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# A Deterministic Single-Photon Source for Distributed Quantum Networking

## Abstract

A sequence of single photons is emitted on demand from a single three-level atom strongly coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity. The photons are generated by an adiabatically driven stimulated Raman transition between two atomic ground states, with the vacuum field of the cavity stimulating one branch of the transition, and laser pulses deterministically driving the other branch. This process is unitary and therefore intrinsically reversible, which is essential for quantum communication and networking, and the photons should be appropriate for all-optical quantum information processing.

A future quantum network connecting remote quantum processors and memories has several advantages in processing quantum information as compared to a local quantum computer, since it combines scalability with modularity. Different kinds of networks have been proposed Monroe (2002): one is an all-optical network Knill et al. (2001), where the nodes are linear optical components, with quantum information encoded in the number of photons flying from node to node. The nodes perform gate operations based on quantum interference effects between indistinguishable photons. In another, more general, network the nodes also serve as quantum memories storing information, e.g., in long-lived states of atoms located in an optical cavity Cirac et al. (1997). The key requirement for such a network is its ability to interconvert stationary and flying qubits and to transmit flying qubits between specified locations DiVincenzo et al. (2000). The atom-cavity system, in particular, must be able to transfer quantum information between atoms and photons in a coherent manner Maître et al. (1997); Brattke et al. (2001). It must also act as an emitter and a receiver of single-photon states. These states must therefore be generated by a reversible process. However, all deterministic single-photon emitters demonstrated so far Kim et al. (1999); Lounis and Moerner (2000); Kurtsiefer et al. (2000); Brouri et al. (2000); Michler et al. (2000a); Santori et al. (2001); Yuan et al. (2002); Michler et al. (2000b); Moreau et al. (2001) do not meet this essential requirement. The reason is that the emission process, namely an electronic excitation of the system followed by spontaneous emission, cannot be described by a Hamiltonian evolution and, hence, is irreversible.

This letter describes the realization of an intrinsically reversible single-photon source Cirac et al. (1997); van Enk et al. (1997); Parkins et al. (1993, 1995); Pellizari et al. (1995), which is based on a stimulated Raman process driving an adiabatic passage Vitanov et al. (2001) (STIRAP) between two ground states of a single atom strongly coupled to a single mode of a high-finesse optical cavity Law and Kimble (1997); Kuhn et al. (1999). A laser beam illuminating the atom excites one branch of the Raman transition, while the cavity vacuum stimulates the emission of the photon on the other branch. STIRAP is slow compared to the photon lifetime in the cavity, so that the field generated inside the cavity is instantaneously mapped to the outside world. Moreover, it employs a dark state, which has two important consequences: first, any electronic excitation is avoided, so that irreversible spontaneous processes do not occur. Second, the scheme allows one to continuously tune the frequency of the photon within a range that is only limited by the atom-cavity coupling strength. The tuning ability has recently been demonstrated with a beam of atoms passing through the cavity Hennrich et al. (2000). This experiment produced at most one photon per passing atom, but did not operate as a single-photon source, because its continuous driving scheme simply mapped the random (Poissonian) atom statistics to the photons. The present experiment, however, uses a pulsed driving together with a pulsed recycling. This makes possible to produce on demand a stream of several single-photon pulses from one-and-the-same atom, triggered by the detection of a “first” photon emitted from the cavity.

Figure 1A shows the basic scheme of the photon-generation process. A single 85Rb atom is prepared in state $`|u`$, which is the $`F=3`$ hyperfine state of the $`5S_{1/2}`$ electronic ground state. The atom is located in a high-finesse optical cavity, which is near resonant with the 780 nm transition between states $`|g`$ and $`|e`$. Here, $`|g`$ is the $`F=2`$ hyperfine state of the electronic ground state and $`|e`$ is the electronically excited $`5P_{3/2}(F=3)`$ state. The state of the cavity is denoted by $`|n`$, where $`n`$ is the number of photons. When the atom is placed inside the cavity, the product states $`|g,n`$ and $`|e,n1`$ are coupled by the electric dipole interaction, characterized by the Rabi frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n=2g\sqrt{n}`$. Here, $`g`$ is the average atom-cavity coupling constant, which takes into account that neither the position of the atom in the cavity, nor the magnetic quantum number of the atom is well defined in the experiment. We assume $`g`$ to be constant while a pump-laser pulse with Rabi frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }_P\left(t\right)`$ is applied. This laser is close to resonance with the $`|u|e`$ transition, so that now the three product states $`|u,n1`$, $`|e,n1`$ and $`|g,n`$ of the atom-cavity system are coupled. For the one-photon manifold, $`n=1`$, and a Raman-resonant excitation, where the detunings of the pump laser, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_P`$, and the cavity, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_C`$, from the respective atomic transitions are equal, it is straightforward to find the three eigenstates of the coupled atom-cavity system, $`|\varphi _1^\pm `$ and $`|\varphi _1^0=\left[2g|u,0\mathrm{\Omega }_P(t)|g,1\right]/\sqrt{4g^2+\mathrm{\Omega }_P^2(t)}`$. Note that state $`|\varphi _1^0`$ is dark, i.e. has no contribution of the excited state, $`|e`$, and is therefore not affected by spontaneous emission.

The dark state $`|\varphi _1^0`$ is now used to generate a single photon inside the cavity. This is achieved by establishing a large atom-cavity coupling constant, $`g`$, before turning on the pump pulse. In this case, the system’s initial state, $`|u,0`$, coincides with $`|\varphi _1^0`$. Provided the pump pulse rises slowly, the system’s state vector adiabatically follows any change of $`|\varphi _1^0`$, and for a lossless cavity a smooth transition from $`|u,0`$ to $`|g,1`$ is realized as soon as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_P2g`$. Hence, a single photon is generated in the relevant cavity mode. This photon leaves the cavity through that mirror which is designed as an output coupler. The emission starts as soon as the decaying state, $`|g,1`$, contributes to $`|\varphi _1^0`$, i.e. already with the rising edge of the pump pulse, because the contribution from $`|g,1`$ is proportional to $`\mathrm{\Omega }_P^2(t)`$. If the pump pulse rises slowly, the emission can therefore end even before $`\mathrm{\Omega }_P>2g`$. The dynamics of the simultaneous excitation and emission processes determines the duration and, hence, the linewidth of the photon. When the photon is emitted, the final state of the coupled system, $`|g,0`$, is reached. This state is not coupled to the one-photon manifold, and the atom cannot be reexcited. This limits the number of photons per pump pulse and atom to one.

To emit a sequence of photons from one-and-the-same atom, the system must be transferred back to $`|u,0`$ once an emission has taken place. To do so, we apply recycling laser pulses that hit the atom between consecutive pump pulses. The recycling pulses are resonant with the $`|g|e`$ transition and pump the atom to state $`|e`$. From there, it decays spontaneously to the initial state, $`|u`$. Note that state $`|e`$ populated by the recycling laser couples to the cavity. However, spontaneous emission into the cavity is suppressed by deliberately choosing a large cavity detuning, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_C`$. The pump laser is detuned by the same amount to assure Raman resonance. If an atom that resides in the cavity is now exposed to a sequence of laser pulses, which alternate between triggering single-photon emissions and re-establishing the initial condition by optical pumping, a sequence of single-photon pulses is produced.

Figure 1B shows the apparatus. Atoms are released from a magneto-optical trap and pass through the TEM00 mode of the optical cavity, where they are exposed to the sequence of laser pulses. On average, 3.4 atoms/ms enter the cavity 111The flux of atoms is determined by a statistical analysis of the emitted light, with continuous pump- and recycling lasers exciting the falling atoms. As the cavity acts as detector, non-interacting atoms are ignored, so that its spatial mode structure is taken into account., so that the probability of finding a single atom inside the cavity is 5.7%, while the probability of having more than one atom is only 0.18% which is negligible. The cavity is 1 mm long and has a finesse of $`\mathrm{60\hspace{0.17em}000}`$. One mirror has a 25 times larger transmission coefficient than the other. Therefore, photons are preferentially emitted into one direction. These photons are counted by two avalanche photodiodes which are placed at the output ports of a beam splitter. For each experimental cycle, all photon arrival times are recorded with transient digitizers with a time resolution of $`8`$ns.

In the experiment, the electric field amplitudes and, hence, the Rabi frequencies of the pump and recycling pulses have the shape of a saw-tooth and increase linearly, as displayed in Fig. 2A. This leads to a constant rate of change of the dark state, $`|\varphi _1^0`$, during the initial stage of the pump pulses, and therefore optimal adiabaticity with minimal losses to the other eigenstates. The linear slope of the recycling pulses suppresses higher Fourier components and therefore reduces photon emission into the detuned cavity. Note that the recycling process is finished before the end of the pulse is reached, so that the final sudden drop in Rabi frequency does not influence the atom.

Also shown in Fig. 2 are two measured arrival-time distributions of the photons and a simulation of the photon emission rate for typical experimental parameters. The simulation is based on a numerical solution of the system’s master equation Kuhn et al. (1999) which takes into account the decay of the relevant states. The simulation (Fig. 2C) reveals that the pump-pulse duration of $`2\mu `$s is slightly too short, as the emitted photon pulse is not completely finished. This is also observed in the photon arrival-time distribution (Fig. 2B). Here, the measured data agree well with the simulation if only photons from strongly coupled atoms are considered (solid line). For these, we assume that several photons are detected within he atom-cavity interaction time. If solitary photons, which we attribute to weakly coupled atoms, are included in the analysis, the arrival-time distribution is given by the dotted line. Note that the envelope of the photon pulses is well explained by the expected shape of the single-photon wavepackets, and therefore cannot be attributed to an uncertainty in emission time, which is not present for a unitary process. Assuming transform-limited Gaussian pulses, we infer a single-photon linewidth of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =340`$kHz (FWHM) from the $`1.3\mu `$s photon-pulse duration (FWHM). We emphasize that the pump-pulse duration was adjusted to maximize the number of photons per atom. Longer pump pulses would not truncate the photon pulses and, hence, would slightly increase the emission probability per pulse, but due to the limited atom-cavity interaction time, the total number of photons per atom would be reduced.

