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# Tracking quintessential inflation from brane worlds

## I Introduction

There has been interest, recently, on the cosmological implications arising in a certain class of brane world scenarios where the Friedmann equation is modified at very high energies . The key feature is that the modification makes it easier to obtain inflation in the early universe, by contributing extra friction to the scalar field equation of motion . Analysing this situation, it has been explicitly demonstrated how inflation naturally occurs in such models even when the potential is too steep to allow conventional inflation to occur . Inflation ends when the brane world corrections begin to lose their dominance, and reheating takes place as a result of gravitational particle production, rather than the usual inflaton decay mechanism. In this case the inflaton energy density subsequently redshifts sufficiently quickly that the produced radiation comes to dominate. One of the nice features this allows for is that the inflaton potential does not have to have a feature in it, and the field does not have to decay completely as we do not require a minimum to the potential about which the inflaton normally oscillates as it decays. Instead, we can consider the intriguing possibility that the inflaton actually survives as inflation ends. As the universe evolves through radiation to matter domination the inflaton potential does not play much of a role, however, at a recent redshift of $`z1`$, it once again comes to dominate driving the universe to an accelerated expansion. This mechanism has been named “quintessential inflation” scenario . In this paper we investigate this possibility in more depth. Similar approaches have been adopted in the brane world context  although in this paper we will be analysing a broader class of potentials and discussing the likelihood of being able to detect the presence of such a field in the next generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations. The class of potentials we will investigate include inverse power law, exponential and potentials motivated by supergravity models.

We consider the five–dimensional brane scenario, in which the Friedmann equation is modified from its usual form, becoming

$$H^2=\frac{\kappa ^2}{3}\rho \left[1+\frac{\rho }{2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}\right]+\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }_4}{3}+\frac{}{a^4},$$
(1)
where $`\kappa ^28\pi G=8\pi /M_4^2`$ and $`M_4`$ is the four-dimensional Planck mass. $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_4`$ is the four-dimensional cosmological constant and the final term represents the influence of bulk gravitons on the brane.

The brane tension $`\lambda _\mathrm{b}`$ relates the four and five-dimensional Planck masses via

$$M_4=\sqrt{\frac{3}{4\pi }}\left(\frac{M_5^2}{\sqrt{\lambda _\mathrm{b}}}\right)M_5,$$
(2)
and is constrained by the requirement of successful nucleosynthesis as $`\lambda _\mathrm{b}>(1\mathrm{MeV})^4`$. We assume that the four–dimensional cosmological constant cancels out by some (as yet undiscovered) mechanism, and once inflation begins the final term will rapidly become unimportant, leaving us with

$$H^2=\frac{\kappa ^2}{3}\rho \left[1+\frac{\rho }{2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}\right].$$
(3)
We assume that the scalar field is confined to the brane, so that its field equation has the standard form

$$\ddot{\varphi }+3H\dot{\varphi }+\frac{dV}{d\varphi }=0.$$
(4)
Following Ref.  the density of particles produced after inflation is

$$\rho _\mathrm{R}^{\mathrm{end}}=0.01g_\mathrm{p}H_{\mathrm{end}}^4,$$
(5)
where $`g_\mathrm{p}`$ is the number of scalar fields involved in particle production, likely to be $`10g_\mathrm{p}100`$, and $`H_{\mathrm{end}}`$ is the value of the Hubble parameter at the end of inflation.

In our brane world scenario, the ratio of the energy densities of the scalar field to the relativistic particles is well determined from Eq. (5),

$$\frac{\rho _\varphi ^{\mathrm{end}}}{\rho _\mathrm{R}^{\mathrm{end}}}\frac{36\lambda _\mathrm{b}^2}{0.01g_\mathrm{p}\kappa ^4V_{\mathrm{end}}^3}.$$
(6)
Hence, the ratio of the energy densities is inversely proportional to the number of fields involved in gravitational production $`g_\mathrm{p}`$. Moreover, it decreases as the time between the end of inflation $`a_{\mathrm{end}}`$ and the maximum of the energy density of the produced relativistic particles $`a_\mathrm{p}`$ increases. Defining $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{log}(a_\mathrm{p}/a_{\mathrm{end}})`$, we find from our numerical simulations that this value is weakly dependent on the parameters of the scalar potential or the number of $`e`$–foldings of inflation, and spans the interval $`0.29\mathrm{\Delta }0.4`$. Therefore, when constraining the parameter space of scalar potentials, we will consider both the average case of $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.35`$ with $`g_\mathrm{p}=100`$, and the case of instant reheating $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ with $`g_\mathrm{p}=10`$, which corresponds to the situation when the quoted ratio is its maximum.

## II Inflationary parameters

It proves useful to define the slow–roll parameters, analogously to the usual inflationary case. Following Refs.  we define $`ϵ`$, $`\eta `$ and $`\xi ^2`$, generalising the usual ones , by

$`ϵ`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa ^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{V^{}}{V}}\right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1+V/\lambda _\mathrm{b}}{(1+V/2\lambda _\mathrm{b})^2}},`$ (7)
$`\eta `$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{V^{\prime \prime }}{V}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+V/2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}},`$ (8)
$`\xi ^2`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa ^4}}{\displaystyle \frac{V^{}V^{\prime \prime \prime }}{V^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1+V/2\lambda _\mathrm{b})^2}}`$ (9)
where prime indicates a $`\varphi `$–derivative and the slow-roll approximation has been employed.

As the Universe inflates, the associated number of $`e`$–foldings of the scale factor $`a`$, is given by

$$N_a^{a_{\mathrm{end}}}d\mathrm{ln}a\kappa ^2_\varphi ^{\varphi _{\mathrm{end}}}\frac{V}{V^{}}\left(1+\frac{V}{2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}\right)𝑑\varphi ,$$
(10)
where $`a_{\mathrm{end}}`$ corresponds to the end of inflation, given by the condition $`ϵ=1`$. In this model, the number of $`e`$–foldings corresponding to scales entering the Hubble radius today can be unambiguously determined . The scale that leaves the Hubble radius during inflation and re–enters today is $`k=a_NH_N=a_0H_0`$, i.e.

$$1=\frac{k}{a_0H_0}=\frac{a_N}{a_{\mathrm{end}}}\frac{a_{\mathrm{end}}}{a_\mathrm{p}}\frac{a_\mathrm{p}}{a_0}\frac{H_N}{H_0}.$$
(11)
The subscript $`N`$ corresponds to the value of the quantity $`N`$ $`e`$–foldings from the end of inflation. Noting that $`a_N/a_{\mathrm{end}}=\mathrm{exp}(N)`$ and $`\rho _\mathrm{R}^{\mathrm{end}}=\rho _\mathrm{R}^0(a_0/a_\mathrm{p})^4`$ we find

$$N=\mathrm{ln}\left[\left(\frac{3\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{R}}{0.01g_\mathrm{p}}\right)^{1/4}(\kappa H_0)^{1/2}\frac{a_{\mathrm{end}}}{a_\mathrm{p}}\frac{H_\mathrm{N}}{H_{\mathrm{end}}}\right].$$
(12)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{R}=2.471h^2\times 10^5`$ is the fractional energy density in radiation today.

The amplitude of the scalar and tensor perturbations produced during inflation are given by

$$A_\mathrm{S}^2=\frac{\kappa ^4}{150\pi ^2}\frac{V}{ϵ}\left(1+\frac{V}{2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}\right)\left(1+\frac{V}{\lambda _\mathrm{b}}\right),$$
(13)
$$A_\mathrm{T}^2=\frac{\kappa ^4}{150\pi ^2}V\left(1+\frac{V}{2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}\right)F^2(V/\lambda _\mathrm{b}),$$
(14)
where

$$F^2(x)\left[\sqrt{1+x^2}x^2\mathrm{sinh}^1\left(\frac{1}{x}\right)\right]^1$$
(15)
and

$$x\left(\frac{3}{4\pi \lambda _\mathrm{b}}\right)^{1/2}HM_4=\left[\frac{2V}{\lambda _\mathrm{b}}\left(1+\frac{V}{2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}\right)\right]^{1/2}.$$
(16)
In the low energy limit, $`\rho \lambda _\mathrm{b}(x1)`$, $`F^21`$, whereas $`F^23V/2\lambda _\mathrm{b}`$ in the high energy limit.

