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# Quantum imaging

## I Preamble

This article is based on the plenary talk that one of us (L.A.L.) gave at the ICSSUR Conference in Boston in June 2001.
The starting point is provided by the general topic of the spatial aspects of quantum optical fluctuations. This has been the object of several studies in the past, but only recently there has been a constant focus of attention, which is mainly due to the fact that the spatial features may open new possibilities, e.g. in the direction of parallel processing and multichannel operation by quantum optical procedures. Once realized that these studies may have interesting perspectives, it is natural to coin a new name as quantum imaging to designate this field.
This article includes an introductory part, in which we discuss few concepts that play a key role in this field, such as the intrinsic connection between quantum entanglement and squeezing, the spatial squeezing and the near field/far field duality. Next, we discuss several topics in the field of quantum imaging and illustrate recent ideas and results. The topics include

\- Detection of weak phase and amplitude objects beyond the standard quantum limit,

\- Amplification of weak optical images preserving the signal-to-noise ratio (noiseless amplification),

\- Entangled two-photon microscopy,

\- Quantum limits in the detection of small displacements and in image reconstruction,

\- Quantum lithography,

\- Quantum teleportation of optical images.

Several of the results and approaches that we will illustrate have been pursued by the participants in the European Project QUANTIM (Quantum Imaging), that started in January 2001.

## II Introduction

### A Intrinsic connection between squeezing and quantum entanglement

One might consider that squeezing is a rather old-fashioned field, whereas for entanglement one immediately thinks of such topics as quantum computing, or quantum teleportation, or cryptography, and concludes that it is a new and exciting field. However one must remark that, in the framework of the continuous variable approach, squeezing and quantum entanglement are intrinsically linked, they are basically two faces of the same phenomenon. This circumstance explains by the way why a series of meetings entitled Squeezed States and Uncertainty Relations is still gathering so many people.
In order to demonstrate this point in details, let us consider two radiation beams and the associated annihilation operators of photons $`a_1`$ and $`a_2`$, and let us focus on the simple linear transformation to another couple of beams $`b_1`$ and $`b_2`$:

$$b_1=\frac{a_1+a_2}{\sqrt{2}},b_2=\frac{a_1a_2}{\sqrt{2}}$$
(1)
This transformation can be implemented very easily. If, for example, $`a_1`$ and $`a_2`$ have the same frequency and the same polarization, it is realized by a 50/50 beam splitter. If they have the same frequency but horizontal and vertical polarization, respectively, one can use a polarizing beam splitter in which the two output beams are polarized at $`45^0`$ and $`135^0`$, respectively.
Now, the general result for transformation (1) is that

– if $`a_1`$ and $`a_2`$ are EPR (Einstein-Podolski-Rosen ) entangled beams with respect to quadrature components, then beams $`b_1`$ and $`b_2`$ are squeezed with respect to two orthogonal quadrature components and, vice versa,

– if $`a_1`$ and $`a_2`$ are squeezed beams with respect to two orthogonal quadrature components, $`b_1`$ and $`b_2`$ are EPR entangled beams with respect to quadrature components.

To prove this result, let us consider the interaction Hamiltonian for parametric down-conversion in the nondegenerate configuration and in the approximation of classical undepleted pump

$$H=ig\alpha \left(a_1^{}a_2^{}a_1a_2\right)$$
(2)
where $`g`$ is the coupling constant and $`\alpha `$ is the classical amplitude of the pump beam. As it is well known, in the nondegenerate configuration the two beams $`a_1`$ and $`a_2`$ are entangled both with respect to photon number and with respect to two quadrature components . The entanglement can be explicitly shown by applying the time evolution operator corresponding to the Hamiltonian (2) to the uncorrelated vacuum state, for an interaction time $`\tau _{int}`$

$`\mathrm{e}^{\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}H\tau _{int}}|0_1|0_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}c_n|n_1|n_2`$ (3)
$`c_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\left[\mathrm{tanh}\left(g\tau _{int}/\mathrm{}\right)\right]^n}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(g\tau _{int}/\mathrm{}\right)}}.`$ (4)
Clearly the state described by Eq.(4) is not factorizable, and implies perfect correlation between the photon number in the two beams.

If we now introduce into Eq. (2) the expression of $`a_1`$ and $`a_2`$ as a function of $`b_1`$ and $`b_2`$

$$a_1=\frac{b_1+b_2}{\sqrt{2}},a_2=\frac{b_1b_2}{\sqrt{2}},$$
(5)
we obtain immediately the alternative expression

$$H=i\frac{g\alpha }{2}\left[\left(b_1^{}\right)^2b_1^2\right]i\frac{g\alpha }{2}\left[\left(b_2^{}\right)^2b_2^2\right],$$
(6)
which corresponds to the sum of two interaction hamiltonians for parametric down-conversion in the degenerate configuration. Hence the beams $`b_1`$ and $`b_2`$ are squeezed, and, because of the minus sign in front of the second term, the squeezing is in orthogonal quadrature components. For example, when $`\alpha `$ is real $`b_1`$ is squeezed with respect to the Y quadrature (imaginary part of the annihilation operator) and $`b_2`$ is squeezed with respect to the X quadrature (real part of the annihilation operator).

### B Spatially multimode versus singlemode squeezing

In almost all literature on squeezing one considers singlemode squeezing. If one wants to detect a good level of squeezing, the local oscillator must be matched to the squeezed spatial mode and, in addition, it is necessary to detect the whole beam. If one detects only part of the beam the squeezing is immediately degraded, because a portion of a mode necessarily involves higher order modes, in which squeezing is absent. What we can call local squeezing, i.e. squeezing in small regions of the transverse plane, can be obtained only in presence of spatially multimode squeezing, i.e. squeezing in a band of spatial modes. This has been predicted by Sokolov and Kolobov for the traveling wave optical parametric amplifier (OPA)  and by our group for the optical parametric oscillator (OPO) .
Let us dwell a moment, for example, on the case of the OPA (Fig.1a), in which one has a slab of $`\chi ^{(2)}`$ material which is pumped by a coherent plane wave of frequency $`2\omega _s`$. A fraction of the pump photons are down-converted into signal-idler photon pairs, which are distributed over a broad band of temporal frequencies around the degenerate frequency $`\omega _s`$. For each fixed temporal frequency, the photon pairs are distributed over a band of spatial frequencies labeled by the transverse component $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ of the wave vector.
If, in addition to the pump field, we inject a coherent plane wave with frequency $`\omega _s`$ and transverse wave vector $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ (Fig. 1b), in the output we have a signal wave which corresponds to an amplified version of the input wave and for this reason the system is called optical parametric amplifier. Because of the pairwise emission of photons, there is also an idler wave which, close to degeneracy, is symmetrical with respect to the signal wave.
Referring to the case in which only the pump is injected, two regimes can be distinguished. One is that of pure spontaneous parametric down-conversion, as in the case of a very thin crystal. In this case coincidences between partners of single photon pairs are detected. The other is that of dominant stimulated parametric down-conversion, in which a large number of photon pairs at a time is detected. In the following we will consider both cases alternatively.

### C Near field/Far field duality

We want to illustrate the key spatial quantum properties of the field emitted by an OPA, in the linear regime of negligible pump depletion, or by an OPO below threshold. In the OPA case, we consider the configuration of a large photon number.
In the near field (see Fig. 2) one has the phenomenon of spatially multimode squeezing or local squeezing discussed in Sec. II B. A good level of squeezing is found, provided the region which is detected has a linear size not smaller than the inverse of the spatial bandwidth of emission in the Fourier plane. If, on the other hand, one looks at the far field (which can be reached, typically, by using a lens as shown in Fig.2) one finds the phenomenon of spatial entanglement between small regions located symmetrically with respect to the center. Precisely, if one considers two symmetrical pixels 1 and 2 (Fig.3), the intensity fluctuations in the two pixels are very well correlated or, equivalently, the fluctuations in the intensity difference between the two pixels are very much below the shot noise . Because this phenomenon arises for any pair of symmetrical pixels, we call it spatial entanglement. The same effect occurs also for quadrature components, because in the two pixels the fluctuations of the quadrature component $`X`$ are almost exactly correlated, and those of the quadrature component $`Y`$ are almost exactly anticorrelated . The minimum size of the symmetrical small regions, among which one finds spatial entanglement, is determined by the final aperture of optical elements, and is given, in the paraxial approximation, by $`\lambda f/a`$, where $`\lambda `$ is the wavelength, $`f`$ is the focal length of the lens and $`a`$ is the aperture of optical elements (e.g. the lens aperture)(Fig. 2). In a more realistic model of the OPA, the finite waist of the pump field should be taken into account. In this case the minimum size of the regions where entanglement is detectable in the far field is mostly determined by the pump waist.
The spatial entanglement of intensity fluctuations in the far field is quite evident even in single shots (the pump field is typically pulsed). Fig. 4a shows a numerical simulation in a case of non collinear phase matching at degenerated frequency. One observes the presence of symmetrical intensity peaks, which become broader and broader as one reduces the waist of the pump field. A similar situation is observed in an experiment performed using a LBO crystal . We observe finally that the near field/far field duality can be understood on the basis of the intrinsic connection between squeezing and quantum entanglement. The spatial entanglement in the far field arises from the correlation between the modes $`a_\stackrel{}{q}\mathrm{exp}[i\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{x}]`$ and $`a_\stackrel{}{q}\mathrm{exp}[i\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{x}]`$, , which in the far field give rise to two separated and opposite spots in the transverse plane ($`\stackrel{}{q}`$ is the transverse wave vector and $`\stackrel{}{x}`$ is the position vector in the transverse plane).
On the other hand, in the near field there is no squeezing in modes $`a_\stackrel{}{q}`$ and $`a_\stackrel{}{q}`$ separately, whereas there is large squeezing in the combination modes and $`b_\stackrel{}{q}=\left(a_\stackrel{}{q}+a_\stackrel{}{q}\right)/\sqrt{2}`$ and $`b_\stackrel{}{q}=\left(a_\stackrel{}{q}a_\stackrel{}{q}\right)/\sqrt{2}`$ , which annihilate photons on spatial modes $`\mathrm{cos}(\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{x})`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}(\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{x})`$. In the near field it is possible to observe this squeezing by using a local oscillator with a $`\mathrm{cos}(\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{x})`$ or $`\mathrm{sin}(\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{x})`$ spatial configuration . One notices immediately that the relation between modes $`a_\stackrel{}{q},a_\stackrel{}{q}`$ and modes $`b_\stackrel{}{q},b_\stackrel{}{q}`$ coincides with Eq. (1), which, as we have seen, transforms entangled beams into squeezed beams, and viceversa.

