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# Deflationary cosmology: constraints from angular size and ages of globular clusters

## I Introduction

The search for alternative cosmologies is presently in vogue. The leitmotiv is the observational support for an accelerated Universe provided by the type Ia supernovae (SNe) experiments at intermediate and high redshifts perlmutter ; riess . Such observations are consistently indicating that the bulk of energy in the Universe is repulsive and appears like a quintessence component, that is, an unknown form of energy (in addition to the ordinary dark matter), probably of primordial origin sahni . In the current literature there are many candidates for this negative-pressure dark component, among them: (i) a vacuum decaying energy density, or a time varying $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)`$ ozer , (ii) a time varying relic scalar field slowly rolling down its potential ratra , (iii) the so-called “X-matter”, an extra component simply characterized by an equation of state $`p_x=\omega \rho _x`$, where $`\omega 1`$ turner  and (iv) models based on the framework of brane-induced gravity dvali .

In a recent paper joao  (henceforth paper I), we derived the basic expressions for kinematic tests in a quintessence scenario of the type (i) above, which has originally been termed deflationary cosmology jackson ; lima1 . The effective time dependent cosmological term is regarded as a second fluid component with an energy density, $`\rho _v(t)=\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)/8\pi G`$, which transfers energy continuously to the material component. Such a scenario has an interesting cosmological history evolving in three stages. First, an unstable de Sitter configuration is supported by the largest value of the decaying vacuum energy density. This nonsingular state evolves to a quasi-Friedmann-Roberton-Walker (FRW) vacuum-radiation phase and, subsequently, the Universe approaches continuously the present vacuum-dust stage. The first stage harmonizes the scenario with the cosmological constant problem, while the transition to the second stage solves the horizon and other well-know problems in the same manner as in inflation. Finally, the Universe enters in the present accelerated vacuum-dust phase required by the SN Ia observations.

More recently, it has been argued that deflation can be described in terms of a scalar field coupled to the fluid component jackson1 . Such models are analytic examples of warm inflationary scenarios proposed by Berera WI  where particle production occurs during the evolution. As a consequence, the supercooling process, as well as the subsequent reheating are no more necessary. In this concern, it should be interesting to analyze the generation of the perturbation spectra by comparing the results with the ones recently obtained by Taylor and Berera for warm inflation TB00 . Here, as there, one may expect a suppression of the tensor-to-scalar ratio perturbations, though a detailed study is necessary in order to have a more definitive conclusion. On the other hand, the scalar field in this enlarged framework is also thermally coupled with dark matter, and as such, it can be used to avoid the cosmic coincidence problem. Specific examples of exact deflationary models and the underlying thermodynamics has been given by Gunzig et al. GMN , and some scalar field motivated descriptions were also investigated in detail by Maartens et al. Maartensetal  and Zimdahl Zimdahl .

In this paper we discuss more quantitatively how the observations put limits on the free parameters of the deflationary scenario. We focus our attention on constraints from the angular size of milliarcsecond compact radio sources, and the latest age estimates of globular clusters (GCs), and for completeness we also consider shortly the case for old high redshift galaxies (OHRGs). Next section we set up the basic equations for these models. In Section III we derive the corresponding constraints for deflationary cosmologies from $`\theta (z)`$ analysis. Limits from GCs and OHRGs are discussed in Section IV. The main results are summarized in the conclusion section.

## II Basic equations

Let us now consider a class of spacetimes described by the general FRW line element ($`c=1`$)

$$ds^2=dt^2R^2(t)\left[d\chi ^2+S_k^2(\chi )(d\theta ^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta \mathrm{d}\varphi ^2)\right],$$
(1)
where $`\chi `$, $`\theta `$, and $`\varphi `$ are dimensionless comoving coordinates, $`R(t)`$ is the scale factor, and $`S_k(\chi )`$ depends on the curvature parameter ($`k=0`$, $`\pm 1`$). The later function is defined by one of the following forms: $`S_k(\chi )=\mathrm{sinh}(\chi )`$, $`\chi `$, $`\mathrm{sin}\chi `$, respectively, for open, flat and closed universes. Since the main interest here is related to kinematic tests for deflation, in what follows we consider only the Einstein field equations (EFE) for a nonvacuum pressureless component plus a cosmological $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)`$-term:

$$8\pi G\rho +\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)=3\frac{\dot{R}^2}{R^2}+3\frac{k}{R^2},$$
(2)
$$\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)=2\frac{\ddot{R}}{R}\frac{\dot{R}^2}{R^2}\frac{k}{R^2},$$
(3)
where an overdot means time derivative and $`\rho `$ is the dust energy density. The effective $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)`$ is a variable dynamic degree of freedom. In our context, it relaxes to the present value, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_o`$, according to the deflationary ansatz lima1

$$\rho _v=\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)}{8\pi G}=\beta \rho _T\left(1+\frac{1\beta }{\beta }\frac{H}{H_I}\right),$$
(4)
where $`\rho _v`$ is the vacuum density, $`\rho _T=\rho _v+\rho `$ is the total energy density, $`H=\dot{R}/R`$ is the Hubble parameter, $`H_I^1`$ is the arbitrary time scale characterizing the deflationary period, and $`\beta [0,1]`$ is a dimensionless parameter of order unity.

Deflationary universe models start their evolution with the largest value of the Hubble parameter, $`H=H_I`$, for which the phenomenological expression (4) reduces to $`\rho _v=\rho _T`$ so that we have inflation with no matter and radiation components ($`\rho =0`$). At late times ($`H<<H_I`$), we see that $`\rho _v\beta \rho _T`$, as required by the recent observations. Therefore, if the deflationary process begins at Planck time one has $`H_I^110^{43}`$s, and since $`H_0^110^{17}`$s it thus follows that $`H_0/H_I10^{64}`$ while the remaining terms are of order unity. Such a conclusion does not change appreciably if the Planck scale is replaced by the grand or even the electroweak unification scales in accordance to the standard model (see paper I). This means that to a high degree of accuracy, the scale $`H_I`$ is unimportant during the vacuum-dust dominated phase so that for all practical purposes the vacuum energy density can be approximated by $`\rho _v=\beta \rho _T`$.

An interesting feature of decaying $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)`$ models is that the temperature dependence on the redshift $`z`$ of the relic radiation, $`T(z)`$, can be different from the standard prediction, which is deduced assuming an adiabatic expansion. For deflationary universes, the temperature law at the vacuum/dust phase reads

$$T(z)=T_o(1+z)^{1\beta }.$$
(5)
where $`T_o`$ is the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) at $`z=0`$. This new relation implies that for a given redshift $`z`$, the temperature of the Universe is slightly lower than in the standard photon-conserved scenario. Actually, indirect measurements of $`T(z)`$ at high redshifts S94 ; GE97 ; los  may become one of the most powerful cosmological tests because it may exclude the presence of a cosmological constant or even of any kind of separately conserved quintessence LAV00 .

## III Constraints from angular size-redshift diagram

The angular size - redshift relation to a light source of proper size $`l`$ (assumed free of evolutionary effects) can be obtained by integrating the spatial part of Eq. (1) for $`\xi `$ and $`\varphi `$ fixed. One finds

$$\theta =\frac{D(1+z)}{\xi (z)}.$$
(6)
In the above expression $`D`$ is the angular-size scale expressed in milliarcseconds (mas)

$$D=100lh,$$
(7)
where $`l`$ is measured in parsecs (for compact radio-sources). The dimensionless coordinate $`\xi `$ is given by (see Appendix A of paper I)

$$\xi (z)=_{(1+z)^1}^1\frac{dx}{x\left[1(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}}{1\beta })+(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}}{1\beta })x^{(13\beta )}\right]^{1/2}}.$$
(8)
Now, by integrating the previous expression and inserting the result into Eq.(6) one finds

$$\theta =\frac{D\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}}{1\beta }\right)^{1/2}(1+z)}{\mathrm{sin}\left[\delta sin^1\alpha _1\delta sin^1\alpha _2\right]}.$$
(9)
where $`\delta =\frac{2}{(13\beta )}`$, $`\alpha _1=(1\frac{1\beta }{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}})^{\frac{1}{2}}`$, and $`\alpha _2=\alpha _1(1+z)^{(\frac{13\beta }{2})}`$.

The above equations show that the predicted value of $`\theta (z)`$ is completely determined once the values of $`l`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$ and $`\beta `$ are given. Two points, however, should be stressed before discussing the resulting diagrams. First of all, the predicted values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$ and $`\beta `$ are strongly dependent on the adopted value of $`l`$. In the absence of a statistical study describing the intrinsic length distribution of the sources, we consider here the approach recently discussed by Lima and Alcaniz lima . More specifically, instead of assuming a given value for the mean projected linear size, we work on the interval $`l20h^130h^1`$ pc, i.e., $`lO(40)`$ pc for $`h=0.65`$, or equivalently, $`D=1.42.0`$ mas. In addition, following Kellermann kell , we also assume that compact radio sources are free of the evolutionary and selection effects that have bedevilled attempts to use extended double radio source in this context (see, for example, bucha ), as they are deeply embedded in active galactic nuclei, and, therefore, their morphology and kinematics do not depend considerably on the changes of the intergalactic medium. Moreover, these sources have typical ages of some tens of years, i.e., it is reasonable to suppose that a stable population is established, characterized by parameters that do not change with the cosmic epoch jack .

