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# Quantum Dots with Disorder and Interactions: A Solvable Large-𝑔 Limit

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## Abstract

We show that problem of interacting electrons in a quantum dot with chaotic boundary conditions is solvable in the $`g\mathrm{}`$ limit, where $`g`$ is the dimensionless conductance of the dot. The critical point of the $`g=\mathrm{}`$ theory (whose location and exponent are known exactly) that separates strong and weak-coupling phases also controls a wider fan-shaped region in the coupling-$`1/g`$ plane, just as a quantum critical point controls the fan in at $`T>0`$. The weak-coupling phase is governed by the Universal Hamiltonian and the strong-coupling phase is a disordered version of the Pomeranchuk transition in a clean Fermi liquid. Predictions are made in the various regimes for the Coulomb Blockade peak spacing distributions and Fock-space delocalization (reflected in the quasiparticle width and ground state wavefunction).

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The union of interactions and disorder in electronic systems poses a nasty problem: Techniques that work when only one or the other is present fail when they coexist. Here we discuss a class of problems involving quantum dots (QD’s) where the evil twins can be tamed, thanks to a small parameter $`1/g`$, $`g`$ being the dimensionless conductance of an open QD. The problem is interesting for experiments in the Coulomb Blockade (CB) regime.

We consider $`d=2`$ dots characterized by $`E_F`$, the Fermi energy, $`E_T`$, the Thouless energy (which is the amount by which the uncertainty principle broadens the electronic energy levels in the time it takes to traverse the dot), and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, the average single particle level spacing, with $`E_F>>E_T>>\mathrm{\Delta }`$. $`E_T`$ also measures the band around the Fermi energy wherein the energy levels and wave functions ($`g`$ in number) may be described statistically by Random Matrix Theory (RMT). The randomness here is due to the chaotic boundary conditions, with the mean free path $`l`$ equal to the sample size $`L`$, and $`E_TE_\tau \mathrm{}v_F/L`$, where $`E_\tau `$ is the level width due to scattering.

Our hamiltonian is:

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha }{}}\psi _\alpha ^{}\psi _\alpha \epsilon _\alpha +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }{}}V_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }\psi _\alpha ^{}\psi _\beta ^{}\psi _\gamma \psi _\delta `$ (1)
where $`\epsilon _\alpha `$ are single-particle levels that obey RMT statistics, have a mean spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and range from $`g\mathrm{\Delta }/2`$ to $`g\mathrm{\Delta }/2`$. In the following we will supress spin for simplicity, pointing out how its restoration modifies various results.

Choices for $`V_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }`$ range in previous work from all of them being independent gaussian variables to the Universal Hamiltonian, wherein $`V_{\alpha \beta \beta \alpha }=u_0\mathrm{\Delta }`$, (all others zero). The sole parameter $`u_0`$ clearly couples to $`Q^2`$, $`Q`$ being the total charge. For the spinful case a term coupling to total $`\stackrel{}{S}^2`$ is also included.

We employ the choice made by Murthy and Mathur (MM) who appeal to the Renormalization Group (RG) approach developed by one of us, where one integrates out modes that lie outside a narrow band centered on the Fermi energy to expose the low-energy physics. In a clean system the RG leads to Landau’s Fermi Liquid (FL) parameters as fixed-point couplings. With disorder one expects this RG to work till we come down to $`E_\tau E_T`$, still leading to FL couplings since $`E_T<<E_F`$. At this point disorder is included exactly by switching from the $`𝐤`$ basis to the disorder basis:

$`V_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{4}}`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{𝐤𝐤}^{}}{}}u(\theta \theta ^{})\left[\varphi _\alpha ^{}(𝐤)\varphi _\beta ^{}(𝐤^{})\varphi _\alpha ^{}(𝐤^{})\varphi _\beta ^{}(𝐤)\right](\alpha \beta \delta \gamma )`$
where $`\theta `$ and $`\theta ^{}`$ are the angles of the momentum vectors $`𝐤`$ and $`𝐤^{}`$ and $`V_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }`$ is just the transcription of the Fermi liquid interaction $`V_{FL}=\frac{E_T}{2g}_{\mathrm{𝐤𝐤}^{}}u(\theta \theta ^{})n_𝐤n_𝐤^{}`$. We will Fourier resolve the interaction as $`u(\theta \theta ^{})=u_0+_{m=1}^{\mathrm{}}u_m\mathrm{cos}\left[m(\theta \theta ^{})\right]`$. The constant $`u_0`$ controls $`V`$’s with nonzero average $`V_{\alpha \beta \beta \alpha }=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{g^2}_{\mathrm{𝐤𝐤}^{}}u(\theta ,\theta ^{})=u_0\mathrm{\Delta }`$. All couplings have nonzero fluctuations given by

