text:
# Unlike Particle Correlations and the Strange Quark Matter Distillation Process

## I Motivation

The possibility to create strangelets or droplets of metastable cold strange quark matter in ultra-relativistic collisions has been proposed and studied by several authors . The existence of such exotic states, as well as metastable exotic multi-strange baryonic objects (MEMO’s), has fundamental importance in cosmological models and in the underlying description of strong interactions. Several experiments are being carried out at the Brookhaven AGS (E864, E878) and the CERN SPS (NA52), which look for strangelet production (searching for small $`Z/A`$ ratios) .

Among the different theoretical approaches , a mechanism of separation of strangeness from anti-strangeness (distillation process) has been proposed  during hadronization of a system at finite baryon densities. This scenario, which assumes a first order phase transition, predicts a relative time delay between the production of strange and anti-strange particles. In the present paper, we propose to search for this delay with the help of the novel correlation method proposed in . It exploits the sensitivity of the directional dependence of the correlation function of two non-identical particles to the time order of their emission. This new technique can allow for the study of the transient strange quark matter state even if it decays on strong interaction time scales .

A different method, exploiting $`K_s^0K_s^0`$ correlations, also allowing for a study of the relative delays (but not their sign) in $`K`$ and $`\overline{K}`$ emission was proposed in . It is based on the fact that the $`K_s^0K_s^0`$ system, due to the positive CP parity of $`K_s^0`$, triggers out the symmetric combination of the $`K^0\overline{K}^0`$ states, thus leading to the familiar Bose–Einstein correlation pattern . This pattern, contrary to the case of non interacting identical bosons, is however substantially modified by the effect of the strong final state interactions .

Here we will use the general method of  to study the impact of the time delays on the correlations in $`K^+K^{}`$ pairs. The choice of this system, similar to the case of neutral kaons, apart from the possibility to determine the signs of the time delays, has the advantage of weaker distortions caused by the resonance production (more than 50% of kaons are predicted to originate from direct emission ), as compared to pions, while the experimental feasibility is better than in the case of neutral kaons.

## II The mixed phase thermodynamical approach

The dynamical evolution of the mixed phase consisting of a quark gluon plasma and hadronic gas will be described in a two-phase model which takes into account equilibrium as well as non-equilibrium features .

Within this model, two main assumptions are made. Firstly, the QGP is surrounded by a layer of hadron gas and equilibrium ( described by Gibbs conditions) is maintained during the evolution. Secondly, non-equilibrium evaporation is incorporated by a time dependent emission of hadrons from the surface of the hadronic fireball. Within this model, it is possible to follow the evolution of mass, entropy and strangeness fraction $`f_s`$ of the system and extract relative yields of particles which compare reasonably well with experimental data .

One specific feature of these calculations is the prediction that the system quickly enters the strangeness sector leaving the usual $`\mu _\mathrm{q}T`$ plane of the phase diagram. While the net-baryon number $`A_B`$ decreases during the hadronization process, the s quark chemical potential $`\mu _\mathrm{s}`$ increases from $`\mu _\mathrm{s}=0\mathrm{MeV}`$ (for $`f_s^{\mathrm{ini}}=0`$ if we start with a pure u,d quark phase) to several tens of MeV. Consequently, the strangeness fraction $`f_s=(N_sN_{\overline{s}})/A_{\mathrm{tot}}`$ increases. This is the so-called ”distillation process”  which can result in the formation of stable or metastable blobs of strange matter in the case of low bag model constants $`B^{1/4}<180\mathrm{MeV}`$. (In this case, a cooling of the system is predicted.) Strange and anti-strange quarks, produced in equal amount in the hot plasma, do not hadronize at the same time. Because of the excess of massless (u and d) quarks (as compared to their anti-quarks) in the case of a baryon rich plasma, the hadronization of $`K^+`$ and $`K^0`$ (containing $`\overline{s}`$ quarks) will be favored preferentially to $`K^{}`$ and $`\overline{K}_0`$ ( containing s quarks). The evaporation from the surface of the hadron gas, which is rich of anti-strangeness, carries away $`K^+`$, $`K^0`$,… thus charging up the remaining mixed system with net positive strangeness. Fig.1 shows, for two rather different bag constants, the time evolution  of the baryon number $`A`$, the strangeness fraction $`f_s`$ and the temperature $`T`$ for initial entropy $`S/A_{\mathrm{ini}}=10,45`$ and $`f_s=0`$. Another prediction of interest is the hadronic freeze-out time. Strange and antistrange hadrons are not emitted at the same time since the hadron densities in the outer layer are dictated by the strongly time dependent chemical potentials and the time dependent temperature . One should also notice that the difference between $`K^+N`$ and $`K^{}N`$ cross sections in a baryon rich gas will slow down the diffusion of negative strangeness (s), thus leading to an additional creation of time differences .

In the present work, this time separation characterizes the transient existence of the plasma. In the following, we will show that it can be used to search for the distillation process by using correlation techniques of unlike particle pairs .

## III Unequal particle Correlations: Time-ordering Sensitivity

Particle correlations at small relative momentum are mainly driven by strong and Coulomb final state interactions (in the case of unlike particle pairs).

At high bombarding energies, this effect has been often treated with a well known size-independent Coulomb correction factor. Contrary, at low energies, the Coulomb effect becomes the main tool for the study of this evolution due to larger time sequence of emission.

Unlike particle correlations have been used experimentally and theoretically for more than 15 years , particularly for the study of heavy ion collision mechanisms around the Fermi energy . Particularly, evidence for three-body Coulomb effects on two-particle correlations was observed in  and taken into account to describe a variety of two-particle correlation patterns using classical trajectory calculations  or a complete three-body quantum approach  in the adiabatic limit. The sensitivity of unlike particle correlations to the order of particle emission was pointed out and studied using both quantum  and classical trajectory  approaches. In the framework of the former one and under the assumption of sufficiently small density in phase space, the two–particle correlation function at a given relative c.m.s. momentum $`\stackrel{}{q}=2\stackrel{}{k}`$ is determined by the modulus squared of the two–particle amplitude averaged over the relative c.m.s. coordinates $`\stackrel{}{r}^{}`$ of the emission points. The sensitivity of the correlation function to the time delays, or generally to the space-time asymmetries in particle production, appears due to the dependence of the two-particle amplitude on the scalar product $`\stackrel{}{k}\stackrel{}{r}^{}`$. In particular, in the limit of large relative emission times $`t=t_1t_2`$, $`v|t|r`$, the Lorentz transformation from the source rest frame to the two-particle c.m.s ($`v`$ and $`\gamma `$ are the pair velocity and Lorentz factor):

$$r_L^{}=\gamma (r_Lvt),r_T^{}=r_T,$$
(1)
indicates that the vector $`\stackrel{}{r}^{}\gamma \stackrel{}{v}t`$ is only slightly modified by averaging over the spatial location of the emission points in the rest frame of the source. So the vector $`\stackrel{}{r}^{}`$ is nearly parallel or antiparallel to the pair velocity $`\stackrel{}{v}`$, depending on the sign of the time difference $`t`$. The dependence of the amplitude on $`\stackrel{}{k}\stackrel{}{r}^{}`$ is thus transformed into the dependence of the correlation function on $`\stackrel{}{k}\stackrel{}{v}\gamma t`$. Therefore, the sensitivity to the sign of the time difference $`t`$ is due to the odd part, in $`\stackrel{}{k}\stackrel{}{v}`$, of the correlation function. The mean relative emission time, including its sign, can be determined by comparing the correlation functions $`R^+`$ and $`R^{}`$ corresponding to $`\stackrel{}{k}\stackrel{}{v}>0`$ and $`<0`$ . Noting that for particles of equal masses the sign of $`\stackrel{}{k}\stackrel{}{v}`$ coincides with the sign of the velocity difference $`v_1v_2`$, we can see the simple classical meaning of the above selection. It corresponds to the intuitive expectation of different particle interaction in the case when the faster particle is emitted earlier as compared to the case of its later emission.