Having obtained the amplitude of the scalar and tensor perturbations the corresponding scalar and tensor spectral indices can be obtained. Using

$$\frac{d}{d\mathrm{ln}k}\frac{V^{}}{3H^2}\frac{d}{d\varphi },$$
(17)
we find

$$n_\mathrm{S}1\frac{d\mathrm{ln}A_\mathrm{S}^2}{d\mathrm{ln}k}=6ϵ+2\eta ,$$
(18)
$$n_\mathrm{T}\frac{d\mathrm{ln}A_\mathrm{T}^2}{d\mathrm{ln}k}=2ϵ\left(1+2\frac{F^{}}{F}\frac{V}{V^{}}\frac{1+V/2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}{1+V/\lambda _\mathrm{b}}\right).$$
(19)
If we define the quantity $`\delta `$ to be 0 for the standard inflationary scenario (without the brane corrections) and $`\delta =1`$ in the brane inspired case, then we can simplify Eq. (19) for the low and high energy limits as,

$$n_\mathrm{T}=(2+\delta )ϵ.$$
(20)
We also obtain that the consistency equation is the same in either limit ,

$$n_\mathrm{T}=2\frac{A_\mathrm{T}^2}{A_\mathrm{S}^2}.$$
(21)
The derivatives of the scalar and tensor spectral indices give in the limits of high and low energies

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dn_\mathrm{S}}{d\mathrm{ln}k}}`$ $`=`$ $`(246\delta )ϵ^2+16ϵ\eta 2\xi ^2,`$ (22)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dn_\mathrm{T}}{d\mathrm{ln}k}}`$ $`=`$ $`(8+\delta )ϵ^2+(4+2\delta )ϵ\eta .`$ (23)
In the next section we turn our attention to a number of particle physics inspired potentials, to determine how the brane corrections modify the dynamics of the associated scalar field, leading to inflation in a number of scenarios where inflation would not have normally been present. In the following section we will proceed to investigate the class of models where the inflaton field then becomes the quintessence field by today.

## III Brane Inflation

### A Exponential potentials.

The simplest case to investigate involves the dynamics associated with a pure exponential potential ,

$$V(\varphi )=V_0\mathrm{exp}(\alpha \kappa \varphi ).$$
(24)
For completeness we recall the key results. During slow–roll inflation, from Eq. (7) we have

$$ϵ\frac{2\alpha ^2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}{V}.$$
(25)
Inflation ends when $`ϵ=1`$, giving

$$V_{\mathrm{end}}2\alpha ^2\lambda _\mathrm{b},$$
(26)
which implies that typically the term quadratic in the density still dominates the linear term at the end of inflation.

The potential $`V_N`$, $`N`$ $`e`$–foldings from the end of inflation can be obtained from Eq. (10) and is given by the simple formula

$$V_N=V_{\mathrm{end}}\left(N+1\right).$$
(27)
The amplitude of density perturbations generated during the inflationary period fixes the brane tension

$$\lambda _\mathrm{b}=\left[\frac{2\kappa ^4}{75\pi ^2}\alpha ^6(1+N)^4\right]^1A_\mathrm{S}^2,$$
(28)
which significantly is independent of the mass parameter $`V_0`$.

From Eqs. (3) and (27), we have, $`H_N=(N+1)H_{\mathrm{end}}`$; and substituting into Eq. (12) we find that $`N=70.7`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.35`$, $`g_\mathrm{p}=100`$ and $`N=72.1`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$, $`g_\mathrm{p}=10`$.

Inserting this into Eq. (28), and using the observed value from COBE of $`A_\mathrm{S}=2\times 10^5`$ , we find that

$$\lambda _\mathrm{b}\frac{1\times 10^{17}}{\alpha ^6}M_4^4=\left(\frac{10^{15}\mathrm{GeV}}{\alpha ^{3/2}}\right)^4,$$
(29)
indicating a brane tension of order the Grand Unified Theories scale.

For the scalar and tensor spectral indices and their derivatives we find,

$`n_\mathrm{S}1`$ $`=`$ $`(1+N){\displaystyle \frac{dn_\mathrm{S}}{d\mathrm{ln}k}}={\displaystyle \frac{4}{1+N}},`$ (30)
$`n_\mathrm{T}`$ $`=`$ $`(1+N){\displaystyle \frac{dn_\mathrm{T}}{d\mathrm{ln}k}}={\displaystyle \frac{3}{1+N}}.`$ (31)
### B Power law potentials

For power law potentials,

$$V(\varphi )=V_0(\kappa \varphi )^n,$$
(32)
during slow–roll inflation we have

$$ϵ\frac{2n^2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}{V_0}(\kappa \varphi )^{n2}.$$
(33)
For the particular case of $`n=2`$ the condition for inflation is $`\lambda _\mathrm{b}<V_0/8`$, i.e. when this condition is satisfied, inflation ends in the low energy limit. When $`n2`$, we obtain, at the end of inflation,

$$V_{\mathrm{end}}=V_0\left(\frac{2n^2\lambda _\mathrm{b}}{V_0}\right)^{n/(n+2)},$$
(34)
and $`N`$ $`e`$–foldings prior to the end,

$$V_N=V_{\mathrm{end}}\left[n+(n+2)N\right]^{n/(n+2)}.$$
(35)
The brane tension is no longer independent of the mass scale $`V_0`$ but is related to it by,

$$\lambda _\mathrm{b}=V_0\left(\frac{\kappa ^4}{600\pi ^2}\frac{V_0}{n^2}\frac{1}{A_\mathrm{S}^2}\right)^{\frac{n+2}{4n}}\left[2n\left(n+(n+2)N\right)\right]^{\frac{4n+2}{4n}}.$$
(36)
when $`n4`$, otherwise $`\lambda _\mathrm{b}`$ is completely free and only $`V_0`$ is fixed, yielding

$$V_0=\frac{75\pi ^2}{256\kappa ^4}\frac{1}{(1+N)^3}A_\mathrm{S}^2.$$
(37)
For the scalar and tensor spectral indices and their derivatives we find,

$`n_\mathrm{S}1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2+4n}{n+(2+n)N}},`$ (38)
$`n_\mathrm{T}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3n}{n+(2+n)N}},`$ (39)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dn_\mathrm{S}}{d\mathrm{ln}k}}`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{2+5n+2n^2}{\left(n+(2+n)N\right)^2}},`$ (40)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{dn_\mathrm{T}}{d\mathrm{ln}k}}`$ $`=`$ $`3{\displaystyle \frac{2n+n^2}{\left(n+(2+n)N\right)^2}}.`$ (41)
which reduce to Eqs. (30) in the limit $`n\mathrm{}`$.

For negative powers of $`n`$, the precise number of $`e`$–foldings corresponding to the scale entering the Hubble radius today is easily determined from Eqs. (12) and (35).

In Fig. 1 we show the dependence of the number of $`e`$–foldings $`N`$ with $`n`$ for four different combinations of the time delay between the production of particles and the end of inflation and the number of fields experiencing particle production.

For completeness we review the main features of power law potentials in the case of standard inflation. In this case, there is no freedom for the mass scale $`V_0`$ which is fixed by the density perturbations as

$$V_0=\left[\frac{\kappa ^4}{75\pi ^2}\frac{1}{n^2}\left(2n(n/4+N)\right)^{\frac{n+2}{2}}\right]^1A_\mathrm{S}^2.$$
(42)
The corresponding spectral indices are

$`n_\mathrm{S}1`$ $`=`$ $`(n/4+N){\displaystyle \frac{dn_\mathrm{S}}{d\mathrm{ln}k}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{n+2}{n/4+N}},`$ (43)
$`n_\mathrm{T}`$ $`=`$ $`(n/4+N){\displaystyle \frac{dn_\mathrm{T}}{d\mathrm{ln}k}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{n}{n/4+N}}.`$ (44)
### C Future observational constraints

In Fig. 2 we show how a selection of different observational parameters depend on the precise value of $`n`$ comparing standard inflation with brane world inflation. In particular, we consider here the spectral index $`n_\mathrm{S}`$, the ratio of tensor to scalar perturbations $`r4\pi A_\mathrm{T}^2/A_\mathrm{S}^2=2\pi n_\mathrm{T}`$ and the derivative of the spectral index $`dn_\mathrm{S}/d\mathrm{ln}k`$. For the positive power law case, reheating can happen through conventional mechanisms, and hence we take the number of $`e`$–foldings corresponding to the scale entering the Hubble radius today of $`N=50`$. The filled areas correspond to estimated error bars on these observables based on upcoming Planck observations, according to Ref.. We quote, $`\delta n_\mathrm{S}=0.006`$, $`\delta r=0.04`$ and $`\delta dn_\mathrm{S}/d\mathrm{ln}k=0.01`$. The error bars are centred on a $`\varphi ^2`$ standard inflationary cosmology for the sake of illustration. There are several pieces of information one can extract from this figure. Firstly, a $`\varphi ^2`$ theory in brane worlds is degenerate with the same theory in standard inflation. The case becomes worse for a $`\varphi ^4`$ theory as the exponential potential presents similar values for all the observables. Secondly, in brane worlds, an exponential and power law with $`n<10`$ are degenerate potentials. Thirdly, if we could rule out the exponential potential, the remaining models would be truly non–degenerate only if $`|n|>20`$. And finally, it appears that the derivative of the spectral index will be unable to give us any information about the underlying inflationary cosmology. In summary, based on this small sample, it appears that upcoming satellite experiments wont be able to conclusively discriminate between the various models of inflation.

In the next section, we go one step further trying to use the same field to link the early inflation epoch with the current accelerated expansion of the universe, which is strongly suggested by supernovae type Ia (SN Ia) observations.