$$V_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }^2V_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }^2=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }^2}{4g^2}\underset{m=1}{}u_m^2.$$
(2)
Couplings with zero average are discarded in the Universal Hamiltonian. Can these couplings be relevant in the RG sense and dominate low-energy physics, despite their small size in the original Hamiltonian? To answer this, MM resorted to further fermionic RG within $`E_T`$. Their one-loop $`\beta `$-function yielded a critical point at $`u_m^{}=1/\mathrm{ln}2`$ for $`m>0`$. (Upon including spin the instabilities can occur in the charge or spin channels, the critical coupling being $`1/2\mathrm{ln}2`$ for each channel.) For $`u_m>1/\mathrm{ln}2`$, the flow led to the Universal Hamiltonian, while for $`u_m<1/\mathrm{ln}2`$ there was a runaway to strong coupling. The two phases seemed clearly related to two types of behavior in level spacings and the nature of quasiparticles. However, uncertainty surrounding the nature of the strong-coupling phase and even its very existence, predicated as it was on a one-loop calculation and a fixed point of order unity, impeded further progress.

We have verified that the theory is solvable in the limit $`g\mathrm{}`$, with $`1/g`$ playing the role of $`1/N`$ in large-N theories. The key idea is illustrated by proving that the four point function $`G_{\alpha \beta \gamma \delta }`$ is just a sum of repeated particle-hole bubble diagrams. Recall that in theories with interaction $`V=\lambda /N(_i\psi _i^{}\psi _i)(_j\psi _j^{}\psi _j)`$, only such iterated bubbles survive, since only they have a free sum over $`N`$ for each extra loop. The situation here is similar. Consider the one-loop diagrams in our theory. Each vertex carries a sum over two momenta ( $`𝐤`$ and $`𝐤^{}`$ in Fig. 1a for the bare vertex), and each propagator is diagonal in the disorder eigenvalue index, but not the $`𝐤`$ index. In Fig. 1b, the internal states involve a sum over terms of the form $`\varphi _\mu ^{}(𝐥)\varphi _\mu (𝐦)\varphi _\nu ^{}(𝐦)\varphi _\nu (𝐤)`$ Replacing the sum (over $`\mu ,\nu ,𝐥,𝐦`$ ) by the ensemble averages using

$$\varphi _\mu ^{}(𝐤_1)\varphi _\mu (𝐤_2)\varphi _\nu ^{}(𝐤_3)\varphi _\nu (𝐤_4)=\frac{\delta _{12}\delta _{34}}{g^2}+O(1/g^3)$$
(3)
(and neglecting fluctuations down by $`1/g`$) we find that $`𝐦=𝐥`$ and that there is a free sum over $`g`$ values of either one of them. (An exception occurs when either vertex involves $`u_0`$ which does not flow.) The reader may check that other possible one-loop particle-hole and particle-particle diagrams are down by $`1/g`$ because one or more of the external $`𝐤`$ labels creep into the diagram. The same logic holds for higher orders.

Consequently, MM’s one-loop $`\beta `$-function and critical exponent $`\nu =1/\beta ^{}(u^{})=1`$ are exact and the phase transition is real. We now ask what it corresponds to.

Let us consider just one $`u_m<0`$ and factorize:

$`\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{𝐤𝐤}^{}}{}}|u_m|\mathrm{cos}(m\theta m\theta ^{})\right]=`$
$`{\displaystyle 𝑑𝝈\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{|𝝈|^2}{2|u_m|\mathrm{\Delta }}\overline{\psi }_\alpha 𝝈𝐌_{\alpha \beta }\psi _\beta \right]}`$
where $`𝝈=(\sigma ^1,\sigma ^2)`$ has two components, as does $`𝐌`$:

$$(M^1,M^2)=\underset{𝐤}{}\varphi _\alpha ^{}(𝐤)\varphi _\beta (𝐤)(\mathrm{cos}m\theta ,\mathrm{sin}m\theta )$$
(4)
Integrating out the fermions we get an effective action

$$S=\frac{|𝝈|^2}{2|u_m|\mathrm{\Delta }}+Tr\mathrm{ln}\left[(i\omega \epsilon _\alpha )𝐈𝝈𝐌\right]$$
(5)
where $`I`$ is the unit matrix. The quadratic part of the action is

