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# 1 INTRODUCTION

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Any physical quantity measured in experiment is subject to fluctuations. In general, these fluctuations depend on the properties of the system under study (in the case at hand, on the properties of a fireball created in a heavy ion collision) and may contain important information about the system.

The original motivation for event-by-event (E-by-E ) studies in ultra relativistic heavy ion collisions has been to find indications for distinct event classes. In particular it was hoped that one would find events which would carry the signature of the Quark Gluon Plasma. First pioneering experiments in this direction have been carried out by the NA49 collaboration . They analyzed the E-by-E fluctuations of the mean transverse momentum as well as the kaon to pion ratio. Both observables, however, did not show any indication for two or more distinct event classes. Moreover, the observed fluctuations in both cases were consistent with pure statistical fluctuations.

On the theoretical side, the subject of E-by-E fluctuations has recently gained considerable interest. Several methods to distinguish between statistical and dynamic fluctuations have been devised . Furthermore the influence of hadronic resonances and possible phase transitions has been investigated . All these theoretical considerations assume that the observed fluctuations will be Gaussian and thus the physics information will be in the width of the Gaussian, which is controlled by 2-particle correlations .

## 2 EVENT-BY-EVENT FLUCTUATIONS

Fluctuations have contributions of different nature. Besides the statistical fluctuations due to a finite number of particles in case of heavy ion collisions, there are also fluctuations of the volume. Both these fluctuations are trivial and add to the dynamical fluctuations which carry the real information about the properties of the system. The dynamical fluctuations are controlled by the appropriate susceptibilities, which are the second derivative of the free energy with respect to the appropriate conjugate variable. For example the fluctuations of the charge are given by

$`(\delta Q)^2=T{\displaystyle \frac{^2F}{\mu _Q^2}}=VT\chi _Q`$ (1)
where $`\mu _Q`$ is the charge chemical potential, $`T`$ the temperature and $`V`$ the volume of the system. $`\chi _Q`$ is the charge susceptibility. It is interesting to note that the very same susceptibility also controls the response of the system to an external electric field. The properties of a macroscopic system are studied by investigating its response, i.e. its susceptibility, to external forces. This is of course impossible for the mesoscopic systems created in a heavy ion collision. However, the same property can also be accessed via fluctuations.

Since we will mostly concentrate on the charge susceptibility, let us point out that they are directly related to the electric mass, which is given by the zero momentum limit of the static current-current correlation function  $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{00}(\omega =0,\stackrel{}{k}0)`$.

$`(\delta Q)^2=VT\mathrm{\Pi }_{00}(\omega =0,\stackrel{}{k}0)`$ (2)
This object has been, evaluated in Lattice QCD  as well as in effective hadronic models (see below and ). Note also that this is the same current-current correlation function, which controls dilepton and photon production in heavy ion collisions .

### 2.1 Fluctuations of particle ratios

In order to avoid volume fluctuations one needs to study observables which are independent of the volume of the system. Among others the ratio of particle multiplicities will have this property. This is certainly true if one looks at similar particles such as $`\pi ^+`$ and $`\pi ^{}`$, where the freeze out volumes are expected to be the same. Some residual volume fluctuations may be present if one considers ratios of particles with different quantum numbers such as the $`K/\pi `$ ratio, but they still should be small. Let us define the particle ratio $`R_{12}`$ of two particle species $`N_1`$ and $`N_2`$

$`R_{12}={\displaystyle \frac{N_1}{N_2}}`$ (3)
The fluctuations of this ratio are then given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{(\delta R_{12})^2}{R_{12}^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{(\delta N_1)^2}{N_1^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{(\delta N_2)^2}{N_2^2}}2{\displaystyle \frac{\delta N_1\delta N_2}{N_1N_2}}\right).`$ (4)
The last term in Eq. (4) takes into account correlations between the particles of type 1 and type 2. This term will be important if both particle types originate from the decay of one and the same resonance. For example, in case of the $`\pi ^+/\pi ^{}`$ratio, the $`\rho _0`$, $`\omega `$ etc. contribute to these correlations. Also this term is responsible to cancel out all volume fluctuations .

Let us note that the effect of the correlations introduced by the resonances should be most visible when $`N_1N_2`$. On the other hand, when $`N_2N_1`$, as in the $`K/\pi `$ ratio, the fluctuations are dominated by the less abundant particle type and the resonances feeding into it. The correlations are then very hard to extract. In  it was shown that in case of the $`K/\pi `$-ratio resonances and quantum statistics give rise to deviations from the statistical value of at most 2 %, in agreement with experiment .

As pointed out in  the measurement of particle ratio fluctuations can provide important information about the abundance of resonances at chemical freeze out, and thus provides a crucial test for the picture emerging from the systematics of single particle yields . In particular the fluctuations of the $`\pi ^+/\pi ^{}`$-ratio should be reduced by about 30 % as compared to pure statistics due to the presence of hadronic resonances with decay channels into a $`\pi ^+`$-$`\pi ^{}`$-pair at chemical freeze out. About 50 % of the correlations originate from the decay of the $`\rho _0`$ and the $`\omega `$ mesons. Thus the fluctuations provide a complementary measurement to the dileptons.

