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# New High Proper Motion Stars from the Digitized Sky Survey. I. Northern Stars with 0.5<𝜇<2.0″𝑦𝑟⁻¹ at Low Galactic Latitudes.This paper is respectfully dedicated to the memory of the late Barry M. Lasker, former director of the Catalogs and Survey Branch of the Space Telescope Science Institute, whose vision was instrumental in the creation of the Digitized Sky Survey and Guide Star Catalogs. Based on data mining of the Digitized Sky Survey, developed and operated by the Catalogs and Surveys Branch of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA. Based on data mining of the Guide Star Catalog-II, a joint project of the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino.

## 1 Introduction

The study of stars with large proper motions forms the basis of our knowledge of the stellar content and dynamical structure of the Galaxy. It is largely through surveys of high proper motion (HPM) stars that the census of stars in the solar vicinity has been established. Since the proper motion of a star is inversely proportional to its distance from the observer, a high proper motion is a strong selection criterion for proximity. The power of proper motion as a selection tool is well illustrated when we consider that among the billions of stars brighter than about 20th magnitude that fill the sky, those with proper motions $`\mu `$ larger than half of a second of arc per year ($`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}yr^1`$) are numbered in the thousands.

The stellar proper motion is also proportional to the velocity of the star, projected on the plane of the sky. This is the main drawback for samples of nearby stars derived from HPM surveys: stars which are moving toward or away from the Sun are systematically missed. Another effect is that samples of HPM stars are always over-represented with stars having large transverse velocities. Essentially, the high velocity stars are sampled over a larger volume than the low velocity stars. While this may bias statistical studies of HPM samples, it is actually extremely useful for finding old disk and halo stars, which are rare in the solar neighborhood, and crucial to our understanding of the structure and stellar content of the Galaxy as a whole.

Of course, direct parallax measurements are ultimately the best method to measure the distances to the stars. However, even the most complete survey to date, carried out by the Hipparcos astrometric satellite, is limited to the brightest hundred thousand stars in the sky (brighter than about 12th magnitude, see the Hipparcos and Tycho catalogs Perryman 1997). Next-generation astrometric mission are being planned (the GAIA mission, see Lindegren & Perryman 1996; the DIVA mission, see Röser 1999) which will eventually obtain parallaxes for hundreds of millions more stars. But the identification of nearby stars in the 12th-20th magnitude range still depends largely on surveys of high proper motion stars.

To date, the most extensive catalogs of high proper motion stars remain the two catalogs by W. H. Luyten, published over 20 years ago. One, the LHS catalogue: a catalogue of stars with proper motions exceeding 0.5$`\mathrm{}`$ annually (Luyten 1979) lists 3602 objects with estimated proper motions $`\mu 0.500\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 and 867 other stars with estimated proper motions $`0.235\mu <0.500\mathrm{}`$ yr-1. The LHS catalogue was compiled from previous lists of known HPM stars and from a list of new HPM stars detected in the 1950’s Palomar Sky Survey by hand-blink or with an automated blink-machine. The complete catalog is available at the ViZier service of the Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg (http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/) under catalog number I/87B. The New Luyten Catalogue of stars with proper motions larger than two tenths of an arcsecond (NLTT, Luyten 1979) lists 58845 HPM stars, the majority of which have estimated proper motions $`\mu 0.18\mathrm{}`$ yr-1. The NLTT catalogue is essentially an extension of the LHS catalogs to stars with smaller proper motions, and is also available at the ViZier service under catalog number I/98A.

Both the LHS and NLTT catalogs were first published in a printed version based on a typewriter copy of the catalog, and both are thus subject to occasional typos and misprints, only a few of which are obvious. The entire LHS catalog has been recently investigated by Bakos, Sahu, & Németh (2002), who searched for each and every one of the LHS stars in the Digitized Sky Survey. While they were able to recover the majority of the LHS stars, they found substantial errors in the coordinates quoted by Luyten. A small number of LHS stars could not even be recovered at all, raising serious doubts as to the reliability of the Luyten catalogs. Furthermore, the LHS and NLTT are also clearly incomplete in some parts of the sky, especially in the southern hemisphere and at low galactic latitudes. The incompleteness of the Luyten catalogs, and the large inaccuracies it sometimes contains, make it a less than completely reliable tool in an epoch where data mining of large electronic databases is becoming an important aspect of astronomical research.

While other surveys of high proper motion stars have been conducted since the publication of the LHS and NLTT catalogs, these surveys have been more limited in magnitude range or in survey area. The most notable is the survey conducted with the Hipparcos satellite (Hipparcos and Tycho catalog, ESA 1997; Tycho-2 catalog, Hog et al. 2000) which covers the whole sky but is complete only for relatively bright ($`V10`$) stars. Deeper large proper motion surveys include the UCAC survey conducted by the US. Naval Observatory, which reaches $`V16`$ and covers the whole sky south of $`\delta =+24`$, and the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey (Hambly et al. 2001) which so far covers 5000 square degrees in the southern galactic cap (15% of the sky) down to $`R19`$. Other deep surveys covering smaller areas include the search for very high proper motion stars in 1400 square degrees of second epoch Palomar Sky Survey plates by Monet et al. (2000), the Calar-ESO proper motion survey (Ruiz et al. 2001), and the southern survey by Wroblewski & Costa (2001). Other proper motion surveys have been conducted using fields monitored by gravitational microlensing experiments: the EROS 2 proper motion survey (EROS collaboration 1999), and a search of the MACHO data archive (Alcock et al. 2000).

For the past few years, we have been conducting our own systematic, automated survey for high proper motion stars using the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS). We are searching for high proper motion stars in the DSS with SUPERBLINK, a powerful software developed by one of us (SL). SUPERBLINK is an extremely efficient, fully automated, blink-comparator which can be used to identify variable and moving objects in any pair of FITS images of a field observed at two different epochs. We have been feeding DSS images to our SUPERBLINK software and assembling a new catalog of HPM stars, complete with “blinkable” double-epoch finder charts. This first paper of a series presents some of the first results of our efforts: an updated census of HPM stars with $`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 down to a magnitude R=20.0 north of -2.8 in declination and at low galactic latitudes ($`|b|<25^{}`$). We report the recovery of 640 Luyten stars and the discovery of 141 new HPM stars within this area. A second series of papers (Lépine et al. 2002, in preparation) will present the results of our parallel campaign of spectroscopic observations of those new high proper motion stars.

In §2, we describe the data retrieval, image handling, candidate identification, and photometry. §3 and §4 contrast our results with the Tycho and Luyten catalogs. Finder charts for all the new high proper motion stars are printed in the appendix.

## 2 A new survey of high proper motion stars using the Digitized Sky Survey

### 2.1 Data retrieval

We are retrieving Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) images from the Space Telescope Science Institute archive server (archive.stsci.edu) using Linux scripts, with the kind permission of the Catalogs and Surveys Branch at the STScI. Our first epoch images the scanned Palomar Sky Survey (POSS-I, Abell 1959) red (xx103aE + plexi) images which have been obtained circa 1950 and have been scanned with a resolution of 1.7$`\mathrm{}`$ pixel-1. The second epoch images, the scanned Second Palomar Sky Survey (POSS-II, Reid et al. 1991) red (IIIaf \+ RG 610) images are generally of higher quality, and have been scanned with a resolution of 1.00 to 1.02 $`\mathrm{}`$ pixel-1. We adopted the following strategy: the POSS-I image is used as a reference frame onto which we attempt to match the POSS-II image, to generate two image that look as similar as possible and that can be easily subtracted to reveal the differences between the two epochs.

The first epoch survey covers the entire sky north of $`\delta =2.7^{}`$ in a grid of $`6.5^{}\times 6.5^{}`$ plates with a small overlap region at the sides of the plates (643 plates in all). The POSS-II plates cover the same region with plates of similar sizes, but with a larger overlap between neighboring plates, and thus with a larger number of plates to cover the northern sky. As a result, there is no direct correspondence between the POSS-I and POSS-II plates, and the same region of the sky can appear in very different locations on the first and second epoch plates. This means that larger scale distortions in the plates can be significantly different in the POSS-I and POSS-II. Since we are using a differential technique to identify high proper motion stars, the correspondence between the two fields must be extremely tight.

For these reasons, we are working on small subfields of the Digitized Sky Survey representing areas on the POSS-I and POSS-I plates no larger than $`17\mathrm{}\times 17\mathrm{}`$ in size. We arrived at this figure after intensive experimentation with DSS subfields. We found that superposition of POSS-I and POSS-I fields of this size is reasonably accurate and straightforward, and can be easily handled by the software. We have mapped the whole sky north of $`\delta =2.7^{}`$ into 642,900 subfields, allowing for a significant overlap between the fields.

### 2.2 Image superposition

The SUPERBLINK software uses optimization techniques to align the two images and to degrade and normalize the second epoch images so that they match the aspect and quality of the earlier epoch image. The code then simply subtracts the two images and identifies significant features in the residuals. In order for the residual image to contain significant information, the two images must be aligned very precisely. The process is illustrated in Figure 1.

To align the images, the code proceeds in a series of steps. First the image with the highest angular resolution per pixel element is remapped onto a grid that matches the resolution of the other image. In our data, it is the POSS-II image (with resolution of 1.00, 1.01, or 1.02$`\mathrm{}`$ pixel-1) that is remapped into a grid that matches the POSS-I image (1.70$`\mathrm{}`$ pixel-1). This results in a small degradation in the quality of the POSS-II image, but this is of little consequence since the quality of the POSS-II image is always better to start with.