## III Topics in quantum imaging

Next we focus specifically on studying the quantum aspects of the very classical field of imaging.
We will discuss several topics in order.

### A Detection of weak amplitude or phase objects beyond the standard quantum limit

Let us consider first the case of a weak amplitude object which is located, say, in the signal part of the field emitted by an OPA (Fig.5). Both signal and idler are very noisy and therefore, in the case of large photon number, if the object is weak and we detect only the signal field, the signal-to-noise ratio for the object is low. But, because of the spatial entanglement, the fluctuations in the intensity difference between signal and idler are small. Hence if we detect the intensity difference, the signal-to-noise ratio for the object becomes much better. This scheme is conceptually related to well known ’́ ghost image ” experiments  in the regime of detection of single photon pairs.
Next, let us pass to the case of a weak phase object in which one can exploit, instead, the property of spatially multimode squeezing. The configuration is the standard one of a Mach-Zender interferometer in which, as it is well known, one can detect a small phase shift with a sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit by injecting a squeezed beam in the port through which usually normal vacuum enters. If we have a weak phase image (Fig.6) we can obtain the same result by injecting a spatially multimode squeezed light .

### B Quantum imaging with entangled photon pairs

This approach has been formulated by Abouraddy, Saleh, Sergienko, and Teich for the regime in which single photon pairs are detected. They have shown that using entangled photons in an imaging system offers possibilities that cannot be attained when entanglement is absent .
In a classical imaging configuration one has a source, an illumination system, an object, an imaging system and a detector. The field at the detection plane is related to that at the object plane by a linear integral transformation with a kernel $`h`$. Let us focus on the interesting case illustrated in Fig. 7, in which the imaging is performed using photon pairs, in which case the topography of the system allows for two branches with different kernels to be simultaneously illuminated, a system that was heuristically considered by Belinskii and Klyshko . The two-photon wave function is denoted $`\psi (\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{x}^{})`$ ($`\stackrel{}{x}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{x}^{}`$ are source position vectors in the transverse plane) and the two kernels are denoted $`h_1`$ and $`h_2`$ for the signal and idler beams 1 and 2, respectively. Next, let us introduce two assumptions. The first is that the two photons are entangled. This is expressed by the fact that the wave function $`\psi `$ includes a factor $`\delta (\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{x}^{})`$, which expresses the fact that the two photons are generated at the same point. The second assumption is that the first photon is detected by a bucket detector, which can reveal its presence, but not at all its location. On the other hand, the other detector is capable of scanning the position of the photon, and one detects the coincidences between photon pairs. The key point is that in this situation the probability distribution for the position of the second photon depends not only on $`h_2`$ but also on $`h_1`$, and this is true even though the position of photon 1 is not detected. Thus, suppose that, for example, there is nothing in the path of photon 2, whereas in the path of photon 1 there is an object which may be transmissive/reflective, diffusive or scattering (see Fig.7). By using a bucket detector for the first photon, and by scanning the position of the second photon and detecting coincidences one can obtain an image of the object which is in the path of the first photon despite the fact that the position of this photon is not scanned. The essential point is that, when the two photons are entangled, such distributed quantum imaging is in general partially coherent, and can possibly be fully coherent in which case phase information about the object is preserved , whereas for classically correlated but unentangled photons the imaging would be incoherent. These authors have also applied the principle of entangled-photon imaging to quantum holography .

### C Entangled two-photon microscopy

In recent years there has been a lively interest in entangled-photon microscopy .

The surge in the development of fluorescence microscopy based on two-photon excitation using laser light has been driven by the principal advantages of this technique over single-photon excitation: a pair of low-energy photons can deposit as much energy as a single ultraviolet photon thereby exciting a fluorescent molecule within a sample with greater penetration depth, better resolution, and less risk of damage upon absorption along the optical path. However, in order to obtain two-photon absorption with a classical light source such as a laser, a very large photon-flux density is necessary to place two photons within a small enough volume and time window so that the fluorescent molecule can absorb them. In this latter case, a femtosecond-pulsed high-power laser is used directly as the source of light, which can produce undesired photodamage of the specimen.

On the other hand, entangled photons generated by the process of spontaneous parametric downconversion in a nonlinear crystal comprise intrinsically paired photons within a small volume and short time window. In principle, therefore, far smaller photon-flux densities can be used to effect absorption so that the risk of photodamage to the specimen is reduced (see Fig. 8). Yet other possible advantages arise from the direct proportionality of absorption to photon-flux density (rather than the quadratic relation that holds for ordinary two-photon absorption) and the fact that the sum of the photon energies of each entangled pair is a constant and equal to the energy of the downconverted pump photon whereas the sum energy is far broader for photons from a femtosecond laser). However, one of the principal challenges in implementing this form of microscopy is obtaining an entangled-photon flux that is sufficient to excite two-photon transitions, which have a limited cross section .

### D Image amplification by parametric down conversion

Let us come back to the configuration of Fig. 1b in the case of a large number of photon pairs. Let us assume that now, instead of a plane wave at frequency close to $`\omega _s`$, we inject a coherent monochromatic image (Fig.9) of frequency $`\omega _s`$. Parametric image amplification has been extensively studied from a classical viewpoint (see e.g.). A basic point in Fig.9 is that, if the image is injected off axis, one obtains in the output a signal image, that represents an amplified version of the input image, and also a symmetrical idler image. An interesting situation arises if one has, in addition to the amplifier, a pair of lenses located at focal distances with respect to the object plane, to the amplifier and to the image plane (Fig.10). As it was shown by our group , in the limit of large amplification the two output images can be considered twin of each other even from a quantum mechanical viewpoint. As a matter of fact, they do not only display the same intensity distribution but also the same local quantum fluctuations. Precisely, let us consider two symmetrical pixels in the two images (Fig.11). It turns out that the intensity fluctuations in the two pixels are identical, i.e. exactly correlated/synchronized. On the other hand, the phase fluctuations are exactly anticorrelated. Hence the situation with respect to phase and intensity fluctuations is similar to what one obtains by breaking a fossil in two parts (Fig. 12). In fact the two parts have the same ’́ intensity ”, if one establishes an analogy between intensity and thickness, but they have opposite phase, since one is clockwise and the other anticlockwise, one is convex and the other concave. So in this way, from one image one obtains twin images in a state of spatial entanglement which involves also the quadrature components $`X`$ and $`Y`$, as it was already described in the case of pure parametric fluorescence without any signal injection in Sec.II C.
There is, however, a negative point that concerns the signal-to-noise ratio. When the input image is injected off axis, this mechanism of amplification is phase insensitive and therefore, as it is well known, it adds 3 dB of quantum noise in the output. In order to have noiseless amplification, i.e. amplification which preserves the signal-to-noise ratio, one must inject two coherent images symmetrically (Fig.13) . In this case one has in the input two identical, but uncorrelated images and in the output two amplified images in a state of spatial quantum entanglement. One can prove that this symmetrical configuration is phase sensitive and, in fact, as it was shown in  the amplification can become noiseless. A couple of years ago there was a landmark experiment by Kumar and collaborators which demonstrated the noiseless amplification of a simple test pattern.

### E Measurement of small displacements

This topic has been recently studied from a quantum mechanical standpoint by Fabre and his group . They analyze the displacement of a light beam. According to the Rayleigh diffraction limit, the position of the beam can be measured with an error on the order of the beam section. However, one can use, rather, a split detector which measures the intensities $`i_1`$ and $`i_2`$ from the two halves of the beam cross section (Fig.14).
If one displaces gradually the beam with respect to the detector and plots the intensity difference, one obtains a curve like that shown in Fig.14 and the precision in the measurement of the displacement is limited only by noise. The standard quantum limit is given  by the ratio of the Rayleigh limit to the square root of the photon number. In this way one can measure shifts in the sub-nanometer range. In the case of the microscopic observation of biological samples, one cannot raise the photon number and therefore it is important to have the possibility of going beyond the standard quantum limit by reducing the noise in the intensity difference $`i_1i_2`$ below the shot noise level. To achieve this, a possibility is to use a beam in a state of spatial entanglement between its upper and its lower part, because in this way the number of photons in the two parts is basically the same and the fluctuations in the intensity difference are very small. Another possibility, which was proposed in , is to synthesize a special two-mode state which arises from the superposition of a Gaussian mode in a squeezed vacuum state and a spatially antisymmetrical mode which lies in a coherent state. The antisymmetrical mode is obtained from a Gaussian mode by flipping upside down one of the two halves. One shows that in this way one can measure displacements beyond the standard quantum limit. Experiments with this configuration are presently conducted in the laboratory of Bachor at the University of Canberra in collaboration with the group of Fabre .

