝝋\mathbf{,}𝜷\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝝋\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{,}\hfill \\ \hfill 𝝀_{\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{)}}^𝝁& \mathbf{=}\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝝋\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}𝝋\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{,}\hfill \\ \hfill 𝝀_{\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{)}}^𝝁& \mathbf{=}𝜸\mathbf{(}𝜷\mathbf{,}\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}𝝋\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝝋\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{,}\hfill \\ \hfill 𝝀_{\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟑}\mathbf{)}}^𝝁& \mathbf{=}\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{.}\hfill \end{array}$$
(17)
The acceleration tensor $`\mathit{\varphi }_{𝜶𝜷}`$ is given in this case by a centripetal acceleration $`𝐠\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}𝜸^\mathrm{𝟐}𝒗𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ and a rotation frequency $`𝛀`$$`\mathbf{=}𝜸^\mathrm{𝟐}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{,}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{)}`$ with respect to the tetrad frame (17).

The incident field along the worldline of the observer may be expressed as

$$𝒇\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}\frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{\mathrm{𝟐}}𝒊𝝎𝑨\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{c}𝐞_\mathbf{\pm }\\ 𝐛_\mathbf{\pm }\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}𝒆^{\mathbf{}𝒊𝜸𝝎\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}}\mathbf{+}𝒄\mathbf{.}𝒄\mathbf{.}\mathbf{,}$$
(18)
where $`𝑨`$ is a constant complex amplitude, “c. c.” indicates the corresponding complex conjugate term, $`𝐞_\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{=}\mathbf{(}𝐞_\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{\pm }𝒊𝐞_\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{/}\sqrt{\mathrm{𝟐}}`$, $`𝐛_\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}𝒊𝐞_\mathbf{\pm }`$ and the upper (lower) sign indicates positive (negative) helicity radiation. Here $`𝐞_\mathrm{𝟏}`$ and $`𝐞_\mathrm{𝟐}`$ indicate unit vectors along the positive $`𝒙`$ and $`𝒚`$ axes, respectively. The field as measured by the hypothetical comoving inertial observers is given by $`\widehat{𝒇}\mathbf{=}𝚲𝒇`$, where

$$𝚲\mathbf{=}\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{cc}𝚲_\mathrm{𝟏}& 𝚲_\mathrm{𝟐}\\ \mathbf{}𝚲_\mathrm{𝟐}& 𝚲_\mathrm{𝟏}\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}$$
(19)
and

$$𝚲_\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{ccc}𝜸\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝝋& 𝜸\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}𝝋& \mathrm{𝟎}\\ \mathbf{}\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}𝝋& \mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝝋& \mathrm{𝟎}\\ \mathrm{𝟎}& \mathrm{𝟎}& 𝜸\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}\mathbf{,}𝚲_\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{=}𝜷𝜸\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{ccc}\mathrm{𝟎}& \mathrm{𝟎}& \mathrm{𝟏}\\ \mathrm{𝟎}& \mathrm{𝟎}& \mathrm{𝟎}\\ \mathbf{}\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝝋& \mathbf{}\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}𝝋& \mathrm{𝟎}\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}\mathbf{.}$$
(20)
The kinetic kernel, which can be worked out using equations (6), (19) and (20) turns out to be a constant matrix

$$𝒌\mathbf{=}\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{cc}𝒌_\mathrm{𝟏}& 𝒌_\mathrm{𝟐}\\ \mathbf{}𝒌_\mathrm{𝟐}& 𝒌_\mathrm{𝟏}\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}\mathbf{,}$$
(21)
where $`𝒌_\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{=}𝛀\mathbf{}𝐈\mathbf{=}𝜸^\mathrm{𝟐}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}𝑰_\mathrm{𝟑}`$ and $`𝒌_\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}𝐠\mathbf{}𝐈\mathbf{/}𝒄\mathbf{=}𝜸^\mathrm{𝟐}𝜷𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}𝑰_\mathrm{𝟏}`$. Here $`𝑰_𝒊\mathbf{,}\mathbf{(}𝑰_𝒊\mathbf{)}_{𝒋𝒌}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}\mathit{ϵ}_{𝒊𝒋𝒌}`$, is a $`\mathrm{𝟑}\mathbf{\times }\mathrm{𝟑}`$ matrix proportional to the operator of infinitesimal rotations about the $`𝒙^𝒊`$-axis. If in equation (16) $`𝒂_𝒌\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}`$ for all integers $`𝒌\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟎}`$, then $`𝓕\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and the observed field is

$$𝑭\mathbf{=}\frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{\mathrm{𝟐}}𝒊𝜸𝝎𝑨\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{c}\widehat{𝐞}_\mathbf{\pm }\\ \widehat{𝐛}_\mathbf{\pm }\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}\frac{𝝎𝒆^{\mathbf{}𝒊\widehat{𝝎}\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}}\mathbf{}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}}{𝝎\mathbf{}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}}\mathbf{+}𝒄\mathbf{.}𝒄\mathbf{.}\mathbf{,}$$
(22)
where $`\widehat{𝐛}_\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{=}\mathbf{}𝒊\widehat{𝐞}_\mathbf{\pm }`$ and

$$\widehat{𝐞}_\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{=}\frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{\sqrt{\mathrm{𝟐}}}\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{𝟏}\\ \mathbf{\pm }𝒊𝜸^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}\\ \mathbf{\pm }𝒊𝜷\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}\mathbf{.}$$
(23)
This field is only due to the kinetic kernel . For $`𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{/}𝝎\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}`$, $`𝑭`$ involves a small constant term with amplitude $`𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{/}𝝎`$ and a harmonic term of frequency $`\widehat{𝝎}`$, as expected. The predicted constant term is a direct result of nonlocality and has not yet been experimentally verified; however, it may be rather difficult to search for such a term of very small amplitude $`𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{/}𝝎`$ in the presence of noise.