$`S_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \left[\frac{\dot{𝝈}^2}{4g\mathrm{\Delta }^3}+\frac{|𝝈|^2}{2\mathrm{\Delta }}\left[\frac{1}{|u_m|}\mathrm{ln}2\right]\right]}`$ (6)
upon using the disorder-averaged result

$$\underset{\alpha \beta }{}\frac{N_\beta N_\alpha }{\epsilon _\alpha \epsilon _\beta }=\frac{2}{\mathrm{\Delta }^2}_0^{\frac{g\mathrm{\Delta }}{2}}\frac{d\epsilon _1d\epsilon _2}{\epsilon _1+\epsilon _2}=\frac{2g\mathrm{ln}2}{\mathrm{\Delta }}$$
(7)
where $`N_\alpha `$ is the Fermi occupation factor of level $`\alpha `$. The $`\dot{𝝈}^2`$ term is valid for frequencies well below $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. (We shall not be interested in faster motion of the collective mode.)

To reconfirm the large-$`g`$ nature of the theory, one defines $`\overline{𝝈}=𝝈/g`$ and evaluates the $`Tr\mathrm{ln}`$, term by term, and finds that $`S`$ has a $`g^2`$ in front, which plays the role of $`1/\mathrm{}`$. If $`1/g^2=^{\prime \prime }\mathrm{}^{\prime \prime }=0`$, we are in the classical limit and spontaneous symmetry breaking is possible (even) for a single degree of freedom, while if $`1/g^2>0`$, this is impossible due to “quantum” fluctuations. If we include more $`u_m`$’s, the corresponding $`𝝈`$’s will make additive contributions to $`S`$. As soon as one of them breaks symmetry, the rest will not matter.

The phase diagram is shown in Figure 2. Let us first focus on $`1/g=0`$. For $`u_m>u_m^{}`$, $`𝝈=0`$. For $`u_m<u_m^{}`$, $`𝝈0`$ with a Mexican hat minimum located by balancing the quadratic term we have above with the rest of $`S`$. This leads to $`|𝝈|=Cg\sqrt{|r|}`$ where $`C`$ is a number of order unity and $`r=u_m^1(u_m^{})^1`$. At $`1/g=0`$ there are no fluctuations and $`𝝈`$ can sit anywhere on a circle.

What happens at $`1/g>0`$ follows from its role as the pre-factor in the action of $`\overline{𝝈}`$: the critical point can be felt within a critical ”fan” just as a $`T=0`$ critical point can influence $`T>0`$ physics. The fan is $`V`$-shaped since both $`r`$ and $`1/g`$ scale with exponent $`1`$.

For $`1/g>0`$ the symmetry of the Mexican hat valley is explicitly broken by sample-specific corrections to next order in $`1/g`$ yielding a unique minimum at some angle $`\theta `$. The stability of this minimum to ”quantum” fluctuations (at nonzero $`1/g`$) is examined by reading off the hamiltonian for $`𝝈`$ from Eqn.(6) for the effective action. The angular part of $`𝝈`$ is governed by

$$H_\sigma =\frac{L^2}{g}+gV(\theta )$$
(8)
where $`L`$ is the angular momentum conjugate to $`\theta `$, and factors other than $`g`$ are suppressed. The radial part of $`<𝝈>g`$ which appears in both kinetic and potential terms is represented by its average value of order $`g`$. The potential term dominates at large $`g`$ and ensures that the wavefunction is localized near the minimum of $`V`$. Unlike in the two phases, the critical point (and fan region) has very large fluctuations in $`𝝈`$: From the hamiltonian

$$H_\sigma =g𝐏^2+\frac{\sigma ^4}{g^2}$$
(9)
we estimate the ground state wave function to have a width $`𝒪(g^{1/2})`$ in $`\sigma `$. As the interaction increases we cross over from the Universal Hamiltonian phase through the critical region to the symmetry-broken phase.