The second step is to normalize the two images to match the intensity levels. For each image, pixels are separated into sky pixels and star pixels. The mean pixel value and standard deviations are calculated; any pixel that is above 3 times the mean standard deviation is flagged as a star pixel and removed from the set. The process is repeated recursively until all the pixels are flagged as either star or sky. The sky pixels are then fitted to a plane and the whole image is renormalized so that the mean value of the sky is set to 1. The total flux from star pixels is then calculated, and each image is renormalized so that the fluxes above the sky level are equal.

In the third step, the software attempts to minimize the total residuals between the two images by shifting and rotating the higher quality (POSS-II) image. We use a multidimensional minimization algorithm to determine the shift in X and Y and the rotation $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ that matches the two images best. We retrieve the POSS-I and POSS-II images based on the coordinates at the center of the images, so we expect the two images to be already aligned in X and Y. In effect we find that the centers of the two images are not always perfectly aligned, and a typical shift of a fraction of a pixel (rarely exceeding 1 pixel) is usually required. On the other hand, the two images can be at an angle because they may come from different parts of a POSS-I and POSS-II plate (e.g. upper left corner of a POSS-I plate with lower right corner of a POSS-II plate) which means that the individual images can be oriented differently, with the north pointing in different directions. We thus sometimes require large values for $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$, up to 40 degrees in high declination fields.

### 2.3 Identification of moving objects

High proper motion stars are identified as pairs of residual features. The SUPERBLINK software contains a search algorithm which attempts to match any significant residual feature with another one up to a given distance. While the task appears to be relatively simple, it is actually quite complex because one wants to avoid the systematic identification of any differences between the plates as a high proper motion star. The POSS-I and POSS-II images are scans of photographic plates, and they contain numerous plate defects. Furthermore, the images are filled with large numbers of variable features, from variable stars (and nebulae!), to asteroid tracks, diffractions spikes and instrumental reflections from bright stars. The POSS-I and POSS-II plates have also been obtained in slightly different bandpasses (the POSS-I plate used an xx103aE emulsion with a plexiglas filter while the POSS-II used a IIIaF emulsion with an RG610 filter) which means that some objects are expected to have slightly different plate magnitudes. The POSS-II plate also goes a few magnitudes deeper, and some of the fainter stars do not record on the POSS-I plates. For all these reasons, specific tests have been designed within the code to eliminate most unwanted features while retaining a set of the most likely high proper motion star candidates.

At the same time, the code remains a general tool for identifying moving objects of any shape and size (i.e. no attempt is made to fit the variable features with an axisymmetric stellar profile). The reason for this is that high proper motion stars tend to be so close to the Sun that long-period binary systems are often resolved. Because the PSF on the POSS images is so broad (exposure times $`>30`$ minutes), companions may look like a moving elliptical or pear-shaped object, which can easily be confused with plate defects or short asteroid tracks.

The general procedure to test whether a feature in the residual image is consistent with a high proper motion star is as follows. (1) The code identified the plate feature in the POSS-I or POSS-II image that is responsible for the residual feature. (2) The plate feature is removed from the POSS image in which it is found. (3) The modified plate image, lacking the plate feature, is then subtracted from the second plate image. (4) The plate feature is then matched to any plate feature remaining on the second plate image after the subtraction. Because the first plate image is complete except for the now removed candidate moving feature, subtracting it from the second plate image removes everything except the counterpart of the moving object on the second plate image. (5) A probability of match is calculated based on the similarity between the two features. The code also calculates the proper motion and estimates the magnitude of the candidate high proper motion star.

The detailed algorithm has been tested and specifically adapted to work best on scans of photographic plates, and it achieves extremely high detection rates. A significant problem arises when a HPM star moves into the image of a brighter star on one plate (when this happens, we say that the high proper motion star passes “in front of” the brighter star). When this occurs, the residual image of the high proper motion star is assigned by the code to the brighter star because the code has no way of knowing that the residual image is due to a proper motion star passing in front of the bright star. Fortunately, HPM events always leave two distinct traces in the residual images, so if one of the residual images corresponds to the image of the HPM object passing in front of a brighter star, the other one will (most of the time) be correctly identified. The code is usually able to make the match with the counterpart passing in front of the brighter star. This is actually one of the greatest strengths of the code: the ability to correctly identify a high proper motion star even if it passes in front of a brighter star on one of the plates. Several of the new high proper motion stars that we have identified with SUPERBLINK occur in such a fashion.

The only case when the code will definitely miss an HPM star is when the star is passing in front of brighter stars in both the POSS-I and POSS-II plates. Admittedly, this failure of the code could hardly be noticed since such a star is also very likely to escape detection even by careful visual inspection of the plates. However, this is an important issue because we do expect that a small number of faint, high proper motion stars will escape detection, especially in low galactic latitude fields where crowding can be significant.

The two parameters that determine the computing time used by the SUPERBLINK code are the lower intensity limit for the detection of faint residual features and the search radius for a matching counterpart. Experiments have shown that for the combination of POSS-I and POSS-II plates, optimal results are obtained by limiting the identification of variable features with magnitude brighter than about r=20, and using a search radius smaller than $`2\mathrm{}`$. Using these parameter values, a one square degree area can be processed in about 15 minutes on a Linux workstation with dual Pentium-III microprocessors. Over 10,000 CPU-hours have been invested so far in searching the northern sky for new HPM stars.

### 2.4 Estimation of POSS-II magnitudes

The SUPERBLINK software provides POSS-II red magnitude estimates for the detected high proper motion stars by simple calculation of the plate flux. Because we only retrieve the red plates, we do not have any direct means to get colors for the objects. But since the second version of the Guide Star Catalog (GSC-II) catalog has been made publicly available, we have been searching for counterparts of our high proper motion stars in the public version of the GSC-II (the GSC2.2.1 catalog) to obtain POSS-II $`r`$ and $`b`$ colors.

The GSC2.2.1 is based on scans of the photographic Sky Survey plates, exactly the same material that we are using for our survey, and can be regarded as an improved version of the Guide Star Catalog (Lasker et al. 1990, Russell et al. 1990, and Jenkner et al. 1990). The GSC-II is maintained by the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the GSC2.2.1 is available electronically through the ViZier service of the Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg (catalog number I/271).

All entries in the GSC2.2.1 are provided with coordinates and epochs, which correspond to the epoch of the photographic plate when the star was observed. For each GSC2.2.1 star located within 1$`\mathrm{}`$ of one of our HPM stars, we calculate the astrometric distance between the location of the GSC2.2.1 star and the estimated location of the HPM star candidate at the epoch of the GSC2.2.1 star (recall that our catalog quotes the position of the HPM stars at the 2000.0 epoch).

While cross-correlating our sample of high proper motion stars into the GSC2.2.1 catalog, we found that $`25\%`$ of the stars could be matched with two or more different objects in the GSC2.2.1 catalog. Every time this happened, the different objects listed in the GSC2.2.1 had different quoted epochs of detections and thus obviously corresponded to the same star observed in different POSS-II plates at different epochs. In most cases, one object has a quoted red magnitude but no blue magnitude, while the other has a blue magnitude, but no red magnitude. This is because the same star has been observed on plates of different colors at different times. Whenever a star has been observed twice in the same color and quoted as two different objects, we have used the mean of the quoted magnitudes.

A small number of stars were found not to have any GSC2.2.1 counterpart. The majority of these are stars which are beyond the current magnitude limit of the Second Guide Star Catalog (r=18.5), but a handful of brighter stars could still not be found. The majority of those missing stars are moderately bright stars that just happened to be passing close to brighter stars at the epoch when the POSS-II image was obtained. They can be easily identified from the POSS-I plates, but their identification is difficult on the POSS-II plates, on which the GSC2.2.1 is based. In one specific case, the missing star was found on the POSS-II image blended with a bright track left by the passage of an airplane; it could not possibly have been identified as a star from the POSS-II scans alone.

We use in our catalog the quoted GSC2.2.1 $`r`$ and $`b`$ magnitudes for all the stars we were able to match from GSC2.2.1. For all other stars, we use the $`r`$ magnitude estimated by SUPERBLINK. The GSC2.2.1 magnitudes are a significant improvement over the magnitudes quoted in the Luyten proper motion catalogues (see §4.3 below).

## 3 Inclusion of bright high proper motion stars from the Tycho catalogs

The SUPERBLINK software does not work efficiently on stars which are extremely saturated on the DSS images. SUPERBLINK works best for stars fainter than magnitude $`r=12`$ and cannot handle stars brighter than about $`r=9`$ at all. Fortunately, the range of magnitudes over which the code is much less efficient corresponds to the faint limit of the stars which have been measured during the HIPPARCOS astrometric mission, and listed in the Hipparcos and Tycho catalog (ESA 1997) and in the Tycho-2 catalog (Hog et al. 2000). Provided that the SUPERBLINK and Tycho samples overlap over a significant range in magnitudes, the two surveys are really complementary, and we thus have a means to build a complete census of all high proper motion stars down to r=20.

Our recovery rate of high proper motion Tycho stars in our survey area is plotted in Figure 2 as a function of the HIPPARCOS V magnitude. Not a single star in the V=8 magnitude bin was identified by SUPERBLINK, which sets the absolute upper limit of our code in handling bright stars. The efficiency rises rapidly as the stars get fainter, and the recovery rate reaches over 80% in the V=10 magnitude bin. The SUPERBLINK software was fully successful in recovering the stars in the last magnitude bin of the Tycho catalogs (V=12). However, this last bin contains only 15 stars, and while this does suggest a high recovery rate, we cannot affirm that the code is actually more than about 90% efficient in that range.