For charged particles characterized by a large Bohr radius, $`|a|r^{},|\mathrm{Re}f|`$ ($`f`$ is the amplitude due to the strong interaction), the ratio $`(1+R^+)/(1+R^{})`$ at very small $`q`$ takes on a simple analytical form :

$$(1+R^+)/(1+R^{})1+2r_L^{}/a12\gamma vt/a,$$
(2)
where the arrow indicates the limit $`v|t|r`$. Thus, for $`K^+K^{}`$-system ($`a=111`$ fm), each fm in the asymmetry $`r_L^{}`$ or $`\gamma vt`$ transforms in a 2$`\%`$ change of the $`(1+R^+)/(1+R^{})`$ ratio at $`q0`$. The correlation functions $`R^+`$ and $`R^{}`$ as predicted in  well agree with the proton–deuteron correlation functions measured in low energy nuclear collisions studied at GANIL . As proposed in , this technique can be extended for a study of the emission time differences between any kinds of interacting unlike particles.

In preliminary studies using simple event generators, it has been demonstrated  that $`K^+K^{}`$ pairs with mean emission time differences as small as $`\pm 5\mathrm{fm}/\mathrm{c}`$ can give rise to observable differences between $`R^+`$ and $`R^{}`$ correlation functions. It has been also found that most of the effect at $`q<10\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}`$ originates from the Coulomb interaction between the two kaons and that, in full correspondence with Eq. (2), the later (on the average) emission of $`K^{}`$’s is associated with the $`(1+R^+)/(1+R^{})`$ ratio less than unity.

In this paper, we will use this method in conjunction with the dynamical two phase description (see previous section) in order to quantitatively demonstrate its sensitivity to the predicted delays between the $`K^+`$ and $`K^{}`$ emission related to the production of a transient strange quark matter state.

Three sets of parameters  have been chosen:
set 1 $`\&`$ 2 (representing Au+Au at AGS energies ):
initial mass $`A=394`$, entropy per baryon $`S/A=10`$, initial net strangeness $`f_s=0`$;
set 1: $`B^{1/4}=160\mathrm{MeV}`$, strangelets (albeit metastable) are formed .
set 2: $`B^{1/4}=235\mathrm{MeV}`$, strangelets are not distilled . They are not (meta-)stable.
set 3 ( representing S+Au at SPS energies ):
bag model constant $`B^{1/4}=235\mathrm{MeV}`$, initial mass $`A=100`$, entropy per baryon $`S/A=45`$, initial net strangeness $`f_s=0`$.

In the case of the low bag constant ($`B^{1/4}=160\mathrm{MeV}`$) - set 1 - a cooling of the system is predicted leading to rather long kaon emission times. In the early stage mainly $`K^+`$’s are emitted (see Fig. 1, l.h.s. column) so that a cold strangelet emerges in a few tens fm/c. According to Eqs. (1), (2) and the corresponding discussion, the later emission of $`K^{}`$’s should lead to the correlation function ratio $`(1+R^+)/(1+R^{})`$ less than unity provided that the asymmetry $`r_L^{}`$ in $`K^+K^{}`$ c.m.s. is dominated by the time asymmetry term $`vt`$. As seen from table 1 and Fig. 2 this is indeed the case: the spatial asymmetry term $`r_L`$ contributes by less than $`10\%`$ (in the same direction); the predicted value of the deviation of the correlation function ratio from unity of $`26\%`$ at $`q0`$ is in good agreement with the intercept value of the calculated ratio curve with the ordinate axis. Also, the deviation from unity remains important and statistically meaningful up to the region $`q30\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}`$. Thus, in spite of experimental difficulties to measure correlations down to a few $`\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}`$, the signal proposed for consideration is accessible to usual correlation measurements. Since for various two-particle systems produced in the mid-rapidity region, the ordinary dynamical mechanisms lead to the intercept values deviating from unity by less than $`10\%`$ , we can consider the eventual observation of a large negative asymmetry in the $`K^+K^{}`$ correlation function ratio as a signal of the strangelet formation.

In the case of the high bag constant ($`B^{1/4}=235\mathrm{MeV}`$) - set 2 and 3 - the system heats up slightly. This results in a fast hadronization  and, subsequently, in a small difference between the $`K^+`$ and $`K^{}`$ emission times  (see the middle and r.h.s. columns in Fig. 1). Similar to the previous case the $`K^+`$’s are emitted earlier than $`K^{}`$’s. Also the asymmetry $`r_L^{}`$ is dominated by the time asymmetry term $`vt`$, the spatial one, $`r_L`$, contributing by about $`25\%`$ in the same direction (see table 1, rows 2 and 3). However, the asymmetry effect is now much weaker (Fig.2): the predicted intercepts with the ordinate axis of the correlation function ratio deviate from unity by $`4.7\%`$ and $`2.3\%`$ for sets 2 and 3, respectively.

Clearly, in this case, such a relatively weak asymmetry effect cannot be considered as a signal of the strangeness distillation without detailed studies of the impact of the ordinary mechanisms (rescattering effects, for example).

Regarding the width of the effect seen in the correlation function ratios (Fig. 2), it decreases with the increasing $`r^{}`$ (see table 1) in correspondence with the narrowing of the correlation effect itself. Thus, for set 1 ($`r^{}18\mathrm{fm}`$) the effect rapidly vanishes with increasing $`q`$ and extends up to about $`30\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}`$ only. For sets 2 and 3 ($`r^{}6\mathrm{fm}`$ in both cases) the deviation from unity is softer in the same range of $`q`$ values and extends up to about $`60\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}`$.

## IV Conclusions

We have presented a novel method which can be applied to characterize the possible existence of a strange quark matter distillation process in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions. The method is based on the predictions  for unequal particle correlations and exploits the predicted properties of the transient, strange quark matter state , even if it decays on strong interaction time scales. Using the description of this strangeness distillation process by a dynamical evolution model for the mixed QGP-hadronic phase, we have quantitatively demonstrated the sensitivity to the bag constant correlated to the stability of the quark matter possibly encountered in available experimental situations.

For the lower bag constant case a strong and sharp negative asymmetry effect is predicted in the correlation function ratio, thus offering a clear signal of the predicted strangeness distillation process provided the experimental resolution and statistics are sufficient to measure the ratio down to about $`10\mathrm{MeV}/\mathrm{c}`$. Weaker though wider signals are predicted for the higher bag constant hypothesis. In this case the competition with other collision mechanisms generating the asymmetry is possible. These mechanisms, including the expansion of the hadronic system, are currently under investigation .

Finally,we think that the unlike particle correlation technique may offer a very valuable tool to disentangle between different and presently debated scenarios for the phase transition in QCD matter at finite net baryon density.

## V Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank B. Erazmus, L. Martin, D. Nouais, C. Roy, and A.Dumitru for useful discussions and/or for providing numerical programs. D. A. is pleased to thank the Institut für Theoretische Physik at the University of Frankfurt for invitation and kind hospitality.

## References

| set | $`vt`$ (fm) | $`r_L`$ (fm) | $`r_L^{}`$ (fm) | $`r^{}`$ (fm) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | -10.9 | 1.1 | 14.3 | 17.5 |
| 2 | -1.4 | 0.5 | 2.6 | 5.5 |
| 3 | -0.7 | 0.2 | 1.3 | 6.3 |

Fig.2


format: text

text:
# Instantons and ⟨𝐴²⟩ Condensate

## I Introduction

Lattice calculations of the gluon propagator and three-point Green function in the Landau gauge indicate that the expected perturbative behaviour at large momentum $`p`$ has to be corrected by a $`O(1/p^2)`$ contribution sizeable up to 10 GeV . An understanding of this contribution as the effect of an $`A^2A_\mu ^aA_a^\mu `$ condensate (in the Landau gauge $`A^2`$ is the only mass dimension-two operator liable to have a v.e.v.) has been gained by verifying that two independent Green functions could be described by the perturbative contribution corrected by the effect of one common value of $`<A_{\mathrm{OPE}}^2>`$, as expected from OPE. The physical origin of this condensate is an important question, possibly involving the non-trivial topology of the QCD vacuum. In particular, instantons provide an interesting insight into a wide range of low energy QCD properties ( and refs therein). They have been put into evidence on the lattice using different cooling procedures. In this letter we claim that instantons provide for $`<A^2>`$ a value close to what is needed for the OPE fit to Green functions.