## 3 Fluctuations and correlations

As already pointed out in the previous section, the fluctuations are sensitive to correlations among the particles of concern. In case of charge fluctuations which we will discuss below, the relation between the charge fluctuations and the 2-particle correlation function $`C_2`$ for a system of unit charged particles is given by

$`(\delta Q)^2=C_2(+,+)+C_2(,)2C_2(+,)+\rho _1(+)+\rho _1()`$ (5)
where the correlation function $`C_2`$ is defined as

$`C_2(\pm ,\pm )={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{\Delta }y}}𝑑y_{1,\pm }𝑑y_{2,\pm }{\displaystyle \frac{d^2N}{dy_{1,\pm }dy_{2,\pm }}}{\displaystyle \frac{dN}{dy_{1,\pm }}}{\displaystyle \frac{dN}{dy_{2,\pm }}}`$ (6)
The single particle density $`\rho _1(\pm )`$ is defined as

$`\rho _1(\pm )={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{\Delta }y}}𝑑y_\pm {\displaystyle \frac{dN}{dy_\pm }}`$ (7)
Here $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ denotes the range of acceptance e.g. in rapidity, over which the particles are measured. This expression can easily be extended to a system of particles with charge states different from unity .

Thus, an alternative way to access charge fluctuations is the measurement of the one and two particle densities. However in this case the effect of volume fluctuations still needs to be removed. This can be achieved by defining appropriate modifications of the correlation functions as discussed in . Also the so-called balance functions introduced in ref.  can be viewed as another way of analyzing these correlation functions and a relation between the ratio fluctuations discussed here has been made in .

## 4 Charge fluctuations

Measuring the charge fluctuations or more precisely the charge fluctuations per unit degree of freedom of the system created in a heavy ion collision would tell us immediately if we have created a system of quarks and gluons  (see also ). The point is that in the QGP phase, the unit of charge is $`1/3`$ while in the hadronic phase, the unit of charge is 1. The net charge, of course does not depend on such subtleties, but the fluctuation in the net charge depends on the squares of the charges and hence are strongly dependent on which phase it originates from. However, as discussed in the previous section, measuring the charge fluctuation itself is plagued by systematic uncertainties such as volume fluctuations, which can be avoided if one considers ratio fluctuations. The task is then to find a suitable ratio whose fluctuation is easy to measure and simply related to the net charge fluctuation.

As shown in  the fluctuation of the ratio $`R=N_+/N_{}`$ serves this purpose and the observable to investigate is

$`DN_{\mathrm{ch}}\delta R^2=4N_{\mathrm{ch}}\delta F^2=4{\displaystyle \frac{\delta Q^2}{N_{\mathrm{ch}}}}`$ (8)
which provides a measure of the charge fluctuations per unit entropy.

In order to see how this observable differs between a hadronic system and a QGP let us compare the value for $`D`$ in a pion gas and in a simple model of free quarks and gluons. Ignoring small corrections due to quantum statistics a simple calculation gives for a pion gas

$`D_{\pi \mathrm{gas}}4.`$ (9)
In the presence of resonances, this value gets reduced by about 30 % due to the correlations introduced by the resonances, as discussed in section (2.1).

For a thermal system of free quarks and gluons we have in the absence of correlations and ignoring small correction due to quantum statistics .

$`D_{\mathrm{QGP}}3/4.`$ (10)
Actually the charge fluctuations $`(\delta Q)^2`$ have been evaluated in lattice QCD along with the entropy density . Using these results one finds

$`D_{\mathrm{Lattice}\mathrm{QCD}}11.5`$ (11)
where the uncertainty results from the uncertainty of relating the entropy to the number of charged particles in the final state. Actually the most recent lattice result  for the charge fluctuations, which was obtained in the quenched approximation, is somewhat lower then the result of .

But even using the larger value of $`D=1.5`$ for the Quark Gluon Plasma, there is still a factor of 2 difference between a hadronic gas and the QGP, which should be measurable in experiment.

The key question of course is, how can these reduced fluctuations survive the hadronic phase. This has been addressed in  and in more detail in . The essential point why this signal should survive is that charge in conserved which leads to a very slow relaxation of the initial fluctuations.

Finally one needs to take into account that the total charge of the system in conserved and thus does not fluctuate. This has been addressed in  and a corrected observable $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$ has been derived.

In Fig. (1) the importance of these corrections, in particular the charge conservation correction is demonstrated. There we compare the uncorrected observable $`D`$ with the corrected observable $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$ as a function of the width of the rapidity window based on a URQMD  simulation. The effect of the charge conservation is clearly visible. With increasing rapidity window the charge fluctuation are suppressed. Once the charge-conservation corrections are applied, the value for $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$ remains constant at the value for a hadron gas of $`\stackrel{~}{D}3`$. This is to be expected for the URQMD model, which is of hadronic nature and does not have quark- gluon degrees of freedom.

Also for small $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ the value is $`\stackrel{~}{D}4`$ before it drops to $`\stackrel{~}{D}3`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }y>1.5`$. This effect, which was already predicted in , is simply due to the fact that the correlation introduced by the resonances gets lost if the acceptance window becomes too small.

Recently an interesting comparison  between predictions for $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$ by different event generators has been made. The authors find that indeed a parton cascade model leads to small values for $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$ provided hadronic rescattering is turned off. This is in line with the predictions of . However, the authors also report substantial corrections due to hadronic rescattering, which appear quite large given the arguments presented in . But none of the event generator gave result large than $`\stackrel{~}{D}3`$.