To find the frequency spectrum of the extra field $`𝓕`$, let us note that the substitution of equation (18) in equation (14) results in an expression for $`𝒇_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ that exhibits transient as well as steady-state behaviors. The nature of the transients is illustrated in Figure 1. For observational purposes, we are only interested in the steady-state behavior of $`𝒇_𝒌`$. At late times $`𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟐}𝝅\mathbf{|}𝒌\mathbf{|}\mathbf{/}𝝎`$, $`𝒇_𝒌`$ approaches a steady state given by

$$𝒇_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{}\frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{\mathrm{𝟐}}𝜸^\mathbf{}\mathrm{𝟏}𝑨\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{c}𝐞_\mathbf{\pm }\\ 𝐛_\mathbf{\pm }\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏}\mathbf{}𝒆^{\mathbf{}𝒊𝜸𝝎\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{+}𝒄\mathbf{.}𝒄\mathbf{.}\mathbf{,}$$
(24)
which is independent of $`𝒌`$. Once the steady state is established, $`𝒇_𝒌`$ is real and can be expressed as a constant term together with a harmonic term of frequency $`𝜸𝝎`$. Let us next consider the frequency content of $`𝒂_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ given by equation (10). We note that

$$𝚲\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{c}𝐞_\mathbf{\pm }\\ 𝐛_\mathbf{\pm }\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}\mathbf{=}𝜸\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{c}\widehat{𝐞}_\mathbf{\pm }\\ \widehat{𝐛}_\mathbf{\pm }\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}𝒆^{\mathbf{\pm }𝒊𝝋}\mathbf{.}$$
(25)
We can determine the frequency content of $`𝒂_𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{}𝝉_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ by taking derivatives of equation (25) with respect to $`𝝉`$ and using the fact that for $`𝒎\mathbf{>}\mathrm{𝟏}`$

$$\frac{𝒅^𝒎𝚲}{𝒅𝝉^𝒎}\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{c}\widehat{𝐞}_\mathbf{\pm }\\ \widehat{𝐛}_\mathbf{\pm }\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}\mathbf{=}\mathbf{(}\mathbf{\pm }𝒊𝜸𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}^𝒎\mathbf{\left\{}\mathbf{\left[}\begin{array}{c}\widehat{𝐞}_\mathbf{\pm }\\ \widehat{𝐛}_\mathbf{\pm }\end{array}\mathbf{\right]}𝒆^{\mathbf{\pm }𝒊𝝋}\mathbf{+}𝑶\mathbf{(}𝜷^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{\right\}}\mathbf{,}$$
(26)
where $`𝑶\mathbf{(}𝜷^\mathrm{𝟐}\mathbf{)}`$ indicates terms proportional to either $`\mathrm{𝐜𝐨𝐬}𝝋`$ or $`\mathrm{𝐬𝐢𝐧}𝝋`$ with amplitudes that are smaller than the corresponding amplitude of the main term by a factor of $`\mathbf{}𝜷^\mathrm{𝟐}`$. Combining these results, we find that the Fourier content of $`𝓕`$ is given in this case as follows: the term proportional to $`𝑸_𝒌`$ consists of a constant plus a harmonic term of frequency $`𝜸𝝎`$, which disagrees with observation. The next term proportional to $`𝑪_{𝒌𝒎}^\mathrm{𝟏}`$ consists of harmonic terms with frequencies $`\widehat{𝝎}`$ and $`𝜸𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}`$; the latter term is contrary to observation. Moreover, the term proportional to $`𝑪_{𝒌𝒎}^𝒏`$ for $`𝒏\mathbf{>}\mathrm{𝟏}`$ would contain principal harmonics $`𝜸\mathbf{(}𝝎\mathbf{}𝒏𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ and $`𝒏𝜸𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}`$ that would be in contradiction with experimental results as well as terms whose amplitudes would be smaller by a factor of $`\mathbf{}𝜷^\mathrm{𝟐}`$. We can thus conclude that either $`𝓕\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}`$ or that its amplitude is so small as to have escaped detection thus far. We may therefore proceed with the tentative assumption that $`𝓕\mathbf{=}\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and the kinetic kernel (6) is unique, while keeping in mind the possibility that future experimental data may prompt us to take $`𝓕`$ into account as well. This eventuality appears highly unlikely, however, from a theoretical standpoint since $`\widehat{𝝎}\mathbf{=}𝜸\mathbf{(}𝝎\mathbf{}𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ for $`𝛀_\mathrm{𝟎}\mathbf{}𝝎`$ emerges from the simple kinematics of Maxwell’s theory .

## 5 Discussion

In this paper we have looked for bounded continuous kernels within the framework of the nonlocal theory of accelerated observers that would be consistent with Lorentz invariance and satisfy the requirement that a basic radiation field would never stand completely still with respect to an accelerated observer. Concentrating on electrodynamics and taking into account observational data regarding spin-rotation coupling, we find that the kinetic kernel $`𝑲\mathbf{(}𝝉\mathbf{,}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}\mathbf{=}𝒌\mathbf{(}𝝉^{\mathbf{}}\mathbf{)}`$ given by equation (6) is the only one consistent with the data thus far. We therefore adopt the kinetic kernel for the nonlocal theory in general, regardless of the nature of the field.