In our analysis we consider the angular size data for milliarcsecond radio-sources recently compiled by Gurvits et al. gurv . This data set, originally composed by 330 sources distributed over a wide range of redshifts ($`0.011z4.72`$), was reduced to 145 sources with spectral index $`0.38\alpha 0.18`$ and total luminosity $`Lh^210^{26}`$ W/Hz in order to minimize any possible dependence of angular size on spectral index and/or linear size on luminosity. This new sample was distributed into 12 bins with 12-13 sources per bin. In order to determine the cosmological parameters $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$ and $`\beta `$, we use a $`\chi ^2`$ minimization for a range of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$ and $`\beta `$ spanning the interval  in steps of 0.02

$$\chi ^2(l,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m},\beta )=\underset{i=1}{\overset{12}{}}\frac{\left[\theta (z_i,l,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m},\beta )\theta _{oi}\right]^2}{\sigma _i^2},$$
(10)
where $`\theta (z_i,l,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m},\beta )`$ is given by Eq. (9) and $`\theta _{oi}`$ is the observed values of the angular size with errors $`\sigma _i`$ of the $`i`$th bin in the sample.

In Fig. 1 we display the binned data of the median angular size plotted against redshift for $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=0.3`$ and several values of $`\beta `$. The curve for a static Euclidean universe is also shown for comparison ($`\theta z^1`$). As can be seen from the figure, Euclidean models are strongly deprived by the observational data. In our statistical analysis presented below, it was implicitly assumed that possible selection effects (including the resolution angular limit) are completely under control.

Figure 2 shows contours of constant likelihood (95$`\%`$ and 68$`\%`$) in the plane $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}\beta `$ for the interval $`l2030h^1`$ pc. Note that the allowed range for $`\beta `$ is reasonably large unless the characteristic length is also large ($`l30h^1`$ pc). For $`l22h^1`$ pc, the best fit occurs for a closed model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=0.58`$ and $`\beta =0.58`$. In the subsequent panels of the same figure similar analyzes are displayed for $`l23.53h^1`$ pc (D = 1.6 mas), $`l26.47h^1`$ pc (D = 1.8 mas) and $`l29.41h^1`$ pc (D = 2.0 mas). As physically expected, the limits are now more restrictive for the matter density contribution while larger values of $`\beta `$ are allowed. It happens because since $`\theta l/\xi `$, for the same data ($`\theta _{oi}`$) and larger $`l`$ we need larger $`\xi (z)`$ and, therefore, smaller (larger) values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$ ($`\beta `$). In particular, if we minimize $`\chi ^2`$ for $`l`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$, and $`\beta `$, we obtain $`l=22.64^1`$ pc (D = 1.54 mas), $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=0.54`$, and $`\beta =0.6`$ with $`\chi ^2=4.28`$ and 9 degrees of freedom. Such values are also in agreement to the ones recently found by Vishwakarma vish . Indeed, as explained in Paper I, a subclass of the models investigated by him ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }=n\mathrm{\Omega }H^2`$) corresponds to the late stages of our deflationary scenario. We also remark that although not discussed here, it is possible to determine exactly the influence of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(t)`$-term in the critical redshift $`z_m`$ at which the angular size takes its minimal value. However, as shown elsewhere alcaniz , the critical redshift cannot discriminate between world models since different scenarios may provide the same $`z_m`$ values. The main results of this section are summarized in Table 1.

## IV Constraints from ages of globular clusters

Let us now discuss the constraints on deflationary cosmologies related to the expanding age of the Universe. As widely known, a lower bound for this quantity can be estimated in a variety of different ways. For instance, Oswalt et al. osw , analyzing the cooling sequence of white dwarf stars found a lower age limit for the galactic disk of 9.5 Gyr. Later on, a value of 15.2 $`\pm `$ 3.7 Gyr was also determined using radioactive dating of thorium and europium abundances in stars cowan . In this connection, the recent age estimate of an extremely metal-poor star in the halo of our Galaxy (based on the detection of the 385.957 nm line of singly ionized 238U) indicated an age of 12.5 $`\pm `$ 3 Gyr cay .

Probably, the most important way of estimating a lower limit to the age of the Universe is dating the oldest stars in GCs. Such estimates have, however, oscillated considerably since the publication of the statistical parallax measures done by Hipparcos. Initially, some studies implied in a lower limit of 9.5 Gyr at $`95\%`$ confidence level (c.l.) chab , making some authors argue immediately for the end of the age problem krauss . Nevertheless, subsequent studies chab1  using new statistical parallax measures and updating some stellar model parameters, found 13.2 Gyr with a lower limit of 11 Gyr at 95$`\%`$ c.l., as a corrected mean value for age estimates of GCs (see also carreta . This implies that the flat cold dark matter (CDM) model is ruled out for $`h0.50`$, thereby showing that the “age crisis” is not dead at all since the most recent measurements of $`h`$ point consistently to $`h0.65`$ gio ; f1 ; f2 . All these results are also in accordance with recent estimates based on rather different methods for which the ages of the oldest GCs in our Galaxy fall on the interval 13.8 - 16.3 Gyr rengel .

The general age-redshift relation for a deflationary universe is (see Paper I)

$$t_o=H_o^1_0^1\frac{dx}{\left[1\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}}{(1\beta )}+\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}}{(1\beta )}x^{3\beta 1}\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}}.$$
(11)
As one may conclude, by fixing the $`H_ot_o`$ from observations, the limits on the $`\beta `$ parameter may readily be obtained for some specified values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$. Note also that the age parameter depends only on the product of the two quantities $`H_o`$ and $`t_o`$, which are measured from completely different methods. Here we consider $`t_o=13\pm 1`$ Gyr as a median value for the most recent estimates of globular clusters, and, following Freedman f2 , we assume $`H_o=70\pm 0.7\mathrm{Km}.\mathrm{s}^1.\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$. Since these quantities ($`H_o`$ and $`t_o`$) are independent, the two errors may be added in quadratures providing $`H_ot_o=0.93\pm 0.12`$, a value very close to some determinations based on SN Ia data riess ; tonry . From this analysis we see that the Einstein-de Sitter case is off by $``$ 2 standard deviations.

In Fig. 3a we show the dimensionless product $`H_ot_o`$ as a function of $`\beta `$ for some values of the density parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$. Horizontal dashed lines indicate $`\pm 2\sigma `$ of the age parameter for the values of $`H_o`$ and $`t_o`$ considered here. As should be physically expected, the greater the contribution of the vacuum ($`\beta `$) the larger the age predicted by the model. For $`\beta =1/3`$, all models predict $`H_ot_o=1`$ regardless of the value of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$. As explained in Paper I, this critical case corresponds to an expanding universe with constant Hubble flow ($`q_o=0`$) also termed “coasting cosmology” kolb .

In Fig. 3b we show the plane $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}\beta `$ for the fixed value of the product $`H_ot_o=0.93\pm 0.12`$ (solid curve). Horizontal lines correspond to the observed range $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=0.20.4`$ calb , which is used to fix the limits on the $`\beta `$ parameter. For this interval we find $`\beta 0.18`$ and $`\beta 0.25`$, respectively. For comparison, we also have plotted the curve for an object (LBDS 53W069) with 4.0 Gyr at $`z=1.43`$ dunlop . The estimated age of this radio galaxy does not provide restrictive limits on the $`\beta `$ parameter, thereby showing that deflationary cosmologies are quite efficient to solve the variant of the age crisis at high-$`z`$. These results are also in agreement with those found in Ref. alc1999  in the context of the standard and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM models.

## V Conclusion

We have investigated the observational constraints on deflationary cosmologies provided by the angular size data and age estimates of globular clusters. By considering a sample of 145 milliarcsecond radio-sources recently compiled by Gurvits et al. gurv  we found that the best fit occurs for a closed model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}=0.54`$, $`\beta =0.6`$ ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{T}=1.3`$), and a characteristic length of $`l=22.64^1`$ pc (D = 1.54 mas). As we have seen, angular size measurements from compact radio sources may provide an important test for world models driven by a dark energy component. We stress, however, that constraints from the angular size redshift relation should be taken with some caution because a statistical analysis describing the intrinsic length distribution of the sources is still lacking. This aspect should be specially investigated since the recent development of the observational techniques certainly will provide more accurate data of angular size in the near future.