## 5 Effects of particle interactions

So far we have discussed the fluctuations of free, noninteracting particles only. Of course, by considering resonances as well, some of the interactions are taken into account . To address the effect of interactions we have calculated the electromagnetic current-current correlator $`\mathrm{\Pi }^{00}`$ as well as the entropy to the first order of the interaction for a system of pions interacting via $`\rho `$-meson exchange. For simplicity, we have assumed that the $`\rho `$-mass is infinite, which leads to point-like interaction among the pions, and is goverened by the following effective Lagrangian

$``$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}F_{\mu \nu }^2m_\pi ^2|\varphi |^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}((_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_0)^2m_\pi ^2\mathrm{\Phi }_0^2)+|D_\mu \varphi |^2{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{2m_\rho ^2}}\left(\varphi ^{}\stackrel{}{D_\mu }\varphi \right)^2`$ (12)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{m_\rho ^2}}\left(\varphi _0D_\mu \varphi \varphi _\mu \varphi _0\right)\left(\varphi _0\left(D^\mu \varphi \right)^{}\varphi ^{}^\mu \varphi _0\right)`$
The 2-loop diagrams for the corrections to $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{00}`$ are shown in fig 2.

The ratio $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{00}(T)/S(T)`$ for the entropy $`S(T)`$ and the self energy $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{00}(T)`$ is shown in fig 3.

The effect of the interactions is to increase the charge fluctuations per entropy. At temperature of $`140\mathrm{MeV}`$ the corrections are quite large, in line with the findings of , where chiral perturbations theory has been used. However, in the same paper  the effect the charge fluctuations have also been evaluated in a virial expansion, leading to much smaller (but still positive) corrections. Therefore, it appears that at least dynamical $`\rho `$ mesons need to be taken into account before any quantitative conclusion can be made.

## 6 Conclusions

We have discussed event-by-event fluctuations in heavy ion collisions. These fluctuations may provide useful information about the properties of the matter created in these collisions, as long as the ‘trivial’ volume fluctuations, inherent to heavy ion collisions, can be removed. We have argued that the fluctuations of particle ratios is not affected by volume fluctuations.

In particular the fluctuations of the ratio of positively over negatively charged particles measures the charge fluctuation per degree of freedom. Due to the fractional charge of the quarks, these are smaller in a QGP than in a hadronic system.

A measurement of our observable $`\stackrel{~}{D}1`$ would provide strong evidence for the existence of a QGP in these collisions. A measurement of $`\stackrel{~}{D}3`$ on the other hand does not rule out the creation of a QGP. There are a number of caveats (see ), which could destroy the signal, such as unexpected large rapidity shifts during hadronization.

At this workshop first preliminary results for the results observable $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$ have been reported by the STAR, CERES and NA49 collaboration . They all find a value which is consistent with $`\stackrel{~}{D}4`$. This finding is somewhat surprising since not even the effect of resonances seem to be visible in the fluctuations. At the same time STAR reports that the measured number of $`K^{}`$ mesons is well in line with the expectations of the thermal model . So were are the correlations? Could it be that the interactions among the resonance are indeed so strong that they entirely compensate the reduction of $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$ due to resonances. Also, as already mentioned, in the study presented in  none of the event generators finds a value of $`\stackrel{~}{D}>3`$ for rapidity windows $`\mathrm{\Delta }y>2`$. This certainly needs further investigation.

Finally let us note that fluctuations of the baryon number in principle can also be utilized, since in the QGP quarks carry fractional baryon number . This, however, would require the measurement of neutrons on an event by event basis.

## Acknowledgments

This work was supported GSI, Darmstadt and by the Director, Office of Energy Research, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, Division of Nuclear Physics, the Office of Basic Energy Science, Division of Nuclear Science, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098. V.K. would like to thank GSI for the hospitality during his sabbatical leave, where some of this work has been carried out.


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# Galaxy groups in the 2dF redshift survey: Effects of Environment on Star Formation

## 1 Introduction

Groups of galaxies are one of the most important laboratories in the universe to understand how this environment affects the galaxy formation. One of the main issues on the process of galaxy building is the rate at which they form stars. Several works has been devoted to study the star formation rate (hereafter SFR) in galaxies (Kennicutt 1983, Gallager, Bushouse & Hunter 1989, Kennicutt 1992, Gallagher & Gibson 1993, Kennicutt, Tamblyn & Congdom 1994, Gallego et al. 1995) and most of them agree that the luminosity of $`H_\alpha `$ provides a direct measure of the global photoionization rate, which can be used in turn to reliably estimate of SFR in massive ($`M>10M_{}`$) stars.

Even when most of these studies have been carried out in galaxies, the extension to systems of galaxies is not very well understood yet given the impossibility to account with large samples suitable for statistical studies. The effects of environments on the global process of star formation in galaxy systems is a very important piece on the construction of theoretical models of galaxy formation and their consequent evolution. Some studies have claimed for a strong correlation between group early-type galaxy fraction and velocity dispersion. This could result from an increase in the early-type fraction and velocity dispersion as a group evolves, where galaxy morphologies change due to a mechanism such as mergers or from conditions at the time of galaxy formation (Zabludoff 1999). It is possible that mergers cause some evolution in the early-type fraction of poor groups and cease to be effective in richer groups and clusters.