## IV Quintessence

In the case of reheating by means of gravitational production of relativistic particles, the scalar field does not totally decay. Many authors  have suggested that the field could then dominate the energy density at late times, providing the dark energy that appears to be driving the observed acceleration of the universe today .

In the brane world picture the potential does not have to have a shallow slope to satisfy the slow–roll conditions followed by a steep fall where the latter break, as in standard inflation. In fact, we have seen that the potential can be exponentially steep and still inflate at early times and at the point where the brane correction becomes negligible inflation comes gracefully to an end. This feature broadens the range of potentials one can consider for “quintessential inflation” provided the brane effects become negligible before nucleosynthesis .

Using the modified Friedmann equation (3), Huey and Lidsey showed that for a pure inverse power law potential, the requirement that the field was both sub–dominant prior to nucleosynthesis, and tracked the matter and radiation in the universe before today implied that the value of the power $`n`$ in Eq. (32), is so large (and negative) that the corresponding equation of state ($`w_\varphi p_\varphi /\rho _\varphi `$) is too large to give an accelerating universe at this epoch. They concluded that within the class of inverse power law potentials, the only successful model would correspond to a kind of “creeping quintessence”, in which the energy density of the field is kinetic energy dominated from its value at the end of inflation to its present value. The field effectively remains frozen (with equation of state $`w_\varphi =1`$) until the energy density of matter matches its energy density, which occurs only around a redshift $`z1`$. At this point the field starts rolling down its potential again, and dominates the total energy density slowly raising the equation of state from $`1`$, thereby explaining the present day acceleration of the universe. Although an interesting scenario, its similarity to a pure cosmological constant at late times, makes the evolution of this quintessence field very difficult to confirm on the basis of upcoming SN Ia or CMB observations, especially if the equation of state of dark energy is very close to $`1`$ as observations suggest . However, if the contribution of the quintessence field to the total energy density is significant, it can increase the expansion rate resulting in a shift in the positions and an increase in the amplitude of the peaks of the angular power spectrum , hence opening up the possibility that we may be able to discriminate a quintessence field from a bare cosmological constant type behaviour.

In what follows we analyse a class of scalar potentials in which the energy density of the quintessence field tracks the background energy density during the epoch of decoupling. We are able to constrain the parameters of the potentials by employing the values allowed on the fractional density of a scalar field, both at the epoch of nucleosynthesis and at the time of recombination :

$`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi ^{\mathrm{nuc}}<0.045,\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi ^{\mathrm{rec}}<0.39.`$ (45)
In the next subsections we will consider the two possible cases of evolution of the scalar field between the end of inflation and the epoch the attractor is reached.

### A Monotonic evolution

After the initial period of inflation and following that of the kinetic energy domination, the scalar field is known to freeze at a value given by

$$\varphi _{\mathrm{ke}}=\varphi _{\mathrm{end}}+\frac{\sqrt{6}}{\kappa }\left[1+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\left(\rho _\varphi ^{\mathrm{end}}/\rho _\mathrm{R}^{\mathrm{end}}\right)\right].$$
(46)
Using Eq. (6) and the results of the previous section for an exponential scalar potential, we can calculate the bounds on the allowed slope of the potential. We require the field to enter the scaling regime (whereupon $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi =4/\alpha ^2`$ when radiation is dominant) after nucleosynthesis but before radiation–matter equality, i.e.,

$$4\rho ^{\mathrm{eq}}/\alpha ^2V(\varphi _{\mathrm{ke}})4\rho ^{\mathrm{nuc}}/\alpha ^2.$$
(47)
These requirements impose the following bounds: $`3.6\alpha 4.8`$ for $`g_\mathrm{p}=100`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.35`$ and $`3.4\alpha 4.5`$ for $`g_\mathrm{p}=10`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$, results found to be in good agreement with our numerical integrations (see row corresponding to zero oscillations in Table I). Now, in the standard Friedmann cosmology, a pure exponential potential with a slope within this range of parameters has a stable attractor solution for the energy density that scales with the background . Therefore, this solution does not provide a late time accelerating universe. A number of modifications to this type of potential have been proposed and investigated in depth which do fit the observational data . These models present a pure exponential term dominating for almost the entire history of the universe and only recently the other features of the potentials become dominant to provide the accelerating universe, hence, the above constraints also apply to the exponential part of these potentials. In Fig. 3, we show the evolution of the equation of state of the scalar field for the two exponentials potential (2EXP)

$$V(\varphi )=V_0\left(e^{\alpha \kappa \varphi }+e^{\beta \kappa \varphi }\right).$$
(48)
We would like to make two remarks on the pure exponential case. The first concerns the small range of the parameter $`\alpha `$ where this scenario can be implemented revealing some degree of fine tuning. The second, refers to the smallness of the parameter itself. In this range of parameters, the contribution of the field is large enough for the integrated Sachs–Wolf (ISW) effect to increase the power on large scales. Under the assumption that the anisotropies we see today are primordial, the normalisation of the power spectrum to COBE at the multipole $`\mathrm{}=10`$ therefore, results in a wrong suppression of the small scales anisotropies. Hence, for these type of potentials, the analysis of the angular power spectrum must be made with special care to take into account the ISW effect.

### B Oscillatory evolution

In the case of very steep potentials, the kinetic energy of the field at the end of inflation can be large enough to overtake the potential by a huge factor. Consequently, the field might freeze at a value corresponding to an energy density lower than the energy density of the background at equality, or even lower than today’s energy density. One then requires an additional mechanism to slow down the field’s evolution. Potentials with a minimum can provide the necessary solution.

For potentials with a minimum, the field can perform several wide damped oscillations around its minimum while energy is continually being converted between kinetic and potential. Hence, extra time for the friction term in Eq. (4) to slow down the field. In the regime of wide oscillations the equation of state of the field is close to unity as the potential is very steep and looks like $`V\varphi ^n`$ for $`n1`$. Hence, in practice, the field energy density continues decaying as $`a^6`$. In Fig. 3 we show the evolution of the equation of state of the field for a potential with a minimum (solid line). Fig. 4 shows the evolution of the energy densities of the scalar field and of the background fluid and the evolution of the scalar potential for the same potential with a minimum.

After inflation the field quickly becomes kinetic energy dominated. The sharp peaks with $`w_\varphi =1`$ in Fig. 3 or the epochs when $`V(\varphi )=V_{\mathrm{minimum}}`$ in Fig. 4 represent the points at which the field passes through the minimum. In this example, the field becomes sub-dominant just before nucleosynthesis as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi `$ drops below 0.5 before $`z>10^{10}`$. After a few oscillations the field has slowed down enough and freezes (for $`z10^5`$, in this example). From here the usual dynamics resume. When the background fluid’s energy density drops, the field reaches the attractor solution. The contribution of the field increases when it approaches the minimum of the potential, then the equation of state quickly decreases to $`1`$ accelerating the universe by today.

We give two examples corresponding to models presented before in the literature. The 2EXP potential with $`\alpha /\beta <0`$, satisfies the above requirements. For the particular case of symmetric slopes i.e. $`\beta =\alpha `$ , we find that to satisfy the nucleosynthesis bound and for the field to scale after this period and no later than radiation–matter equality, the slopes must satisfy the constraints presented in Table I.

The second example is for the SUGRA type potentials ,

$$V(\varphi )=V_0(\kappa \varphi )^n\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{1}{2}(\kappa \varphi )^2\right].$$
(49)
For initial conditions of $`\varphi \varphi _{\mathrm{minimum}}`$, the bounds in Eq. (45) above place a restriction of $`78n23`$ for $`g_\mathrm{p}=100`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.35`$ and $`n86`$ for $`g_\mathrm{p}=10`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$, corresponding to two oscillations of the field (see Fig. 3) and $`w_\varphi 0.8`$, today.

To obtain the quoted results, the initial conditions of the scalar field in our simulations were such that they gave a number of $`e`$–foldings of inflation consistent with the number of $`e`$–foldings corresponding to scales entering the Hubble radius today in Eq. (12). We have taken $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi 0.7`$, today.

## V Conclusions

We have demonstrated, giving examples, of a number of classes of scalar potentials that provide realistic models of “tracking quintessential inflation”. We have seen that the parameter space of potentials described by a pure exponential at early times is highly contrived on the basis of nucleosynthesis bounds and under the requirement that the scalar field had reached the attractor by radiation–matter equality. However, potentials with a minimum offer a larger range of parameter values for which these requirements are satisfied.

For the potentials we have considered, successful realisation of “quintessential inflation” requires potentials with very steep slopes in order to satisfy the nucleosynthesis bound, therefore we expect for all of these models similar values for the observables, i.e. $`n_\mathrm{S}0.94`$ and $`r0.27`$ (using Eqs. (38) for large $`n`$ with $`N70`$ or from Fig. 2).

We have seen in Sec. III and Fig. 2 that these models can be degenerate to a $`\varphi ^4`$ theory either in standard or in brane world inflation. It is important to know then, if the type of potentials considered here fit both the reconstruction of the quintessence potential from SN Ia observations  and the reconstruction of the inflaton potential from CMB observations  giving indications of a unified theory of “quintessential inflation”.