For the kinetic kernel, the nonlocal contribution to the field has the character of a weighted average such that the weight function is proportional to the acceleration of the noninertial observer. This result is consistent with the idea put forward by Bohr and Rosenfeld  that the measured field is an average over a spacetime region. For the case of an accelerated observer, the spacetime region reduces to the past worldline of the observer due to certain basic limitations on the measurement of distance discussed in . Furthermore, Bohr and Rosenfeld  considered only inertial observers for which the weight function would be unity due to the homogeneity and isotropy of inertial frames of reference. However, the field measurements of a noninertial observer would be weighted according to its acceleration along its past worldline.


text:
# Optical Conductivity of Ferromagnetic Semiconductors

\[

## Abstract

The dynamical mean field method is used to calculate the frequency and temperature dependent conductivity of dilute magnetic semiconductors. Characteristic qualitative features are found distinguishing weak, intermediate, and strong carrier-spin coupling and allowing quantitative determination of important parameters defining the underlying ferromagnetic mechanism.
PACS numbers: 75.50.Pp, 75.10.-b, 75.30.Hx, 75.20.Hr

\]

Observations of ferromagnetism in dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS)  with transition temperatures as high as 110K (GaMnAs at $`5\%`$ Mn ) or even above room temperature (GaMnN, GaMnP) have renewed interest in these remarkable systems , in part because of possible ‘spintronic’ applications . Several crucial scientific questions have emerged, most notably what parameters control the magnitude of the magnetic transition temperature and how these may be optimized. There is also an urgent need for experimental diagnostics, both for determining fundamental parameters such as the strength of the carrier-spin coupling, and for determining sample-specific parameters such as the carrier density and the degree of spin polarization of the mobile carriers. In this Letter we present theoretical calculations showing that measurements of the optical conductivity $`\sigma (\omega ,T)`$ can be of great help in answering these questions. Optical conductivity measurements have proven useful in understanding the physics of the colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) manganites  where carrier-spin coupling is also crucial .

We find that the DMS optical conductivity exhibits novel features not found in the CMR. To perform our calculations we use a recently developed non-perturbative method, the ‘dynamical mean field theory’ (DMFT)  to calculate $`\sigma (\omega ,T)`$ for the generally accepted model of dilute magnetic semiconductors. A non-perturbative method is needed because the crucial physics involves bound-state formation and other aspects of intermediate carrier-spin couplings not accessible to perturbative methods. The system sizes required for direct numerical simulations for this problem are impractically large, and obtaining accurate dynamical information from numeric is not easy. The DMFT method can handle dynamics easily. Our results display striking, sometimes, counterintuitive, dependence of conductivity on carrier-spin coupling, carrier density, and temperature revealing key features of the underlying physics. Experimental observation of our predictions should lead to crucial information about bound state formation and impurity band physics in this problem.

It is generally believed  that DMS are described by the generalized Kondo lattice model

$`H=H_{host}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i,\alpha ,\beta }{}}J\widehat{𝐒}_i\psi _\alpha ^{}(R_i)\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{\alpha \beta }\psi _\beta (R_i)`$ (1)
$`+`$ $`W\psi _\alpha ^{}(R_i)\psi _\alpha (R_i),`$ (2)
where $`H_{host}`$ describes carrier propagation in the host semiconductor and the second (magnetic) term describes coupling of the carriers to an array of (impurity, e.g. Mn) spins at positions $`R_i`$. The coupling has two sources: a spin-spin coupling and a potential scattering. Here we absorb the magnitude of the impurity spin into the coupling $`J`$ (which we take to be positive), and represent the spin direction by the unit vector $`\widehat{𝐒}`$. For simplicity we consider a host material with a single non-degenerate band; the extension to the multiband case relevant, for example, to the GaAs valance band is straightforward, involves no new features, and will be presented elsewhere. We therefore write

$$H_{host}=\underset{\alpha }{}d^3x\psi _\alpha ^+(x)\frac{^2}{2m}\psi _\alpha (x)+V_R(x)\psi _\alpha ^+(x)\psi _\alpha (x),$$
(3)
where $`V_R`$ is a random potential arising from non-magnetic defects in the material.

The crucial physical issues are revealed by the consideration of a ferromagnetic state in which all impurity spins $`S_i`$ are aligned, say, in the $`z`$ direction. Then the carriers with spin parallel to $`S_i`$ feel a potential $`J+W`$ on each magnetic impurity site and anti-parallel carriers feel a potential $`J+W`$. These potentials self-consistently rearrange the electronic structure. The spin-dependent part of this rearrangement provides the energy gain which stabilizes the ferromagnetic state. The key physics issue is, evidently, whether the potential $`WJ`$ is weak (so its effect on carriers near the lower band edge is simply a scattering phase shift) or strong (so only majority spin or perhaps both species of carriers are confined into spin-polarized impurity bands). Recent density functional supercell calculations  suggest that in GaMnAs $`J+W`$ is close to the critical value for bound state formation for the majority spin systems. Then as temperature is increased, the Mn spins disorder and it is natural to ask how this physics changes. We shall see that all of this behavior is clearly revealed in the optical conductivity, which can therefore be used experimentally to probe the qualitative nature of the magnetic coupling.