Recently, Merchán & Zandivarez (2002) have constructed one of the largest sample of groups of galaxies until the present using a finding algorithm with the public 100K data release of the 2dF galaxy redshift survey ($`100000`$ galaxies). The sample comprise 2209 galaxy groups inside the 2dF angular mask with redshifts in the range $`0.003z0.25`$. The group finding algorithm was designed modifying the traditional Huchra & Geller (1982) finder algorithm in order to take into account the 2dF magnitude limit and redshift completeness masks.

Madgwick et al. (2002) define a new parameter $`\eta `$ in order to characterise the galaxy spectra on the 2dF galaxy redshift survey. This parameter is a linear combination of the first two projections derived from a Principal Component Analysis and their definition is such that its value correlates with the strength of absorption-emission features. A negative value of $`\eta `$ is correlated with old stellar populations and strong absorption features whereas a positive value is related with young stellar population and strong emission lines. Figure 6 of Madgwick et al (2002) shows the strong correlation of the $`\eta `$ parameter with the equivalent width of $`H_\alpha `$ in emission line galaxies. Consequently, $`\eta `$ can be interpreted as a measure of the current star formation present in each galaxy.

In this work we use the $`\eta `$ parameter to characterise the star formation rate of galaxy members of the group catalogue of the 2dF survey. We study the correlation of the relative fraction of galaxies with different values of $`\eta `$ and the group virial mass. The outline of this letter is as follows. In section 2 we describe the group catalogue and the statistical analysis performed is discussed in section 3. Finally, the main conclusions are given in section 4.

## 2 The 2dF galaxy group catalogue (2dFGGC)

Merchán & Zandivarez (2002) identify galaxy groups on the 2dF public 100K data release of galaxies with the best redshift estimates within the northern (NGP, $`37^{}.5\delta 22^{}.5`$, $`21^h40^m\alpha 3^h30^m`$) and southern ($`7^{}.5\delta 2^{}.5`$; $`9^h50^m\alpha 14^h50^m`$) strips of the catalogue. This sample comprise 84499 galaxies with final $`b_j`$ magnitudes corrected for galactic extinction. The finder algorithm used on the identification is similar to that developed by Huchra & Geller (1982) but modified in order to take into account the sky coverage problems present on the current release of galaxies. The redshift completeness, which represent the ratio of the number of galaxies for which redshifts have been obtained to the total number of objects contained in the parent catalogue, and the magnitude limit mask, which correspond with variations of the parent survey magnitude limit with the position on the sky, are the two main sky coverage problems on this catalogue (see Figure 13 and 15 of Colless et al. 2001).

The 2dFGGC was constructed using the values $`\delta \rho /\rho =80`$ and $`V_0=200\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ which maximize the group accuracy (see section 4 of Merchán & Zandivarez 2002). The resulting groups catalogue comprises a total number of 2209 galaxy groups with at least 4 members and mean radial velocities in the range $`900\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{V}75000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. The limit adopted in the number of members in galaxy groups is necessary in order to avoid pseudo-groups.

The virial group masses are estimated using the virial radius and the velocity dispersion ($`M_{vir}=\sigma ^2R_V/G`$, Limber & Mathews 1960) where the former is computed with the projected virial radius and the later with their radial counterpart. A robust estimation of this component is obtained applying the biweight estimator for groups with richness $`N_{tot}15`$ and the gapper estimator for poorer groups (Beers, Flynn and Gebhardt 1990, Girardi et al. 1993, Girardi and Giuricin 2000). These methods improve the velocity dispersion estimation in terms of efficiency and stability when dealing with small groups. Consequently, the catalogue has a mean velocity dispersion of $`261\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, a mean virial mass of $`8.5\times 10^{13}h^1M_{}`$ and a mean virial radius of $`1.12h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$.

## 3 The $`\eta `$ spectral type parameter in groups

In this section the fraction of galaxies of different $`\eta `$ spectral types in 2dFGGC groups is analysed as a function of group virial mass. The $`\eta `$ parametrization of a galaxy spectral properties is defined by Madgwick et al (2002) for galaxies in the 100K data release of the 2dF galaxy redshift survey based upon a Principal Component Analysis of the galaxy spectra that takes into account the relative emission/absorption line strength present in a galaxy’s optical spectrum. As shown in Madgwick et al (2002), the equivalent width of $`H_\alpha `$ emission-line, $`EW(H_\alpha )`$, is very tightly correlated to $`\eta `$ for emission line galaxies. This classification correlates well with morphology and can be interpreted as a measure of the relative current star-formation present in each galaxy. The star formation rate for a galaxy is proportional to $`EW(H_\alpha )`$ times the galaxy luminosity. Consequently $`\eta `$ can be used as a measure of a galaxy star formation rate relative to its luminosity.

We split the galaxies in the 2dFGGC groups into the 4 types of Madgwick et al (2002):

* Type 1: $`\eta <1.4`$,
* Type 2: $`1.4\eta <1.1`$,
* Type 3: $`1.1\eta <3.5`$,
* Type 4: $`\eta 3.5`$.

This is not a criterion based upon morphology training set but rather by the shape of the $`\eta `$-distribution.