Concerning the age constraints, by adopting $`t_o=13\pm 1`$ Gyr as a median value for the most recent age estimates of globular clusters and $`h=0.7\pm 0.07`$ we have showed that deflationary models are very efficient to solve the “already” classical age of the Universe problem, as well as its variant related to old galaxies at high redshifts. In particular, regardless of the value of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{m}`$, for $`\beta 0.25`$ the class of models studied here provides total ages greater than 14 Gyr.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors are grateful to L. I. Gurvits for sending his compilation of angular size data as well as for helpful conversations. We also thank the anonymous referee for useful suggestions and discussions. This work was partially supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Pronex/FINEP (No. 41.96.0908.00), FAPESP (00/06695-0) and CNPq (62.0053/01-1-PADCT III/Milenio).


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# Explicit Gravitational Radiation in Hyperbolic Systems for Numerical Relativity

## I Introduction

The structure of Einstein field equations has deserved great interest since the very beginning of General Relativity. It was early noticed that, by rearranging the order or partial derivatives, the principal part of the four dimensional Ricci tensor could be written as a sort of generalized wave equation

$$2R_{\mu \nu }=\mathrm{}g_{\mu \nu }+_\mu \mathrm{\Gamma }_\nu +_\nu \mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu +\mathrm{}$$
(1)
where the box stands for the d’Alembert operator acting on functions and we have written for short

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu g^{\rho \sigma }\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}^{\mu }{}_{\rho \sigma }{}^{}=\mathrm{}x^\mu .$$
(2)
This opened the way to the use of harmonic spacetime coordinates ($`\mathrm{}x^\mu =0`$) in order to obtain an hyperbolic evolution system .

By the middle of the past century, however, the interest focused in the relativistic Cauchy problem. The 3+1 decomposition of the line element:

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha ^2dt^2`$ (3)
$`+`$ $`\gamma _{ij}(dx^i+\beta ^idt)(dx^j+\beta ^jdt)i,j=1,2,3`$ (4)
allowed one to express six of the ten second order original equations as a system of evolution equations for the metric $`\gamma _{ij}`$ and the extrinsic curvature $`K_{ij}`$ of the $`t=constant`$ slices, namely:

$`(_t_\beta )\gamma _{ij}`$ $`=`$ $`2\alpha K_{ij}`$ (5)
$`(_t_\beta )K_{ij}`$ $`=`$ $`_i\alpha _j+\alpha [{}_{}{}^{(3)}R_{ij}^{}2K_{ij}^2+trKK_{ij}]`$ (6)
where $``$ stands for the Lie derivative (we restrict ourselves to the vacuum case for simplicity). The remaining four equations could instead be expressed as constraints:

$`{}_{}{}^{(3)}Rtr(K^2)+(trK)^2`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ (7)
$`_kK_{}^{k}{}_{i}{}^{}_i(trK)`$ $`=`$ $`0.`$ (8)
This opened the door to a new way of obtaining hyperbolic evolution systems . The key point was to use in one or another way the momentum constraint (8) to ensure hyperbolicity while keeping the freedom of choosing arbitrary space coordinates on every $`t=constant`$ slice. This allows for instance to use normal coordinates ($`\beta ^i=0`$) without affecting the mathematical structure of the evolution system.(See Ref.  for a detailed comparison of the ”old” and ”new” hyperbolic systems).

These findings came at the right moment for people working on Numerical Relativity with a view on the gravitational waves detector projects starting by the turn of the century. Following the wake of these first works, many groups found their own way of combining the momentum constraint with the evolution equation (6), leading in each case to a new brand of hyperbolic systems .

Suddenly, the problem of having too few hyperbolic formalisms for Numerical Relativity turned into the opposite problem of having too many of them. Some of the works considered even multiparameter families of hyperbolic systems . Faced with the problem of choice, we think that the right question at this point is: what are hyperbolic systems for?

There are many answers, of course, but we can get a hint from the physical point of view when we realize that all but one of the resulting characteristic speeds can be altered when playing with these arbitrary parameters (see the work of the Cornell group  for a fairly complete analysis). The only one that has an intrinsic value (light speed) is associated with the two (transverse traceless) degrees of freedom of gravitational waves. The evident question now is wether or not we can directly relate the corresponding explicit eigenfields with gravitational radiation propagation. We will see below that a positive answer actually determines one of the parameters, introduced in the Cornell paper . We claim that the requirement of having explicit eigenvectors describing the gravitational waves degrees of freedom in an intrinsic way (for an arbitrary choice of space coordinates) is a strong benchmark to discriminate between different hyperbolic evolution systems.

In order to obtain our results, it has been crucial the use of an intrinsic method in order to find the characteristic speeds and the corresponding eigenfields. This method, based on a General Relativistic analogue of the well known Riemann problem of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), is completely independent of the space coordinate system used at any given $`t=constant`$ hypersurface. It is presented in Section 3 and then applied in Section 4 to a new simple one-parameter family of hyperbolic systems in order to illustrate our arguments.

## II A first order evolution system

The evolution system (5,6) is of first order in time but second order in space. To obtain a system which is also of first order in space, we will follow the standard procedure by considering the first space derivatives of the metric coefficients $`\gamma _{ij}`$ as new independent variables:

$$D_{kij}=1/2_k\gamma _{ij}.$$
(9)
The evolution equation of these new variables $`D_{kij}`$ can then be taken to be:

$$_tD_{kij}+_k(\alpha K_{ij})=0$$
(10)
where we are using for simplicity normal coordinates, so that $`\beta ^i=0`$. The relationship (9) can then be understood as a first integral of the extended system (5, 6, 10).

In order to complete this system, however, we need to provide evolution equations for the lapse function $`\alpha `$ and its first derivatives. It can be done in a straightforward way as follows:

$`_t\mathrm{ln}\alpha =\alpha Q`$ (11)
$`A_i=_i\mathrm{ln}\alpha `$ (12)
$`_tA_i+_i(\alpha Q)=0`$ (13)
where, again, the equation (12) must be considered as a first integral of (13). Notice that one could instead prescribe a more general evolution equation for $`A_i`$:

$$_tA_i+_i(\alpha Q)+\mu \alpha (_kK_{}^{k}{}_{i}{}^{}_itrK)=0$$
(14)
where $`\mu `$ is an arbitrary parameter. In that case, (12) would be a first integral of (14) if and only if the momentum constraint (8) is satisfied.

The complete first order evolution system can then be expressed in a balance law form, namely:

$$_tu+_kF^k=S,$$
(15)
where $`u`$ is the array of independent variables (the metric coefficients and their first derivatives), and both the Fluxes $`F^k`$ vector array and the Sources $`S`$ scalar array depend of u.

Note however that the actual form of the fluxes associated to $`K_{ij}`$ in eq. (6), will depend on the expression of the three-dimensional Ricci tensor $`{}_{}{}^{(3)}R_{ij}^{}`$ in terms of the metric derivatives (see for instance Ref.  for a discussion of this point). We will take in this paper the original expression, namely:

$${}_{}{}^{(3)}R_{ij}^{}=_k\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}^{k}{}_{ij}{}^{}_j\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}^{k}{}_{ki}{}^{}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}^{k}{}_{kr}{}^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}^{r}{}_{ij}{}^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}^{k}{}_{ri}{}^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}^{r}{}_{kj}{}^{}$$
(16)
This is in contrast with the actual choice in most of the hyperbolic formalisms published up to now, where a three-dimensional version of the decomposition (1) is used instead of (16) in order to mimic the properties of generalized wave equations.

## III The general relativistic Riemann problem

The balance law form (15) of the evolution system is familiar from the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) domain, where we can consider (15) in the sense of distributions, so that discontinuous solutions for $`u`$ are allowed (weak solutions). The discontinuity surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ can be given by:

$`\varphi (x^i,t)=constant`$ (17)
$`_t\varphi +v^i_i\varphi =0,`$ (18)
where $`v^i`$ is the velocity of the $`x^i=constant`$ points of the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. The consistency of these weak solutions with (15) requires the exact cancellation of the Dirac $`\delta `$ terms arising where the derivatives of discontinuous functions are performed. One gets then the well known Rankine-Hugoniot conditions:

$$v[u]=n_k[F^k]$$
(19)
where the square bracket stands for the jump of the quantities across $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, $`n_k`$ is the unit normal to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`vv^in_i`$ is the propagation speed of the discontinuity front. The eigenvalue problem (19) is usually known in CFD as the “Riemann problem”.

In General Relativity, we are familiar with ’matched’ metrics having discontinuous first order derivatives and other less common weak solutions, like colliding waves. A peculiar feature in General Relativity is however that the non-linear terms are limited to the Sources $`S`$ in (15), which can not originate $`\delta `$ terms and do not appear then in (19). This means that the General Relativistic Riemann problem is a linear one and can be solved explicitly. This implies also that the eigenvalues $`v`$ of (19) will coincide with the characteristic speeds, contrary to what happens in CFD, where one finds a much richer structure so that, in addition to plain discontinuities, one can get also shocks and rarefaction waves propagating at non-characteristic speeds. We will take advantage of these simplifications in what follows.

