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# Untitled Document

hep-th/0209138 HUTP-02/A046

Perturbative Derivation of Mirror Symmetry

Mina $`\mathrm{Aganagic}`$ and Cumrun $`\mathrm{Vafa}`$

Jefferson Physical Laboratory

Harvard University

Cambridge, MA 02138

Abstract

We provide a purely perturbative (one loop) derivation of mirror symmetry for supersymmetric sigma models in two dimensions.

September, 2002

1. Introduction

In  a proof of mirror symmetry was provided in terms of equivalence of linear sigma models and certain Landau-Ginsburg theories. In the proof non-perturbative physics, i.e. generation of superpotential by vortices, played a crucial role. In this brief note we provide a $`perturbative`$ derivation of mirror symmetry, which can be viewed as a purely perturbative reinterpretation of the derivation of .

The main motivation to revisit the proof of mirror symmetry is based on the recent results in , where it was shown that instanton effects in massive $`𝒩=1`$ supersymmetric theories in four dimensions can be evaluated in perturbation theory (see also the followup work \[3,,4\]). Moreover it was shown that this allows one to derive non-perturbative S-dualities for 4d supersymmetric field theories from a perturbative perspective. This leads naturally to the question of whether one can also derive mirror symmetry for two dimensional supersymmetric sigma models, which involves non-perturbative physics, using only perturbative techniques. We will show that this is indeed the case.

2. Perturbative Derivation of Mirror Symmetry

Consider, for example, a $`d=2`$ supersymmetric sigma model for a non-compact toric manifold which can be realized as an $`𝒩=(2,2)`$ linear sigma model with one abelian vector multiplet and $`n`$ chiral fields charged under it . The arguments below easily generalize to the case with more than one $`U(1)`$ gauge group. The local geometry is specified by the charges of chiral fields $`Q_i`$, $`i=1,\mathrm{}n`$ and the FI term $`t`$. Provided that charges sum up to zero $`_iQ_i=0`$ the theory is expected to flow to a conformal theory corresponding to a Calabi-Yau target geometry. In such a case, the Higgs-branch theory is a non-compact Calabi-Yau manifold $`X`$ with $`h_{1,1}(X)=1`$, and Kahler class proportional to $`t`$. We will consider, as in , mirror symmetry in a more generalized sense which includes non-Ricci flat target geometries as well.

It is well known that the quantum cohomology ring for supersymmetric sigma models on Kahler manifolds with $`c_1>0`$ can be understood from purely perturbative perspective. For example for $`\text{ }\mathrm{C}P^n`$, which can be realized as a $`U(1)`$ linear sigma model with $`n+1`$ charged fields, integrating out the charged fields leads to a one loop generation of the superpotential

$$W=\mathrm{\Sigma }(\mathrm{log}\mathrm{\Sigma }^{n+1}(n+1))+t\mathrm{\Sigma }$$

where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the twisted chiral superfield containing the gauge field. This also leads to the quantum cohomology ring

$$dW=0\mathrm{\Sigma }^{n+1}=e^t,$$

as is well known, where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ plays the role of the Kahler class. Note that as long as $`\mathrm{\Sigma }0`$ the charged fields pick up a mass $`M_iQ_i\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and can be integrated out. The fact that extremization of the superpotential leads to a non-vanishing value of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ makes integrating out the charged fields a self-consistent scheme. The generalization of the above superpotential and quantum cohomology to other $`c_1>0`$ Kahler manifolds has been studied in .

For the conformal case, where $`_iQ_i=0`$ integrating out the charged fields would not be completely justified, as $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=0`$ is not dynamically ruled out and thus this does not give a complete self-consistent description of the theory. However, as discussed in  it is also natural to consider twisted mass deformations of this theory given by weakly gauging the global symmetries while freezing the corresponding vector multiplet scalars to fixed non-zero values (for earlier work on these deformations see ). Now, integrating out the massive charged fields is justified and the exact twisted superpotential is generated at one loop for the dynamical vector multiplet $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. For simplicity of notation define

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_i=Q_i\mathrm{\Sigma }+m_i,$$
$`(2.1)`$
where $`m_i`$ is the twisted mass of the charged fields. The superpotential is, up to a constant, ,

$$W(\mathrm{\Sigma })=\underset{i}{}\mathrm{\Sigma }_i(log\mathrm{\Sigma }_i1)+t_i\mathrm{\Sigma }_i,$$
$`(2.2)`$
where $`t_i=t/nQ_i`$. The path integral (which we present only schematically)

$$Z(m,t)=𝒟\mathrm{\Sigma }e^{W(\mathrm{\Sigma })}$$
$`(2.3)`$
can be rewritten in terms of integral over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_i`$ with a delta function that freezes the non-dynamical part: this should constrain $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_i`$ to satisfy $`n1`$ linear relations that imply (2.1)

$$\underset{i}{}R_i^A\mathrm{\Sigma }_i=m^A.$$
$`(2.4)`$
That is, $`R`$’s are orthogonal to $`Q`$’s

$$\underset{i}{}R_i^AQ_i=0,$$

for $`A=1,\mathrm{},n1`$ and the $`n1`$ physical mass terms are given by $`m^A`$. The constraints (2.4) can be imposed by introducing new twisted chiral fields $`Y_A`$ in the theory, playing the role of Lagrange multipliers for the constraints. These fields are such that if we integrate them out we get back the original theory with the same superpotential. In particular we consider the action

$$Z(m,t)=\underset{i,A}{}𝒟\mathrm{\Sigma }_i𝒟Y_Ae^{_i\mathrm{\Sigma }_i(log\mathrm{\Sigma }_i1)+t_i\mathrm{\Sigma }_i}e^{_{A,i}Y_A(R_i^A\mathrm{\Sigma }_im_A)},$$

which as far as the F-terms are concerned imposes the above constraints. We are not interested in the potential deformations of the D-terms, and only keep track of the F-terms. In particular there would also be D-terms involving the $`Y_A`$ fields which do not affect the F-terms and we have suppressed them in the above expression. It is important to notice that $`Y_A`$ are $`\text{ }\mathrm{C}^{}`$ valued, i.e.

$$Y_AY_A+2i\pi .$$

This follows from the observation made in \[5,,9\] about the nature of the chiral field $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Recall that the top component of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ contains the field strength of the $`U(1)`$ vector field, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=\mathrm{}+\theta ^+\overline{\theta }^{}F`$. If we consider the theory on a compact Riemann surface, then $`F`$ is quantized, and consequently Lagrange multiplier enforcing (2.4) on $`F`$ must be periodic with period $`2\pi `$. From the coupling $`𝑑\theta ^+𝑑\overline{\theta }^{}Y\mathrm{\Sigma }=Im(Y)F`$ in the superpotential we conclude that it is the imaginary part of $`Y`$ that is periodic, and integrating over $`Y`$’s above, we recover the original formulation of the theory, (2.3).

The path integral over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_i`$ can be done and localizes on $`_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_i}W=0`$

$$log(\mathrm{\Sigma }_i)+t_i+\underset{A}{}R_i^AY_A=0.$$

This gives

$$Z(m,t)=\underset{A}{}DY_Ae^{_ie^{Y_i}_AY_Am_A},$$

where we defined

$$Y_i=t_i+\underset{A}{}R_i^AY_A.$$

This Landau-Ginsburg theory is the known result for the mirror of a massive deformation of the local A-model theory .

This generalizes to the derivation of mirrors of other local and compact models. As explained in  mirror symmetry in the case of compact manifolds is closely related to the non-compact case (see also ). As there are no new ingredients, we refer the reader to  for detailed discussion of mirror symmetry in the compact case.

In fact in , by T-dualizing the charge fields to $`Y_A`$, it was noticed that in massive cases, the theory formulated in terms of $`(Y_A,\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ fields, gives rise to the expected superpotential in terms of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ fields by integrating out the $`Y_A`$ fields. In the derivation we have presented here the $`Y_A`$ play the role of Lagrange multiplier fields. However it is not too difficult to show that the insertion of the square of the charge fields $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_i|^2`$ is equivalent to the insertion of $`ReY_i`$ which is compatible with the derivation of . In this sense, the derivation above is not new, but it provides a novel perturbative perspective.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by NSF grants PHY-9802709 and DMS-0074329.

References

relax K. Hori and C. Vafa, “Mirror symmetry,” arXiv:hep-th/0002222. relax R. Dijkgraaf and C. Vafa, “Matrix models, topological strings, and supersymmetric gauge theories,” arXiv:hep-th/0206255; “On geometry and matrix models,” arXiv:hep-th/0207106; “A perturbative window into non-perturbative physics,” arXiv:hep-th/0208048. relax L. Chekhov and A. Mironov, “Matrix models vs. Seiberg-Witten/Whitham theories,” arXiv:hep-th/0209085. relax N. Dorey, T. J. Hollowood, S. P. Kumar and A. Sinkovics, “Exact superpotentials from matrix models,” arXiv:hep-th/0209089; “Massive Vacua of N=1\* Theory and S-duality from Matrix Models,” arXiv:hep-th/0209099. relax E. Witten, “Phases of N = 2 theories in two dimensions,” Nucl. Phys. B 403, 159 (1993) arXiv:hep-th/9301042. relax A. D’Adda, A.C. Davis, P. Di Vecchia and P. Salomonson, “An Effective Action for the Supersymmetric $`CP^{N1}`$ Sigma Model”, Nucl. Phys. B 222, 45 (1983) relax D. R. Morrison and M. Ronen Plesser, “Summing the instantons: Quantum cohomology and mirror symmetry in toric varieties,” Nucl. Phys. B 440, 279 (1995) arXiv:hep-th/9412236. relax L. Alvarez-Gaume and D.Z. Freedman, “Potentials For The Supersymmetric Nonlinear Sigma Models”, Commun. Math. Phys. 91, 87 (1983); S.J Gates, “Superspace Formulation of New Nonlinear Sigma Models”, Nucl. Phys. B 238, 349 (1984); A. Hanany and K. Hori, “Branes and N=2 Theories in Two Dimensions”, Nucl. Phys. B 513, 119 (1998), arXiv:hep-th/9707192. relax A. Losev, N. Nekrasov, and S. Shatashvili, “The Freckled Instantons”, arXiv:hep-th/9908204; ”Freckled Instantons in Two and Four Dimensions”, Class. Quant. Grav. 17, 1181 (2000), arXiv:hep-th/9911099.


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# Nonlinear current-induced forces in Si atomic wires

## Abstract

We report first-principles calculations of current-induced forces in Si atomic wires as a function of bias and wire length. We find that these forces are strongly nonlinear as a function of bias due to the competition between the force originating from the scattering states and the force due to bound states. We also find that the average force in the wire is larger the shorter the wire, suggesting that atomic wires are more difficult to break under current flow with increasing length. The last finding is in agreement with recent experimental data.

Current-induced atomic motion (electromigration) has always been of concern in microelectronics since it was found to be a major failor mechanism in aluminum conductors. blech  Such an effect is more pronounced the smaller the material dimensions as it is the case, for instance, for metallization lines in conventional circuits. hauder  It does not come as a surprise then that this effect has recently attracted considerable interest in nanoscience. In particular, current-induced forces in atomic lango ; agr ; ita ; yas ; tod1  and molecular wires aya ; md1  have been investigated. These systems show interesting physical properties which make them promising candidates for future electronic applications. avir  It was found that current-induced forces in a nanoscale wire can distort its local atomic structure and affect its stability according to the external bias and the wire length. agr ; ita ; yas ; tod1 ; md1 ; miochem  Longer atomic wires, for instance, have been found to be more stable with respect to current-induced forces than shorter wires. yan

Over the years considerable theoretical and experimental work has been devoted to understand the microscopic origin of electromigration. solid  It has become clear, for instance, that this phenomenon depends strongly on the microscopic details of the self-consistent electric field that is created upon scattering of the electrons across the region of interest. Despite the progress in the fundamental understanding of current-induced forces, however, it is still unclear what determines, e.g., the resistance of atomic and molecular wires to electromigration effects or what is the dependence of these forces on the external bias and wire length.