To compute the conductivity we write $`(ieA/c)`$ and apply the usual Kubo formula. To evaluate the properties of $`H`$ we employ the DMFT approximation, which amounts to assuming that the self energy is momentum independent: $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(p,\omega )\mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega )`$, so that the Green function $`G(p,\omega )`$ corresponding to $`H`$ is $`G(p,\omega )=[\omega p^2/2m\mathrm{\Sigma }(\omega )]^1`$. The self energy is given in terms of the solution of an impurity problem . The impurity problem requires a momentum cutoff, arising physically from the electron band-width. We impose the cutoff by assuming a semicircular density of states $`D(ϵ)=\sqrt{4t^2ϵ^2}/2\pi t`$ with $`t=(2\pi )^{2/3}/mb`$ and $`b^3`$ the volume per formula unit. The parameter $`t`$ is chosen to correctly reproduce the band edge density of states. Within this approximation the real part of the conductivity is given by

$`\sigma (\mathrm{\Omega },T)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{d^3p}{(2\pi )^3}\left(\frac{p\mathrm{cos}\theta }{m}\right)^2\frac{d\omega }{\pi }\frac{\left[f(\omega )f(\omega +\mathrm{\Omega })\right]}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}`$ (4)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{Im}G(p,\omega )\mathrm{Im}G(p,\omega +\mathrm{\Omega }),`$ (5)
Our approximation for the density of states implies $`d^3p/(2\pi )^3(p\mathrm{cos}\theta /m)^2𝑑\epsilon D(\epsilon )\mathrm{\Phi }(\epsilon )`$ with $`\mathrm{\Phi }(\epsilon )=(4t^2\epsilon ^2)/3`$ .

The main panels of Fig. 1 show the evolution of the conductivity with temperature for two couplings; intermediate-weak ($`J=1`$, Fig. 1(a)) and intermediate-strong ($`J=1.5`$, Fig. 1(b)); the insets show the majority-spin densities of states. Consider first the $`T=T_c`$ curves (solid lines), where $`T_c`$ is the ferromagnetic transition temperature . The $`J=1`$ curve has approximately the Drude form expected for carriers scattering off random impurities (a closer examination reveals minor differences due to density of states variations near the band edge). In the $`J=1.5`$ case the density of states plot shows that an impurity band is formed and the corresponding conductivity has two structures: a low-frequency quasi-Drude peak corresponding to motion within the impurity band and a higher frequency peak corresponding to excitations from the impurity band to the main band. We observe that the frequency of the upper peak does not directly give the separation between the impurity band Fermi level and the conduction band, because the vanishing of the velocity and density of states at the band edge means that the lowest unoccupied state is not optically active.

We now turn to the temperature dependence. For the $`J=1.5`$ curves we see that as $`T`$ is decreased, the dc conductivity changes only very slightly, whereas the width of the low frequency peak increases and the high frequency peak moves up in energy and decreases in oscillator strength. The increase in energy of the higher frequency peak may be understood from the density of states curves, which show a weak blue-shift of the conduction band edge and a broadening of the impurity band. The counter-intuitive broadening (as $`T`$ is decreased) of the lower frequency peak arises because, as the spins order, the binding of the carriers to the impurity spins

increases (as seen from the increase in separation between the chemical potential and the edge of the main band) corresponding to an increase in the basic scattering rate. The weak $`T`$-dependence of the dc conductivity occurs because the increase in scattering rate is compensated by another effect. Because the impurity band is spin-polarized carriers which are bound to impurity site must have spins parallel to impurity spin. Thus, as the spins order ferromagnetically, basic ability of carriers to move in the impurity band increases. This physics is familiar from the CMR materials  and corresponds to an increase in conduction band oscillator strength.

Consider next the $`J=1`$ curve, where two effects occur as $`T`$ decreases. First, the main quasi-Lorentzian peak decreases slightly in amplitude and increases slightly in half-width. The increase in width is due to increased carrier-spin coupling as mentioned above. Second, a new narrow peak appears. As can be seen from the inset in Fig. 1(a), at $`T=0`$ for this carrier concentration, the minority spin-band is slightly occupied and the sharply

peaked conductivity occurs because this small density of carriers is very weakly scattered.

To understand the small scattering rate it is helpful to consider the Born approximation, which would lead to Im$`[\mathrm{\Sigma }]`$ $`xN(E_F)J^2`$ with $`x`$ the magnetic impurity concentration, $`N(E_F)`$ the density of states, and $`J`$ the carrier-spin coupling. The combination of the small value of $`x`$ and the small density of states at the band edge leads to a small scattering rate (in the Born approximation). Now consider corrections to the Born approximation. For the majority spin band, increase of $`J`$ leads to the formation of a spin-polarized bound state, so the corrections to the Born approximation must be such as to strongly increase the effective scattering rate. On the other hand, for minority spin carriers the increase of $`J`$ leads to an antibound state at the top of the band, so that at the physically relevant lower band edge, the corrections must be such as to decrease the effective scattering rate. Quantitatively, these effects are quite large. Fig. 2, for example, shows the calculated imaginary part of the $`T=0`$ majority and minority spin self energy for $`J=1`$.

We now consider the density dependence of the conductivity. Fig. 3(a) shows the evolution of $`\sigma (\omega ,T=0)`$ with carrier density for $`J=1`$. At very low density ($`n=0.01`$) the minority spin band is unoccupied and the behavior associated with the majority spin band is observed. A sharp peak occurs when the minority band begins to be populated. Fig. 3(b) shows the evolution of $`\sigma (\omega ,T=0)`$ with $`n`$ for the ‘impurity-band’ case $`J=1.5`$. At very small $`n`$ the conductivity is dominated by the ‘impurity band’ contribution, with a relatively weak feature corresponding to transitions from the impurity band to the main band. As the carrier density is increased the band oscillator strength in transitions between the impurity and main band increases dramatically, both in absolute terms and relative to the intra-impurity band transitions. When the Fermi level crosses into the minority spin band (note that the minority spin impurity band is at the upper band edge; here we have only main-band states) an

additional sharp low frequency component is observed.