Figure 3 displays an example of the photon stream recorded while single atoms fall through the cavity one after the other. Obviously, the photon sequence is different for each atom. In particular, not every pump pulse leads to a detected photon, since the efficiencies of photon generation and photon detection are limited. The second-order intensity correlation function of the emitted photon stream is shown in Fig. 4. Displayed is the cross-correlation of the photon streams registered by the two photodiodes $`D1`$ and $`D2`$. It is defined as $`g^{(2)}(\mathrm{\Delta }t)=P_{D1}(t)P_{D2}(t\mathrm{\Delta }t)/\left(P_{D1}(t)P_{D2}(t)\right)`$, where $`P_{D1}(t)`$ and $`P_{D2}(t)`$ are the probabilities to detect a photon at time $`t`$ with photodiode $`D1`$ and $`D2`$, respectively. Note that all photon-arrival times are recorded to calculate the full correlation function, without the otherwise usual restriction of a simple start/stop measurement which would consider only neighboring events. Of course, $`g^{(2)}`$ includes not only correlations between photons emitted from the cavity but also those involving detector-noise counts. This last contribution has been determined from an independent measurement of the detector-noise count rate. The result is indicated by the time-independent hatched area in Fig. 4. Only the excess signal, $`\stackrel{~}{g}^{(2)}(\mathrm{\Delta }t)=g^{(2)}(\mathrm{\Delta }t)g_{noise}^{(2)}`$, reflects the true photon statistics of the light emitted from the atom-cavity system.

The correlation function, $`\stackrel{~}{g}^{(2)}(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$, oscillates with the same periodicity as the sequence of pump pulses. This indicates that photons are only emitted during the pump pulses, and no emissions occur when recycling pulses are applied. The nearly Gaussian envelope of the comb-like function is obviously a consequence of the limited atom-cavity interaction time. The most remarkable feature in Fig. 4 is the missing correlation peak at $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0`$. In fact, photon antibunching together with $`\stackrel{~}{g}^{(2)}(0)0`$ is observed. This clearly demonstrates the nonclassical character of the emitted light, and proofs that (a) the number of emitted photons per pump pulse is limited to one, and (b) no further emission occurs before the atom is recycled to its initial state. Note that the relatively large noise contribution is no intrinsic limitation of our system but reflects only the low atomic flux through the cavity in the present experiment.

We emphasize that the detection of a first photon signals the presence of an atom in the cavity, and fixes the atom number to one. The photons emitted from this atom during subsequent pump pulses dominate the photon statistics and give rise to antibunching. Such an antibunching would not be observed for faint laser pulses, since a random photon statistics applies to each pulse. The areas of the different peaks of the correlation function in Fig. 4 reflect the probability for the emission of further photons from one-and-the-same atom. They are determined from a lengthy but straightforward calculation, which relates the number of correlations per pulse with the total number of photons. Using the data displayed in Fig. 4, the result for the conditional emission of another photon during the (next, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th) pump pulse is (8.8, 5.1, 2.8, 1.4, 0.8, 0.5) %. Note that the probabilities for subsequent emissions decrease, since the photon emission probability, $`P_{emit}`$, depends on the location of the moving atom. It is highest for an atom in an antinode, and decreases if the atom moves away from this point. It is not possible to control the atoms location in the present experiment, but it is possible to calculate $`P_{emit}(z)`$ from the experimental data. Here, $`z`$ is the atom’s vertical position relative to the cavity axis, and $`P_{emit}(z)`$ is averaged over all possible atomic trajectories in the horizontal $`xy`$-plane. Assuming a Gaussian $`z`$-dependence, the deconvolution of $`\stackrel{~}{g}^{(2)}(\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ gives $`P_{emit}(z)=0.17\mathrm{exp}\left[\left(z/15.7\mu m\right)^2\right]`$. For $`z=0`$, the average photon-emission probability of 17% is smaller than the calculated value of 67% for an atom in an antinode of the cavity. It follows that a system combining a cavity and a single atom at rest in a dipole trap Schlosser et al. (2001); Kuhr et al. (2001), or a single ion at rest in a rf-trap Guthörlein et al. (2001); Mundt et al. , should allow one to generate a continuous bit-stream of single photons with a large and time-independent efficiency Law and Kimble (1997); Kuhn et al. (1999). The photon repetition rate is limited by the atom-cavity coupling constant, $`g`$, which one could push into the GHz regime by using smaller cavities of wavelength-limited dimensions in, e.g., a photonic bandgap material.

In conclusion, we have shown that a coupled atom-cavity system is able to emit single photons on demand. Moreover, it is possible to generate a sequence of up to seven photons on demand from one-and-the-same atom in a time interval of about $`30\mu `$s. These photons are all generated in a well-defined radiation mode. They should have the same frequency and a Fourier-transform limited linewidth, limited from above by the decay rate of the cavity field Hennrich et al. (2000). It follows that one can expect the photons to be indistinguishable and, therefore, ideal for all-optical quantum computation schemes Knill et al. (2001). Moreover, the photon-generation process is unitary. This makes possible to produce arbitrarily shaped single-photon pulses by suitably tailoring the envelope of the pump pulse. For symmetric pulses, the emission process can be reversed. This should allow one to transfer the photon’s quantum state to another atom located in another cavity. Such a state mapping between atoms and photons is the key to quantum teleportation of atoms between distant nodes in a quantum network of optical cavities Cirac et al. (1997).

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by the research program ‘Quantum Information Processing’ of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and by the European Union through the IST (QUBITS) and IHP (QUEST) programs.


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# Theory of Interacting Neural Networks

## 1 Introduction

Neural networks learn from examples. This concept has extensively been studied using models and methods of statistical physics . In particular the following scenario has been investigated: Feedforward networks are trained on examples generated by a different network.

Feedforward networks classify high dimensional data, in the simplest case by a single output bit (1/0, wrong/correct, yes/no). They are adaptive algorithms, their parameters (= synaptic weights) are adapting to a set of training examples, in our case a set of input/output pairs. After the training phase, the networks have achieved some knowledge about the rule which has generated the examples, the network can classify input vectors which it never has seen before, it can generalise.

Several mathematical models studied before use training examples which are generated by a different neural network, called the “teacher”. On-line training means that the “student”, at each training step, receives a new example from the teacher network. Each example is used only once for training. Hence, in this case training may be considered as dynamics of interacting neural networks: A teacher network is sending signals (= examples) to the student network which is stepwise changing its weights according to the received message.

Mathematical methods have been developed to calculate the properties of the dynamics of interacting networks. In the limit of large networks one can describe the system by a differential equation for a few “order parameters”, which determine, for example, the generalisation error as a function of the number of training examples .

In this contribution we give an overview over recent work on the theory of interacting neural networks. The model is defined in Section 2. The typical teacher/student scenario is considered in Section 3. A static teacher network is presenting training examples for an adaptive student network. In the case of multilayer networks, the student shows a transition from a symmetric state to specialisation. Neural networks can also generate a time series. Training on time series and predicting it are studied in Section 4. When a network is trained on its own output, it is interacting with itself. Such a scenario has implications on the theory of prediction algorithms, as discussed in Section 5. When a system of networks is trained on its minority decisions, it may be considered as a model for competition in closed markets, see Section 6. In Section 7 we consider two mutually interacting networks. A novel phenomenon is observed: synchronisation by mutual learning. In Section 8 it is shown, how this phenomenon can be applied to cryptography: Generation of a secret key over a public channel.

## 2 On-line training

The simplest mathematical neural network is the perceptron. It consists of a single layer of $`N`$ synaptic weights $`\underset{¯}{w}=(w_1,\mathrm{},w_N)`$. For a given input vector $`\underset{¯}{x}`$, the output bit is given by

$$\sigma =\text{sign}\left(\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}w_ix_i\right)$$
(1)
The decision surface of the perceptron is just a hyperplane in the $`N`$-dimensional input space, $`\underset{¯}{w}\underset{¯}{x}=0`$. A perceptron may also have a continuous output $`y`$ as

$$y=\mathrm{tanh}\left(\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}w_ix_i\right)$$
(2)
A perceptron may be considered as an elementary unit of a more complex network like an attractor network or a multilayer network. In fact any function can be approximated by a multilayer network if the number of hidden units is large enough .

The perceptron can learn from examples. Examples are input/output pairs,

$$(\underset{¯}{x}(t),\underset{¯}{\sigma }(t))t=1,\mathrm{},\alpha N$$
(3)
On-line training means that at each time step $`t`$ the weights of the perceptron adapt to a new example, for instance by the rule

$$\underset{¯}{w}(t+1)=\underset{¯}{w}(t)+\frac{\eta }{N}\sigma (t)\underset{¯}{x}(t)F(\sigma (t)\underset{¯}{x}(t)\underset{¯}{w}(t))$$
(4)
$`F(z)=1`$ is usually called – after the corresponding biological mechanism – the Hebbian rule, each synapse $`w_i`$ responds to the activities $`\sigma (t)x_i(t)`$ at its ends. $`F(z)=\mathrm{\Theta }(z)`$ is called the Rosenblatt rule: a training step occurs only if the example is misclassified. Finally, the Adatron rule $`F(z)=|z|\mathrm{\Theta }(z)`$ is important since it gives good results for generalisation, as discussed in the following. For the last two learning rules, in addition to the two neural activities at the synaptic ends, the postsynaptic potential determines the strength of the synaptic adaptation.

## 3 Generalisation

Now we consider two perceptrons. One is called the teacher network which is producing a set of examples. It is receiving a set of random input vectors $`\underset{¯}{x}(t)`$ and generating output bits $`\sigma (t)`$. The teacher has a fixed weight vector $`\underset{¯}{w}^T`$.