In this letter we explore the above issues using first-principles approaches. In particular, we study current-induced forces as a function of bias in Si atomic wires of varying length (we consider wire lengths of up to four Si atoms). We find that current-induced forces are strongly nonlinear as a function of bias due to the competition between the force originating from the continuum of states and the force due to states in the discrete part of the spectrum. The force originating from the bare electrodes (we will call this force direct prec ) varies almost linearly as a function of bias. We also find that the average force in the wire is larger the shorter the wire, suggesting that atomic wires of increasing length are more difficult to break under current flow. The last finding is in agreement with recent experimental data. yan

A schematic of the system investigated is depicted in the inset of Fig. 1. It consists of a Si atomic wire sandwiched between two gold surfaces that we model with ideal metals (jellium model). langt ; md2  The interior electron density of the electrodes is taken equal to the value for metallic gold ($`r_s3`$). The electric current is calculated using the method described in Refs. langt, ; md2, . The electron wave functions are computed by solving the Lippman-Schwinger equation iteratively to self-consistency in steady state. Exchange and correlation are included in the density-functional formalism within the local-density approximation. langt ; md2  The current is computed from the wave functions $`|\psi `$ of the electrode-molecule system. The force $`𝐅`$ acting on a given atom at position $`𝐑`$ due to the electron distribution as modified by the external bias is given by the Hellmann-Feynman-type of theorem developed in Ref. md1, prec1

$$𝐅=\underset{i}{}\psi _i\left|\frac{H}{𝐑}\right|\psi _i\underset{\mathrm{\Delta }0}{lim}_\sigma 𝑑E\psi _\mathrm{\Delta }\left|\frac{H}{𝐑}\right|\psi _\mathrm{\Delta }.$$
(1)
The sum and integral in Eq. (1) include spin variables also. The first term on the RHS of Eq. (1) is the usual Hellmann-Feynman contribution to the force due to localized electronic states $`|\psi _i`$. The second term is the contribution to the force due to the continuum of states. md1  It is calculated by constructing, for each energy in the continuum, square-integrable wavefunctions $`|\psi _\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in an energy region $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$

$$|\psi _\mathrm{\Delta }=𝒜_\mathrm{\Delta }𝑑E\psi ,$$
(2)
where $`𝒜`$ is a normalization constant and the $`\psi `$’s are single-particle wavefunctions in the continuum, solutions of the Lippmann-Schwinger equation. md1  The continuum integration $`\sigma `$ covers the part of the spectrum occupied by the electrons at a given bias. Finally, the total force on the atom includes a trivial ion-ion interaction.

We start the calculations by first relaxing the atomic positions at zero bias. For all different wire lengths the relaxed Si-jellium surface bond length is about 2 a.u., and the relaxed Si-Si bond distance is about 4.2 a.u. In Fig. 1(a),(b),(c) we plot the total force as a function of bias on each Si atom for wires composed of two, three and four Si atoms, respectively. The atomic positions have been fixed at the equilibrium position at zero bias, and the atoms are labeled with increasing number starting from the closer to the left electrode (see Fig. 1). In Fig. 1(d) we plot the average force (sum of the forces on each atom divided by the number of atoms in the wire) as a function of bias and the force for a wire composed of a single Si atom. Positive force pushes the atom to the right, i.e., opposite to electron flow (the left electrode is positively biased). It is clear from Fig. 1(a),(b),(c) that the force on atoms is a nonlinear function of the bias (exept for the single-atom wire, see below and Ref. prec3, ) while the average force Fig. 1(d) saturates with the number of atoms in the wire. We first discuss the nonlinear behavior of the forces and then discuss the average force.

For a small external bias (0.01 $`V`$, i.e., linear-response regime), the current-induced forces in the 3-Si wire satisfy the zero-force sum rule while for the 2-Si and 4-Si wire all atoms are pushed opposite to the current flow with almost equal force as it can be inferred from symmetry considerations tod1 . On the other hand, strong nonlinearities in the current-induced forces appear at voltages above 0.1 $`V`$. For instance, in the 2-Si wire the Si atom closer to the left electrode (Si1 in the inset of Fig. 1) is pushed against the electron flow for biases less than 0.5 $`V`$ and moves along the electron flow for larger biases. On the other hand, the second Si atom (Si2 in the inset of Fig. 1) is pushed against the electron flow at all external voltages. Similar effects, involving different atoms in the wire, occur at even smaller voltages for the 4-Si wire. In the same vein, for the 3-Si wire the zero-force sum rule is not satisfied already at 0.1 $`V`$. It is interesting to note that for large biases the largest force occurs on the second Si atom from the left. The break-up of the wires is thus likely to nucleate from the bonds of this atom. In general, each atom experiences a force due to current flow that is nonlinear in the external bias. Such nonlinearities affect the atomic redistribution in the wire and eventually its resistance to current-induced rupture. In order to understand this nonlinear behavior, we study the different contributions to the forces as a function of bias: (a) the contribution from the electrodes without the atoms in between (direct force solid ), (b) the contribution from the continuum part of the spectrum, and (c) the part of the force originating from the discrete spectrum. The force originating from the ion-ion interaction does not depend on the bias and we thus not discuss it here. For the sake of simplicity we discuss the 3-Si wire case. Similar considerations are valid for other wire lengths. We plot in Fig. 2 the three different contributions considered. As expected, the direct force is almost linear with the bias. Small deviations from linearity appear due to the small deviations from linear decay of the electrostatic potential close to the electrode surfaces. langt ; md2  Furthermore, due to this deviation, the force on the central atom in the wire is larger than the force on the two atoms close to the electrode surfaces at any bias (see Fig. 2). The latter atoms also experience a force of similar magnitude with deviations occurring at large voltages. From Fig. 2 is also evident that for biases larger than 0.5 $`V`$ the major contribution to the force on each atom comes from the direct force. The nonlinearities in the total force then orginate from the competition between the force due the states in the continuum (scattering states) and the force due to the bound states (in this case, those states below the band bottom of the left electrode). The force on the central atom of the wire (Si2) due to the scattering states pushes the atom to the left, i.e. along with the electron flow. This force is almost linear with the bias. The force on the same atom due to the discrete spectrum, on the other hand is almost zero even at very large voltages. This behavior can be understood by looking at the extra charge localized on the atom at any given bias. This quantity can be estimated by integrating the charge around a given atom in a box centered on that atom with one face parallel to the electrode surfaces and whose size in the perpendicular direction is equal to the bond distance between the atoms. The difference between this charge at zero bias and the corresponding charge at any given bias is plotted in Fig. 3 for the three different Si atoms. Apart from small fluctuations as a function of bias, the extra charge on the central atom is zero. The charge on this atom is thus practically constant at any bias. Since, in this system, the number of bound states does not change with bias, their contribution to the force is constant \[see Fig. 2(c)\]. On the other hand, the force due to the continuum \[second term on the RHS of Eq. (1)\], increases linearly with bias due to the larger energy integration in Eq. (1) for larger voltages. prec3

The continuum and discrete contribution to the force is nonlinear for the atoms closer to the electrodes (Si1 and Si3 of Fig. 2). For the Si1 atom, for instance, the continuum force is almost constant up to about 1 $`V`$, while the force from the discrete spectrum increases in magnitude with bias in the same voltage range (the sign of the force corresponds to the atom pushed along with the current flow). For biases above 1 $`V`$, the continuum force increases in magnitude and the force due to bound states is almost constant. An opposite trend is observed for the Si3 atom (see Fig. 2). The opposite trend can be explained again by looking at the extra charge on these atoms (Fig. 3). This charge is of similar magnitude but of opposite sign indicating that there is a charge transfer from the right electrode to the left electrode when current flows with consequent creation of a local electric dipole. prec2

While it is difficult to extract general trends in the overall resistance of the wires to electromigration by looking at the forces on each atom, the average force follows quite a simple trend as a function of bias and wire length. In Fig. 1(d) we plot such a quantity for wires of two, three and four Si atoms. For comparison we also plot the force for a single Si atom. The average force is almost linear as a function of bias even for large biases (deviations occur above 2.5 $`V`$ for the 2-Si wire). Furthermore, the force is larger the smaller the wire length and, in particular, it is almost equal for the 3- and 4-Si wires. prec4  This trend indicates that short wires are easier to break than longer wires, and the average force reaches a “bulk” value at wire lengths of only three atoms, i.e., wire lenghts of less than 10Å. Similar trends have been observed in experiments with Au atomic wires. yan

We conclude this paper by studying the effects of current-induced atomic relaxations on the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of atomic wires. It was found by Di Ventra et al. md1 ; miochem  that current-induced atomic relaxations in molecular wires do not substantially affect the absolute value of the current for large voltages and current densities. We find that this trend is also valid in the present case of atomic wires, suggesting it is a general trend valid for both atomic and molecular wires when current flow is mainly coherent. This is illustrated in Fig. 4 where we plot the I-V characteristics for the 3-Si wire with and without current-induced atomic relaxations. In the inset of the same figure we show the relaxed atomic positions for each atom at selected biases. It is clear from Fig. 4 that small changes in the absolute value of the current when the atoms are relaxed are observed even at large biases. Similar results are valid for the other wires as well.

In conclusion, we have reported first-principles calculations of current-induced forces in Si atomic wires. We find that these forces are generally strongly nonlinear as a function of bias. Since the direct force from the bare electrodes is almost linear as a function of bias, the nonlinearity originates from the competition between the scattering-state and discrete-spectrum force. We also find that the average force in the wire is larger the shorter the wire, suggesting that atomic wires are more difficult to break under current flow with increasing length. Finally, current-induced relaxations are found to change only slightly the absolute value of the current even at large voltages. A similar effect has been predicted for molecular wires, indicating it is a general trend for nanoscale wires when coherent scattering is the main transport mechanism.

We thank Y.-C. Chen for useful discussions. This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation Grants No. DMR-01-02277 and DMR-01-33075, Carilion Biomedical Institute, and Oak Ridge Associated Universities. Acknowledgement is also made to the Donors of The Petroleum Research Fund, administered by the American Chemical Society, for partial support of this research. The calculations reported in this paper were performed on the beowulf cluster of the Laboratory for Advanced Scientific Computing and Applications at Virginia Tech.


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# Quantum computation using the Aharonov-Casher set up

## Abstract

It is argued that the Aharonov-Casher set up could be used as the basic building block for quantum computation. We demonstrate explicitly in this scenario one- and two-qubit phase shift gates that are fault tolerant to deformations of the path when encircling two sites of the computational system around each other.

Efficient and reliable quantum computation of arbitrarily long duration is possible even with faulty components, if the errors can be corrected faster than they occur shor95 ; steane95 . Even more desirable would be to implement quantum computation that is intrinsically fault tolerant as this would prevent errors to occur. Topological ideas arise naturally in this context, as they are robust against deformations of the physical path, such as what happens when a small amount of noise is added.