## Acknowledgements

We acknowledge conversations with Dominic Clancy and Andrew Liddle. We thank Pier Corasaniti and David Wands for helpful comments on the manuscript. N.J.N. is supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal).


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Given positive integers $`a_1,\mathrm{},a_d`$ with $`\mathrm{gcd}(a_1,\mathrm{},a_d)=1`$, we call an integer $`t`$ *representable* if there exist nonnegative integers $`m_1,\mathrm{},m_d`$ such that

$$t=\underset{j=1}{\overset{d}{}}m_ja_j.$$

In this paper, we discuss the *linear Diophantine problem of Frobenius*: namely, find the largest integer which is not representable. We call this largest integer the *Frobenius number* $`g(a_1,\mathrm{},a_d)`$; its study was initiated in the 19th century. For $`d=2`$, it is well known (most probably at least since Sylvester ) that

$$g(a_1,a_2)=a_1a_2a_1a_2$$
(1)
For $`d>2`$, all attempts for explicit formulas have proved elusive. Two excellent survey papers on the Frobenius problem are  and .

Our goal is to establish bounds for $`g(a_1,\mathrm{},a_d)`$. The literature on such bounds is vast—see, for example, . We focus on the first non-trivial case $`d=3`$; any bound for this case yields a general bound, as one can easily see that $`g(a_1,\mathrm{},a_d)g(a_1,a_2,a_3)`$. All upper bounds in the literature are proportional to the product of two of the $`a_k`$’s. On the other hand, Davison proved in  the lower bound $`g(a_1,a_2,a_3)\sqrt{3a_1a_2a_3}a_1a_2a_3`$. Experimental data (see Figure 3 below) shows that this bound is sharp in the sense that it is very often very close to $`g(a_1,a_2,a_3)`$. This motivates the question whether one can establish an *upper* bound proportional to $`\sqrt{a_1a_2a_3}^p`$ where $`p<4/3`$. ($`p=4/3`$ would be comparable to the known bounds.) In this paper we illustrate empirically, on the basis of more than ten thousand randomly chosen points, that $`g(a_1,a_2,a_3)\sqrt{a_1a_2a_3}^{5/4}a_1a_2a_3.`$

## 2 Some geometric-combinatorial ingredients

Another motivation for the search for an upper bound proportional to $`\sqrt{a_1a_2a_3}^p`$ comes from the following formula of , which is the basis for our study: Let $`a,b,c`$ be pairwise relatively prime positive integers, and define

$$N_t(a,b,c):=\mathrm{\#}\{(m_1,m_2,m_3)^3:m_k0,am_1+bm_2+cm_3=t\}.$$

Then

$`N_t(a,b,c)={\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2abc}}+{\displaystyle \frac{t}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{ab}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{ac}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{bc}}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{12}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{3}{a}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{b}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{c}}+{\displaystyle \frac{a}{bc}}+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{ac}}+{\displaystyle \frac{c}{ab}}\right)`$
$`+\sigma _t(b,c;a)+\sigma _t(a,c;b)+\sigma _t(a,b;c),`$ (2)
where

$$\sigma _t(a,b;c):=\frac{1}{c}\underset{\lambda ^c=1\lambda }{}\frac{\lambda ^t}{\left(\lambda ^a1\right)\left(\lambda ^b1\right)}$$

is a *Fourier-Dedekind sum*. One interpretation of $`N_t(a,b,c)`$ is the number of partitions of $`t`$ with parts in the set $`\{a,b,c\}`$. Geometrically, $`N_t(a,b,c)`$ enumerates integer points on the triangle

$$\{(x_1,x_2,x_3)^3:x_k0,ax_1+bx_2+cx_3=1\},$$

dilated by $`t`$. The Frobenius problem hence asks for the largest integer dilate of this triangle that contains no integer point, in other words, the largest $`t`$ for which $`N_t(a,b,c)=0`$. It is also worth mentioning that the condition that $`a`$, $`b`$, and $`c`$ are *pairwise* relatively prime is no restriction, due to Johnson’s formula : if $`m=\mathrm{gcd}(a,b)`$ then

$$g(a,b,c)=mg(\frac{a}{m},\frac{b}{m},c)+(m1)c.$$
(3)
In , formulas analogous to (2) for $`d>3`$ are given. In our case ($`d=3`$), a straightforward calculation shows

$$\sigma _t(a,b;c)=\frac{1}{4c}\underset{k=1}{\overset{c1}{}}\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{c}(2t+a+b)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi ka}{c}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kb}{c}}.$$

In fact, $`\sigma _t(a,b;c)`$ is a *Dedekind-Rademacher sum* , as shown in . Hence we can rewrite (2) as

$`N_t(a,b,c)={\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2abc}}+{\displaystyle \frac{t}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{ab}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{ac}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{bc}}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{12}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{3}{a}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{b}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{c}}+{\displaystyle \frac{a}{bc}}+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{ac}}+{\displaystyle \frac{c}{ab}}\right)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4a}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{a1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{a}(2t+b+c)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kb}{a}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kc}{a}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4b}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{b1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{b}(2t+a+c)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi ka}{b}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kc}{b}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4c}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{c1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{c}(2t+a+b)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi ka}{c}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kb}{c}}}.`$ (4)
If we write the “periodic part” of $`N_t(a,b,c)`$ as

$$P_t(a,b,c):=\frac{1}{4a}\underset{k=1}{\overset{a1}{}}\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{a}(2t+b+c)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kb}{a}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kc}{a}}+\frac{1}{4b}\underset{k=1}{\overset{b1}{}}\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{b}(2t+a+c)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi ka}{b}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kc}{b}}+\frac{1}{4c}\underset{k=1}{\overset{c1}{}}\frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{c}(2t+a+b)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi ka}{c}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kb}{c}},$$

(4) becomes

$$N_t(a,b,c)=\frac{t^2}{2abc}+\frac{t}{2}\left(\frac{1}{ab}+\frac{1}{ac}+\frac{1}{bc}\right)+\frac{1}{12}\left(\frac{3}{a}+\frac{3}{b}+\frac{3}{c}+\frac{a}{bc}+\frac{b}{ac}+\frac{c}{ab}\right)P_t(a,b,c).$$

If we can bound $`P_t(a,b,c)`$ from above by, say, $`B`$ then the roots of $`N_t(a,b,c)`$—and hence $`g(a,b,c)`$—can be bounded from above:

$`g(a,b,c)abc\left(\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{1}{ab}+\frac{1}{ac}+\frac{1}{bc}\right)+\sqrt{\frac{1}{4}\left(\frac{1}{ab}+\frac{1}{ac}+\frac{1}{bc}\right)^2\frac{2}{abc}\left(\frac{1}{12}\left(\frac{3}{a}+\frac{3}{b}+\frac{3}{c}+\frac{a}{bc}+\frac{b}{ac}+\frac{c}{ab}\right)B\right)}\right)`$
$`=\frac{1}{2}(a+b+c)+\sqrt{\frac{1}{4}(abc)^2\left(\frac{1}{ab}+\frac{1}{ac}+\frac{1}{bc}\right)^2\frac{1}{6}abc\left(\frac{3}{a}+\frac{3}{b}+\frac{3}{c}+\frac{a}{bc}+\frac{b}{ac}+\frac{c}{ab}\right)+2Babc}`$
$`=\sqrt{2Babc+\frac{1}{12}\left(a^2+b^2+c^2\right)}\frac{1}{2}(a+b+c)`$
From this computation, the question of the existence of an upper bound for $`g(a,b,c)`$ proportional to $`\sqrt{abc}^p`$ comes up naturally. Unfortunately, it is not clear how to bound the periodic part $`P_t(a,b,c)`$ effectively. An almost trivial bound for $`P_t(a,b,c)`$ yielded in  the inequality

$$g(a,b,c)\frac{1}{2}\left(\sqrt{abc\left(a+b+c\right)}abc\right),$$

which is of comparable size to the other upper bounds for $`g(a,b,c)`$ in the literature. However, we believe one can obtain bounds of smaller magnitude.

## 3 Special cases

On the path to such “better” bounds, we first have to exclude some cases which definitely yield Frobenius numbers of size $`a_k^2`$. One of these cases are triples $`(a,b,c)`$ such that $`c`$ is representable by $`a`$ and $`b`$: by (1), we obtain in this case $`g(a,b,c)=abab`$.

A second case of triples $`(a,b,c)`$ that we need to exclude are those for which $`a|(b+c)`$. Brauer and Shockley  proved that in this case

$$g(a,b,c)=\mathrm{max}(b\frac{ac}{b+c},c\frac{ab}{b+c})a.$$

Here $`x`$ denotes the greatest integer not exceeding $`x`$.