Let us then write down the Riemann problem corresponding to our evolution system (5, 6, 10, 14), taking from granted that the metric coefficients are continuous so that the only jumps can be on the first derivatives quantities, namely

$`v[K_{ij}]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha n_k[\lambda _{}^{k}{}_{ij}{}^{}]`$ (20)
$`v[D_{kij}]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha n_k[K_{ij}]`$ (21)
$`v[A_i]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha n_k[Q\delta _{}^{k}{}_{i}{}^{}+\mu (K_{}^{k}{}_{i}{}^{}trK\delta _{}^{k}{}_{i}{}^{})]`$ (22)
where we have written, allowing for (16),

$$\lambda _{}^{k}{}_{ij}{}^{}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}^{k}{}_{ij}{}^{}+1/2\delta _i^k(A_j+D_j)+1/2\delta _j^k(A_i+D_i)$$
(23)
and $`D_k=\gamma ^{ij}D_{kij}`$.

Let us remark that the Riemann problem (20-22) is stated for a generic orientation of the unit normal $`n_k`$, in a way that is independent of the space coordinate system. In this sense, it provides an intrinsic method to obtain the characteristic speeds and the corresponding eigenfields in terms of geometrical objects related with both the $`t=constant`$ hypersurface and the characteristic surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

## IV Getting an strongly hyperbolic system

We will now solve the eigenvalue problem (20-22) in order to display the causal structure of the evolution system (5, 6, 10, 14). We remember that the system will be strongly hyperbolic if and only if all the eigenvalues $`v`$ are real and if the set of eigenfields is complete, in the sense that it spans all our variable space. It follows easily from (21) that

$$v[D_{ij}]=0$$
(24)
where the symbol $``$ replacing one index means that we are taking the corresponding components tangent to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ (orthogonal to $`n_k`$). The remaining degrees of freedom in (21) can then be written as

$$v[D_{}^{n}{}_{ij}{}^{}]=\alpha [K_{ij}]$$
(25)
where we have noted for short $`D_{}^{n}{}_{ij}{}^{}n_kD_{}^{k}{}_{ij}{}^{}`$.

Let us now analyze the “mixed” components of (20)

$`v[K_{}^{n}{}_{}{}^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha [D_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{nn}+1/2A_{}]`$ (26)
$`v[A_{}]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha \mu [K_{}^{n}{}_{}{}^{}]`$ (27)
so that, allowing for (24), one gets the following set of eigenvectors

$$\sqrt{\mu /2}K_{}^{n}{}_{}{}^{}\pm (1/2A_{}D_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{nn})$$
(28)
with characteristic speeds $`v=\pm \alpha \sqrt{\mu /2}`$, respectively. This means that our evolution system will be (strongly) hyperbolic only if $`\mu >0`$. This surprising parameter-dependence of the characteristic speeds can be understood if we recall that physical solutions must verify the momentum constraint (8). For a discontinuous solution one gets

$$[K_{}^{n}{}_{i}{}^{}]=n_i[trK]$$
(29)
so that the first term of (28) comes from the transverse part of (29). This means that the characteristic cones spanned by (28) are just mathematical artifacts in order to get an hyperbolic system: they can not propagate physical information. We will take $`\mu =2`$ to impose this arbitrary characteristic speed to coincide with light speed.

Let us focus now on the purely transverse components in (20). We get

$`v[K_{}]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha [\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}^{n}{}_{}{}^{}]=\alpha [D_{}^{n}{}_{}{}^{}2D_{()}^{}{}_{}{}^{n}]`$ (30)
$`v[D_{}^{n}{}_{}{}^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha [K_{}]`$ (31)
so that, allowing again for (24), one gets the following eigenfields

$$K_{}\pm (D_{}^{n}{}_{}{}^{}2D_{()}^{}{}_{}{}^{n})$$
(32)
with characteristic speed $`v=\pm \alpha `$, independently of the choice of $`\mu `$. Notice that the longitudinal component of (29) can be written as

$$(\gamma ^{ij}n^in^j)[K_{ij}]=0$$
(33)
so that, again, the trace component in (32) can not describe the propagation of any physical information. See for instance Ref.  to verify that the corresponding characteristic speed can be also modified at will by using the energy constraint in a suitable way. We can conclude that only the traceless part of the transverse components (32) can actually propagate physical information.These two degrees of freedom are then good candidates to describe intrinsic features, like gravitational waves, as we will discuss further in the next section.

The remaining degrees of freedom in the original system (20-22) are given by:

$`v[trK]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha [A^n+2(D^nD_{k}^{}{}_{}{}^{kn})]`$ (34)
$`v[A^n]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha [2(K^{nn}trK)+Q]`$ (35)
$`v[\gamma ^{ij}D_{}^{n}{}_{ij}{}^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha [trK]`$ (36)
where now we must specify the gauge-related function $`Q`$ in terms of other quantities. We have postponed the gauge specification up to that point to emphasize that our previous analysis is gauge independent. Now we will take the simple prescription

$$Q=ftrK$$
(37)
where $`f`$ can be again an arbitrary parameter. We get then, allowing once more for (24):

$$v[A^n+2(D^nD_{k}^{}{}_{}{}^{kn})fD^n]=0$$
(38)
and also that the following gauge-dependent combinations

$$\sqrt{f}trK\pm (A^n+2D^n2D_{k}^{}{}_{}{}^{kn})$$
(39)
are eigenfields with characteristic speeds $`v=\pm \alpha \sqrt{f}`$, so that the system can be strongly hyperbolic only if $`f>0`$. We can take for instance $`f=1`$ if we insist in having light speed as a characteristic speed also here.

The analysis is complete now, because for $`\mu =2,f>0`$, the eigenfields (24), (28), (32), (38) and (39) span the whole space of variables. It follows that the resulting evolution system is strongly hyperbolic, no matter of the particular orientation $`n_k`$ of the characteristic surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

## V Geometrical and physical interpretation

Let us now decompose the line element of the three-dimensional $`t=constant`$ hypersurfaces in the following way (2+1 decomposition):

$`\gamma _{ij}`$ $`dx^i`$ $`dx^j=N^2dz^2`$ (40)
$`+`$ $`\sigma _{ab}(dx^a+\lambda ^adz)(dx^b+\lambda ^bdz)a,b=1,2`$ (41)
where the coordinates $`x^a`$ span the characteristic surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, $`\sigma _{ab}=\gamma _{ab}`$ is the induced metric on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`z`$ is a transverse coordinate so that the unit normal to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ can be expressed as

$$n_i=N\delta _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{z}.$$
(42)
The eigenfields (32) can then be written as

$$K_{ab}\pm N(D_{}^{z}{}_{ab}{}^{}D_{ab}^{}{}_{}{}^{z}D_{ba}^{}{}_{}{}^{z})$$
(43)
and a straightforward calculation shows that the extrinsic curvature of the two-dimensional surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, namely

$$\kappa _{ab}1/(2N)[_z\sigma _{ab}_\lambda (\sigma _{ab})]$$
(44)
is given by

$$\kappa _{ab}=N(D_{}^{z}{}_{ab}{}^{}D_{ab}^{}{}_{}{}^{z}D_{ba}^{}{}_{}{}^{z})$$
(45)
so that the eigenfields (32) can be expressed as

$$K_{ab}\pm \kappa _{ab}$$
(46)
which shows that they are two-dimensional tensors associated to the characteristic surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ in an intrinsic, coordinate-independent way.

Looking for a physical interpretations, let us note that the traceless part of (46) contains the shear degrees of freedom as measured by a two-dimensional array of observers sitting on the surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. This is precisely the kind of effect one expects from gravitational waves with wavefront $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Our results can then be interpreted as an extension of the standard description of the effect of a gravitational wave on an array of freely falling (geodesic, $`\alpha =constant`$) observers. This is an extension in the sense that our gauge conditions (37) apply to more general kinds of observers (like static ones, where both $`Q`$ and $`trK`$ vanish separately so that (37) holds for any value of $`f`$). This can be relevant for modelling Earth-based gravitational wave detectors, which are certainly not in free fall.

Notice, however, that the eigenfields expression (32) is sensitive to the ordering ambiguity of space derivatives when passing from (6) to a first order system (see Ref.  for details). The tensor character of the eigenfields is completely lost if one starts with a three-dimensional version of (1) instead of (16). The intrinsic information resides of course in the system (15), where the divergence of the fluxes is taken, but the local covariance of the fluxes themselves is lost if we make a choice different of (16). We claim that our results provide a criterion for solving the ordering ambiguity: the eigenfields describing the gravitational radiation degrees must have an intrinsic geometrical meaning independent of the space coordinate system. This opens the way to a coordinate-independent local description of gravitational wave detectors at Earth-based laboratories.

## VI Conclusions and outlook

We have started this paper by proposing a new simple method, based on the General Relativistic Riemann problem, in order to analyze the causal structure of any first order flux-conservative evolution system in an intrinsic way, independent of the space coordinates. To compare with previous results , we can look at the characteristic speeds and see how we get now light speed as $`v=\pm \alpha `$ (length per unit coordinate time), whereas in coordinate-dependent analysis, the speed along the z axis is given by $`v=\pm \alpha \sqrt{\gamma ^{zz}}`$ (coordinate displacement per unit coordinate time).