Motivated by this intuition, fault tolerant quantum computation based upon topological phases in various anyonic systems has been suggested recently kitaev97 ; ogburn99 ; lloyd00 ; freedman01 ; mochon02 . Related to these ideas is to achieve fault tolerance by using the geometric phase zanardi99 ; pachos00 ; duan01 ; jones00 ; ekert00 ; xiang-bin01 , as this phase is dependent only upon the area enclosed in the physical state space and is thereby robust against area preserving deformations of the physical path. These topological and geometric approaches to fault tolerant quantum computation have been shown zanardi02  to be particular cases of the notion of computation in noiseless quantum subsystems knill00 .

In this Letter, we propose the two dimensional Aharonov-Casher (AC) set up aharonov84  as the basic building block for topological one- and two-qubit phase shift gates. This implementation would be fault tolerant as the AC effect is only dependent upon the winding number of the physical path. We suggest that combining the present phase shift gates with appropriate nontopological one-qubit gates would be a realisation of universal quantum computation lloyd95 ; deutsch95  based upon the AC set up.

Let us first briefly review the AC effect. In the two dimensional AC set up, a magnetic moment $`\mu `$ and a point charge $`q`$ are free to move in the $`xy`$ plane, say. This system is described by the Galilean and gauge invariant Lagrangian

$$=\frac{1}{2}mv^2+\frac{1}{2}MV^2+q𝐀(𝐫𝐑)[𝐯𝐕],$$
(1)
where $`m,𝐫,𝐯`$ denote the mass, position, and velocity, respectively, of the charge, and $`M,𝐑,𝐕`$ the corresponding quantities of the dipole. In this two dimensional set up, the curl $`_xA_y_yA_x`$ of the vector potential $`𝐀=(A_x,A_y)`$ vanishes except at the origin, but when encircling the two particles $`n`$ times around each other along the path $`C`$ there is a phase of the form

$$\gamma =\frac{q}{\mathrm{}}_C𝐀(𝐥)𝑑𝐥n\mu q,$$
(2)
where $`𝐥=𝐫𝐑`$. This phase is topological in the sense that it only depends upon the winding number $`n`$, which makes it insensitive to small deformations of the path $`C`$.

This AC scenario may be used to implement fault tolerant one- and two-qubit phase shift gates as follows. Let us store the $`j^{\text{th}}`$ qubit on the two spatial sites $`a`$ and $`b`$ of a single AC set up. The computational basis consists of $`|0_j=|q(a)\mu (b)_j`$ with the magnetic moment localised at site $`a`$ and the charge localised at site $`b`$, respectively, and the reverse for the orthogonal state, i.e. $`|1_j=|\mu (a)q(b)_j`$, see Fig. 1. We assume that the states are sufficiently localised so that $`0|1_j=0`$ for each $`j`$. The computational system is build up from such AC-qubits arranged along a line in the two dimensional plane and let us assume for simplicity that all the qubits contain the same magnetic moment $`\mu `$ and the same charge $`q`$.

A controlled phase shift gate $`B(\gamma )`$ can be achieved by encircling along the path $`C`$ the particle at site $`b`$ around the particle at site $`a`$ from two different AC-qubits $`j`$ and $`j^{}`$. This results in

$`B(\gamma ):|00_{jj^{}}`$ $``$ $`e^{i\gamma }|00_{jj^{}}`$
$`B(\gamma ):|01_{jj^{}}`$ $``$ $`|01_{jj^{}}`$
$`B(\gamma ):|10_{jj^{}}`$ $``$ $`|10_{jj^{}}`$
$`B(\gamma ):|11_{jj^{}}`$ $``$ $`e^{i\gamma }|11_{jj^{}},`$ (3)
as illustrated in Fig. 2. This gate is topological as it is insensitive to any deformations of the path $`C`$ under the assumption that charge-charge and dipole-dipole interactions can be neglected between all pairs of AC-qubits. Except for the trivial case where $`\gamma `$ is an integer multiple of $`\pi `$, $`B(\gamma )`$ may entangle the qubits it acts on.

Universal quantum computation can be achieved by combining $`B(\gamma )`$ with the one-qubit logic gates

$`U(\gamma )`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left[i{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma }{2}}\sigma _z^j\right],\text{(phase shift gate)},`$
$`U_{SWAP}(\theta _j)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left[i{\displaystyle \frac{\theta _j}{2}}\sigma _y^j\right],\text{(partial swap gate)},`$
where $`\sigma _z^j=|0_j0|_j|1_j1|_j`$ and $`\sigma _y^j=i|0_j1|_j+i|1_j0|_j`$. That is, any $`N`$qubit logic operation can be simulated to any precision with an appropriate set of $`U(\gamma ),U_{SWAP}(\theta _j)`$, and $`B(\gamma )`$ gates. The one-qubit phase shift gate $`U(\gamma )`$ is achieved by encircling the two sites within a single AC-qubit around each other depending upon whether the state is $`|0_j`$ or $`|1_j`$. This could for example be achieved by addressing the site $`a`$, say, in such a way that the particle there is only taken around site $`b`$ if it is charged. This would result in $`U(\gamma )`$ up to an unimportant overall phase factor $`e^{i\gamma /2}`$. The $`U_{SWAP}(\theta _j)`$ gates could be realised in principle by exposing beam-splitters to each of the AC set ups. The parameter $`\theta _j`$ determines the transmission probability $`T`$ of such a beam-splitter according to $`T=\mathrm{cos}(\theta _j/2)`$.

While the $`U(\gamma )`$ gate is topological and thereby fault tolerant to path deformations, the $`U_{SWAP}(\theta _j)`$ gate is essentially dynamical and nontopological as it relies upon the detailed interaction between the AC-qubit and the beam-splitter. This situation is expected since the present treatment of the AC effect is basically Abelian and there are therefore non-Abelian operations necessary to achieve universality that could not be obtained by the AC effect alone (see Ref. lloyd00  for a similar case).

Quantum computation based upon the AC set up can be realised as follows. First, translate the quantum algorithm into a set of elementary one- and two-qubit gates. Prepare an initial state by spreading out a set of AC composites along a line in the plane of motion. Perform appropriate phase shifts and partial swaps on each AC set up and perform appropriate two-qubit controlled phase shifts by braiding sites from pairs of AC-qubits. The final answer of the computation is obtained by measuring the spatial location of the particles in the output.

Universal quantum computation using the AC set up only involves electromagnetic interactions between elementary systems and works even for distinguishable qubits. This should be compared with the suggestions for topological quantum computation in Refs. kitaev97 ; ogburn99 ; lloyd00 ; freedman01 ; mochon02 , that all involves collective effects such as anyons or spin systems with long-range correlations.

In principle, quantum computation based upon the AC set up could be realisable in combined atom-ion systems confined to a plane. A similar implementation could be achieved in three dimensions by replacing the point charge with a line of charge. However, to put this charged line in a coherent superposition would be difficult in practise and it is therefore unclear whether AC based quantum computation could have any relevance in the three-dimensional context. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that the AC shift is essentially a relativistic effect and thus usually quite small also for such systems (see, e.g., sangster93 ; gorlitz95 ), which means that the gates have to be repeated many times to achieve phase shifts of useful size. This may spoil the fault tolerance of the phase shift gates as the error probability is expected to increase with the winding number. Another challenge, associated with the implementation of the controlled phase shift gate, is the control of the nontopological charge-charge and dipole-dipole interactions that act between the various AC-qubits. These interactions could be made small under certain circumstances, but may add up when repeating the gate.

In conclusion, we have proposed to use the two dimensional Aharonov-Casher (AC) set up as the basic building block for quantum computation. We have argued that the AC set up could be useful in the implementation of one- and two-qubit phase shift gates that are fault tolerant to path deformations when two sites are encircled around each other. Universality is achieved by adding nontopological one-qubit partial swap gates. Although it seems hard to implement quantum computation based upon the AC set up with present day technology, we believe it has a conceptual value as it demonstrates topological quantum computation using electromagnetic interactions between elementary systems.

The work by E.S. was financed by the Swedish Research Council.


text:
# Quasiperiodic tilings under magnetic field

## I Introduction

For periodic systems such as the square, the triangular or the hexagonal lattice embedded in a magnetic field, it is well-known that commensurability effects between the characteristic magnetic length and the lattice period may lead to very interesting features. For example, if we consider a standard tight-binding model, the energy spectrum displays a complex multifractal structure when varying the magnetic flux per unit cell as illustrated by the famous Hofstadter butterfly Hofstadter ; Claro\_Wannier ; Rammal\_hexa . However, this spectrum is strongly geometry-dependent since even for periodic tilings, some anomalies can appear leading to interesting quantum interference phenomena Vidal\_Cages ; Vidal\_Cages\_big . This dependence has led several groups to analyze the interplay between the quasiperiodicity and the magnetic frustration Arai ; Hatakeyama1 ; Hatakeyama2 ; Schwabe\_Mag\_field . Nevertheless, in these studies, it is difficult to know the real contribution of the quasiperiodic order since the incommensurability between the tiles area is another source of aperiodicity in the spectrum Hatakeyama1 . We must indeed distinguish several classes of tilings depending on their structural order (periodic, quasiperiodic or disordered), their topology (trivial or nontrivial) and the ratio of the tiles area (rational or irrational). If we focus on quasiperiodically ordered structures, there is actually one type of tiling (those of codimension one) that has never been studied so far which consists in a nontrivial topology (several types of coordination numbers) with commensurate tile areas.

The aim of this work is to study such tilings by considering a modified version of the two-dimensional generalized Rauzy tilings (GRT) presented in Ref. Vidal\_Rauzy  that are built with tiles having the same areas. Note that a great advantage of such systems is that all the physical quantities are periodic functions of the magnetic field so that we can restrict our analysis to a finite range of flux values.

This paper is organized as follows: in the next section, we briefly present the two-dimensional isometric generalized Rauzy tilings (iGRT) whose properties will always be compared to the square lattice ones. In Sect. III, we introduce the tight-binding Hamiltonian and we compute the energy spectrum of both tilings. We show that despite the quasiperiodic order, the spectrum of the iGRT has a fine nontrivial structure. To get more precise informations on the spectrum and the eigenstates, we compute in Sect. IV the time evolution of wave packets for different fluxes per plaquette $`\varphi `$ and we focus on the average autocorrelation function and the mean square spreading. For the iGRT a singular continuous spectrum and a sub-ballistic propagation is found for rational and irrational $`f=\varphi /\varphi _0`$ where $`\varphi _0`$ is the flux quantum. By contrast, for the square lattice, the propagation is ballistic and the spectrum absolutely continuous for rational $`f`$, whereas the spectrum is singular continuous and the spreading sub-ballistic for irrational $`f`$. Sect. V is devoted to the superconducting wire network with the iGRT geometry. After mapping the linearized Ginzburg-Landau equations onto a tight-binding model with nonconstant hopping terms, we compute the transition temperature as a function of the magnetic field and compare it with those of the square lattice. A cusp-like structure is clearly observed and shows the importance of the quasiperiodic order in this context.