Each time the teacher is producing a new example, the student perceptron is trained on it according to (4). As a consequence, the weight vector of the student $`\underset{¯}{w}^S(t)`$ is time dependent. The student tries to approach the teacher, at each training step $`t`$ its weight vector moves towards the one of the teacher. It is easy to see that for random inputs $`\underset{¯}{x}`$, equation (4) gives a kind of random walk in $`N`$-dimensional space with a bias towards the teacher vector $`\underset{¯}{w}^T`$.

The distance between student and teacher can be measured by the overlap

$$R=\frac{\underset{¯}{w}^T\underset{¯}{w}^S}{|\underset{¯}{w}^T||\underset{¯}{w}^S|}$$
(5)
The quantity $`R`$ determines the angle $`\varphi `$ between student and teacher weights, $`R=\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$. It turns out that from this overlap the generalisation error $`e_g`$ can be calculated. The generalisation error is the probability that the student gives an answer to a random input $`\underset{¯}{x}`$ which is different from the one of the teacher. One finds

$$e_g=\frac{\mathrm{arccos}R}{\pi }$$
(6)
In the limit of infinitely many input units, $`N\mathrm{}`$, the dynamics of the overlap $`R(t)`$ can be calculated analytically. According to (4), the size of the training step scales down with $`1/N`$. Therefore one defines a variable $`\alpha =t/N`$ which becomes a continuous variable, called time, in the limit of large $`N`$.

The time dependence of $`R(\alpha )`$ is obtained by multiplying (4) by $`\underset{¯}{w}^T`$ and $`\underset{¯}{w}^S`$ and by averaging these two equations over the random input vector $`\underset{¯}{x}`$. This can be done since the expressions $`\underset{¯}{w}\underset{¯}{x}`$ are Gaussian variables.

For the Adatron rule one finally obtains the differential equation

$$\frac{dR}{d\alpha }=\frac{R}{2\pi }\mathrm{arccos}R+\frac{1}{\pi }\left(1\frac{R^2}{2}\right)\sqrt{1R^2}$$
(7)
The generalisation error calculated by this equation is shown in Fig. 2. If only a finite number of examples has been learned, $`\alpha =0`$, the error is 50 %, as bad as random guessing. If the number of training examples is of the order of $`N`$, $`\alpha >0`$, the student network has obtained some overlap to the teacher. In the limit of large values of $`\alpha `$ the error decreases to zero, the student has obtained complete knowledge about the parameters of the teacher.

The asymptotic decay of the generalisation error depends on the learning rule. One finds for the Adatron rule $`e_g3/2\alpha ^1`$. In fact, it has been shown that the error cannot decay faster than $`e_g0.88\alpha ^1`$. For the Rosenblatt rule, one finds $`e_g\alpha ^{1/3}`$, and for the Hebbian rule $`e_g\alpha ^{1/2}`$. But in all cases the student succeeds to approach the teacher when it makes of the order of $`N`$ steps. This even holds when the examples are distorted by noise .

Learning from examples works for more complex networks, too. Here I would like to mention the work on specialisation of committee machines . Such a network is a multilayer network with several hidden units, similar to Fig. 8. The output bits of the continuous hidden units are summed and taken as the output of the network. Teacher and student networks have an identical architecture, and the learning step is just a gradient descent of the training error, the quadratic deviation between teacher and student output.

The corresponding generalisation error is shown in Fig. 3. For small number of examples it decreases fast, then it reaches a plateau and only for a huge number of examples it decreases to zero.

The motion of the student network can be expressed by the overlap between the corresponding members of the two machines. The teacher as well as the student consists of two weights vectors, $`\underset{¯}{w}_1^{T/S}`$ and $`\underset{¯}{w}_2^{T/S}`$. A distance between teacher and student can be defined from the overlaps

$$R_{i,j}=\underset{¯}{w}_i^T\underset{¯}{w}_j^S$$
(8)
Initially, all vectors are random, hence up to fluctuations all the overlaps are zero. Then all overlaps increase due to learning. But on the plateau of Fig. 3 the overlaps are all identical, $`R_{1,1}=R_{2,2}=R_{1,2}`$. The student has achieved some knowledge, but it is in a symmetric state. Only if the student receives much more information it can specialise: $`R_{1,1}=R_{2,2}`$ are much larger than $`R_{1,2}`$.

In the initial process the two members of the student committee act as being one single perceptron, but later they specialise and follow their partners in the teacher committee until they achieve complete knowledge for $`\alpha \mathrm{}`$.

## 4 Time series prediction and generation

Neural networks are successful prediction algorithms . Given a sequence of numbers, a neural network can be trained on this sequence by moving it over the sequence, as shown in Fig.4. This sequence can be produced by another network, called the teacher, by generating a new number and using it as an input component in the next step. Hence we have a new kind of interacting networks: The teacher with its static weight vector is a bit or sequence generator . The student is adapting its weights to the sequence generated by the teacher.

In principle this is the scenario described in the previous section. Here the difference is that the patterns are correlated, the input is not random but generated from the output of the teacher.

If a neural network cannot generate a given sequence of numbers, it cannot predict it with zero error. Hence one has investigated the generation of time series by neural networks  But this is not the whole story. Even if the sequence has been generated by an (unknown) neural network (the teacher), a different network (the student) can try to learn and to predict this sequence. In this context we are interested in two questions:

1. When a student network with the identical architecture as the teacher’s is trained on the sequence, how does the overlap between student and teacher develop with the number of training examples (= windows of the sequence)?
2. After the student network has been trained on a part of the sequence, how well can it predict the sequence several steps ahead?

Recently these questions have been investigated numerically for the simple perceptron, equation (1,2) . Consider a teacher perceptron with weight vector $`\underset{¯}{w}^T`$ generating the sequence $`S_0,S_1,S_2,\mathrm{},S_t,\mathrm{}`$ This sequence follows the equation

$$S_t=f\left(\frac{1}{N}\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}w_jS_{tj}\right)$$
(9)
where $`f(x)`$ is the transfer function. It has been shown that a perceptron can generate simple as well as complex sequences .

If $`f(x)`$ is monotonic, for instance $`f(x)=\mathrm{tanh}(\beta x)`$, then in general one obtains quasiperiodic sequences. In fact, the sequence is essentially generated by one Fourier component of the weight vector $`w_i^T`$ . If the transfer function, however, is not monotonic, for instance $`f(x)=\mathrm{sin}(\beta x)`$, then the sequence can be chaotic, depending on the model parameters . For both cases, learning and prediction have been investigated .

If a quasi periodic sequence is learned on-line, using gradient descent to update the weights,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }w_i=\frac{\eta }{N}(S_tf(h))f^{}(h)S_{ti}\text{with}h=\beta \underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}w_jS_{tj}$$
(10)
then one has found two time scales (time $`\alpha `$ means the number of training steps divided by $`N`$):

1. A short scale on which the overlap $`R(\alpha )`$ between teacher and student rapidly increases to a value which is still far away from the value $`R=1`$, which corresponds to perfect agreement.
2. A long one on which the overlap $`R(\alpha )`$ increases very slowly. Numerical simulations up to $`10^6N`$ training steps yielded an overlap which was close but sell different from the value $`R=1`$.

Although there is a mathematical theorem on stochastic optimisation which seems to guarantee convergence to perfect success , the on–line algorithm cannot gain much information about the teacher network, at least during reasonable training periods.

This is completely different for a chaotic time series generated by a corresponding teacher network with $`f(x)=\mathrm{sin}(x)`$. It turns out that the chaotic series appears like a random one: After a number of training steps of the order of $`N`$ the overlap relaxes exponentially fast to perfect agreement between teacher and student.

Hence, after training the perceptron with a number of examples of the order of $`N`$ we obtain the two cases: For a quasi periodic sequence the student has not obtained much information about the teacher, while for a chaotic sequence the student’s weight vector comes close to the one of the teacher. One important question remains: How well can the student predict the time series?

Fig.5 shows the prediction error as a function of the time interval over which the student makes the predictions. The student network which has been trained on the quasi periodic sequence can predict it very well. The error increases linearly with the size of the interval, even predicting $`10N`$ steps ahead yields an error of about 10% of the total possible range. On the other side, the student trained on the chaotic sequence cannot make predictions. The prediction error increases exponentially with time; already after a few steps the error corresponds to random guessing, $`e_g1`$. The explanation is that an infinitesimal change in the parameters of a chaotic map has the same effect as a small change in initial conditions, namely, an exponential growth in the distance between original and the disturbed trajectory.

In summary one finds the counterintuitive result:

1. A network trained on a quasiperiodic sequence does not obtain much information about the teacher network which generated the sequence. But the network can predict this sequence over many (of the order of $`N`$) steps ahead.
2. A network trained on a chaotic sequence obtains almost complete knowledge about the teacher network. But this network cannot make reasonable long-term predictions on the sequence.

It would be interesting to find out whether this result also holds for other prediction algorithms, such as multi-layer networks.

## 5 Self-interaction

In the previous section the time series was generated by a static teacher network. Now we consider a network which changes its synaptic weights while it is generating a bit sequence. The teacher is interacting with itself. The motivation of this investigation stems from the following problem:

Consider some arbitrary prediction algorithm. It may contain all the knowledge of mankind, many experts may have developed it. Now there is a bit sequence $`S_1,S_2,\mathrm{}`$ and the algorithm has been trained on the first $`t`$ bits $`S_1,\mathrm{},S_t`$. Can it predict the next bit $`S_{t+1}`$? Is the prediction error, averaged over a large $`t`$ interval, less than 50%?

If the bit sequence is random then every algorithm will give a prediction error of 50%. But if there are some correlations in the sequence then a clever algorithm should be able to reduce this error. In fact, for the most powerful algorithm one is tempted to say that for any sequence it should perform better than 50% error. However, this is not true . To see this just generate a sequence $`S_1,S_2,S_3,\mathrm{}`$ using the following algorithm:

Define $`S_{t+i}`$ to be the opposite of the prediction of this algorithm which has been trained on $`S_1,\mathrm{},S_t`$ .