The use of this intrinsic method has allowed ourselves to explain the appearance of arbitrary parameter-dependent characteristic speeds  as a direct consequence of the mixing of evolution and constraint equations. As we emphasized in Section IV, only two degrees of freedom are intrinsically related with causal propagation of physical information. Hyperbolic formalisms, which can only consist of characteristic cones and lines, apply instead to an extended, unconstrained, space of solutions. The subspace of physical solutions is recovered by restricting the initial conditions to those that satisfy the constraints. The extra degrees of freedom are then to be regarded as mathematical artifacts devised to ensure hyperbolicity and their corresponding (arbitrary) characteristic speeds are irrelevant from the physical point of view.

Regarding the two remaining degrees of freedom, that can consistently be interpreted as describing gravitational radiation, we have provided an intrinsic geometrical interpretation of the corresponding eigenfields in terms of the shear of the congruence of eulerian (laboratory) observers combined with the shear of the front-wave surfaces $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. The requirement that the eigenfields admit this geometrical interpretation allows one to solve the ordering ambiguity for space derivatives when passing from the second order form of Einstein evolution equations to a first order system.

The fulfillment of this requirement must be regarded as an important benchmark to check any hyperbolic formalism. This is actually a strong requirement: none of the hyperbolic formalisms proposed previously by the Palma group  verifies it. It is not difficult, however, to modify the existing formalisms to comply with it .

This “explicit gravitational radiation” requirement is mandatory if we want to provide a local description of gravitational radiation in order to model for instance the process of detection of these waves by a given array of observers. In this sense, our results generalize the well-known textbook results for freely falling observers, based in the geodesic deviation equations. In particular, our results can be useful to model Earth-based laboratories, where the Earth gravitational field can be approximated by the well known Schwarzchild solution and the other effects, including the gravitational wave itself, can be included using perturbation theory.

Acknowledgements: We thank Manuel Tiglio for helpful and stimulating discussions during his visit to Palma de Mallorca. This work has been supported by the EU Programme ’Improving the Human Research Potential and the Socio-Economic Knowledge Base’ (Research Training Network Contract (HPRN-CT-2000-00137) and by a grant from the Conselleria d’Innovacio i Energia of the Govern de les Illes Balears


text:
# Diamagnetic Screening of the Magnetic Field in Accreting Neutron Stars

## Abstract

A possible mechanism for screening of the surface magnetic field of an accreting neutron star, by the accreted material, is investigated. In particular, we investigate the nature of the evolution of the internal field configuration in the case of a) a polar cap accretion and b) a spherical accretion.

Observations of radio pulsars and X-Ray binaries imply that the evolution of magnetic field is related to mass accretion onto a neutron star (Bhattacharya & Srinivasan 1991). Theoretical efforts in modeling the plausible mechanisms have so far been concentrated on the ohmic dissipation of crustal currents (Konar & Bhattacharya 2001). One of the novel mechanisms which could also be operative, in an accreting neutron star, is the diamagnetic screening of magnetic field by the accreting material (Romani 1990).

Recently, Choudhuri & Konar (2002) have done detailed modeling of the flow of the accreting material in the surface layers of a neutron star. The accreted material, confined to the poles by strong magnetic stresses, accumulates in a column and sinks below the surface when the pressure of the accretion column exceeds the magnetic pressure. From the bottom of the accretion column, the material moves to the lower latitudes in an equator-ward flow. Material from both the poles meet at the equator and submerges, pushing against the solid interior and displacing it very slowly in a counter-flow downwards as well as to higher latitudes. And, in the very deep layers the material moves radially inwards due to overall compression of the star. We have modelled the flow ensuring that it has all the above characteristics and satisfies the continuity equation (incompressible matter). In Fig.1 we show the profile of this velocity flow (a) for a low rate of accretion (polar cap accretion) and, (b) for a higher rate of accretion, (more towards spherical accretion).

Now, this accreted material, flowing horizontally from the polar caps, drags the magnetic field lines with it because of ’flux-freezing’ resulting in the distortion of the original field structure. This distortion gives rise to an effective screening of the observable field over a time-scale of the material flow. Assuming an initial central dipolar configuration for the field (Fig.2a) we show the final field configurations (obtained by solving the induction equation in 2-D) in Fig.2b & Fig.2c corresponding to the two velocity profiles of Fig.1. Details of these calculations can be found in Konar & Choudhuri (2002).


text:
# Hanle effect in Coherent Backscattering

## Abstract

We study the shape of the coherent backscattering (CBS) cone obtained when resonant light illuminates a thick cloud of laser-cooled rubidium atoms in presence of a homogenous magnetic field. We observe new magnetic field-dependent anisotropies in the CBS signal. We show that the observed behavior is due to the modification of the atomic radiation pattern by the magnetic field (Hanle effect in the excited state). PACS numbers: 42.20-y, 32.80.Pj

When a multiply scattering medium is illuminated by a laser beam, the scattered intensity results from the interference between the amplitudes associated with the various scattering paths; for a disordered medium, the interference terms are washed out when averaged over many sample configurations, except in a narrow angular range around exact backscattering where the average intensity is enhanced. This phenomenon, known as coherent backscattering (CBS), is due to a two-wave constructive interference (at exact back-scattering) between waves following a given scattering path and the associated reverse path, where exactly the same scatterers are visited in the reversed order . The maximum enhancement is obtained when the amplitudes of the interfering paths are exactly balanced. For a convenient choice of polarization, time-reversal symmetry directly implies the equality of the interfering amplitudes. More generally, the interference phenomenon is very robust and qualitatively insensitive to most characteristics of the sample and illuminating wave.

However, applying a magnetic field on the sample breaks the time-reversal invariance. It was predicted , then experimentally observed  and theoretically studied  that it results in a decrease of the CBS enhancement as well as some rather complicated behavior of the cone shape. In our current understanding of CBS, two ingredients are essential : the individual scattering event, characterized for example by the radiation pattern of each scatterer (this is the single scattering ingredient), and the propagation in the medium between scattering events (this is the ”average effective medium” ingredient). Of course, these two ingredients are not independent since the optical theorem links the propagation in the medium to the individual scattering. In the presence of a magnetic field, both ingredients can be affected. For the propagation, this is well known under the name of Faraday effect (and the Voigt or Cotton-Mouton effect) and can be described by the modification of the complex refractive index by the magnetic field. The magnetic field-induced variation of the radiation pattern is much less studied, because it is very small in usual magneto-optically active materials; it is responsible for the ”photonic Hall effect” predicted by van Tiggelen  and later observed experimentally . In this paper, we show a novel situation where it is experimentally and theoretically possible to discriminate between the two ingredients and where the modification of the radiation pattern dominates the propagation effects.

In our experiment, we analyze coherent backscattering of resonant light by a dilute gas of laser-cooled rubidium atoms. Some features of this medium differ markedly from those used in previous CBS experiments. First, the cold atomic cloud constitutes a monodisperse sample of point scatterers, highly resonant in the vicinity of the optical transition. This implies a dramatic increase of the scattering cross section at resonance, but also a great sensitivity to any external perturbation like a magnetic field. Typically, few Gauss are enough to bring the atom completely off resonance, in sharp contrast with previous studies where Teslas were needed to induce significant effects . Concurrently, a giant Faraday effect is observed in the cold atomic cloud . Another important difference with classical systems is the presence of a quantum internal structure, which has been shown to strongly reduce the coherent backscattering interference . Obviously, the addition of a magnetic field will affect the contrast of the CBS cone in various ways, and we have indeed observed new behaviors that will be described somewhere else. In the present Letter, we focus on the shape of the cone rather than its intensity.

The experiment has been described elsewhere . We use the $`J=3J^{}=4`$ transition of the D2 line of Rb85 (wavelength $`\lambda =780`$ nm, natural width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }/2\pi =5.9`$ MHz) where $`J`$ here denotes the hyperfine angular momentum. We show in Fig. 1 some CBS cones obtained in the linear polarization channels, for different values of the magnetic field and laser detuning. After scaling and substraction of the incoherent background (average intensity in the wings of the peak), we plot the detected far-field intensity isolines. The horizontal and vertical coordinates correspond to the two azimuthal scattering angles. The magnetic field $`𝐁`$ is orthogonal to the plane of the figure, like the backscattered light wavevector $`𝐤_\text{b}`$ which points towards the reader. The incident light polarization is parallel to the vertical axis of the figure. Since we will care about the sign of magneto-optical rotations, we have to precise our conventions. A positive magnetic field is parallel to the incident light wavevector $`𝐤_\text{i}(=𝐤_\text{b})`$ with the same orientation. A positive angle corresponds to a counterclockwise rotation when $`𝐤_\text{i}`$ points towards the observer.