## II The isometric generalized Rauzy tilings

The GRTs are codimension one quasiperiodic structures that can easily be built in any dimension $`D`$ using the standard cut and project method Vidal\_Rauzy . These tilings have a complex topological structure with sites of coordination number ranging from $`D+1`$ to $`2D+1`$. In this study, we focus on the two-dimensional GRT whose contruction is based on the irrational solution $`\theta 1.839`$ of the equation:

$$x^3=x^2+x+1\text{.}$$
(1)
Contrary to previous studies Vidal\_ICQ7 ; Triozon\_Rauzy ; Jagannathan\_Rauzy  concerning these tilings, we consider here an isometric version of the $`2D`$ GRT where all the edge lengths are equal. This can be very easily done by projecting the selected sites of the $`3D`$ cubic lattice perpendicularly to the direction $`(1,1,1)`$ instead of the Rauzy direction $`(1,\theta ,\theta ^2)`$. Such a choice is motivated by the fact that since these tilings are codimension one tilings, equal edge lengths imply equal tile areas. This property which is only true for codimension one tilings 111For example, the Penrose (codimension 3) and Octagonal (codimension 2) tilings have incommensurate tile areas but equal edge lengths. allows us to concentrate on the role played by the topological quasiperiodicity related to the connectivity matrix.

## III Hamiltonian and butterflies

In this study, we consider a standard tight-binding Hamiltonian given by:

$$H=\underset{i,j}{}t_{ij}|ij|\text{,}$$
(2)
where $`|i`$ is a localized orbital on site $`i`$. The hopping term $`t_{ij}=1`$ if $`i`$ and $`j`$ are nearest neighbors and $`0`$ otherwise. In the presence of a magnetic field Peierls , $`t_{ij}`$ is multiplied by a phase factor $`e^{i\gamma _{ij}}`$ involving the vector potential $`𝐀`$:

$$\gamma _{ij}=\frac{2\pi }{\varphi _0}_i^j𝐀.d𝐥\text{,}$$
(3)
where $`\varphi _0=hc/e`$ is the flux quantum. In the following, we only consider the case of a uniform magnetic field $`𝐁=B𝐳`$ which can be obtained, for example, with the Landau gauge $`𝐀=B(0,x,0)`$, and we denote by $`\varphi =Ba^2\sqrt{3}/2`$ the magnetic flux through an elementary tile. It is also useful to introduce the dimensionless parameter $`f=\varphi /\varphi _0`$ known as the reduced flux.

The study of the zero-field spectrum of $`H`$ has been presented in Ref. Vidal\_ICQ7 ; Triozon\_Rauzy ; Jagannathan\_Rauzy  for the nonisometric GRTs, but for $`B=0`$ the tile areas is an irrelevant parameter since $`H`$ is, in this case, simply proportionnal to the connectivity matrix. The spectral measure is absolutely continuous, the spectrum is gapless, and the weakly critical eigenstates, are responsible for an anomalous diffusion. To obtain the spectrum of $`H`$ for $`B0`$, we have used the recursion method Haydock\_rec3  also known as Lanczos algorithm Paige . This powerful tool allows one to compute the local density of states (LDOS) of a given initial state. The main advantage of this method is that we can easily compute this LDOS for very large system size (about $`10^6`$ sites), by diagonalizing only a small half-chain of a few hundred sites. However, it does just give a local information but, if one considers an initial random phase state, its LDOS gives a fairly good approximation of the total density of states. To compute these spectra we have computed 500 recursion coefficients in a circular cluster of 785757 sites for the square lattice, and 460 coefficients in a circular cluster of 767604 sites for the iGRT. We must also mention an important point concerning the edge states. Indeed, since we compute the recursion coefficients up to a given order, there are obviously some spurious states that arise due to the fact that the recursion cluster is finite with open boundary conditions. To get rid of them, we have selected eigenvectors for which the amplitude on the initial state of the recursion was greater than a given threshold (here $`10^9`$).

As it can be seen in Fig. 2, the spectrum of the square lattice obtained here with the recursion scheme is in very good agreement with those computed by Hofstadter in 1976 using the mappping onto the Harper equation Hofstadter . As it can be readily seen, both spectra display the symmetry $`EE`$ related to the fact that both tilings are bipartite. In addition, since there is only one characteristic area, the Hamiltonian is a periodic function of $`f`$ with period 1. Finally, the symmetry with respect to $`f=1/2`$ just reflects the symmetry $`t_{ij}t_{ij}`$. At small fields, the emergence of Landau levels, expected in the continuum limit, is clearly observed. In the square lattice, it is well known that rational values of $`f=p/q`$ lead to an absolutely continuous spectrum made up of $`q`$ subbands that can touch each other as for $`f=1/2`$. Of course, nothing similar is expected for quasiperiodic tilings since no periodicity exists.Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that for the iGRT, there is still a complex gap structure with notably a large gap that can be followed continuously from $`f=0`$ (where it vanishes) till $`f=1/2`$. We can also see that the iGRT spectrum display a fine subband structure that would require a detailed but difficult analyzis since even in the zero field case, it is nontrivial.

To go beyond this basic description, we have analyzed the nature of the spectrum for particular values of the reduced flux by studying the quantum dynamics of wave packets in both structures for remarkable values of the reduced flux.

## IV Wave packets dynamics

The quantum dynamics in two-dimensional quasiperiodic tilings has been widely investigated within the last ten years either by exact diagonalizations Passaro\_Octo ; Zhong ; Yuan  or by approximating the evolution operator $`e^{iHt}`$ Triozon\_Rauzy ; Vidal\_ICQ7 . Here we have used the Second Order Differencing Scheme Numerique , that consists, for a given initial state $`|\psi (0)`$, to make the following approximation:

$$|\psi (t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)=|\psi (t\mathrm{\Delta }t)2i\mathrm{\Delta }tH|\psi (t)\text{.}$$
(4)
Contrary to exact diagonalizations, this method allows one to investigate the dynamics on very large systems (about one million sites). Practically, choosing a time step $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=0.05`$ is sufficient to get a good accuracy and all our results have been obtained with this value. We have considered two quantities of interest: the averaged autocorrelation function

$$C(t)=\frac{1}{t}_0^t𝑑t^{}P(t^{})t^\alpha \text{,}$$
(5)
where $`P(t)=|\psi (0)|\psi (t)|^2`$ and the mean square spreading

$$\mathrm{\Delta }R^2(t)=\psi (t)|\widehat{R}^2|\psi (t)(\psi (t)|\widehat{R}|\psi (t))^2t^{2\beta }\text{,}$$
(6)
where $`\widehat{R}`$ is the position operator, the origin being taken at the center of the cluster. The spectral and diffusion exponents $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are defined from the long time behavior of $`C`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }R^2`$ respectively. If $`\alpha =1`$, the spectrum is absolutely continuous, if $`\alpha =0`$, the spectrum is pure point, and if $`0<\alpha <1`$ the spectrum is singular continuous. Concerning the diffusion exponent, $`\beta =1`$ corresponds to a ballistic propagation whereas $`0<\beta <1`$ defines a sub-ballistic regime ($`\beta =1/2`$ is the diffusive case).

For the square lattice, since all sites are equivalent, we have considered an initial state localized on a single (central) site. For the iGRT, the situation is more complicated since, as for the Octagonal tiling Passaro\_Octo , the exponents depends, a priori on the initial conditions as shown in Ref. Triozon\_Rauzy ; Vidal\_ICQ7 . Of course, this is only true at short times, since in the asymptotic regime, we expect $`\alpha =inf_E\{\alpha (E)\}`$, $`\beta =sup_E\{\beta (E)\}`$ for $`E`$ in the spectrum. Here, we have built an initial random phase state localized on a circular cluster ($`10^2`$ sites) whose radius is about 1/100 of the cluster considered for the computation, and we have checked that our results were weakly sensitive to the precise random phase configuration chosen. However, we can never ensure that we have reached the asymptotic regime so that the exponents given here just give a qualitative idea of the wave packet spreadings.

We have considered several special values of the reduced flux: (i) $`f=0`$ for which the band width are maximum for both lattices ; (ii) $`f=1/2`$ for which the band width of the iGRT is minimum ; (iii) $`f=\sqrt{2}`$ for which the band width of the square lattice is minimum ; (iv) $`f=\theta `$ which is a natural irrational number in this context. Our results are plotted in Fig.3 and Fig.4.

For the square lattice, everything is qualitatively known for these values. Indeed, when $`f`$ is a rational number, the eigenstates are Bloch waves, the spectrum is absolutely continuous ($`\alpha =1`$) and the spreading is ballistic ($`\beta =1`$). For $`f=0`$, when starting from a single site, one can even easily show that: $`P(t)=J_0^4(2t)`$ which behaves as $`t^2`$ at large time 222$`J_0`$ denotes the Bessel function of order $`0`$. so that $`C(t)t^1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }R^2(t)=4t^2`$. For irrational $`f`$, the spectrum is known to be singular continuous Hofstadter ; KPG ; Zhong , and the propagation sub-ballistic Piechon ; Ketzmerick . Nevertherless, we emphasize that existing results about the dynamics have been obtained by analyzing the Harper chain and do not reflect the dynamics on the square lattice. Indeed, the mapping of the square lattice onto the Harper chain results from a decoupling of the eigenstates given by $`\mathrm{\Psi }(x,y)=e^{ik_yy}\psi (x)`$ which is due the special Landau gauge choice. Thus, the dynamics discussed in Refs. KPG ; Zhong ; Piechon ; Ketzmerick  only concerns the $`x`$ direction (at fixed $`k_y`$) and thus do not give the exponent of the two-dimensional square lattice. For example, we have computed the dynamics for $`f=(1+\sqrt{5})/2=\tau `$ and we have found $`\alpha =0.50(1)`$ in the square lattice instead of $`\alpha =0.14(1)`$ in the Harper chain KPG ; Zhong .

Interestingly, for $`f=\sqrt{2}`$, we have found a diffusive propagation with $`\beta =0.50(1)`$ whereas for $`f=\theta `$, the problem is more complicated since there are clearly two regimes. If we consider only $`t250`$ we obtain, $`\beta =0.94(2)`$ (weakly sub-ballistic motion) but we cannot decide whether it is an intermediate regime or not. The exponents obtained by fitting our data are given in Table I.

For the iGRT, the situation is different since even for $`f=0`$, the spectrum has some critical states responsible for a sub-ballistic spreading Vidal\_Rauzy . However, as shown in Ref. Triozon\_Rauzy  the diffusion exponent is strongly energy-dependent and might even be very close to 1 at the band edges. In the asymtotic regime, a quasi-ballistic propagation should therefore be recovered. Contrary to the square lattice, a sub-ballistic spreading is found for $`f=1/2`$ with $`\beta =0.61(1)`$ which is not really surprising since even though $`1/2`$ is a rational number, the underlying quasiperiodicity of the iGRT does not allow for the contruction extended eigenstates. In a sense, there are no commensurability effects for rational $`f`$.

For $`f=\sqrt{2}`$, it is interesting to note that the propagation is faster in the iGRT ($`\beta =0.57(2)`$) than in the square lattice $`\beta =0.50(1)`$. This means that the quasiperiodic order can break the destructive quantum interference effects that slow the spreading down for incommensurate $`f`$ in periodic structures. Nevertheless, this is not always the case, since for $`f=\theta `$, the propagation is faster in the square lattice than in the iGRT. Concerning the nature of the spectrum, it is always found to be clearly singular continuous but for $`f=0`$, we cannot be sure that $`\alpha 1`$ in the asymptotic regime.

## V Superconducting wire networks

In this section, we analyze the role of the quasiperiodic order on the superconducting-normal transition temperature as a function of the magnetic field $`T_c(f)`$. As explained above, the main advantage of the iGRT is that all its elementary tiles have the same area. Thus, we can really analyze the role of the topological quasiperiodic order which has, in fact, never been investigated.