An even less trivial example of special cases was given by Lewin , who studied the Frobenius number of *almost arithmetic sequences*: If $`m,n>0`$, gcd$`(a,n)=1`$, and $`da`$, then

$$g(a,ma+n,ma+2n,\mathrm{},ma+\left(d1\right)n)=\left(m\frac{a2}{d1}+m1\right)a+\left(a1\right)n.$$

For arithmetic sequences ($`m=1`$), this formula goes back to Roberts , for consecutive numbers ($`m=n=1`$) it is due to Brauer . For the special case $`d=3`$, we obtain

$$g(a,ma+n,ma+2n)=\left(m\frac{a}{2}1\right)a+\left(a1\right)n.$$

As a function in $`a,b:=ma+n,c:=ma+2n`$, this Frobenius number grows proportionally to $`ab`$, which means an upper bound proportional to $`\sqrt{abc}^p`$ with $`p<4/3`$ can not be achieved. Hence in our computations and conjectures about upper bounds for $`g(a,b,c)`$, we will exclude the cases of one of the numbers being representable by the other two, one number dividing the sum of the other two, and almost arithmetic sequences. Finally, as noted above, thanks to (3) we may assume without loss of generality that $`a`$, $`b`$, and $`c`$ are pairwise coprime. The triples $`(a,b,c)`$ that are not excluded will be called *admissible*.

## 4 Computations

In the present section we discuss the computation of the Frobenius number. For convenience we computed the number $`f(a,b,c)=g(a,b,c)+a+b+c`$. It is not hard to see that $`f(a,b,c)`$ is the largest integer that can not be represented by a linear combination of $`a`$, $`b`$, and $`c`$ with *positive* integer coefficients. The respective counting function

$$\overline{N}_t(a,b,c):=\mathrm{\#}\{(m_1,m_2,m_3)^3:m_k>0,am_1+bm_2+cm_3=t\}.$$

can also be found in  and is closely related to $`N_t(a,b,c)`$:

$`\overline{N}_t(a,b,c)={\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2abc}}{\displaystyle \frac{t}{2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{ab}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{ac}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{bc}}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{12}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{3}{a}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{b}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{c}}+{\displaystyle \frac{a}{bc}}+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{ac}}+{\displaystyle \frac{c}{ab}}\right)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4a}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{a1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{a}(2t+b+c)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kb}{a}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kc}{a}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4b}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{b1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{b}(2t+a+c)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi ka}{b}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kc}{b}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4c}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{c1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{e}^{\frac{\pi ik}{c}(2t+a+b)}}{\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi ka}{c}\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi kb}{c}}}.`$
The following illustrates our algorithm.

```
STEP 0: Initiate the intervals I1, I2, I3 for the selection of the
        arguments a,b,c;

STEP 1: Draw at random integers a,b,c from I1, I2, I3 respectively;

STEP 2: Test a,b,c for coprimality and for almost arithmetic sequences;

STEP 3: IF (a,b,c are not pairwise coprime) or IF (a,b,c are almost arithmetic)
        {discard a,b,c and GOTO STEP 1}
        ELSE {SET delta <- min(a,b,c); GOTO STEP 4};

STEP 4: Compute z=sqrt(a*b*c),
        SET mb <- INT(sqrt(3)*z)+delta;
        SET t <- mb;

STEP 5: Compute NB(t,a,b,c);

STEP 6: IF (NB(t,a,b,c)>0) {SET t <- t-1, and GOTO STEP 5}
        ELSE {GOTO STEP 7};

STEP 7: SET f <- t;

STEP 8: IF(mb-f < delta) {SET
        mb <- mb+delta
        t <- mb
        GOTO STEP 5}
        ELSE {GOTO STEP 9};

STEP 9: PRINT f(a,b,c) <- f;
        STOP.

```

For example, for $`a=7,b=13,c=30`$ the program yields the Frobenius number $`f(7,13,30)=95`$, or $`g(7,13,30)=45`$. This program was tested against arguments which yield known results, and found to be correct.

Our program is to choose at random arguments $`a,b,c`$ in a certain range (in our case $`[1,750]`$), and test the triplets for admissibility. For admissible triplets $`a,b,c`$ we compute the Frobenius number $`f(a,b,c)`$ based on the straightforward observation that, once we have $`a=\mathrm{min}(a,b,c)`$ consecutive integers which are representable, we know that every integer beyond that interval is representable as well. We start searching for roots of $`\overline{N}_t(a,b,c)`$ at the lower bound $`\sqrt{3abc}`$. If a root is found at an integer $`f`$, we repeat this search until we found an interval of $`a`$ integers $`t`$ with $`\overline{N}_t(a,b,c)>0`$, that is, an interval of $`a`$ representable integers. At this stopping point, the integer $`f`$ is the sought-after Frobenius number $`f(a,b,c)`$.

We have created a PARI-GP program222Our program can be downloaded at www.math.binghamton.edu/matthias/frobcomp.html, following the above algorithm. The program proved to be quite efficient, since most of the values of $`f(a,b,c)`$ were found to be close to the lower bound $`\sqrt{3abc}`$, as shown in the analysis below. The Dedekind-Rademacher sums appearing in (4) can be computed very efficiently because they satisfy a reciprocity law (, for computational complexity see also ), which allows us to calculate their values similar in spirit to the Euclidean algorithm. This implies that for a given $`t`$, $`\overline{N}_t(a,b,c)`$ can be computed with our rather simple algorithm in $`O(\mathrm{log}(c))`$ time, assuming that $`c=\mathrm{max}(a,b,c)`$. Hence if $`f(a,b,c)`$ is close to the lower bound $`\sqrt{3abc}`$—which, again, happens in the vast majority of cases—, we obtain $`f(a,b,c)`$ in $`O(a\mathrm{log}(c))`$ time. On the other hand, we can of course not assume that $`f(a,b,c)`$ is close to $`\sqrt{3abc}`$; still we get ‘at worst’ a computation time of $`O(ab\mathrm{log}(c))`$. What makes this analysis even more appealing is that it applies to the general case of the Frobenius problem. As mentioned above, there is an analog for (2) and (4) for $`d>3`$ , which again is a lattice-point count in a polytope and as such is known (for fixed $`d`$) to be computable in $`O\left(p(\mathrm{log}a_1,\mathrm{},\mathrm{log}a_d)\right)`$ time for some polynomial $`p`$ . With an analogous algorithm for the general case, we would hence be able to compute $`f(a_1,\mathrm{},a_d)`$ in $`O\left(a_1a_2p(\mathrm{log}a_1,\mathrm{},\mathrm{log}a_d)\right)`$ time, where $`a_1<a_2<\mathrm{}<a_d`$. As in the three-variable case—in fact, even more so—, most Frobenius numbers will be situated very close to the lower bound $`\sqrt{3a_1a_2a_3}`$, which means that in the vast majority of cases we can expect a computation time of $`O\left(a_1p(\mathrm{log}a_1,\mathrm{},\mathrm{log}a_d)\right)`$.

The computational complexity of the Frobenius problem is very interesting and still gives rise to ongoing studies. Davison  provided an algorithm for the three-variable case ($`a<b<c`$) which runs in $`O(\mathrm{log}b)`$ time. The general case is still open. While Kannan  proved that there is a polynomial-time algorithm (polynomial in $`\mathrm{log}a_1,\mathrm{},\mathrm{log}a_d`$) to find $`g(a_1,\mathrm{},a_d)`$ for fixed $`d`$, no such algorithm is known for $`d>3`$. The fastest general algorithm which we are aware of is due to Nijenhuis  and runs in $`O(da\mathrm{log}a)`$ time, where $`a=\mathrm{min}(a_1,\mathrm{},a_d)`$. Hence, while our primitive algorithm is not competitive for the three-variable case of the Frobenius problem, it might be worthwhile to develop it further in the general case.

We initially implemented our program as an MS-DOS QUICK BASIC program and experienced some interesting problems due to floating-point errors: computing generalized Dedekind sums can get challenging for large arguments. These problems were only discovered when we reimplemented the algorithm in PARI-GP, which has an extended precision aritmetic and also keeps track of roundoff errors effectively. It is worth mentioning that both Knuth’s algorithm  for the computation of Rademacher-Dedekind sums and Davison’s algorithm  for computing $`g(a,b,c)`$ are integer algorithms and therefore are very stable.

With our program we generated at random 10000 admissible triplets. Our main question is the relation of the Frobenius number $`f=f(a,b,c)`$ to $`z:=\sqrt{abc}`$. The following is a statistical description of the ratios $`R:=f/z`$.

Descriptive Statistics
Variable $`N`$ Mean Median StDev Min Max $`Q_1`$ $`Q_3`$    $`R`$ 10000 2.283 2.012 0.737 1.736 9.332 1.940 2.299

$`Q_1`$ and $`Q_3`$ are the first and third quartiles, respectively. We see in the above table that 50% of the cases have a ratio smaller than 2.01, and 75% have ratio smaller than 2.30. In the following figures we present a box-plot and a histogram of the variable $`R`$.

