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# Narrowband frequency tunable light source of continuous quadrature entanglement

## I Introduction

Quantum interface between light and atomic systems requires narrowband frequency tunable sources of light possessing various non-classical features. Examples of sources which are in demand include narrowband tunable single photon sources and narrowband tunable sources of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entangled light. Both types of sources can be constructed using a non-degenerate optical parametric oscillator below threshold (ND-OPO). However, the vast majority of current experiments with entangled light is carried out with single pass downconversion sources with their inherent low spectral brightness. The first EPR-type experiment using a narrowband light source Ou et al. (1992a, b) was also the first demonstration of entanglement for continuous variables. Recently another experiment demonstrating the EPR state for solitons has been carried out Silberhorn et al. (2001) although in this experiment the bandwidth of the correlated fields was very wide. The first demonstration of a frequency tunable source of a non-classical narrowband light source possessing entanglement between the modes at 852 nm and 917 nm was reported in Georgiades et al. (1995). A potentially tunable source of entangled beams at the same wavelength but in different spatial modes was used in the continuous variables teleportation experiment Furusawa et al. (1998). In the latter experiment a degenerate OPO pumped in two opposite directions was utilized to generate two squeezed beams which were mixed on a beamsplitter to produce two entangled beams with the degree of entanglement around -1 dB. In the present paper we demonstrate the entanglement of a new type. Namely two symmetric longitudinal modes of the OPO cavity which are shown to possess the quadrature phase entanglement as suggested in the original paper by M. Reid Reid (1989) where entanglement of the OPO output has been discussed for the first time.

## II ND-OPO theory

In this section we present a model for calculating quantum fluctuations of the ND-OPO output modes. Our treatment is based on Reid (1989) with experimentally relevant generalizations: the two modes do not necessarily experience the same losses in the resonator and the output coupling rates can be different too. The ND-OPO is described as a moderate finesse optical resonator containing a $`\chi ^{(2)}`$ nonlinear medium. This resonator is assumed to be resonant with two field modes $`\stackrel{~}{a}_+`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{a}_{}`$, henceforth denoted the signal and idler modes respectively. In terms of frequency the signal and idler modes are assumed to be an integer number of free spectrum ranges higher and lower relative to the degenerate frequency set by the classical external pump field $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }`$. That is, energy conservation requires that the sum of the frequencies of the resonating fields must equal the pump field frequency $`\omega _++\omega _{}=\omega _p`$, so that $`\omega _\pm =\omega _p/2\pm \nu \omega _{FSR}`$, where $`\omega _{FSR}`$ is the frequency of a free spectrum range and $`\nu `$ is an integer. The mode operators obey the usual bosonic commutation relation

$$[\stackrel{~}{a}_n(t),\stackrel{~}{a}_m^{}(t)]=\delta _{nm},\{n,m\}=\{+,\}$$
(1)
### II.1 Dynamics

The starting point for our treatment of the ND-OPO is the Hamiltonian

$$H=H_{free}+H_{int}+H_{res}$$
(2)
where $`free`$, $`int`$ and $`res`$ describes the free, noninteracting OPO cavity fields, the nonlinear interaction between the fields and the coupling of the fields to the external reservoir of vacuum modes respectively. The first two Hamiltonians take the form

$$H_{free}=\mathrm{}\omega _+\stackrel{~}{a}_+^{}\stackrel{~}{a}_++\mathrm{}\omega _{}\stackrel{~}{a}_{}^{}\stackrel{~}{a}_{}$$
(3)
and

$$H_{int}=i\mathrm{}g\left(\stackrel{~}{\alpha }e^{i\chi }\stackrel{~}{a}_+^{}\stackrel{~}{a}_{}^{}\stackrel{~}{\alpha }^{}e^{i\chi }\stackrel{~}{a}_+\stackrel{~}{a}_{}\right)$$
(4)
where $`g`$ is the coupling strength, $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }=\alpha \mathrm{exp}(2i\omega t)`$ is the classical pump field and $`\chi `$ is the pump field phase. From (2), (3) and (4) we can derive the Heisenberg-Langevin equations of motion for the cavity fields

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill \frac{d}{dt}\stackrel{~}{a}_\pm =i\omega _\pm \stackrel{~}{a}_\pm +g\stackrel{~}{\alpha }e^{i\chi }\stackrel{~}{a}_{}^{}\gamma _\pm \stackrel{~}{a}_\pm \\ \hfill +\sqrt{2\kappa _\pm }\stackrel{~}{a}_\pm ^{in}+\sqrt{2(\gamma _\pm \kappa _\pm )}\stackrel{~}{b}_\pm ^{in}\end{array}$$
(5)
where the $`\stackrel{~}{a}^{in}`$ fields describe the vacuum fluctuations leaking into the resonator through the main coupler and the $`\stackrel{~}{b}^{in}`$ fields enter the ND-OPO via residual leakage. $`\kappa _\pm `$ define the leak rate through the main coupler at frequencies $`\omega _\pm `$ and $`\gamma _\pm `$ define the overall leak rates. Our observables of interest are the slowly varying envelopes of the field quadratures

$$q_\pm (\theta )=\stackrel{~}{a}_\pm e^{i(\omega _\pm t\theta )}+\stackrel{~}{a}_\pm ^{}e^{i(\omega _\pm t\theta )}$$
(6)
The pump field we parameterize in terms of its threshold value $`\alpha =\epsilon \alpha _{th}`$, where $`\alpha _{th}=\sqrt{\gamma _+\gamma _{}}/g`$. This results in the equations of motion for the subharmonic quadrature operators

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill \frac{d}{dt}q_\pm (\theta )=\epsilon \sqrt{\gamma _+\gamma _{}}q_{}(\chi \theta )\gamma _\pm q_\pm (\theta )\\ \hfill +\sqrt{2\kappa _\pm }q_\pm ^{in}(\theta )+\sqrt{2(\gamma _\pm \kappa _\pm )}p_\pm ^{in}(\theta )\end{array}$$
(7)
Here we have defined the slowly varying vacuum field quadratures $`q_\pm ^{in}(\theta )=\stackrel{~}{a}_\pm ^{in}e^{i(\omega _\pm t\theta )}+(\stackrel{~}{a}_\pm ^{})^{in}e^{i(\omega _\pm t\theta )}`$ and $`p_\pm ^{in}(\theta )=\stackrel{~}{b}_\pm ^{in}e^{i(\omega _\pm t\theta )}+(\stackrel{~}{b}_\pm ^{})^{in}e^{i(\omega _\pm t\theta )}`$. The phase dependence of $`q^{in}`$ and $`p^{in}`$ will be left out in the following since no phase can be assigned to the vacuum state and hence the properties of the ’$`in`$’ quadrature phase operators is independent of the choice of $`\theta `$.

From (7) we see that only the quadratures with phases $`\varphi _\pm =\chi /2\pm \theta `$ will interact. Hence we find that the ND-OPO intracavity fields are described by a continuum of pairwise coupled equations of motion of the form

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill \frac{d}{dt}q_\pm (\varphi _\pm )=\epsilon \sqrt{\gamma _+\gamma _{}}q_{}(\varphi _{})\gamma _\pm q_\pm (\varphi _\pm )\\ \hfill +\sqrt{2\kappa _\pm }q_\pm ^{in}+\sqrt{2(\gamma _\pm \kappa _\pm )}p_\pm ^{in}\end{array}$$
(8)
Before moving on to solve (8) we make a few observations about the quadrature phase operators. Using (1) we find that these operators obey the following commutation relations

$$[q_n(\varphi ),q_m(\varphi ^{})]=2i\mathrm{sin}(\varphi ^{}\varphi )\delta _{nm},\{m,n\}=\{+,\}$$
(9)
meaning that the combined signal/idler quadratures describing cross correlations of the ND-OPO output commute as

$$[q_+(\varphi _+)+q_{}(\varphi _{}),q_+(\varphi _++\psi )+q_{}(\varphi _{}+\psi )]=[q_+(\varphi _+)q_{}(\varphi _{}),q_+(\varphi _++\psi )q_{}(\varphi _{}+\psi )]=4i\mathrm{sin}\psi $$
(10)
Hence the combinations $`\{q_+(\varphi _+)+q_{}(\varphi _{}),q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)+q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2)\}`$ and $`\{q_+(\varphi _+)q_{}(\varphi _{}),q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2)\}`$ form conjugate observables. As we will see below the fluctuations of the quadrature difference $`q_+(\varphi _+)q_{}(\varphi _{})`$ can become very small in the ND-OPO output as compared to a two mode coherent state output. This means that $`q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)+q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2)=q_+(\varphi _+^{})q_{}(\varphi _{}^{})`$, with $`\varphi _\pm ^{}=\chi /2\pm (\theta +\pi /2)`$, also can become a quiet observable since $`\varphi _\pm `$ is defined for any arbitrary value of $`\theta `$. From the commutation relation (10) we then conclude that $`q_+(\varphi _+)+q_{}(\varphi _{})`$ and $`q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2)`$ must become correspondingly noisy observables. This is illustrated in the phasor diagram of Fig. 1.

In the parametric down conversion the phase is conserved, meaning that the signal and idler fields are created symmetrically around the axis making an angle of $`\chi /2`$ with the abscissa in phase space. This axis illustrates the pump phase. In the rotating frame oscillating at $`\omega _p/2`$ the signal field will rotate clockwise and the idler will rotate counterclockwise in such a way that their sum always will be parallel to the pump axis. Hence we find that the difference of projections of signal/idler fields onto the pump axis will tend to cancel on average. This difference is described by the cross correlation of quadratures $`q_+(\varphi _+)q_{}(\varphi _{})`$. Also the sum of projections onto the axis perpendicular to the pump axis will cancel. This observable is described by $`q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)+q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2)`$.