The study of quasiperiodic wire networks has been initially motivated by several experiments Behrooz\_PRL ; Behrooz\_PRB ; Wang2 ; Springer  in which the superconducting transition temperature as a function of the magnetic field was determined. Using a mapping between the linearized Ginzburg-Landau equations and the tight-binding model, the rich structure of this phase boundaries has been then computed by Nori and coworkers Nori1 ; Nori3 . The main idea of this correspondence developped by Alexander Alexander\_fils\_supra  and De Gennes DeGennes\_fils\_supra  is to integrate the LGL equations on each wire and to obtain a set of equations that determines the order parameter $`\psi _i`$ at each nodes $`i`$. This can be simply achieved using the continuity of the order parameter and the current conservation at each node. Denoting by $`l_{ij}`$ the distance between the (connected) nodes $`i`$ and $`j`$ and by $`\xi `$ the coherence length, the current conservation at each node $`i`$ expresses as:

$$\psi _i\underset{i,j}{}\mathrm{cot}(l_{ij}/\xi )+\underset{i,j}{}\psi _je^{i\gamma _{ij}}/\mathrm{sin}(l_{ij}/\xi )=0\text{,}$$
(7)
where the elementary flux quantum involved on the definition (3) of $`\gamma _{ij}`$ is here $`\varphi _0^{}=hc/2e`$. The coherence length depends on the temperature:

$$\xi (T)=\xi (0)\left(\frac{T_c(0)}{T_c(0)T}\right)^{1/2}\text{,}$$
(8)
where $`T_c(0)`$ is the transition temperature at zero field. For a given value of the magnetic field, the transition temperature is thus given by the highest temperature for which a nontrivial solution of (7) exists. If we now consider a system where all the lengths are equal $`l_{ij}=l`$, and if we set $`\varphi _i=\sqrt{z_i}\psi _i`$ where $`z_i`$ is the coordination of the node $`i`$, Eq. (7) can be rewritten as Nori3 :

$$\mathrm{cos}(l/\xi )\varphi _i=\underset{i,j}{}(z_iz_j)^{1/2}e^{i\gamma _{ij}}\varphi _j\text{.}$$
(9)
Setting with $`t_{ij}=(z_iz_j)^{1/2}`$ and $`E=\mathrm{cos}(l/\xi )`$, we obtain the secular system given by the Hamiltonian (2) and thus the field dependence of the transition temperature:

$$1\frac{T_c(f)}{T_c(0)}=\frac{\xi (0)^2}{l^2}\mathrm{arccos}^2(E_0(f))$$
(10)
where $`E_0(f)`$ is the highest eigenvalue of this modified Hamiltonian for a reduced flux $`f=2\pi \varphi /\varphi _0^{}`$.

For the square lattice, the first experiments have been performed by Pannetier et al. Pannetier2  and have confirmed the validity of these predictions. Indeed, a self-similar cusp-like structure for rational $`f`$ has been clearly identified in agreement with the fractal pattern of $`E_0(f)`$ already pointed by Hofstadter Hofstadter . For quasiperiodic systems, experiments by Behrooz and coworkers Behrooz\_PRL ; Behrooz\_PRB  have also revealed an cusp-like structure that can be understood in terms of incommensurability between the tiles area Nori1 .

We have computed $`T_c(f)`$ for the square lattice and for the iGRT using, as previously, the recursion method. As explained in Ref. Nori3 , this is a particularly well-adapted algorithm to obtain the ground state of the modified Hamiltonian which is in this case equal to $`E_0(f)`$. The results displayed in Fig. 5, clearly show the strong cusp-like structure for the square lattice but nothing similar seems to occur for iGRT. However, when zooming, we can distinguish a fine structure in $`T_c(f)`$ but with oscillations much smaller than those of the square lattice. We also note that, for the iGRT, the minimum of $`T_c(f)`$ is obtained for $`f=1/2`$ where an inverse-cusp is observed as for the Dice lattice Abilio\_T3  or for the Kagome lattice Xiao\_Kagome ; Lin\_Nori . This rich cusp structure is rather strange for this tiling since there is no incommensurability effect due to either the ratio of the tile areas (which are all equal for the iGRT) or to the lattice periodicity.

## VI Conclusion

We have studied the spectrum and the quantum dynamics of an electron in a quasiperiodic tiling embedded in a magnetic field. As in periodic structures, its spectrum displays a complex energy pattern when the magnetic flux is varied. We have shown that for several values of the reduced flux $`f`$, the wave packet spreading is sub-ballistic with a field-dependent diffusion exponent. For $`f=\sqrt{2}`$, we have even found a propagation which is faster in the quasiperiodic tiling than in the square lattice for which the motion is, in this case, diffusive. It would be very interesting to study the influence of the disorder (topological, geometrical, or Anderson-like) on these exponents since, even in the zero-field case, nontrivial behaviours have already been observed Roche\_Review .

We have also determined the superconducting-normal transition line $`T_c(f)`$ that displays a cusp-like structure revealing the importance of the quasiperiodic order. However, the analysis of the cusp positions clearly requires further investigations. It would be also important to study the transition line for codimension one random tilings that also have one type of tile but no quasiperiodic order. In this case, the absence of cusp would confirm the particular role played by the quasiperiodicity.

We would like to thank Cl. Aslangul and B. Douçot for fruitful discussions.


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# Moment Problems and the Causal Set Approach to Quantum Gravity

## 1. Introduction

There are currently a number of approaches aimed at formulating a successful theory of quantum gravity undergoing development, the most familiar being String Theory. This note concerns an alternative to String Theory: the Causal Set approach to quantum gravity. In its current state of the development, the Causal Set approach provides a classical analog to a true quantum theory; work focussing on the development of a full quantum analog is currently underway (cf section 2 below and  for basic axioms of the Causal Set theory and  and  for physical discussions concerning the Causal Set approach). We study the Causal Set approach as a classical precursor to a theory of quantum gravity.

At first glance, the most natural way to combine quantum theory and general relativity would be to quantize the spacetime metric. As is well known, such a direct approach must contend with a number a significant obstructions, including the existence of unrenormalizable divergences. There is currently no clear consensus as to how these divergences are to be addressed. Many believe that the source of the problem (if not the solution) might lie in the basic assumptions involving the underlying structure of spacetime. More precisely, it has been suggested that treating spacetime as a discrete combinatorial object as opposed to a manifold could lead to insight towards removing the divergences in the quantum field theoretic approach, if not to a substitute for such an approach (cf ,  and references therein).

Discrete approaches to gravity initially arose as an attempt to circumvent many of the difficulties arising in classical general relativity (eg, existence of singularities, the difficulty of solving Einstein’s field equations for general systems). Roughly speaking, the idea behind early discretization procedures involved replacing the space-time continuum with a triangulation, the construction being either a triangulation of 4-dimensional spacetime, or later 3+1 in nature (triangulate a 3-dimensional hypersurface at a fixed time, triangulate a second hypersurface considered as a time evolution of the first hypersurface, and connect vertices between triangulated hypersurfaces). In such an approach the vertices are taken to be (discrete) events, the edges between vertices in different hypersurfaces spacelike or timelike curves, and the salient relation between two such events whether one can cause the other or not.

Over the last two decades, discretization procedures have been further developed and refined, and their applications in gravity greatly expanded (cf  for a recent survey of discrete approaches to gravity, both classical and quantum). One particular line of development, pioneered by Sorkin and his co-workers , de-emphasized the role of the metric in favor of focussing on the causal structure of spacetime. This approach, the so-called Causal Set approach, is motivated in part by two observations. First, the causal structure of the spacetime continuum determines the topological, differentiable, and conformal Lorentzian metric structure of the spacetime continuum (cf , , ). Second, the causal structure of the spacetime continuum and the corresponding discrete causal structure, are very simple mathematical objects: posets (partially ordered sets). Taking the primary relationship between two events to be causation, the Causal Set approach to gravity posits that the deep structure of spacetime should be modelled by the discrete causal structures which arise as natural abstractions of the posets occuring when the causal structure of the spacetime continuum is discretized (in the context of gravity, these posets are called causets). The Causal Set approach to gravity then seeks “natural” dynamics under which causets evolve. In , Rideout and Sorkin propose such dynamics (formulated probabilistically) for the (classical) evolution of causets.

Thus, the search for an appropriate dynamical framework for a quantum theory of gravity has recently led to interest in stochastic dynamical systems taking their values in certain locally finite partially ordered sets (causets). As discussed in , these systems can be realized as Markov chains whose transition probabilities are required to satisfy a discrete covariance principle and a discrete causality principle. We call such Markov chains “generic” if all of the transition probabilities which could be nonzero are positive (cf Definition 2.1). Given the appropriate mathematical formalism (cf , section 2 below), it is possible to classify all such generic chains: there is a 1-1 correspondence between generic chains satisfying covariance and causality and nonnegative sequences of real numbers, $`T=\{t_n\}_{n=0}^{\mathrm{}},`$ satisfying $`t_0=1`$ (the coupling constants $`t_n`$ are given explicitly in terms of the Markov chain - cf  and section 2 below).

It is easy to see that an arbitrary sequence $`T`$ is unlikely to have physical significance, and therefore we want to find additional natural conditions which restrict the collection of sequences under consideration to those sequences which are “physical.” Thus, in addition to covariance and causality one might expect, as first suggested in , that a discrete theory of quantum gravity should satisfy a cosmological renormalizability condition under cycles of expansion and contraction. Given the framework of , such a condition can be formulated as an additional constraint on the coupling constants defining the theory. To make this precise, we introduce the required notation.

We will denote by $`𝒮`$ the collection of sequences of nonnegative real numbers. We will denote elements of $`𝒮`$ by upper case roman letters, and, as above, we will use the corresponding lower case letter to denote specific elements of a given sequence. We will denote by $`𝒮_1`$ the subset of $`𝒮`$ consisting of those sequences which begin with $`1.`$ We define a cosmological renormalization operator $`:𝒮𝒮`$ by

(1) $`((T))_n`$ $`=t_n+t_{n+1}.`$
The operator $``$ admits a stable manifold, $`\text{Stab}()𝒮,`$ defined by

(2) $`\text{Stab}()`$ $`=`$ $`\{T𝒮:T{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}^k(𝒮)\}.`$
We call elements of $`\text{Stab}()`$ stable sequences and we note that (cf  and section 2 below) there is a 1-1 correspondence between generic chains satisfying causality, covariance and cosmological renormalizability under cycles of expansion and contraction and elements of $`𝕊=𝒮_1\text{Stab}().`$ Our main result, a representation theorem, gives a complete description of $`\text{Stab}()`$ in terms of measures on $`^+=[0,\mathrm{}):`$

###### Theorem 1.1.

Let $`T`$ be a sequence of nonnegative real numbers. Then $`T\text{Stab}()`$ if and only if there is a nondecreasing function $`\alpha :^+`$ such that

(3) $`t_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}s^n𝑑\alpha (s).`$
For $`T`$ and $`\alpha `$ as in Theorem 1.1, we will say that $`T`$ is represented by $`\alpha .`$

Our theorem is motivated by an observation of : transitive percolation, the theory which is determined by choosing $`t^+`$ and defining associated coupling constants by

(4) $`t_n`$ $`=`$ $`t^n,`$
defines a stable sequence (by convention $`0^0=1`$). Transitive percolation as given by (4) is represented by a probability measure on $`^+;`$ a delta-mass of weight one concentrated at $`t^+`$ has moments which coincide with the sequence. This measure can in turn be represented by its probability distribution function, a translate of the Heaviside function. Our theorem can be seen as quantifying to what extent transitive percolation is representative of the general behavior of stable sequences. Namely, any stable sequence is a “linear combination” of percolation sequences.