Nevertheless, this does suggest a good complementarity between the Tycho catalogs and our survey. The combination of high proper motion stars from the Tycho catalogs and from our survey should provide a virtually complete census of all high proper motion stars in the survey area down to the magnitude limit of our survey. The main limitation lies in that the HIPPARCOS satellite relied on an input catalog, and only observed a subsample of selected stars fainter than V$`9`$. Because our DSS-based survey is incomplete for stars in the $`9<`$V$`<12`$ range, there is the possibility that some high proper motion stars in that range are not in the Tycho catalogs and will not have been recovered in our survey. The acid test to check if the combined Tycho/DSS catalog is complete throughout the full range of magnitudes is a comparison with the previous most complete catalog of high proper motion stars: the Luyten catalogs.

## 4 Comparison with the Luyten proper motion catalogs

### 4.1 Astrometric errors in the Luyten catalogs: rebuilding the Luyten proper motion survey

We find that there are numerous, significant errors in the stellar positions quoted in the LHS and in the NLTT catalogs. The LHS and NLTT catalogs are supposed to be essentially redundant for stars with proper motions $`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1. The main difference between the two is that the NLTT catalog also lists stars down to $`\mu >0.18\mathrm{}`$ yr-1. In all appearances, the differences are only minor: the LHS catalogs lists 3561 stars with $`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 while the NLTT lists 3555. While both the LHS and NLTT give R1950 coordinates for all entries, the LHS catalog also gives J2000 coordinates.

The R1950 coordinate should be understood as the coordinate of the star at epoch 1950.0 and equinox 1950. The J2000 coordinate refers to the position of the star at epoch 2000.0 in the equatorial coordinate system with equinox 2000. We should expect to be able to re-derive the quoted J2000 position by adding the quoted proper motion of the star to the R1950 position and precessing the result. Using the electronic version of the catalog obtained from VIZIER, we have attempted to reproduce this result. We were quite surprised to find that a large number of stars had significant differences between the J2000 coordinate that we calculated based on the quoted R1950 coordinate and proper motion, and the J2000 coordinate quoted by Luyten. Of a total of 4421 stars, 570 showed discrepancies of over 20$`\mathrm{}`$, 147 showed discrepancies of over 1$`\mathrm{}`$, and 84 showed discrepancies of over 5$`\mathrm{}`$. We find that in the majority of the cases, it is the quoted J2000 coordinate that is clearly in error. We verified this by matching the stars with large errors with the updated LHS catalog compiled by Bakos, Sahu, and Németh (2002). All the stars for which we found a very large discrepancy between the J2000 and R1950 position are those that Bakos, Sahu, and Németh were unable to recover in their investigation. We can therefore identify the main source of their many problems at recovering LHS stars in the DSS with the fact that they used the error-filled J2000 column as their source of coordinates in the LHS catalog.

It is most unfortunate that the searchable electronic version of the LHS catalog found at CDS uses the J2000 column as the main source of coordinates. Even worse, the SIMBAD database also uses the erroneous column as the main source of coordinates for most objects that are LHS stars. This leads to a number of HPM stars being quoted twice in the Simbad database, with one entry for the LHS star at the erroneous location and another, separate entry for the same star, quoted under its other known names at the accurate location. We conclude that coordinates quoted in the LHS catalog are extremely unreliable, and that they should be excluded from use in the SIMBAD astronomical database. In contrast, we found the coordinates retrieved from the electronic version of the NLTT catalog to be significantly more reliable.

We have thus compiled a more accurate list of Luyten stars by merging the information provided by the LHS and NLTT. Unfortunately, the LHS and NLTT have different numbering systems, and the only means to match an NLTT star with an LHS star is to match their coordinates. We thus cross-correlated all entries in the LHS and NLTT, using both the R1950 and the (precessed) J2000 coordinates from the LHS, and the R1950 coordinates for the NLTT. Given the sometimes large difference between the positions, we matched the stars by performing several passes using increasingly larger search radii (up to $`5\mathrm{}`$) until most of the LHS and NLTT stars could be paired. We found a total of 3554 stars with $`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 listed in both the LHS and NLTT catalog. In the process, we discovered 6 stars which were listed twice in the LHS catalog under different names (LHS28 and LHS201, LHS1611 and LHS5086, LHS2785 and LHS2786, LHS5126a and LHS6132, LHS5215a and LHS6231, LHS5217a and LHS6235). While the LHS R1950 coordinates were generally found to provide the best match to the NLTT counterparts, 411 LHS stars could be matched better with NLTT objects when we used their precessed J2000 coordinates. We generally found good agreement between the quoted R1950 positions in the LHS and NLTT. However, most of the NLTT coordinates appear to have been copied directly from the LHS, so this is no guarantee that the locations are accurate.

There were 32 LHS stars with $`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 for which we could not find an NLTT counterpart with the automated procedure, and 53 NLTT stars with $`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 which we could not match with an LHS star. Close examination of all these entries revealed that 28 more stars could be matched together by assuming that one of the quoted coordinates (either from the LHS or from the NLTT) had an error larger than $`5\mathrm{}`$. In all these cases, the LHS and NLTT entries have the same quoted proper motion, proper motion angle, and magnitude, but different quoted positions. We searched for those high proper motion stars in the DSS at both quoted positions. We were able to recover all the high proper motion stars at one of the quoted positions, therefore identifying which ones were in error (see Table 1). For 21 of the stars, it appears to be a simple transcription error affecting one digit or a sign, always in the declination column except for LHS3415/NLTT47039 where the error in in the RA column. For the other 7 stars, there is a discrepancy $`15\mathrm{}`$ in the declination which affects only NLTT entries.

In the end, we were left with 4 LHS stars with $`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 for which we could not find any counterpart in the NLTT and 25 NLTT stars with $`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 for which we could not find any counterpart in the LHS. We verified the existence of all these objects by looking in DSS fields at the quoted locations. We confirmed the existence of all 4 LHS stars which are missing from the NLTT (see Table 2). We also confirmed the existence of 22 on the NLTT stars absent from the LHS, but were unable to recover NLTT11999, NLTT22764, and NLTT46584 within $`5\mathrm{}`$ of their quoted location. Furthermore, we found that 4 of the recovered NLTT stars had quoted proper motions overestimated by a factor 10, and are actually stars with $`\mu <0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 (see Table 3). This means that 18 NLTT stars with $`\mu <0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 were actually omitted from the LHS catalog. Overall, the complete sample of $`\mu <0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 stars compiled by Luyten includes 3576 distinct objects. We used this verified compilation of high proper motion Luyten stars to match the stars found by SUPERBLINK or listed in the Tycho catalogs. Within our survey area ($`\delta >2.7^{},25^{}<|b|<+25^{}`$) there is a total of 674 stars from the Luyten sample.

### 4.2 Recovery of LHS and NLTT stars

We have cross-correlated all entries in the combined list of HPM stars that we generated from SUPERBLINK and the Tycho catalogs with the updated Luyten master catalog reconstructed from the LHS and NLTT. A first pass was made where we matched stars with positions similar to within $`1\mathrm{}`$. We made successive passes with gradual increases in the search radius, always requiring that matching objects have proper motions similar to within 10% and proper motion vectors similar to within $`10^{}`$. We found that 85% of the Luyten stars in the area covered by our survey could be matched within 10$`\mathrm{}`$ of stars found by SUPERBLINK (see Figure 3). By increasing the search radius to 1$`\mathrm{}`$, we could match 665 of the Luyten stars (all but 9 of them). One more star was matched (LHS6374) which we found at a distance of $`563\mathrm{}`$ of the location quoted by Luyten (the matching star has a very similar magnitude and proper motion). We could not find any counterpart in our catalog for the remaining 9 stars (see §5 below).

Figure 4 presents the complete results of our analysis. We use a color scheme to identify four classes of objects. Black: HPM stars that were found in the Tycho catalogs. Blue: HPM stars found by SUPERBLINK in the DSS, and matched to previously known HPM stars, listed in the Luyten catalogs. Red: HPM stars listed in the Luyten catalog which are not listed in the Tycho catalogs and could not be recovered with SUPERBLINK. Green: HPM stars identified in the DSS with SUPERBLINK but that do not correspond to any entry in the Luyten catalogs, i.e. newly discovered HPM stars. The histogram clearly illustrates the fact that the HIPPARCOS satellite has only looked at the “tip of the iceberg” of HPM stars with $`\mu >0.5\mathrm{}`$ yr-1, since the bulk of the stars are in the $`10<r<16`$ magnitude range. As expected, most of the new discoveries are at the faint end of the distribution. The 10 Luyten stars that have been “missed” actually include 3 stars which have proper motions too large to be detected by SUPERBLINK ($`\mu >2.0\mathrm{}`$ yr-1). Three more “missed” Luyten stars are close to the bright star limit for SUPERBLINK, while also being below the completeness limit of the Tycho catalog.

Based on these results, we have calculated the completeness of the Tycho and Luyten catalogs, and estimated the completeness of our own survey as a function of magnitude; the results are displayed in Figure 5. To calculate the completeness of the Tycho and Luyten catalogs, we have simply divided, for each magnitude bin, the number of HPM stars found in those catalogs by the total number of HPM stars known (those now listed in the present catalog, which include the new stars found by SUPERBLINK). To estimate the completeness of our own survey, we calculated the recovery rate of Luyten stars for each magnitude bin. We find that, at low galactic latitudes, the Luyten catalog is complete only down to $`r`$=13, and the completeness falls below 50% for stars fainter than $`r`$=15. The Tycho catalog is complete for HPM stars only down to $`r=8`$ and is very incomplete below $`r=12`$. The Tycho-2 catalog is thus a good complement to SUPERBLINK, which is extremely efficient, but only for stars fainter than $`r`$=12. Note that the $`r=17`$ and $`r=18`$ bins give a 100% recovery rate but are based on the recovery of only 15, and 6 Luyten stars, respectively (all of them recovered by SUPERBLINK). While this is consistent with a very high efficiency for SUPERBLINK, we cannot exclude the possibility that the faint Luyten stars, having been discovered with more limited methods, are simply the most obvious HPM stars to be found, and that more elusive objects have actually been missed by SUPERBLINK. However, based on our recovery of NLTT stars with proper motions in the range $`0.18<\mu <0.50\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 (analysis in progress), we find that SUPERBLINK is indeed highly efficient in finding HPM stars down to $`r=19`$.