### II.2 Quantum fluctuations

The solutions of (8) are found by Fourier transforming and solving the resulting algebraic equations

$$𝒟\stackrel{}{q}=𝒜\stackrel{}{q}^{in}+\stackrel{}{p}^{in}$$
(11)
where we have defined

$$\begin{array}{c}𝒟=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\gamma _+i\mathrm{\Omega }& \epsilon \sqrt{\gamma _+\gamma _{}}\\ \epsilon \sqrt{\gamma _+\gamma _{}}& \gamma _{}i\mathrm{\Omega }\end{array}\right),𝒜=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\sqrt{2\kappa _+}& 0\\ 0& \sqrt{2\kappa _{}}\end{array}\right),\\ =\left(\begin{array}{cc}\sqrt{2(\gamma _+\kappa _+)}& 0\\ 0& \sqrt{2(\gamma _{}\kappa _{})}\end{array}\right)\end{array}$$
(12)
and

$$\stackrel{}{q}=\left(\begin{array}{c}q_+(\varphi _+)\\ q_{}(\varphi _{})\end{array}\right),\stackrel{}{q}^{in}=\left(\begin{array}{c}q_+^{in}\\ q_{}^{in}\end{array}\right),\stackrel{}{p}^{in}=\left(\begin{array}{c}p_+^{in}\\ p_{}^{in}\end{array}\right)$$
(13)
now are the Fourier transformed quadrature phase operators. From the solution of (11) we can find the fields escaping the ND-OPO through the main coupler via the boundary condition on the coupler

$$\stackrel{}{q}^{out}=𝒜\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{q}^{in}$$
(14)
These are given by

$$\stackrel{}{q}^{out}=\left[𝒜𝒟^1𝒜\right]\stackrel{}{q}^{in}+𝒜𝒟^1\stackrel{}{p}^{in}$$
(15)
where $``$ is the 2$`\times `$2 unit matrix. To describe the nonclassical correlations between the $`out`$ fields in (15), we define the general linear combinations of the signal and idler quadratures

$$\stackrel{}{Q}=\left(\begin{array}{c}Q_+\\ Q_{}\end{array}\right)=𝒰\stackrel{}{q},𝒰=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\psi & \mathrm{sin}\psi \\ \mathrm{sin}\psi & \mathrm{cos}\psi \end{array}\right)$$
(16)
Hence we find the outgoing linear combinations as

$$\stackrel{}{Q}^{out}=𝒰\left[𝒜𝒟^1𝒜\right]𝒰^T\stackrel{}{Q}^{in}+𝒰𝒜𝒟^1𝒰^T\stackrel{}{P}^{in}$$
(17)
where $`\stackrel{}{Q}^{in}=𝒰\stackrel{}{q}^{in}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{P}^{in}=𝒰\stackrel{}{p}^{in}`$. For the vacuum input fields we define the standard quantum limit (SQL) to be:

$$Q_\pm ^{in}(\mathrm{\Omega })Q_\pm ^{in}(\mathrm{\Omega })=P_\pm ^{in}(\mathrm{\Omega })P_\pm ^{in}(\mathrm{\Omega })=\lambda (\psi )$$
(18)
and all other correlations functions of the $`in`$ fields are vanishing for a vacuum state input. Clearly $`\lambda `$ must depend on our choice of $`\psi `$ since for $`\psi =0`$ $`Q_\pm ^{out}`$ describes the fluctuations of the individual signal and idler fields of the ND-OPO, whereas for $`\psi 0`$ $`Q_\pm ^{out}`$ describes inter-beam correlations. As we shall see below in the case of symmetrical signal/idler losses and perfect inter-beam correlations we measure the strongest inter-beam correlations when choosing $`\psi =\pi /4`$. Hence we define $`\lambda (\psi =0)=1`$ and $`\lambda (\psi 0)=2`$, since in the latter case we must compare our inter beam-correlations to a SQL given by the correlations between two independent coherent state fields. It is worth noting here that only very close to the ND-OPO threshold are the inter-beam quantum correlations perfect and the noise of the signal and idler can cancel each other exactly. However the single beam noise grows rapidly as the ND-OPO pump parameter $`\epsilon `$ grows. Hence due to imperfect quantum correlations between signal and idler fields it turns out that since this growing noise cannot be canceled, it is more advantageous to measure not the symmetric combination of the quadratures described by $`\psi =\pi /4`$, but rather a somewhat scaled combination with $`\psi =\pi /4+\delta (\epsilon )`$Reid (1989).

The correlations of the outgoing quadratures $`(Q_\pm ^{out})^2_\psi =Q_\pm ^{out}(\mathrm{\Omega })Q_\pm ^{out}(\mathrm{\Omega })_\psi `$ are found from (17) and (18) to be

$$\left(\begin{array}{c}(Q_+^{out})^2_\psi \\ (Q_{}^{out})^2_\psi \end{array}\right)=\lambda \left\{1+4\epsilon \eta \frac{2\epsilon \left[\sigma \left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{cos}^2\psi \\ \mathrm{sin}^2\psi \end{array}\right)+\sigma ^1\left(\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{sin}^2\psi \\ \mathrm{cos}^2\psi \end{array}\right)\right]+\left(\mathrm{\Delta }^2+1+\epsilon ^2\right)\mathrm{sin}2\psi \left(\begin{array}{c}1\\ 1\end{array}\right)}{\left[\mathrm{\Delta }^2+\left(E+\mathrm{\Lambda }\right)^2\right]\left[\mathrm{\Delta }^2+\left(E\mathrm{\Lambda }\right)^2\right]}\right\}$$
(19)
Here we have defined the normalized fluctuation frequency $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\mathrm{\Omega }/\sqrt{\gamma _+\gamma _{}}`$, the signal/idler escape efficiencies $`\eta _\pm =\kappa _\pm /\gamma _\pm `$, the generalized OPO escape efficiency for the signal and idler fields $`\eta =\sqrt{\eta _+\eta _{}}`$, the escape efficiency asymmetry $`\sigma =\sqrt{\eta _+/\eta _{}}`$, the loss asymmetry function $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=(\rho +\rho ^1)/2`$, with $`\rho =\sqrt{\gamma _+/\gamma _{}}`$ and the effective pump parameter $`E=\sqrt{\epsilon ^2+\mathrm{\Lambda }^21}`$. From (19) we find for $`\psi =0`$ the single beam noise spectra

$$\begin{array}{c}(q_\pm ^{out})^2=1+\eta _\pm \frac{8\epsilon ^2}{\left[\mathrm{\Delta }^2+(E+\mathrm{\Lambda })^2\right]\left[\mathrm{\Delta }^2+(E\mathrm{\Lambda })^2\right]}\hfill \end{array}$$
(20)
These are independent on $`\theta `$, meaning that the individual signal and idler fields contain phase insensitive excess noise relative to the standard quantum limit here being 1. As the threshold is approached $`E\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, and we find the noise to diverge at zero detuning. Naturally the linearized approach taken here breaks down in this limit, where we must take pump depletion into account as the ND-OPO gain becomes large and much energy is transferred from the pump to the fluctuations of the signal/idler fields.

By setting $`\psi =\pi /4`$ we find from (19) the inter-beam correlations

$$\begin{array}{c}(Q_\pm ^{out})^2_{\pi /4}=2\left\{1\pm 4\epsilon \eta \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }^2+1+\epsilon ^2\pm (\sigma +\sigma ^1)\epsilon }{\left[\mathrm{\Delta }^2+(E+\mathrm{\Lambda })^2\right]\left[\mathrm{\Delta }^2+(E\mathrm{\Lambda })^2\right]}\right\}\hfill \end{array}$$
(21)
It is easy to check that in the case of symmetric losses $`\rho =\sigma =1`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=1`$ and $`E=\epsilon `$, we recover from (21) the well known result for the cross correlations Collett and Loudon (1987)

$$(Q_\pm ^{out})^2_{\pi /4}=2\left\{1\pm \eta \frac{4\epsilon }{\mathrm{\Delta }^2+(\epsilon 1)^2}\right\}$$
(22)
From (22) we find perfect inter-beam correlations at low frequencies as the threshold is approached $`\epsilon 1`$, which reflects that $`\psi =\pi /4`$ corresponds to the natural signal/idler linear combination to measure in the case of symmetric losses for the two modes.

When allowing for non-equal losses of signal and idler modes, we see from Fig. 2 that a low frequency noise spike appears in the spectrum of fluctuations when $`\gamma _+`$ is increased relatively to $`\gamma _{}`$. With $`\rho =3`$ we find that the inter-beam correlations are virtually lost. This is because the simple sums and differences of signal idler fields, corresponding to choosing $`\psi =\pi /4`$, no longer are the best combinations to measure in order to observe strong inter-beam correlations. As we shall see by optimizing $`\psi `$ we can recover at least some of the inter beam correlations around a given frequency.

A remark should be made about losses experienced by the signal and idler fields during propagation from the ND-OPO to the detectors. Any such losses including non-perfect detectors, limited local oscillator overlaps etc. for the signal/idler fields will reduce the quantum correlations on equal footing with non-unity escape efficiencies. Hence we define overall propagation efficiencies for the two field modes describing the survival probability for photons in these modes from birth in the $`\chi ^{(2)}`$ process until detection. We denote these efficiencies $`\xi _\pm `$ for the two modes and for later reference we define them here as

$$\xi _\pm =\eta _\pm \eta _\pm ^{prop}\eta _\pm ^{LO}\eta _\pm ^{QE}$$
(23)
Here we have defined the signal/idler propagation efficiencies $`\eta _\pm ^{prop}`$, the overlap with the local oscillators of the heterodyne quadrature detections $`\eta _\pm ^{LO}`$ and the quantum efficiency of the detectors $`\eta _\pm ^{QE}`$. In the realistic case of lossy propagation and non-perfect detection we should replace the signal/idler escape efficiencies in (19) with the overall efficiencies defined in (23).

As mentioned above we can optimize the inter-beam correlations at a given set of parameters by choosing to measure the optimized linear combination described by $`\psi =\psi _0`$, where $`\psi _0`$ is found from

$$\mathrm{tan}2\psi _0=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2+1+\epsilon ^2}{\left(\sigma \sigma ^1\right)\epsilon }$$
(24)
Here $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ is the frequency at which we wish to minimize fluctuations. From (24) it is again clear that in the symmetric limit where $`\sigma =1`$ there is no advantage of deviating from measuring equally weighted $`q_+^{out}(\varphi _+)`$ and $`q_{}^{out}(\varphi _{})`$ observables corresponding to $`\psi _0=\pi /4`$. But in general we find a large variation of $`\psi _0`$ with $`\sigma `$ for small values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, hence there may be a big advantage of optimizing $`\psi `$ when signal/idler losses become non-symmetric. As $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ is increased the variation of $`\psi _0`$ gets smaller since at higher frequencies the impact of measuring unevenly weighted signal/idler amplitudes gets negligible.

By using $`\psi =\psi _0`$ in (19) and again varying $`\gamma _+`$ relative to $`\gamma _{}`$, we find the inter beam correlation spectra shown in Fig. 3. These have been optimized at $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0=0`$. Here we see that the correlations at low frequencies persist despite the growing asymmetry of the losses, however since the escape efficiency $`\eta _+`$ decreases with increasing $`\gamma _+`$, we find the overall degree of inter-beam correlations to diminish when $`\rho `$ deviates from 1. The importance of measuring scaled signal and idler fields is seen more clearly from Fig. 4, which corresponds to the somewhat unrealistic situation when $`\rho `$ is increased, but $`\sigma `$ and $`\eta `$ are left unchanged. Still keeping $`\psi `$ optimized we find no loss of inter beam correlations in an increasingly small frequency window around $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$. Optimizing $`\psi `$ around a nonzero frequency is not possible without a reduction of correlations and in general the gain in correlations by optimizing $`\psi `$ is marginal when $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0>1`$.

As a conclusion to this section we remark that not only the quantum fields will show the behavior depicted in Fig. 1, but also classical fields. This means that if we inject a classical coherent field with frequency $`\omega _+`$ and phase $`\varphi _+`$ into our ND-OPO, the nonlinear interaction will result in generation of an idler field of frequency $`\omega _{}`$ and phase $`\varphi _{}`$ such that $`\varphi _++\varphi _{}=\chi `$, where $`\chi `$ is the pump field phase. This was utilized in the experiment to gain information about the pump phase of the ND-OPO.