As is clear from the statement of Theorem 1.1, our result is closely related to the classical moment problem of Stieltjes type (cf section 3 below). As a consequence, Theorem 1.1 and its proof provide a means of applying the extensive collection of sophisticated mathematical tools developed in the context of the moment problem to questions related to quantum gravity. We provide a number of straightforward corollaries of our technique. These corollaries include an explicit representation of the transition probabilities associated to any generic Markov chain which defines a discrete theory satisfying covariance, causality and cosmological renormalizability, as well as a second representation theorem which associates to any such theory a natural self-adjoint nonnegative operator acting on a model Hilbert space (cf section 5 below).

We thank Rafael Sorkin for suggesting the problem and for a number of helpful conversations.

## 2. Background and definitions from discrete quantum gravity

In this section we present the mathematical formulation for a classical precursor of a discrete theory of quantum gravity. We follow the development of  and .

The fundamental object of study, a causet, is a locally finite partially ordered set. Throughout this note we will denote causets with upper case roman letters and, when needed, indicate the partial order relation using the symbol $`.`$ We assume throughout that $``$ is irreflexive.

An isomorphism of causets is a bijection which preserves the partial orders. Isomorphism defines an equivalence relation on causets. We will denote by $`𝒞_n`$ the collection of equivalence classes of causets with $`n`$ elements indexed by $`\{0,1,\mathrm{},n1\},`$ with partial order consistent with indexing. Thus, up to equivalence,

(5) $`𝒞_n`$ $`=`$ $`\{C:C\text{ a causet },C=\{a_0,\mathrm{},a_{n1}\},a_ka_lk<l\}.`$
We write

(6) $`𝒞`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}𝒞_n`$
and we note that $`𝒞`$ carries a natural partial order given as follows: $`CD`$ if and only if $`C𝒞_n,D𝒞_m`$ with $`n<m,`$ and there exists an order preserving function $`f:CD`$ such that $`f(C)`$ is an intial segment of $`D.`$

Informally, we can describe the dynamic evolution of causets as follows: Initially, the state of the system is given by the trivial causet consisting of a single point. At each increment of time, an element comes into existence as the “offspring” of elements already in existence. That is, at the beginning of the $`n`$th increment of time we have a causet $`C𝒞_n`$ which we evolve to a causet $`D𝒞_{n+1}`$ by adding an element to $`C`$ together with relations between the new element and a subset of elements of $`C`$ (those elements in the past of the new element, ie, those which bear some causal relationship to the new element). The new relations are determined randomly; the probability that any given collection of relations is added is given by a collection of transition probabilities which define the theory. We can now proceed to formalize this description.

Given a causet $`C`$ and an element $`xC,`$ we define the past of $`x`$ by

(7) $`\text{past}_C(x)`$ $`=`$ $`\{yC:yx\}.`$
We will regard $`\text{past}_C(x)`$ as a poset with partial order given by the partial order of $`C.`$ A link in a partially ordered set is an irreducible relation (ie a relation that contains no other relation). A path in a partially ordered set is a sequence of elements of the set, each related to the next by a link.

Given $`C𝒞_n,`$ we will define the family of $`C,`$ denoted $`F(C),`$ as those elements $`D𝒞_{n+1}`$ such that $`CD,`$ where $``$ denotes the partial order of elements of $`𝒞:`$

(8) $`F(C)`$ $`=`$ $`\{D𝒞_{n+1}:CD\}.`$
Given $`C𝒞_n`$ and $`DF(C),`$ the precursor set of the transition $`CD,`$ denoted $`\text{Prec}(C,D),`$ is the past of the element $`xDC:`$

(9) $`\text{Prec}(C,D)`$ $`=`$ $`\text{past}_D(x)D.`$
Note that $`\text{Prec}(C,D)`$ is a poset with partial order given by its description as the past of an element $`xD.`$ The collection of maximal elements associated to the transition $`CD,`$ is the collection of elements of $`D`$ with links to the element $`x:`$

(10) $`\mathrm{max}(C,D)`$ $`=`$ $`\{yD:y\text{ linked to }x,xDC\}.`$
A special role in the theory will be played by those causets with no relations. We will denote the element of $`𝒞_n`$ with no relations by $`A_n:`$

(11) $`A_n`$ $`=`$ $`((a_0,a_1,\mathrm{},a_{n1}),\mathrm{}).`$
We note that there is a natural path in $`𝒞`$ of length $`n`$ from $`A_0`$ to $`A_n.`$

We define a collection of Markov chains with state space $`𝒞`$ as follows:

###### Definition 2.1.

We say that a Markov chain $`M`$ with state space $`𝒞`$ belongs to the collection $``$ if the transition probabilities of $`M`$ satisfy:

1. Given $`C𝒞_n,`$ let $`\text{Prob}(CD)`$ denote the transition probability corresponding to an evolution from causet $`C`$ to causet $`D.`$ Then $`\text{Prob}(CD)=0`$ if $`DF(C)`$ and $`_{DF(C)}\text{Prob}(CD)=1`$
2. (General Covariance) Let $`C𝒞_n.`$ Suppose $`𝒫_1`$ and $`𝒫_2`$ are two paths from $`A_0`$ to $`C`$ and write $`𝒫_I=\{l_{i1},\mathrm{},l_{in}\}`$ where the $`l_{ij}`$ are the links defining the path $`𝒫_i.`$ Then

$$\underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}\text{Prob}(l_{1k})=\underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}\text{Prob}(l_{2k}).$$
3. (Causality) Suppose that $`C𝒞_n`$ and for $`i=1,2,`$ suppose that $`C_iF(C).`$ Let $`B𝒞_m,mn,`$ be defined by

$`B`$ $`=`$ $`\text{Prec}(C,C_1)\text{Prec}(C,C_2)`$
with poset structure induced by that of $`C.`$ Let $`B_i𝒞_{m+1}`$ be $`B`$ with an element added in the same manner as in the transitions $`CC_i.`$ Then we require

(12) $`{\displaystyle \frac{\text{Prob}(CC_1)}{\text{Prob}(CC_2)}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\text{Prob}(BB_1)}{\text{Prob}(BB_2)}}.`$

It is a theorem of Rideout and Sorkin that any generic element of $``$ is completely determined by a discrete collection of coupling constants given by transitions between causets with no relations. More precisely, let $`M,`$ and suppose that $`A_n`$ is given as in (11). Associate to $`M`$ a sequence of positive coupling constants $`\{q_n\}_{n=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ defined by

(13) $`q_0`$ $`=`$ $`1`$
(14) $`q_n`$ $`=`$ $`\text{Prob}(A_{n1}A_n)`$
where, as above, the expression appearing on the right hand side of (14) denotes the probability of transition from $`A_{n1}`$ to $`A_n.`$ In , Rideout and Sorkin prove that the sequence $`\{q_n\}_{n=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ completely determines the theory associated to $`M.`$ More precisely, given an element $`C𝒞_n,`$ and $`DF(C)`$ (cf (8)), let $`\mathrm{max}(C,D)`$ be the collection of maximal elements associated to the transition $`CD`$ (cf (10)) and let $`\text{Prec}(C,D)`$ be the precursor set of the transition $`CD`$ (cf (9)). Suppose the cardinality of $`\text{Prec}(C,D)`$ is $`\rho `$ and that the cardinality of $`\mathrm{max}(C,D)`$ is $`m.`$ Then the transition probability for the evolution $`CD`$ is given by (cf )

(15) $`\text{Prob}(CD)`$ $`=`$ $`q_n{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{m}{}}}(1)^k\left(\begin{array}{c}m\\ k\end{array}\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{q_{\rho k}}}`$
which indicates that the Markov chain $`M`$ is completely determined by the sequence of $`q_n`$ defined as in (14).

Following , we define a sequence $`t_n`$ by

(16) $`t_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}}(1)^{nk}\left(\begin{array}{c}n\\ k\end{array}\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{q_k}}.`$
Then we can recover the coupling constants $`q_n`$ from the sequence of $`t_n:`$

(17) $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{q_n}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}}\left(\begin{array}{c}n\\ k\end{array}\right)t_k.`$
As in the introduction, let $`𝒮_1`$ be defined by $`𝒮_1=\{T𝒮:t_0=1\}.`$ There is a bijection between generic elements of $``$ and elements of $`𝒮_1`$ given by associating to each element of $`𝒮_1`$ the associated collection of coupling constants $`\{q_n\}_{n=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ given by (17).

Amongst additional constraints that one might impose to restrict further the collection of chains that could serve as classical precursor for a discrete model of quantum gravity, there is a natural choice involving cosmological renormalizability under cycles of expansion and contraction. More precisely, given a causet $`C,`$ we call an element $`\gamma C`$ a post, if every element of $`C`$ is either in the past of $`\gamma `$ or in the future of $`\gamma `$ in $`C`$ (denoted $`\text{future}_C(\gamma )`$):

(18) $`C`$ $`=`$ $`\text{past}_C(\gamma )\{\gamma \}\text{future}_C(\gamma ).`$
Physically, the occurence of a post corresponds to a collapse of the universe to zero diameter, followed by re-expansion.

Given a causet $`C`$ and a post $`\gamma ,`$ there is a simple relationship between the coupling constants $`t_n`$ governing the evolution of $`C`$ and the coupling constants governing the evolution of the causet $`\{\gamma \}\text{future}_C(\gamma )`$ (cf ): If $`p=|\text{past}_C(\gamma )|,`$ then the coupling constants for $`\{\gamma \}\text{future}_C(\gamma )`$ are given by

(19) $`\stackrel{~}{t}_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{p}{}}}\left(\begin{array}{c}p\\ k\end{array}\right)t_{n+k}`$
where $`n>0.`$ This relationship is concisely described in terms of the cosmological renormalization operator $`:𝒮𝒮`$ defined by

(20) $`((T))_n`$ $`=`$ $`t_n+t_{n+1}`$
Using the renormalization operator we can write the right hand side of (19) as $`(^p(T))_n.`$ We use this concise notation to define the collection of Markov chains which we intend to study.

###### Definition 2.2.

We say that a Markov chain $`M`$ with state space $`𝒞`$ belongs to the collection $`𝕄`$ if

1. $`M`$ is generic, and
2. If $`M`$ is represented by the sequence $`T𝒮,`$ then

(21) $`T`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}^n(𝒮).`$

As in the introduction, we call the right-hand-side of (21) the stable set of the renormalization operator and we write

(22) $`\text{Stab}()`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}^n(𝒮).`$
If we set $`𝕊=𝒮_1\text{Stab}(),`$ then it is clear from the definition that there is a bijection between elements of $`𝕄`$ and elements of $`𝕊.`$ It is also clear that $`\text{Stab}()`$ is a convex set.

As discussed in  and  and our introduction, there are a number of interesting special cases of processes which satisfy the conditions defining $`𝕄.`$ Of particular interest from our point of view are theories of transitive percolation defined by fixing $`t^+`$ and setting

(23) $`t_n`$ $`=`$ $`t^n.`$
As mentioned in the introduction, the sequence defined by (23) can be represented by a probability measure on $`:`$ a delta-mass of weight 1 concentrated at $`t^+.`$ This fact, together with the observed convexity of $`\text{Stab}()`$ suggests that we develop a representation of $`\text{Stab}()`$ in terms of the moments of probability measures on $`^+.`$

## 3. Moment Problems

In this section we develop material related to the classical moment problem which we will need in the sequel. References to this material include  and .