We have computed the fraction of galaxies of the different types as a function of group virial mass in two samples; The first one gives priority to galaxy completeness in order to avoid significant selection biases, the second sample is intended to incorporate as many groups as possible trying to avoid the incompleteness typical of a flux limited sample.

Our first sample of galaxies in groups, which is aimed to achieve the highest level of completeness, was selected taking into account the following prescriptions. Groups were limited to the redshift range $`0.02z0.056`$ (see Figure 1). This range was chosen due to the highly homogeneous distribution of group virial masses with redshift. Therefore, we prevent the possibility of a preferential bias to high mass groups in the sample. Secondly, we introduce a absolute magnitude cut-off on the galaxies ($`M_{b_J}<17.2`$) attempting a selection which is not biased to high luminosity galaxies, i.e. no spectral type preference. There are 1522 galaxies in 331 groups in this sample.

The second group sample considers a wider redshift range, $`0.02z0.1`$, and the galaxies in these groups have no absolute magnitude restriction, resulting in 7481 galaxies in 1155 groups. The large number of groups in this sample allow us to increase the reliability of our statistics, but we have not extended the redshift range beyond $`z0.1`$, since this could introduce strong biases in both, group selection and galaxy luminosities.

In Figure 2 we show the fraction of galaxies of each spectral type as a function of group virial mass for our volume-limited sample. We have binned group virial masses into six bins taking as abscissa the mean mass of the groups in each interval. Error bars in Figure 2 were estimated using the bootstrap resampling technique. We have also computed the fraction of galaxies of each type for all galaxies in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey with the same selection criterion to determine a comparison level. It is clear that while the fraction of Type 1 galaxies show an increasing behavior with group virial mass, the fraction of galaxies with higher SFR ($`\eta >1.4`$) show the opposite trend. In particular, for Type 4 galaxies, which have the largest SFR, exists a variation of $`75\%`$ between the most massive and the less massive groups. This strong decrease of star forming galaxies on massive groups indicates the importance of environmental effects acting on galaxy systems.

There exists a significant difference between the fraction of galaxies of Type 1 (galaxies with very low SFR or early type galaxies) in most massive groups respect to that found when including field galaxies. If early-type galaxies are evolved merger remnants as expected in hierarchical models for galaxy formation, then the galaxy populations of more massive groups are more evolved on average. Allam et al. (1999) claim that the depressed star formation in galaxy groups is partly due to a relative over abundance of early-type galaxies and also to some mechanism that dampens star formation within late-type spirals. The later suggestion could also explain the observed decreasing fraction of star forming galaxies ($`\eta >1.4`$) with the virial group mass in our analysis.

The results of the second selected sample are shown in Figure 3. Even when this sample lacks of the level of confidence of the previous volume limited sample, we observe a very good agreement of the trends in both figures. The increase of the fraction of Type 1 galaxies in the least massive groups could be due to a possible lack of low luminosity galaxies in the sample. This effects could also explain the variations in the mean global fractions between Figure 2 and 3.

Regarding the contribution of each galaxy spectral type to the current SFR in groups, the influence of Type 1 galaxies is negligible since they are dominated by old stellar populations. Type 2 galaxies dominate in number over the remaining star forming types independently of group virial mass. However, since Type 3 galaxies have larger values of $`EW(H_\alpha )`$ and similar luminosities, their contribution to the SFR could be even higher than that of Type 2 galaxies. On the other hand, Type 4 corresponds to the tail of the $`\eta `$ distribution (see figure 4 of Madwick et. al 2002) and is dominated by particularly active galaxies such as starbursts and AGNs. Consequently special care should be taken when computing the contribution of these galaxies to the SFR, specially in low mass groups where the fraction of Type 4 galaxies is more important.

## 4 CONCLUSIONS

We have analysed the fraction of star forming galaxies in environments corresponding to groups and poor clusters of galaxies. The 2dFGGC is the largest sample available at the present and can be easily divided several times whilst still maintaining very reliable statistics. Our subsamples are the largest data sets used in the calculation of galaxy populations in groups so far.

The results of the analysis reported in this work clearly show a continuous trend of decreasing fraction of spectral types associated to star forming galaxies with group virial mass. Groups with virial mass $`M24\times 10^{12}M_{}`$ have a relative fraction of galaxy spectral types similar to the global values. These results imply that even the environment of low mass systems $`M10^{13}M_{}`$ is effective in diminishing the process of star formation in their member galaxies.

It is interest to note the way that the fraction of early-type galaxies (Type 1) increases monotonically with group virial mass which can be well fitted by a power-law of the form $`\mathrm{log}(F_{Type1})=0.14\mathrm{log}(M/M_{})2.2`$. This simple law provides a suitable fit to the fraction of Type 1 galaxies spanning over three orders of magnitude in group virial masses.

Our tests with two redshift restricted samples provide firm evidence of the lack of biases in our results that could arise due to the different galaxy luminosity functions of each spectral type as well as possible biased selection of high mass groups.