Although there appears to be a concentration of new stars at very low galactic latitudes ($`|b|<10^{}`$) some new stars have been discovered even at $`|b|>20^{}`$, which indicates that our analysis of higher galactic latitudes (under way) is likely to discover still more new faint HPM stars.

### 4.3 Magnitude and color differences

We compare the red and blue magnitudes and color as quoted in the NLTT and LHS catalogs (the Luyten-r and Luyten-b magnitudes), and the magnitudes and colors estimated from our survey with the help of the GSC2.2.1 ($`r`$, $`b`$, and $`br`$), to the magnitudes and colors of the same stars that are found in the Tycho catalogs ($`B_T`$, $`V_T`$, $`B_TV_T`$). The Tycho catalog magnitudes are accurate to about 0.1 mag, while photographic magnitudes are generally accurate to only 0.5 mags. We thus use the Tycho magnitudes as a standard of reference to compare the accuracy of the Luyten and POSS-II magnitudes.

Figure 6 reveals that the POSS-II magnitudes are significantly more accurate than the magnitudes estimated by Luyten. It also shows that Luyten-r, the “red” magnitude quoted in the Luyten catalogs, is actually closer to a visual V magnitude; Luyten-b and Luyten-r do match $`B_T`$ and $`V_T`$ relatively well. This warrants the use of the new POSS-II magnitudes as the reference for our updated catalog of HPM stars.

Figure 7 shows the generally good agreement between the Luyten-r - Luyten-b color and the Tycho $`B_TV_T`$ color, while there is a substantial difference between these two and the POSS-II $`br`$ color. The Tycho $`B_T`$ and $`V_T`$ passbands are spaced further apart than Johnson $`B`$ and $`V`$; there is a relationship $`BV=0.85(B_TV_T)`$. Figure 7 also shows that there is an extremely large scatter in the color-color relationship between the Luyten and POSS-II magnitude. Since we have shown that the POSS-II magnitudes are more accurate than the Luyten estimated magnitudes, we suggest that any classification based on the old Luyten magnitudes should be revised. It is possible that stars suspected to be white dwarfs based on the Luyten photometry may turn out to be red dwarfs and vice-versa. We demonstrate this by reconstructing the reduced proper motion diagram for the Luyten stars in the area covered by our survey.

### 4.4 Reduced proper motions

The reduced proper motion $`H`$ is obtained by adding the logarithm of the proper motion to the apparent magnitude of the star (Luyten 1925). Because both the apparent magnitude and proper motions are a function of the distance to the star, the distance terms cancel, and one is left with a measure of the combined absolute magnitude and transverse velocity. The reduced proper motion can be defined in a specific passband e.g.:

$$H_r=r+5+5\mathrm{log}\mu =M_r+5\mathrm{log}v_t3.38,$$

where $`r`$ and $`\mu `$ are the measured apparent magnitude and proper motion (in $`\mathrm{}`$ yr-1) and $`M_r`$ and $`v_t`$ are the absolute magnitude and sky-projected velocity component (in km s-1). The reduced proper motion is useful when plotted against color, as it yields a diagram similar to the Hertzprung-Russel diagram, but with an additional scatter due to the $`\mathrm{log}v_t`$ term. Stars of a given color with unusually large reduced proper motion either are intrinsically sub-luminous (such as white dwarfs) and/or have unusually large transverse velocities (halo subdwarfs). The main use of the reduced proper motion diagram for faint stars is thus to separate out the white dwarfs and the high velocity stars from the local K and M dwarfs.

We have built reduced proper motion / color diagrams for all the stars in our catalog for which we had Luyten-r and Luyten-b magnitudes and GSC2.2.1 $`r`$ and $`b`$ magnitudes. These essentially represent the subsample of old Luyten stars which were faint enough that we could get POSS-II magnitudes (brighter stars are saturated on the POSS plates and their magnitudes are uncertain). This excludes from the sample most of the LHS and NLTT stars observed by HIPPARCOS. The purpose of this exercise is to compare the quality of the red and blue magnitudes quoted by Luyten and those derived from the GSC2.2.1. A comparison of the reduced proper motion diagrams attests to the generally higher quality of the POSS-II magnitudes (see Figure 8). The scatter in color is smaller, and the white dwarf sequence (to the lower left) is better separated from the K-M dwarf sequence (the bulk of the stars on the upper right). The better separation is achieved partly because of the higher quality of the color determination in the POSS-II data, but also because the $`br`$ color index spans a larger dynamic range than Luyten-b - Luyten-r (since the Luyten color is actually equivalent to a $`BV`$). The larger span in dynamic range insures that the red dwarfs are shifted more to the left of the diagram, where they are more easily separated from the bluer white dwarfs.

## 5 Luyten stars not observed by HIPPARCOS and missed by SUPERBLINK

A total of 9 stars listed in the Luyten catalogs could not be found either in the Tycho catalog or on the DSS plates with SUPERBLINK. Three of the Luyten stars for which we could not find a match (LHS18, LHS35, LHS64) exceed the 2.0$`\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 search limit of SUPERBLINK, and are also not entered in the Tycho-2 catalog. We manually recovered these stars by inspecting the DSS fields in which they would be placed according to Luyten’s coordinates, and they were recovered at Luyten’s predicted positions.

We also examined DSS fields centered on the quoted location for the 6 other Luyten stars which SUPERBLINK failed to recover. We were able to visually identify 5 of the stars. Three of these (LHS223, LHS464, LHS3489) are relatively bright $`r`$=12-14 magnitude stars which are at the bright star limit of SUPERBLINK and below the completeness limit of the Tycho catalog. The other two stars (LHS153, LHS1103) are $`r=1617`$ stars, normally within the detection range of SUPERBLINK, but were missed for reasons that we have not fully explained yet. Both objects lie close to brighter stars at one epoch, but SUPERBLINK normally handles similar cases very well. One possibility we are currently investigating is that difficulty in handling the very different PSF in the POSS-I and POSS-II images for those specific objects might be the source of the problem.

The only LHS star which we were absolutely unable to recover, either with our software or by visual examination of the DSS plates, is the very faint star LHS1657, quoted by Luyten as having a red magnitude r=19.0 and a blue magnitude b=21.0. Absolutely no star could be found at the location predicted by Luyten, and visual examination of a $`15\mathrm{}\times 15\mathrm{}`$ field centered of the quoted position for this star failed to recover any HPM star at all. We conclude that, in all likeliness, this is a bogus entry in the LHS catalog (the only one in our survey area).

Overall, we find that SUPERBLINK achieves a recovery rate exceeding 99.5% for faint Luyten stars. This suggests that not more that a handful of HPM stars have been missed by our software, at least down to $`r`$=19.

## 6 New high proper motion stars discovered by SUPERBLINK

We have identified a total of 147 stars which did not match any entry from the Luyten catalogs. Six of those are close companions to Luyten stars (listed as single in the LHS and NLTT) identified with HIPPARCOS, and listed in the Tycho-2 catalog. The other 141 stars are entirely new objects discovered with SUPERBLINK, and identified here for the first time.

We verified if any of the new stars found by SUPEBLINK could be a previously unreported common proper motion companion to a Luyten star. We checked for the presence of Luyten stars within $`30\mathrm{}`$ of the new stars, with proper motion magnitudes within 5%. We discovered 2 new faint stars which are common proper motion companions to brighter Luyten stars (see §7 below).

The names, coordinates, and magnitudes of the 141 stars are listed in Table 4. We give the estimated coordinates of the stars for the epoch 2000.0, which we extrapolated from the measured position on the POSS-II with the estimated proper motion vector. The magnitude $`pm`$ of the proper motion, and the direction of the proper motion vector (proper motion angle, or $`pma`$) are also given in the table. We give the estimated values of the red and blue magnitudes ($`b`$ and $`r`$) in the POSS-II system. We are quoting the r and b magnitudes from the GSC2.2.1 for all those stars for which we were able to obtain a match. For all other stars (mainly stars with $`r<18.5`$) we estimated the magnitudes ourselves from the integrated plate flux. We could not obtain an estimate of the b magnitude for several of the faintest stars; these were too faint on the blue plates and often did not have any observable blue counterpart. All the quoted magnitudes are accurate to $`\pm 0.5`$. Finding charts for all 141 stars are presented in the appendix.

The distribution of new and old stars with galactic latitude is shown in Figure 9, for stars in the range $`13<r<16`$ (moderately faint) and $`16<r<20`$ (faint). The Luyten survey was virtually complete for bright stars ($`r<13`$). A significant number of moderately faint stars were missing at low galactic latitudes; most of the new moderately faint HPM stars were found within 15 of the plane. On the other hand, Luyten’s census of faint HPM stars was significantly incomplete, even at relatively high galactic latitudes ($`|b|20^{}`$), and listed only a handful of objects within $`10^{}`$ of the galactic plane. It remains to be verified whether significant numbers of faint HPM stars can be discovered at higher galactic latitudes ($`|b|>25^{}`$). The distribution with galactic latitude of the updated census of HPM stars is now consistent with a uniform distribution, which suggests that the survey is now complete, at least down to R=19.