## III Experimental details

We will now consider the experiment carried out to characterize the frequency ND-OPO described in the previous section. This was divided into three parts: First we simply measured the squeezing in the degenerate mode of the OPO. Then we investigated the signal/idler cross correlations of the ND-OPO output and finally we recorded the signal/idler phases to confirm the relationships derived above and to visualize the EPR paradox for our kind of quantum mechanically entangled light. But before considering the results we will just outline here some of the underlying experimental setup.

This was made up of a single ended optical ring resonator with a 10mm long Potassium Niobate crystal located in the smallest waist. Potassium Niobate is famous for its high $`\chi ^{(2)}`$ nonlinearity which can be up to 8 pm/volt. However it is equally notorious due to its nonlinear losses of which Blue Light Induced InfraRed Absorption (BLIIRA) is the most harmful Mabuchi et al. (1994); Shiv et al. (1995). In this experiment the nonlinear crystal had a single pass nonlinearity of $`0.015\pm 0.002`$ W<sup>-1</sup> measured by second harmonic generation. The ND-OPO output coupler had a power transmission of 0.122 around the signal/idler wavelength of 860 nm. Residual losses in the ND-OPO were $`0.007\pm 0.001`$ excluding the BLIIRA. The cavity length was 81 cm resulting in a free spectrum range of 370 MHz. With a typical value of BLIIRA of 0.015 at 160 mW blue pump power we find the ND-OPO cavity bandwidth of 8.5 MHz FWHM.

The ND-OPO pump was produced by performing external cavity second harmonic generation (SHG) of a Titanium-Sapphire (Ti:S) laser operating at 860nm. This was done in a single ended ring resonator also with a 10 mm Potassium Niobate crystal placed in the waist. The cavity was 70 cm long and the input coupler transmitted 0.078 at 860 nm. Residual internal losses were at the level of 0.009 again excluding BLIIRA. The cavity waist was 20 $`\mu `$m, close to the optimum for nonlinear conversion of 16 $`\mu `$m Boyd and Kleinman (1968). However since the resonator was pumped with up to 800 mW of light from the Ti:S a slightly larger waist was chosen to compensate thermal lensing in the nonlinear medium. From the SHG we got up to 300 mW of blue light (430 nm) for pumping the OPO. The mode matching of the SHG Gaussian mode to the ND-OPO mode was typically 0.95 measured by the reference resonator shown in the setup on Fig. 5.

The signal and idler fields emerging from the ND-OPO to be analyzed were separated in oscillation frequency by two free spectrum ranges, that is 740 MHz. In order to separate the fields spatially we sent them onto a two ended ring resonator with a length of 20 cm and coupler transmissions of 0.078 at 860 nm. The length of this filtering cavity was stabilized to maintain resonance with $`\omega _+`$, such that this frequency component was transmitted. The cavity linewidth was 38 MHz and the free spectrum range 1.5 GHz, meaning that less than $`10^3`$ of the idler field was transmitted when the filtering cavity was resonant with $`\omega _+`$. Mode matching and internal losses of the filtering cavity limited the transmission of the signal field to 0.95. This cavity as well as the SHG and OPO cavities were locked using the Pound-Drever-Hall FM technique Bjorklund et al. (1983). The mode cleaning cavities were locked to give a constant transmission at roughly 80% of their maximum transmission.

From the filtering cavity the signal and idler fields propagated in different directions each to be heterodyned with a frequency degenerate strong local oscillator and detected on a pair of detectors. The local oscillators were produced by sending part of the Ti:S output in double pass through a pair of acousto optical modulators driven by a 185 MHz RF source. A small portion of the up-shifted light ($`\omega _+`$) was injected into the filtering cavity counter propagating to the ND-OPO idler field in order to stabilize the cavity length. Additional small portions of the $`\omega _\pm `$ local oscillators were split off to have the possibility to inject them into the ND-OPO through a high reflector. The remainder of the local oscillators were passed through their respective mode cleaning cavities to ensure a clean TEM<sub>00</sub> mode and finally interfered with the ND-OPO outputs on separate 50/50 beam splitters. The outputs from the beam splitters were detected on four Silicon pin diodes and the photocurrents from each pair of detectors we subtracted to make a balanced measurement of the quadrature phases of the signal/idler fields. The two differential photocurrents were led into a hybrid junction producing the sum and difference of these photocurrents to be Fourier transformed in a pair of RF spectrum analyzers. The quantum efficiencies of the photodiodes were measured to be higher than 0.98 and the fringe visibilities on the 50/50 beam splitters were 0.97 and 0.98 for the $`\omega _{}`$ and $`\omega _+`$ fields respectively.

As mentioned earlier we also investigated the degree of squeezing in the degenerate OPO output mode. For this purpose we inserted a mirror between the OPO and the filtering cavity. This mirror deflected the OPO output to a third heterodyne detector with a local oscillator extracted directly from the Ti:S laser. Hence the OPO output field was demodulated at exactly the frequency of degeneracy of the OPO. The fringe visibility in the degenerate heterodyne detector was 0.965 and the detector quantum efficiencies were also here higher than 0.98. The phase dependent quantum fluctuations were recorded by feeding the differential photocurrent of the detector pair directly into a RF spectrum analyzer.

## IV Results

In order to learn about the ability of our OPO to produce non classical quantum correlations we first analyzed the degenerate output mode. Here either increased or reduced quantum fluctuations should be observed depending on the relative phase difference between the heterodyne local oscillator and the OPO output. The phase of fluctuations in the latter was determined by the pump phase. Since the same mechanisms are responsible for squeezing as well as signal/idler cross correlations the squeezing results yielded valuable information about what could be expected when observing the nondegenerate OPO modes. Next employing the filtering cavity we analyzed the two nondegenerate modes closest to the degenerate mode. Here the cross correlations between signal and idler fields were measured while we tracked the local oscillator phases. This enabled us to visualize the EPR paradox now with frequency nondegenerate quantum correlated fields as opposed to the polarization nondegenerate fields of Ou et al Ou et al. (1992a). We will discuss this in more detail below.

### IV.1 Classical gain and squeezing

When observing squeezing we pumped the OPO with 160 mW of 430 nm light from the SHG stage. At this power we observed a BLIIRA level of $`0.015\pm 0.002`$ and by injecting a weak coherent field into the OPO via a high reflector we observed a maximum phase sensitive gain of 6.8. It can be shown Sørensen (1998) that this gain is given by $`(1\epsilon )^2`$, which gives us $`\epsilon =0.62`$. Taking into account the blue mode matching of 0.95 this gives us an OPO threshold power of 395 mW. From $`\alpha _{th}`$ putting $`\gamma _+=\gamma _{}`$ we find the power needed to drive the OPO above threshold to be

$$P_{th}=\frac{(𝒯++_P)^2}{4E_{NL}}$$
(25)
where $`𝒯`$ is the OPO coupler transmission, $``$ are residual OPO losses, $`_P`$ is BLIIRA and $`E_{NL}`$ is the single pass nonlinearity of the $`\chi ^{(2)}`$ medium. From our derived threshold power we now find $`E_{NL}=0.013\pm 0.001`$ W<sup>-1</sup> in reasonable agreement with the value of $`0.015\pm 0.002`$ W<sup>-1</sup> obtained from second harmonic generation in the OPO.

Given the measured losses of the OPO, the quantum efficiencies of the detectors, the fringe visibility in the heterodyne detection scheme and measured propagation losses of 2%, we find using (23) an overall detection efficiency of quantum correlations of $`\xi =0.76\pm 0.02`$. The squeezing balance is summarized in Table 1.

The photocurrent resulting from the balanced heterodyne measurement was sent into a RF spectrum analyzer to be Fourier analyzed in a 30 kHz frequency window centered at 1.15 MHz. Here the quantum noise of the OPO output $`q^2`$ was recorded while the local oscillator phase was scanned at a rate of approximately 10 rad/sec. To establish the standard quantum limit the OPO pump was blocked and the resulting vacuum input to the heterodyne detector was analyzed to give the vacuum noise level. By blocking all inputs to the heterodyne detector the electronic noise floor was established. This was found to be 11.76 dB below the SQL when the local oscillator power was 5 mW. A typical spectrum analyzer trace of the quantum noise is shown in Fig 6.

From analyzing 10 such traces we found quantum fluctuations in the squeezed quadrature of the OPO output to be at $`4.0\pm 0.1`$ dB relative to the SQL and in the anti squeezed quadrature $`8.0\pm 0.2`$ dB of excess noise was found. Since our detectors had limited sensitivity the squeezing results were influenced by the electronic noise. After subtraction of electronic noise we found the corrected squeezing of $`4.5\pm 0.1`$ dB and the anti squeezing of $`8.3\pm 0.2`$ dB relative to the SQL. The degree of squeezing should be compared to the theoretical value found from Collett and Walls (1985)

$$q^2=1\xi \frac{4\epsilon }{\mathrm{\Delta }^2+(1+\epsilon )^2}$$
(26)
Inserting our parameters in (26) we find an expected degree of squeezing of $`5.2\pm 0.3`$ dB which we believe is in reasonable agreement with the observed value.

### IV.2 Entangled state of two modes

With our OPO characterized in terms of its ability to produce quadrature phase squeezed light we could now move on to investigate the quantum correlations between the frequency non degenerate OPO cavity modes adjacent to the degenerate mode. Since these modes only were shifted $`\pm 370`$ MHz relative to the degenerate mode it was safe to assume equal output coupler transmissions and internal OPO losses for both modes. However, since the signal and idler fields experienced different optical paths, the detection efficiencies were not equal for the two modes, meaning that $`\sigma 1`$ in (19), whereas we had $`\rho =1`$. The limiting factors on the inter beam correlations are listed in Table 2, from which we derive the parameters $`\xi =\sqrt{\xi _+\xi _{}}=0.74\pm 0.01`$ and $`\sigma =\sqrt{\xi _+/\xi _{}}=0.98\pm 0.01`$.

By using (24) we find the optimum phase choice $`\psi _0=\pi /4+0.0086`$ radians which inserted in (19) gives a predicted maximum degree of inter beam correlations of -4.9 dB. It should be mentioned that the correction to $`\psi `$ due to asymmetric losses was so small that we chose not to make any at all. This also applied to the correction of $`\psi `$ due to a finite degree of correlations. Hence within our uncertainties we used $`\psi =\pi /4`$ throughout the experiment. The measured correlations are shown in Fig. 7, from which we find the noise reduction relative to two independent coherent state correlations of $`3.8\pm 0.1`$ dB. Correcting again for electronic noise we get $`4.3\pm 0.3`$ dB noise reduction due to the inter beam quantum correlations. Again this is in reasonable agreement with our theoretical predictions.