We propose a method to identify instantons from the cooled gauge configuration, count them and measure their radii; we also check that these results are compatible with the instanton number deduced from the two-point correlation function of an instanton. We then estimate $`<A_{\mathrm{inst}}^2>`$, the contribution of the instantons to $`<A^2>`$ in cooled configurations, extrapolate back to the thermalised configurations (zero cooling sweeps) and finally, compare the outcome with the OPE estimate.

## II Cooling and instanton counting by shape recognition

### A cooling

In order to study the influence of the underlying classical properties of a given lattice configuration, the first step will be to isolate these structures from UV modes. The method we use is due to Teper ; it consists in replacing each link by a unitary matrix proportional to the staple. A cooling sweep is performed after replacing all the links of the lattice. This procedure introduces largely discussed biases, such as UV instanton disappearance and instanton–anti-instanton pair annihilations, that increase with the number of cooling sweeps; alternative cooling methods have been proposed (see for example  and refs. therein) to cure these diseases. We will try to reduce them by identifying the instantons after a few cooling sweeps and extrapolating back to the thermalised gauge configuration.

### B Instantons

Instantons (anti-instantons) are classical solutions  of the equations of motion. We work in the Landau gauge which is defined on the lattice by minimizing $`_xA_\mu (x)^2`$. For an instanton solution this prescription leads to the singular Landau gauge, where the gauge field is

$`A_\mu ^{(I)a}={\displaystyle \frac{2\overline{\eta }_{\mu \nu }^ax_\nu \rho ^2}{x^2\left(x^2+\rho ^2\right)}},`$ (1)
$`\rho `$ being the instanton radius. The instanton has been chosen centered at the origin with a conventional color orientation. These solutions have $`Q=\pm 1`$ topological charge,

$`Q{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{32\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle d^4xF_a^{\mu \nu }\stackrel{~}{F}_{\mu \nu }^a}=\pm {\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{32\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle d^4xF_a^{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }^a},`$ (2)
where $`\stackrel{~}{F}_{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{2}ϵ_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }F^{\rho \sigma }`$. From eq. (1) the topological charge density is:

$`Q_\rho (x)=\pm {\displaystyle \frac{6}{\pi ^2\rho ^4}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\rho ^2}{x^2+\rho ^2}}\right)^4,`$ (3)
On the lattice, the topological charge density will be computed as

$`Q_{\mathrm{latt}}(x)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2^9\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\pm 1}{\overset{\pm 4}{}}}\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }Tr[\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }(x)\mathrm{\Pi }_{\rho \sigma }(x)],`$ (4)
with $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }(x)=U_\mu (x)U_\nu (x+\mu \widehat{a})U_\mu ^{}(x+\mu \widehat{a}+\nu \widehat{a})U_\nu ^{}(x+\nu \widehat{a})`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{ϵ}_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }`$ the antisymmetric tensor, with an extra minus sign for each negative index.

### C identification of instantons

A common belief is that an instanton liquid gives a fair description of important features of the QCD vacuum. Along this line we will try a desciption of our cooled gauge configuration as an ensemble of non-interacting instantons with random positions and color orientations. We hence also neglect the interaction-induced instanton deformations and correlations. Although the instanton ensemble for the QCD vacuum cannot be considered as a dilute gas , this crude assumption allows a qualitatively reasonable picture, especially near the instanton center.

Many enlightening works have studied the instanton properties from lattice gauge configurations***A detailed comparison of our results to their’s will appear in a forthcoming extensive work., among which . As for us, we start by searching regions where the topological charge density looks like that of Eq.(3). Starting from each local maximum or minimum of $`Q_{\mathrm{latt}}(x)`$ we integrate over all neighbouring points with $`|Q_{\mathrm{latt}}(x)|\alpha |Q_{\mathrm{latt}}(x_{max})|`$, for different values of $`\alpha `$ ranging from $`0.8`$ to $`0.4`$. A local extremum is accepted to be an (anti-)instanton if the ratio $`ϵ`$ between the lattice integral and its theoretical counterpart, $`Q_\rho (x)`$,

$`ϵ=\left(13\alpha ^{1/2}+2\alpha ^{3/4}\right)^1{\displaystyle _{x/|Q(x)|\alpha |Q(0)|}}d^4xQ_{\mathrm{latt}}(x)`$ (5)
shows a plateau when $`\alpha `$ is varied. Indeed for a theoretical (anti-)instanton $`ϵ=1`$ ($`ϵ=1`$) for any $`\alpha [0,1]`$. As a cross-check of self-duality, this instanton shape recognition (ISR) procedure is applied on the lattice to both expressions for $`Q`$ introduced in eq. (2).

### D Instanton numbers and radii

The ISR method resolves the semiclassical structure on the lattice with only $`5`$ cooling sweeps. This early recognition reduces the possible cooling-induced bias.

Whenever this method succeeds, we measure the radius of the accepted instanton in two separate ways: from the maximum value of $`Q`$, written $`Q_{\mathrm{latt}}^{\mathrm{max}}`$, at the center of the instanton, and from the number $`N_\alpha `$ of lattice points in the volume $`_{x/|Q(x)|\alpha |Q(0)|}d^4x`$. We find:

$`\rho /a=\sqrt[4]{{\displaystyle \frac{6}{\pi ^2Q_{\mathrm{latt}}^{\mathrm{max}}}}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\alpha ^{1/4}1}}}\sqrt[4]{{\displaystyle \frac{2N_\alpha }{\pi ^2}}},`$ (6)
These two measures of the radius agree within $`10\%`$.

## III gluon propagator

### A The instanton gauge-field correlation function

The classical gauge-field two-point correlation function verifies, for any position and color orientation,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}\overline{G}_{\mu \nu }^{aa}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8V}}{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}\left(A_\mu ^{(I)a}(k)A_\nu ^{(I)a}(k)\right)=\overline{G}^{(2)}(k^2)\left(\delta _{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{k_\mu k_\nu }{k^2}}\right),`$ (7)
where $`V`$ is the volume in the euclidean four-dimensional space and $`A_\mu ^{(I)a}(k)`$ is the Fourier Transform of Eq.(1). The resulting scalar form factor is:

$`\overline{G}^{(2)}(k^2)={\displaystyle \frac{32\pi ^4}{Vk^6}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{(k\rho )^2}{2}}K_2(k\rho )\right)^2,`$ (8)
$`K_2`$ being a Bessel function . Eq. (8) equally applies to instantons and anti-instantonsA similar analysis is being parallelly performed, in other context, by Broniowski and Dorokhov.

In a perfect gas approximation for an ensemble of $`n_I`$ ($`n_A`$) (anti-)instantons of radius $`\rho `$, the classical gauge-field correlation function is simply given by Eq.(8) times the number of instantons and anti-instantons, $`n_I+n_A`$. This correlation function is the contribution of the background field to the gluon propagator. We expect this formula to describe the behaviour of the lattice gluon propagator once the effect of quantum UV fluctuations is removed by the cooling procedure . The effect of instanton interactions is known  to modify the instanton shape far from its center, in the IR region. But the large $`k^2`$ behaviour should be appropriately given by Eq.(8) i.e. $`1/k^6`$. This is shown in Fig.1.a for one generic lattice gauge field configuration.

The theoretical lines in that plot We multiply by $`k^2`$ to compute a dimensionless object and perform the matching. are generated by Eq.(8) using the average radius $`\rho `$ and $`n_I+n_A`$ computed from the ISR method. Note that the matching improves with the number of cooling sweeps. This agrees with the expectation that decreasing the instanton density reduces the instanton deformation and that quantum fluctuations are damped by cooling. Reversely, if we know the average radius from the ISR method, we can compute $`n_I+n_A`$ from the fit to the measured propagator.

### B The hard gluon propagator

Let us now consider a hard gluon of momentum $`p_\mu `$ propagating in an instanton gas background. The gluon interacts with the instanton gauge field. This can be computed with Feynman graphs and it is easy to see that when the instanton modes $`k_\mu `$ verifies $`k_\mu 1/\rho p_\mu `$, the dominant contribution is an $`O(1/p^2)`$ correction to the perturbative gluon. This correction is equal to the standard OPE Wilson coefficient  times $`<A_{\mathrm{inst}}^2(0)>1/Vd^4x\left(A^{(I)}\right)^2(x)`$. We will now proceed to estimate this instanton-induced condensate.