## 7 New common proper motion companions to LHS stars

### 7.1 LSR0013+5437: a companion to LHS1039

We have discovered an r=17 star LSR0013+5437 located 343$`\mathrm{}`$ to the southeast of the r=13 star LSR0012+5439 (=LHS1039). Both stars have a proper motion $`\mu 0.98\mathrm{}`$ yr-1, with a proper motion angle $`52^{}`$. The primary star, also known as G217-38 (see Giclas, Burnham, & Thomas 1971), is a suspected M dwarf with no published spectrum or spectroscopically determined spectral type. A parallax of $`0.027\mathrm{}`$ for LHS1039 has been measured by Harrington & Dahn (1980), which suggest the star is at a distance $`37`$pc. At that distance, the projected separation between the components is $`12,500`$AU.

### 7.2 LSR0401+5131: a companion to LHS1618

We have discovered an r=16 star LSR0401+5131 located 495$`\mathrm{}`$ to the north of the r=12 star LSR0401+5123 (=LHS1618). Both stars have a proper motion $`\mu 0.85\mathrm{}`$ yr-1, with a proper motion angle $`24^{}`$. The star LHS1618 has been spectroscopically observed and classified M3.5 by Reid, Hawley, & Gizis (1995). It is a suspected nearby star listed in the Catalog of Nearby Stars, Preliminary 3rd Version (Gliese & Jahreiss 1991), with an estimated distance of $`39`$pc. At that distance, the projected separation between the components is a large $`19,300`$AU. The 4 magnitudes difference in their luminosity suggests that the secondary is an M5-M6 dwarf.

### 7.3 LSR1833+2219: a companion to LHS3392

This new distant companion to the nearby flare star LHS3392 (=V774 Her, =GJ718) has already been presented and discussed in a previous paper by us (Lépine, Shara & Rich 2002). Please refer to that paper for more details.

## 8 Conclusions

The current census of northern hemisphere stars with proper motion $`0.5<\mu <2.0\mathrm{}`$ yr-1 and within 25 of the galactic plane is now essentially complete down to $`r=19`$. There are at most a handful of such objects which remain to be identified.

The Luyten catalogs of high proper motion stars (LHS, NLTT) are significantly incomplete for faint ($`R>15`$) stars at low galactic latitudes. The Luyten catalogs also contain numerous errors in the positions of the stars, and should be replaced with new a new catalog of high proper motion stars.

We are currently expanding our search for high proper motion stars at higher galactic latitude in the northern sky. Results will be published in the next paper of this series.

Acknowledgments The late Barry Lasker was, for many years, project scientist of the Guide Stars Catalogs, and the Digitized Sky Surveys, at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The enormously positive impacts of these projects will continue to be felt in astronomy for decades to come. This work (and others to follow) are only possible because of Barry’s vision, tenacity and dedication, and we are grateful for his friendship and astronomical legacy. We also gratefully acknowledge the enormous efforts of Brian McLean and dozens of his colleagues: astronomers, engineers, programmers, data and archive technicians and plate scanners who made the Digitized Sky Surveys a reality. This research program has been supported by NSF grant AST-0087313 at the American Museum of Natural History, as part of the NSTARS program. This work has been made possible through the use of the Digitized Sky Surveys. The Digitized Sky Surveys were produced at the Space Telescope Science Institute under U.S. Government grant NAG W-2166. The images of these surveys are based on photographic data obtained using the Oschin Schmidt Telescope on Palomar Mountain and the UK Schmidt Telescope. The plates were processed into the present compressed digital form with the permission of these institutions. The National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory Sky Atlas (POSS-I) was made by the California Institute of Technology with grants from the National Geographic Society. The Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II) was made by the California Institute of Technology with funds from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Sloan Foundation, the Samuel Oschin Foundation, and the Eastman Kodak Corporation. The Oschin Schmidt Telescope is operated by the California Institute of Technology and Palomar Observatory. The UK Schmidt Telescope was operated by the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, with funding from the UK Science and Engineering Research Council (later the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council), until 1988 June, and thereafter by the Anglo-Australian Observatory. The blue plates of the southern Sky Atlas and its Equatorial Extension (together known as the SERC-J), as well as the Equatorial Red (ER), and the Second Epoch \[red\] Survey (SES) were all taken with the UK Schmidt. This work has been made possible through the use of the Guide Star Catalogue-II. The Guide Star Catalogue-II is a joint project of the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino. Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under contract NAS5-26555. The participation of the Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino is supported by the Italian Council for Research in Astronomy. Additional support is provided by European Southern Observatory, Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility, the International GEMINI project and the European Space Agency Astrophysics Division. The data mining required for this work has been made possible with the use of the SIMBAD astronomical database and VIZIER astronomical catalogs service, both maintained and operated by the Centre de Données Astronomiques de Strasbourg (http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/).

## Appendix A Finder charts

Finder charts of high proper motion stars are been generated as a by-product of the SUPERBLINK software. We present here finder charts for all the new, low galactic latitude, high proper motion stars presented in this paper. All the charts consist in pairs of $`4.25\mathrm{}\times 4.25\mathrm{}`$ images showing the local field at two different epochs. The name of the star is indicated in the center just below the chart, and correspond to the name given in Table 1. To the left is the POSS-I field, with the epoch of the field noted in the lower left corner (typically in the 1953-1955 range). To the right is the modified POSS-II field which has been shifted, rotated, and degraded in such a way that it matches the quality and aspect of the POSS-I image. The epoch of the POSS-II field is noted on the lower right corner. High proper motion stars are identified with circles centered on them.

The charts are oriented in the local X-Y coordinate system of the POSS-I image; the POSS-II image has been remapped on the POSS-I grid. This means that north is generally up and east left, but the fields might appear rotated by a small angle for high declination objects. Sometimes a part of the field is missing: this is an artifact of the code. SUPERBLINK works on $`17\mathrm{}\times 17\mathrm{}`$ DSS subfields. If a high proper motion star is identified near the edge of that subfield, the output chart will be truncated. Similar finder charts are automatically generated for every single object identified by the code, and we are currently building a large electronic catalog of two-epoch finder charts.


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# Nuclear Propelled Vessels and Neutrino Oscillation Experiments

## Abstract

We study the effect of naval nuclear reactors on the study of neutrino oscillations. We find that the presence of naval reactors at unknown locations and times may limit the accuracy of future very long baseline reactor-based neutrino oscillation experiments. At the same time we argue that a nuclear powered surface ship such as a large Russian ice-breaker may provide an ideal source for precision experiments. While the relatively low reactor power would in this case require a larger detector, the source could be conveniently located at essentially any distance from a detector built at an underground location near a shore in a region of the world far away from other nuclear installations. The variable baseline would allow for a precise measurement of backgrounds and greatly reduced systematics from reactor flux and detector efficiency. In addition, once the oscillation measurement is completed, the detector could perform geological neutrino and astrophysical measurements with minimal reactor background.

Reactor-based neutrino oscillation experiments  have recently generated renewed interest because of their ability to probe very small $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ values albeit with modest $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta `$ sensitivity. The $`1`$ km baseline experiments at the Chooz  and Palo Verde  reactors were optimized for the $`10^3\mathrm{eV}^2\mathrm{\Delta }m^210^2\mathrm{eV}^2`$ region and the large mixing angle suggested by the atmospheric neutrino anomaly . The negative results from these two experiments contributed to the elimination of $`\nu _\mathrm{e}`$ as a main component of the atmospheric neutrino signal. The KamLAND experiment , now taking data, was designed with a $`200`$ km baseline making it sensitive to the oscillation parameters in the large mixing angle solution (LMA-MSW) to the solar neutrino problem . In addition the Borexino detector , although designed to detect the 7Be neutrinos from the sun, might also perform oscillation measurements using European reactors .

In the future the interest for reactor-based neutrino oscillation experiments may shift towards the possibility of performing precision measurements. A proposal has been put forward  to improve the measurement of $`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{13}`$ beyond the $`0.1`$ sensitivity of Chooz and Palo Verde with a high statistics, $``$1 km baseline (double) detector. If the MSW solution is confirmed, depending on the $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ value found by KamLAND, it may be appropriate to build either a larger detector ($``$10-20 kton) with a similar baseline  or a somewhat smaller detector with a $`1020`$ km baseline to perform precision measurements.

Very little attention has been given until now to the background due to nuclear propelled vessels to these experiments. Although we estimate that the total thermal power generated by such vessels is just a few percent of the total nuclear thermal power in the world, we will show that the mobility and stealthy nature of these installations may produce backgrounds for the present generation experiments. In the case of future detectors, awareness of the background from naval reactors and careful geographical placement will be essential to retain the ability to perform meaningful measurements.

It is also interesting to consider whether this apparent liability could be turned into an asset, by placing the detector far away from any fixed nuclear installations and bringing in a reactor on a vessel. The variable baseline available this way would be important to cancel most systematics and tune the experiment to some particular set of oscillation parameters. In addition, in the case of a very large detector, removing the reactor altogether would allow for lower backgrounds in the study of geological  and astrophysical neutrinos.

Naval reactors are mainly installed in submarines, providing underwater endurance and larger power density than conventional engines. Many aircraft carriers and few other large military vessels are also nuclear powered. While, in general, nuclear propulsion for civilian vessels has only reached the demonstration stage, a notable exception is represented by the Russian fleet of large icebreaker that today counts some seven operational ships. Also in this case the large amount of power and the endurance make nuclear propulsion particularly appropriate for forcing routes through the northern coast of Siberia.