### F Image reconstruction

Kolobov and Fabre have recently studied the quantum limits in the process of image reconstruction . The very well known scheme they analyzed is shown in Fig.15. The object is contained in a finite region of size X. The imaging system is composed by two lenses and an aperture. Because of the transverse finiteness of the imaging system, diffraction comes into play, with a consequence that some details of the object are blurred. In order to better reconstruct the object, one can proceed as follows. One considers the linear operator H which transforms the object into the image, its eigenvalues and its eigenfunctions, which are called prolate spheroidal functions:

$$Hf_n(\stackrel{}{x})=\mu _nf_n(\stackrel{}{x})$$
(7)
If the imaging were perfect, $`H`$ would be the identity operator and all eigenvalues would be equal to unity. An imperfect imaging introduces a sort of loss so that $`\mu _n1`$. Now one expands the image $`e(\stackrel{}{x})`$ on the basis of the eigenfunctions:

$$e(\stackrel{}{x})=\underset{n}{}c_nf_n(\stackrel{}{x})$$
(8)
and obtains the coefficients $`c_n`$. The object $`a(\stackrel{}{x})`$ is reconstructed by the following expression

$$e(\stackrel{}{x})=\underset{n}{}\frac{c_n}{\sqrt{\mu _n}}f_n(\stackrel{}{x})$$
(9)
where the coefficients $`c_n`$ have been replaced by $`c_n\sqrt{\mu _n}`$.
In principle the reconstruction is perfect, but a problem is introduced by the circumstance that when the index $`n`$ is increased the eigenvalues $`\mu _n`$ quickly approach zero. As it is shown in , this feature makes the reconstruction of fine details very sensitive to noise, so that again quantum noise represents the ultimate limitation. The idea proposed in  is to illuminate the object by bright squeezed light instead of coherent light, and to replace the vacuum state in the part of the object plane outside the object itself by squeezed vacuum radiation. In this way one can obtain a definite improvement of the resolution in the reconstruction, beyond the standard quantum limit.

### G Quantum optical lithography

This topic was pioneered by Scully and Rathe  and has become a focus of attention after the theoretical paper by Dowling and collaborators . In this work there are two key points (Fig. 16). First, the entangled photon pairs emitted by an OPA in a regime of pure parametric down- conversion are conveyed to a 50/50 beam splitter, and second the lithographic interference pattern is obtained by two-photon absorption. The effect is that the wavelength of the interference modulation is halved with respect to the standard one-photon absorption pattern. This is due to the fact that, according to a well known experiment by Hong and Mandel , the entangled photons emerge from the beam splitter either in pair on the upper side or in pair on the lower side of the beam splitter, and there is never a coincidence between one photon on each side. It is just the quantum interference between the two possible two-photon paths which produces the halved interference pattern. A very recent experiment by Shih and collaborators , related to this configuration, provides a first-principle demonstration of quantum lithography and exhibits nicely the halving effect in the passage from one-photon to two-photon absorption. A recent article  considers, instead of the regime of single photon pairs detection, the case in which the OPA produces a large number of photons pairs. It shows that in this limit the halving effect is well preserved, even if the fringe visibility is reduced by a factor 5. A simple interpretation of the halving effect in this case is obtained by observing that the two entangled beams emitted by the OPA are transformed by the beam splitter into a pair of squeezed beams (see Sec.II A), and therefore one detects the two photon absorption of the interference of two squeezed vacuum fields. In Fig. 17 we see the squeezing ellipses of the two beams. One of the two ellipses rotates with respect to the other corresponding to the variation of the phase $`\chi `$ (see Fig.16) which represents the phase difference among the two paths. Clearly it is not necessary to perform a rotation of $`2\pi `$. to return to the initial configuration. A rotation of $`\pi `$ is enough, and this produces the halving of the wavelength. This consideration suggests an alternative procedure to attain an experimental demonstration of the principle of optical lithography: the interference of two vacuum squeezed beams produced by two optical parametric oscillators below threshold which share the same pump beam.
As it is well known, a minimum uncertainty squeezed vacuum state has the form

$$\mathrm{exp}\left[\zeta a^2\zeta ^{}\left(a^{}\right)^2\right]|0$$
(10)
where $`\zeta `$ is a c-number and $`|0`$ is the vacuum state. One can generalize the argument above by considering a state of the form

$$\mathrm{exp}\left[\zeta a^N\zeta ^{}\left(a^{}\right)^N\right]|0$$
(11)
which can be obtained, for example, by a material with a $`\chi ^N`$ nonlinearity, in which a single pump photon is down-converted into N entangled photons. One can consider the interference of two beams, one of which is in state (11), while the other lies in the state

$$\mathrm{exp}\left[\zeta \left(ae^{i\chi }\right)^N\zeta ^{}\left(a^{}e^{i\chi }\right)^N\right]|0$$
(12)
obtained from (11) by a rotation of the angle $`\chi `$ which corresponds to the phase difference between the two paths plus, possibly, a constant. Clearly, a rotation of $`\frac{2\pi }{N}`$ is enough to return to the initial configuration and as a consequence the wavelength of the interference pattern, detected by N-photon absorption, is reduced by a factor N. Of course, this argument does not predict the visibility of the fringes.

### H Quantum teleportation of optical images

As a final futuristic point, let us consider the quantum teleportation of optical images . In this case we consider an OPA without any input image. Nonetheless in the output we have two twin images which are very noisy but still in a state of spatial entanglement, and are sent one to the station of Alice and the other to the station of Bob. The teleportation scheme generalizes the one formulated by Vaidman, Braunstein and Kimble  for quantum teleportation in terms of continuous variables. The input image to be teleported lies in an arbitrary quantum state and using a 50/50 beam splitter it is combined with one of the two noisy twin images, so that its quantum state is completely corrupted at this stage. However, the system as a whole works as a quantum fax machine which is capable of reproducing in the output image not only the average properties of the input image, but also the details of its quantum state. This is due to the fact that, thanks to the perfect correlation between the two noisy entangled twin images, all the noise introduced at the initial state is exactly cancelled in the final stage. This process is called ’́ holographic quantum teleportation” because it shows striking analogies with standard holography, apart from the fact that, of course, it works on a quantum level.

## Acknowledgments

We thank Claude Fabre, Mikhail Kolobov, Eric Lantz, Bahaa Saleh, Alexander Sergienko, Malvin Teich for giving us permission of including in this paper material provided by them. This work is supported by the European FET Project QUANTIM (Quantum Imaging).

## References

Fig.1 (a) Scheme for parametric down-conversion.

Fig 1.(b) Parametric amplification of a plane wave. $`\stackrel{}{q}`$ is the component of the wave-vector in the planes orthogonal to the pump propagation direction.

Fig.2. Illustration of the near field/far field duality. f is the focal length of the lens.

Fig.3. Illustration of the concept of spatial entanglement. $`I_i`$, $`X_i`$, $`Y_i`$ $`(i=1,2)`$ denote the intensities and the quadrature components measured in the two pixels 1 and 2, respectively.

Fig.4 (a) Intensity distribution in the far field for a single shot of the pulsed pump field. a) Numerical simulations. The waist of the pump beam is 1000 $`\mu `$m, 300 $`\mu `$m, 150 $`\mu `$m in the three frames from top to bottom, respectively.

Fig.4 (b) Experimental observations by Devaud and Lantz at University of Besancon (see .

Fig.5. Detection of a weak amplitude object by measuring the intensity difference $`i_1i_2`$.

Fig.6. Detection of a weak phase object.

Fig.7 . Quantum imaging with entangled photon pairs. Photon 1 is revealed by a bucket detector which does not reveal its transverse position; photon 2 is observed by a detector that scans its position in coincidence with photon 1 detection.

Fig.8 Illustration of entangled two photon microscopy.

Fig.9. Off-axis injection of an image and generation of twin entangled images.

Fig.10. Scheme of the parametric optical image amplifier. Not shown in the figure is the pump field of frequency $`2\omega _s`$

Fig.11. The spatial entanglement between the two output images concerns intensity and phase fluctuations, and also the fluctuations of quadrature components.

Fig.12. Analogy between the twin images and the two parts of a fossil.

Fig.13. Symmetrical injection of an image.

Fig.14. Measurement of very small beam displacements in the transverse plane.

Fig.15. Scheme of the imaging system.

Fig.16. Scheme for quantum optical lithography.

Fig.17. Interpretation of quantum lithography as interference between two squeezed vacuum beams.


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# Spin calculations in arbitrary and diagonal spin basesPresented at the VIth International School-seminar “Actual Problems of High Energy Physics”. Gomel, Belarus, August 7-16, 2001

## 1 Introduction

At the present time, the conventional method of direct calculation of the squared modulus of amplitudes is practically not used in calculating of reactions. This is due to the fact that even an insignificant increase in the number of particles participating in a reaction as well as the account of their polarizations sharply complicate calculations. The idea of direct calculation of amplitudes followed by their quadrating is fairly obvious. However, such an approach entails a number of specific problems. Therefore, in the last few decades publications devoted to the development of particular aspect of this method have been appearing in the press (see references in reviews , ).

These works can conventionally be classified according to the following directions: a covariant or an incovariant approach is used; calculations are carried out in an arbitrary or a particular spin basis. Among the first works devoted to this topic are the works of F.I. Fedorov and his scholars. For details see . They are devoted primarily to covariant calculation of amplitudes in an arbitrary spin basis. For instance, in  a method that permits using in calculating amplitudes the main “trick” of the quadrating procedure was proposed. Namely, reduction of calculations to the computation of traces from $`\gamma `$-matrix operators.

Let us illustrate this approach by an example of a fermion “sandwich” which can be given in the following form ($`Q`$ – arbitrary operator):

$$\overline{u}^\sigma ^{}(p^{},s^{})Qu^\sigma (p,s)=TrQu^\sigma (p,s)\overline{u}^\sigma ^{}(p^{},s^{}).$$
(1)
The main difficulties of this approach are the obtaining of an explicit form of the transition operator

$$u^\sigma (p,s)\overline{u}^\sigma ^{}(p^{},s^{}),$$
(2)
as well as the solution of such problems as the calculation of the phase factors, the removal of singularities, the calculation of the exchange diagrams, and the account of the specificity of the spin configuration $`\sigma ^{}=\sigma `$, and so on. Some of these difficulties can be overcome by fixing a certain manner the spin basis. Transition to another basis is realized with the use of the Wigner $`D`$-functions. However, this apparatus is exceedingly cumbersome and incovariant.

The present paper shows how, using amplitudes (1) in the basis in which they have the simplest form, to obtain expressions for the squared modulus of an amplitude in an arbitrary spin basis. The paper considers the following questions. In Section 2, one-particle states are considered. It is shown that consistent use of tetrads formalism permits operating with a complete set of bispinors as well as reducing the operations of matrix operators to tensor ones.