What does the order parameter correspond to? In a pure system when any Landau parameter $`u_m<2`$ ( $`<1`$ with spin), the Fermi surface undergoes a Pomeranchuk shape transition. For example if $`m=2`$ the shape is an oval, with the director being a Goldstone mode. The present transition is the disordered version of this, with small disorder terms making the Goldstone mode massive. (An anisotropic gap at the Fermi surface could also arise when considering instabilities in the spin channel). Note that the phenomenology described above can occur on top of a mesoscopic Stoner transition.

The phase diagram clarifies at least two issues. First, we can relate the fluctuations of $`𝝈`$ to “delocalization in Fock space”, which concerned the crossover of the quasiparticle width to a Breit-Wigner form as a function of its energy. Note that $`𝝈`$ acts as a background field for the fermions in the Hartree -Fock Hamiltonian

$$H_{HF}=\underset{\alpha \beta }{}\psi _\alpha ^{}\left[\epsilon _\alpha \delta _{\alpha \beta }+𝝈𝐌_{\alpha \beta }\right]\psi _\beta .$$
(10)
Outside the critical fan $`H_{HF}`$ is controlled by one sharply peaked value of $`<𝝈>`$ (either zero or somewhere on the Mexican hat’s valley) and states are descendants of a single Slater determinant. In the fan $`𝝈`$ suffers large critical fluctuations. Thus we expect the ground state to go from being localized to delocalized and back to localized as we raise the coupling at fixed $`g`$. This re-entrance has been seen in numerics. We connect the quasiparticle width to its energy $`\epsilon `$, by arguing that $`\epsilon `$ plays the same role as $`1/g`$ or $`T`$, and that there will be a fan in the $`u\epsilon `$ plane. As the quasiparticle energy increases in either phase, one hits the crossover fan with its delocalized states.

Second, we can understand the dependence of the CB peak spacing distribution on $`u`$. $`H_{HF}`$ (Eqn.(10) is a sum of two random Hamiltonians whose widths can be added in quadrature to yield an effective level spacing

$$\mathrm{\Delta }^{}=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }^2+6<𝝈>^2/g^2}$$
(11)
In the weak-coupling phase $`<𝝈>=0`$ and there is no memory of $`u_m`$. In the broken symmetric phase we have $`<𝝈>=Cg\mathrm{\Delta }\sqrt{r}`$, and the effective level spacing increases with $`r`$, and thus $`u_m`$. There is a crossover between these two regimes in the critical fan.

Let us now briefly analyze the relevant experiments. The Sivan et al and Patel et al experiments are done on gated GaAs 2DEG samples, for which $`r_s11.2`$ in the bulk. Using the area of the sample and the fact that these dots are in the ballistic limit we can find both $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ and $`E_T`$, and thence find $`g714`$. Sivan et al find that the CB peak spacing is about 5 times broader than that predicted by the Universal Hamiltonian, which describes the weak coupling region of our phase diagram. However, Patel et al find it to be in accord with this prediction, after accounting for “experimental noise” which is determined by measuring the magnetic field asymmetry of the CB spacings (which indicates motion of the dopant atoms, or some other scrambling of the single-particle potential). Thus, the Patel et al data seem to lie in the weak-coupling region. Accounting for experimental noise could also put the Sivan et al data in the weak-coupling region, consistent with the equality of parameters in the two experiments.

The experiments by Simmel et al and Abusch-Magder et al are performed on Si quantum dots. Including valley degeneracy one finds $`r_s2.2`$, and $`g18`$. While one cannot directly relate $`r_s`$ to $`u_m`$, one expects that some $`u_m`$ might become more negative as $`r_s`$ increases. (For $`r_s2`$ local charge density correlations develop in the dot, similar to the classical limit. While a Fermi surface distortion is not a charge density wave, it enhances the susceptibility for one, and could thus be a precursor). Indeed, two signatures of the critical fan are found in this experiment. The CB peak-spacing distribution is found to be 7-8 times wider than expected from the Universal Hamiltonian (assuming spin degeneracy). The most striking feature of the data is that the width of the CB peaks does not vanish as $`T0`$. This is just what is expected for a system was located in the critical fan: The ground and low-lying excited states are “Fock-space delocalized”, and single-particle states are broad even at low energy.