While many details of the design and operation of naval reactors are not available in the open literature, for the purpose of this paper it will be sufficient to consider the thermal power and, in some cases, a crude estimate of the fuel composition, parameters that are available at least for some reactor types. Typical thermal powers are available for Russian vessels  and can be estimated from the quoted “shaft-power”  for American aircraft carriers assuming a thermodynamical yield of 30% from thermal power to mechanical (shaft) power. In order to estimate the backgrounds from naval reactors to existing experiments we will consider a “Typhoon” class Russian submarine to transit in the closest tract of sea to KamLAND (Toyama Bay, Sea of Japan) and Borexino (Adriatic Sea). In addition we will consider the effect on these experiments of a US aircraft carrier entering a large military harbor, such as there exist both in Japan (Yokosuka) and Italy (Naples). “Typhoon” subs are the largest submarines ever built. They are propelled by two reactors with total power of 0.38 GWth. While other subs have lower power (and often one reactor only), we will use 0.38 GWth as an upper limit for power installed in submarines. As far as we know, both the Sea of Japan and the Adriatic are possibly visited by Russian and/or western submarines for unknown periods and at unknown times.

As discussed above we can calculate that the USS Enterprise uses $``$0.84 GWth for propulsion, generated by two of its eight reactors. Possibly another reactor (and $``$0.42 GWth) is used to produce steam for the catapults launching aircrafts. Other US carriers have marginally lower power. At least in principle these ships are easy to detect and their location is not kept secret, so we will not examine the case of one of such ships transiting close to shore at the point of closest approach to the experiments (however we point out that at present none of the experiments is keeping track of the whereabouts of such ships). To estimate an order of magnitude for the background we will simply assume that one of these ships, with only the propulsion power of $``$0.84 GWth is in transit at Yokosuka or Naples. Although presumably ships do not enter harbors at full power, the number of surface and submarine ships at these two locations is probably larger than one at any given time. A comparison between the signal from fixed reactors and the background from naval reactors is given in Table I. For simplicity the flux and count rates from naval reactors have been estimated by assuming the same anti-neutrino spectrum produced by stationary power reactors. Differences in fuel composition, which will be discussed later, do not alter appreciably the situation.

Keeping in mind that systematics of at least 2-3% have to be expected in this kind of experiments  it is clear from the table that the effect of nuclear vessels is not very important at KamLAND, although some method will have to be devised to assign a systematic. The situation is already somewhat different for Borexino, in which case a reliable estimate of this systematic error appears essential and rather difficult. The possible presence of naval reactors seems even more problematic for future experiments that might be built for precision measurements of oscillations. It is likely that both Gran Sasso and Kamioka will result unsuitable for such future endeavors. Continental location such as Baksan, Heilbron , Homestake, Soudan and WIPP at Carlsbad are a-priori much more suitable from this point of view. We also note, in passing, that while naval reactors appear to be a problem for precision measurements of reactor neutrinos, their effect is not sufficient to allow reliable and efficient detection of the vessel carrying them, at least for any conceivable detector size.

We now discuss the possibility of using a naval reactor as a mobile source of anti-neutrinos in oscillation experiments. Variable baseline experiments are known to have a number of advantages over fixed ones. However, as long baseline experiments become larger and require massive shielding, the possibility of moving the detector becomes technically difficult. Neutrino sources also are considered un-movable, both in the case of accelerators and reactors. Since the oscillatory term is proportional to $`L/E`$, where $`L`$ is the baseline and $`E`$ is the neutrino energy, a change in energy is equivalent to a change in baseline. Indeed this feature is used in accelerator experiments as well as reactor experiments, where $`E`$ naturally spans the region 1.8 – 9 MeV. With some luck the $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ for $`\overline{\nu }_e\overline{\nu }_X`$ oscillations will be such that KamLAND will observe a spectrum vastly distorted by oscillations. However the range of energies accessible with a reactor or a single accelerator beam-line pointing in a fixed direction is limited. In addition, in the case of reactors, the construction of several detectors at different distances does not allow one to cancel the very important systematic error contributions from backgrounds and detector efficiencies. A naval reactor used as anti-neutrino source with a detector installed underground near a waterway may come close to the ideal setup. While it appears out of question to consider using a military vessel for this purpose, a ship from the Russian nuclear icebreaker fleet may well be made available, particularly outside their operating season.

Five “Arktica” class nuclear icebreakers are operated commercially by the Murmansk Shipping Company (MSCO) . While the main mission of the fleet is to guide cargo vessels along the northern coast of Siberia, some of the ships have been employed in a variety of tasks, including taking tourists to the North Pole. Each of these icebreakers is powered by two 100 MWth nuclear reactors for a total power of 200 MWth. The cores are loaded with uranium enriched to 20% in 235 approximately every three years. For reference in Figure 1 we compare the anti-neutrino spectrum produced by a hypothetical reactor built 100% of 235U with the more familiar case of a commercial reactor at the beginning and at the end of a fuel cycle (most commercial reactors at the end of a fuel cycle replace 1/4 to 1/3 of their fuel with uranium enriched to 4% in 235U). The spectrum from the icebreaker’s reactors will lay somewhere between those presented in the figure depending upon the burn-up stage of the core. While the exact spectrum will have to be accurately known for an actual experiment, for the purpose of this analysis we will simply assume a 100% 235U core.

The lower power levels available from naval reactors call for a larger detector. We will assume to have a liquid scintillator detector with 20 ktons fiducial mass and a hydrogen to carbon ratio of 2 (as in KamLAND). Scintillation detectors of this size have been discussed  and would fit in cavities of the size occupied by SuperKamiokande. At 2 km distance from the naval reactor such a detector would observe $`3.9\times 10^5\overline{\nu }_e\mathrm{yr}^1`$. Such a rate, scaling with $`1/L^2`$, would reduce to $`1.6\times 10^4\overline{\nu }_e\mathrm{yr}^1`$ at 10 km and $`9.8\times 10^2\overline{\nu }_e\mathrm{yr}^1`$ at 40 km. The detector would have to be built at an underground location very far from permanent nuclear installations but accessible by water. An initial extended period of data with no icebreaker in the vicinity would be used to measure the background and other natural phenomena. We can assume that at the end of this period the background will be known with negligible error, as it was in the case of Chooz. The naval reactor would then be brought to the point of closest proximity, that we assume to be 2 km (closer distances are excluded by the need for detector shielding). A 1 month measurement at this distance would give a flux/detector efficiency calibration at the 0.5% level. Measurements would then be performed at a variety of intermediate distances, first in short periods to identify the optimal baseline, then, probably, for an extended period at this optimal place. The calibration run may then be repeated before switching to a second phase in the program, with no reactor, when geological neutrinos and astrophysical sources would be addressed without reactor background. The large size of the detector would be justified also by this second phase of experimentation. It may be appropriate during the lifetime of the detector to periodically bring the icebreaker in for calibrations with neutrinos.

A detailed running strategy for the reactor neutrino oscillation experiment would have to be established also taking into account the knowledge of the neutrino mixing matrix at the time of the experiment. Here we estimate the sensitivity of this scheme assuming that data is collected for one year at the optimal baseline for each hypothetical value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$. For each pair of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ and $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta `$ we then estimate the 95% CL contours of the measurement. In Figure 2 we plot the projections of such contours (errors in $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ and $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta `$) as functions of $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ along with the same quantities for 100 ton  and 1 kton detectors at a fixed baseline of 20 km. The three curves for the variable baseline case refer to different mixing angle values. While in the fixed reactor case a systematic error of 2.7% is used, in the case of the movable reactor we assume a 0.5% systematic error (consistent with the superior ability to measure backgrounds and efficiency). Appropriate statistical errors are applied to each case.

Clearly the sensitivity of the fixed baseline case is dominated by the oscillation pattern, while the variable baseline case becomes limited by statistics at large distances (small $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$). It should be noted here that the small 0.5% systematic error assumed here would be dominated by the relative reactor power measurement between calibration and data taking phases. It appears like such relative error for reactors mounted on icebreakers is currently only of about 10% . Therefore some engineering would be needed to install precise temperature and flow gauges on the cooling water loops. Commercial nuclear power plants typically measure their power to better than 1% in absolute terms, so the error we quote should be easily attainable. The possibility of running the reactors at full power with the ship stationary (i.e. without dissipating $``$1/3 of the power in moving the ship) would also have to be investigated.

Several general locations would have to be investigated in order to find the optimal location for an experiment of this kind. In general it appears like the subarctic regions may indeed offer the best chances for underground sites near closed waterways and surrounded by a geophysics that is optimal for the later study of geological neutrinos. Furthermore these regions are far from permanent nuclear power plants. Ideally one of the Siberian rivers would ensure that no other nuclear powered vessel approaches the detector, although similar conditions could also be satisfied in a number of Canadian bays accessible from the Arctic Ocean.

We would like to thank Mr. A. Chernov, Mr. G. Kornilov and Dr. Yu.V. Sivintsev for the help in understanding the performance of reactors on Russian icebreakers and Drs. N. Sleep and P. Vogel for critical readings of the manuscript. This work has been supported, in part, by US DoE Grant DE-FG03-90ER40569-A019.


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# Andreev quantum dots for spin manipulation

## Abstract

We investigate the feasibility of manipulating individual spin in a superconducting junction where Bogolyubov quasiparticles can be trapped in discrete Andreev levels. We call this system Andreev Quantum Dot (AQD) to be contrasted with a common semiconductor quantum dot. We show that AQD can be brought into a spin-1/2 state. The coupling between spin and superconducting current facilitate manipulation and measurement of this state. We demonstrate that one can operate two inductively coupled AQD’s as a XOR gate, this enables quantum computing applications.