For resonant light (laser detuning $`\delta _\text{L}=\omega _\text{L}\omega _\text{A}=0`$ where $`\omega _\text{L}`$ and $`\omega _\text{A}`$ are the laser and atomic frequencies respectively) and zero magnetic field $`B=0`$, we obtain in the $`linlin`$ channel a cushion-shaped cone with a four-fold symmetry shown in Fig. 1(a) (bottom). In the parallel channel (top), the cone has an elliptical shape with its large axis parallel to the incident polarization. In the presence of a magnetic field, we observe in the $`linlin`$ channel (b) that the cone has now an elliptical shape with an inclination of $`45^{}`$ from the incident polarization, which does not depend on the magnetic field strength. It is remarkable that, when the sign of the magnetic field is reversed, the cone flips by $`90^{}.`$ In the $`linlin`$ channel, the shape of the cone does not significantly change with the magnetic field. When the laser is detuned with respect to the zero-field atomic transition, the cones in both the $`linlin`$ and $`linlin`$ channels become isotropic, as shown in Fig. 1(c).

To understand the features observed in Fig. 1, we need to remember that the CBS cone shape is closely linked to the distribution of distances between first and last visited scatterers in the sample. In fact, it is the Fourier transform of the transverse intensity profile of the scattered light when the sample is illuminated by a narrow light beam . Thus, any scattering asymmetry inside the medium immediately results in a cone shape asymmetry. For the discussion of the observed effect, it turns out (see below) that the internal structure (Zeeman sublevels) of the atom is not crucial. We thus first consider the simplest case where the atomic transition is $`J=0J^{}=1`$. The Zeeman effect induces a splitting of the atomic resonance line in 3 components separated by $`\mu B`$ where $`B`$ is the magnetic field and $`\mu /2\pi =1.4`$ MHz/G is the Zeeman shift rate. As soon as the Zeeman shift is comparable to the resonance width (magnetic field of the order of 4 Gauss), the scattering cross-section of the atom is strongly modified. For simplicity, we restrict the discussion to a resonant excitation $`\delta _\text{L}=0`$. In this case, the response of the atom to a linearly polarized field is that of a dipole rotated from the incident polarization by an angle $`\phi =\mathrm{arctan}(2\mu B/\mathrm{\Gamma })`$, in the plane perpendicular to $`B`$. This rotation is responsible for the well-known fluorescence dip curve observed in typical Hanle experiments in the excited state . The effect of the magnetic field on the average effective medium is also well known: in the direction of the magnetic field, it induces the Faraday effect, i.e. a rotation of the electric field around the magnetic field. For a weak magnetic field $`\mu B\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, the Faraday angle $`\theta _\text{F}`$ per mean-free path is : $`\theta _\text{F}\mu B`$/$`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ . It is crucial to note that it has a sign opposite to that of the atomic dipole rotation. As CBS involves both propagation and individual scattering, the experimental observation of the sign of the rotation makes it possible to determine the dominant effect. In our case, we will show that the rotation of the atomic dipole leads.

We propose a simple model which explains the observed cone shape behavior, taking into account only the rotation of the atomic dipole. We will restrict the discussion to the case of double scattering, as it is known to be dominant in our experimental conditions and because anisotropy effects are expected to decrease for higher order scattering. Due to the exponential attenuation of light inside the sample, the first and last scatterers of most paths lie in a ”skin layer” of thickness approximately one scattering mean-free path under the surface of the sample. Thus, we will assume that all propagation takes place in the transverse plane, orthogonal to the incident wave vector. In addition, we will neglect all propagation effects (i.e. Faraday and Cotton-Mouton).

Let us now consider an initial polarization vector $`𝐏`$. The first scatterer radiates a wave at an angle $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ from $`𝐏`$ towards the second atom, which then radiates in the backscattering direction where the field is analyzed along the polarization $`𝐀`$ at an angle $`\alpha `$ with $`𝐏`$. The angular dependence of the interference term between reverse paths is readily given by $`\mathrm{sin}^2(\phi \mathrm{\Psi })\mathrm{sin}^2(\phi +\mathrm{\Psi }\alpha )`$. This formula (valid for resonant light) allows us to understand most of the observed behavior of the CBS interference pattern. Using a general symmetry argument, one can show that the CBS cone should remain symmetric with respect to the bisectors of the incident and detected polarizations directions. Indeed, the expression given above is invariant by the transformation $`\mathrm{\Psi }\alpha \mathrm{\Psi }.`$ In a polar plot, it exhibits two orthogonal pairs of lobes along the two bisectors. Each pair has two symmetric lobes, and the intensity ratio $`R`$ between the two pairs is $`R=\mathrm{tan}^4(\alpha /2\phi )`$. Thus, in most cases one lobe pair dominates over the other, yielding a cone with an elliptical shape along one of the bisector. When varying the value of $`\alpha /2\phi `$ (either by scanning the magnetic field or rotating the analyzer), the intensity of the dominant lobe decreases while the smallest lobe grows, until $`\alpha /2\phi =\pi /4`$, where they are of equal intensity (a four-fold symmetry of the cone is there recovered). Above this threshold value, the roles of the two pairs of lobes are interchanged: one thus observes a flip of the CBS cone orientation by $`90^{}.`$ Moreover, in the $`linlin`$ channel ($`\alpha =\pi /2`$), $`BB`$ flips the cone as observed in Fig. 1(b). In our model, the value $`\alpha _f`$ corresponding to the flip threshold is simply related to the magneto-optical rotation through $`\alpha _f=2\phi +\pi /2`$. So far, we have neglected all propagation effects. However, note that the Faraday rotation due to the propagation of the light through the ”skin layer” separating the sample surface from the first scattering event  would have the same influence on the cone shape as the dipole rotation $`\phi `$. As it will be discussed later, our results indicate that the dipole rotation dominates in this experiment.

Figure 2 shows some examples of the double scattering CBS cones obtained in the linear channels with this model. (a) and (b) correspond to the same parameters as in Fig. 1. One clearly sees ((a), bottom row) the distinctive clover-leaf shape in the $`linlin`$ channel at $`B=0`$ with 4 lobes along the bisectors (at $`45^{}`$). At non-vanishing magnetic field one of the lobe pairs is favored depending on the sign of $`\phi `$ (b). The comparison between Fig. 1 and 2 confirms that the CBS cone tilt observed experimentally is consistent with the sign of the dipole rotation, and that our simple model catches the essential part of the physics. For off-resonant excitation $`\delta _\text{L}0`$, the picture becomes more complex since the induced dipole is elliptical. However, if the Zeeman splitting is large enough $`\mu B\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and if the laser frequency is tuned to resonance with one of the circular components $`\delta _\text{L}=\pm \mu B`$, then the dipole is essentially circular and the cone is isotropic in agreement with the data in Fig. 1(c).

We now discuss the effect of the internal structure in the ground state, which is neglected in the previous model. Due to its internal structure, the rubidium atom does not behave like a pure dipole scatterer. More specifically, the radiation pattern depends on the ground state magnetic sublevels $`m_g`$ and $`m_g^{}`$ respectively before and after the scattering event. To determine the total CBS signal, one has to sum over all possible transitions ($`m_{g1}m_{g1}^{}`$, $`m_{g2}m_{g2}^{}`$) of two atoms. We have computed numerically the total CBS signal in this case and found that, for moderate B values (up to a few Gauss), the symmetry of the CBS pattern is only weakly modified compared to the $`J=0J^{}=1`$ case. Indeed, in this regime, the CBS signal is dominated by the ”Rayleigh” transitions $`m_gm_g`$, yielding the same behavior as in the $`J=0J^{}=1`$ situation. Thus, and this is the important point, we can still use the results of the simple $`J=0J^{}=1`$ model with an average dipole rotation $`\phi `$ to describe the cone behavior for the $`J=3J^{}=4`$ transition of rubidium. One illustration of the effect of the internal structure is given in Fig. 2(c) where we plot the double scattering CBS signal at $`B=0`$ in the $`linlin`$ (top) and $`linlin`$ (bottom) channels for the $`J=3J^{}=4`$ transition and a semi-infinite geometry. The main effect of the internal structure in this case is a rounding-off of the cone features. The comparison with the experimental cones of Fig. 1(a) yields a nice agreement. In order to make a quantitative test of our model, we have experimentally measured the dipole rotation $`\phi `$ (open squares in Fig. 3(a)) by analyzing the polarization of resonant light scattered by an optically-thin atomic cloud (optical thickness $`0.05`$). In this regime, Faraday rotation and multiple scattering are negligible. The solid line in Fig. 3(a) corresponds to the theory for a $`J=3J^{}=4`$ transition and agrees well with our measurements. In a different experiment, we have measured the Faraday rotation per mean free path $`\theta _F`$ (solid squares in Fig. 3(a)) by recording, as a function of $`B`$, the polarization rotation of light transmitted by a cloud of fixed optical thickness $`1`$. When the magnetic field increases, the total scattering cross-section decreases yielding an increasing mean-free path. Thus, in order to keep the optical thickness constant one has to increase either the density or the size of the cloud. We emphasize that the sign of the Faraday rotation is indeed opposite to that of the dipole rotation (i.e. negative). We also note that the Faraday rotation per mean-free path increases with the magnetic field due to the increasing mean-free path . The dotted curve corresponds to the theory for a 3 $``$ 4 transition and is again in excellent agreement. Finally, the triangles in Fig. 3(b) show the measured angle $`\alpha _f`$ for which the dominant lobe of the cone in the $`linlin`$ channel flips by $`90^{}`$, as a function of the magnetic field, compared with our model taking into account the internal structure (line). The measurement is unpractical above $`B=4`$ G due to poor cone contrast. The excellent agreement between the experiment and our model on both the sign and magnitude of the magneto-optical rotation in the CBS signal indicates that the Faraday rotation through the ”skin layer” is negligible in our configuration, and confirm the magnetic field-induced dipole rotation as the mechanism underlying the observed CBS anisotropies.