Let $`[a,b]`$ be an interval in the real line, $`\alpha :[a,b]`$ a function of bounded variation. Given $`t(a,b),`$ we write

$`\alpha (t\pm )`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{st^\pm }{lim}\alpha (s).`$
We say that $`\alpha `$ is normalized if $`\alpha (a)=0`$ and for all $`t(a,b),`$

(24) $`\alpha (t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha (t)+\alpha (t+)}{2}}.`$
If $`f`$ is continuous on $`[a,b]`$ and $`\alpha `$ is of bounded variation, we will denote the Stieltjes integral of $`f`$ with respect to $`\alpha `$ by $`_a^bf(s)𝑑\alpha (s).`$ Functions of bounded variation behave well with respect to Stieltjes integration: if $`\alpha `$ is of bounded variation on $`[a,b],`$ if $`f`$ is continuous, and if $`c[a,b],`$ then

(25) $`\beta (x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _c^x}f(s)𝑑\alpha (s)`$
defines a function of bounded variation. Moreover, if $`g`$ is continuous, then

(26) $`{\displaystyle _a^b}g(s)𝑑\beta (s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _a^b}g(s)f(s)𝑑\alpha (s).`$
Stieltjes integration behaves as expected under change of coordinates: if $`\alpha `$ is of bounded variation on $`[a,b],`$ if $`f`$ is continuous on $`[a,b]`$ and if $`\gamma `$ is continuous and strictly increasing on $`[a,b],`$ then

(27) $`{\displaystyle _a^b}f(s)𝑑\alpha (s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _c^d}f(\gamma (s))𝑑\alpha (\gamma (s))`$
where $`a=\gamma (c)`$ and $`b=\gamma (d).`$

Stieltjes integration can be extended to improper integrals. For example if $`\alpha :^+`$ is of bounded variation, and $`f`$ is continuous on $`(0,\mathrm{}),`$ we write

$`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}f(s)𝑑\alpha (s)`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{R\mathrm{},ϵ0}{lim}{\displaystyle _ϵ^R}f(s)𝑑\alpha (s)`$
when the limit exists and is finite. The formulas (26) and (27) are easily extended to improper integrals.

###### Definition 3.1.

Let $`T𝒮.`$ We say that a nondecreasing function $`\alpha :[0,1]`$ is a solution of the Hausdorff Moment Problem for $`T`$ if, for all $`n,`$

(28) $`t_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^n𝑑\alpha (s).`$
We say that a nondecreasing function $`\alpha :^+`$ is a solution of the Stieltjes Moment Problem for $`T`$ if, for all $`n,`$

(29) $`t_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}s^n𝑑\alpha (s).`$
The solution of the Stieltjes Moment Problem played a fundamental role in the development of modern analysis. We recall the material relevant to our purpose.

###### Definition 3.2.

Let $`T`$ be a sequence of real numbers. The difference operator, $`\mathrm{\Delta },`$ mapping sequences of real numbers to sequences of real numbers is defined by

(30) $`(\mathrm{\Delta }(T))_n`$ $`=`$ $`t_{n+1}t_n.`$
A sequence $`T𝒮`$ is said to be completely monotonic if for all $`n`$ and for all $`k,`$

(31) $`(\mathrm{\Delta }^k(T))_n`$ $``$ $`0.`$
We can now state Hausdorff’s solution to the moment problem bearing his name:

###### Theorem 3.1.

(Hausdorff) Suppose $`T𝒮.`$ Then the Hausdorff Moment Problem for $`T`$ has a solution if and only if the sequence $`T`$ is completely monotonic. When $`T`$ is completely monotonic, the solution of the moment problem is unique.

The solution of the moment problem associated to Stieltjes is given in

###### Theorem 3.2.

(Stieltjes) Suppose $`T𝒮.`$ Then the Stieltjes Moment Problem for $`T`$ has a solution if and only if the Hankel determinants

(32) $`H_{0,n}`$ $`=`$ $`\left|\begin{array}{cccc}t_0& t_1& \mathrm{}& t_n\\ t_1& t_2& \mathrm{}& t_{n+1}\\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}\\ t_n& t_{n+1}& \mathrm{}& t_{2n}\end{array}\right|`$
(33) $`H_{1,n}`$ $`=`$ $`\left|\begin{array}{cccc}t_1& t_2& \mathrm{}& t_{n+1}\\ t_2& t_3& \mathrm{}& t_{n+2}\\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}\\ t_{n+1}& t_{n+2}& \mathrm{}& t_{2n+1}\end{array}\right|`$
are nonnegative for all values of $`n.`$

## 4. Proof of the main result

We begin with a definition:

###### Definition 4.1.

Let $`X=(X_{i,j}),0i,j<\mathrm{}`$ be a doubly infinite matrix with real entries. We say that $`X`$ is a tableau if

1. $`X_{i,j}0`$ for all $`i,j.`$
2. If $`X_k=\{X_{k,j}\}_{j=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is the sequence whose terms are given by the $`k`$th row of $`X`$ and $``$ is the renormalization operator defined by (20), then $`(X_k)=X_{k1}`$ for all $`k.`$

Given $`n,`$ a partial $`n`$-tableau is a matrix of $`n`$ rows and an infinite number of columns which satisfies the two defining conditions of a tableau. If $`𝒫_n`$ is the collection of partial $`n`$-tableau, if $`P𝒫_n`$ and $`mn,`$ the $`m`$-corner operator $`𝒪_m:𝒫_n^m\times ^m`$ is the map defined by truncation:

(34) $`𝒪_m(P)`$ $`=`$ $`(P_{i,j}),0i,jm1.`$
Tableaux are closely related to stable sequences: It is clear from Definition 2.2 and Definition 4.1 that if $`X`$ is a tableau and $`X_0=\{X_{0,n}\}_{n=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is the first row of $`X,`$ then $`X_0\text{Stab}().`$ Conversely,

###### Lemma 4.1.

Suppose that $`T\text{Stab}().`$ Then there is a tableau whose first row is $`T.`$

Proof Let $`T\text{Stab}().`$ For each $`n`$ we can find an partial $`n`$-tableau with first row $`T.`$ We will create an infinite sequence, $`\{Y^\alpha \}_{\alpha =1}^{\mathrm{}}.`$ Each $`Y^\alpha `$ is itself an infinite sequence of partial tableaux where the number of rows will tend to infinity as $`\alpha \mathrm{}.`$ Then we will use a diagonal trick to finish the proof.

Define a sequence of partial tableau, $`Y^1=\{Y_n^1\}_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}},`$ where for each $`n,`$ $`Y_n^1`$ is a partial $`n`$-tableau with $`T`$ as first row. Having chosen subsequences $`Y^{m1}Y^{m2}\mathrm{}Y^1,`$ choose a subsequence $`Y^m`$ of $`Y^{m1}`$ which satisfies

1. $`Y_n^m`$ is a partial $`k_n`$-tableau with $`k_nm;`$
2. If $`𝒪_m`$ is the $`m`$-corner operator defined in (34), then $`𝒪_m(Y_n^m)`$ converges as $`n\mathrm{}.`$

Consider the sequence of matrices $`Z_k=Y_k^k.`$ Then $`Z_k`$ converges to a doubly infinite matrix with nonnegative entries and first row given by $`T.`$ That $`Z`$ is a tableau follows from the continuity of the $`m`$-corner operator acting on $`Z_k.`$ $`\mathrm{}`$

###### Lemma 4.2.

Suppose that $`X`$ is a tableau and let $`\{X_{k,n}\}=\{X_{k,n}\}_{k=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ be the sequence whose terms are given by the $`n`$th column of $`X.`$ Then $`\{X_{k,n}\}`$ is a completely monotonic sequence.

Proof An explicit computation shows that the diagonal entries of $`X`$ are given by

(35) $`X_{k,k}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{k}{}}}(1)^l\left(\begin{array}{c}k\\ l\end{array}\right)X_{l,0}.`$
By assumption the terms of $`X`$ are all nonnegative. This proves that the first column of $`X`$ is completely monotonic. To finish the proof, note that tableau are stable under truncation of their first $`n`$ columns. Carrying out such a truncation, the argument above establishes that the $`(n+1)`$th column of $`X`$ (the first column of the truncated matrix) is completely monotonic. $`\mathrm{}`$

###### Lemma 4.3.

Suppose $`\{y_i\}_{i=1}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is a completely monotonic sequence. Let $`\alpha :[0,1]`$ be the normalized nondecreasing function such that, for $`1i,`$

(36) $`y_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^{i1}𝑑\alpha (s).`$
Then there exists $`y_0`$ such that $`\{y_i\}_{i=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is completely monotonic if and only if

(37) $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^1𝑑\alpha (s)`$ converges.
Moreover, if $`_0^1s^1𝑑\alpha (s)=L,`$ then

(38) $`L`$ $`=`$ $`inf\{y_0:\{y_i\}_{i=0}^{\mathrm{}}\text{ is completely monotonic}\}.`$
Proof Suppose that (37) holds. Define $`\beta :[0,1]`$ by

$$\beta (t)=_0^ts^1𝑑\alpha (s).$$

Then $`\beta `$ is nondecreasing and for $`i1,`$

$`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^i𝑑\beta (s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^{i1}𝑑\alpha (s)`$
Setting $`y_0=_0^1s^1𝑑\alpha (s),`$ we see that there is a solution to the Hausdorff Moment Problem for the augmented sequence $`\{y_i\}_{i=0}^{\mathrm{}}.`$ By Hausdorff’s Theorem (cf Theorem 3.1), the augmented sequence is completely monotonic.

Conversely, suppose there is a $`y_0`$ such that the augmented sequence $`\{y_i\}_{i=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is completely monotonic. Let $`\beta :[0,1]`$ be the normalized nondecreasing solution of the Hausdorff Moment Problem for the augmented sequence. Then, for all $`i1,`$

(39) $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^{i1}𝑑\alpha (s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^{i1}s𝑑\beta (s).`$
Define continuous linear functionals, $`L_\alpha ,L_\beta ,`$ on the space of continuous functions on $`[0,1]:`$

$`L_\alpha (f)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}f(s)𝑑\alpha (s)`$
$`L_\beta (f)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}f(s)s𝑑\beta (s).`$
From (39) we conclude that $`L_\alpha `$ and $`L_\beta `$ agree on polynomials. By the Weierstrass theorem and continuity of the integral, we conclude that $`L_\alpha =L_\beta .`$ Choose $`f_n(s)`$ the increasing sequence of nonnegative continuous functions equal to $`\frac{1}{s}`$ on $`[\frac{1}{n},1]`$ and equal to $`n`$ on $`[0,\frac{1}{n}]`$ so that

$$\underset{n\mathrm{}}{lim}_0^1f_n(s)s𝑑\beta (s)=y_0.$$

Then,

(40) $`{\displaystyle _{\frac{1}{n}}^1}f_n(s)𝑑\alpha (s)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}f_n(s)s𝑑\beta (s).`$
Since the right hand side of (40) converges as $`n\mathrm{},`$ we conclude that (37) holds. Since the right hand side converges to $`y_0,`$ we conclude that $`L=_0^1s^1𝑑\alpha (s)`$ is a lower bound for any $`y_0`$ augmenting the original sequence. Since we have already established that when the integral converges, $`y_0=L`$ gives a completely monotonic augmented sequence, we are done. $`\mathrm{}`$

Remark: With $`\{y_i\}_{i=1}^{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`L`$ as in Lemma 4.3, any $`y_0L`$ gives a completely monotonic augmented sequence.