Fig. 7 shows five traces: (a) The SQL obtained by blocking the ND-OPO pump, hence only the vacuum input to the heterodyne detectors was being probed yielding the quantum fluctuations from two uncorrelated vacuum states. (b) The SQL from a single heterodyne detector. This level was found by blocking the local oscillator of the other heterodyne detector as well as the ND-OPO pump. Unblocking now all beams we obtained the trace (c). As documented by the trace, phase fluctuations in our setup were relatively small, so that the local oscillator phases could be maintained constant on a timescale of hundreds of milliseconds in a way that maximum inter-beam quantum correlations were observed. The same procedure was used to obtain the level of maximum anti correlations (d). Next one of the local oscillators phases was allowed to drift freely while the other phase was scanned at a high rate. This resulted in the oscillatory trace (e) showing the transition between observing the correlated $`(Q_+^{out})^2`$ and the anti correlated $`(Q_{}^{out})^2`$ defined in (16).

According to the criterion for state separability developed in refs. Simon (2000); Duan et al. (2000) we must have

$$\begin{array}{c}(q_+(\varphi _+)q_{}(\varphi _{}))^2+\hfill \\ (q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)+q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2))^2<2\hfill \end{array}$$
(27)
in order to be able to claim state inseparability for the signal and idler fields and hence entanglement. Inserting the measured values of interbeam correlations we get $`0.37+0.37=0.74<2`$. Hence our signal and idler fields are indeed in an entangled quantum state. Since the right hand side of (27) sets the limit for separability we can quantify our degree of entanglement as -4.3 dB relative to this limit. To our knowledge this is strongest entanglement demonstrated up to now using a narrowband tunable lightsource. We are of course aware that no universal measure of the strength of entanglement has been established yet, hence our quantification above only applies for the Gaussian continuous variable case.

In order to get a measure of the local oscillator phases we now injected a weak coherent field into the ND-OPO through a high reflector. The purpose of this exercise was to show that the sum of the local oscillator phases must be shifted by $`\pi `$ radians in order to switch from observing correlations to observing anti correlations as illustrated on Fig. 1. The frequency of the injected field was $`\omega _{}`$, hence a coherent field with the frequency $`\omega _+`$ was produced in the ND-OPO via difference frequency generation. Given that the injected field had the phase $`\theta ^{}`$ relative to half the pump phase $`\chi /2`$ we know that the high frequency field was produced with the phase $`+\theta ^{}`$ relative to $`\chi /2`$. As a result we could by observing the DC interference fringe between these two fields and the respective local oscillators learn about the local oscillator phase settings relative to the ND-OPO pump phase. An example of the interference fringes is shown in Fig. 8. In order not to disturb the quantum noise measurements taking place in the heterodyne detectors the coherent amplitudes of the injected field had to be small. Hence only about 100 nW hit the detectors and consequently the DC interference fringe visibility was only about 0.01 with a rather poor signal to noise ratio as a result. Again we left one local oscillator phase freely drifting but this time the other local oscillator phase was actively stabilized to produce either maximum or minimum inter beam quantum correlations. This was done using a standard dither and lock approach with an error signal derived from the spectrum analyzer output. Now the phase of the injected field was scanned linearly in time and the resulting interferences with the local oscillators were recorded. Before commenting on the results displayed in Fig. 8 we should note that when $`\theta ^{}`$ was varied in the negative direction for the $`\omega _{}`$ field, the change of $`\theta ^{}`$ would be in the positive direction for the $`\omega _+`$ field due to phase conservation in the difference frequency generation process. Hence we would expect the phase difference between the two interference fringes to be constant when the local oscillator phases were fixed to produce maximum or minimum quantum correlations between the two heterodyne detectors. If this phase difference was constant it would correspond to having the local oscillator phases adding up to a constant value as illustrated in Fig. 1.

We found the phase differences $`\theta _\pm ^C=\theta _\pm \theta _\pm ^{}`$ and $`\theta _\pm ^{AC}=\theta _\pm \theta _\pm ^{}`$ for the two frequencies in the cases of being locked to maximum correlations and maximum anti correlations respectively. This was done by fitting the somewhat noisy interference fringes to a sinusoidal function and the resulting phase variations as well as their differences are shown on the graphs of Fig. 8. We found $`\theta _+^C\theta _{}^C=0.53\pm 0.11`$ rad and $`\theta _+^{AC}\theta _{}^{AC}=2.52\pm 0.06`$ rad, and we note that $`(\theta _+^C\theta _{}^C)(\theta _+^{AC}\theta _{}^{AC})=3.05\pm 0.13`$ rad. Ideally the last result should be $`\pi `$ since the sum of the local oscillator phases should be shifted by this amount in order observe the change from measuring a quiet to a noisy quadrature combination. As a final remark here we note that our setup was one big Mach-Zender interferometer from which the systematic phaseshift of 0.53 radians seen in $`\theta _+^C\theta _{}^C`$ was originating. The procedure described here for establishing the local oscillator phases was used in the following experiment, where the EPR paradox was revived for a short while.

### IV.3 The EPR paradox revisited

It is well known that the quantum correlated field quadratures of the ND-OPO output can be used to visualize the EPR paradox in its original form put forward by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in 1935 Einstein et al. (1935). This has been first demonstrated using a polarization non degenerate OPO Ou et al. (1992a, b). It is known that the non-negativity of the Wigner function describing the ND-OPO output prohibits us from violating local hidden variable theories when measuring quadrature phase amplitudes Bell (1987). However an experimental realization of the EPR paradox is still interesting especially seen in the light of recent proposals suggesting that Bell inequalities generalized to continuous variables can be violated by measuring parity like observables Chen et al. (2001); Banaszek and Wodkiewicz (1998, 1999). Moreover when considering quantum information transfer with continuous variables using the ND-OPO, like quantum teleportation Furusawa et al. (1998) one must have a fidelity larger than 2/3 for outperforming classical systems consisting of linear optics and coherent states in terms of reproducing the input state Grosshans and Grangier (2001). This can only be achieved when more than 50% noise reduction is present in the correlation between the signal and idler fields, which is just the condition required for realizing the EPR paradox Reid (1989). We note that the 50% limit only applies when one uses $`\psi =\pi /4`$. For other values of $`\psi `$ it turns out that the EPR paradox can be realized for a smaller degree of correlations. However demonstration of the EPR paradox with our choice of $`\psi `$ in our ND-OPO is equivalent to demonstration of its usefulness as a resource for continuous variable quantum information transfer like cryptography Ralph (1999, 2000), teleportation Vaidman (1994), storage Polzik (1999) etc.

We refer to refs. Peres (1995) and Ou et al. (1992a, b) for the detailed discussion of the EPR paradox. In brief we arrive at the paradox by inferring the idler quadratures $`q_{}(\varphi _{})`$ and $`q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2)`$ from measuring the correlated signal variables $`q_+(\varphi _+)`$ and $`q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)`$. One can choose at will to measure either of the two variables, hence according to EPR they both should be ”elements of objective reality”. However according to quantum mechanics the non commuting observables $`q_{}(\varphi _{})`$ and $`q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2)`$ cannot have objective values simultaneously, hence the paradox, which is demonstrated if the product of the inferred uncertainties is $`(q_{}(\varphi _{}))^2_{inf}(q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2))^2_{inf}<1`$.

Turning now to the experiment we sent the photocurrents from the two heterodyne detectors into a hybrid junction producing the sum and the difference of the photocurrents in its two outputs. These outputs were fed into two RF spectrum analyzers in order to establish the noise density around 1.15 MHz. During this experiment one local oscillator phase was kept constant while the other was scanned linearly. Like in the previous section we also here injected a weak signal into the OPO in order to keep track of the local oscillator phases. Depending on the phase of scanned local oscillator the outputs of the hybrid junction yielded the observables $`q_+(\varphi _++\theta _+)\pm q_{}(\varphi _{})`$. That is, with $`\theta _+=0`$ we measured the non commuting observables $`q_+(\varphi _+)q_{}(\varphi _{})`$ in the (-) junction and $`q_+(\varphi _+)+q_{}(\varphi _{})=q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2)`$ in the (+) junction (see Fig. 5). When $`\theta _+=\pi `$ we measured $`(q_+(\varphi _+)+q_{}(\varphi _{}))`$ in the (-) junction and $`(q_+(\varphi _+)q_{}(\varphi _{}))=(q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)+q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2))`$ in the (+) junction. From (22) we see that with $`\theta _+=0`$ we measured a quiet observable in the (-) junction and hence gained information about $`q_{}(\varphi _{})`$ while with $`\theta _+=\pi `$ we measured a quiet observable in the (+) junction and then learned about the conjugate idler observable $`q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2)`$. The result of a scan is shown in Fig. 9. Here the fluctuations of the two measurements are shown normalized to the vacuum noise level of a single detector. After averaging over 12 pairs of traces like the ones displayed in Fig 9 we found the uncertainties $`(q_+(\varphi _+)q_{}(\varphi _{}))^2=1.0\pm 0.1`$ dB and $`(q_+(\varphi _++\pi /2)+q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2))^2=0.9\pm 0.1`$ dB both relative to the single beam SQL. These uncertainties resulted in an error of the same size in our estimation of the idler quadratures. Hence we could readily calculate the product of inferred variances in this experiment to be $`(q_{}(\varphi _{}))^2_{inf}(q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2))^2_{inf}=0.65\pm 0.02<1`$ which was a clear demonstration of the paradox.

## V Summary

We have demonstrated how the frequency non degenerate optical parametric oscillator can be used to generate spatially separated entangled optical fields. In this paper we have used the OPO cavity resonances adjacent to the frequency degenerate mode, resulting in entangled fields separated by 740 MHz corresponding to two OPO cavity free spectrum ranges. In principle one could select any pair of modes placed symmetrically around the degenerate mode, as long as the $`\chi ^{(2)}`$ phase matching condition is fulfilled for this pair of modes. The entanglement for our source is present over a bandwidth of approximately 14 MHz FWHM depending on ND-OPO pump parameter $`\epsilon `$. This results in a high spectral brightness making the source well suited for addressing atomic transitions.

In particular our source can be used for quantum memory readout via interspecies teleportation of a collective atomic spin state onto the polarization state of beam of light Kuzmich and Polzik (2000). For this purpose two modes of light displaying entanglement in the Stokes parameters would be needed and only minor modifications to our source would be needed in order produce such states of light.

We found a degree of squeezing of -4.0 dB of the frequency degenerate mode and we found inter beam correlations of the nondegenerate modes of -3.8 dB. Both results could be improved by approximately 0.5 dB if the thermal noise of our detectors could be suppressed. In this case the agreement with our theoretical predictions was reasonable.

To gain information about the OPO pump phase we injected a weak coherent field with frequency $`\omega _{}`$ and thereby produced a $`\omega _+`$ field via difference frequency generation. These fields interfered with the local oscillators yielding us information about the local oscillator phases relative to the OPO pump field. Here we found that the sum of local oscillator phases changed by $`3.05\pm 0.13`$ rad. when going from observing maximum inter beam correlation to observing maximum anti correlations. This was consistent with the theoretical value of $`\pi `$.