In conclusion, we reported in this paper the observation of various anisotropies in the shape of the coherent backscattering cone from cold rubidium atoms in a magnetic field. The observed behavior differs radically from previous work on magneto-optically active samples where the cone features were determined by the Faraday effect during the propagation between scatterers. In our situation, the observed anisotropy is due to the modification of the atomic radiation pattern by the magnetic field. This observation illustrates the new regimes that are accessible through the use of cold atoms as a scattering medium for light. Some more elaborate modelling is needed to understand in detail the roles of propagation versus individual scattering effects in our sample, in particular to explain the behavior of the CBS enhancement factor in the presence of a magnetic field.

We thank the CNRS and the PACA Region for financial support. Laboratoire Kastler Brossel is laboratoire de l’Université Pierre et Marie Curie et de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, UMR 8552 du CNRS.


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# Hidden long range order in Heisenberg Kagomé antiferromagnets

## Abstract

We give a physical picture of the low-energy sector of the spin 1/2 Heisenberg Kagomé antiferromagnet (KAF). It is shown that Kagomé lattice can be presented as a set of stars which are arranged in a triangular lattice and contain 12 spins. Each of these stars has two degenerate singlet ground states which can be considered in terms of pseudospin. As a result of interaction between stars we get Hamiltonian of the Ising ferromagnet in magnetic field. So in contrast to the common view there is a long range order in KAF consisting of definite singlet states of the stars.

In spite of numerous theoretical and experimental studies in the last decade, some magnetic properties of Kagomé antiferromagnets (KAFs) remain open problems. Experiments revealed unusual low-temperature behavior of the specific heat and magnetic susceptibility in Kagomé -like compounds. For example specific heat $`C`$ measurements in $`SrCr_{9p}Ga_{129p}O_{19}`$ ($`S=3/2`$ Kagomé material) have shown that there is a peak at $`T5`$ K, $`CT^2`$ at $`T5`$ K and it appears to be practically independent of magnetic field up to 12 T Ramirez et al. (2000).

Some of the experimental findings are in agreement with the results of numerical finite cluster investigations Zeng and Elser (1990); Leung and Elser (1993); Waldtmann et al. (1998); Zeng and Elser (1995). They reveal a gap separating the ground state from the upper triplet levels and a band of nonmagnetic singlet excitations with a very small or zero gap inside the triplet gap. The number of states in the band increases with the number of sites $`N`$ as $`\alpha ^N`$. For samples with up to 36 sites $`\alpha =1.15`$ and 1.18 for the even and odd $`N`$, respectively Waldtmann et al. (1998). This wealth of low-lying singlet excitations explains the peak of specific heat at low temperature and its independence of the magnetic field.

However the origin of this band as well as the nature of the ground state were unclear until now. Previous exact diagonalization studies Chalker and Eastmond (1992); Leung and Elser (1993) reveal exponential decay of the spin-spin and dimer-dimer correlation functions. So the point of view that KAF is a spin liquid is widely accepted now Sachdev (1992); Zeng and Elser (1995); Yang et al. (1993); Kalmeyer and Laughlin (1987); Marston and Zeng (1991); Waldtmann et al. (1998); Leung and Elser (1993); Chalker and Eastmond (1992). It seems the best candidate for description of KAF low-energy properties is a quantum dimer model Sachdev (1992); Zeng and Elser (1995); Mila (1998). It should be mentioned a certain recent success in this field. In the paper Mambrini and Mila  a spin 1/2 Kagomé lattice is considered as a set of interactive triangles with a spin in each apex. It was suggested there to work in the subspace where the total spin of each triangle is 1/2 (short range RVB states (SRRVB)) investigating low-lying excitations. It was shown that low-energy spectrum obtained with SRRVB on the samples with up to 36 cites and the number of singlet excitations in the band coincide with the results of exact diagonalization. Meanwhile a further development of this approach is required to get a full physical description of KAF.

Another types of frustrated magnets which possess a similar behavior as KAF and have many singlet states inside the triplet gap are pyrochlore Canals and Lacroix (1998) and $`CaV_4O_9`$ Albrecht et al. (1996). Recently it was suggested a model of frustrated antiferromagnet which low-energy properties can be generic for these compounds as well as for KAF Kotov et al. (2001). Weakly interactive plaquettes in the square lattice were considered there. Each plaquette has two almost degenerate singlet ground states, so a band of singlet excitations arises if the inter-plaquette interaction is taken into account. It is shown that there is a quantum phase transition in the model at a critical value of frustration separating a disorder plaquette phase and a columnar dimer one. In the proximity of this transition the specific heat has a low-temperature peak below which it possesses a power low temperature dependence.

In this paper we show that such a behavior is do relevant for spin 1/2 KAF. It is proposed to consider a Kagomé lattice as a set of stars with 12 spins arranged in a triangular lattice (see Fig. 1). A star has two degenerate singlet ground states. Interaction between stars leads to the band of low-lying excitations which number increases as $`2^{N/12}1.06^N`$. It is demonstrated that this interaction can be considered as a perturbation in the low-energy sector. As a result we get a model of the Ising ferromagnet in effective magnetic field where these degenerate states are described in terms of two projections of pseudospins 1/2. So it is shown that in contrast to the common view there is a hidden long range order in KAF which consists of definite singlet states of the stars. This picture should be relevant also for KAFs with larger values of spin.

We start with the Hamiltonian of the spin 1/2 Kagomé Heisenberg antiferromagnet:

$$_0=J_1\underset{i,j}{}𝐒_i𝐒_j+J_2\underset{(i,j)}{}𝐒_i𝐒_j,$$
(1)
where $`i,j`$ and $`(i,j)`$ denote nearest and next-nearest neighbors on the Kagomé lattice shown in Fig. 1, respectively. The case of $`|J_2|J_1`$ is considered in this paper. We discuss a possibility of both signs of next-nearest-neighbor interaction — ferromagnet and antiferromagnet one. As is shown below, in spite of the smallness the second term in Eq. (1) can be of importance for the low-energy properties.

Kagomé lattice can be presented as a set of stars arranged in a triangular lattice (see Fig. 1). To begin with we neglect interaction between stars and put $`J_2=0`$ in Eq. (1). A star is a system of 12 spins. Let us consider its properties in detail. The symmetry group contains 6 rotations and reflections with respect to 6 lines passing through the center. There are two degenerate singlet ground states $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ which differ each other by symmetry. Their wave functions are shown schematically in Fig. 2 where a bold line represents the singlet state of the corresponding two spins, i.e. $`(_i_j_i_j)/\sqrt{2}`$. Evidently $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ are invariant with respect to rotations of the star and they transform to each other under reflections. They contain six singlets each having the energy $`3/4J_1`$. One can show that interaction between singlets makes no contribution to the energy of the ground states which is consequently equal to $`4.5J_1`$. We have obtained numerically that there is a gap of the value approximately $`0.26J_1`$ which separates the ground states and the lower triplet levels in the star.

It should be pointed out that $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ are not orthogonal: the scalar product of these two functions is $`(\varphi _1\varphi _2)=1/32`$. So in the following we will use two orthonormalized combinations:

$`\mathrm{\Psi }_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2+1/16}}}(\varphi _1+\varphi _2),`$ (2)
$`\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{21/16}}}(\varphi _1\varphi _2).`$ (3)
Because $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ are invariant under rotations and transform to each other with reflections, $`\mathrm{\Psi }_1`$ is invariant under all the symmetry group transformations and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$ is invariant under rotations and it changes the sign with reflections.