Recently Lewis et al. (2002) have studied a sample of seventeen known galaxy clusters using 2dFGRS spectra to compute SFR as function of local galaxy density and cluster-centric radius. They have found that the dependence of SFR on local density is independent of cluster velocity dispersion and presumably mass. It should be taken into account the different characteristics of the sample analysed in that paper and those analysed in this work. The sample study by Lewis et al. (2002) comprises more massive systems than the groups in our samples. A detailed analysis of the dependence of spectral types fractions on local galaxy density and group-centric distance for our samples, is given in Domínguez et al. (2002). They find that the more massive groups show a significant dependence of the fraction of low star forming galaxy on local galaxy density and group-centric radius whereas groups with lower masses show no significant trends. As we have discussed above, it is important to remark that our results and those obtained by Domínguez et al. (2002) refer to relative fractions of galaxy spectral types and not to current SFR in groups.

The present results could be very useful to provide constraints to the theoretical models of galaxy formation and evolution. In particular, the statistical behaviors reported in this work should be taken into account when considering the influence of environment on galaxy formation and evolution in semi-analytical models.

## Acknowledgments

We thank the referee Jaime Zamorano for helpful comments. We thank to Peder Norberg and Shaun Cole for kindly providing the software describing the mask of the 2dFGRS and to the 2dFGRS Team for having made available the actual data sets of the sample. We also thank Hernan Muriel for reading the manuscript and useful comments. This work has been partially supported by Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de la República Argentina (CONICET), the Secretaría de Ciencia y Técnica de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (SeCyT) and Fundación Antorchas, Argentina.


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# Quantum Cryptography Using Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Correlations of Continuous Variables

## Abstract

Quantum cryptography with the predetermined key was experimentally realized using Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen(EPR) correlations of continuously bright optical beams. Only one of two EPR correlated beams is transmitted with the signals modulated on quadrature phases and amplitudes, and the other one is retained by the authorized receiver. The modulated small signals are totally submerged in the large quantum noise of the signal beam, therefore nobody except the authorized receiver can decode the signals. Usability of imperfect quantum correlation, high transmission and detection efficiencies, and security provided by quantum mechanics are the favorable features of the presented scheme.

PACS numbers: 03.67.Dd,03.67.Hk, 42.50.Dv,89.70.+c

Quantum cryptography (QC) provides a way for two distant parties(Alice and Bob) to share keys for encryption that can be absolutely secret in principle comparing to the classical ones in which their security is based on the conjectured computational difficulty of certain functions. The fundamental properties of quantum mechanics, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, provide the security of QC. The first complete protocol for quantum key distribution (QKD) using four polarization states of a photon pulse was proposed in 1984 by Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard (named BB84). The majority of proposals and all implemented experiments for QKD so far have focused on the use of discrete variables to transmit information. Although discrete systems have the advantage to be loss insensitive, also have a number of disadvantages in working with single photons, particularly the strong restrictions on data transmission rates and the poor efficiency of detection. In recent years the cryptographic schemes employing continuous coherent and nonclassical light fields have been suggested. A lot of interest has arisen in continuous variable quantum cryptography (CVQC) with EPR beams due to that the experimental demonstrations of quantum teleportation and quantum dense coding for continuous variables (CV). J.Kimble and his colleagues completed the quantum communication of dual channels with correlated nonclassical states of light. However in this case, an eavesdropper (Eve) could simultaneously access the signal and idler beams without the knowledge of the legitimate receiver. So far, to the best of our knowledge, there is no experimental demonstration on CVQC.

In this letter we present a scheme using the nonlocal correlation of bright EPR beams to implement QC, in which the source generating EPR beams is placed inside the receiver, only one of the EPR correlated beams (signal beam) is sent to Alice and other one (idler beam) is retained by Bob. The security of the presented system is directly provided by EPR correlations between amplitude and phase quadratures of continuous bright optical beams and no-cloning of quantum fluctuations. Any random choice on measurements of quadratures are not needed and the sender encodes the key string with predetermined binary bits. All transmitted bits are used for constituting the key string without bit rejection, thus the transmission efficiency of 100% may be achieved in principle.

It has been theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that bright EPR beams with anticorrelated amplitude quadratures and correlated phase quadratures may be produced by a continuous nondegenerate optical parametric amplifier(NOPA) operating at deamplification. The calculated normalized fluctuation variances of the amplitude quadratures for the output modes from NOPA are

$$\delta ^2(X_1)=\delta ^2(Y_1)=\delta ^2(X_2)=\delta ^2(Y_2)=\frac{e^{2r}+e^{2r}}{2}$$
(1)
and the quantum correlation variances between the quadratures are

$$\delta ^2(X_1+X_2)=\delta ^2(Y_1Y_2)=2e^{2r}$$
(2)
where $`r(0r+\mathrm{})`$ is the correlation parameter between modes 1 and 2 which depends on the strength and the time of parametric interaction, $`r=0`$ without correlation, $`r>0`$ with partial correlation, $`r\mathrm{}`$ with perfect correlation.