Finally we used the entangled fields of our ND-OPO to visualize the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in its original form with continuous quantum variables. Here we found a product of inferred variances of $`(q_{}(\varphi _{}))^2_{inf}(q_{}(\varphi _{}+\pi /2))^2_{inf}=0.65\pm 0.02`$ which shows the paradox since this is significantly smaller than the Heisenberg limit of unity.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work is supported by the Danish National Research Foundation and by the EU QIPC network via the QUICOV project. We wish to thank O. Arcizet for interesting discussions and his help at the initial stage of the experiment.


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# Strain induced stabilization of stepped Si and Ge surfaces near (001)

## Abstract

We report on calculations of the formation energies of several  and  oriented step structures on biaxially stressed Si and Ge (001) surfaces. It is shown that a novel rebonded  oriented single-height step is strongly stabilized by compressive strain compared to most well-known step structures. We propose that the side walls of “hut”-shaped quantum dots observed in recent experiments on SiGe/Si films are made up of these steps. Our calculations provide an explanation for the nucleationless growth of shallow mounds, with steps along the  and  directions in low- and high-misfit films, respectively, and for the stability of the (105) facets under compressive strain.

Strain induced self-assembly is actively being pursued as a technique for the fabrication of nanoscale electronic devices and memories that have the potential to bring higher speed to information processing and higher areal and volumetric capacity to information storage. In the past few years, significant advances have been made on both the technological and fundamental aspects of self assembly. On the technological side, it has become possible to prepare regular spatial arrays of nanostructures.

Several basic issues concerning the physical mechanisms involved in the different stages of the formation and morphological evolution of the nanostructures are only now becoming clear. The initial stages of epitaxial nanostructure formation remains least well understood. Of particular interest here, recent experimental work \[1-4\] has revealed that (105) oriented quantum dots in SiGe/Si films grow from shallow precursor mounds whose sidewalls are made up of widely spaced steps that are oriented in the  or  directions for low or high Ge compositions, respectively. These observations cannot be understood on the basis of a competition between surface energy increase involved in creating the walls of the dots and the strain energy reduction through elastic relaxation. Such a competition would lead to a nucleation barrier for the formation of the islands, while the experiments clearly show that the stepped mounds emerge as a natural instability without any such barrier .

Recently we have demonstrated that nucleationless growth of stepped mounds can be understood by including the physics of surface steps, in particular the dependence of their formation energy on strain and their interactions . In this letter, we calculate the parameters that characterize step formation and interactions in order to understand the stabilization of  or  steps on (2$`\times `$1) reconstructed Si and Ge (001) surfaces at different levels of biaxial strain. The strain dependence of the step formation energy is determined by the disposition of the atomic bonds in the vicinity of the step-edge; if there is significant rebonding such that these bonds are stretched (compressed) relative to the bonds in the bulk material, a compressive (tensile) mismatch stress tends to lower their formation energy . The interactions between steps include the repulsive dipolar interactions , which depend on the local step density, and the non-local attractive interactions due to the force monopoles induced by the mismatch strain . The surface energy of a stepped surface that is oriented at a small angle $`\theta `$ with respect to the (001) direction can be written by including the step formation and dipolar interaction energies as

$$\gamma (\theta ,ϵ)=\gamma _0(ϵ)\mathrm{cos}\theta +(\beta _1+\stackrel{~}{\beta }_1ϵ)|\mathrm{sin}\theta |+\beta _3\frac{|\mathrm{sin}\theta |^3}{\mathrm{cos}^2\theta },$$
(1)
where $`ϵ`$ is the biaxial surface strain, $`\gamma _0`$ is the surface energy of the (001) surface, $`\beta _1`$ is the formation energy of a step, $`\stackrel{~}{\beta }_1`$ is a measure of the sensitivity of the formation energy of a step to strain and $`\beta _3`$ characterizes the strength of the step-step dipolar interactions. Since the attractive monopole induced interactions favor a stepped surface over a flat surface, stepped mounds can grow without any nucleation barrier if the surface energy of their sidewalls becomes lower than that of the (001) surface . It can be seen from (1) that this indeed happens for stepped surfaces with orientations in the range $`|\theta |<\theta _c`$, where $`\theta _c\sqrt{\beta (ϵ)/\beta _3}`$, if the condition $`\beta (ϵ)\beta _1+\stackrel{~}{\beta }_1ϵ<0`$ is satisfied. In the present work we show by means of atomistic simulations that this condition is satisfied for the mismatch strains of interest.

In the  direction, we will only consider the double-height B-type (DB) steps ; these steps are known to be lower in energy than the combination of alternating single-height SA and SB steps for vicinal angles that are more than about 10 \- 20. In the  direction we consider two kinds of steps: (1) zig-zag SA+SB steps proposed by Chadi  and experimentally observed by Wu et.al.  and (2) straight steps on which the dimer rows of the adjoining terraces arrive at the steps at an angle of 450. If we focus attention on the family of (10n) surfaces to which the (105) surface belongs, there are two distinct low-energy step structures that can be obtained by removing every other atom from the step-edge in order to reduce the number of dangling bonds, as shown in Fig. 1. The key difference between the two structures is that in one of them, which we call single-height rebonded (SR), there are atoms at the edge of the step bonded to atoms on the adjoining terraces, while this type of rebonding is absent in the single-unrebonded (SU) step (refer to Fig. 1). The structure of the (105) facet made up of SU and SR steps correspond to the reconstructions for this surface proposed by Mo et. al.  and Kohr and Das Sarma , respectively.

We determine the step formation and interaction energies using the following procedure: the surface energies of various stepped surfaces are first determined as a function of applied biaxial strain for both the (10n) and (11n) families as shown in Fig. 2. The step formation and interaction energies are then extracted from the surface energy $`\gamma (ϵ,\theta )`$ using (1). The strain dependent step formation energies for various step structures calculated using the Tersoff (T3)  potential are shown in Fig. 2 for Si and Ge . In all cases, the step formation energies can be reasonably approximated by a linear relation assumed in (1) with small deviations that can be attributed to non-linear effects, particularly at larger strains. Calculation of step energies using the Stillinger-Weber (S-W)  potential also showed almost linear dependence of the formation energies with strain. The parameters $`\beta _1`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\beta }_1`$, obtained by using a linear fit to $`\beta (ϵ)`$, along with the dipolar interaction strength $`\beta _3`$ are given in Table I.

If we focus attention on the  oriented steps in Si, we find that the formation energies of the SR steps are lower than those for the SU and SA+SB steps for compressive mismatch strains. This can be understood by analyzing the bond lengths at the step-edge (refer to Fig. 1); since there are several stretched bonds in the SR structure, we expect its energy to be lower in compressive strains than the SU structure. Although the zig-zag SA+SB steps are energetically lower than the SR steps in the absence of strain, Fig. 2 shows that a modest amount of compressive strain (0.3 % in Si) stabilizes the SR steps over these steps. Table I also shows that while the formation energies of the SR steps on an unstrained surface are larger that the corresponding values for the DB steps, the strain sensitivity $`\stackrel{~}{\beta }_1`$ for the SR steps is about 50% larger in both Si and Ge. This implies that the SR steps are preferred over the DB steps at large values of compressive strain, with one key difference between Si and Ge. Using both the S-W and T3 potentials, we find that the formation energies of the SR steps fall below the energies for DB steps when strains become more than about 1% and about 4% in Si and Ge, respectively (refer to the insets in Fig. 2 and Table I).

The above observations have important implications for the growth of stepped islands observed in recent experiments \[1-4\]. If we assume that the results for Si are indicative of the trends in low-misfit films ($`ϵ`$ $``$ 1%-2%), it is clear that the  SR steps should be observed during early stages of island growth since their formation energies are lowest among all the cases that we have considered. While we are not aware of a direct experimental observation confirming this prediction, our picture is consistent with the experiments of Sutter and Lagally  who find that in SiGe films with 25% Ge content, the stepped mounds are made up of  oriented monolayer steps. Experiments that can identify the surface structure of these stepped mounds will be invaluable in resolving the issue. In distinct contrast to the low-misfit films, experiments on pure Ge  and Si-capped Ge  islands show that the stepped mounds are made up of  oriented steps . These observations can also be understood on the basis of the formation energy of the SR and DB steps in Ge shown in Fig. 2. Here, the SR steps do not become favorable until mismatch strain becomes close to 4% and 5% in the T3 and S-W potentials respectively; since the strains in these mounds should be less than the mismatch between Si and Ge (4.2%), the observation of  oriented steps are in agreement with our calculations.

While a negative step creation energy would lead to formation of surfaces with closely spaced steps, repulsive interactions increase as the spacing between the steps become smaller. This competition leads to an optimum slope, which can be determined using (1) as $`\theta ^{}\sqrt{\beta (ϵ)/3\beta _3}`$ . The existence of such a slope is indeed confirmed by the surface energies for Ge shown in Fig. 2, where at 4% strain the (105) and (115) surfaces are seen to be the optimum facets in the (10n) and (11n) directions respectively. In the case of the (11n) surfaces, the (115) surface corresponds to closest spacing of DB steps (the (114) and (113) surfaces are reconstructed so that the steps lose their identity). In the presence of compressive strains, the (105) surface with SR steps has a smaller surface energy than both the high index (10n) surfaces shown in Fig. 2 and the low index (103) surface. It can also be seen from Fig. 2 that the surface energy of the (105) surface in Ge lies below the energy of the (115) surface throughout the range of interest, while it falls below the energy of the (117) at a strain of about 3%. In the case of Si, we find a similar trend with the (105) surface falling below the (117) surface close to 1% . These observations indicate that the (105) facet made up of SR steps is stabilized by compressive strains in both low- and high-misfit SiGe films. On the other hand, the (105) surface with the SU steps proposed by Mo et.al. is stabilized by tensile rather than compressive stresses since the bonds at the step-edge are in compression (refer to Fig. 1). While the results in the present work are obtained using empirical potentials , we have verified by means of ab initio simulations that the atoms at the edges of the SR steps in the (105) surface are indeed in a stretched state. The details of these calculations will be published elsewhere.

In summary, the nucleationless growth of stepped mounds can be understood on the basis of strain dependence of  and  oriented steps on (001) surfaces. The rebonding at the edge plays an important role in stabilizing stepped surfaces in the presence of strain. The competition between repulsive step interactions and strain induced lowering of step formation energies leads to optimum low-energy orientations such as (105). Further work that analyzes the effect of surface segregation on step formation energies will be invaluable in gaining deeper insight into early stages of quantum dot formation in SiGe and other alloys.

Acknowledgments : The research support of the National Science Foundation through grant CMS-0093714 and the Brown University MRSEC Program, under award DMR-0079964, is gratefully acknowledged.

References

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15. In the case of SR steps there should be an additional term in (1) that accounts for interaction of the monopoles due to the discontinuity of surface stress at the step-edge. We have ignored this term in our analysis of vicinal surfaces with $`\theta >`$ 30 since the magnitude of this term becomes significant for small vicinal angles ($`\theta <`$ 10).
16. From the STM images of the stepped mounds in  we have inferred that the  oriented steps are of the double-height type.