## IV $`<A^2>`$ condensate

### A $`<A^2>`$ in instantons

From Eq.(1) we get

$`<A_{\mathrm{inst}}^2(n_c)>{\displaystyle \frac{n_I+n_A}{V}}{\displaystyle d^4x\underset{\mu ,a}{}A_\mu ^{(I)a}A_\mu ^{(I)a}}=12\pi ^2\rho ^2{\displaystyle \frac{n_I+n_A}{V}}.`$ (9)
where $`\rho `$ is the average instanton radius in the considered cooled configuration and $`n_c`$ is the number of cooling sweeps.

We use an ensemble of 10 independent gauge configurations§§§Considering the present size of our systematic uncertainties we did not consider it worthwhile to increase further the statistics. at $`\beta =6.0`$ on a $`24^4`$ lattice. Each configuration has been cooled and after 5,7,10,15,30 and 100 cooling sweeps transformed into the Landau gauge. Using the ISR method on each gauge configuration, we obtain the results of Tab.I. In this table we also present the number of (anti-)instantons and the corresponding value for $`<A^2(n_c)>`$ computed by a Correlation Function Fit (CFF) i.e. a fit of the lattice propagators to the instanton correlation function, Eq.(8). The CFF method is expected to be affected differently from the ISR method by systematic uncertainties: instanton interactions, deformations and quantum fluctuations (as we can see in Fig.1.a, at low momentum), and we therefore consider as quite encouraging the qualitative agreement - becoming quantitative at large $`n_c`$ \- between ISR and CFF results. We have, for simplicity, translated our lattice results into physical units using, for all values of $`n_c`$, the $`n_c=0`$ inverse lattice spacing, $`a^1(n_c=0)=1.996`$ GeV (at $`\beta =6.0`$). This simple recipe overlooks the effect of cooling on the lattice spacing (see ref.  and refs. therein) but this simplification becomes harmless after extrapolating back our results to $`n_c=0`$.

### B $`<A_{\mathrm{inst}}^2(n_c)>`$ at zero cooling.

The instanton number depends on the number of cooling sweeps. This result may imply that the cooling procedure destroys not only quantum UV fluctuations but something else from the semiclassical background of gauge fields. To lessen this problem we take advantage of the early recognition of the instanton content in a gauge configuration ensured by the ISR method and perform an extrapolation  to $`n_c=0`$ of the ISR results for $`<A_{\mathrm{inst}}^2(n_c)>`$ in the table. We then obtain (see fig.1.b):

$`<A_{\mathrm{inst}}^2(n_c=0)>=1.76(23)\mathrm{GeV}^2.`$ (10)
We have used a form $`a/(b+n_c)`$ to fit and extrapolate. We have also varied a little this functional form to check the stability of the extrapolation. We take this result as indicative of the non-perturbative instanton contribution to the $`<A^2>`$ condensate. If we applied other lattice estimates of instanton gas parameters taken from the available literature to Eq.(9), the value of $`<A^{(I)^2}>`$ would range We use the parameters obtained in  for simulations on different lattices and $`\beta `$’s with a cooling improved to let scale invariant instantons solutions exist for large enough instanton sizes. We only quote anyway the results where the packing rate, $`\pi ^2/2(\rho /L)^4(n_I+n_A)`$, is as much as 1, since our method to estimate $`<A_{\mathrm{inst}}^2(n_c)>`$ assumes limited overlap between instantons. from 1 to 2 GeV2. On the other hand, parameters from instanton liquid based phenomenology yield estimates of the order of 0.5 GeV2. As the quoted error in Eq.(10) is only statistical, this last range somehow estimates a certain systematic uncertainty.

### C Comparison with $`<A^2>`$ from OPE.

Our instanton estimate of $`A^2`$ is a semiclassical one, deprived of the necessary UV fluctuations, and therefore not directly comparable with  $`A_{\mathrm{OPE}}^2(10\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})=2.4(5)`$GeV2. There is of course no exact recipe to compare both estimates, since the separation between the semiclassical non perturbative domain and the perturbative one cannot be exact. We may appeal to the fact that at the renormalisation point $`\mu `$, the radiative corrections are minimised; therefore a semiclassical estimate must best correspond to $`A_{\mathrm{OPE}}^2`$ at some reasonable $`\mu `$. In the example of $`\varphi ^2`$ vacuum expectation in the spontaneously broken $`\varphi ^4`$ model given in , one finds indeed that it equals the classical estimate for $`\mu `$ around the spontaneously generated mass. In our problem, one could guess that the corresponding scale should typically be around $`1/\rho 0.7`$ GeV, or some gluonic mass, a very low scale anyway. We cannot run $`A_{\mathrm{OPE}}^2(10\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})`$ down to such a low scale ,

$`A_{R,\mu }^2=A_{R,\mu _0}^2\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{35}{44}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{\mu _0}}/\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{MOM}}}}\right).`$ (11)
we therefore stop arbitrarily $`\mu 2.6`$ GeV, where the OPE corrected perturbative running of the Green functions fails to correctly describe their behaviour. This scale of 2.6 GeV turns out to be of the same order as the critical mass for the gluon propagator. At this scale, we obtain:

$`<A_{\mathrm{OPE}}^2(2.6\mathrm{GeV})>=1.4(3)(3)\mathrm{GeV}^2,`$ (12)
where the first quoted error just propagates the uncertainty from the OPE determination of $`<A^2>`$ and the second one takes into account, in the way proposed in ref. , higher ordersWe re-write Eq.(11) in terms of the coupling constant renormalised in other schemes, such as $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$. in $`\alpha _s`$ for running.

## V Discussion and conclusions

We are aware that our method of comparison of $`<A_{\mathrm{inst}}^2(n_c=0)>`$ and $`<A_{\mathrm{OPE}}^2>`$ suffers from a lot of arbitrariness and approximations (such as the perfect gas approximation, possible errors in the instanton identification, the uncertainty in the extrapolation to zero cooling sweeps, etc.). We have taken care to crosscheck our estimates by comparing different methods at each step of the computation, in particular the ISR and CFF (see Fig.1.a and Tab. I). A comparison with direct “measurements” of the $`A^2`$ condensate from cooled lattice configurations could be thought as an additional crosscheck. Qualitative agreement is found for a large enough number of cooling sweeps, but this agreement is manifestly destroyed by UV fluctuations already for $`n_c30`$. Of course, by using ISR and instanton gas approximation we sharply separate UV fluctuations from the semiclassical background. All these imprecisions seem anyway inherent to the subject.

With this in mind, we nevertheless take the fair agreement between Eqs. (10) and (12) as a convincing indication that the $`A^2`$ condensate receives a significant instantonic contribution. In other words, the instanton liquid picture might yield the explanation for the $`1/p^2`$ corrections to the perturbative behaviour of Green functions computed with thermalised configurations on the lattice.

## Acknowledgements.

These calculations were performed on the Orsay APEmille purchased thanks to a funding from the Ministère de l’Education Nationale and the CNRS. We are indebted to Bartolome Alles, Carlos Pena and Michele Pepe for illuminating discussions. A. D. acknowledges the M.U.R.S.T. for financial support through Decreto 1833/2001 (short term visit programme), F. S. acknowledges the Fundación Cámara for financial support. A.D. wishes to thank the LPT-Orsay for its warm hospitality. This work was supported in part by the European Union Human Potential Program under contract HPRN-CT-2000-00145, Hadrons/Lattice QCD.


text:
# Periodic orbit quantization of chaotic systems with strong pruning

## 1 Introduction

The question as to the connection between quantum mechanics and classical dynamics lies at the heart of physics, and therefore has attracted continual attention for several decades. A milestone for understanding this relation in chaotic systems was Gutzwiller’s trace formula , which provided the semiclassical approximation to the quantum density of states in terms of a sum over all periodic orbits of the corresponding classical system. However, it is a well known, and fundamental, problem of the trace formula that it does not normally converge in the physical energy domain, mainly as a consequence of the rapid proliferation of periodic orbits with growing period. Various techniques have been designed to overcome this problem, though most of them rely on special properties of the individual systems in point, such as ergodicity and the existence of a complete symbolic dynamics . As an alternative, the method of harmonic inversion has been developed and proven  in recent years to be universal in scope as regards the extraction of semiclassical eigenvalues from trace formulae, in the sense that (1) it can be applied to both chaotic and regular systems and (2) does not require any specific properties of the system.