Now, if the same algorithm is trained on this sequence, it will always predict the following bit with 100% error. Hence there is no general prediction machine; to be successful the algorithm needs some pre-knowledge about the class of problems it is applied to.

The Boolean perceptron is a very simple prediction algorithm for a bit sequence, in particular with the Hebbian on–line training algorithm (4). What does the bit sequence look like for which the perceptron fails completely?

Following (4), we just have to take the negative value

$$S_t=\text{sign}\left(\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}w_jS_{tj}\right)$$
(11)
and then train the network on this new bit:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }w_j=+\frac{1}{N}S_tS_{tj}.$$
(12)
The perceptron is trained on the opposite (= negative) of its own prediction. Starting from (say) random initial states $`S_1,\mathrm{},S_N`$ and weights $`\underset{¯}{w}`$, this procedure generates a sequence of bits $`S_1,S_2,\mathrm{}S_t,\mathrm{}`$ and of vectors $`\underset{¯}{w},\underset{¯}{w}(1),\underset{¯}{w}(2),\mathrm{}\underset{¯}{w}(t),\mathrm{}`$ as well. Given this sequence and the same initial state, the perceptron which is trained on it yields a prediction error of 100%.

It turns out that this simple algorithm produces a rather complex bit sequence which comes close to a random one . After a transient time the weight vector $`\underset{¯}{w}(t)`$ seems to perform a kind of random walk on an $`N`$–dimensional hyper-sphere. The bit sequence runs to a cycle whose average length $`L`$ scales exponentially with $`N`$,

$$L2.2^N.$$
(13)
The autocorrelation function of the sequence shows complex properties: It is close to zero up to $`N`$, oscillates between $`N`$ and $`3N`$ and it is similar to random noise for larger distances. Its entropy is smaller than the one of a random sequence since the frequency of some patterns is suppressed. Of course, it is not random since the prediction error is 100% instead of 50% for a random bit sequence.

When a second perceptron (=student) with different initial state $`\underset{¯}{w}^S`$ is trained on such a anti-predictable sequence generated by Eq.(11) it can perform somewhat better than the teacher: The prediction error goes down to about 78% but it is still larger than 50% for random guessing. Related to this, the student obtains knowledge about the teacher: The angle between the two weight vectors relaxes to about 45 degrees . Hence the complex anti-predictable sequence still contains enough information for the student to follow the time dependent teacher.

## 6 Agents competing in a closed market

We just considered a network interacting with itself. Now we extend this model to a system of many networks interacting with the minority decision of all members. This work was motivated by the following problem of econophysics .

Recently a mathematical model of economy receives a lot of attention in the community of statistical physics. It is a simple model of a closed market: There are $`K`$ agents who have to make a binary decision $`\sigma (t)\{+1,1\}`$ at each time step. All of the agents who belong to the minority gain one point, the majority has to pay one point (to a cashier which always wins). The global loss is given by

$$G=\left|\underset{t=1}{\overset{K}{}}\sigma (t)\right|$$
(14)
If the agents come to an agreement before they make a new decision, it is easy to minimise $`G:(K1)/2`$ agents have to choose $`+1`$, then $`G=1`$. However, this is not the rule of the game; the agents are not allowed to make contracts, and communicate only through the global sum of decisions. Each agent knows only the history of the minority decision, $`S_1,S_2,S_3,\mathrm{}`$, but otherwise he/she has no information. Can the agent find an algorithm to maximise his/her profit?

If each agent makes a random decision, then $`G^2=K`$. It is possible, but not trivial, to find algorithms which perform better than random .

Here we use a perceptron for each agent to make a decision based on the past $`N`$ steps $`\underset{¯}{S}=(S_{tN},\mathrm{},S_{t1})`$ of the minority decision. The decision of agent $`\underset{¯}{w}(t)`$ is given by

$$\sigma (t)=\text{sign}(\underset{¯}{w}(t)\underset{¯}{S}).$$
(15)
After the bit $`S_t`$ of the minority has been determined, each perceptron is trained on this new example $`(\underset{¯}{S},S_t)`$,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\underset{¯}{w}(t)=\frac{\eta }{N}S_t\underset{¯}{S}.$$
(16)
This problem could be solved analytically . The average global loss for $`\eta 0`$ is given by

$$G^2=(12/\pi )K0.363K.$$
(17)
Hence, for small enough learning rates the system of interacting neural networks performs better than random decisions. Successful cooperation emerges in a pool of adaptive perceptrons.

## 7 Synchronisation by mutual learning

Before, we have considered a pool of several neural networks interacting through their minority decisions. Now we study the interaction of just two neural networks . Contrary to the teacher/student case, now both of the networks are adaptive, each network is learning the output bit of its partner.

In particular, we consider the model where two perceptrons $`A`$ and $`B`$ receive a common random input vector $`\underset{¯}{x}`$ and change their weights $`\underset{¯}{w}`$ according to their mutual bit $`\sigma `$, as sketched in Fig. 6. The output bit $`\sigma `$ of a single perceptron is given by the equation

$$\sigma =\text{sign}(\underset{¯}{w}\underset{¯}{x})$$
(18)
$`\underset{¯}{x}`$ is an $`N`$-dimensional input vector with components which are drawn from a Gaussian with mean $`0`$ and variance $`1`$. $`\underset{¯}{w}`$ is a $`N`$-dimensional weight vector with continuous components which are normalised,

$$\underset{¯}{w}\underset{¯}{w}=1$$
(19)
The initial state is a random choice of the components $`w_i^{A/B},i=1,\mathrm{},N`$ for the two weight vectors $`\underset{¯}{w}^A`$ and $`\underset{¯}{w}^B`$. At each training step a common random input vector is presented to the two networks which generate two output bits $`\sigma ^A`$ and $`\sigma ^B`$ according to (18). Now the weight vectors are updated by the Rosenblatt learning rule (4):

$`\underset{¯}{w}^A(t+1)`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{¯}{w}^A(t)+{\displaystyle \frac{\eta }{N}}\underset{¯}{x}\sigma ^B\mathrm{\Theta }(\sigma ^A\sigma ^B)`$
$`\underset{¯}{w}^B(t+1)`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{¯}{w}^B(t)+{\displaystyle \frac{\eta }{N}}\underset{¯}{x}\sigma ^A\mathrm{\Theta }(\sigma ^A\sigma ^B)`$ (20)
$`\mathrm{\Theta }(x)`$ is the step function. Hence, only if the two perceptrons disagree a training step is performed with a learning rate $`\eta `$. After each step (7), the two weight vectors have to be normalised.

In the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$, the overlap

$$R(t)=\underset{¯}{w}^A(t)\underset{¯}{w}^B(t)$$
(21)
has been calculated analytically . The number of training steps $`t`$ is scaled as $`\alpha =t/N`$, and $`R(\alpha )`$ follows the equation

$$\frac{dR}{d\alpha }=(R+1)\left(\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\eta (1R)\eta ^2\frac{\varphi }{\pi }\right)$$
(22)
where $`\varphi `$ is the angle between the two weight vectors $`\underset{¯}{w}^A`$ and $`\underset{¯}{w}^B`$, i.e. $`R=\mathrm{cos}\varphi `$. This equation has fixed points $`R=1,R=1`$, and

$$\frac{\eta }{\sqrt{2\pi }}=\frac{1\mathrm{cos}\varphi }{\varphi }$$
(23)
Fig.7 shows the attractive fixed point of (22) as a function of the learning rate $`\eta `$. For small values of $`\eta `$ the two networks relax to a state of a mutual agreement, $`R1`$ for $`\eta 0`$. With increasing learning rate $`\eta `$ the angle between the two weight vectors increases up to the value $`\varphi =133^{}`$ for

$$\eta \eta _c1.816$$
(24)
Above the critical rate $`\eta _c`$ the networks relax to a state of complete disagreement, $`\varphi =180^{},R=1`$. The two weight vectors are antiparallel to each other, $`\underset{¯}{w}^A=\underset{¯}{w}^B`$.

As a consequence, the analytic solution shows, well supported by numerical simulations for $`N=100`$, that two neural networks can synchronise to each other by mutual learning. Both of the networks are trained to the examples generated by their partner and finally obtain an antiparallel alignment. Even after synchronisation the networks keep moving, the motion is a kind of random walk on an N-dimensional hypersphere producing a rather complex bit sequence of output bits $`\sigma ^A=\sigma ^B`$ . In fact, after synchronisation the system is identical to the single network learning its opposite output bit discussed in section 5.

## 8 Cryptography

In the field of cryptography, one is interested in methods to transmit secret messages between two partners A and B. An opponent E who is able to listen to the communication should not be able to recover the secret message.

Before 1976, all cryptographic methods had to rely on secret keys for encryption which were transmitted between A and B over a secret channel not accessible to any opponent. Such a common secret key can be used, for example, as a seed for a random bit generator by which the bit sequence of the message is added (modulo 2).

In 1976, however, Diffie and Hellmann found that a common secret key could be created over a public channel accessible to any opponent. This method is based on number theory: Given limited computer power, it is not possible to calculate the discrete logarithm of sufficiently large numbers .

Recently, it has been shown how interacting neural networks can produce a common secret key by exchanging bits over a public channel and by learning from each other .

We want to apply synchronisation of neural networks to cryptography. In the previous section we have seen that the weight vectors of two perceptrons learning from each other can synchronise. The new idea is to use the common weights $`\underset{¯}{w}^A=\underset{¯}{w}^B`$ as a key for encryption. But two problems have to be solved yet: (i) Can an external observer, recording the exchange of bits, calculate the final $`\underset{¯}{w}^A(t)`$, (ii) does this phenomenon exist for discrete weights? Point (i) is essential for cryptography, it will be discussed further below. Point (ii) is important for practical solutions since communication is usually based on bit sequences. It will be investigated in the following.