In the box-plot, the bottom line of the box corresponds to the first quartile $`Q_1`$. The top line of the box corresponds to the third quartile $`Q_3`$. There are 980 points above the value of $`R=3`$. Only 24 points, which are listed below, have a value of $`R`$ greater than 7.5.

| $`a`$ | $`b`$ | $`c`$ | $`f(a,b,c)`$ | $`z=\sqrt{abc}`$ | $`\sqrt{3}z`$ | $`z^{5/4}`$ | $`R=f/z`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 487 | 733 | 738 | 121755 | 16231.0 | 28112.9 | 183202 | 7.50140 |
| 229 | 483 | 662 | 64901 | 8557.0 | 14821.1 | 82300 | 7.58457 |
| 223 | 307 | 698 | 52657 | 6912.7 | 11973.2 | 63032 | 7.61740 |
| 244 | 357 | 619 | 56067 | 7343.0 | 12718.5 | 67974 | 7.63542 |
| 509 | 541 | 557 | 95788 | 12384.7 | 21450.9 | 130649 | 7.73439 |
| 262 | 349 | 699 | 61861 | 7994.7 | 13847.2 | 75597 | 7.73776 |
| 475 | 611 | 679 | 109183 | 14037.9 | 24314.4 | 152802 | 7.77773 |
| 248 | 305 | 439 | 45274 | 5762.5 | 9980.9 | 50207 | 7.85671 |
| 265 | 488 | 509 | 65434 | 8113.2 | 14052.5 | 77000 | 8.06514 |
| 274 | 401 | 695 | 70596 | 8738.6 | 15135.6 | 84489 | 8.07868 |
| 368 | 415 | 599 | 77374 | 9564.5 | 16566.2 | 94586 | 8.08972 |
| 281 | 341 | 502 | 57790 | 6935.6 | 12012.8 | 63293 | 8.33241 |
| 315 | 488 | 559 | 77734 | 9269.8 | 16055.8 | 90958 | 8.38571 |
| 305 | 319 | 652 | 67142 | 7964.7 | 13795.3 | 75242 | 8.42995 |
| 393 | 452 | 619 | 89830 | 10486.0 | 18162.3 | 106112 | 8.56664 |
| 313 | 532 | 579 | 84150 | 9819.0 | 17007.0 | 97743 | 8.57012 |
| 301 | 479 | 725 | 87903 | 10224.0 | 17708.5 | 102808 | 8.59773 |
| 655 | 671 | 679 | 150043 | 17274.9 | 29921.1 | 198048 | 8.68558 |
| 296 | 731 | 749 | 110834 | 12730.5 | 22049.9 | 135225 | 8.70618 |
| 359 | 520 | 619 | 94318 | 10749.6 | 18618.9 | 109457 | 8.77406 |
| 337 | 346 | 701 | 79559 | 9040.9 | 15659.3 | 88159 | 8.79989 |
| 320 | 469 | 491 | 77556 | 8584.2 | 14868.4 | 82628 | 9.03469 |
| 335 | 668 | 669 | 112894 | 12235.6 | 21192.6 | 128685 | 9.22672 |
| 379 | 389 | 748 | 97998 | 10501.4 | 18188.9 | 106306 | 9.33194 |

In Figure 3 we presents all the points $`(z,f)`$. Notice that all the points are above the straight line $`\sqrt{3}z`$, which illustrates Davison’s lower bound. The upper bound is, however, convex. It is included in the figure as the graph $`z^{5/4}`$.

## 5 Conjectures and closing remarks

Randomly chosen admissible arguments tend to yield a Frobenius number $`f`$ smaller than the expected number (mean) which is estimated to be $`2.28z`$. The distribution of $`R=f/z`$ is very skewed (positive asymmetry) as seen in the Figure 1. Since 10000 random points yielded $`f<z^{5/4}`$, or $`g(a,b,c)<\sqrt{abc}^{5/4}abc`$, the probability that a future randomly chosen admissible triplet with $`z=\sqrt{abc}<20000`$ will yield $`fz^{5/4}`$ is smaller than $`1/10000`$.

In general, our data suggests that one can obtain an upper bound of smaller magnitude than what the above cited results state. Again, the upper bounds in the literature are comparable to an upper bound proportional to $`\sqrt{abc}^{4/3}`$. We believe the following is true.

###### Conjecture 1

There exists an upper bound for $`(a,b,c)`$ proportional to $`\sqrt{abc}^p`$ where $`p<\frac{4}{3}`$, valid for all admissible triplets $`(a,b,c)`$.

In fact, our data suggests, more precisely, that for all admissible triplets $`(a,b,c)`$,

$$g(a,b,c)\sqrt{abc}^{5/4}abc.$$

It is very improbable that a randomly chosen admissible triple $`(a,b,c)`$, such that $`\sqrt{abc}<20000`$, will yield $`g(a,b,c)>\sqrt{abc}^{5/4}abc`$. However, we remark that there might be specific structures of triples $`(a,b,c)`$, close to almost arithmetic, for which $`g(a,b,c)>\sqrt{abc}^{5/4}abc`$. This is generally not the case.

Acknowledgements. We would like to thank Tendai Chitewere for days and days of computing time, Gary Greenfield for the non-trivial task of converting our pictures into -friendly postscript, and the referee and associate editor for helpful comments on the first version of this paper. Finally, we would like to thank the authors and maintainers of PARI-GP.

Department of Mathematical Sciences
State University of New York
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000
matthias@math.binghamton.edu

Structured Decisions Corp.
1105 Washington St.
West Newton MA 02465
deinst@world.std.com

Department of Mathematical Sciences
State University of New York
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000
shelly@math.binghamton.edu


text:
# Systematic observation of tunneling field-ionization in highly excited Rb Rydberg atoms

## Abstract

Pulsed field ionization of high-$`n`$ (90 $`n`$ 150) manifold states in Rb Rydberg atoms has been investigated in high slew-rate regime. Two peaks in the field ionization spectra were systematically observed for the investigated $`n`$ region, where the field values at the lower peak do not almost depend on the excitation energy in the manifold, while those at the higher peak increase with increasing excitation energy. The fraction of the higher peak component to the total ionization signals increases with increasing $`n`$, exceeding 80$`\%`$ at $`n`$ = 147. Characteristic behavior of the peak component and the comparison with theoretical predictions indicate that the higher peak component is due to the tunneling process. The obtained results show for the first time that the tunneling process plays increasingly the dominant role at such highly excited nonhydrogenic Rydberg atoms.

, thanks:  Present address: Research Center for Neutrino Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8578, Japan  , , , , , , thanks:  Present address: Department of Physics, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan  , ,

Rydberg atoms have been utilized in fundamental physics research, such as in the field of cavity quantum electrodynamics. Area of their application fields has recently been more enhanced with the development of the quantum computing and its related quantum measurements. In these experimental studies, the field ionization method has been widely used for the detection of highly excited atoms. Most applications of Rydberg states up to now have been performed by using alkali atoms with the principal quantum number $`n`$ less than 60 or so and it is known in this region that the field ionization occurs mostly around the classical saddle-point field-value given by $`F_c=W^2/4`$ (in a.u.), where $`W`$ is the binding energy of the Rydberg states. There often observed are two peaks in the field ionization spectra due to the adiabatic and non-adiabatic processes in the time evolution of the Rydberg atoms in the electric field. This ionization is due to the level mixing in the ionic core of the bound blue state with the continuum red states coming down from the higher $`n`$ states(autoionization-like process) . This field ionization due to the level mixing effect occurs at the field region between the classical saddle point value and the value expected from the tunneling process. At the low $`n`$ (less than $``$ 60) region, the ionization due to the tunneling process has not been observed usually in nonhydrogenic atoms because the ionization due to the autoionization-like process has much shorter ionization-lifetime than that from the tunneling process (see, however, Neijzen and Dönszelmann and Rolfes, Smith and MacAdam).

Since the level mixing in the ionic core interior is weaker with increasing $`n`$ by a factor of $`n^2`$, it is naturally expected that the competition between the autoionization-like and the tunneling processes occurs at some $`n`$ region and thereafter the tunneling process will dominate the ionization process. To our best knowledge, no detailed investigations have been reported for the field ionization behavior in highly excited Rydberg atoms with $`n`$ higher than 70. In addition to the above intrinsic interests in the physics of pulsed field ionization mechanism in highly excited Rydberg atoms, such studies are inevitably important to extend the applications of the Rydberg atoms to still higher excited region where the coupling to the external electromagnetic field is increasingly stronger and thus open new areas of application fields.

We report here the experimental results of the detailed systematic investigation of field ionization behavior of the highly excited Rb Rydberg states with $`n`$ ranging from 90 to 150. Specifically we focussed on the high-$`n`$ manifold states which are degenerate in energy at zero electric field except for some low angular-momentum ($`\mathrm{}`$) states, but are split under the electric field. After exciting these splitting manifold states from a low-lying 5$`p_{3/2}`$ state with lasers under a small electric field, pulsed electric field was applied to ionize the states in high slew rate regime. It was found for the first time that the tunneling process is increasingly the dominant process in the pulsed field ionization at such highly excited Rydberg atoms. Here the systematic occurrence of the tunneling process and comparison of the results with theoretical predictions are presented and discussed with applications of such highly excited Rydberg states.