It is the purpose of this Letter to show that harmonic inversion also provides a key to solving the problem of semiclassical quantization of systems with symbolic dynamics that exhibit strong pruning. As a prototype of such systems, we choose the three-disk billiard, and demonstrate that even in the particularly challenging limit of mutually touching disks the method allows us to semiclassically calculate the energy eigenvalues up to the 28th excited state with high accuracy.

The three-disk billiard system consists of three equally spaced hard disks of unit radius. Large distances $`d`$ between the centers of the disks, especially $`d=6`$, have been studied as a test case for periodic orbit quantization of chaotic systems in a number of investigations in recent years. In particular, the system has served as a model for the utility of the cycle expansion method . At large distances between the disks, the dynamics of the system is completely hyperbolic, and it is possible to uniquely label the orbits by a complete symbolic code. Also, at large distances, the basic assumption of the cycle expansion, namely, that the contributions of long periodic orbits are shadowed by contributions of corresponding combinations of short orbits, is very well fulfilled. The actions and stability coefficients of the orbits are essentially determined by the cycle length, and the number of orbits up to a given action is relatively small. The situation, however, changes completely when the disk separation is reduced: As for decreasing $`d`$ all orbits become shorter, the total number of orbits up to a given value of the action increases rapidly. Moreover, the parameters of the orbits turn out to be no longer simply determined by the cycle length, the condition of shadowing is more and more badly fulfilled, and, finally, at $`d=2.04821419`$, pruning sets in , i.e., part of the periodic orbits becomes unphysical in that they run through one of the disks, and have to be discarded, rendering the symbolic code incomplete. The number of pruned orbits grows rapidly, as the distance between the disks is further decreased. Finally, in the limiting case of touching disks, $`d=2`$, the system exhibits strong pruning, and the conditions for the convergence of the cycle expansion are no longer satisfied at all.

A remarkable first step towards semiclassical quantization of the closed three-disk system was achieved by combining the conventional cycle expansion with a functional equation . Based on periodic orbit corrections to the mean density of states, approximations to the lowest eigenvalues were obtained from a small set of periodic orbits up to cycle length $`l=3`$, for which the symbolic dynamics is still complete (including formally a zero length orbit).

It is our aim in this Letter to dispose of special additions to semiclassical quantization, like functional equations, and apply “pure” periodic orbit quantization by including longer orbits even in regions where strong pruning occurs. The method applied here to the particular example of the closed three-disk billiard will be the key for the semiclassical quantization of a large variety of other challenging systems lacking special structural information on the quantum or classical level such as the existence of a complete symbolic dynamics or the applicability of a functional equation.

## 2 Periodic orbits of the closed three-disk system

In the numerical search for periodic orbits, we can make use of a symmetry reduction characteristic of this system , i.e., periodic orbits are calculated in a fundamental domain and labeled by a binary code with the alphabet ’0’ and ’1’. In the case of touching disks, the orbits can be grouped in “channels” with the same “tail” (end letters) but increasing number of leading zeros in the symbolic code. These orbits have the same basic geometric shape but run deeper and deeper into the corner formed by two touching disks, bouncing back and forth between the two disks, until finally – with only two exceptions – the channel breaks off because the orbits become pruned. An example is shown in Fig. 1. Adding a leading zero to the code increases the action of the corresponding orbit only slightly. This means that there is a huge number of orbits with very long symbol lengths but relatively small, similar, actions.

We searched for periodic orbits of the closed three-disk system with physical length $`s<s_{\mathrm{max}}=5.0`$. The number of orbits proliferates very rapidly with increasing length. Therefore, it is impossible in practice to determine all orbits up to this length, but one has to introduce reasonable restrictions for the orbits to be included. The orbits were calculated channel by channel, starting from the shortest orbit in the channel and adding more and more leading zeros to the code. As the orbits become more unstable with increasing length of the symbolic code, the main contributions to Gutzwiller’s trace formula arise from the shortest orbits of each channel. Therefore, we stopped the calculation of orbits in a given channel when the absolute value of the larger eigenvalue $`\lambda `$ of the monodromy matrix exceeded a set value of $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}=10^9`$. Furthermore, to make the calculations feasible, the maximum number of successive zeros in the code was restricted to 20 for orbits with length $`s<3.1`$, and to 12 for orbits with $`3.1<s<5.0`$. The final set of orbits obtained by an extensive numerical periodic orbit search consists of about 5 million primitive periodic orbits, and is illustrated in Fig. 2, where each dot in the diagram marks the parameter pair $`(s,|\lambda |)`$ of a primitive periodic orbit. In the region $`s2.5`$ various channels are clearly distinguishable, a few of which are indicated by arrows.

As mentioned above, most of the channels break off because of pruning. However, the number of orbits grouped in a channel can be very large or, for the two channels labeled (C), even infinite. \[The cutoff for (C) in Fig. 2 is caused by restricting the number of successive zeros in the symbolic code as explained above.\] Note that the total number of orbits in those channels which break off because of the restriction of the number of successive zeros in the symbolic code is usually much larger than in those channels where the number of orbits is physically restricted by pruning, which means that pruning is the dominating effect for the cutoff of orbits in the various channels.

## 3 Periodic orbit quantization by harmonic inversion

The task, and challenge, now is to extract semiclassical eigenvalues in a numerically stable way from the huge set of periodic orbits depicted in Fig. 2. To this end, we resort to the harmonic inversion technique of cross-correlated periodic orbit sums , which is an extension of periodic orbit quantization by harmonic inversion introduced in . Here, we only briefly review the basic ideas and refer the reader to the literature for details. For simplicity, though without loss of generality, we focus on billiard systems, where the shape of the orbits is independent of the energy $`E=\mathrm{}^2k^2/2m`$, with $`k`$ the wave number, and the classical action of orbits reads $`S=\mathrm{}ks`$, with $`s`$ the physical length of the orbit.

The starting point is to introduce a weighted density of states in terms of $`k`$

$$\varrho _{\alpha \alpha ^{}}(k)=\frac{1}{\pi }\mathrm{Im}g_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}(k),$$
(1)
with

$$g_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}(k)=\underset{n}{}\frac{b_{\alpha n}b_{\alpha ^{}n}}{kk_n+\mathrm{i}ϵ},$$
(2)
where $`k_n`$ is the wave number eigenvalue of eigenstate $`|n`$ and

$$b_{\alpha n}=n|\widehat{A}_\alpha |n$$
(3)
are the diagonal matrix elements of a chosen set of $`N`$ linearly independent operators $`\widehat{A}_\alpha `$, $`\alpha =1,2,\mathrm{},N`$. The Fourier transform of (2) yields an $`N\times N`$ cross-correlated signal

$$C_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}(s)=\frac{1}{2\pi }_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}g_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}(k)\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}sk}dk=\mathrm{i}\underset{n}{}b_{\alpha n}b_{\alpha ^{}n}\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}k_ns}.$$
(4)
A semiclassical approximation to the cross-correlated signal (4) has been derived in . The cross-correlated periodic orbit signal reads

$$C_{\alpha \alpha ^{}}^{\mathrm{sc}}(s)=\mathrm{i}\underset{\mathrm{po}}{}\frac{a_{\alpha ,\mathrm{po}}a_{\alpha ^{},\mathrm{po}}s_{\mathrm{po}}\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\frac{\pi }{2}\mu _{\mathrm{po}}}}{r|det(M_{\mathrm{po}}1)|^{1/2}}\delta \left(ss_{\mathrm{po}}\right),$$
(5)
where $`r`$ is the repetition number counting the traversals of the primitive orbit, and $`M_{\mathrm{po}}`$ and $`\mu _{\mathrm{po}}`$ are the monodromy matrix and Maslov index of the orbit, respectively. The weight factors $`a_{\alpha ,\mathrm{po}}`$ are classical averages over the periodic orbits

$$a_{\alpha ,\mathrm{po}}=\frac{1}{s_{\mathrm{po}}}_0^{s_{\mathrm{po}}}A_\alpha (𝐪(s),𝐩(s))ds,$$
(6)
with $`A_\alpha (𝐪,𝐩)`$ the Wigner transform of the operator $`\widehat{A}_\alpha `$. Semiclassical approximations to the eigenvalues $`k_n`$ and eventually also to the diagonal matrix elements $`n|\widehat{A}_\alpha |n`$ are now obtained by adjusting the semiclassical cross-correlated periodic orbit signal (5) to the functional form of the quantum signal (4). The numerical tool for this procedure is an extension of the harmonic inversion method to the signal processing of cross-correlation functions .