There are many problems one can attack using our approach. The $`d=2`$ disordered, interacting bulk system, which shows experimental and theoretical indications of undergoing a metal-insulator transition, with a Stoner-type instability that occurs for arbitrary negative triplet $`u_{0t}`$, can be modeled as a $`d=2`$ lattice of quantum dots. In the strong-coupling phase, each dot will have a slow collective degree of freedom, which could lead to phase-breaking and lack of coherent backscattering of quasiparticles at very low energies. Persistent current measurements in systems with a flux, which have resisted theoretical explanation, may succumb to our treatment, as may disordered gapless superconductors exhibiting a novel metal-insulator transition, since the eigenvalue and eigenvector statistics of their grains are expected to be governed by one of four newly discovered RMT universality classes. Effects of finite $`T`$ on the CB peak spacing in the strong-coupling phase constitute a natural extension of our work.

In summary, by identifying a small parameter $`1/g`$, we have managed to control the problem of electrons subject to interactions and disorder in ballistic quantum dots. At $`1/g=0`$ the (exact) saddle-point result shows that order parameter $`𝝈`$ acquires a nonzero average past a critical coupling, and the correlation length exponent is $`\nu =1`$, results coinciding with MM’s results based on the one-loop $`\beta `$-function. The transition is the disordered version of the Pomeranchuk transition of the Fermi surface. For $`1/g>0`$ the critical point controls a critical fan in which $`𝝈`$ fluctuates wildly, leading to a ground state not originating from a single Slater determinant, and a broad quasiparticle peak even at low energy (which has been seen in experiment). Thus Fock-space delocalization is just $`𝝈`$ delocalization. The nonzero $`𝝈𝒪(g)`$ in the strong-coupling phase is seen to explain the significant dependence of the CB peak spacing distribution on the interaction, just as $`𝝈=0`$ in the weak-coupling regime makes the distribution insensitive to interaction. Finally, note that the increase of the effective level spacing leads to an enhancement of the persistent current.

We are grateful to the NSF for grants DMR-0071611 (GM), and DMR- 0103639 (RS), the Aspen Center for Physics for its hospitality, and Sudip Chakravarty, Claudio Chamon, Yong-Baek Kim, Harsh Mathur, Eduardo Mucciolo, Chetan Nayak, Zvi Ovadyahu, Boris Shklovskii, and Chandra Varma for illuminating conversations.


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# An Automated Search for Extrasolar Planet Transits

## 1. Introduction

An increasing number of teams are searching for extra-solar planets using the transit method (see Horne 2002 for a review). Although the probability of observing a transit for any given star is small, using a wide-field telescope a large number of stars can be monitored, potentially yielding a higher detection rate than the radial velocity surveys (e.g. Marcy et al. 2002; Mayor et al. 2002). Furthermore, for a transiting planet orbiting a sufficiently bright star, the planet’s size, as well as its actual mass and orbital characteristics (from follow-up spectroscopy) can be determined, constraining models of its structure and formation.

## 2. The Automated Patrol Telescope

The Automated Patrol Telescope (APT) is a 0.5m telescope of Baker-Nunn design, modified for use with a CCD. It is owned and operated by the University of New South Wales, and located at Siding Spring Observatory, Australia. The current CCD camera images a 2$`\times `$3 field with 9.4′′ pixels. An upgrade is planned (for early 2003) to a pair of 3k$`\times `$6k CCDs with 4.2′′ pixels, covering the entire useful field of view of the telescope ($`6`$ in diameter). The telescope and dome are computer-controlled, with the possibility of remote or fully automated observation. About 50% of the observing time on the APT is reserved for this planet search.

A significant drawback of our current system is that the images are undersampled (the FWHM of the point spread-function is 1.3 pixels). Combined with intra-pixel sensitivity variations on the CCD, this causes photometric errors of $`3`$% when using standard aperture photometry. Anderson and King (2000) have developed software which deals with the undersampling problem. We are using a modified version of this software. It builds up a model of the “effective” point-spread function, which is the instrumental point-spread function convolved with the sensitivity of a single pixel, and measures stars by fitting this model to the image. We can now measure stars down to $`V14`$ with a relative precision of 1% (Fig 1) in a single 150 second exposure. For the brightest stars, systematic errors limit the precision. We are working on identifying and eliminating these errors.