In Section 3, matrices that make it possible, using the amplitudes calculated in one spin basis, to calculate the squared modulus of amplitudes in another spin basis.

Section 4 considers the introduced into  the diagonal spin basis (DSB). In the DSB, the bispinors of the initial and final states have a common set of spin operators and interrelated in the simplest way. As a result, the central problem of this approach – the obtaining of a simple and compact solution. The diagonal amplitudes have a clear physical interpretation and are the best “building bricks” for calculation of squared modulus of amplitudes in arbitrary spin basis.

In Section 5, some examples of calculation in DSB are considered.

## 2 One-particle states. Tetrads

The one-particle state is defined by 4-vectors, momentum $`p`$ and the axis of spin projections $`s`$. And $`ps=0`$. This condition is fulfilled if $`s`$ is determined in terms of the arbitrary vector $`q`$

$$s=\frac{(pq)pm^2q}{m\sqrt{(pq)^2m^2q^2}}.$$
(3)
Define

$$s_0=v=\frac{p}{m},s_3=s,$$
(4)
then $`s_0^2=s_3^2=1`$, $`s_0s_3=0`$. Any vector having the form $`\alpha s_0+\beta s_3`$ belongs to the 2-plane $`(s_0,s_3)`$ in Minkowski space. The orthogonal 2-plane can be determined with the aid of two tensors

$$g_{}^{\mu \nu }=v^\mu v^\nu s^\mu s^\nu ,\stackrel{~}{\epsilon }_{}^{\mu \nu }=\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }v_\rho s_\sigma ,$$
(5)
where $`\epsilon _{0123}=1`$. If the arbitrary vector $`r`$ lies incompletelly in the 2-plane $`(s_0,s_3)`$, then the vectors ($`g`$ is Minkowski tensor)

$$s_1^\mu =(g_{}^{\mu \nu }g^{\mu \nu })\frac{r_\nu }{r_{_{}}},s_2^\mu =\stackrel{~}{\epsilon }_{}^{\mu \nu }\frac{r_\nu }{r_{_{}}};r_{_{}}=\sqrt{r_\mu (g_{}^{\mu \nu }g^{\mu \nu })r_\nu }$$
(6)
satisfy the conditions $`s_1^2=s_2^2=1`$, $`s_1s_2=0`$ and both vectors are orthogonal to $`s_0`$ and $`s_3`$. Thus, the tetrad $`s_0,s_3,s_1,s_2`$ form orthonormalised basis in the Minkowski space. In all spin reactions, vectors $`s_1`$ and $`s_2`$ only occur in combination $`s_1\pm is_2`$. From (6) follows

$$s_1+i\sigma s_2=T_\sigma \frac{r}{r_{_{}}},T_\sigma =g_{}gi\sigma \stackrel{~}{\epsilon }_{}.$$
(7)
It is clear that the tensor $`T_\sigma `$ plays the special role in spin calculations. Besides the apparent properties $`T_\sigma ^{}=T_\sigma `$, $`T_\sigma ^+=T_\sigma `$, $`T_\sigma ^2=2T_\sigma `$, the relation

$$T_\sigma ^{\mu \nu }T_\sigma ^{\alpha \beta }=T_\sigma ^{\mu \beta }T_\sigma ^{\alpha \nu }$$
(8)
holds for it. From this relation follows

$$T_\sigma ^{\mu \nu }r_\nu r_\alpha T_\sigma ^{\alpha \beta }=r_{_{}}^2T_\sigma ^{\mu \beta }.$$
(9)
If in (7) we replace the vector $`r`$ by $`r^{}`$, then from (7) and (9) we obtain

$$s_{1}^{}{}_{}{}^{}+i\sigma s_{2}^{}{}_{}{}^{}=e^{i\sigma \phi }(s_1+i\sigma s_2),e^{i\sigma \phi }=\frac{rT_\sigma r^{}}{r_{_{}}r_{_{}}^{}}.$$
(10)
Thus, variations of $`r`$ lead to rotation by angle $`\phi `$ in the 2-plane $`(s_1,s_2)`$, and in the spin relations an additional phase factor appears. Having fixed $`r`$, we thus fix the tetrad in the Minkowski space and thus can write in explicit form the whole set of spin operators111 $`\gamma _5=i\gamma ^0\gamma ^1\gamma ^2\gamma ^3`$ can be given in form $`\gamma _5=i\widehat{s}_1\widehat{s}_2\widehat{s}_3\widehat{s}_0`$. :

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_3=\gamma _5\widehat{s}_3,\mathrm{\Sigma }_\sigma =\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{s}_1+i\sigma \widehat{s}_2),$$
(11)
which act on the bispinor222 We will keep symbols $`s`$ and especially $`r`$ only where necessary. $`u^\sigma (p,s,r)`$ in following way:

$$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{\Sigma }_3u^\sigma (p,s,r)=\sigma u^\sigma (p,s,r);\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Sigma }_\sigma u^\sigma (p,s,r)=u^\sigma (p,s,r),\mathrm{\Sigma }_\sigma u^\sigma (p,s,r)=0.\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
The second relation represents the known phase agreement: the action of the spin flip operator does not lead to the appearance of an additional phase factor. Note the following important fact. Having fixed the tetrad, we obtain the possibility of writing for the 4-component bispinor four equations, namely, two equations for the spin flip operator are added to the Dirac equation and the equation for the spin projection.

Let us consider of the consequences of this situation. We give the tensor $`g`$ in the form

$$g^{\mu \nu }=v^\mu v^\nu s^\mu s^\nu s_1^\mu s_1^\nu s_2^\mu s_2^\nu .$$
(13)
Then from (11), (13) follows

$$\begin{array}{c}\gamma ^\mu =g^{\mu \nu }\gamma _\nu =v^\mu \widehat{v}s^\mu \widehat{s}s_1^\mu \widehat{s}_1s_2^\mu \widehat{s}_2\hfill \\ =v^\mu \widehat{v}\gamma _5\left\{s^\mu \mathrm{\Sigma }_3+(s_1^\mu i\sigma s_2^\mu )\mathrm{\Sigma }_\sigma +(s_1^\mu +i\sigma s_2^\mu )\mathrm{\Sigma }_\sigma \right\}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(14)
Using the Dirac equation and (12), we have

$$\gamma ^\mu u^\sigma (p,s)=(v^\mu \sigma s^\mu \gamma _5)u^\sigma (p,s)(s_1^\mu +i\sigma s_2^\mu )\gamma _5u^\sigma (p,s).$$
(15)
Repeated action of the $`\gamma `$-matrix on (15) gives

$$\begin{array}{c}\sigma ^{\mu \nu }u^\sigma (p,s)=\sigma \left([vs]^{\mu \nu }\gamma _5+i\stackrel{~}{[vs]}^{\mu \nu }\right)u^\sigma (p,s)\hfill \\ \left[(s_1+i\sigma s_2)(\sigma s+\gamma _5v)\right]^{\mu \nu }u^\sigma (p,s),\hfill \end{array}$$
(16)
where the notation for tensor is introduced

$$[ab]^{\mu \nu }=a^\mu b^\nu b^\mu a^\nu .$$
(17)
Any operator $`Q`$ can be expanded by complete set of Dirac matrices

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }=\{1,\gamma _5,\gamma ^\mu ,\gamma _5\gamma ^\mu ,\sigma ^{\mu \nu }\}.$$
(18)
Thus, formulas (15), (16) provide the possibility of reducing the action of an arbitrary matrix operator on the bispinor: $`Qu^\sigma (p,s)`$ to expansion by a complete set of bispinors $`u^{\pm \sigma }(p,s)`$, $`\gamma _5u^{\pm \sigma }(p,s)`$. The expansion coefficients will be tensors whose rank is equal to the number of free Lorentz-indices in the operator $`Q`$.

## 3 The transit matrices between the different spin bases

Let us assume that we know the set of amplitudes in a certain spin basis

$$_{\delta ^{}\delta }=\overline{u}^\delta ^{}(p^{},s^{})Qu^\delta (p,s),$$
(19)
but the initial state is represented so that the axis of the spin projections is the vector $`l`$. Thus, we are interested in the amplitudes

$$_{\delta ^{}\sigma }^{}=\overline{u}^\delta ^{}(p^{},s^{})Qu^\sigma (p,l),$$
(20)
or to be more exact, in the final analysis, the squares of their modules.

Using the equation

$$\underset{\delta }{}\frac{1}{4}(1+\widehat{v})(1+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{s})u^\sigma (p,l)=u^\sigma (p,l)$$
(21)
we obtain the expression for the squared module of the amplitude (20) (arguments in bispinors are omitted):

$`\begin{array}{c}|_{\delta ^{}\sigma }^{}|^2=\overline{u}^\delta ^{}Qu^\sigma \overline{u}^\sigma \overline{Q}u^\delta ^{}\\ ={\displaystyle \underset{\delta _1\delta _2}{}}\overline{u}^\delta ^{}Q{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(1+\widehat{v})(1+\delta _1\gamma _5\widehat{s})u^\sigma \overline{u}^\sigma {\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(1+\widehat{v})(1+\delta _2\gamma _5\widehat{s})\overline{Q}u^\delta ^{}\\ ={\displaystyle \underset{\delta _1\delta _2}{}}\overline{u}^\delta ^{}Qu^{\delta _1}\overline{u}^{\delta _1}u^\sigma \overline{u}^\sigma u^{\delta _2}\overline{u}^{\delta _2}\overline{Q}u^\delta ^{}={\displaystyle \underset{\delta _1\delta _2}{}}_{\delta ^{}\delta _1}𝒦_{\delta _1\delta _2}_{\delta ^{}\delta _2}^{},\end{array}`$ (25)
where

$$𝒦_{\delta _1\delta _2}=\overline{u}^{\delta _1}u^\sigma \overline{u}^\sigma u^{\delta _2}=Tru^\sigma \overline{u}^\sigma u^{\delta _2}\overline{u}^{\delta _1}.$$
(26)
Thus, if we know the explicit form of matrix (26), then using (19), we calculate the squared modules of amplitudes (20).