The resolution of the results depends on the signal length. For a one-dimensional signal, the method requires a signal length of $`s_{\mathrm{max}}4\pi \overline{\rho }(k)`$, with $`\overline{\rho }(k)`$ the average density of states to resolve the eigenvalues . This means that all periodic orbits up to the scaled action $`s_{\mathrm{max}}`$ have to be included. The advantage of using the cross-correlation approach is based on the realization that the total amount of independent information contained in the $`N\times N`$ signal is $`N(N+1)`$ multiplied by the length of the signal, while the total number of unknowns (here $`b_{\alpha n}`$ and $`k_n`$) is $`(N+1)`$ times the total number of poles $`k_n`$. Therefore the informational content of the $`N\times N`$ signal per unknown parameter is increased (as compared to the one-dimensional signal) by roughly a factor of $`N`$, and the cross-correlation approach should lead to a significant improvement of the resolution. The technique has been successfully applied in the periodic orbit quantization of an integrable system . We will now demonstrate the power of the method in the semiclassical quantization of the (chaotic) closed three-disk system. As in Ref. , we concentrate on the quantum states with $`A_1`$ symmetry of the $`C_{3v}`$ group.

The semiclassical cross-correlation signal (5) is constructed using the set of about 5 million periodic orbits represented in Fig. 2. We first construct a one-dimensional signal ($`N=1`$) by simply choosing $`\widehat{A}_1=\mathrm{𝟏}`$, i.e., the unity operator. Fig. 3 contains the results for the eigenvalues $`k_n`$ of the closed three-disk system in terms of the corresponding energy values $`E_n=k_n^2/2`$. The uppermost spectrum is the result from harmonic inversion obtained from the one-dimensional signal of length $`s_{\mathrm{max}}=4.9`$. The spectrum in the middle shows the exact quantum results, taken from Ref. , for comparison. It can be seen that the lowest 20 eigenvalues are well reproduced by the results of the harmonic inversion of the $`1\times 1`$ signal. The major part of the small deviations is due to the error inherent in the semiclassical approximation. However, it can also be seen that the signal length is not sufficient to resolve the higher eigenvalues, with energies $`E4500`$, where the mean density of states with respect to $`k`$ (which grows $`\sqrt{E}`$) is too large.

A further increase of the signal length in an attempt to resolve more eigenvalues is clearly inhibited by the rapid proliferation of periodic orbits in this system (cf. Fig. 2). Instead, we now exploit the cross-correlation technique to significantly improve the resolution. We construct the cross-correlated periodic orbit signal (5) using a set of three independent operators, viz. the operators $`\widehat{A}_1=\mathrm{𝟏}`$ (unity), $`\widehat{A}_2=r^4`$, and $`\widehat{A}_3=L^4`$, with $`r`$ and $`L`$ the distance from the center of the billiard and the angular momentum, respectively. The bottom spectrum in Fig. 3 shows the results for the eigenvalues of the closed three-disk system obtained from the harmonic inversion of the $`3\times 3`$ set of cross-correlated periodic orbit signals. Only the converged frequencies are presented, which have been selected by the criterion that their amplitude (multiplicity) should be close to 1 and the imaginary part of the frequencies close to zero (as the eigenvalues must be real). With the cross-correlated signal, all eigenvalues up to $`E6500`$ (a total of 29 levels) can be well reproduced.

The accuracy of the semiclassical results presented in Fig. 3 may at first glance seem surprising when one recalls the fact that the set of periodic orbits (see Fig. 2) used for constructing the signal (5), although being huge, is not strictly complete. For example, the channel marked (C) in Fig. 2 was cut off by restricting the number of successive leading zeros in the symbolic code. However, the Maslov indices of adjacent orbits in that channel differ by 2, and therefore the periodic orbit amplitudes alternate in sign, which leads to approximate cancellations of terms in the periodic orbit signal. Furthermore, very unstable orbits with stability eigenvalues $`|\lambda |>\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}=10^9`$ were ignored in the analysis. By lowering the limit $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}`$ we have checked that indeed the very unstable orbits do not carry important information about the semiclassical spectrum, i.e., the results change only insignificantly. On the other hand, increasing $`\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}`$, and thus the total number of orbits used for harmonic inversion, will still slightly improve the accuracy of the semiclassical spectrum.

In conclusion, we have successfully carried out a “pure” periodic orbit quantization of a chaotic system with extremely rapid proliferation and strong pruning of orbits. We have demonstrated that harmonic inversion of cross-correlation signals is indeed a powerful method for periodic orbit quantization, allowing the numerically stable handling even of huge periodic orbit sets. It should also be stressed that the semiclassical eigenvalues were obtained without having to resort to the mean density of states, which is difficult to calculate, including all necessary correction terms, even in the case of the closed three-disk system . The present results may stimulate future work on other challenging systems without special structural information on the quantum or classical level. One example with strong pruning of the symbolic dynamics is the three-dimensional generalization of the closed three-disk billiard, i.e., a system consisting of four touching spheres at the corners of a regular tetrahedron. By contrast to the closed three-disk system this is an open system where no functional equation can be applied.

## Acknowledgments

We thank A. Wirzba for communicating to us quantum mechanical data of the closed three-disk system. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.


text:
# On the fidelity of mixed states of two qubits.

## Abstract

We consider a single copy of a mixed state of two qubits and show how its fidelity or maximal singlet fraction is related to the entanglement measures concurrence and negativity. We characterize the extreme points of the convex set of states with constant fidelity, and use this to prove tight lower and upper bounds on the fidelity for a given amount of entanglement.

The concept of fidelity BDSW96 , also called maximal singlet fraction HHH99 , is of central importance in the field of quantum information theory. It is defined as as the maximal overlap of the state with a maximally entangled state (ME)

$$F(\rho )=\underset{|\psi =\mathrm{ME}}{\mathrm{max}}\psi |\rho \psi .$$
(1)
An explicit value for the fidelity has been derived by Horodecki BHHH00 . If one considers the real $`3\times 3`$ matrix $`\stackrel{~}{R}=\mathrm{Tr}\left(\rho \sigma _i\sigma _j\right)`$ with $`\{\sigma _i,i=\mathrm{1..3}\}`$ the Pauli matrices, then

$$F(\rho )=\frac{1+\lambda _1+\lambda _2\mathrm{Sgn}(det(\stackrel{~}{R}))\lambda _3}{4}$$

with $`\{\lambda _i\}`$ the ordered singular values of $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$ and $`\mathrm{Sgn}(det(\stackrel{~}{R}))`$ the sign of the determinant of $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$.

The concept of fidelity appears in the context of entanglement distillation BBPSSW96 ; BDSW96  where it quantifies how close a state is to a maximally entangled one, and in the context of teleportation BBCJPW93  where it quantifies the quality of the teleportation that can be achieved with the given state. Due to the linearity and the convexity of the definition (1), this measure has very nice properties that make it also possible to derive upper bounds for the entanglement of distillation Ra01 .

Despite the importance of the concept of fidelity, no rigorous comparison appears to have been made before between the value of the fidelity on one side and entanglement measures on the other side. This paper aims at filling this gap and gives explicit tight lower and upper bounds of the fidelity for given concurrence Wo98  and negativity VW02 .

At first we will explicitly derive the possible range of values of the fidelity in function of its concurrence Wo98  or entanglement of formation. Next we show that the states that minimize (maximize) the fidelity for given values of the entanglement of formation are also extremal for given negativity VW02 . Following EP99 ; VADD01 , we use the following definition of negativity:

$$N(\rho )=\mathrm{max}(0,2\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}(\rho ^\mathrm{\Gamma }))$$

with $`\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}`$ the minimal eigenvalue of the partial transpose of $`\rho `$ denoted as $`\rho ^\mathrm{\Gamma }`$.