Fig. 4 shows the sensitivity of the predicted behavior to potential scattering. The main panel shows the evolution of the conductivity as the scalar part $`W`$ of the electron-impurity potential is varied. We study here a case in which at zero scalar potential the impurity band is well formed. As the potential is made more attractive, the impurity band features become more pronounced; as it is made more repulsive, the impurity band rapidly rejoins the main band and the extra feature in the conductivity is lost. The inset shows the dependence of the transition temperature on density at different potential strengths. We see that for attractive potential the dependence on potential strength is weak, but as the potential is made more repulsive the impurity band is destroyed and $`T_c`$ decreases.

It is instructive to compare the optical properties of DMS to those of another system with strong carrier-spin couplings, namely CMR manganites such as (La1-xCax)MnO3 . In CMR, instead of being dilute random impurities as in DMS, the Mn ions form an ordered lattice. They possess large local moment, to which

mobile carriers are very strongly coupled. Thus instead of a spin-polarized impurity band, there is a spin-polarized conduction band, sufficiently well separated from other bands in the solid that the contribution to the optical conductivity arising from it may be clearly identified and analyzed . The periodic arrangement of the Mn sites means that (in the absence of other physics) the scattering rate decreases as T is lowered unlike in the DMS system. The conductivity turns out to be most usefully characterized by its integrated area (spectral weight), and the change of this quantity was shown to be a good predictor of the magnetic transition temperature .

These CMR ideas have limited applicability to the DMS systems. For $`J<1`$ the physics is of extended states scattered by defects, and this is sufficiently different from the CMR situation that the spectral weight in DMS is not related in a useful manner to $`T_c`$ in this weak coupling situation. However, as $`J`$ is increased and the spin-polarized impurity band develops the physics becomes more analogous to that of CMR. For example, in Fig. 1(b) the two structures in the conductivity are relatively well separated, and the spectral weight in the lower feature increases as $`T`$ decreases below $`T_c`$. For $`J>2`$ (not shown) the low feature becomes completely separated from the upper one. We therefore define an effective ‘impurity band spectral weight’ for $`J>1`$ by integrating the conductivity from $`\omega =0`$ to the conductivity minimum. We find again that the changes in ’impurity band spectral weight’ are very weak in DMS systems relative to those observed in CMR materials, so that spectral weight ideas useful in CMR do not carry over to DMS. This is an important qualitative distinction between DMS and CMR materials.

To summarize, we have shown that the frequency, density, and temperature dependence of the conductivity contains important information about the physics of dilute magnetic semiconductors; in particular the formation of a spin-polarized impurity band leads to a peak centered at a non-zero frequency. We present several, at first sight, counterintuitive findings. We find an increase in scattering rate as $`T`$ is decreased, signalling enhanced carrier-spin coupling with increasing spin alignment. We also show that in certain doping and coupling regimes a very narrow conductivity peak could occur corresponding to a slightly occupied minority spin band. It occurs because the repulsive interaction between local moments and “wrong-spin” carriers suppresses the carrier amplitude at the impurity site, reducing the effective carrier-spin coupling and consequently narrowing the wrong-spin conductivity peak; in addition in three dimensions the vanishing of the density of states at the band edge further decreases the rate. This suggests that a small occupation of the minority band could be quite dangerous from the spintronic applications point of view, particularly in three dimensional devices.

Finally, we note that the most interesting phenomena involve intermediate couplings, intermediate temperatures and non-zero frequency response. This regime is very difficult to treat by standard analytical or numerical methods; it is therefore fortunate that the dynamical mean field method allows access to this regime.

We thank H. D. Drew and A. Chattopadhyay for helpful conversations and DARPA(E.H.H. and S.D.S.), US-ONR (E.H.H and S.D.S.), and the University of Maryland/Rutgers NSF-DMR-MRSEC (A.J.M.) for support.


text:
# Cosmological Magnetic Fields from Primordial Helical Seeds

## I Introduction

The origin of galactic and large scale extragalactic magnetic fields (for which there is no detection yet on scales larger than mega-parsecs) is one of the main unresolved problems of astrophysics and cosmology review . In most scenarios where magnetic fields are produced in the early Universe, these seed fields are concentrated on scales below the horizon scale where they dissipate quickly, and are too small on cosmological scales to have any observable effects. However, if pseudoscalar interactions induce a non-vanishing helicity of these seeds, such as in string cosmology string  or during the electroweak phase transition by projection of non-abelian Chern-Simons number onto the electromagnetic gauge group ew ; cornwall ; vachaspati , then part of the small scale power can cascade to large scales and produce observable effects cascade ; cornwall ; son ; fc . In this paper we develop a new numerical approach to treat such non-linear cascades up to zero redshift and apply it to helical seed fields produced in the early Universe.

## II MHD in the Early Universe

The principal equations for magnetic field $`𝐁`$ and velocity field $`𝐯`$ in the one-fluid approximation of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) are choudhuri

$`_t𝐁`$ $`=`$ $`\times (𝐯\times 𝐁\eta \times 𝐁)`$
$`_t𝐯+(𝐯)𝐯`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(\times 𝐁)\times 𝐁}{4\pi \rho }},`$ (1)
where $`\eta `$ is the resistivity and $`\rho `$ is the fluid density. The second equation describes backreaction of the magnetic field on the flow. To eliminate it, following Ref. subra ; cornwall , we write

$$𝐯\frac{𝐟}{\beta \rho }=\frac{\tau }{4\pi \rho }(\times 𝐁)\times 𝐁,$$
(2)
where $`\beta `$ is the drag coefficient and $`\tau 1/\beta `$ is the fluid response time to the Lorentz force $`𝐟=\left[(\times 𝐁)\times 𝐁\right]/(4\pi )`$. The latter can be viewed as the time the charged fluid can be accelerated until it interacts (scatters) with other particles in the background and therefore describes damping of the magnetic field modes.