If $`\delta _1=\delta _2=\delta `$, then

$$𝒦_{\delta \delta }=\frac{1}{16}Tr(1+\widehat{v})(1+\sigma \gamma _5\widehat{l})(1+\widehat{v})(1+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{s})=\frac{1}{2}\left(1\sigma \delta (ls)\right).$$
(27)
Using the operators of spin flipping  $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\gamma _5(\widehat{s}_1i\delta \widehat{s}_2)`$, we obtain the expression for the configuration $`\delta _1=\delta _2=\delta `$:

$`\begin{array}{c}𝒦_{\delta \delta }={\displaystyle \frac{1}{32}}Tr(1+\widehat{v})(1+\sigma \gamma _5\widehat{l})\gamma _5(\widehat{s}_1i\delta \widehat{s}_2)(1+\widehat{v})(1+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{s})\hfill \\ ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{16}}Tr\gamma _5(\widehat{s}_1i\delta \widehat{s}_2)(\sigma \gamma _5\widehat{l}+\sigma \delta \widehat{s}\widehat{v}\widehat{l})={\displaystyle \frac{\sigma }{2}}(s_1i\delta s_2)l.\hfill \end{array}`$ (30)
In deriving (30), we used the representation $`(s_3=s,s_0=v)`$

$$\gamma _5=i\widehat{s}_1\widehat{s}_2\widehat{s}_3\widehat{s}_0.$$
(31)
¿From the explicit form (27), (30) of the elements of the matrix $`𝒦_{\delta _1\delta _2}`$ it follows that it can be written with the aid of Pauli matrices $`\sigma _i`$:

$$𝒦_{\delta _1\delta _2}=\left(1\sigma \sigma _i(ls_i)\right)_{\delta _1\delta _2}.$$
(32)
(32) can be given in a covariant 4-dimensional form. To do this, we introduce the isotropic 4-vector

$$L=(1;\sigma (ls_i))$$
(33)
and take into account that $`\sigma _0=\mathrm{𝟏}`$. Than

$$𝒦=\sigma _\mu L^\mu .$$
(34)
It should be noted that $`1`$ is nothing but the square of the 4-velocity of the particle, and $`l`$ and $`s_3`$ are the axes of spin projections in different spin bases.

Note that into (32), (33) enter only the vectors of the tetrad in which we calculated amplitudes (19). It can be shown that the finite expression (25) is independent of not only the phase vector $`r`$, but also the vectors $`s_1`$ and $`s_2`$, since they enter into (25) in combinations $`s_1^\mu s_1^\nu +s_2^\mu s_2^\nu =s_3^\mu s_3^\nu g^{\mu \nu }`$ and $`\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }s_{1}^{}{}_{\rho }{}^{}s_{2}^{}{}_{\sigma }{}^{}=[v_0s_3]^{\mu \nu }`$.

Using formulas (27), (30), (32), (34) we can construct a matrix $`𝒦`$ for any fermion participating in the reaction. And the representation of (32), (34) provides the possibility of using, if necessary, the Fierz transformation.

Note the following important fact. Formula (25) can also be used in the case where the beam is partially polarized and the states are not pure. To do this, it is enough to carry out substitution $`\sigma la`$, $`|a^2|<1`$ in (27), (30), (33). $`a`$ is the vector of partial polarization (see ).

To investigate the polarization phenomena, besides the squared modules of amplitudes (25), it is necessary to know the values of $`_\sigma _\sigma ^{}`$,333The projection of only that particle whose polarization we are investigating is given in the amplitude designations. since various polarization characteristics are expressed in their real and imaginary parts.

Thus, in the general case, it is necessary to know the matrix

$$𝒦_{\delta _1\delta _2}^{\sigma _1\sigma _2}=Tru^{\sigma _1}\overline{u}^{\sigma _2}u^{\delta _2}\overline{u}^{\delta _1},$$
(35)
and at $`\sigma _2=\sigma _1`$, we obtain (25), (26).

It can be shown that the matrix $`𝒦`$ is of the form ($`\delta _{\alpha \beta }`$ are Kroneker symbols)

$$𝒦_{\delta _1\delta _2}^{\sigma _1\sigma _2}=\frac{1}{2}\left\{\delta _{\sigma _1\sigma _2}\delta _{\delta _1\delta _2}\sigma _i^{\sigma _2\sigma _1}\sigma _j^{\delta _1\delta _2}(l_is_j)\right\}.$$
(36)
It should be recalled that with respect to $`\delta _1`$ and $`\delta _2`$ summation with the amplitudes calculated in the spin basis with the tetrade $`\{v,s_3,s_1,s_2\}`$ is made.

In conclusion, note that the formula

$$_{}^{}{}_{\sigma _1}{}^{}_{}^{}{}_{\sigma _2}{}^{}=\underset{\delta _1\delta _2}{}_{\delta _1}𝒦_{\delta _1\delta _2}^{\sigma _1\sigma _2}_{\delta _2}^{}$$
(37)
represent a new way of describing the transition from one spin basis to another without using the extremely cumbersome and noncovariant apparatus of $`D`$-Wigner functions.

## 4 Diagonal spin basis (DSB)

In any process, only an even number of fermions can participate. If the number of free fermions is $`2n`$, each diagram contains $`n`$ open fermion lines and is described by a structure consisting of contractings between $`n`$ fermion “sandwiches” of the type

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Phi }}^\sigma ^{}(p^{},s^{})Q\mathrm{\Phi }^\sigma (p,s).$$
(38)
For the fermion line $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ are bispinors $`u`$ (see (1)) and for the antifermion line – bispinors $`v`$; for annigilation and for creation of an pair $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ are bispinors $`u`$ and $`v`$.

For certainty, we shall consider the structures (1), (2).

We shall not consider the group aspects of introduction of the DSB. We only note that in DSB the vectors $`s`$ and $`s^{}`$ are chosen such that they belong to the 2-plane $`(p,p^{})`$ or $`(v,v^{})`$; $`v={\displaystyle \frac{p}{m}}`$, $`v^{}={\displaystyle \frac{p^{}}{m^{}}}`$. Satisfying this requirement, we obtain

$$s=\frac{(vv^{})vv^{}}{\sqrt{(vv^{})^21}},s^{}=\frac{(vv^{})v^{}v}{\sqrt{(vv^{})^21}}.$$
(39)
Thus, the support vectors (see (3)) for the on- and off- states of the fermion line are vectors $`q=v^{}`$, $`q^{}=v`$. With such a choice of signs in special reference systems vectors $`\stackrel{}{s}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{s^{}}`$ coincide with the direction of the 3-momentum of the initial particle and are opposite to the 3-momentum of the final particle. By special reference systems is meant the Breit system for fermion or antifermion lines ($`t`$-lines) and s.c.m. for the pair being annihilated or created ($`s`$-lines).

¿From (39) it can easily be seen that in the derived reference systems diagonality gets the meaning of helicity, with $`\delta =\lambda `$, $`\delta ^{}=\lambda ^{}`$. Thus, the DSB is covariant description of the helicity in the special reference systems. Exactly in these systems helicity the pairs of particles as well as such notions as non-flip and flip amplitudes have a clear physical meaning. Indeed, in helicity basis in arbitrary reference system the spin of the initial particle is projected on the 3-momentum $`\stackrel{}{p}`$ and that of the final particle on $`\stackrel{}{p^{}}`$, than what can be said about the non-flip or flip process? These notions in helicity basis have a only marking meaning.

In our opinion, neglect of this fact is the main reason why the process of constructing operators (2) convenient for calculation has been extended to decades. Attempts to construct covariant operators (2) in helicity basis look unreasonable. The helicity of massive particle is a “bad” quantum number, since it is not invariant at a Lorentz transformation. Any declaration of covariancy of operators (2) in the helicity basis usually is a disguised transition to the special reference system. It should be noted that other fermion pair “droop”, since each pair has its own special reference system. The only exception is $`e^+e^{}\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ type reactions. No wonder that just these reactions are chosen, as a rule, for examples of calculations of processes.

Before to go to the construction of tetrads for the initial and final states, we introduce into the 2-plane $`(v,v^{})`$ two $`v`$\- and $`v^{}`$\- symmetrized, orthonormalized vectors

$$n_0=\frac{v+v^{}}{2V_+},n_3=\frac{vv^{}}{2V_{}};$$
(40)
$$V_\pm =\sqrt{\frac{vv^{}\pm 1}{2}}.$$
(41)
¿From (5), (39), (40) it follows that

$$\begin{array}{c}g_{}^{\mu \nu }=v^\mu v^\nu s^\mu s^\nu =v_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{\mu }v_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{\nu }s_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{\mu }s_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{\nu }=n_0^\mu n_0^\nu n_3^\mu n_3^\nu ,\hfill \\ \stackrel{~}{\epsilon }_{}^{\mu \nu }=\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }v_\rho s_\sigma =\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }v_{}^{}{}_{\rho }{}^{}s_{}^{}{}_{\sigma }{}^{}=\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }n_{0}^{}{}_{\rho }{}^{}n_{3}^{}{}_{\sigma }{}^{}=\frac{1}{2V_+V_{}}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }v_\rho v_{}^{}{}_{\sigma }{}^{}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(42)
¿From (6), (42) it follows that the choice of common phase vector $`r^{}=r`$ leads to the coincidence for both vectors of the tetrads lying in the orthogonal 2-plane, i.e.

$$n_1^\mu =s_1^\mu =s_{}^{}{}_{1}{}^{\mu }=(g_{}^{\mu \nu }g^{\mu \nu })\frac{r_\nu }{r_{_{}}},n_2^\mu =s_2^\mu =s_{}^{}{}_{2}{}^{\mu }=\stackrel{~}{\epsilon }_{}^{\mu \nu }\frac{r_\nu }{r_{_{}}}.$$
(43)
Next, let us coincidence the plane Lorentz transformation that transforms $`v`$ to $`v^{}`$. In the representation of the group $`SL(2,C)`$, it is of the form

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }(vv^{})=\frac{1+\widehat{v^{}}\widehat{v}}{2V_+},$$
(44)
and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\widehat{v}\mathrm{\Lambda }^+=\widehat{v^{}}`$. From (39) it also follows that $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\widehat{s}\mathrm{\Lambda }^+=\widehat{s^{}}`$. Transformation (44) does not change vectors lying in the orthogonal 2-plane. Thus, the Lorentz transformation (44) converts the tetrad of the initial particle into the tetrad of final particle:

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }(vv^{})\{\widehat{v},\widehat{s},\widehat{n},\widehat{n}_2\}\mathrm{\Lambda }^+(vv^{})=\{\widehat{v^{}},\widehat{s^{}},\widehat{n^{}},\widehat{n^{}}_2\},$$
(45)
and this in turn means that the relation between the bispinors of the initial and final states in DSB is of the form

$$u^\delta (p^{},s^{})=\mathrm{\Lambda }(vv^{})u^\delta (p,s).$$
(46)
In the DSB we choose the normalization

$$\overline{u}^\delta (p)u^\delta (p)=\overline{u}^\delta ^{}(p^{})u^\delta ^{}(p^{})=1.$$
(47)
Then the relation (46) describes the cases $`m^{}m`$ too.