Synchronisation occurs for normalised weights, unnormalised ones do not synchronise . Therefore, for discrete weights, we introduce a restriction in the space of possible vectors and limit the components $`w_i^{A/B}`$ to $`2L+1`$ different values,

$$w_i^{A/B}\{L,L+1,\mathrm{},L1,L\}$$
(25)
In order to obtain synchronisation to a parallel – instead of an antiparallel – state $`\underset{¯}{w}^A=\underset{¯}{w}^B`$, we modify the learning rule (7) to:

$`\underset{¯}{w}^A(t+1)`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{¯}{w}^A(t)\underset{¯}{x}\sigma ^A\mathrm{\Theta }(\sigma ^A\sigma ^B)`$
$`\underset{¯}{w}^B(t+1)`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{¯}{w}^B(t)\underset{¯}{x}\sigma ^B\mathrm{\Theta }(\sigma ^A\sigma ^B)`$ (26)
Now the components of the random input vector $`\underset{¯}{x}`$ are binary $`x_i\{+1,1\}`$. If the two networks produce an identical output bit $`\sigma ^A=\sigma ^B`$, then their weights move one step in the direction of $`x_i\sigma ^A`$. But the weights should remain in the interval (25), therefore if any component moves out of this interval, it is set back to the boundary $`w_i=\pm L`$.

Each component of the weight vectors performs a kind of random walk with reflecting boundary. Two corresponding components $`w_i^A`$ and $`w_i^B`$ receive the same random number $`\pm 1`$. After each hit at the boundary the distance $`|w_i^Aw_i^B|`$ is reduced until it has reached zero. For two perceptrons with a $`N`$-dimensional weight space we have two ensembles of $`N`$ random walks on the internal $`\{L,\mathrm{},L\}`$. If we neglect the global signal $`\sigma ^A=\sigma ^B`$ as well as the bias $`\sigma ^A`$, we expect that after some characteristic time scale $`\tau =𝒪(L^2)`$ the probability of two random walks being in different states decreases as

$$P(t)P(0)e^{t/\tau }$$
(27)
Hence the total synchronisation time should be given by $`NP(t)1`$ which gives

$$t_{\mathrm{sync}}\tau \mathrm{ln}N$$
(28)
In fact, the simulations for $`N=100`$ show that two perceptrons with $`L=3`$ synchronise in about 100 time steps and the synchronisation time increases logarithmically with $`N`$. However, the simulations also showed that an opponent, recording the sequence of $`(\sigma ^A,\sigma ^B,\underset{¯}{x})_t`$ is able to synchronise, too. Therefore, a single perceptron does not allow a generation of a secret key.

Obviously, a single perceptron transmits too much information. An opponent, who knows the set of input/output pairs, can derive the weights of the two partners after synchronisation. Therefore, one has to hide so much information, that the opponent cannot calculate the weights, but on the other side one has to transmit enough information that the two partners can synchronise.

In fact, it was shown that multilayer networks with hidden units may be candidates for such a task . More precisely, we consider parity machines with three hidden units as shown in Fig.8. Each hidden unit is a perceptron (1) with discrete weights (25). The output bit $`\tau `$ of the total network is the product of the three bits of the hidden units

$`\tau ^A`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _1^A\sigma _2^A\sigma _3^A`$
$`\tau ^B`$ $`=`$ $`\sigma _1^B\sigma _2^B\sigma _3^B`$ (29)
At each training step the two machines $`A`$ and $`B`$ receive identical input vectors $`\underset{¯}{x}_1,\underset{¯}{x}_2,\underset{¯}{x}_3`$. The training algorithm is the following: Only if the two output bits are identical, $`\tau ^A=\tau ^B`$, the weights can be changed. In this case, only the hidden unit $`\sigma _i`$ which is identical to $`\tau `$ changes its weights using the Hebbian rule

$$\underset{¯}{w}_i^A(t+1)=\underset{¯}{w}_i^A(t)\underset{¯}{x}_i\tau ^A$$
(30)
For example, if $`\tau ^A=\tau ^B=1`$ there are four possible configurations of the hidden units in each network:

$`(+1,+1,+1),(+1,1,1),(1,+1,1),(1,1,+1)`$

In the first case, all three weight vectors $`\underset{¯}{w}_i,\underset{¯}{w}_2,\underset{¯}{w}_3`$ are changed, in all other three cases only one weight vector is changed. The partner as well as any opponent does not know which one of the weight vectors is updated.

The partners $`A`$ and $`B`$ react to their mutual stop and move signals $`\tau ^A`$ and $`\tau ^B`$, whereas an opponent can only receive these signals but not influence the partners with its own output bit. This is the essential mechanism which allows synchronisation but prohibits learning. Numerical  as well as analytical  calculations of the dynamic process show that the partners can synchronise in a short time whereas an opponent needs a much longer time to lock into the partners.

This observation holds for an observer who uses the same algorithm (30) as the two partners $`A`$ and $`B`$. Note that the observer knows 1. the algorithm of $`A`$ and $`B`$, 2. the input vectors $`\underset{¯}{x}_1,\underset{¯}{x}_2,\underset{¯}{x}_3`$ at each time step and 3. the output bits $`\tau ^A`$ and $`\tau ^B`$ at each time step. Nevertheless, it does not succeed in synchronising with $`A`$ and $`B`$ within the communication period.

Since for each run the two partners draw random initial weights and since the input vectors are random, one obtains a distribution of synchronisation times as shown in Fig. 9 for $`N=100`$ and $`L=3`$. The mean value of this distribution is shown as a function of system size $`N`$ in Fig. 10. Even an infinitely large network needs only a finite number of exchanged bits - about 400 in this case \- to synchronise.

If the communication continues after synchronisation, an opponent has a chance to lock into the moving weights of $`A`$ and $`B`$. Fig.11 shows the distribution of the ratio between the synchronisation time of $`A`$ and $`B`$ and the learning time of the opponent. In the simulations for $`N=100`$, this ratio never exceeded the value $`r=0.1`$, and the average learning time is about 50000 time steps, much larger than the synchronisation time. Hence, the two partners can take their weights $`\underset{¯}{w}_i^A(t)=\underset{¯}{w}_i^B(t)`$ at a time step $`t`$ where synchronisation most probably occurred as a common secret key. Synchronisation of neural networks can be used as a key exchange protocol over a public channel.

Up to now it is not clear, yet, whether more advanced attacks will finally break this exchange protocol. On the other side, there are several possible extensions of the synchronisation mechanism where tracking seems to be even harder .

## 9 Conclusions

The dynamics of interacting neural networks has been studied in the context of a simple model: the perceptron and its extensions. The dynamics of these models can be calculated analytically; macroscopic properties can be described by differential equations for a few order parameters.

Several kinds of interaction processes have been studied. In all cases the networks are trained by a set of examples which are generated by different networks. This is the way networks interact. Some networks are generating pairs of high dimensional input data and a corresponding output signal and transmit this information to other networks. The networks receiving this information are adapting their parameters – their synaptic weights – to each example. One question is to what extend the networks exchanging information are approaching each other in the high dimensional synaptic space.

The teacher/student scenario of a static networks generating the examples in addition to an adaptive network being trained on these examples is the case studied most. The question is: How well does the student learn the rule which is producing the examples, how can it generalise? The analytic solutions for the perceptron show the number of training examples has to be of the number of neurons to achieve generalisation. For the optimal training algorithm the generalisation error decays not faster than the inverse power of training time.

If both teacher and student networks are more complex then new phenomena are observed. For example, for a committee machine specialisation occurs: For short times the student relaxes fast to a configuration for which it has achieved generalisation but it is still in a symmetric state, it behaves like a simple perceptron. Only if the number of examples is increased to a very large value the student network can escape from this configuration and each member of the committee specialises to its corresponding member in the teacher network.

A static teacher network can also generate a time series on which the student network is trained. In addition to the overlap between teacher and student parameters, one is interested in the prediction abilities of the student after the interaction period. It turns out that learning and prediction are not necessarily correlated. One finds perceptrons which learn a chaotic sequence very well but cannot predict it. On the other side, for quasiperiodic sequences it is difficult to learn the weights of the teacher but it is simple to predict the corresponding sequence.

A very general question about properties of prediction algorithms leads to a perceptron interacting with itself. It produces a rather complex time series which yields 100 % prediction error if the same perceptron is trained on this sequence. But even if a different perceptron is trained on this sequence, it achieves some knowledge about the teacher, hence its prediction error is larger than 50 %.

A community of neural networks can exchange information and learn from each other. It is shown how such a scenario can lead to successful cooperation in the minority game – a model for competing agents in a closed market.

If two networks are exchanging information and learning from each other, they can synchronise. That means, after some training time they relax to a configuration with identical time dependent synaptic weights (up to a common sign). The two networks keep diffusing on a high dimensional hypersphere, but with identical weights. Neural networks can synchronise by mutual learning.

This new phenomenon is applied to cryptography. It is shown how multilayer networks with discrete weights synchronise after a few hundred steps of interactions. However, a third network which is recording the exchange of examples does not synchronise, at least during a short period of time. Learning by mutual learning is fast, but learning by listening is very slow. Hence two partners can agree on a common secret key over a public channel. Any observer who knows all the details of the algorithm and who knows all the training examples cannot calculate the secret key. This is – to my knowledge – the first public key exchange which is not based on number theory. Future research will show how well this new algorithm – based on mutual learning of neural networks – can resist any advanced attacks which still have to be invented.

Synchronisation of neural networks is an active subject of research in neurobiology. Up to now it is – to my knowledge – unclear how synchronisation develops and what is its function. Here the model calculations point to a new direction: Two or several biological networks can achieve a common time dependent state by learning information exchanged between active partners. Any other network receiving the same information without being able to influence the partners cannot lock into this time dependent common state. Hence even in a fully connected network, parts of it can synchronise by mutual learning, at the same time screening their synchronised state from parts which learn only by listening.

In summary, this is the first attempt to develop a theory of interacting neural networks. Several phenomena were discovered from simple models like the perceptron or the parity machines. These phenomena were neither included into the models from the beginning nor are obvious; they are a result of cooperative behaviour of the synaptic weights and can only be understood from the analytical and numerical calculations.