Manipulation and operation of individual quantum systems and arrays of such systems, so-called “quantum machines” is now in focus of both experimental and theoretical research 1Vion-Devoret ; 2Yu-Jozsa . The progress in quantum computing algorithms 3Ekert-Jozsa  has demonstrated potential applicability of quantum mechanics thus stimulating various proposals to implement arrays of operational two-state systems (qubits) in solid-state 4Loss-DiVincenzo ; 5Recher-Levy ; 6Shnirman-Hermon ; 7Averin ; 8Mooij-Lloyd ; 9Kane ; 10Makhlin-Schnirman ; 11Ioffe-Blatter ; 12Nakamura-Tsai ; 13Ioffe . Many proposals concern quantum dots. The quantum dots are often referred to as artificial atoms since they confine a discrete number of particles that occupy discrete quantum states. In contrast to atoms, the properties of quantum dots can be tuned and their charge and spin degrees of freedom can be controlled. This would allow for quantum manipulation. An interesting and elaborated proposal 4Loss-DiVincenzo ; 5Recher-Levy  utilizes spin states of semiconductor quantum dots. However, the complexity of the manipulation schemes proposed and severe difficulties with the read-out of these spin states 5Recher-Levy ; 14Recher  drives one to think of alternatives.

Below we present an alternative scheme for individual spin manipulation. We concentrate on sufficiently resistive superconducting constrictions where individual Bogolybov quasiparticles can be trapped in discrete Andreev bound states. We refer to such system as Andreev Quantum Dots (AQD). An AQD resembles a common quantum dot as long as discreetness of a (quaisi)particle number, spectrum and spin is concerned. Albeit in contrast to a common quantum dot the charge of the AQD is not fixed. This allows for superconducting current in the constriction and makes electron-electron interaction negligible.

We propose to utilize spin states of the AQD’s. We show that an AQD can be brought to the state with spin-1/2 that persist over a long time. It is important that the spin direction in this state determines the superconducting current in the constriction, thus solving the read-out problem. We demonstrate that the spin state of a single AQD can be manipulated. Further, the two dots can be inductively coupled to make a XOR quantum gate. Quantum information theory 3Ekert-Jozsa  proves that this enables one to build a universal quantum computer.

The AQD can be formed in any constriction between two superconducting leads that have a gap in energy spectrum. If an electron with the energy below the gap tries to escape to the bulk of a superconductor, it is reflected back as a hole (Andreev reflection Andreev ), which also can not escape due to the same reason. So that, the junction confines quasiparticles that are coherent mixtures of electron and holes. Their discrete energy levels and eigenfunctions are determined by Bogoliubov equations (BdG) dG . It is sometimes forgotten that these equations do possess a spin structure. Bogoliubov eigenfunctions are made of two spinors Landau3  $`u^\alpha ,v^\alpha `$ \[coefficients of the Bogoliubov transformation dG  $`\mathrm{\Psi }(r,\sigma )=_n(u_n(r,\sigma )\gamma _n+g^{\sigma \mu }v_n^{}(r,\mu )\gamma _n^{})`$\] that satisfy

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \epsilon u^\alpha & =\widehat{H}_\beta ^\alpha u^\beta +\widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}v^\alpha \hfill \\ \hfill \epsilon v^\alpha & =[\widehat{H}^{}]_\beta ^\alpha v^\beta +\widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}^{}u^\alpha ,\hfill \end{array}$$
(1)
Here “hat” denotes an operator over orbital degrees of freedom. We make explicit the spin structure of the single-particle Hamiltonian $`H`$ and pair potential $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, $`g_{\alpha \beta }i\sigma ^y`$ being metric tensor in spinor space Landau3 , $`(\widehat{H}^{})_\beta ^\alpha g^{\nu \alpha }(\widehat{H}_\mu ^\nu )^{}g_{\mu \beta }`$. By virtue of Eq. (1) quasiparticle energy levels always come in pairs: each eigenstate with energy $`\epsilon `$ has a counterpart with energy $`\epsilon `$. This is due to a double-counting: there are two quasiparticle eigenfunctions per each state of $`H`$. Should $`\widehat{H}`$ possess no spin structure, Andreev levels are spin-degenerate. For many problems that do not involve spin, one can avoid the double counting by considering one non-degenerate level. This technical trick does not correspond to original formulation of superconductivity theory 17\_1/2 ; dG , neither it gives the correct description of spin in superconductors.

We concentrate on a short constriction, such that the typical time for an electron $`\tau _{_{\mathrm{flight}}}`$ to traverse the junction satisfies the condition $`\tau _{_{\mathrm{flight}}}\mathrm{}/\mathrm{\Delta }`$. In the limit $`\tau _{_{\mathrm{flight}}}\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{}0`$, and in the absence of magnetic field Andreev levels are spin-degenerate and can be universally expressed 16Beenakker  through eigenvalues $`T_n`$ of the transmission matrix square, $`\epsilon _{n_1,n_2;\sigma }=\mathrm{sign}(n_2)\mathrm{\Delta }\sqrt{1T_{n_1}\mathrm{sin}^2(\phi /2)}`$. Here the integer index $`n_1`$ labels orbital channels, $`n_2=\pm 1`$, $`\sigma =\pm 1`$ is spin-index and $`\phi `$ stands for the superconducting phase difference between the leads.

Andreev levels that are relevant for electron transport, and for manipulation of spin states, originate from $`T_n1`$. These levels are distributed in energy strip $`\mathrm{\Delta }|\mathrm{cos}(\phi /2)|<|\epsilon |<\mathrm{\Delta }`$. Their typical spacing is given by $`\delta E\mathrm{\Delta }G_QR`$, $`R`$ being the normal state resistance of the constriction,$`G_Q`$ being the conductance quantum 15Imry . This estimation is valid for any sufficiently disordered constriction except tunnel junctions for which all $`T_n1`$. To give an estimation, for $`R`$ 10 Ohm and $`\mathrm{\Delta }10`$K, the spacing $`\delta E100`$mK, this is typical for semiconductor QD. It is remarkable that that the Andreev levels do not depend on microscopic and geometric details of the constriction by means other than conductance and transmission amplitudes. This fact considerably simplifies the fabrication of Andreev dots with discrete Andreev levels.

In the ground state of the dot, quasiparticles occupy Andreev levels with negative energy. The $`\phi `$-dependent part of the ground state energy reads $`E_0=1/2_{n\sigma }\epsilon _{n\sigma }\mathrm{\Theta }(\epsilon _{n\sigma })`$ where we sum over channel and spin index; $`\mathrm{\Theta }(x)=1`$ for $`x>0`$ and zero for $`x0`$. The factor $`1/2`$ comes from the double-counting mentioned.17\_1/2  If spin splitting of Andreev levels is smaller than $`\delta E`$, the ground state has zero spin, since both components of the spin dublet are occupied by quasiparticles. In an excited state of the AQD, some Andreev levels with positive energy are populated. Let us concentrate on a given transport channel where there are two such Andreev levels corresponding to two spin directions. One quasiparticle fills either level, the AQD has spin-1/2. Second quasiparticle fills the level with the opposite spin resulting in an excited spin-singlet state. (Fig. 1a) The spin-1/2 state of an AQD with the lowest energy (that corresponds to the most transparent transport channel) is of particular interest because it is very stable. The transition to ground state require the 1/2 change of spin. This means that a quasiparticle must either leave or enter the AQD. The probabilities of these processes contain exponentially small factors $`\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{\Delta }/k_BT)`$, this means that at zero temperature the AQD would remain in spin-1/2 forever. The physics involved is very similar to well-known parity effect in superconducting grains 18Averin-Nazarov . Thus it is possible to preserve the system for a long time in this spin-1/2 state.

How to set the AQD to spin-1/2 state? Possibilities include microwave irradiation 19Lundin  and quasiparticle injection 20Wendin . We concentrate on the first possibility. Let us assume that the irradiation frequency $`\omega `$ satisfies $`\mathrm{\Delta }+\epsilon _0<\mathrm{}\omega <2\mathrm{\Delta }`$. Under these conditions, the absorption of the irradiation quanta takes place in the constriction only. If initial state is the ground state, each absorption generates two quasiparticles. There are two possibilities: 1) both quasiparticles appear in bound Andreev states; 2) one quasiparticle appears in a bound state whereas another one acquires energy $`>\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and gets to the extended state (photoemission); the latter quasiparticle leaves the AQD almost immediately and never comes back. Next absorption process can occur in excited state, in this case the energy balance allows extra processes: 1) two quasiparticles leave the dot, 2) one quasiparticle in a bound state is excited over the energy barrier and leaves the dot. In any case, the processes of the first type are irrelevant not changing the parity of the AQD. Processes of the second type switch the AQD between states with even and odd number of quasiparticles. If the irradiation lasts long enough for many processes of the second type to occur, the AQD is in the state with half-integer spin with 50 % probability. Let us now switch off the irradiation. If there is an even number of quasiparticles in the AQD, the subsequent energy relaxation will drive the system to the ground state. For an odd number of particles, the relaxation will result in a stable single quasiparticle occupying the lowermost Andreev level, the lowermost spin-1/2 state we are after.

How to detect the spin-1/2 state? It is important that the superconducting current in the constriction is different for the states involved, since their $`\phi `$-dependent energies are different. Here we concentare on a channel $`n`$ and count energy from the ground state energy of quasiparticles in all other channels, $`E_g+|\epsilon _n|`$. The energies then are $`|\epsilon _n|`$, $`0`$, and $`|\epsilon _n|`$ for ground, spin-1/2, and excited singlet state respectively.(Fig. 1b) and the superconducting current equals to $`I=e_\phi E/\mathrm{}`$. The change from the ground to spin-1/2 state is therefore manifested as a change of supeconducting current by a value of $`\delta Ie_\phi \epsilon _{n\sigma }/\mathrm{}`$. The detection of such current jumps in superconducting constrictions would amount to the direct experimental observation of the spin-1/2 state.