Again following Ref. subra , we express the magnetic field in terms of correlation functions $`M_{ij}(r,t)=B_i(𝐱,t)B_j(𝐲,t)`$, where $`r=|𝐱𝐲|`$, assuming isotropy and homogeneity,

$$M_{ij}=M_N\left(\delta _{ij}\frac{r_ir_j}{r^2}\right)+M_L\frac{r_ir_j}{r^2}+Hϵ_{ijk}r_k$$
(3)
where $`M_L`$, $`M_N`$, and $`H`$ are longitudinal, transverse, and helical magnetic correlation functions, respectively. $`M_N=_r(r^2M_L)/(2r)`$ is not independent because of $`𝐁=0`$. We define the magnetic field and gauge invariant helicity power spectra per logarithmic wavenumber interval $`b^2(k)`$ and $`h(k)`$ by $`E_M𝐁^2(𝐫)/(8\pi )=_0^+\mathrm{}𝑑kb^2(k)/(8\pi k)`$ and $`H_M𝐁(𝐫)𝐀(𝐫)=_0^+\mathrm{}𝑑kh(k)/k`$, with $`𝐀`$ the vector potential, $`𝐁=\times 𝐀`$. One can show that $`M_L`$ and $`H`$ are related to these power spectra via

$`M_L(r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^+\mathrm{}}{\displaystyle \frac{dk}{k}}{\displaystyle \frac{j_1(kr)}{kr}}b^2(k)`$
$`H(r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3r}}{\displaystyle _0^+\mathrm{}}𝑑kj_1(kr)h(k),`$ (4)
where $`j_1(x)=\mathrm{sin}(x)/x^2\mathrm{cos}(x)/x`$ is the first order spherical Bessel function. In terms of the usual Fourier transforms $`𝐁(𝐤)=d^3𝐫/(2\pi )^{3/2}\mathrm{exp}(i𝐤𝐫)𝐁(𝐫)`$ etc., $`b^2(k)=4\pi k^3𝐁^2(k)`$ and $`h(k)=k^3𝑑\mathrm{\Omega }_𝐤𝐁(𝐤)𝐀(𝐤)`$. Eq. (4) also shows that $`M_L(0)=8\pi E_M/3`$, and $`H_M=3_0^+\mathrm{}𝑑rrH(r)`$, and $`|h(k)|b^2(k)/k`$ implies for all $`r`$

$$|H(r)||M_L(r)|/rH_{\mathrm{max}}(r).$$
(5)
Cosmological expansion can be taken into account by redefining $`M_LM_L/T^4`$ and $`HH/T^5`$ from now on, where $`T`$ is the cosmological temperature. Assuming for now the absence of any external source terms such as fluid motions except the one induced by the magnetic field, i.e. using Eq. (2), the MHD equations (1) reduce to

$`_tM_L`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{r^4}}_r\left(r^4\kappa _rM_L\right)4\alpha TH`$
$`_tH`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^4}}_r\left[r^4_r\left(2\kappa H+\alpha M_L/T\right)\right]`$ (6)
where

$`\kappa `$ $`=`$ $`\eta +{\displaystyle \frac{\tau T^4}{2\pi \rho }}M_L(0,t)`$
$`\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\tau T^5}{\pi \rho }}H(0,t),`$ (7)
and all quantities appearing here are in physical (not co-moving) coordinates. The diffusion term $`\kappa `$ consists of a microscopic ($`\eta `$) and a non-linear drift contribution, whereas the $`\alpha `$ effect is only due to non-linear drift here. The source terms will be discussed in the next section. If the spatial derivatives of $`M_L`$ and $`H`$ fall off faster than $`1/r`$ for $`r\mathrm{}`$, Eq. (6) implies $`_tH_M=9\left[2\kappa H(0)+\alpha M_L(0)\right]`$ which, together with Eq. (7), shows that helicity is conserved in the absence of resistivity.

Eqs. (6) describe small and large scale dynamos of helical magnetic fields including damping by Ohmic dissipation and ”Silk” damping (which is expressed by the redshift dependent relaxation time $`\tau `$) on a unified basis. In the early Universe the resistivity can be estimated by $`\eta 1/(40\pi T)`$ before photon decoupling, $`T0.25`$eV ae , and by the Spitzer resistivity $`\eta \pi m_e^{1/2}e^2/T_e^{3/2}`$ (where $`m_e`$, $`e`$, and $`T_e10^6`$K are electron mass, charge, and temperature, assuming full ionization) after recombination choudhuri  (the results are insensitive to the latter). Below $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation at $`T20`$keV, within the MHD one fluid approximation the fluid coupled to the magnetic field is well represented by the tightly coupled remaining free electrons and protons and $`\tau `$ is governed by Thomson scattering of photons off electrons. In this regime we use jko1

$`\tau `$ $`=`$ $`\tau _\gamma 4\times 10^{21}\left({\displaystyle \frac{0.25\mathrm{eV}}{T}}\right)^4X_e^1\mathrm{cm}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\rho }{T^4}}`$ $``$ $`0.4{\displaystyle \frac{4\pi ^2}{45}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{0.25\mathrm{eV}}{T}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2}{0.0125}}\right),`$ (8)
where the number of free electrons per nucleon $`X_e`$ is $`1`$ for $`T0.25`$eV and $`10^5`$ for $`T0.25`$eV, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_bh^2`$ is the baryon density in terms of the critical density times the Hubble constant in units of $`100\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}/\mathrm{Mpc}`$ today. For $`T20`$keV we can approximate the fluid to consist of the electromagnetically interacting particles and $`\tau `$ is governed by neutrino scattering with jko1

$$\tau =\tau _\nu 10^{11}\left(\frac{\mathrm{MeV}}{T}\right)^5\frac{8.75}{g_r2}\frac{g_r}{g_\nu }\mathrm{cm},$$
(9)
and $`\rho /T^4g_f\pi ^2/30`$, where $`g_r`$, $`g_f`$, and $`g_\nu =5.25`$ are the statistical weights of all relativistic particles, the particles in the fluid and of the neutrinos, respectively.