As the different scenarios described in this overview show, the first results of this theory of interacting adaptive systems may be relevant in the fields of cooperative systems, nonlinear dynamics, time series prediction, economic models, biological networks and cryptography.

Acknowledgement This overview is based on enjoyable collaborations with Ido Kanter, Richard Metzler and Michal Rosen-Zvi. I thank Michael Biehl for suggestions on the manuscript. This work has been supported by the German Israel Science Foundation (GIF), the Minerva Center of the Bar Ilan University and the Max-Planck Institute für Physik komplexer Systeme in Dresden.


text:
# An additional planet as a model for the Pleistocene Ice Age

## 1 Properties of the Pleistocene Ice Age

Earth’s most recent Ice Age Epoch is characterised by unique features, which still require an explanation . The Pleistocene Glaciation began approximately 2 Myr ago, after a gradual decrease of the global temperature in the Upper Plicoene from about 3 to 2 Myr BP. During the Pleistocene the general drop in temperature was interrupted by fluctuations, which augmented in proportion to the global cooling. Cold periods (Stadials) and warm periods (Interstadials) followed each other with a period of about 100 kyr during the last 1 Myr. Sometimes the temperature of the Interstadials even exceeded the average value for the Holocene  \[Fig. 1\]. The last Stadial (100 to 11.5 kyr BP) was interrupted about 20 times at irregular intervals by sudden temperature increases lasting from a few hundred to a few thousand years (Dansgaard-Oeschger events)  \[Fig. 2\]. During the Last Glacial Maximum, 20 kyr ago, the continental ice sheets reached the region around the present New York and covered Northern Germany, while Eastern Siberia and part of Alaska were ice-free and inhabited by large herbivorous mammals such as mammoths. Some of these have been excavated in a frozen state, which shows that in these areas the temperature dropped suddenly at the end of the Ice Age Epoch. During the Last Glacial Maximum, the continental ice sheets were centred in a geographically displaced position with relation to the present pole positions . In the Northern Hemisphere this position was in Greenland, about 18 degrees away from the present North Pole \[Fig. 3\]. According to Fig. 2, the Last Glacial Maximum was suddenly terminated 11.5 kyr ago. At about the same time a catastrophic geological event occurred, the relics of which are recorded in peculiar sediments found all over the Earth .

## 2 An additional planet as the basis of the model

Usually, the Ice Age Epoch is considered to be the reaction of a highly unstable climate system to the slow insolation variations proposed by Milankovitch . However, the present climate on Earth with its distribution and behaviour follows the basis of the Milankovitch model, suggesting that for the Holocene the climate does not require major non-linearities for its explanation. In contrast, throughout the Ice Age Epoch, the climate was strongly variable, as is evident from Fig. 1. It is therefore reasonable to assume that for a limited time the main driving force of the climate was not the Milankovitch effect but an additional external agent to which Earth’s climate responded linearly. In particular, the asymmetry of the ice distribution in the Northern Hemisphere as well as the presence of Mammoths in arctic Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum suggest that the geographic position of the North Pole was located somewhere in Central Greenland. If this was the case, then, at the End of the Pleistocene, it had to move to its present position. Such a movement of the geographic position of the Earth’s rotation axis, which in stellar space retains a practically fixed direction, can be induced by a transitory deformation of the Earth. This requires an extremely close passage near the Earth of a mass having at least the size of Mars. We therefore postulate that during the Ice Age Epoch and in the Upper Pliocene such an additional planet existed, henceforth called Z. Since at present Z does not exist any more, the Sun is the most likely agent to have promoted its disappearance. We therefore assume that Z moved in a highly eccentric orbit with a perihelion distance of only about 4 million km, so that during each passage near the Sun, Z was heated by both tidal forces and solar radiation. Thus planet Z was liquid and radiant.

## 3 Origin and fate of Z

Since Z is not a member of the present planetary system the crucial question has to be answered how in such a short time interval it could appear and subsequently disappear. Regarding the origin of Z there are several possibilities: Z may have entered into the planetary system from outside, i.e. from the Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud. Alternatively, it may have its origin in the Asteroid belt or as a moon of Jupiter. It then must have lost energy and angular momentum through resonances with other planets . This requires a time of the order of a million years only. Fig. 1 suggests that Z reached an orbit with a small perihelion distance 3 million years ago, thereby creating a gas cloud resulting in the Earth’s Pleistocene. Regarding the termination of Z, it is indispensable to assume that it was fragmented during the final close encounter with the Earth. This process consumed orbital energy, so that the perihelion distances of the fragments were likely to be reduced compared to the perihelion distance of Z. Most importantly, the smaller escape velocity of the fragments increased the evaporation rate. Typically, the molecular binding energy became more important than the escape energy, so that both molecules and clusters could evaporate. These were then blown away by radiation pressure. In this way, the fragments of Z could become dissolved within the Holocene. It is not unlikely that some of the fragments also dropped into the Sun.

## 4 Frequency of approaches to Earth

In order to obtain a measure of how often Z approached the Earth, the equations of motion of the planetary system including Z were solved for various orbital parameters of Z. Tidal work and any effects from evaporation were disregarded. Earth and Moon were considered separately, and the planets beyond Saturn were omitted . In the main calculation, the parameters assumed for Z at time J2000.0 were: semi-major axis 0.978 AU, numerical eccentricity 0.973, inclination 0, longitude and argument of the perihelion both 0. The result for a period of 750 kyr is shown in Figs. 4 and 5. The orbit of Z was found to be stable over the time range considered. The semi- major axis varied within 0.95 AU and 1.1 AU without showing a general trend. Similarly, the eccentricity remained between 0.958 and 0.977. The inclination, i.e. the angle between the orbit of Z and the invariant plane, showed an irregular variation between 0 and 13.5, with a period of approximately 9 kyr. In Fig. 4, each approach to Earth to less than 3 million km is marked by a vertical line ending at the closest distance. The Figure shows that the encounters are irregularly clustered, somewhat resembling the pattern of temperature fluctuations of Figs. 1 and 2. In Fig. 5 calculated approaches between Z and Earth to less than twice the Earth-Moon distance are shown. Within 100 kyr there are several passages closer than Moon’s distance. These must have created enormous earthquakes, and during the Ice Age Epoch must have caused ruptures of the continental ice shelves. We tentatively identify these with the Heinrich events . The diagram in Fig. 5 contains no approach closer than 30 000 km, i.e., approaches which might induce a polar shift; however, additional calculations suggest that this may occur once in a few Myr.

## 5 Mechanics of a polar shift

The asymmetry of the glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere \[Fig. 3\] is the most conspicuous feature of the Ice Age Epoch. Because of this, a displaced pole position and a fast polar migration have been postulated already at the end of the 19$`^{\text{th}}`$ century . This migration is a damped precession of the rotation axis on the globe, while the axis remains fixed in stellar space. This was discussed and judged as impossible. Indeed, with an Earth in either the solid or the liquid state, both of which were at that time considered, a deformation would relax too fast to allow an appreciable geographic shift of the poles. However, assuming a plastic Earth with a relaxation time of at least a few hundred days makes possible a shift of the required magnitude of ca. 18 . The rotation of the unperturbed Earth is stabilised by its increased radius at the equator compared to that at the poles. If the Earth had an additional deformation in an oblique direction, it would perform a motion in which the position of the rotation axis on the globe would migrate. The deformation could result from a close passage of a planet-sized object, which would stretch the Earth by tidal forces. A 1 per mil deformation is required for the shift. We consider an initial stretching deformation of the Earth such that, at an angle of 30 with the initial rotation axis, the radius is increased by 6.5 km. In the ensuing process, the Earth relaxes into a new equilibrium shape with a displaced equatorial belt. Angular momentum is strictly conserved, and at all times the rotation axis practically points to the same star. The spiral in Fig. 3 shows the geographic path of the rotation axis. It is the solution of Euler’s equations and a relaxation equation for the inertial tensor. A turn in the spiral takes about 400 days. For details of the calculation, see Appendix and . A stretching force is obtained from the tidal action due to a mass near the Earth. The required deformation corresponds to the equilibrium shape of Earth when a Mars-sized mass is at 24 000 km distance. The actual deformation problem, with a mass passing near the rotating Earth, is vastly more complex. We expect that the peak tidal force has to be about an order of magnitude larger; this brings the closest distance between the centres of Earth and Z into the range of 12 000 to 15 000 km. As a result, Z enters the Roche limit of Earth. It is then likely to be torn into two or more parts. Since Z is lighter than the Earth, tidal effects are stronger on Z than on Earth: Z is torn to pieces rather than the Earth. Note that the requirements restrict the mass of Z at the end of the Pleistocene to a range of at least that of Mars and clearly smaller than Earth’s. The polar shift event must have been accompanied on Earth by continental floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, i.e. a world-wide catastrophe, which actually left many stratigraphic evidences and which can also be assumed to be reported in traditions in many countries all over the globe .