We are about to begin regular observations. We select four dense stellar fields near the Galactic plane and cycle between them, taking exposures through a V filter. This way we obtain 5 images of each field per hour, for 6–8 hours per clear night. We observe each field for 2–3 months.

## 3. Estimated detection rate

Kovács, Zucker, & Mazeh (2002) show that their box-fitting algorithm for detecting transit signals in stellar lightcurves requires an effective signal-to-noise ratio (for the combined measurements during the transit) of 6 for a significant detection. For a typical 1% deep, 3 hour long transit, we can achieve this by observing just 3 transits. This is true for $`1000`$ stars with $`V<14`$ in one low Galactic latitude APT field. To a magnitude limit of $`V=14`$, near the Galactic plane, F, G, K and M type main sequence stars constitute $`60`$% of the stars in the field. Upper main sequence stars are too large for a Jupiter to cause a 1% transit. Thus, with the 5 times larger field of view of our new CCD system, we will measure $`3000`$ stars per field with sufficient precision to detect an orbiting Jupiter.

Due to observational constraints (weather, lunar and diurnal cycle, other projects), we estimate that we will detect 10% of transits which occur in our fields. We are most likely to detect close-orbiting planets with periods of a few days. Almost 1% of nearby stars host one of these “Hot Jupiters” (Butler et al. 2001). Their orbits have a $`10`$% probability of being edge-on. We therefore expect to find one planet per $`10^4`$ stars measured with sufficient precision. We plan to observe 24 fields per year, yielding approximately 7 new planets each year.

## References

Anderson, J., & King, I. R. 2000, PASP, 112, 1360

Butler, R. P. et al. 2000, http://exoplanets.org/stats2000.ps

Horne K. 2002, in ASP Conf. Ser. Vol. 28?, Scientific Frontiers in Research on Extrasolar Planets, ed. D. Deming et al., in press

Kovács, G., Zucker, S., & Mazeh, T. 2002, A&A, 391, 369

Marcy, G. W. et al. 2002, http://exoplanets.org

Mayor, M. et al. 2002, http://obswww.unige.ch/ udry/planet/planet.html


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# 1 Primordial quanta

## 1 Primordial quanta

Observations of the cosmic background now penetrate to a time when the number of quanta in the universe was a relatively small number. It is natural to ask whether we can learn something from such extraordinary data about the fundamental quantum structure of space and time. Here I offer arguments that this may indeed be possible, based on an estimate of the information content of the universe near the beginning.

It is now thought that cosmological perturbations originate as quantum fluctuations of the inflaton and the graviton fields during inflation. Their properties are calculated using the theory of quantum fields in curved spacetime . Zero point fluctuations in the quantum modes of the the inflaton field give rise to scalar perturbations, those in the graviton field to tensor perturbations.

The spatial structure of field quanta in the original fluctuations “freezes out” as they increase in size beyond the inflationary event horizon, since causality prevents them from fluctuating further. From a quantum point of view, their states squeeze into a definite spatial projection, and then grow coherently by an exponential factor during the many subsequent e-foldings of inflation, creating an enormous number of coherent quanta (or holes in the inflaton condensate), in phase with the original quantum wave. From the classical point of view, the quantum fluctuations create permanent perturbations in the classical gravitational gauge-invariant potential $`\varphi _m`$, leading to observable background anisotropy and large scale structure.

The large-scale classical perturbations observed today are thus a direct result of the quantum field activity during inflation; indeed, the pattern of microwave anisotropy on the largest scales corresponds to a faithfully amplified image of microscopic field configurations as they froze out during inflation. Roughly speaking, each hot or cold patch on the sky derives originally from about one quantum, in the sense that the occupation number at freeze-out was of order unity; the energy of a fluctuating patch was typically $`EhH`$, where $`h`$ is Planck’s constant and $`H`$ is the expansion rate (Hubble’s constant) during inflation.

The model leads to a remarkable phenomenon: primordial anisotropies that are simultaneously the smallest and largest imaged entities in nature. COBE gave us our first glimpse  of what these structures look like. When we look at the largest structures in the cosmic background radiation— the largest and most distant things we can possibly see, stretching across the sky at the edge of the universe— we are looking at images of particle wavefunctions imprinted when they were single quanta far smaller than the smallest subatomic structure seen in the lab. (The nearest laboratory analogs are images of wavefunctions of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates that trace the zero-point mode of their trap, but even these are not free vacuum fluctuations.) The universe acts like a giant natural microscope, providing us with a natural virtual-particle observatory.