## III Helical Seeds

Here we consider helical fluid motion, as it can arise during cosmological phase transitions (see, for example, Ref. ew ; cornwall  for the electroweak phase transition). This case has already been treated in Ref. subra  which we adapt here to our situation. Since the backreaction of the magnetic field onto the fluid motion has already been taken into account by the approximation Eq. (2), the external fluid flow $`𝐯_e`$ is assumed to be uncorrelated with the field. It is furthermore assumed that the correlation time of the external velocity field is much smaller than the time scale of change of the magnetic correlation function, $`𝐯_{ei}(𝐱,t)𝐯_{ej}(𝐲,s)=T_{ij}(r)\delta (ts)`$, where, in analogy to Eq. (3), $`r=|𝐱𝐲|`$, and

$$T_{ij}=T_N\left(\delta _{ij}\frac{r_ir_j}{r^2}\right)+T_L\frac{r_ir_j}{r^2}+Cϵ_{ijk}r_k.$$
(10)
Assuming for simplicity an incompressible fluid, $`𝐯_e=0`$, the additional terms in Eqs. (6) and (7) are given by

$`_tM_L`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}\left(2_r^2T_L+{\displaystyle \frac{8}{r}}_rT_L\right)M_L`$
$`\kappa `$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}+T_L(0)T_L(r)`$ (11)
$`\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}+2C(0)2C(r),`$
such that $`\kappa `$ and $`\alpha `$ obtain a scale dependent turbulent diffusion and $`\alpha `$ effect contributions, respectively, from the fluid. Here $`T_L`$ and $`C`$ are given by $`T_L(r)=\tau _{\mathrm{corr}}𝐫𝐯_e(0)𝐫𝐯_e(𝐫)/r^2`$ and $`C(r)=\tau _{\mathrm{corr}}𝐫𝐯_e(0)\times 𝐯_e(𝐫)/(2r^2)`$. The correlation time $`\tau _{\mathrm{corr}}`$ is either the damping time scale due to interactions with the background or, if all components are tightly coupled and move as a whole, the age of the Universe $`t_u(T)`$ at the relevant epochs.

The spatial velocity correlations $`T_L`$ and $`C`$ can be expressed in terms of their power spectra $`v^2(k)`$ and $`c(k)`$, respectively, in complete analogy to Eq. (4). In general they will have the form

$`T_L(r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\tau _{\mathrm{corr}}v_e^2(T)f(r)`$
$`|C(r)|`$ $``$ $`|T_L(r)|/rC_{\mathrm{max}}(r),`$ (12)
where $`f(r)`$ is a dimensionless function with $`f(r)1`$ for $`r0`$ and, typically, a power law fall-off at large distances, and the total power $`v_e^2(T)`$ typically peaks at a certain temperature $`T_{\mathrm{ph}}`$, for example, at a primordial phase transition, and becomes negligible for $`TT_{\mathrm{ph}}`$ and $`TT_{\mathrm{ph}}`$.

## IV Numerical Simulations and Results

For any early Universe scenario the initial conditions for $`M_L`$ and $`H`$ at the temperature where the fields are created should be calculated from the power spectra $`b^2(k)`$ and $`h(k)`$, using Eq. (4). The magnetic field evolution can then be obtained by numerically integrating the non-linear partial differential Eqs. (6) and their extensions with helical source terms in co-moving coordinates from this initial time up to redshift zero. This is done by employing an alternating implicit method recipes  to a one-dimensional grid of typically a hundred bins roughly logarithmic in co-moving distance between the inverse of today’s cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature $`T_0`$ and $`10^4`$Mpc, and using the logarithm of the temperature $`\mathrm{ln}T`$ as independent variable, adopting the standard relations between time and temperature, see e.g. Ref. kt . In order to assure that induced velocities Eq. (2) remain non-relativistic, the induced contributions to the coefficients $`\kappa `$ and $`\alpha `$, Eq. (7), are limited to the corresponding contributions, Eq. (11), of a maximally strong external fluid flow during the simulations.

At a physical length scale $`r`$ at cosmic time $`t`$ the accuracy requirement on the step-size is recipes  $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{ln}Tr^2/\left[t\mathrm{Max}(\kappa ,\alpha )\right]`$. For about $`10^4`$ time steps per decade in $`T`$ and for the coefficients given by Eq. (7) this is typically fulfilled for temperatures up to close to the GUT scale and co-moving lengths down to the parsec scale which are mostly of interest here. Although this accuracy requirement is not fulfilled at the smallest length scales close to the inverse temperature used in the numerical integration, the implicit method assures at least convergence toward the equilibrium solution at such scales.

The power spectra $`b^2(k)`$ and $`h(k)`$ can be obtained by inverting the transformations of Eq. (4), but a rough estimate is given by $`b^2(k)M_L(1/k)`$ and $`h(k)H(1/k)/k^2`$.