## 6 The gas cloud during the Ice Age Epoch

Since during the Pleistocene Z is assumed to have been at least Mars-sized, evaporation was limited by the gravitational escape energy. Only single atoms escaped from the hot surface of Z. If an atom has an optical transition from the ground state within the main solar spectrum, then radiation pressure expels it from the planetary system. However, some atoms and many ions can be excited with ultraviolet light only. Apart from the rare gas atoms, these include atoms of Oxygen and Carbon. In these cases the repulsion due to solar radiation is much weaker than the gravitational attraction to the Sun, so that atoms of these elements can remain in bound orbits. These orbits shrink due to the Poynting-Robertson drag. The continued evaporation creates an interplanetary cloud. Its material consists of single atoms and ions and is thus quite distinct from the present zodiacal dust . The dynamics of the atomic cloud involves a variety of processes and is complex. We can only tentatively guess its behaviour. Collisions between atoms with planetary velocities are inelastic. They reduce the relative velocity between the colliding particles, so that their outgoing orbits become more similar. This increases the particle densities and thereby the frequency of collisions. This suggests that the range of inclinations of the orbits in the cloud can shrink with a time scale determined by the mean free time for particle collisions. Also, since collisions are inelastic, the semi-axes diminish. Particles with different ratios of repulsion by solar radiation to gravitational attraction intrinsically belong to different orbits and may become separated. If molecules form, these are expelled by radiation pressure. Atoms and molecules may become ionised. The scattering of solar radiation from any material along the line between Sun and Earth lowers the global temperature. Clearly, this screening depends on the density of the cloud and on the relative motions of cloud and Earth. Therefore, the extremely strong variations in temperature characteristic of the Pleistocene may be due to changes in the screening of the Sun. The isotopic and stratigraphic data for the last Myr of the Ice Age Epoch show a 100 kyr period . Now, Earth’s inclination, i.e. the angle between Earth’s orbit and the invariant plane, is governed by a 100 kyr cycle. The maxima of the inclination in fact coincide with the Interstadials, except for the last maximum, where no Interstadial has been observed. This indicates that the orbits of the atoms of the cloud often had inclinations which were smaller than the maxima of Earth’s inclination. Possibly at the end of the Pleistocene the width of the cloud had become too large. A similar solution to the problem of the origin of the 100 kyr cycle has previously been suggested by Muller et al .

## 7 The termination of the Ice Age Epoch

The climatic fluctuations which occurred towards the end of the Pleistocene require further study. We just note here that the last rapid increase of the temperature recorded in the polar ice data occurred at 11 500$`\pm `$65 yr BP \[Fig. 2\]. All radiocarbon dates made on residue material originated during the global catastrophe point to the same age ). However, these radiocarbon ages are not corrected for the variation of the production rate. The new dendro and U/Th calibration curves indicate that these ages have to be increased by about 1500 yr ). Thus, it appears that the Younger Dryas, which begins at 12 700$`\pm `$100 yr BP  is younger than the polar shift event. At the beginning of the Holocene the temperature increased in two steps. The first fast step was followed by a much slower rise, which reached its maximum about 9 000 yr ago \[Fig. 2\]. Since then the temperature remained remarkably constant until today. The possibility should not be a priori discarded that minor, still unexplained climatic features such as the cold events at 8.2 kyr cal BP  and 4.166 kyr cal BP  as well as the so-called Little Ice Age, 300 years ago, are due to remaining traces of gaseous material.

## 8 Facts which become plausible or which can be explained by our model

### 8.1 From the displaced pole positions

* The asymmetry of the glaciation in North America and east Siberia; it was the main motivation for considering geographically displaced poles. At present there are no climate models which determine the optimum position of the poles and the amount of screening of the solar radiation compatible with the observed glaciation.
* The existence of mammoths in arctic East Siberia indicates that there was sufficient sunlight for the growth of the plants on which they lived.
* Archaeological objects having ages around 40 000 years BP were found close to the Arctic Circle in Siberia . At the time the place had lower latitude.
* Lake Baikal was never frozen during the Pleistocene .
* The Tibetan Plateau was about 15 closer to the equator and not ice-domed during the last 170 kyr .
* The Atacama Desert and the altiplano Bolivia were humid . They were then situated closer to the equator than today.
* The Sahara desert was covered with grass and bushes during the Pleistocene. While for the Western Sahara this may be explained by its higher latitude in the Pleistocene, other reasons such as globally lower temperature should play a role in the Eastern Sahara.

### 8.2 From the interplanetary gas cloud

* The beginning of the general temperature decrease, 3 Myr ago can be understood as the time at which the perihelion distance of Z became sufficiently small for the gas cloud to develop.
* The coldest Ice Age was at the end of the Pleistocene, since due to tidal work the perihelion distance of Z decreased. With the passing of time the cloud became denser.
* The colder the mean temperature, the larger were the variations of the temperature. Dense clouds throw strong shadows.
* Some Interstadials had higher temperatures than at present. Not only was the Earth exposed to the regular sunlight, but it also received radiation scattered from clouds or backscattered from material outside Earth’s orbit.
* The form of the Daansgard-Oeschger temperature variations, typically a gradual decrease followed by a rapid increase, may be connected with the presently still unknown dynamics of the cloud. The observed shape of the variations may help to understand the cloud’s behavior.
* During the last million years the Interstadials occur approximately every 100 kyr, which coincides with the cycle of Earth’s inclination.

### 8.3 From the orbit of Z

* The approaches shown in Fig. 5 produce a similar irregular pattern as the temperature variations of Fig. 2. The events marked in Fig. 5 have distances less than 3 Mio. km, which is the radius to which a gas cloud may expand by thermal motion during the passage from the perihelion of Z to Earth’s distance. This suggests that a screening of the solar radiation by gases may lead to a frequency of temperature excursions as observed in the sequence of the Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
* Gigantic earthquakes, as listed in Fig. 5, accompanied fly-byes at less than Moon’s distance. Their frequency, about 6 per 100 kyr, corresponds to the frequency of Heinrich events, in which large glaciers broke away from the continent and floated into the Atlantic Ocean.
* Fig. 5 contains no fly-byes to less than 30 000 km, which might induce a polar shift. The rarity of polar shifts, say one event in a few Myr, is compatible with Fig. 5.

### 8.4 From the polar shift catastrophe

* The model explains how a polar shift within the time of relaxation of a global deformation, i.e. a few years, can occur.
* The frozen mammoths in the permafrost of arctic Siberia are a direct consequence of the geographic motion of the polar axis.
* The catastrophe produced a global extinction of many species of large animals .
* Frozen muck containing broken trees and bones testify for the violence of the event .
* The fragmentation of Z lead to its relatively rapid disappearance. Thus the Ice Age Epoch had an end.
* Once the continental ice shelf was molten, the Holocene was constantly warm and distinct from the Interstadials, which were interrupted by temperature variations.
* Human civilization reappeared about 9 000 years ago. Notably these populations, which stem from survivors, had an elaborately structured language.
* Many traditions are related to Z or its fragments, such as the Chinese dragon, a flying animal that spits fire and has a long, indefinite tail .

## 9 Conclusion

At present, the climate system of the Earth is observed to react to external forcing in a plausible way. If we assume this to be generally true in the geological past the observed asymmetry of the glaciation during the Late Glacial Maximum requires a shifted pole position and a fast migration of the poles at the end of the last glaciation. A pole shift of the order of 18 requires a close encounter with a massive object, which we have here called Z. Its mass was at least Mars sized, but clearly smaller than Earth’s, so that Z could be torn into fragments during the encounter. Since only the Sun can dispose of Z, we have to assume the perihelion of Z so small that Z was intensely heated. Clearly, its aphelion has to be larger than the radius of the Earth’s orbit. The choice of the aphelion determines the frequency of encounters. It had several million passes near the sun and a few close encounters with the Earth as well as with the other inner Planets. The heating of the surface of Z lead to the accumulation of an interplanetary atomic gas cloud having a complex dynamics. The material between the Sun and the Earth reduced the insolation and thereby the global temperature in a time-dependent way. In particular, the increasingly cold and variable climate during the last 3 Myr, until 11.5 kyr ago, is plausibly explained by the slow decrease of the orbital energy of Z and its angular momentum. The perihelion decreases, and this enhances the density of the gas cloud. In the Holocene, after the removal of all fragments of Z, its threat for life on Earth finally ended. Note that this model has only few free parameters. On the other hand, it creates new problems that deserve a more complete treatment in future studies. It may be worthwhile to clarify the relation of our model to a claim held by I. Velikovsky  that a close-by passage of Venus and later of Mars had produced a polar shift on Earth. Einstein  in his third letter to Velikovsky resumed his recommendations by the expression ”Catastrophes yes, Venus no”. Our model is compatible with this directive of Einstein.

## Appendix

The tidal force field $`F(z)`$ (for large distances $`R`$ compared to the radius $`R_E`$ of the Earth) is parallel to the $`z`$-direction, which points to the perturbing mass $`M_Z`$ . It has the value

$$F(z)=2M_ZG\frac{z}{R^3},$$
(1)
where $`G=6.67310^{11}`$ m<sup>3</sup> kg<sup>-1</sup> s<sup>-2</sup> is the gravitational constant. Earth’s induced deformation is described by an increment to the radius $`H(\gamma )`$, where $`\gamma `$ is the angle with the direction $`z`$ (at latitude 30)

$$H(\gamma )=H_0\left[\mathrm{cos}(2\gamma )+\frac{1}{3}\right].$$
(2)
The energy for such a deformation is minimised by the amplitude

$$H_0=\frac{R_E^2M_ZG}{2R^3g}$$
(3)
with $`g=9.8`$ m/s<sup>2</sup>, the gravitational acceleration at the surface of the Earth. For $`R=`$24 000 km, $`H_0=6.45`$ km. In a dynamic theory $`R`$ will be smaller. The diagonalized inertial tensor of the equilibrium Earth $`\mathrm{\Xi }_0`$ has matrix elements \[1.0033,1,1\] in units $`8.0110^{37}`$ kg m<sup>2</sup>. For the deformed Earth the initial inertial tensor $`\mathrm{\Xi }(0)`$ has diagonal elements \[1.0018, 0.9995, 1\] and off-diagonal elements $`\mathrm{\Xi }_{12}(0)=\mathrm{\Xi }_{21}(0)=\mathrm{0.000\hspace{0.17em}9}`$. Deformations are assumed to relax as

$$\frac{d\mathrm{\Xi }}{dt}=\frac{\mathrm{\Xi }(t)\mathrm{\Xi }_0[\stackrel{}{\omega }(t)]}{\tau },\tau =1000\text{d}.$$
(4)
The geographic wandering of the rotation vector $`\stackrel{}{\omega }`$ in co-ordinates fixed to the Earth is described by the Euler equation for free motion:

$$\frac{d\mathrm{\Xi }\stackrel{}{\omega }}{dt}=[\mathrm{\Xi }\stackrel{}{\omega },\stackrel{}{\omega }].$$
(5)
Eq. (4) and (5) are solved numerically.