###### Theorem 1

Given a mixed state of two qubits $`\rho `$ with negativity equal to $`N`$ and concurrence equal to $`C`$, then its fidelity $`F`$ is bounded above by

$$F\frac{1+N}{2}\frac{1+C}{2}.$$

Moreover, the first inequality becomes an equality iff $`N=C`$, and this condition is equivalent to the condition that the eigenvector corresponding to the negative eigenvalue of the partial transpose of $`\rho `$ is maximally entangled.

Proof: The fidelity of a state $`\rho `$ is given by

$`\underset{U_A,U_BSU\left(2\right)}{\mathrm{max}}\mathrm{Tr}\left(\left(U_AU_B\right)|\psi \psi |\left(U_AU_B\right)^{}\rho \right)=`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\underset{U_A,U_B}{\mathrm{max}}\mathrm{Tr}\left(\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right)\left(U_AU_B^{}\right)^{}\rho ^\mathrm{\Gamma }\left(U_AU_B^{}\right)\right)`$
with $`|\psi =(|00+|11)/\sqrt{2}`$. An upper bound is readily obtained by extending the maximization over all unitaries instead of all local unitaries, and it follows that $`F\mathrm{Tr}\left(\rho ^\mathrm{\Gamma }\right)=(1+N)/2`$. Equality is achieved iff the eigenvector of $`\rho ^{T_\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ corresponding to the negative eigenvalue is maximally entangled. As shown in VADD01 , this condition is exactly equivalent to the condition for $`N`$ to reach its upper bound $`C`$, which ends the proof.

Note that the upper bound is achieved for all pure states.

A more delicate and technical reasoning is needed to obtain a tight lower bound on the fidelity. We will need the following lemma:

###### Lemma 1

Consider the density operator $`\rho `$ and the real $`3\times 3`$ matrix $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$ with coefficients $`\stackrel{~}{R}_{ij}=\mathrm{Tr}\left(\rho \sigma _i\sigma _j\right)`$ with $`1i,j3`$. Then $`\rho `$ is as a convex sum (i.e. mixture) of rank $`2`$ density operators all having exactly the same coefficients $`\stackrel{~}{R}_{ij}`$.

Proof: Consider the real $`4\times 4`$ matrix $`R`$ with coefficients $`R_{\alpha \beta }=\mathrm{Tr}\left(\rho \sigma _\alpha \sigma _\beta \right)`$, parameterized as

$$R=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& \begin{array}{ccc}x_1& x_2& x_3\end{array}\\ \begin{array}{c}y_1\\ y_2\\ y_3\end{array}& \stackrel{~}{R}\end{array}\right).$$

If $`\rho `$ is full rank, then a small perturbation on the values $`\{x_i\},\{y_i\}`$ will still yield a full rank density operator. Consider a perturbation on $`x_1^{}=x_1+ϵ`$ and the corresponding $`\rho ^{}`$. As the set of density operators is compact, there will exist a lower bound $`lb<0`$ and an upper bound $`ub>0`$ such that $`\rho ^{}`$ is positive iff $`lb<ϵ<ub`$. Call $`\rho _{lb}`$, $`\rho _{ub}`$ the rank three density operator obtained when $`ϵ=lb`$ and $`ϵ=ub`$ respectively. It is easy to see that $`\rho =(ub\rho _{lb}+lb\rho _{ub})/(lb+ub)`$, such that it is proven that a rank four density operator can always be written as a convex sum of two rank three density operators with the same corresponding $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$.
Consider now $`\rho `$ rank three and its associated ”square root” $`\rho =XX^{}`$ with $`X`$ a $`4\times 3`$ matrix. A small perturbation of the form $`\rho ^{}=\rho +ϵXQX^{}`$, with $`Q`$ an arbitrary hermitian $`3\times 3`$ matrix $`Q=_{i=1}^9q_iG_i`$ and $`G_i`$ generators of U(3), will still yield a state of rank three. Moreover, there always exists a non-trivial $`Q`$ such that $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$ is left unchanged by this perturbation. This is indeed the case if the following set of equations is fulfilled:

$$\underset{i}{}q_i\mathrm{Tr}\left(G_iX^{}(\sigma _\alpha \sigma _\beta )X\right)=0$$

for $`(\alpha ,\beta )=(0,0)`$ and $`\alpha ,\beta 1`$. It can easily be verified that this set of 10 equations only contains at most 8 independent ones irrespective of the $`4\times 3`$ matrix $`X`$ , and as $`Q`$ has nine independent parameters there always exists at least one non-trivial solution to this set of homogeneous equations. A similar reasoning as in the full rank case then implies that one can always tune $`ϵ`$ such that $`\rho `$ can be written as a convex sum of two rank two density operators with the same $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$, which concludes the proof.

This lemma is interesting if one wants to maximize a convex measure of a density operator (such as the entropy or an entanglement monotone) under the constraint that the fidelity is fixed: indeed, the fidelity is only a function of $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$, and by the previous lemma we immediately know that states with maximal entropy for given fidelity will have rank two. Note that exactly the same reasoning applies when one wants to maximize a convex measure under the constraint that the CHSH Bell-violation is fixed VW02 , as this CHSH Bell-violation is also solely a function of $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$. This is in exact correspondence with the results derived in VW02 , where it was proven that the states exhibiting the minimal amount of Bell violation for given entanglement of formation are rank 2.

We are now ready to prove a tight lower bound on the fidelity:

###### Theorem 2

Given a mixed state of two qubits $`\rho `$ with concurrence equal to $`C`$, then a tight lower bound for its fidelity $`F`$ is given by:

$$F\mathrm{max}(\frac{1+C}{4},C).$$

Proof: A direct consequence of lemma (1) is that to find states with minimal fidelity for given concurrence (i.e. maximal concurrence for given fidelity), it is sufficient to look at states of rank two. Consider therefore a rank 2 state $`\rho `$ and associated to it the real $`4\times 4`$ matrix $`R`$ with coefficients $`R_{\alpha \beta }=\mathrm{Tr}\left(\sigma _\alpha \sigma _\beta \rho \right)`$. As shown in VDD01a ; VDD02a ; VADD01 ; VW02 , if $`R`$ is multiplied right and left by proper orthochronous Lorentz transformations leaving the $`(0,0)`$-element equal to 1, then a new state is obtained with the same concurrence. Moreover the fidelity of a state $`\rho `$ is variationally defined as

$$F(\rho )=\underset{O_A,O_BSO(3)}{\mathrm{min}}\mathrm{Tr}\left(M\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& O_A\end{array}\right)R\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& O_B^T\end{array}\right)\right)$$

with $`M=\mathrm{diag}(1,1,1,1)`$ ($`M`$ is the representation of the singlet in the R-picture). The minimal fidelity for given concurrence can therefore be obtained by minimizing the following constrained cost-function over all proper orthochronous Lorentz transformations $`L_1,L_2`$:

$$K=\mathrm{Tr}\left(ML_1RL_2^T\right)\lambda \mathrm{Tr}\left(L_1RL_2^T\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right)\right).$$

Note that $`\lambda `$ is a Lagrange constraint. Without loss of generality we can assume that the lower $`3\times 3`$ block $`\stackrel{~}{R}`$ of $`R`$ is diagonal and of the form $`\stackrel{~}{R}=\mathrm{diag}(|s_1|,|s_2|,s_3)`$ with $`|s_1||s_2||s_3|`$, as this is precisely the form needed for maximizing the fidelity over all local unitary operations. The cost-function $`K`$ can be differentiated over $`L_1,L_2`$ by introducing the generators of the Lorentz group (see e.g.VW02 ), and this immediately yields the optimality conditions $`(\lambda =0,MRM=R^T)`$ or $`(\lambda =2,R=R^T)`$. Note however that the above argument breaks down in the case that $`|s_2|=s_3`$. Indeed, the fidelity cannot be differentiated in this case as for example a perturbation of $`s_3`$ of the form $`s_3^{}=s_3+ϵ`$ always leads to a perturbation of the fidelity $`F^{}=F+|ϵ|`$. In this case the conditions $`x_2=y_2,x_3=y_3`$ or $`x_2=y_2,x_3=y_3`$ vanish, and if also $`|s_1|=|s_2|=s_3`$ there are no optimality conditions on $`\{x_i,y_i\}`$ left.
Let us first treat the case with $`R`$ symmetric and $`s_1s_2|s_3|`$:

$$R=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& x_1& x_2& x_3\\ x_1& s_1& 0& 0\\ x_2& 0& s_2& 0\\ x_3& 0& 0& s_3\end{array}\right).$$