Schematic diagram of the present experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1. A thermal atomic beam of Rb was introduced at the center of the field ionization electrodes, where the 85Rb atoms in the ground state $`5s_{1/2}`$ were excited to the Rydberg manifold states through the second excited $`5p_{3/2}`$ state by the two-step laser excitation. A diode laser (780 nm) and a dye laser (479 nm) with a dye of coumarin 102 pumped by a Kr ion laser were used for the first and second step excitations, respectively. The polarizations of the laser lights adopted in the present experiment are parallel and perpendicular to the electric field applied for the first and the second lasers, respectively111 No appreciable change in the experimental results was observed, however, with other configurations such as both parallel and perpendicular cases. .

A linearly ramped electric field was applied for the field ionization in the present experiment. For this purpose a sequence of voltage pulse was generated by a waveform generator AWG420 (Sony Tektronix) and amplified by fast amplifiers before applying to the electrodes. The electrodes consist of two parallel plates of 52 mm length and 40 mm width, the distance between them being 24 mm.

The electrons liberated by the field ionization were guided to a channel electron multiplier through two fine-mesh grids placed in one of the electrode plates. Ionization signals of electrons from the channel electron multiplier were amplified by a preamplifier and a main amplifier and then fed to a multichannel scaler P7886 (FAST ComTek) after the pulse height discrimination. The ionization events were counted as a function of the elapsed time from the starting time of the ramp field with the dwell time of 500ps. From the correspondence of the applied electric field and the time bin, the observed timing spectra were converted into the field ionization spectra as a function of the applied electric field.

The manifold states were excited under a small electric field applied. The applied field was set to $`0.7F_e`$, where $`F_e(=1/3n^5)`$ is the field at which $`n`$ and $`n\pm 1`$ manifolds cross first. This field is larger than the first avoided-crossing field between the $`p`$ state and the adjacent manifold in 85Rb, and yet smaller than $`F_e`$. It is noted here that the manifold states can be excited from the low-lying $`p`$ state only under the electric field because they are intrinsically high $`\mathrm{}`$ states in zero field. Even under the electric field, however, the extreme states near the bluest and the reddest states are hard to be excited appreciably, thus being unable to be used as a reference to the excitation position of the manifold states. Precise position of the excited states in the manifold was therefore determined from the wavelength difference of the second laser relative to the excitation of $`s`$ and $`p`$ states at the applied electric field. For this purpose, exact excitation energies of the $`s`$ and $`p`$ states, which already enter into the manifold and thus not being well separated from the manifold states, were evaluated from the calculated excitation energies at which the $`s`$ and $`d`$ components in their wave functions have maxima among the close-lying manifold states. The Stark energy structure calculated with the method of Hamiltonian diagonalization is shown to be precise enough for this purpose even for such high-lying states.

Typical field ionization spectra measured at the $`n=112`$ manifold with slew rate 13.4V/(cm$`\mu `$s) are shown in Fig. 2. There observed are two prominent peaks, the higher one of which moves appreciably in its field ionization value with the excitation position in the manifold, while the lower one of which shows almost no dependence on the excitation position in the manifold.

Observed values of the ionization field corresponding to the higher peak are plotted in Fig. 3 for the two cases of $`n`$ as a function of the excitation position $`W_r`$ in the manifold. Here the excitation position $`W_r`$ in the manifold with its binding energy $`W`$ is expressed by

$`W_r=2\frac{WW_{\mathrm{min}}}{W_{\mathrm{max}}W_{\mathrm{min}}}1`$,

where $`W_{\mathrm{max}}`$ and $`W_{\mathrm{min}}`$ are the binding energies of the uppermost (bluest state) and the lowermost (reddest state) energy states in the manifold, respectively.

Also shown in this figure with dotted and dashed lines are the theoretical predictions of the ionization field from the tunneling process; the expected ionization field from this process was calculated with a semi-empirical formula of ionization rate in the electric field by Damburg and Kolosov. Although this formula was originally developed for Hydrogen and less accurate in its prediction of ionization lifetime compared to the density-of-state method by Luc-Koenig and Bachelier, Damburg and Kolosov prediction for the ionization field is considered to be accurate enough for the present purpose.

The theoretical predictions are in good agreement with the experimental results if the ionization paths under the applied pulsed electric field from the respective excitation positions are along the diabatic trajectories in the Stark energy diagram as shown by thick solid lines with arrows in Fig. 2. This agreement was found to be well satisfied for all the investigated Rydberg states with 90 $`n`$ 150.

The fraction of the higher peak component to the total ionization signals is shown in Fig.4 as a function of $`n`$. The fraction increases with increasing $`n`$, exceeding 80 % at $`n`$ = 147. This trend is consistent with the theoretical expectation that the level-mixing (autoionization-like process) is less effective with increasing $`n`$.

Another important experimental result is that this fraction of tunneling process increases with higher slew rate as shown in Fig. 5. This feature is also consistent with the theoretical prediction that the field ionization due to the autoionization-like process has finite lifetime which depends on the electric field applied; steeper the applied electric field pulse, shorter time is allowed for the atoms to be ionized with this autoionization-like process, thus inducing relative increase of the fraction of the ionization component due to the tunneling process.

These observations are the first clear indications of the systematic occurrence of the tunneling process in these highly excited nonhydrogenic Rydberg atoms with $`n90`$. Previously two groups observed a field ionization peak due to the tunneling process for the 66$`p`$ ($`{}_{}{}^{2}P`$) state in In and 34$`d`$ state in Na.

Finally we comment on the lower peak behavior. Contrary to the clear behavior of the higher peak component from the tunneling process, the lower peak can not be explained simply from the expected behavior of the autoionization-like process; if the ionization path follows the same diabatic line as in the case of higher peak component (tunneling process), the ionization field would depend on the excitation position of the manifold states, approximately given by the crossing point between the line $`F_c`$ and each straight line of diabatic trajectory in Stark energy diagram as shown in Fig.2. This is not the case in the actual situation as shown in the present experiment. The behavior is rather consistent with that expected from the assumption that the initial manifold states take adiabatic paths to ionization at the classical saddle point values $`F_c`$, although the slew rate of the electric field pulse applied actually is too high for allowing the adiabatic paths in the individual avoided crossings. More detailed experimental results together with discussions on the characteristic feature of the lower peak component will be presented elsewhere.

In conclusion we have studied the pulsed field ionization behavior of highly excited Rb Rydberg atoms in high slew rate regime. Specifically we focussed on the field ionization behavior of the manifold states in high $`n`$ region. It was found for the first time that the tunneling process plays increasingly the dominant role for the field ionization at such highly excited nonhydrogenic Rydberg atoms with $`n`$ ranging from 90 to 150. The fraction of the ionization component from the tunneling process increases with increasing slew rate. This behavior brings us an important application of high-lying Rydberg atoms to serve as a sensitive microwave single-photon detector over the 10-cm wavelength region; in this new method, two low-$`\mathrm{}`$ states which lie below and above the adjacent manifold, respectively, are selected as the lower and the upper states for the Rydberg-atom microwave detector. The lower state initially prepared (the upper state populated by absorbing photons) is then transferred to the lowermost (uppermost) state in the adjacent manifold adiabatically. The resulting extreme states in the manifold are then selectively ionized with the following pulsed electric field in high slew rate regime. The method was demonstrated to be quite stringent in selectivity for the highly excited Rb Rydberg atoms.

This research was partly supported by a Grant-in-aid for Specially Promoted Research by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture, Japan (No. 09102010). M.T., S.Y., and T.H. thank the financial support of JSPS, Japan under the Research Fellowships for the Young Scientists.


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# References

SJSU/TP-02-23

April 2002

Do macroscopic properties dictate microscopic probabilities?
J. Finkelstein111 Participating Guest, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
e-mail: JLFINKELSTEIN@lbl.gov

Department of Physics

San José State University

San José, CA 95192, U.S.A

## Abstract

Aharonov and Reznik have recently argued that the form of the probabilistic predictions of quantum theory can be seen to follow from properties of macroscopic systems. An error in their argument is identified.

Aharonov and Reznik (ref. , hereafter AR) have recently suggested that the form of the probabilistic predictions of quantum theory can be seen to follow from properties of macroscopic systems. This suggestion is made in the context of acceptance of the non-probabilistic parts of standard quantum theory (in particular the requirement that the result of a measurement of an observable must be one of the eigenvalues of the operator corresponding to that observable), as well as the requirement that quantum predictions will indeed be probabilistic; the result that AR wish to derive is the specific form those probabilistic predictions take. The purpose of this note is not to question the standard quantum predictions which AR wish to derive from a consideration of macroscopic properties - indeed, those standard predictions are also required by Gleason’s theorem  and of course are supported by an enormous amount of experimental evidence - but rather to examine whether these predictions can indeed be said to follow from the considerations which AR present.