We turn now to consideration of the interaction between two nearest stars still neglecting the second term in Eq. (1). Initially there are four degenerate ground states with energy $`E_0=9J_1`$ and wave functions $`\{\mathrm{\Psi }_{n_1}^{(1)}\mathrm{\Psi }_{n_2}^{(2)}\}`$ ($`n_i=1,2`$), where upper index labels the stars. As it is seen from Fig. 3, the interaction energy has the form:

$$V=J_1(𝐒_1^{(1)}𝐒_1^{(2)}+𝐒_3^{(1)}𝐒_3^{(2)}).$$
(4)
Let us consider $`V`$ as a perturbation. According to the standard theory Landau and Livshitz  one have to solve a secular equation to find the first correction to the energy. In our case there are four equations and the corresponding matrix elements are given by

$$H_{n_1n_2;k_1k_2}=V_{n_1n_2;k_1k_2}+\underset{m_1,m_2}{}\frac{V_{n_1n_2;m_1m_2}V_{m_1m_2;k_1k_2}}{E_0E_{m_1}E_{m_2}},$$
(5)
where $`V_{n_1n_2;k_1k_2}=\mathrm{\Psi }_{n_1}^{(1)}\mathrm{\Psi }_{n_2}^{(2)}V\mathrm{\Psi }_{k_1}^{(1)}\mathrm{\Psi }_{k_2}^{(2)}`$, $`n_i,k_i=1,2`$ and indexes $`m_1`$ and $`m_2`$ denote excited levels of the first and the second star, respectively. Obviously the first term in Eq. (5) is zero and the second one can be represented as follows:

$`H_{n_1n_2;k_1k_2}`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑te^{\delta t+iE_0t}`$
$`\mathrm{\Psi }_{n_1}^{(1)}\mathrm{\Psi }_{n_2}^{(2)}Ve^{it(H_{01}+H_{02})}V\mathrm{\Psi }_{k_1}^{(1)}\mathrm{\Psi }_{k_2}^{(2)},`$
where $`H_{0i}`$ are Hamiltonians of the corresponding stars. Using the symmetry of the functions $`\varphi _1`$, $`\varphi _2`$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$ discussed above one can show that only diagonal elements (i.e. $`n_1=k_1`$, $`n_2=k_2`$) in Eq. (Hidden long range order in Heisenberg Kagomé antiferromagnets) are nonzero. We have calculated them with a very high precision by expansion of the operator exponent up to the power 130. The results can be represented in the following form:

$`H_{11;11}`$ $`=`$ $`a_1+a_2a_3,`$ (7a)
$`H_{12;12}`$ $`=`$ $`a_1+a_3,`$ (7b)
$`H_{21;21}`$ $`=`$ $`a_1+a_3,`$ (7c)
$`H_{22;22}`$ $`=`$ $`a_1a_2a_3,`$ (7d)
where $`a_1=0.256J_1`$, $`a_2=0.015J_1`$ and $`a_3=0.0027J_1`$. So the interaction shifts all the levels on the value $`a_1`$ and lifts their degeneracy. Constants $`a_2`$ and $`a_3`$ in Eqs. (7) determine the levels splitting. All corrections are small enough and one can consider interaction Eq. (4) between stars as a perturbation at low energies. We restrict ourself with this precision here and don’t consider triplet states.

So KAF appears to be a set of two-levels interacting systems and one can naturally represent the low-energy singlet sector of Hilbert space in terms of pseudospins: $`=\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$ and $`=\mathrm{\Psi }_1`$. It is seen from Eqs. (7) that in these terms the interaction between stars is described by the Hamiltonian of Ising ferromagnet in the external magnetic field:

$$=𝒥\underset{i,j}{}s_i^zs_j^zh\underset{i}{}s_i^z,$$
(8)
where $`i,j`$ labes now nearest-neighbor pseudospins, arranged in a triangular lattice formed by the stars, $`𝒥=4a_3=0.011J_1`$ and $`h=6a_2=0.092J_1`$. We also omit a constant in Eq. (8) which is equal to $`0.439J_1N`$. It should be stressed that within our precision Hamiltonian Eq. (8) is an exact mapping of the original Heisenberg model in the low-energy sector (excitation energy $`\omega 𝒥`$). So one can see from Eq. (8) that the ground state of KAF is that with all the stars in $`\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$ states.

In fact we show existence of a long range order in KAF generated by singlets. This hidden order settles on the triangular star lattice and can be checked by inelastic neutron scattering: corresponding intensity for the singlet-triplet transitions should have periodicity in the reciprocal space corresponding to the original star lattice. This picture is similar to observed one in the case of the dimerised spin-Pairls compound $`CuGeO_3`$ Regnault et al. (1996). Because low-energy physics in KAF is determined by singlets, our consideration should be relevant qualitatively also for KAFs with the larger values of spin.

We proceed with the discussion of the number of low-energy states in KAF. As each star has two singlet ground states and contains 12 spins the number of singlet excitations in the band is given by $`2^{N/12}1.06^N`$. Unfortunately there is no point to compare this result with that of the previous numerical work Waldtmann et al. (1998) discussed above because a very small samples ($`N36`$) were considered there.

Let us take into account the next-nearest-neighbor interactions. As is seen from Fig. 3 they can be divided on three parts: $`\stackrel{~}{V}_1`$, $`\stackrel{~}{V}_2^{(1)}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{V}_2^{(2)}`$, where $`\stackrel{~}{V}_1=J_2(𝐒_1^{(1)}𝐒_2^{(2)}+𝐒_2^{(1)}𝐒_1^{(2)}+𝐒_2^{(1)}𝐒_3^{(2)}+𝐒_3^{(1)}𝐒_2^{(2)})`$ contributes to the inter-stars interaction and $`\stackrel{~}{V}_2^{(1)}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{V}_2^{(2)}`$ contain 12 intrinsic next-nearest-neighbor interactions of the first and the second star, respectively. Considering now perturbation theory according to a sum of these three operators and that given by Eq. (4) we find that in addition to corrections presented in Eqs. (7) there are new ones proportional to $`J_2`$ from the first and the second terms in Eq. (5) given by $`\stackrel{~}{V}_2^{(1)}`$, $`\stackrel{~}{V}_2^{(2)}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{V}_1`$, respectively. Using symmetry of functions $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ it can be shown that secular matrix Eq. (Hidden long range order in Heisenberg Kagomé antiferromagnets) remains diagonal in this case. As a result calculations give for the values of ”exchange” and ”magnetic field” in the effective Hamiltonian Eq. (8):

$`𝒥`$ $`=`$ $`0.011J_10.005J_2,`$ (9)
$`h`$ $`=`$ $`0.092J_1+3.635J_2.`$ (10)
One can see from Eqs. (9) and (10) that the next-nearest interactions give a correction of the order of $`|J_2|/J_11`$ to the value $`𝒥`$ and their contribution to the ”magnetic field” is considerable if $`|J_2|0.01J_1`$. If $`J_2<0`$ (ferromagnet interaction) they could even change the sign of $`h`$. In the case of $`h>0`$ the ground state of the Kagomé lattice is that with all stars in $`\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$ states and if $`h<0`$ all stars are in $`\mathrm{\Psi }_1`$ states.

We could expect a logarithmic singularity of the specific heat $`C`$ in the point $`h=0`$ at the critical temperature $`T_c`$ which is of the order of $`𝒥`$ and there should be a peak at $`T𝒥`$ if $`h0`$. Specific heat decreases at $`T0`$ as $`e^{(3𝒥+|h|)/T}`$. So we don’t get low-temperature behavior $`CT^2`$ obtained in experiments Ramirez et al. (2000). It should be noted that such a law should exist if the energy of low-lying excitations $`ϵ_𝐪`$ with wave vector $`𝐪`$ at $`q1`$ has the form $`ϵ_𝐪=cq^2+\mathrm{\Delta }`$. Within the first order of perturbation theory considered in this paper interaction between stars is described by the Hamiltonian Eq. (8) of Ising ferromagnet in magnetic field which doesn’t imply such a behavior of the low-energy spectrum. But the further orders could give some kind of anisotropy in Eq. (8) which leads to the necessary picture. This point will be considered in detail elsewhere.

It is appropriate to mention here a recent experiment on $`Cu_3V_2O_7(OH)_22H_2O`$ Hiroi et al.  which is the only candidate for spin-1/2 Kagomé material by now. In spite of strong exchange $`J_1100`$ K in this compound, there is no regime obtained for KAF with the larger values of spins has been achieved up to the temperature $`1.8`$ K. In this respect we point here on a small scale of the dynamics in spin-1/2 KAF. According to our results the representative temperature is of the order of $`0.01J_1`$, so the region $`T1`$ K should be attained for this material.

In conclusion, we present a new insight of low-energy physics of spin 1/2 Kagomé antiferromagnet (KAF). The lattice can be presented as a set of stars which are arranged in a triangular lattice and contain 12 spins (see Fig. 1). Each star has two degenerate singlet ground states with different symmetry. It is shown that interaction between the stars leads to the band of singlet excitations and can be considered as a perturbation in the low-energy sector. We demonstrate the existence of a long range order in KAF on the triangular star lattice which is generated by singlets and can be detected in particular in experiments on inelastic neutron scattering. This physical picture should be relevant also for KAFs with larger spin values.

This work was supported by Russian State Program ”Collective and Quantum Effects in Condensed Matter”, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grants No. 00-02-16873, 00-15-96814) and Russian State Program ”Quantum Macrophysics”.