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# Non-deterministic Gates for Photonic Single Rail Quantum Logic

## I Introduction

The standard method for encoding qubits in optics is to use the polarisation degrees of freedom of single photons. This is sometimes referred to as dual rail logic because it uses the occupation, or not, of two orthogonal polarisation modes as the qubit . This type of encoding is easy to manipulate at the single qubit level and recently schemes for two-qubit operations have been introduced . However, there is considerable fundamental interest in alternate encoding strategies.

One such strategy is single rail logic . Here the qubit is encoded in the occupation, or not, of a single optical mode. That is the vacuum state, $`|0`$ represents the logical zero, whilst the single photon state, $`|1`$, represents the logical one. Recently experimental progress in creating superpositions of such states has been reported  and there has been a demonstration of entanglement swapping based on this logic .

In this paper we show how it is possible to construct a universal set of non-deterministic quantum gates for this encoding using only linear optics and detection. We investigate some simple experimental arrangements designed to test the performance of the gates and conclude that demonstrations using state of the art technology are possible. It would presumably be possible to scale up these gates into near deterministic gates using similar techniques to those proposed in Ref., though we do not pursue this possibility here. Alternatively the experiments proposed here may be viewed as stepping stones to multi-photon single rail schemes, for which scalable achitectures have been described .

A universal set of gates is formed by the Control sign shift (CS) gate, the Hadamard gate and the phase rotation gate. Non-deterministic CS gates for single rail logic actually form the heart of identical gates for dual rail logic . We will borrow the most efficient and dedicated version of these, recently described by Knill , for this discussion. Phase rotations are easily implemented via phase delays but the Hadamard gate presents a bigger challenge. Never-the-less we show that a non-deterministic Hadamard gate can be implemented using only linear optics and detection.

The paper is arranged in the following way. In the following section we will review the construction of a CS gate. In section III we will describe the construction of the Hadamard gate. In section IV we will investigate the operation of our gates under non-ideal conditions and in section V we will conclude.

## II CS Gate

We now review the operation of the linear optical network proposed by Knill  and shown in Fig.1. The network is designed to be a non-deterministic CS gate with a probability of success of $`2/27`$.

In this gate the reflectivities of the beam-splitters are $`\eta _1=1/3`$ and $`\eta _2=\frac{1}{6}(3+\sqrt{6})`$. Also, these beam-splitters have a sign change on transmission for a beam incident on the black side. Therefore the operator evolution through individual beam-splitters looks like

$`a_{out}=\sqrt{\eta }a+\sqrt{1\eta }b`$

$`b_{out}=\sqrt{1\eta }a+\sqrt{\eta }b`$

and the operator evolution through the entire gate with the above reflectivities is given by

$`a_{out}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}(a+\sqrt{2}b+\sqrt{2}c2d)`$ (1)
$`b_{out}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}(\sqrt{2}ab+2c+\sqrt{2}d)`$ (2)
$`c_{out}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3\sqrt{2}}}\left(\sqrt{3+\sqrt{6}}\left(\sqrt{2}a+c\right)+\sqrt{3\sqrt{6}}\left(\sqrt{2}b+d\right)\right)`$ (3)
$`d_{out}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3\sqrt{2}}}\left(\sqrt{3\sqrt{6}}\left(\sqrt{2}a+c\right)+\sqrt{3+\sqrt{6}}\left(\sqrt{2}b+d\right)\right)`$ (4)
where the qubits enter in modes $`a`$ and $`b`$, whilst modes $`c`$ and $`d`$ are prepared in single photon Fock states. The input state to the gate can be written in a general way as

$$|\varphi _{in}=c^{}d^{}(\alpha +\beta a^{}+\gamma b^{}+\delta a^{}b^{})|0000$$
(5)
The output state of the gate can be calculated by inverting the operator equations, Eq.1-4, thus obtaining the input operators in terms of the output operators, and substituting these for the operators appearing in Eq.5. The form of the output state is quite long and hence will not be given here. However if we condition our state by the simultaneous detection of a single photon in each of the lower two modes $`c`$ and $`d`$, then the output state (unnormalized) is

$$|\varphi _{out}=\sqrt{\frac{2}{27}}(\alpha +\beta a_o^{}+\gamma b_o^{}\delta a_o^{}b_o^{})|0000$$
(6)
This is control sign logic with a 180 sign flip. The probability of success is $`\frac{2}{27}`$ as predicted by Knill.

## III Hadamard Gate

Superposition State Production In order to create the single rail Hadamard gate, a special superposition is used and this resource must be generated. The state that is desired is the equal superposition state $`|0+|1`$. This state can be produced conditionally using only linear optics with coherent state and single photon state inputs . We consider a simpler, single element approach similar to that employed in the experiment of Ref.. This set-up is shown Fig.2.

The parameter for the coherent state throughout will be given by the number $`\chi `$. This parameter and the reflectivity of the beam-splitter must be chosen such as to give the $`|0+|1`$ state with the higher order terms giving very little contribution to the state. We must assume that $`\chi `$ is close to zero to satisfy this situation. The analysis of this system was performed using the expansion of the coherent state to the order of three photons. The coherent state $`|\chi `$ was written as (unnormalised)

$`|\chi |0+\chi |1+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}}\chi ^2|2+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}}\chi ^3|3\text{.}`$

After the detection of one photon at the indicated output, the following reflectivity ($`\eta `$) is required for the coefficients of $`|0`$ and $`|1`$ to be equal at the other output.

$$\eta =\frac{1+4\chi ^2\pm \sqrt{1+8\chi ^2}}{8\chi ^2}$$
(7)
The positive solution is used from here on. Using this relationship, the value of $`\chi `$ required to make the coefficient of the second order $`|2`$ term 100 times smaller (probability 10000 times smaller) is

$`\chi =0.10074\text{.}`$

This means the reflectivity must be

$`\eta =0.990244\text{.}`$

Using these values however, the $`|0+|1`$ state is prepared only 1% of the time. We can get better efficiency by allowing the second order term to be larger. For example choosing $`\chi =0.33714`$ (corrosponding reflectivity $`\eta =0.91985`$) the coefficient of the second order $`|2`$ term is 10 times smaller (probability 100 times smaller) and now the state is prepared 8% of the time.

Superposition Basis Measurements Now that the superposition state $`|0+|1`$ has been produced we also need to be able to measure in the basis state spanned by this and the orthogonnal state $`|0|1`$. The device which is used to perform measurements in this basis is a 50:50 beamsplitter with a known, positive superposition state injected into one port and the unknown superposition injected into the other, as shown in Fig.3.

One finds the state for a positive phase superposition to be

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}|00+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}}|10+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}}\left(|20|02\right)`$

and for a negative phase

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}|00+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}}|01\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}}\left(|20|02\right)`$

If one photon is measured in the first mode then the unknown superposition had positive phase whilst a one in the second mode indicates a negative phase superposition. No descision can be made if zero photons are counted in both modes or if two photons are found in one. The measurement succeeds one half of the time.

Hadamard Gate Now we have enough tools to perform the task that is desired. Fig.4 shows the construction of a single rail Hadamard gate.

This gate requires two $`|0+|1`$ superpositions, one control sign gate (as described in the previous section) and one $`|0\pm |1`$ measurement. If the input is arbitrary (i.e. $`\alpha |0+\beta |1`$) then the bottom two modes at the far left can be described by the state

$`|\mathrm{\Phi }=\alpha |00+\alpha |01+\beta |10+\beta |11`$

where the first number is the number state of the upper mode. After the control sign operation the state looks like

$`|\mathrm{\Phi }=\alpha |00+\alpha |01+\beta |10\beta |11`$

Now a $`|0\pm |1`$ measurement is made on the top mode from the control sign gate. If we only take the positive result then the output state in the output mode is

$`|\psi =\alpha (|0+|1)+\beta (|0|1)`$

which is Hadamard logic. Noting that differential propagation produces a phase rotation

$`|\psi ;t`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\omega \widehat{a}^{}\widehat{a}t}(|0+|1)`$
$`=`$ $`|0+e^{i\omega t}|1`$
Allows us to then apply arbitrary rotations and thus completes our universal set of gates.

## IV Testing the Gates

In our discussion so far we have assumed unit detector efficiency and the ability to differentiate between zero, one and two photons. Off the shelf photon counters on the other hand have efficiencies of around 65% and can only differentiate between zero and more photons. This would be insufficient for demonstrating our single rail gates. However state of the art detectors have recently been described  with 90% efficiency and the ability to differentiate between zero, one or two photons. We now model the performance of a simple single rail test circuit if implemented with these state of the art detectors. The test circuit is shown in Fig 5.

In the figure ‘SP’ produces the state $`|0+|1`$ non-deterministically, ‘H’ is a Hadamard gate, $`\varphi `$ is a phase shift and there is a detector after the Hadamard gate. After the phase shift, the state looks like (unnormalised)

$`|\psi =|0+e^{i\varphi }|1\text{.}`$

This state is passed through the Hadamard gate, so the output state at the detector is (unnormalised)

$`|\psi =(1+e^{i\varphi })|0+(1e^{i\varphi })|1\text{.}`$

So as the phase shift $`\varphi `$ is changed the superposition at the output changes from $`|0`$ to $`|1`$ over the range of $`\varphi =0`$ to $`\varphi =\pi `$, ideally with 100% visibility.

Photon loss in inefficient detectors is included into the analysis of the gate by modelling the inefficient detector as a beamsplitter of transmittivity equivalent to the efficiency of the detector followed by a perfect detector. The reflected mode is traced over. Each of the detectors used in the construction of the Hadamard gate and the $`|0+|1`$ state production devices was simulated by this technique. Figure 6 shows the results of this simulation. The $`|0+|1`$ state producer (Fig 2) use a coherent strength of $`\chi =0.33714`$ and by equation 7 a reflectivity of $`\eta =0.91985`$. Shown is the probability of detecting no photon in the output, given the correct combination of conditioning detector results. The probability is not normalised to this conditioning, so the y-axis reflects the probability of obtaining this event (including the conditioning probability) for a single run. The x-axis is the size of the phase shift. The phase shift is relative to the the phase of the the coherent states used to produce the $`|0+|1`$ superposition states used as an input and as gate resources.

This figure shows detectors of 100% efficiency (solid line), 90% efficiency (dashed line) and 80% efficiency (dotted line) using the photon loss model described above. The visibility of these curves is unity for 100%, 0.81 for 90% and 0.66 for 80% efficient detectors.

## V Conclusion

We have shown that a universal set of gates can be implemented non-deterministically for the qubit encoding in which the vaccum state, $`|0`$, represents logical zero and the single photon state, $`|1`$, represents logicial one. The implementation uses only linear optics and photo-detection. It was also shown that a demonstration of the operation of these gates is plausible using current detector technology.


text:
# Extreme Value Statistics and Traveling Fronts: Various Applications

## Abstract

An intriguing connection between extreme value statistics and traveling fronts has been found recently in a number of diverse problems. In this short review we outline a few such problems and consider their various applications.