AR consider a collection of $`N`$ identically-prepared spin-$`\frac{1}{2}`$ particles, which are in the product state

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }=|\psi _1|\psi _2\mathrm{}|\psi _N,$$
(1)
where $`|\psi _r`$ is the state of the $`r`$th particle which is given, for any $`r`$, by

$$|\psi _r=c_+|+_r+c_{}|_r,$$
(2)
and where $`|+_r`$ and $`|_r`$ are the eigenstates of the operator $`(\sigma _x)_r`$. AR define $`M_x`$ to be the operator for the average value of the $`x`$-component of spin, that is,

$$M_x=\left(\frac{1}{N}\right)\underset{r=1}{\overset{N}{}}(\sigma _x)_r.$$
(3)
Now let $`f_+`$ denote the probability of obtaining, in a measurement of $`\sigma _x`$ on a single particle, the outcome $`+1`$; the result which AR wish to prove is that $`f_+`$ is equal to $`|c_+|^2`$.

If $`N`$ is large, then if one were to measure $`M_x`$ by measuring $`\sigma _x`$ for each particle, the law of large numbers would require that the outcome would almost certainly be close to $`f_+(+1)+(1f_+)(1)`$. Now let $`\overline{\sigma }_x`$ denote $`|c_+|^2(+1)+|c_{}|^2(1)`$ (since $`|c_{}|^2=1|c_+|^2`$, this means $`\overline{\sigma }_x=2|c_+|^21`$). If AR can show that, in a measurement of $`M_x`$ on the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ the outcome would almost certainly be close to $`\overline{\sigma }_x`$, then they would have the result which they want.

AR begin by reminding us (see also refs. ,  ) that if we write

$$M_x|\mathrm{\Psi }=\overline{\sigma }_x|\mathrm{\Psi }+|\mathrm{\Delta },$$
(4)
then the norm of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }`$ vanishes in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$. This fact might be interpreted to mean that, for $`N=\mathrm{}`$, $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is an eigenstate of $`M_x`$ with eigenvalue $`\overline{\sigma }_x`$, which (according to the non-probabilistic part of standard quantum mechanics) would imply that a measurement of $`M_x`$ on the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ would surely have the outcome $`\overline{\sigma }_x`$. However (as AR carefully point out), $`N`$ is finite for any actual system, and so, in order to obtain the desired result for $`N`$ large but finite, AR introduce a “stability assumption”; they write

> One way to proceed is to make an additional assumption which seems natural for macroscopically large samples: the results of physical experiments are stable against small perturbations.

Having made this assumption, they then argue for their result in two ways. The first of these is based on the assertion that a small change in $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ would make it an exact eigenstate of $`M_x`$. In the second way, they consider a model for the interaction which results in a measurement of $`M_x`$, and apply their assumption to the post-measurement state of the $`N`$-particle system entangled with the measurement device.

In this note I point out that the first of these ways is in fact in error, and also note that, given their “stability assumption”, it is not necessary to consider the post-measurement state at all. The first argument given by AR begins with the following passage:

> …for finite large $`N`$, the operator $`M_x`$ fails to be a precise eigenoperator of $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$…However, by a small modification of the state to $`|\mathrm{\Psi }+|\delta \mathrm{\Psi }`$ with magnitude $`|\delta \mathrm{\Psi }=O(1/N)`$, the perturbed state does become an exact eigenstate of $`M_x`$.

However, some time ago Squires  showed that, as $`N`$ becomes large, $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ becomes orthogonal to any eigenstate of $`M_x`$. So, if we let $`|M_x=m`$ denote any (normalized) eigenstate of $`M_x`$, and write

$$|M_x=m=|\mathrm{\Psi }+|\delta \mathrm{\Psi },$$
(5)
we have

$$|\delta \mathrm{\Psi }^2=|\mathrm{\Psi }^2+|M_x=m^22\mathrm{R}\mathrm{e}M_x=m|\mathrm{\Psi },$$
(6)
and since  $`lim_N\mathrm{}M_x=m|\mathrm{\Psi }=0`$, this gives $`lim_N\mathrm{}\delta \mathrm{\Psi }=2`$, contradicting the assertion of AR that $`\delta \mathrm{\Psi }`$ is $`O(1/N)`$.

This result of Squires can be understood as follows: let $`S`$ be a subset of the integers from $`1`$ to $`N`$, and define

$$|S=\left[\underset{rS}{}|+_r\right]\left[\underset{rS}{}|_r\right]$$
(7)
that is, $`|S`$ is the product N-particle state in which the $`r`$th particle is in state $`|+`$ if $`r`$ is included in the set $`S`$, and is in state $`|`$ if $`r`$ is not included in the set $`S`$. Let $`n(S)`$ be the number of elements of $`S`$ (that is, the number of $`|+`$ states in eq. 7), and define

$$|k=\left(\frac{1}{N_k}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\underset{n(S)=k}{}|S.$$
(8)
The number of (mutually-orthogonal) terms on the RHS of this equation is the binomial coefficient $`N!/[k!(Nk)!]`$, and so $`|k`$ is normalized if $`N_k=N!/[k!(Nk)!]`$. Note that each term in the sum in eq. 8, and hence $`|k`$ itself, is an eigenstate of $`M_x`$, with eigenvalue $`[k(+1)+(Nk)(1)]/N`$; I will write this eigenvalue as $`\lambda _k=(2k/N)1`$.

From eqs. 1, 2, 7 and 8 , it is easy to see that

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }=\underset{k=0}{\overset{N}{}}c_+^kc_{}^{(Nk)}N_k^{\frac{1}{2}}|k,$$
(9)
from which it follows that

$$|k|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2=|c_+|^{2k}|c_{}|^{2(Nk)}\left(\frac{N!}{k!(Nk)!}\right).$$
(10)
Since $`|c_{}|^2=1|c_+|^2,`$ this shows that $`|k|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2`$ is a binomial distribution in $`k`$. For large values of $`N`$, the maximum of this distribution is  at $`k=|c_+|^2N`$ (and so $`\lambda _k=\overline{\sigma }_x`$), and Stirling’s formula then shows that this maximum value is $`O(N^{\frac{1}{2}})`$. This is Squires’ result; roughly speaking, this result follows from the fact that, although $`|k|\mathrm{\Psi }|^2`$ is indeed peaked at $`k=|c_+|^2N`$, the width of this peak grows as $`N^{\frac{1}{2}}`$. Thus there are $`N^{\frac{1}{2}}`$ terms which contribute significantly to the sum in eq. 9, and so the overlap of $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ with any one of them must fall as $`N^{\frac{1}{4}}`$.

So it is not true that $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ becomes close to an exact eigenstate of $`M_x`$ as $`N\mathrm{}`$. However, it could be said to come close to an approximate eigenstate, in the following sense: suppose, for any $`ϵ>0`$, we keep only those terms in eq. 9 in which $`k`$ is within $`ϵN`$ of the peak value (which is $`N|c_+|^2`$); that is, let $`a_\pm =N(|c_+|^2\pm ϵ)`$, and then define the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_ϵ`$ (up to normalization) by

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_ϵ=\underset{k=a_{}}{\overset{a_+}{}}c_+^kc_{}^{(Nk)}N_k^{\frac{1}{2}}|k.$$
(11)
Since each term on the RHS of eq. 11 is an eigenstate of $`M_x`$ with eigenvalue $`\lambda _k`$, it follows from the non-probabilistic part of quantum mechanics  that a measurement of $`M_x`$ on the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_ϵ`$ would certainly have an outcome which was in the range from $`\lambda _a_{}`$ to $`\lambda _{a_+}`$, that is, from $`\overline{\sigma }_x2ϵ`$ to $`\overline{\sigma }_x+2ϵ`$. Also, since from eq. 10 it follows (see ref. ) that

$$\underset{k=a_{}}{\overset{a_+}{}}|k|\mathrm{\Psi }|^21\mathrm{as}N\mathrm{};$$
(12)
then

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }|\mathrm{\Psi }_ϵ0\mathrm{as}N\mathrm{}.$$
(13)
So for any $`ϵ>0`$, it is possible to define a state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_ϵ`$ on which a measurement of $`M_x`$ is certain to have an outcome within $`2ϵ`$ of $`\overline{\sigma }_x`$ and which is close to $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ for large $`N`$. The “stability assumption” of AR does not, as stated, specify precisely how stable the results of experiments are expected to be, nor whether that stability is uniform in $`N`$. Nevertheless, if one is willing to use that assumption, one could apply it directly to the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ in the same spirit as AR apply it to the post-measurement state. Since a measurement of $`M_x`$ on the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_ϵ`$ is certain to yield an outcome close to $`\overline{\sigma }_x`$, and since $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is close to $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_ϵ`$ for large $`N`$, that assumption would seem to imply that the outcome of a measurement of $`M_x`$ on the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ would almost certainly be close to $`\overline{\sigma }_x`$.

Therefore, if one accepts the AR “stability assumption”, it is not necessary to consider the post-measurement state at all; the quantum probability rule would follow from an application of this assumption to the pre-measurement state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$. Of course, this does not mean that one could not obtain some insight from discussing, as AR have done, the post-measurement state.

Acknowledgement: I would like to acknowledge the hospitality of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where this work was done.