To restore the generally accepted normalization, it is necessary to multiply the amplitudes calculated in the DSB by factor

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\sqrt{2m_i2m_i^{}},$$
(48)
where $`n`$ is the number of open fermion lines.

Using the Dirac equation and (14), we can write relation (46) in different representations

$$u^\delta (p^{},s^{})=\frac{\widehat{v^{}}+1}{2V_+}u^\delta (p,s)=\widehat{n}_0u^\delta (p,s)=(V_+\delta \gamma _5V_{})u^\delta (p,s).$$
(49)
Formula (49) makes it possible to express in the DSB the explicit form of the transition operator (2) in terms of the projective operators of the initial (or final) state

$$u^\delta (p,s)\overline{u}^\delta (p,s)=\frac{1}{4}(\widehat{v}+1)(1+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{s}).$$
(50)
As relation (49), the transition operators (2) can be given in different form. Some of them are shown below.

$$\begin{array}{c}4u^\delta (p,s)\overline{u}^\delta (p^{},s^{})=(\widehat{v}+1)\left(\frac{1}{2V_+}\frac{\delta \gamma _5}{2V_{}}\right)(\widehat{v}^{}+1)=\hfill \\ =(V_++\delta \gamma _5V_{})(1\delta \gamma _5\widehat{n}_0\widehat{n}_3)+\widehat{n}_0+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{n}_3=\hfill \\ =\left(1+\frac{1}{2}(V_++\delta \gamma _5V_{})(\widehat{n}_0+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{n}_3)\right)(\widehat{n}_0+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{n}_3),\hfill \end{array}$$
(51)
$$\begin{array}{c}4u^\delta (p,s)\overline{u}^\delta (p^{},s^{})=\\ =\frac{\delta }{r_{}}(\widehat{v}+1)\left(\frac{1}{2V_{}}(\widehat{r}\frac{r(v+v^{})}{vv^{}+1})\frac{\delta \gamma _5}{2V_+}(\widehat{r}\frac{r(vv^{})}{vv^{}1})\right)(\widehat{v}^{}+1)=\\ =\gamma _5(V_++\delta \gamma _5V_{}\widehat{n}_0)(\widehat{n}_1+i\delta \widehat{n}_2)=\\ =\gamma _5\left(V_++\delta \gamma _5V_{}\frac{1}{2}(\widehat{n}_0+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{n}_3)\right)(\widehat{n}_1+i\delta \widehat{n}_2).\end{array}$$
(52)
In deriving formula (52) from (51), the spin flip operator (11) is used and the relation valid for an arbitrary orthonormalized tetrad also hold:

$$\widehat{n}_0(\widehat{n}_1+i\delta \widehat{n}_2)=\delta \gamma _5\widehat{n}_3(\widehat{n}_1+i\delta \widehat{n}_2),(\widehat{n}_0+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{n}_3)^2=2(1\delta \gamma _5\widehat{n}_0\widehat{n}_3).$$
(53)
Since any interaction operator can be expanded by the complete set of Dirac matrices (18), it is tempting to calculate the matrix elements of this set in DSB. From (1), (51), (52) it follows that

$$\begin{array}{c}\overline{u}^\delta (p^{},s^{})\{1;\gamma _5;\gamma ^\mu ;\gamma _5\gamma ^\mu ;\sigma ^{\mu \nu }\}u^\delta (p,s)=\\ =\{V_+;\delta V_{};n_0^\mu ;\delta n_3^\mu ;V_{}[n_0n_3]^{\mu \nu }i\delta V_+\stackrel{~}{[n_0n_3]}^{\mu \nu }\},\end{array}$$
(54)
$$\begin{array}{c}\overline{u}^\delta (p^{},s^{})\{1;\gamma _5;\gamma ^\mu ;\gamma _5\gamma ^\mu ;\sigma ^{\mu \nu }\}u^\delta (p,s)=\\ =\{0;\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0};\delta V_{}(\widehat{n}_1+i\delta \widehat{n}_2)^\mu ;V_+(\widehat{n}_1+i\delta \widehat{n}_2)^\mu ;\delta \left[n_3(\widehat{n}_1+i\delta \widehat{n}_2)\right]^{\mu \nu }\}.\end{array}$$
(55)
The matrix elements (54), (55) can be interpreted as spin characteristics of exchange particles under the scalar, pseudoscalar, axial and tensor interaction, respectively.

¿From (55) it follows that the exchange (emission, absorption) of a scalar or pseudoscalar particle does not change the fermion spin projection in DSB. Thus, the choice of DSB not only leads to simple calculation formulas, but also adequately reflects the physical meaning of the processes being described. To support this thesis, we consider in DSB the matrix elements of nucleon current

$$J_\mu ^{\delta ,\delta ^{}}=\overline{u}^\delta ^{}(p^{},s^{})\left(F_1(q^2)\gamma _\mu \frac{F_2(q^2)}{2m}\sigma _{\mu \nu }q^\nu \right)u^\delta (p,s);q=p^{}p.$$
(56)
¿From (54), (55) we have

$$J_\mu ^{\delta ,\delta }=G_En_{0}^{}{}_{\mu }{}^{},J_\mu ^{\delta ,\delta }=\delta V_{}G_M(n_1+i\delta n_2)_\mu .$$
(57)
It is noteworthy that in DSB formfactors $`F_1`$ and $`F_2`$ independently go in Saks formfactors having a clear physical meaning:

$$G_E=F_1+\frac{q^2}{4m^2}F_2,G_M=F_1+F_2,$$
(58)
$`G_E`$ and $`G_M`$ describe the distribution of the electric charge and the magnetic moment of nucleon, respectively. Thus, from (57) it follows that the situation where the non-flip processes are responsible for the electric interaction and the flip spin processes – for the magnetic interaction is covariantly described in DSB. It should be noted that the space-like ($`q^2<0`$) virtual photon has a scalar or a circular polarization, respectively.

In helicity basis, grouping of (58) occurs only in Breit’s system in which the Fourier transformations becomes three-dimensional since

$$\mathrm{exp}(iqr)=\mathrm{exp}i(\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{r}q_0t)=\mathrm{exp}(i\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{r}).$$

Formulas (51), (52) described the fermion $`t`$-line. To describe the antifermion line as well as the $`s`$-line for the annihilating and creating pairs, one should make use by the relation

$$v^\delta (p,s)=\delta \gamma _5u^\delta (p,s),$$
(59)
which relates the particle and antiparticle bispinors.

If in (51), (52) we restore by the recipe (48) the normalization $`\overline{u}^\delta (p)u^\delta (p)=2m`$ and perform the limiting transition $`m0`$ or/and $`m^{}0`$, we will obtain the transition operators for processes involving massless fermions found in .

For calculating concrete processes, it may be convenient to utilize a formalism, in which the basis spinor $`u^\delta (n_0,n_3;n_1,n_2)`$ common for initial and final bispinors and satisfying the conditions

$$\widehat{n}_0u^\delta (n_0,n_3)=u^\delta (n_0,n_3),\gamma _5\widehat{n}_3u^\delta (n_0,n_3)=\delta u^\delta (n_0,n_3),$$
(60)
is used.

It is easy to see444For this the relation $`{\displaystyle \frac{V_{}}{V_++1}}={\displaystyle \frac{V_+1}{V_{}}}`$ is used. that plane Lorentz transformations $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(n_0v)={\displaystyle \frac{1+\widehat{v}\widehat{n}_0}{\sqrt{2(V_++1)}}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(n_0v^{})={\displaystyle \frac{1+\widehat{v}^{}\widehat{n}_0}{\sqrt{2(V_++1)}}}`$ change the basis spinor tetrad to tetrads of the initial and final states respectively. Therefore, the transition operators (51), (52) can be given in the form

$$\begin{array}{c}4u^\delta (p,s)\overline{u}^\delta ^{}(p^{},s^{})=\frac{2}{V_++1}(\widehat{v}+1)u^\delta (n_0,n_3)\overline{u}^\delta ^{}(n_0,n_3)(\widehat{v}^{}+1)=\\ =\frac{1}{2(V_++1)}(\widehat{v}+1)(\widehat{n}_0+1)(\delta _{\delta ^{}\delta }+\gamma _5\widehat{n}^i\sigma _{\delta ^{}\delta }^i)(\widehat{v}^{}+1).\end{array}$$
(61)
In this equality the Bouchiat and Michel relation  is used.

In (61), vectors $`v`$ and $`v^{}`$ can be expanded in vectors $`n_0`$ and $`n_3`$ with the aid of relations (40).