The condition that $`\rho `$ corresponding to this state is rank 2 implies that all $`3\times 3`$ minors of $`\rho `$ are equal to zero. Due to the conditions $`s_1s_2|s_3|`$, it can easily be shown that a state of rank 2 (and not of rank 1!) is obtained iff $`x_1=0=x_2`$ and $`x_3=\pm \sqrt{(1s_1)(1s_2)}`$ and $`1s_1s_2+s_3=0`$. In this case the concurrence is equal to $`C=s_2`$ and the fidelity is given by $`F=(s_1+s_2)/2`$, and the constraints become $`1s_1s_2(1s_1)/2`$ what implies that $`C1/3`$. The minimal fidelity for given concurrence occurs when $`s_1=s_2`$ and then $`C=F`$ which gives the lower bound of the theorem in the case of $`C1/3`$.
Let us now consider the case where $`R=MR^TM`$:

$$R=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& x_1& x_2& x_3\\ x_1& s_1& 0& 0\\ x_2& 0& s_2& 0\\ x_3& 0& 0& s_3\end{array}\right)$$

with again $`s_1s_2|s_3|`$. Let us first note that, due to the symmetry, $`R`$ has a Lorentz singular value decomposition VDD01a  of the form $`R=L_1\mathrm{\Sigma }\stackrel{~}{M}ML_1^TM`$ with $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ of the form $`\mathrm{diag}(|\sigma _0|,|\sigma _1|,|\sigma _2|,|\sigma _3|)`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{M}`$ of the form $`\mathrm{diag}(1,1,1,1)`$ or $`\mathrm{diag}(1,1,1,1)`$ or $`\mathrm{diag}(1,1,1,1)`$ or $`\mathrm{diag}(1,1,1,1)`$. It follows that $`\mathrm{Tr}\left(R\right)=\mathrm{Tr}\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }\stackrel{~}{M}\right)`$, and due to the ordering of the Lorentz singular values, $`\stackrel{~}{M}`$ has to be equal to the identity if $`\mathrm{Tr}\left(R\right)0`$. But $`\mathrm{Tr}\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }\right)`$ is just $`2C`$ with $`C`$ the concurrence of the state, and $`\mathrm{Tr}\left(R\right)=24F`$ with $`F`$ the fidelity of the state. Therefore it holds that $`F=(1+C)/2`$ if $`\mathrm{Tr}\left(R\right)0`$ which corresponds to the upper bound of the fidelity. Therefore only the case where $`\mathrm{Tr}\left(R\right)>0`$ has to be considered for finding lower bounds of the fidelity. The condition that the state be rank 2 (and not rank 1) immediately yields: $`x_3=0`$, $`s_1+s_2s_3=1`$ and $`s_1+s_2=x_1^2/(1s_2)+x_2^2/(1s_1)`$. If we only consider the case with $`\mathrm{Tr}\left(R\right)>0`$, it holds that $`s_3<0`$ and the inequality constraints become $`(1s_1)/2s_2(1s_1)2/3`$. The concurrence can again be calculated analytically and is given by $`C=(1s_1s_2s_3)/2`$, and it follows that $`F=(1C)/2`$. Note that the inequality constraints limit $`C`$ to be in the interval $`C\{0,1/3\}`$, and so this bound is less stringent then the one stated in the theorem.
Let us now move to the degenerate case where $`s_1>s_2=s_3`$:

$$R=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& x_1& x_2& x_3\\ y_1& s_1& 0& 0\\ y_2& 0& s_2& 0\\ y_3& 0& 0& s_2\end{array}\right).$$

As $`s_1>s_2`$, optimality requires $`x_1=\pm y_1`$. We first treat the case $`x_1=y_1`$. Defining $`\alpha =x_3/y_3`$, a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for being rank 2 is given by:

$`0`$ $`=`$ $`x_1=y_1`$
$`0`$ $`=`$ $`x_2+\alpha y_2`$
$`0`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha ^2\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{1s_1}{s_2}}+1`$
$`0`$ $`=`$ $`(x_2^2+x_3^2)\alpha s_2(1+s_1).`$
Under these conditions the concurrence can again be calculated exactly and is given by $`C=s_2`$, while the fidelity is given by $`F=(1+s_1)/4`$. Note that the above set of equations only has a solution if $`(1s_1)/2s_2`$, implying that $`C1/3`$. The fidelity will now be minimal when $`s_2=s_1`$, and then $`F=(1+C)/4`$ which is the second bound stated in the theorem.
Let us now consider the degenerate case with $`s_1>s_2=s_3`$ but $`x_1=y_1`$. The rank 2 condition implies that $`s_1+2s_2=1`$ and $`x_2=y_2`$ and $`x_3=y_3`$. Some straightforward algebra leads to the condition

$$4\frac{1s_1}{1+s_1}x_1^2+1s_1^22x_2^22x_3^2=0.$$

Taking into account the constraints, the concurrence is again given by $`C=s_2=(1s_1)/2`$ and bounded above by $`1/3`$, while the fidelity if equal to $`F=(1+s_1)/4=(1C)/2`$. This bound always exceeds the previously derived bound $`F(1+C)/4`$ for $`C1/3`$, and is therefore useless.
It only remains to consider the case where $`s_1=s_2=s_3`$:

$$R=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& x_1& x_2& x_3\\ y_1& s_1& 0& 0\\ y_2& 0& s_1& 0\\ y_3& 0& 0& s_1\end{array}\right).$$

Defining $`\alpha =x_1/y_1`$, the rank 2 constraint leads to the following set of necessary and sufficient conditions:

$`0`$ $`=`$ $`x_2\alpha y_2`$
$`0`$ $`=`$ $`x_3+\alpha y_3`$
$`0`$ $`=`$ $`s_1\alpha ^2+\alpha (1s_1)+s_1`$
$`0`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha (x_1^2+x_2^2+x_3^2)+s_1(1+s_1).`$
The inequality constraint reads $`s_11/3`$, and the concurrence can again be calculated exactly and is given by $`C=s_1`$. Therefore the fidelity of these states obeys the relation $`F=(1+C)/4`$ for $`C1/3`$, which is the sharp lower bound.

It might be interesting to note that all rank 2 states minimizing the fidelity for given concurrence are quasi-distillable HHH99 ; VDD01a  and have one separable and one entangled eigenvector. More specifically, the states minimizing the fidelity for $`C1/3`$ are, up to local unitaries, of the form

$$\rho =\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\frac{1+C}{2}& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& \frac{1C+\sqrt{12C3C^2}}{4}& \frac{C}{2}& 0\\ 0& \frac{C}{2}& \frac{1C\sqrt{12C3C^2}}{4}& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right),$$

and those for $`C1/3`$ of the form

$$\rho =\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1C& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& C/2& C/2& 0\\ 0& C/2& C/2& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right).$$

Exactly the same states also minimize the fidelity for given negativity. This leads to the following sharp bounds for the fidelity versus negativity:

$`F`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}\left(N+\sqrt{5N^2+4N}\right)`$
$`F`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{2N(N+1)}N`$
$`F`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1+N}{2}}.`$
The first condition applies when $`N(\sqrt{5}2)/3`$ and the second when $`N(\sqrt{5}2)/3`$. A plot of these bounds is given in figure (1). One observes that the difference between the lower bound and the upper bound in terms of the negativity becomes very small ($`ϵ^2/16`$) for large negativity $`N=1ϵ`$. Moreover the fidelity is always larger then $`1/2`$ if the negativity exceeds $`(\sqrt{2}1)/2`$.

In conclusion, we derived a tight upper bound for the fidelity for given value of the concurrence and fidelity, and we identified all states for which this upper bound is saturated. Next we have characterized the extreme points of the convex set of states with given fidelity, and this enabled us to derive tight lower bounds on the fidelity for given amount of entanglement.