Independence of random events is the most desirable property in probability theory and statistical physics. If we have a collection of independent random variables $`X_1,\mathrm{},X_N`$ with finite variance, then the distribution of the sum $`X_j/\sqrt{N}`$ is Gaussian in the thermodynamic limit $`N\mathrm{}`$. Similarly under broad circumstances, the asymptotic distribution of the extreme values, e.g., $`X_{\mathrm{min}}=\mathrm{min}(X_1,\mathrm{},X_N)`$, belongs to one of just three possible families.

However, independence is the exception rather than the rule – random variables are often highly correlated. Little is known on extreme value statistics of correlated random variables yet a vast number of problems can be recast into such scheme. The celebrated example is the traveling salesman problem, that is to find the shortest closed tour visiting every ‘city’ once. There are $`(N1)!/2`$ possible tours and the lengths of the tours are obviously correlated. This and a few other combinatorial optimization problems were recently analyzed by using techniques originally developed to study spin glasses. A nice general review of the recent progress in that direction is given by Martin, Monasson and Zeccina; for an outstanding progress in one specific problem, the matching problem, see.

In a series of recent publications we have shown that there is an intriguing connection between the statistics of extreme values arising in various contexts and traveling fronts. More precisely, the cumulative distributions of extreme variables were shown to admit a traveling front solution. Such a connection was also noted in the context of a particle moving in a random potential. The goal of this short review is to convince the readers that the techniques of traveling fronts is a powerful tool to tackle the extreme value statistics of correlated random variables. By casting the problem in the traveling front framework, one easily determines two leading terms in the asymptotic expansion of the average value of the extreme variable. Furthermore, the variance of the extreme variable is nothing but the width of the traveling wave front and therefore it is usually finite. These results are very natural in the traveling wave framework yet very difficult to guess and derive using other methods.

Traveling front solutions have been found in numerous problems. To keep the discussion short, we consider the most well known example – the one-dimensional KPP (Kolmogorov, Petrovsky, Piskunov) equation, also known as the Fisher equation. This is a nonlinear partial differential equation

$$\frac{\varphi }{t}=\frac{^2\varphi }{x^2}+\varphi \varphi ^2,$$
(1)
where $`\varphi (x,t)`$ represents, for example, the density of a population at a point $`x`$ at time $`t`$. Clearly this equation has two fixed points or stationary solutions: (i) $`\varphi (x)=1`$ for all $`x`$ and (ii) $`\varphi (x)=0`$ for all $`x`$. A simple linear stability analysis shows that the solution (i) is stable while the solution (ii) is unstable. Therefore, if one starts with a sufficiently sharp initial condition, say $`\varphi (x,t=0)=1`$ for $`x<0`$ and $`\varphi (x,t=0)=0`$ for $`x0`$ it is easy to see (for example by numerical simulation) that as time proceeds, the front separating the stable solution $`\varphi =1`$ and the unstable solution $`\varphi =0`$ advances in the forward direction with a unique velocity $`v_f`$. Besides, the front retains its shape in the sense that the width of the front remains finite even at large times. The front velocity $`v_f`$ is determined by analyzing the tail region $`x\mathrm{}`$. In this region, $`\varphi `$ is small and one can ignore the nonlinear term $`\varphi ^2`$ in Eq. (1). The resulting linear equation allows a spectrum of decaying solutions $`\varphi (x,t)e^{\lambda [xv(\lambda )t]}`$ provided $`v(\lambda )`$ satisfies the dispersion relation

$$v(\lambda )=\lambda +\frac{1}{\lambda }.$$
(2)
Thus a whole family of solutions parametrized by $`\lambda `$ is in principle allowed. However, the front actually advances with a unique velocity $`v_f`$. Thus there must be a selection principle to choose the right velocity from the whole spectrum $`v(\lambda )`$. Note that the dispersion spectrum (2) has a unique minimum at $`\lambda =\lambda ^{}=1`$ where $`v(\lambda ^{})=2`$. It was shown that for sufficiently steep initial conditions, the extremum of the dispersion curve is selected by the front, i.e., $`v_f=v(\lambda ^{})=2`$. Note that while the spectrum is determined solely by the linearized equation, for a given initial condition the nonlinear term plays a crucial role in selecting the final velocity from the full spectrum allowed by the linear equation. Subsequently it was shown that the front position $`x_f(t)`$, apart from the leading $`v(\lambda ^{})t`$ term, has a slow logarithmic correction

$$x_f(t)=v(\lambda ^{})t\frac{3}{2\lambda ^{}}\mathrm{ln}t+\mathrm{}$$
(3)
Although this velocity selection principle was originally proved only for the KPP equation, this strategy of selecting the extremum of the dispersion spectrum of the linearized equation was subsequently shown to apply to various traveling front solutions provided certain conditions are satisfied. We will show how this selection principle can be successfully used to derive exact asymptotic results for the statistics of extreme variables in a number of problems. In all the problems discussed below, we will find a traveling front solution of the same generic form (with a leading ‘linear’ term followed by a subleading ‘logarithmic’ correction) as in Eq. (3). While the the velocity dispersion spectrum $`v(\lambda )`$ will be widely different from problem to problem, the principle of selecting the extremum of the spectrum, namely $`v(\lambda ^{})`$, will still be valid. Finally, while $`\lambda ^{}`$ and $`v(\lambda ^{})`$ are thus nonuniversal, the prefactor $`3/2`$ in the logarithmic correction term turns out to be universal and is just the first excited state energy of a quantum harmonic oscillator. For a short derivation of this correction term, see e.g. appendix A of Ref..

Directed Polymer on a Cayley Tree: As a first example, consider the problem of directed polymer on a Cayley tree studied by Derrida and Spohn and recently resurfaced in a number of apparently unrelated problems. The primary emphasis of this work was on the spin glass like transition occurring at finite temperature and on fluctuation properties. In contrast, we consider exactly zero temperature and focus on the basic macroscopic quantity, namely the ground state energy.

We consider a tree rooted at $`O`$ (see Fig. 1) where a random energy $`ϵ`$ is associated with every bond of the tree. The variables $`ϵ`$’s are independent and each drawn from the same distribution $`\rho (ϵ)`$. A directed polymer of size $`n`$ goes down from the root $`O`$ to any of the $`2^n`$ nodes at the level $`n`$. There are $`N=2^n`$ possible paths for the polymer of size $`n`$ and the energy of any of these paths is

$$E_{\mathrm{path}}=\underset{i\mathrm{path}}{}ϵ_i.$$
(4)
The set of $`N=2^n`$ variables $`E_1`$, $`E_2`$, $`\mathrm{}`$, $`E_N`$ are clearly correlated in a hierarchical (i.e., ultrametric) way and the two point correlation between the energies of any two paths is proportional to the number of bonds they share. The ground state energy $`E_{\mathrm{min}}(n)=\mathrm{min}[E_1,E_2,\mathrm{},E_{2^n}]`$ is then a random variable and we are interested in its statistics.

The suitable quantity that has the traveling front solution is the cumulative distribution $`P_n(x)=\mathrm{Prob}[E_{\mathrm{min}}x]`$. It satisfies a nonlinear recursion relation,

$$P_{n+1}(x)=\left[𝑑ϵ\rho (ϵ)P_n(xϵ)\right]^2,$$
(5)
and the initial condition $`P_0(x)=\theta (x)`$, where $`\theta (x)`$ is the Heaviside step function. The front velocity can be determined by following the ‘linearizing’ strategy outlined above for the KPP equation. Unlike the KPP equation, however, we now need to linearize the recursion equation (5) in the ‘backward’ tail region $`x\mathrm{}`$. By inserting $`1P_n(x)e^{\lambda [xv(\lambda )n]}`$ into Eq. (5), one finds a dispersion spectrum

$$v(\lambda )=\frac{1}{\lambda }\mathrm{ln}\left[2𝑑ϵ\rho (ϵ)e^{\lambda ϵ}\right].$$
(6)
For generic distributions $`\rho (ϵ)`$, this spectrum has a unique maximum at $`\lambda =\lambda ^{}`$ and by the general velocity selection principle the maximum velocity $`v(\lambda ^{})`$ will be selected by the front. We now illustrate it for two distributions.

(i) The bimodal distribution, $`\rho (ϵ)=p\delta (ϵ1)+(1p)\delta (ϵ)`$, where $`0p1`$. In this case one can also think of the energy of a bond as a ‘length’ variable and a bond is present with probability $`p`$ and absent with probability $`(1p)`$. By analysing Eqs. (5) and (6) it was found that the polymer undergoes a ‘depinning’ transition at the critical value $`p_c=1/2`$. For $`p>1/2`$, the ground state energy is ‘extensive’ and increases linearly with $`n`$. On the other hand, for $`p<1/2`$ the polymer is ‘localized’ and the ground state energy remains finite even in the $`n\mathrm{}`$ limit. More precisely, the average ground state energy $`E_{min}(n)=_0^{\mathrm{}}P_n(x)𝑑x`$ has the asymptotic behaviors

$$E_{\mathrm{min}}(n)\{\begin{array}{cc}v_{\mathrm{min}}(p)n\hfill & p>1/2\text{,}\hfill \\ (\mathrm{ln}2)^1\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{ln}n\hfill & p=1/2\text{,}\hfill \\ \mathrm{finite}\hfill & p<1/2\text{,}\hfill \end{array}$$
(7)
where $`v_{\mathrm{min}}(p)=v(\lambda ^{})`$ with $`v(\lambda ^{})`$ being the maximum of the dispersion spectrum in Eq. (6). Taking into account the correction term as in the KPP equation, we found that for $`p>1/2`$, the average ground state energy is given by

$$E_{\mathrm{min}}(n)v_{\mathrm{min}}(p)n+\frac{3}{2\lambda ^{}}\mathrm{ln}n+\mathrm{}$$
(8)
In a similar way, one can compute the average maximum energy. $`E_{\mathrm{max}}(n)v_{\mathrm{max}}(p)n`$. Interestingly, the velocities satisfy a duality relation $`v_{\mathrm{min}}(p)+v_{\mathrm{max}}(1p)=1`$.

(ii) For the unbounded one sided distribution $`\rho (ϵ)=e^ϵ\theta (ϵ)`$, the dispersion spectrum (6) becomes

$$v(\lambda )=\frac{1}{\lambda }\mathrm{ln}\left[\frac{2}{\lambda +1}\right].$$
(9)
The average ground state energy is given by Eq. (8) with $`\lambda ^{}=3.31107\mathrm{}`$ and $`v(\lambda ^{})=0.23196\mathrm{}`$.

We have also studied the asymptotic behaviors of the full distribution of the ground state energy for various $`\rho (ϵ)`$ and found that the hierarchical correlations between the random variables $`[E_1,E_2,\mathrm{},E_{2^n}]`$ violate the well known Gumbel type behaviors exhibited by the the distribution of the extreme of a set of independent random variables.