How to detect spin in the spin-1/2 state? An important advantage of an AQD is that its spin state affects the superconducting current, the latter being detected and/or measured. This is due to spin-orbit splitting of Andreev levels. Generally, one expects such splitting given the fact that the supeconducting phase difference changes sign under time reversal so that Kramers theorem does not hold. A confusing circumstance is that the Kramers theorem does hold in the universal limit of short constriction considered. To get spin-orbit splitting, one considers extra perturbative corrections of the first order in $`\tau _{_{\mathrm{flight}}}\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{}`$. The calculation based on the scattering matrix approach 16Beenakker  with the use of Eq.(1) yields the following effective Hamiltonian for the spin-spitting in question:

$$E_n^{(SO)}=\mathrm{\Delta }(𝜶_n𝝈)\mathrm{sin}(\phi )(\tau _{_{\mathrm{flight}}}\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{}),$$
(2)
$`𝝈`$ being the pseudovector operator of spin. Here a dimensionless pseudovector $`𝜶_n`$ is a property of a given Andreev level not depending on $`\phi `$; it is proportional to the spin-orbit constant that routinely contains a nuclear charge of the material $`Z`$, $`|𝜶|Z(e^2/\mathrm{}c)`$. For example, in a quasi-ballistic SNS junction $`𝜶`$ is directed along the vector product of the quasiparticle momentum $`𝐩`$ ($`|𝐩|p_F`$) and the direction of the electric (crystal) field $`𝐄`$ for $`\phi >0`$: $`𝜶𝐩\times 𝐄`$; but when $`\phi <0`$, $`𝐩`$ changes its direction to the opposite and $`𝜶𝐩\times 𝐄`$. This change of the direction of the quasiparticle momentum (Andreev state “chirality”) with the sign of $`\phi `$ is the reason why the Andreev level spin-splitting in Eq.(2) has rather unusual odd dependence on $`\phi `$ \[this is general property of spin-orbit Andreeev level splitting\]. The technical model to derive Eq.(2) was a one-channel conductor with two scatterers separated by a distance corresponding to $`\tau _{\mathrm{flight}}`$. Both scattering matrices contained spin-orbit part. The model showed that in not very short constrictions ($`\tau _{_{\mathrm{flight}}}\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{}1`$) spin-orbit level splitting aquired more complicated dependence on $`\phi `$ and could be of the order of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ provided spin-orbit scattering was comparable with orbital one. Thus the splitting can be huge: for a material with heavy nuclei $`𝜶`$ can become of the order of unity. To show how big can be the effect, let us consider an AQD embedded into a superconducting loop with self-inductance $`L`$. The spin produces an extra superconducting current $`I_\sigma =e\sigma _\phi E^{(SO)}\mathrm{}`$ and an extra magnetic moment per spin thereby. Let us estimate the maximum possible value of this magnetic moment. For this, we set $`\tau _{_{\mathrm{flight}}}\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{}`$ ,$`|𝜶|1`$, and concentrate on a resistive constriction $`RR_Q`$ \[so that the critical current is of the order of $`e\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{}`$\]. The inductance $`L`$ of a typical SQUID loop does not exceed $`1cm`$ Likharev  thus the extra magnetic moment $`\delta M(e\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{})L^2/c10^{12}\mu _B`$.

Let us give a simple example of spin manipulation in the AQD. For this, we need to invoke Zeeman splitting of Andreev level in magnetic field $`\sigma E^{(Z)}`$ in addition to spin-orbit splitting $`\sigma E_n^{(SO)}`$. This allows us to control the direction of spin quantization by the magnetic field, this possibility being absent if we work with spin-orbit only. To achieve comparable $`E^{(Z)}`$ and $`E^{(SO)}`$, the magnetic field should be almost ”in plane” not affecting the flux in the SQUID loop and thus $`\phi `$. Let us assume that we manage to achieve this so that the quantization axis of spin may deviate substantially from $`𝜶`$. The spin wave function is therefore a coherent mixture of the states $`|`$, $`|`$ with spin parallel or antiparallel to $`𝜶`$ respectively. Quite generally, $`\mathrm{\Psi }=a|+b|`$, where $`|a|^2+|b|^2=1`$. If there is no in-plane field, the system is in the ground state $`|`$,spin quantization axis being parallel to $`𝜶`$. Now let us switch on the in-plane field. The Hamiltonian governing dynamics of the wave function will thus become : $`H=g\mu _B(𝝈𝐇)+\widehat{E}_{(SO)}`$. Let us assume the simplest form of the resulting Hamiltonian: $`H=E^{(Z)}\widehat{\sigma }_y+E^{(SO)}\widehat{\sigma }_z`$, $`E^{(Z)}E^{(SO)}`$. The wave function will then evolve according to

$`\mathrm{\Psi }(t)=|\left(\mathrm{cos}(\mathrm{\Omega }t)+i\mathrm{sin}(\mathrm{\Omega }t)(E^{(SO)}/\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Omega })\right)`$
$`|\mathrm{sin}(\mathrm{\Omega }t)(E^{(Z)}/\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Omega }),`$
where $`\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Omega }=\sqrt{(E^{(SO)})^2+(E^{(Z)})^2}`$ is the frequency of Rabi oscillations. It is important to note that these oscillations can be readily detected since they produce an alternating current

$$I_a(t)=2\mathrm{sin}^2(\mathrm{\Omega }t)\left(\frac{E^{(Z)}}{\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Omega }}\right)^2e_\phi E^{(SO)}/\mathrm{}.$$
(3)
Another way of manipulation is readily borrowed from the quantum optics: if the in-plane magnetic field oscillates with the resonant frequency $`E_{SO}`$, a significant manipulaton effect can be achieved even if $`E^{(Z)}E^{(SO)}`$ book:Mandel\_Wolf . A general unitary transformation of the spin-wave function can be performed exposing the junction to the time-dependent $`E^{(Z)}`$, quite similar to many other solid-state implementations of the qubits.

Let us discuss now how the Andreev quantum dots can be utilized for universal quantum computations. An AQD in the spin-1/2 state would be a qubit. We have discussed above how to manipulate the spin of a single AQD. This is how the single-qubit operations can be performed. A quantum computation algorithm should involve two-qubit operations as well. An important theoretical result 3Ekert-Jozsa  establishes that the XOR operation with two qubits along with single-qubit operations forms a minimum set that is sufficient to build up an arbitrary complex universal quantum computer. The XOR operation does the following: given two qubits in the states $`|x`$, $`|y`$, it leaves the $`|y`$ state unchanged if $`|x=|`$, while flipping it when $`|x=|`$. So we concentrate on a possible realization of XOR operation for two AQD’s.

The basic idea is to organize the interaction between AQD’s via inductive coupling between SQUID loops containing these AQD’s \[see Fig. 2\].

The two-qubit operations are performed by varying the mutual inductance between two given loops. Indeed, in this case the interaction between two AQD’s can be described by a simple hamiltonian $`H=L_{12}I_1I_2`$, $`L_{12}`$ being the mutual inductance, $`I_{1(2)}`$ standing for operators of currents in corresponding loops. Owing to spin-orbit interaction, each current depends on spin state of corresponding AQD: $`I_{1,2}=I_{1,2}^{(0)}+I_{1,2}^ss_{1,2}^z`$. Here we choose $`z`$-axis in the space of each spin in the direction of corresponding pseudovector $`𝜶`$. This is to stress the following circumstance: although the pseudovectors $`𝜶`$ in different AQD’s may differ, there is always only one component of spin that is reflected in the current and therefore takes part in the interaction. So that, the relevant part of the Hamiltonian can be written as

$$H=H_1s_1^z+H_2s_2^z+H_{12}s_1^zs_2^z.$$
(4)
This simple Ising-type form of Hamiltonian brings us to the old-fashioned but solid ”optical” quantum computer 21Lloyd . In this approach, the one-bit operations are performed at $`H_{12}=0`$ by pulses at resonant frequencies $`H_1/\mathrm{}`$ or $`H_2/\mathrm{}`$, the pulse duration being tuned to achieve the spin flip. The XOR operation is performed at $`H_{12}0`$ by the same pulse with frequency $`(H_1+H_2)/\mathrm{}`$. An alternative way is to use non-oscillating pulses of $`H_{12}/\mathrm{}`$. Such pulses would shift phases of two states with antiparallel spins with respect to the phases of the states with parallel spins thus realizing “quantum phase shift gate” 22Barenco . The XOR operation can be performed by combining two such phase shifts with two rotations of the target spin.

This approach of organizing two-qubit interactions has two important practical advantages. First, in contrast to other spin-based proposals, the interaction does not have to be organized at microscopic level. To exaggerate, one can use inch-scale transformers to vary inductive coupling between the AQD’s. To make a practical suggestion, one can use the well-developed techniques of SQUID circuitry 23Turchette ; 24Mukhanov  to couple, array, bias, and measure many AQD qubits. Second advantage is the simple Ising form of the resulting interaction that prevents undesired phase shifts and simplifies design of complicated quantum circuits.

To conclude, we analyze prospectives of Andreev quantum dots for spin manipulation and quantum computing. Our theoretical results seem to be promising enough to launch detailed experimental investigations and design efforts in this direction.

We wish to thank RFBR (projects No. 03-02-06259, 03-02-16677, and 03-02-17494), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), the Swiss NSF, the programs of the Russian Ministry of Science: Mesoscopic systems and Quantum computations and the program of the leading scientific schools support.