## Acknowledgement

We are indebted to H.-U. Nissen for comments on the manuscript.


text:
# Realization of wide electron slabs by polarization bulk doping in graded III-V nitride semiconductor alloys

## Abstract

We present the concept and experimental realization of polarization-induced bulk electron doping in III-V nitride semiconductors. By exploiting the large polarization charges in the III-V nitrides, we are able to create wide slabs of high density mobile electrons without introducing shallow donors. Transport measurements reveal the superior properties of the polarization doped electron distributions than comparable shallow donor doped structures. The technique is readily employed for creating highly conductive layers in many device structures.

11footnotetext: djena@engineering.ucsb.edu

Doping in semiconductors has been a much researched topic. The traditional shallow ‘hydrogenic’ doping technique is very well understood and gainfully employed. A good understanding of the role of ionized dopant atoms on carrier scattering in semiconductors led to the concept of modulation doping, which improved low temperature carrier mobilities in quantum-confined structures by many orders of magnitude pfeiffer .

The last decade witnessed the emergence of the III-V nitrides as a wide bandgap semiconductor with the property of large embedded electronic polarization fields owing to the lack of inversion symmetry in the crystal structure bernardini ,patrick . This property has been widely exploited to make nominally undoped two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) in AlGaN/GaN heterostructures, which had led to high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) with record high performance characteristicsyifeng . The 2DEG at the AlGaN/GaN interface of a III-V nitride heterostructure is formed to screen the polarization dipole (with spontaneous and piezoelectric contributions) in the thin epitaxial AlGaN cap layer. Surface donor-like states act as modulation dopants, supplying electrons to form a dipole with the 2DEG at the heterointerfaceibbo .

The discontinuity of polarization across an AlxGa1-xN/GaN heterojunction $`\mathrm{\Delta }P_{hj}=P_{tot}^{AlGaN}(x)P_{Sp}^{GaN}`$ forms a fixed polarization sheet charge at the heterojunction. Grading the AlGaN/GaN heterojunction over a distance should spread the positive polarization sheet charge into a bulk three-dimensional polarization background charge. The charge profile is given by the divergence of the polarization field, which changes only along the (growth)z-direction ($`N_D^{Pol}(z)=P=\frac{P(z)}{z}`$). This fixed charge profile will depend on the nature of the grading; a linear grade results in an approximately uniform profile given by $`N_D^{Pol}(z)=\frac{P(z_0)P(0)}{z_0}`$. Here $`P(z_0)`$ is the polarization (spontaneous+piezoelectric) of AlxGa1-xN at the local Al composition at $`z=z_0`$.

This fixed background charge attracts free carriers from remote donor-like states to satisfy Poisson’s equation and charge neutrality. Figure 1 shows the schematic band diagrams and charge profile showing the effect of linear grading of the heterojunction. The end result of the charge rearrangements makes the polarization bulk charge act as a local donor with zero activation energy. The mobile three-dimensional electron slab (3DES) thus formed should be usable just as bulk doped carriers. However, removal of ionized impurity scattering should result in higher mobilities. Such polarization induced electron slabs should in principle be similar to the modulation doped three-dimensional electron slabs in modulation doped wide parabolically graded quantum wells in the AlGaAs/GaAs system shayegan . The mobile 3DES should not freeze out at low temperature (as shallow donor doped bulk carriers do), and should exhibit high mobilities at low temperatures.

To verify these concepts, five samples were grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Active nitrogen was provided by a rf-plasma source. High resistivity semi-insulating (SI) GaN on sapphire grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) was used as templates. For all five samples, a 100nm buffer MBE layer of undoped (Ga-face) GaN was grown, followed by a different cap layer for each. The cap layer for the five samples are described in Table I. The top 100nm of sample 1 is bulk shallow donor doped with Si (activation energy $`E_D=20meV`$, and concentration $`N_D=10^{18}/cm^3`$). Samples 2,3 and 4 are linearly graded AlGaN/GaN structures for studying polarization bulk doping; they are graded from GaN to 10%, 20% and 30% AlGaN respectively over $`z_0`$=100nm. Sample 5 is a 20nm Al0.2Ga0.8N/GaN which houses a conventional 2DEG at the heterojunction. Samples 1 and 5 are control samples.

Triple-crystal X-Ray diffraction data around the GaN (00.2) peak of samples 1-4 is shown in Figure 2. The data points match very well with the theoretical solid curvesxray  reflecting the high degree of control of Al composition and growth rate in MBE. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) of the sample surfaces revealed step-flow growth and fully strained graded AlGaN surfaces. Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS) was performed on an extra graded AlGaN layer sample specifically grown for that purpose. The linearity of Al composition in the graded layer was revealed by SIMS to be very accurately controlled. It also revealed background oxygen concentration in the MBE GaN layer to be identical to the underlying MOCVD layer accompanied with a small increase in the AlGaN layers. Any background oxygen ( which acts as a shallow donor in (Al)GaN ) may provide a small amount of thermally activated carriers which can be frozen out at low temperatures.

Temperature dependent (20-300K) Hall measurements were performed on all the five samples. Table I shows room temperature and 30K Hall measurement data for all five samples. The table includes the free carrier density in the bulk GaN and polarization induced 3DES and 2DEG densities calculated by solving Schrodinger and Poisson equations self consistently for samples 2-5. The room temperature sheet conductivity $`\sigma =qn\mu `$ is also shown. Temperature dependent carrier densities and mobilities for samples 1,4,and 5 are plotted in Figure 3 for comparison. Carriers in the 0-30% graded AlGaN sample mimics the transport characteristics of modulation doped 2DEGs and 3DESs characterized by a lack of activation energy, leading to a temperature independent carrier density. Carriers in the bulk donor doped sample show the characteristic freeze-out associated with the hydrogenic shallow donor nature of Si in bulk GaN. A fit to theoretical dopant activation yielded an activation energydegenerate  $`E_D=`$ 20 meV with a doping density (fixed by the Si flux in MBE) $`N_D=10^{18}/cm^3`$. The activation energy of Si closely matches that reported by Gotz et. al gotz . 2DEG carrier mobilities (Sample 5) are higher than the shallow donor doped and polarization doped carriers both at room temperature and low temperatures.

The point of interest is the order of magnitude improvement of carrier mobility at low temperatures for the polarization doped 3DESs over comparable donor doped samples. In donor doped GaN, thermally activated carriers freeze out with lowering of temperature leading to less energetic electrons and less effective screening. This causes severe ionized impurity scattering, lowering the mobility. However, the removal of ionized impurity scattering in the polarization doped structure, aided by the complete lack of carrier freezeout at low temperatures results in much improved mobilities. It is not clear yet what limits the low temperature mobility of polarization doped 3DESs. Alloy disorder scattering could be a strong candidate since the 3DES is housed in a linearly graded disordered alloy potential. There is also an improvement of low temperature mobility with increasing carrier density, which points towards possible Coulombic scattering from surface donors, charged dislocations, and background shallow impurities. Dislocation scattering in the polarization doped 3DES is also reduced at low temperatures as compared to donor doped carriers owing to the degenerate nature of 3DES carriersmyfirstpaper . Scattering from disorder in microscopic dipoles forming the graded alloy polarization charge could also be a source of scatteringmydipolepaper . The unanswered questions open up avenues for further work in transport of polarization doped 3DESs.

Of special interest to device engineers is the room temperature mobility, and especially the conductivity $`\sigma =en\mu `$. From Table I, we see that the room temperature charge-mobility product of the polarization doped 3DES (Sample 3) is more than double of that of the comparable donor doped sample (Sample 1). Further, the trend with increasing alloy composition suggests that the conductivity increases with increasing carrier density (got by either grading to higher aluminum composition for the same thickness, or decreasing the thickness for same grading composition). This trend has proved very useful for our design of high conductivity layers required in many device structures, especially in field effect transistors (FETs) and regrown ohmic contacts. The additional band-discontinuity achieved at a regrown polarization-doped AlGaN contact serves as an efficient hot-electron launcher from the source into the FET channel, reducing the transit times. The flexibility of polarization doping by grading (by controlling alloy composition and/or graded layer thickness independently) is an added attraction. An interesting extension would be the possibility of achieving polarization doped p-type carriers with higher mobilities by grading down from AlGaN for Ga-face III-V nitrides. This might solve the problems associated with the high activation energy of the commonly used acceptor (Mg) for GaN. Our work presents the first step towards realizing the proposed enhancement of base conductivity in AlGaN/GaN heterojunction bipolar transistors by exploiting the strong electronic polarization properties of the III-V nitride semiconductors asbeck .

In conclusion, we have demonstrated that polarization fields can be engineered to achieve bulk doping as an attractive alternate doping technique in III-V nitride semiconductors. We demonstrate improved conductivity of polarization doped layers over comparable donor doped layers, and point out avenues where it may be gainfully employed.

The authors would like to thank Patrick Waltereit, Arthur C. Gossard and Herbert Kroemer for useful discussions. Funding from POLARIS/MURI (Contract monitor: C. Wood) is gratefully acknowledged.

Table caption

Table I : Sample structures and Hall measurement data for the five samples.

Figure captions

Figure 1 : Schematic band diagram and charge profile of polarization bulk doping by spreading the heterojunction sheet charge into a bulk charge.

Figure 2 : Triple crystal X-Ray diffraction data (dots) and theoretical curve (solid line) for Samples 1-4 around the GaN (00.2) peak. The close agreement between theoretically predicted and experimentally measured values indicates well controlled MBE growth.

Figure 3 : Temperature dependent carrier sheet densities and mobility for a Polarization doped (Sample 4), Donor doped (Sample 1) and a 2DEG (Sample 5) structures. Note the improvement in mobility and the lack of carrier activation for the polarization doped electrons compared to the donor doped electrons.