In the following we parametrize the magnetic seed field by

$$M_L(r)=N\frac{8\pi ^3}{90}\frac{1}{(1+r/r_B)^n},$$
(13)
where $`N`$ characterizes the strength relative to thermal density, $`r_B`$ is the scale on which it is concentrated, and $`n`$ is the power law index at much larger scales (causally produced fields correspond to $`n5`$).

To demonstrate the general effect of helicity we start with magnetic fields of non-vanishing helicity in the absence of source terms. We start at the electroweak scale, $`T=100`$GeV, with a seed field Eq. (13) with $`N=0.1`$, concentrated at a scale $`r_B=10^4t_u(100\mathrm{GeV})`$, and a power law index $`n=3`$, motivated by a superposition of magnetic dipoles, as may be expected for the electroweak transition soj . We assume an initial helicity $`H_M100n_b`$, somewhat larger than the baryon number $`n_b`$, as suggested by models cornwall ; vachaspati . Assuming the relative helicity, $`h(r)H(r)/H_{\mathrm{max}}(r)`$, to be roughly independent of $`r`$, this corresponds to $`H(r)100/N(n_b/n_\gamma )M_L(r)/r5\times 10^7H_{\mathrm{max}}(r)`$, where the baryon to photon ratio $`n_b/n_\gamma 5\times 10^{10}`$. Fig. 1 shows results for $`M_L`$ and the relative helicity. The field at zero redshift is decreased by dissipation up to the $`0.1`$parsec scale, whereas inverse cascades enhance the field on scales of a few parsecs, reaching $`10^{14}`$G. For comparison Fig. 1 also shows the larger enhancement of $`M_L`$ for maximal initial helicity (the case discussed in Ref. fc ) which, however, we consider speculative in the absence of a specific model predicting such large helicities.

It is easy to show that the total helicity $`H_M`$ which is dominated by the peak of $`h(r)`$ in Fig. 1 is roughly conserved, and thus evolution is dominated by magnetic back-reaction onto the fluid. Indeed, conservation of $`H_M`$ is usually employed to estimate the field strength via $`B^2H_M/l_c`$ which requires an analytical estimate of the coherence scale $`l_c`$ vachaspati . In our numerical approach $`l_c`$ comes out without further assumptions as the scale where the correlation function cuts off.

Another interesting situation could be the production of baryon and lepton number comparable to unity, $`n_b/n_\gamma 1`$ at $`T=T_n100`$GeV, for instance during a phase transition related to new physics, which could give rise to maximally helical flows as well. These flows would consist of the tightly coupled electroweak plasma and could survive as a small perturbation at least down to the neutrino decoupling temperature, i.e. $`t_{\mathrm{corr}}t_u(T)`$ for $`T`$MeV. Their amplitude can be estimated by the dilution factor $`v_e^2(n_b/n_\gamma )_{\mathrm{today}}^{4/3}10^{12}`$ due to the necessary entropy production above the electroweak scale. Assuming a causal flow with power on scales not too far below the horizon scale, we use $`f(r)=[1+rT/t_u(T_n)/T_n]^5`$ with $`T_n=10^{13}`$GeV for the other parameters in Eq. (12). We start with the same magnetic field produced at the electroweak transition as above, but this time with vanishing initial helicity, $`H(r)0`$. Fig. 2 shows that in this case the magnetic field develops helicity and reaches values close to $`10^{13}`$G up to about 100 parsecs. The coherence scales are also consistent with analytical estimates son ; fc , but are considerably larger than in Ref. vachaspati .

Our results also demonstrate that the presence of helicity prevents complete dissipation of the fields at small scales, resulting in a flat correlation function up to the coherence scale. Furthermore, the relative magnetic helicity rises linearly with $`r`$ and is close to maximal at the coherence scale. This could have ramifications for the actual detection of helicity, for example, via its effects on the CMB pvw  and could be an important signature of physics at or above the electroweak scale.

## V Conclusions

We used the evolution equations for the two-point correlation function of helical magnetic fields in MHD approximation including magnetic diffusion, fluid viscosity, and back-reaction onto the external fluid to evolve weakly helical fields produced in the early Universe up to today. We find that magnetic fields and/or fluid flows with a helicity relative to maximal not much larger than the baryon to photon number $`10^9`$, as expected during the electroweak period, can lead to significant inverse cascades. This results in magnetic fields that can be enhanced by several orders of magnitude compared to the merely red-shifted and frozen-in initial fields at scales in the parsec and kilo-parsec range today. If the seeds are roughly thermal in strength and if their power is concentrated on scales not much smaller than the horizon scale around the electroweak transition, the coherence length is close to a kilo-parsec with field strengths up to $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}10}^{13}`$G. While this is smaller than the analytical estimates in Refs. fc , it is based on the more realistic assumptions of small helicities of order the baryon to photon number where fluid viscosity can not be neglected. The fields we obtain are certainly larger than from “astrophysical” seed field mechanisms such as the Biermann battery, but are also well within the limits from big bang nucleosynthesis and the CMB (the best of which are $`10^9`$Gauss on kpc–Mpc scales, see, e.g., lk ; sb ; jko ), and from gravity wave production ($`B(r)10^{11}(r/100\mathrm{pc})^3`$ for $`n=3`$ cd ). Such fields may also be testable by ultra-high energy cosmic ray deflection bs . The approach presented here can also be applied to other magneto-genesis scenarios with pseudo-scalar seeds such as in string cosmology ss  where coupling to axions may lead to larger helicities.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank A. Buonanno, K. Jedamzik, and M. Sakellariadou for helpful discussions.