Random Binary Search Tree: We now outline an application of the traveling front techniques to analysis of search algorithms in computer science. A computer is constantly fed with enormous amount of data. It is therefore essential to organize or sort the data in an efficient way so that the computer spends the minimum time to search for a data if required later. There are various ‘sorting’ and ‘search’ algorithms devised for this purpose. One particular algorithm that has been widely studied by computer scientists is the Random Binary Search Tree (RBST) algorithm. To understand this algorithm, consider a simple example. Suppose the incoming data string consists of the twelve months of the year appearing in the following random order: July, September, December, May, April, February, January, October, November, March, June and August.

The RBST algorithm stores this data on a binary tree in the following way. A chronological order (January, February,…) is first chosen. Now the first element of the input string (July) is put at the root of a tree (see Fig. 2). The next element of the string is September. One compares with the root element (July) and sees that September is bigger than July (in chronological order). So one assigns September to a daughter node of the root in the right branch. On the other hand, if the new element were less than the root, it would have gone to the daughter node of the left branch. Then the next element is December. We compare at the root (July) and decide that it has to go to the right, then we compare with the existing right daughter node (September) and decide that December has to go to the node which is the right daughter of September. The process continues till all the elements are assigned their nodes on the tree. For the particular data string in the above example, we get the unique tree shown in Fig. 2. If the incoming data (consisting of $`N`$ elements) is completely random, then all $`N!`$ possible binary trees have equal probability to occur and are called random binary search trees.

A quantity that is widely used to measure the efficiency of such an algorithm is the maximum search time required to find an element. This is the worst case scenario. The maximum search time is quantified by the height $`H_N`$ of a tree, i.e., the distance from the node to the farthest element on the tree. In the example of Fig. 2, $`H_N=5`$. Thus determining the statistics of $`H_N`$ is an extreme value problem. Apart from a slight modification, this problem can be mapped onto the directed polymer problem described in the previous example. In the modified problem, the bond energies are not completely uncorrelated as in the usual polymer problem, but are correlated in a special way: The energies of two bonds emanating from the same parent (see Fig. 1) satisfy the constraint, $`e^ϵ+e^ϵ^{}=1`$ and this constraint holds at every level of the tree. For example, in Fig. 1, we also have $`e^{ϵ_1}+e^{ϵ_2}=1`$, $`e^{ϵ_1^{}}+e^{ϵ_2^{}}=1`$, etc. The statistics of the height variable $`H_N`$ in RBST problem was shown to be identical to the ground state energy $`E_{\mathrm{min}}(n)`$ of this modified polymer problem with the identification $`N=2^n`$. The traveling front analysis then gives the average height

$$H_N\alpha _0\mathrm{ln}N+\alpha _1\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{ln}N.$$
(10)
Here $`\alpha _0=1/v(\lambda ^{})`$ and $`\alpha _1=3/2\lambda ^{}v(\lambda ^{})`$ where $`\lambda ^{}=3.31107\mathrm{}`$ is the maximum of the dispersion curve (9) with $`v(\lambda ^{})=0.23196\mathrm{}`$. The traveling fronts retains its shape asymptotically, i.e., its width remains finite. This shows that the variance of the height $`H_N`$ remains finite even in the large $`N`$ limit. While some of these results mentioned here were also derived by the computer scientists using rigorous mathematical bounds, the existence of a traveling front was not realized before. Besides, the traveling front techniques allow us to derive more detailed results such as the asymptotic behaviors of the full probability distribution of $`H_N`$ (not just its moments) and also obtain completely new results for trees generated with arbitrary distributions, not necessarily uniform. The statistics of other observables such as the ‘balanced’ height of a tree (which corresponds to the maximum energy in the modified directed polymer problem) has also been derived exactly using the traveling front techniques.

Aggregation Dynamics of Growing Random Trees: In the RBST example discussed above, the trees have fixed size $`N`$. Alternately one can consider random trees generated dynamically via an aggregation mechanism where the size of the trees grows indefinitely with time $`t`$. Apart from the computer science problems discussed above, such growing trees also arise in physical situations such as collision processes in gases where the largest Lyapunov exponent is related to the maximum height problem.

We studied a simple tree generation model where initially we have an infinite number of trivial (single-leaf) trees. Then, two trees are picked at random and attached to a common root. This merging process is repeated indefinitely (to simplify formulas the rate is set equal to 2). Let $`c(t)`$ be the number density of trees at time $`t`$. Initially, $`c(0)=1`$, and then it evolves according to $`dc/dt=c^2`$ whose solution is $`c(t)=(1+t)^1`$. Thence the average number of leaves per tree $`N`$ grows linearly with time, $`N=c^1=1+t`$. We are interested in the minimal and maximal heights of such a growing tree. Rather than considering the two extremal height distributions separately, we studied a more general model that interpolates between the two cases. In this model, each tree carries an extremal height $`k`$. The result of a merger between trees with extremal heights $`k_1`$ and $`k_2`$ is a new tree with extremal height $`k`$ given by

$$k=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{min}(k_1,k_2)+1\hfill & \text{with prob. }p\text{,}\hfill \\ \mathrm{max}(k_1,k_2)+1\hfill & \text{with prob. }1p\text{ .}\hfill \end{array}$$
(11)
Here, $`p`$ is a mixing parameter whose limits $`p=1`$ and $`p=0`$ correspond to the minimal and the maximal heights problems, respectively.

The number density of trees with extremal height $`k`$, $`c_k(t)`$, evolves according to the master equation

$$\frac{dc_k}{dt}=c_{k1}^22cc_k+2pc_{k1}\underset{j=k}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}c_j+2(1p)c_{k1}\underset{j=0}{\overset{k2}{}}c_j.$$
(12)
Introducing the cumulative fractions $`A_k=c^1_{j=k}^{\mathrm{}}c_j`$ and a new time variable $`T=_0^t𝑑\tau c(\tau )=\mathrm{ln}(1+t)`$, we recast Eqs. (12) into

$$\frac{dA_k}{dT}=A_k+2(1p)A_{k1}+(2p1)A_{k1}^2,$$
(13)
which should be solved subject to the step function initial conditions, $`A_k(0)=1`$ for $`k0`$ and $`A_k(0)=0`$ otherwise.

In the long time limit, $`A_k(T)`$ approaches a traveling wave form, $`A_k(T)f(kvT)`$. The velocity $`v`$ can be determined as in the above problems. Knowing this velocity one can compute the expected extremal tree height from the relation, $`k=c^1_kkc_k`$. Let us note one interesting fact. For $`p=0`$ (the maximal height case), we can express $`k`$ as a function of $`N`$ (after eliminating $`t`$ using $`N=1+t`$) for large $`N`$ and find

$$k=\alpha _0\mathrm{ln}N+\alpha _1\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{ln}N,$$
(14)
where $`\alpha _0`$ and $`\alpha _1`$ identical to those in Eq. (10) for the fixed $`N`$ trees. This shows that the dynamically growing trees have the same asymptotic properties as those of the fixed size trees for large trees if one replaces $`N`$ in Eq. (10) by $`N`$. This dynamic approach is thus similar to the grand canonical approach in statistical mechanics with the time $`t`$ playing the role of the chemical potential that can be chosen to fix the average size.

The Dynamics of Efficiency in a Simple Model: We now move from trees to economy and consider a model that mimics the dynamics of efficiencies of competing agents. We represent the efficiency of each agent by a single nonnegative number. The efficiency of every agent can, independent of other agents, increase or decrease stochastically by a certain amount which we set equal to unity. In addition, the agents interact with each other which is the fundamental driving mechanism for economy. We assume that the interaction equates the efficiencies of underachievers to the efficiencies of better performing agents and set the rate of this process equal to one; we denote the rates of the increase and decrease of the efficiency by $`p`$ and $`q`$ respectively.

Let $`h_i(t)`$ is the efficiency of the agent $`i`$ at time $`t`$ and $`P(h,t)`$ is the fraction of agents with efficiency $`h`$ at time $`t`$. The evolution equation for $`P(h,t)`$ is obtained by counting all possible gain and loss terms. For $`h1`$, this equation reads

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dP(h,t)}{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`P(h,t){\displaystyle \underset{h^{}=h+1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}P(h^{},t)(p+q)P(h,t)`$ (15)
$`+`$ $`qP(h+1,t)+pP(h1,t)`$ (16)
$`+`$ $`P(h,t){\displaystyle \underset{h^{}=0}{\overset{h1}{}}}P(h^{},t).`$ (17)
The cumulative distribution $`F(h,t)=_{h^{}h}P(h^{},t)`$ satisfies

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dF(h,t)}{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`F^2(h,t)+(1pq)F(h,t)`$ (18)
$`+`$ $`qF(h+1,t)+pF(h1,t).`$ (19)
The function $`F(h,t)`$ approaches a traveling wave form, $`F(h,t)=f(hvt)`$. The velocity can be determined by repeating the steps detailed in the previous examples. The analysis is more cumbersome due to appearance of the critical line $`p_c(q)`$ in the $`(p,q)`$ plane,

$$p_c(q)=\{\begin{array}{cc}1+q2\sqrt{q}\hfill & \text{for }q1\text{,}\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{for }q1,\hfill \end{array}$$
(20)
separating different behaviors. For $`p>p_c(q)`$, the system is in the developing phase with the average efficiency $`h`$ increasing according to

$$h=v_{\mathrm{min}}t\frac{3}{2\lambda ^{}}\mathrm{ln}t+𝒪(1),$$
(21)
Here again $`\lambda ^{}`$ is the decay rate, $`f(x)e^{\lambda ^{}x}`$ as $`x\mathrm{}`$. For $`pp_c(q)`$ with $`q>1`$, the system is localized and $`h`$ approaches a time-independent constant in the long time limit. For $`p=0`$ and $`q<1`$, the system is in the developing phase for unbounded initial efficiency distributions, with the growth rate dependent on initial conditions. For economically relevant compact initial conditions, the regime $`p=0`$ and $`q<1`$ belongs to the stagnant phase.

To summarize, we have exemplified that the asymptotic statistics of extreme values can often be analytically determined using the powerful traveling front techniques. There might be a deeper hidden connection between the extreme value statistics and traveling fronts, and establishing such a connection is a challenging task. Finally we mention that the recently computed correction to the the celebrated Bekenstein-Hawking (BH) formula for the black hole entropy $`S_{\mathrm{BH}}=A_\mathrm{H}/4l_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2`$ (here $`A_H`$ is the classical horizon area and $`l_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ is the Planck length) is logarithmic. Specifically, for the four-dimensional non-rotating black hole, the entropy expansion

$$S=S_{\mathrm{BH}}\frac{3}{2}\mathrm{ln}S_{\mathrm{BH}}+\mathrm{}$$
(22)
strikingly resembles the time dependence of the front position, Eq. (3). The elogarithmic correction term also appears for other black holes. It is therefore tempting to speculate a traveling front structure in the black hole entropy. This speculation gets further strengthened by the fact that the BH entropy is the ‘maximal’ entropy that a black hole can have. In other words this may be considered as an extreme value problem. The verification of the existence, if any, of a traveling front structure in the black hole problem remains an outstanding open problem.

We thank E. Ben-Naim and D. S. Dean for collaborations on some of these topics. We also thank J. K. Bhattacharjee for pointing out the possible connection to the black hole entropy problem.