###### Lemma 4.4.

Let $`X`$ be a tableau. Then $`X`$ is determined by its first column. In fact, if $`\{X_{n,0}\}=\{X_{n,0}\}_{n=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is the first column of $`X`$ and $`\alpha :[0,1]`$ is the normalized nondecreasing function representing $`\{X_{n,0}\}:`$

(41) $`X_{n,0}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^n𝑑\alpha (s),`$
then

(42) $`X_{0,p}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^p(1s)^p𝑑\alpha (s).`$
Proof By Lemma 4.2 $`\{X_{n,0}\}=\{X_{n,0}\}_{n=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is a completely monotonic sequence and thus admits a representation by $`\alpha `$ as in (41). By definition of a tableau, $`X_{n,0}+X_{n,1}=X_{n1,0}`$ for all $`n1,`$ and thus for $`n1,`$

$`X_{n,1}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^{n1}(1s)𝑑\alpha (s).`$
Since $`\{X_{n,1}\}_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is represented as a moment sequence, by Hausdorff’s Theorem $`\{X_{n,1}\}_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is completely monotonic. Since $`\{X_{n,1}\}_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}`$ is part of a column of a tableau, $`\{X_{n,1}\}_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}`$ extends to a completely monotonic sequence $`\{X_{n,1}\}_{n=0}^{\mathrm{}}.`$ By Lemma 4.3, we conclude that

$`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^1(1s)𝑑\alpha (s)`$
converges and we set

$`L`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^1(1s)𝑑\alpha (s).`$
Let $`\beta :[0,1]`$ be a normalized nondecreasing function representing the completely monotone sequence $`L,X_{1,1},X_{2,1},\mathrm{}`$ Let $`ϵ=X_{0,1}L`$ and let $`h(t)`$ be the Heaviside function:

$`h(t)`$ $`=`$ $`\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{ if }t>0\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{ if }t0.\hfill \end{array}`$
Define $`\gamma :[0,1]`$ by

(43) $`\gamma (t)`$ $`=`$ $`\beta (t)+ϵh(t).`$
Then $`\gamma `$ is nondecreasing and for all $`n0,`$

$`X_{n,1}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^n𝑑\gamma (s).`$
Let $`f_n(s)`$ be as defined in the proof of Lemma 4.3. Consider the pair of columns $`\{X_{n,1}\}`$ and $`\{X_{n,2}\}.`$ By the analysis given for the pair $`\{X_{n,0}\}`$ and $`\{X_{n,1}\},`$ we know that

$$_0^1s^1(1s)𝑑\gamma (s)$$

converges and therefore $`_0^1f_n(s)(1s)𝑑\gamma (s)`$ converges as $`n\mathrm{}.`$ But $`_0^1f_n(s)(1s)𝑑\beta (s)`$ is nonnegative and $`_0^1f_n(s)(1s)𝑑h(s)`$ diverges as $`n\mathrm{},`$ from which we conclude that $`ϵ=0.`$ Thus, $`X_{0,1}=L`$ and the column $`\{X_{n,0}\}`$ determines the column $`\{X_{n,1}\}.`$ The lemma follows by induction. $`\mathrm{}`$

Proof of Theorem 1.1 Suppose that $`T𝒮`$ and suppose that $`\alpha :^+`$ is a normalized nondecreasing function representing $`T:`$

$`t_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}s^n𝑑\alpha (s).`$
Fix $`p`$ and define $`\beta :^+^+`$ by

$`\beta (s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^s}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1+u)^p}}𝑑\alpha (u).`$
Then $`\beta `$ is nondecreasing on $`^+`$ and of bounded variation. Let $`S`$ be the sequence corresponding to the moments of $`\beta :`$

$$s_n=_0^{\mathrm{}}u^n𝑑\beta (u).$$

A direct computation using (26) gives $`^p(S)=T.`$ This proves that every moment sequence is stable.

To establish the converse, suppose that $`T`$ is a stable sequence. By Lemma 4.1, there is a tableau, $`X,`$ which has $`T`$ as its first row. By Lemma 4.4, $`X`$ is determined by its first column. By Lemma 4.2, the first column of $`X`$ is completely monotonic and thus, by Hausdorff’s Theorem, there is a unique normalized nondecreasing $`\alpha :[0,1]`$ which represents $`\{X_{n,0}\}:`$

$`X_{n,0}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^1}s^n𝑑\alpha (s).`$
Thus, $`T`$ is determined by $`\alpha .`$ To complete the proof, we use $`\alpha `$ to construct a measure on $`^+`$ with moments given by $`T.`$

Write $`u=\frac{1s}{s}`$ and $`s=\frac{1}{1+u}.`$ The function $`\gamma :^+`$ defined as the composition $`\gamma (u)=\alpha (s)`$ is nondecreasing with total variation bounded by the variation of $`\alpha .`$ By Lemma 4.4,

(44) $`X_{0,n}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}u^n𝑑\gamma (u)`$
which exhibits the first row of $`X`$ as a moment sequence and completes our proof. $`\mathrm{}`$

## 5. Applications

Theorem 1.1 provides for a representation of the transition probabilities for a Markov chain which provides a classical precursor for a discrete theory of quantum gravity satisfying causality, covariance and cosmological renormalizability:

###### Corollary 5.1.

Suppose that $`M𝕄`$ is a Markov chain satisfying Definition 2.2. Suppose that $`T𝕊`$ is the sequence of coupling constants defining $`M`$ and that $`\alpha :^+`$ is a nondecreasing function representing $`T.`$ Suppose that $`\{q_n\}_{n=0}^{\mathrm{}}`$ are the transition probabilities defined in (14). Then

(45) $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{q_n}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}(1+s)^n𝑑\alpha (s).`$
Proof This follows immedately from (17) and the binomial theorem. $`\mathrm{}`$

Using Corollary 5.1 we obtain an attractive representation for general transition probabilities:

###### Corollary 5.2.

Suppose that $`C𝒞_n`$ and that $`DF(C).`$ Suppose that the cardinality of $`\text{Prec}(C,D)`$ is $`\rho `$ and that the cardinality of $`\mathrm{max}(C,D)`$ is $`m.`$ Suppose that $`M𝕄`$ is a Markov chain satisfying Definition 2.2. Suppose that $`T𝕊`$ is the sequence of coupling constants defining $`M`$ and that $`\alpha :^+`$ is a nondecreasing function representing $`T.`$ Then

(46) $`\text{Prob}(CD)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{_0^{\mathrm{}}s^m(1+s)^{\rho m}𝑑\alpha (s)}{_0^{\mathrm{}}(1+s)^n𝑑\alpha (s)}}.`$
Proof This follows immediately from Corollary 5.1, (15), and the binomial theorem applied to $`s^m=((1+s)1)^m.`$ $`\mathrm{}`$

Our next result establishes that all positive sequences which grow fast enough are stable:

###### Corollary 5.3.

Any monotonic sequence which grows sufficiently quickly defines an element of $`\text{Stab}().`$

Proof For a quickly growing sequence, the positivity condition on the Hankel determinants (32), (33), are trivially satisfied as the value of the determinant is controlled by the entry in the lower right hand corner. Thus, any monotonic sequence which grows sufficiently quickly is a moment sequence and Corollary 5.3 follows from Theorem 1.1. $`\mathrm{}`$

Corollary 5.2 and Corollary 5.3 provide a means of quantifying the evolution of causets under dynamics which provide for rapidly increasing coupling constants. We hope to return to this in a future paper.

Our final result uses Hankel determinants to associate to any stable sequence which is not a finite linear combination of percolation sequences, a model Hilbert space and a nonnegative self-adjoint operator. Our development follows that of Simon .

The Hankel determinants appearing in (32) and (33) are associated to quadratic forms which arise naturally in the analysis of the Stieltjes Moment Problem. More precisely, given a sequence $`T\text{Stab}(),`$ consider the sesquilinear forms $`H_N^i:^N`$ defined by

(47) $`H_N^0(\rho ,\sigma )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{0n,mN1}{}}\overline{\rho }_n\sigma _mt_{n+m}`$
(48) $`H_N^1(\rho ,\sigma )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{0n,mN1}{}}\overline{\rho }_n\sigma _mt_{n+m+1}.`$
Let $`_N^i`$ be the matrices associated to the forms $`H_N^i`$ via the relation

(49) $`H_N^i(\rho ,\sigma )`$ $`=`$ $`\rho ,_N^i\sigma `$
where the pairing is Euclidean. Then the Hankel determinants appearing in Theorem 3.2 are given by $`det(_N^i)=H_{i,N}`$ and the forms $`H_N^i`$ are strictly positive definite if and only if the corresponding Hankel determinants are positive (cf ). Following , we use this material to reformulate the Stieltjes result in the language of self-adjoint operators.

For the remainder of the paper we assume that the sequence $`T`$ is not a finite linear combination of percolation sequences, so that the Hankel determinants are all strictly positive definite.

Suppose that $`[x],`$ is the algebra of polynomials with complex coefficients. Define a positive definite inner product on $`[x]`$ by

(50) $`p,q`$ $`=`$ $`H_{0,N}(\rho ,\sigma )`$
where $`p(x)=_{n=0}^{N1}\rho _nx^n`$ and $`q(x)=_{n=0}^{N1}\sigma _nx^n.`$ Using this inner product, we complete $`[x]`$ to a Hilbert space $`_T,`$ where the subscript $`T`$ denotes the dependence on the moment sequence $`T.`$

Let $`A`$ be the operator with domain $`D(A)=[x]_T`$ defined by

(51) $`A(p)(x)`$ $`=`$ $`xp(x).`$
Then $`A`$ is densely defined, symmetric and nonnegative. Thus, by the theory of von Neumann, $`A`$ admits self-adjoint extensions. Amongst the (possibly many) self-adjoint extensions of $`A`$ there is a distinguished extension, the minimal nonnegative self-adjoint extension (the Friedrichs extension) of $`A`$ to an operator $`A_F`$ with domain contained in $`_T.`$

It is a theorem of Simon that the collection of such extensions of $`A`$ parameterizes solutions to the (nondegenerate) Stieltjes moment problem . We summarize these results in the following

###### Theorem 5.1.

(Simon) Suppose that $`T𝒮`$ is a sequence which is not a finite linear combination of percolation sequences and whose corresponding Stieltjes problem admits a solution. Let $`_T`$ be the corresponding Hilbert space completion of the algebra of polynomials with inner product defined by (50), and let $`A:D(A)[x]`$ be the operator defined by (51). Then every solution to the Stieltjes problem for the sequence $`T`$ corresponds to a unique nonnegative self-adjoint extension of $`A`$ to an operator $`\stackrel{~}{A}:_T_T`$ with spectral measure $`\mu _{\stackrel{~}{A}}`$ satisfying

$$t_n=_0^{\mathrm{}}s^n𝑑\mu _{\stackrel{~}{A}}(s).$$

With the conventions established above, we have the following corollary:

###### Corollary 5.4.

To every sequence $`T𝒮_1\text{Stab}(),`$ which is not a finite linear combination of percolation sequences, there corresponds a pair $`(_T,A_F)`$ where $`_T`$ is the Hilbert space completion of $`[x]`$ defined by inner products (50) and $`A_F`$ is the minimal nonnegative self-adjoint extension of the densely defined operator $`A:[x][x]`$ defined in (51). Thus, there is a distinguished spectral measure whose moments are given by the sequence $`T.`$