Here we have assumed that the two modes are totally balanced during the process of measurements. The modulated signals at given radio frequencies (rf) can be considered as a noise $`\delta X_S(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ and $`\delta Y_S(\mathrm{\Omega })`$. When the powers of $`\delta X_S(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ and $`\delta Y_S(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ are smaller than the original quantum noise power of the signal beam (Eq.(1)) and larger than the correlation noise power (Eq.(2)), the signals are submerged in the noise background of the signal beam $`(X_1,Y_1)`$ and can be decoded with the correspondent idler beam $`(X_2,Y_2)`$ of the EPR beams. Thus, the strength $`\delta ^2X_S`$ of the modulated signals should satisfy the following inequalities:

$`2e^{2r(\mathrm{\Omega })}`$ $`<`$ $`\delta ^2X_S(\mathrm{\Omega })<{\displaystyle \frac{e^{2r(\mathrm{\Omega })}+e^{2r(\mathrm{\Omega })}}{2}}`$ (3)
$`2e^{2r(\mathrm{\Omega })}`$ $`<`$ $`\delta ^2Y_S(\mathrm{\Omega })<{\displaystyle \frac{e^{2r(\mathrm{\Omega })}+e^{2r(\mathrm{\Omega })}}{2}}`$ (4)
From Eqs.(1) and (2), it is obvious, when $`r>0.27`$ the variances of signal beam(Eq.(1)) are higher than that of the correlation fluctuations(Eq.(2)). The larger the correlation parameter is, the higher the noise power of the signal beam is and the lower the correlation variance is. For a perfect transmission line of noiseless the correlation parameter of the NOPA should be larger than $`0.27`$ at least for accomplishing the QC. At Bob station, the signals $`X_S(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ and $`Y_S(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ modulated on the amplitude and phase quadratures of signal beam $`(X_1,Y_1)`$ are decoded with the retained idler beam by means of the direct detection of photocurrents .

Fig.1 is the schematic of the QC system. The EPR source, NOPA, is placed inside the Bob receiving station. The one of the bright EPR correlated beams, the signal beam $`(X_1,Y_1)`$, is sent to the Alice sending station where Alice encodes the transmitted information on the amplitude and phase quadratures by the choice of the modulation types with the binary bit values, for example the modulated amplitude signals stands for $`\mathrm{`}\mathrm{`}1\mathrm{"}`$and the phase signals for $`\mathrm{`}\mathrm{`}0\mathrm{"}`$. Then the encoded signal beam is transmitted back to Bob where the information is decoded by the retained other one of the EPR correlated beams.

The configuration of NOPA and scheme producing the bright beams with anticorrelation of amplitude quadratures and correlation of phase quadratures were same as that used in the experiment of the quantum dense coding which was described in detail in our previous publication. Locking the relative phase between the pump laser and injected seed wave of NOPA to $`(2n+1)\pi `$, where $`n`$ is integer, to enforce the NOPA operating at deamplification, the entangled EPR beams were generated. The output field from NOPA is splitted into the signal and idler beams by a polarized-beam-splitter (PBS), then the signal beam is sent to Alice and the idler beam is retained by Bob. The phase shifter (PS), the 50-50 beam splitter (BS), a pair of photodiodes D1 and D2, and the power combiners (+/-) in Bob station constitute the direct detection system of Bell-state for measuring the variances of the amplitude sum and phase difference between the two quadratures simultaneously. The PS imposes a phase difference of $`\pi /2`$ between signal and idler beams before they are mixed on BS.

A secretly encoded and transmitted binary bit string is summarized in Table I. At the time points $`t_1,t_2\mathrm{}t_6`$, Alice encodes the signal beam and sends it back to Bob, then Bob simultaneously measures the amplitude and phase modulation signals. The measured amplitude signals at $`t_1,t_4,t_5`$ stand for $`\mathrm{`}\mathrm{`}1\mathrm{"}`$, the phase singles at $`t_2,t_3,t_6`$ for $`\mathrm{`}\mathrm{`}0\mathrm{"}`$. The upper traces are the spectral densities of noise power of the SNL(Shot-Noise-Limit) for the EPR beams which is used to evaluate the quantum correlations. The middle traces are the noise spectra of signal beam in which the modulated signals are submerged in the noise background totally and the lower traces are the variances $`\delta ^2(X_1+X_2)`$ and $`\delta ^2(Y_1Y_2)`$ , which are 3.8dBm below the noise level of the SNL of the EPR beams, and the secret signals modulated at 2MHz emerge from the squeezed noise backgrounds. A secret key string characterized by the binary bit values 100110 is obtained.

In experiments, we should pay attention on matching the optical distances between the signal and idler beams to reach optimum correlation and detection efficiency. Especially for long distance transmission one must add optical retarder and attenuator in the idler beam retained by Bob to make its travel distance from EPR source to the beam splitter of the detection system and the detected intensity approximately equal to that of the signal beam. Recently, the schemes on storing quantum entanglement in atomic spins system or in cavity QED have been presented, that probably can provide a practical technique for retaining an EPR component in Bob.

The intensity fluctuations of signal and idler fields of the bright EPR beams generated by the NOPA are quantum-correlated at any instant and nobody can make or copy a light field which has the identical quantum fluctuations, which provide the mechanism of security for the CVQC system. In experiment, the SNR(signal to noise ratio) of the decoded signals depends on the original correlation of EPR beams and the losses of a given transmission line, which is independent of Alice’s bit value. Any decrease of the measured SNR and the correlation degree relative to the predicted results alerts Bob to the additional loss caused by a partial tapping of the signal channel, perhaps by Eve. If Eve wants to perform the quantum-nondemonlition-measurment (QND) on one of the amplitude-phase quadratures of the signal beam, the other quadrature must be disturbed and the disturbance must be reflected on the measured results of Bob. The deviation would indicate the possibility that Eve have performed a QND. More quantitative analyses on protecting against the optical tap attack of Eve have been presented in the previous publications and can be used in the discussion to the presented protocol.