The standard calculation of these processes uses a semiclassical approximation: spacetime is assumed to be classical (not quantized), and the perturbed fields (the inflaton and graviton) are described using relativistic quantum field theory, essentially (in the limit of free massless fields) an infinite collection of quantized harmonic oscillators. The Hilbert space of this system is infinite, so although the fields are quantized, they are continuously variable functions that can assume any values. The theory generically predicts random-phase gaussian noise with a continuous spectrum determined by the parameters of the inflaton potential. Although sky maps contain images of “single quanta,” the amount of information they carry is in principle infinite.

It has always been acknowledged that this description is incomplete, and will be modified by including a proper account of spacetime quantization. Although the fundamental theory of quantum gravity is not known, a “holographic entropy bound” already constrains with remarkable precision the total number of fundamental quantum degrees of freedom. The complete Hilbert space of a bounded volume is finite and discrete rather than infinite and continuous, limiting the range of accessible configurations in any region to a definite, calculable number. In particular this limit applies to the coupled system of inflaton-field and spacetime configurations, together with all their possible fluctuations, during inflation. Like bound states of an atom, but unlike a free quantum field or harmonic oscillator, the spectrum of states is discrete; indeed the number of eigenstates, unlike atoms, is even finite.

A simple estimate suggests that in standard inflation, the amount of information in the anisotropy is remarkably limited: it can be described with only about $`10^5`$ bits per sky-harmonic mode, implying that the perturbations should be “pixelated” in some way. In principle, this effect may be observable, and provide concrete data on the discrete elements or eigenstates of quantum gravity.

## 2 The Holographic Principle

Hawking radiation from black holes presents a conundrum in information accounting. Matter falling into the hole travels to the central singularity long before its energy is radiated. It appears that either the information of infalling matter is lost, in contradiction with quantum mechanics, or else the black hole itself has coherent quantum states that store the information between the time of infall and the time of particle evaporation.

The latter point of view is the one consistent with quantum mechanics and seems to be correct, but it has radical consequences. Hawking’s calculation of black hole evaporation showed that vacuum states of particles incoming from the distant past of a black hole spacetime become populated with a thermal spectrum in the far future, with a precisely calculable entropy. If quantum mechanics holds, then all the processes of black hole formation and evaporation should be time reversible. The evaporation products of a black hole can be time and parity reversed, then run backwards in time, to form a black hole that will slowly grow and eventually fly apart by throwing out whatever macroscopic objects (TV sets, astronauts, whatever) were thrown in originally. This time-reversed situation is also physical, it is just extremely unlikely. The example shows how the laws of gravity can be essentially statistical in nature, even for a black hole.

Assuming this coherent behavior, the evaporating black hole system allows a complete accounting of the number of internal quantum states of the black hole: it must be sufficient to store all the information needed for the radiated particles. A black hole, including its quantum-gravitational and particle degrees of freedom, has a density of states given by $`e^S`$, where the entropy $`S`$ depends only on the area $`A`$ of the event horizon of the hole: $`S=A/4`$ in Planck units. Roughly speaking, each radiated particle carries about a bit of information; when it is radiated, it reduces the mass of the hole by about $`M^1`$ (with a wavelength at infinity of order the Schwarzschild radius, $`M`$), and reduces the area of the event horizon (and the entropy) by about one Planck area. Since a black hole is the maximal entropy state for any spatial region of a given bounding-area size, this result generalizes to a bound on the information content of any physical system.

Therefore, the Hilbert space of everything is finite and discrete: for everything in a three-dimensional region111The three-dimensional regions in the most general formulation are null sheets. bounded by a two-dimensional surface of area $`A`$, the complete quantum state is specified by at most $`n=A/4\mathrm{ln}2`$ binary numbers, and there are at most $`2^n`$ distinguishable outcomes of any experiment. The information content is the same as $`n`$ binary spins, corresponding to one spin per $`0.724\times 10^{65}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ of bounding area. (Since the spins are in general entangled, this is most correctly described as $`n`$ quantum bits, or “qubits”, of information). Field theory, even a single harmonic oscillator, has an infinite Hilbert space, so the holographic entropy bound imposes radical constraints on physics. Discreteness and nonlocality apparently exist in nature that are not modeled in field theory.