In conclusion of this section, we give the recipe for calculating in DSB exchange diagrams. As an example, we consider the electron-electron scattering. For certainty, let particles $`1,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}`$ and $`2,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}`$ are paired. Then the exchange diagram has the structure

$$\overline{u}^{\delta _4}(p_4)\gamma _\mu u^{\delta _1}(p_1)\overline{u}^{\delta _3}(p_3)\gamma ^\mu u^{\delta _2}(p_2)=Tr\gamma _\mu u^{\delta _1}(p_1)\overline{u}^{\delta _3}(p_3)\gamma ^\mu u^{\delta _2}(p_2)\overline{u}^{\delta _4}(p_4),$$
(62)
i.e. it is expressed in terms of the transition operators entering into direct diagram.

## 5 Examples of calculations in DSB

In Section 4, it is shown how the main task of the approach based on the use of formula (1) is solved in DSB in compact, covariant form. Namely, the problem of finding in explicit form the transition operators (2). In each particular reaction, a further simplification of calculations can be achieved by simplifying the form of the interaction operators $`Q`$. Let us demonstrate this by an example of calculating the processes of radiation of bremsstrahlung photons. Let the initial fermion in the state $`u^\delta (p,s,r)`$ emits a photon with a momentum $`k`$ and helicity $`\lambda `$. We do not concentrize the spin projection vector of the fermion so far.

Choose the photon polarization vector in the form

$$e^\lambda (k)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}k_{}}(\epsilon _{}+i\lambda \stackrel{~}{\epsilon }_{}\lambda \sigma )k,$$
(63)
$$\epsilon _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{\mu \nu }=v^\mu s^\nu s^\mu v^\nu ,\stackrel{~}{\epsilon }_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{2}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }\epsilon _{}^{}{}_{\mu \nu }{}^{}.$$
(64)
It is easy to see that vector (63) meets the necessary requirement for the polarization vector: $`ke^\lambda =(e^\lambda )^2=0`$, $`e^\lambda e^\lambda =1`$. ¿From the last equation in (12) and condition (10) it follows

$$i\gamma \stackrel{~}{\epsilon }_{}ku^\sigma (p,s)=\sigma \gamma (g_{}g)ku^\sigma (p,s),$$
(65)
therefore, taking into account that $`e^\lambda v={\displaystyle \frac{(s\lambda \sigma v)k}{\sqrt{2}k_{}}}`$, we obtain

$$\widehat{e}^\lambda u^\sigma (p,s)=e^\lambda v(1+\lambda \gamma _5)u^\sigma (p,s).$$
(66)
In amplitude, the operator $`\widehat{e}^\lambda `$ is followed by operator $`\widehat{p}\widehat{k}+m`$. Using (66) and the commutation relation $`\widehat{p}\widehat{e}=2pe\widehat{e}\widehat{p}`$, it can easily be seen that

$$(\widehat{p}\widehat{k}+m)\widehat{e}^\lambda u^\sigma (p,s)=2e^\lambda p\left(1\frac{1}{2m}(1\lambda \gamma _5)\widehat{k}\right)u^\sigma (p,s).$$
(67)
The fact is rather surprising that if $`n`$ photons with equal helicity $`\lambda `$ are emitted from the fermion line, then the structure avalanche-like increasing in complexity acquires in this approach a very trivial form

$$\begin{array}{c}(\widehat{f_n}+m)\widehat{e_n}\mathrm{}(\widehat{f_1}+m)\widehat{e_1}u^\sigma (p,s)=\\ =2^nf_ne_n\mathrm{}f_1e_1\left(1\frac{1}{2m}(1\lambda \gamma _5)\widehat{k}\right)u^\sigma (p,s),\end{array}$$
(68)
here $`f_i=pk_i\mathrm{}k_1`$ is the momentum of fermion between the photons $`k_i`$ and $`k_{i+1}`$, $`k=k_1+\mathrm{}+k_n`$.

We now consider the following problem. In those diagrams where a photon is emitted from the final fermion line, we shall still use vector (63). However, we shall not obtain a structure similar to (67) because tensors (64) were constructed for the initial fermion line. This problem disappears in DSB where these tensors coincide (42).

If a photon is emitted from another fermion line, then by virtue of gauge invariance we can make the following substitution in these diagrams:

$$e^\lambda e^{i\lambda \phi }e^\lambda ,e^{i\lambda \phi }=e^\lambda e^\lambda ,$$
(69)
(see ) where the vector $`e^{}`$ constructed by the recipe of (63) on basis vectors of another fermion line.

If we pass to limit of massless fermions, we will obtain the known results CALCUL-group , including the factorization of the sum of the contributions of all the diagrams obtained on permutation of photons in (68).

If considering the radiation of gluons, it is necessary to take into account details associated with the gauge invariance in non-Abel theory .

In the processes involving two bremsstrahlung photons, the case $`\lambda _1=\lambda _2=\lambda `$ is described by vector (63). For the polarization $`\lambda _1=\lambda _2=\lambda `$, it is possible to construct a polarization vector common for two photons by formulas analogous to (43). In this case, the amplitude structure takes on the form of a one-photon process and fact of the participation of two photons is only reflected by the kinematics factor .

In  and review , a number of processes going to field of an intense laser wave are considered. One of these processes, $`e^\pm +n\gamma ^{}=e^\pm +\gamma `$ ($`n`$ is number of coherently absorbing laser photons) is basic in the operation of $`e\gamma `$ and $`\gamma \gamma `$ colliders , the others are calibration and test ones. Calculation at level of amplitudes makes it possible to investigate the nonlinear and spin effects. And the spin effects are especially significant exactly in the nonlinear processes.

If reaction involves $`W^\pm `$, $`Z^0`$ bosons, the structure of the transition operators (51), (52) is considerably simplified. This is due to the relations of the type

$$(1\pm \gamma _5)(\widehat{n}_0+\delta \gamma _5\widehat{n}_3)=(1\pm \gamma _5)(\widehat{n}_0+\delta \widehat{n}_3),$$

i.e. these operators are expressed in terms isotropic tetrads, and the relation $`(1\pm \gamma _5)(1\gamma _5)=0`$ reduces to zero some of the terms.

If two bosons participate in the process, their tetrads are plotted in the same manner as for a pair of fermions. In so doing, the circular polarization vectors of bosons coincide. With the participation of tree bosons, as, for example, in the reaction $`e^+e^{}W^+W^{}Z^0`$, it is convenient to choose for them a common support vector $`q=k_1+k_2+k_3=p_1+p_2`$ and a common vector $`n_2`$. And $`n_{2}^{}{}_{}{}^{\mu }\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }k_{1\nu }k_{2\rho }k_{3\sigma }`$. This will considerably simplify the interaction operator $`Q`$ whose structure comprises up to 5 $`\gamma `$-matrices.


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# Nuclear Stellar Disks in Spiral Galaxies Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of the Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

In the last decade, embedded stellar disks or disky distorsions have been found in many elliptical and S0 galaxies (Scorza & Bender 1995 hereafter SB95; Seifert & Scorza 1996). They are characterized by a smaller scalelength and higher central surface brightness with respect to the large kpc-scale disks typical of lenticular and spiral galaxies. The existence of embedded disks gives further observational support to the idea that the disky ellipticals are the continuation of the sequence ranging from Im’s through spirals to S0’s (Kormendy & Bender 1996 and references therein). This suggests also a continuity in the formation history, whereby one or several parameters of the protogalaxy vary smoothly (e.g. van den Bosch 1998).

Subarcsecond resolution provided by state-of-the-art ground and space-based telescopes have revealed even smaller stellar disks in the nuclear region of nearby galaxies. To date the smallest disks we know have scalelengths of few tens of pc and they have been identified in the nucleus of a handful of early-type disk galaxies: the S0’s NGC 3115 (SB95; Lauer et al. 1995), NGC 4342 (van den Bosch, Jaffe, & van der Marel 1998; Scorza & van den Bosch 1998), and S0 NGC 4570 (van den Bosch et al. 1998; Scorza & van den Bosch 1998; van den Bosch & Emsellem 1998), and the Sa NGC 4594 (Burkhead 1986, 1991; Kormendy 1988; Emsellem et al. 1994, 1996). In addition, nuclear stellar disks of gas, dust and stars have been found in the E3 galaxy NGC 5845 (Kormendy et al. 1994) and in the dwarf E2 galaxy NGC 4486A (Kormendy et al. 2002). Although the photometric parameters are not known, these stellar disks appear to be similar to those of NGC 3115 and NGC 4594. This phenomenon may be more common if some of the E and S0 galaxies with disky isophotes observed by Ravindranath et al. (2001) and Rest et al. (2001) turn out to host a nuclear stellar disk.

The presence of nuclear disks raises the question about the epoch (i.e. coeval or not with that of the host) and mechanism (i.e. external or internal origin) of their formation. Indeed, it is possible that they formed with a different mechanism than the one that formed normal S0 disks since their size is one order of magnitude smaller. The blue colour of the nuclear disks of NGC 4342, NGC 4570 and NGC 4486A suggests they are made of younger stars with respect to the bulk of their host galaxy (van den Bosch et al. 1998; Kormendy et al. 2002). In the framework of galaxy formation via hierarchical merging acquired gas may end up forming some of these nuclear stellar disks. On the other hand, they could be built up from gas transported towards the galaxy center during the secular evolution of a bar. This seems to be the case of NGC 4570 (van den Bosch & Emsellem 1998), where the observed features in photometry and kinematics correspond with the position of the main resonances of a small bar. Furthermore, any model for the formation of nuclear disks has to account for supermassive black holes, which are supposed to reside in every galaxy and whose gravitational influence may extend to pc scale of the disks. Galaxies hosting nuclear disks are not exceptions in this context as NGC 3115, NGC 4342, NGC 4594, and NGC 5845 are known to harbour a central supermassive black hole (Kormendy et al. 1996a,b; Cretton & van den Bosch 1999, Kormendy & Gebhardt 2002).

To date studies on nuclear stellar disks considered mainly elliptical or S0 galaxies but there is no a priori reason why they should not be present also in spiral galaxies. Would this be true, such nuclear disks would be the result of star formation by gas either driven toward the center by a bar instability or acquired from the outside.