A possible eavesdropping scheme using fake EPR beams is shown in Fig.2. Eve intercepts totally the signal beam $`(X_1,Y_1)`$ and transmits a fake signal beam $`(X_1^{^{}},Y_1^{^{}})`$ produced by a fake EPR source$`(EPR2)`$ in her station to Alice. Alice has no ability to recognize the fake beam. She modulates the information on it and then sends out as usual. Eve intercepts the beam with messages again and decodes the information with the other one of the fake EPR correlated beams $`(X_2^{^{}},Y_2^{^{}})`$ retained by her. At the same time she modulates the real signal beam $`(X_1,Y_1)`$ according to the intercepted bit values and sends it back to Bob who also does not know that the information has been intercepted. To reveal this type of quantum interception Alice may randomly block the signal beam with a photoelectric detector ($`D_o`$) connected to an oscilloscope at some appointed time points $`t_k`$ for a short time interval $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_k`$ during the duration of transmission. The shape of intensity fluctuation of the signal beam at the blocked moment can be recorded as a function of time by an oscilloscope ($`OS_1`$). In Bob station, the photocurrent of the sum of the amplitude quadratures $`\delta ^2(X_1+X_2)`$ is splitted to two parts by a power splitter, one is sent to a spectrum analyzer (SA) for the noise spectrum measurement and other one to an oscilloscope ($`OS_2`$) for recording the fluctuation of photocurrents. If there is no Eve between Alice and Bob, while the signal beam is blocked by $`D_o`$ the oscilloscope $`OS_2`$ in Bob station records the intensity fluctuation of the idler beam $`\delta ^2X_2(t)`$ which is anticorrelated with $`\delta ^2X_1(t)`$ recorded by $`OS_1`$ at same time and the correlation extent only depends on the quality of the EPR source (EPR1) and the losses of transmission line. Fig.3 shows the intensity fluctuation shapes of $`\delta ^2X_1(t)`$ (trace1) and $`\delta ^2X_2(t)`$ (trace2) simultaneously recorded by $`OS_1`$ and $`OS_2`$ respectively. The partial anticorrelation between the shapes of the fluctuations is very obvious and the measured root-mean-square (rms) noise voltages for the sum and difference of traces 1 and 2 are $`568.64\mu v`$ and $`655.29\mu v`$ respectively. For two uncorrelated beams, the rms voltages for sum and difference photocurrents should be equal, thus the deviation between rms voltages of the sum and difference also shows the presence of quantum correlation. If Eve interrupts the real signal beam, the intensity fluctuations of $`\delta ^2X_1^{^{}}(t)`$ recorded by Alice at the blocked moment are totally not correlated with that recorded by $`OS_2`$ at same time. After a set of communication is finished, Alice publicly sends the wave shapes of intensity fluctuation and the rms voltages recorded by $`OS_1`$ to Bob, where Bob compares with that recorded by himself with $`OS_2`$ at same time points. The absence of anticorrelation between the two sets of fluctuation shapes and the same rms voltages for the sum and difference indicate the presence of Eve.

At last we have to mention that in the practical communication of long distance the question of preserving the entanglement of the initial EPR state is a fascinating one for continuous quantum variables due to the inevitable losses in transmission lines and the sensitivity of the quantum correlation to losses. However the usability of experimentally accessible quantum correlation, relatively high security and efficiency, and the simplicity of the configuration make this scheme valuable to be considered for developing CVQC.

Acknowledgements. This work was funded by the National Fundamental Research Program (No.2001CB309304) and the National Nature Science Foundation (No.69837010). We are grateful to J. H. Kimble, Min Xiao, Jing Zhang and Jiangrui Gao for helpful discussions.

Captions of figures:

Fig.1 The schematic of the quantum cryptography using the EPR beams

AM-amplitude modulator, PM-phase modulator, RNG-random number generator, SA-spectrum analyzer, PS-phase shifter, BS-beamsplitter of 50%, PBS-polarization beamsplitter, NOPA-nondegenerate optical parametric amplifier.

Fig.2 Diagram of eavesdropping Scheme using fake EPR beams

EPR1, EPR2-Sources of EPR beams, AM, PM-Amplitude and phase modulators, SA-spectral analyzer, $`OS_1,OS_2`$-Oscilloscopes, Detector1, 2-Detection systems of Bell-state, $`D_o`$-photoelectric detector, RNG-random number generator.

Fig.3 The fluctuation shapes of signal (1) and idler (2) beams recorded by the oscilloscopes OS1 and OS2 at Alice and Bob.

Table I The generation of the predetermined secret key string

AQ-Amplitude modulation signals, PQ-Phase modulation signals,CD-The correlation degrees between signal and idler beams measured by Bob, Key-The secret keys, upper traces-The SNL of EPR beams, middle traces-the noise spectra of signal beam, lower traces-the noise spectra of $`X_1+X_2`$ and $`Y_1Y_2.`$The measured frequency range 1.0-3.0MHz, resolution bandwidth 30KHz, video bandwidth 0.1KHz. The electronic noise is about 8dBm below that of the SNL of the EPR beams.(not indicated in the figures)