For these reasons we undertook a search for nuclear stellar disks in spiral galaxies based on HST/WFPC2 archive images. In this paper we present as a result of our investigation three new cases of spiral galaxies hosting a nuclear disk embedded in their main outer disk and bulge.

## 2 Searching for nuclear stellar disks in spirals

### 2.1 Sample selection

We selected RC3 (de Vaucouleurs et al. 1991) galaxies classified as spiral ($`T\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}`$), and with $`cz<\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2000}`$ $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. We restricted our sample to galaxies within $`20`$ Mpc (for $`H_0=100`$ $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$) to be able to detect 10-pc scalelength nuclear disks on WFPC2/PC frames out to about $`2`$$`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}`$ scalelengths. We did not exclude low-inclined galaxies from the sample since nuclear disks might have a different inclination with respect to their hosts. We searched the HST science archive looking for all the available images. We realized that WFPC2/F606W was the only camera/filter combination producing an homogeneous sample large enough for our purposes (159 galaxies). This resulted in a sample of 112 objects after we rejected those frames where galaxy nucleus was out or too close to the chip edge as well as those with too short exposure times.

It has to be noted that all but 3 of the selected galaxies belong to 4 SNAP observing programs: (1) 57 objects were taken from the sample of disk galaxies ranging from E/S0 to spirals observed in Program ID 5446 (PI: G. Illingworth); (2) 33 are unbarred Sa/Sb spirals from Program ID 6359 (PI: M. Stiavelli); (3) 14 spirals were taken from the nearby Seyfert galaxies observed in Program ID 5479 (PI: M. Malkan); (4) 5 are Seyfert spirals from Program ID 8597 (PI: M. Regan). In our final sample the Hubble types ranging from Sa to Scd are well represented as well as the number of barred spirals roughly equals that of unbarred ones, although images were collected from HST programs based on different selection criteria.

### 2.2 Analysis of the HST archive images

The on-the-fly calibrated WFPC2/F606W images of the 112 sample galaxies were retrieved from the HST archive. The different images of the same target were aligned and combined. Cosmic ray events were removed with IRAF tasks CRREJ and IMEDIT. The conversion to the Johnson system has been calculated using SYNPHOT in STSDAS. Since this correction depends on the spectral energy distribution of the object, it has been calculated using the Kinney et al. (1996) spectral templates.

As a first step to identify candidates hosting a nuclear disk we construct unsharp-masked images for all the sample galaxies, dividing each WFPC2/F606W frame by itself after being convolved with a circular Gaussian of $`\sigma =`$ 2,4, and 6 pixels, respectively (Fig. 1). The advantage of this procedure is to quickly enhance any surface-brightness fluctuation and non-circular structure extending over a spatial region comparable with the $`\sigma `$ of the smoothing Gaussian.

In the present context this enables first to set apart 74 galaxies whose nucleus is strongly affected by dusts, preventing any further analysis. This is the case of NGC 1637 shown, as an example, in Fig. 1. It should be noted that, in principle, one can check for the presence of dust lanes using images with different filters which are not available for the whole galaxy sample. However adopting different values for $`\sigma `$ in the unsharp-mask allows to clearly reveal dust lanes, when present.

Successively, on the unsharp-masked images of the 38 remaining galaxies, we looked for the highly flattened nuclear structures which are possibly inclined nuclear disks. Such flattened structures are not artifacts of the unsharp-masking procedure since they are always associated to a central increase of ellipticity as measured by performing the isophotal analysis using the IRAF task ELLIPSE. This subset of 38 galaxies ranges from Sa to Sm and from $`M_{B_T}^0=15.6`$ to $`20.0`$ as shown in Fig. 2 and represents our qualified sample for which we are confident we are able to detect an inclined nuclear disk, if present. We found three objects, namely NGC 1425, NGC 3898 and NGC 4698, which show this flattened nuclear structure (Fig. 1). A positive fourth cosine Fourier coefficient (describing the disky deviation of the isophotes from pure ellipses) confirms the presence of a nuclear stellar disk in inner regions of these early-type spirals (Fig. 3). In Fig. 1 we show the case of NGC 4539 as an example of those galaxies where we did not identify any nuclear flattened structure.

### 2.3 Photometric decomposition

Once the existence of the nuclear disks is established, we derived their photometrical properties by using the method described by SB95. When adopting this technique to study the innermost regions of galaxies it is essential to restore the images from the effects of the HST point spread function (PSF) in order to properly derive the nuclear disks parameters, as shown by Scorza & van den Bosch (1998). Such deconvolution was performed through the Richardson-Lucy method by means of the IRAF task LUCY. Although susceptible to noise amplification, this algorithm has been proved by van den Bosch et al. (1998) to lead to a restored surface-brightness distribution comparable to the one obtained by means of a multi-Gaussian representation (Monnet, Bacon, & Emsellem 1992). We decided to deconvolve the images with a number of iterations between 3 and 6. A larger number of iterations does not affect the result of the decomposition but amplify the noise. We believe that the results obtained by van den Bosch et al. (1998) are directly applicable to our case: we are dealing with images obtained with similar or longer integration times, galaxies with less steep surface-brightness profiles and nuclear disks with equal or larger scalelengths.

For each given image and nucleus position on the PC (NGC 3898, NGC 4698) or WF2 CCD (NGC 1425) we adopted a model PSF calculated using the TINY-TIM package (Krist & Hook 1999). No correction for telescope jitter was necessary. The SB95 method consists in the iterative subtraction from the galaxy image of a thin disk model. The parameters of such a disk are varied until the departures from perfect ellipses are smallest (i.e. $`a_4`$ and $`a_6`$ are nearly zero). For the disk component we assumed an exponential surface brightness profile, with central surface brightness $`\mu _0`$, radial scalelength $`h`$, and an inclination given by $`i=\mathrm{arccos}(b/a)`$. We verified that the parameters of nuclear disks resulting from the photometric decomposition are not affected by small changes in PSF (e.g. its generation in different chip positions).

## 3 Results

The results of the photometric decomposition of the surface-brightness distribution of NGC 1425, NGC 3898 and NGC 4698 are shown in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. In Fig. 3 we plot the ellipticity, position angle, $`a_4`$, and $`a_6`$ Fourier coefficient radial profiles before and after the nuclear disk subtraction. In Fig. 4 the same is true for the galaxy isophotes. The photometric parameters derived for the nuclear disks are given in Tab. 1. Here we discuss the individual objects.

NGC 1425. To obtain a residual bulge with nearly elliptical isophotes we needed to subtract two exponential thin disks of different scalelengths, central surface brightnesses and inclinations. If this difference in inclination is real we are facing two structures in an unstable configuration.

As discussed by Scorza & van den Bosch (1998) for the the nuclear and main disks of NGC 4342, it is more likely we are looking at two thick disks of different thickness (e.g., the exponential spheroid disks of van den Bosch & de Zeeuw 1996) rather than two infinitesimally thin disks of different inclination. Such a different thickness may be interpreted as due to the presence of two distinct exponential disks. Alternatively we may think we are facing a non-exponential disk with tickness varying with radius. Considering the two disk hypotesis, we note that the photometric properties of the larger-scale disk are close to those observed for disky ellipticals (Fig. 5).

NGC 3898. The galaxy hosts a small ($`h=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}18}`$ pc) nuclear disk that is noticeable in particular from the Fourier $`a_4`$ coefficient positive values, observed within $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}6`$. In terms of physical size this is the smallest disk so far detected. It possibly corresponds to the somewhat steeper rise of the stellar rotation curve measured in the inner $`1^{\prime \prime }`$ and the two relative maxima in the stellar velocity dispersion at $`\pm 1^{\prime \prime }`$ by Vega Beltrán et al. (2001) but not considered in the dynamical modelling of Pignatelli et al. (2001).

NGC 4698. Although Sandage & Bedke (1994) include this galaxy in The Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies as an example of the early-to-intermediate Sa type, NGC 4698 has photometrical and kinematical properties which are uncommon among spiral galaxies. It shows a clear geometrical decoupling between bulge and disk and hosts a kinematically isolated core (Bertola et al. 1999). The nuclear stellar disk corresponds to this isolated core, which is rotating perpendicularly with respect to the galaxy main disk (Bertola et al. 1999).

## 4 Discussion and conclusions

We have provided evidence for the presence of a nuclear disk in 3 early-type spirals, namely NGC 1425, NGC 3898 and NGC 4698 over a qualified sample of 38 objects. The photometric properties of these 20-pc scale exponential disks are consistent with those of the 4 nuclear disks so far detected in disk galaxies of even earlier morphological type (Fig. 5). We have not found nuclear disks neither in Sbc–Sm nor in barred galaxies although these classes represents the majority of our sample. To further address the demography of nuclear disks we need to apply the relatively easy approach adopted here (based on unsharp-masking) on a larger sample of galaxies, imaged at high spatial resolution in near-infrared pass-bands to deal with central dusts which prevented us to exclude the presence of nuclear disks in a large fraction (roughly two thirds) of our WFPC2/F606W sample galaxies.

Without drawing general conclusions from such a limited number of galaxies, nevertheless we have the indication that the presence of nuclear disks is restricted to S0’s and bulge-dominated unbarred spiral galaxies. In the framework of massive bulge formation through a process of hierarchical clustering merging, the nuclear disks may be the final result of dissipational and star-formation processes subsequent to a second acquisition event. To date however, there were only photometric and kinematical evidences that nuclear disks can also be formed via secular evolution of a bar (e.g. NGC 4570).

With NGC 4698 we showed for the first time that second events indeed represent a viable mechanism to build a nuclear disk in the center of disk galaxies. Indeed the nuclear disk of NGC 4698 is geometrically (this paper) and kinematically (Bertola et al. 1999) decoupled in an orthogonal way with respect to the host galaxy. This phenomenon can be hardly explained without invoking the acquisition of external material from the galaxy outskirts (see Bertola & Corsini 2000).

We thank F. van den Bosch for providing us his data for Fig. 5.


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