## 3  Holography and Cosmology

If the holographic bound is correct, the observable universe today has at most $`3\pi /\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{ln}210^{120}`$ qubits of information, where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the current value of the cosmological constant. Although this is a lot less than infinity, nobody has yet suggested a way that such a large number of degrees of freedom could be distinguished in practice from a continuous system (see e.g. ).

On the other hand, the maximum information within the event horizon during inflation was much smaller:

$$S_{max}=\pi /H^2.$$
(1)
We know from the cosmic background maps that $`H`$ was less than about $`10^5`$ (because graviton fluctuations produce tensor perturbations today with $`\delta T/TH`$), but even at this level the total information content is only $`10^{10}`$ qubits; all possible physical situations could be encoded on a laptop computer.

A more detailed calculation, based on the specific context of “slow-roll inflation”, suggests that for observable fluctuations, the amount of information is even less. The basic assumption of this calculation is a “discreteness ansatz” that the inflationary universe system— inflaton plus gravity— makes discrete transitions between states separated by one bit of entropy. This would follow naturally if the reason for the existence of the holographic bound is that the fundamental theory contains discrete elements. It seems plausible that this is the case, given recent development of candidates for fundamental theory such as M theory and loop quantum gravity that display discrete and holographic features. It also seems natural given the nature of particle-emission processes in the black hole system, where emission of each particle is associated with reduction by about one bit in $`S`$.

The classical evolution of slow-roll inflation then corresponds, from the quantum point of view, to adding binary qubits one at a time. The key assumption is that the background spacetime and horizon-scale fluctuations make transitions between discrete states, each of which adds (or subtracts) one bit of information to the total maximum observable entropy. That is, $`H`$ comes in discrete steps of $`n`$:

$$H_i=\sqrt{\frac{\pi }{n_i\mathrm{ln}2}}$$
(2)
where $`n_i`$ are integers. The values of $`H`$ and the inflaton $`\varphi `$ on the horizon scale are connected by the usual classical equations of inflation, so $`\varphi `$ also takes on discrete values.

The classical expectation value $`\varphi _c`$ of the inflaton field and the inflationary expansion rate $`H`$ obey the Friedmann equation controlling the expansion,

$$H^2=\frac{8\pi }{3}\left[V(\varphi _c)+\dot{\varphi }_c^2/2\right].$$
(3)
and the dynamical equation for $`\varphi _c`$,

$$\ddot{\varphi }_c+3H\dot{\varphi }_c+V^{}(\varphi _c)=0,$$
(4)
where the effective potential is $`V(\varphi _c)`$ and $`V^{}dV/d\varphi _c`$.  For definiteness, assume that the observed modes crossed the inflationary horizon during a standard so-called “slow roll” or Hubble-viscosity-limited phase of inflation, corresponding to $`V^{}/V\sqrt{48\pi }`$ and $`V^{\prime \prime }/V24\pi `$, during which $`\dot{\varphi }_cV^{}/3H`$. The rate of the roll is much slower than the expansion rate $`H`$, so the kinetic term in Eq. (3) can be ignored in the mean evolution. The slow-roll phase of inflation creates approximately scale-invariant curvature perturbations.

We define a combination of inflationary parameters by

$$Q_S\frac{H^3}{|V^{}|}\left(\frac{V^3}{V^2}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{8\pi }{3}\right)^{3/2}.$$
(5)
This combination can be estimated fairly accurately, since it also controls the amplitude of the scalar perturbations observed in the microwave background anisotropy. The best fit to the four-year COBE/DMR data, assuming scale invariance ($`n=1`$) and zero amplitude tensor modes, yields

$$Q_S=9.4\pm 0.84\times 10^5.$$
(6)
Putting this together one finds that there is a steady increase in observable entropy at a rate

$$\dot{S}_{max}=\frac{8\pi ^2}{9}\frac{V^2}{H^5}=8\pi ^2HQ_S^2.$$
(7)
Every inflationary $`e`$-folding, $`S_{max}`$ increases by an amount of order $`10^{10}`$ due to the classical evolution of the system as $`H`$ slowly decreases.

However, the information attached to the observable quantity— the horizon-scale perturbation in the inflaton— is much smaller than this. The variation in total entropy associated with a horizon-scale perturbation $`\delta \varphi `$ is:

$$\delta S_{tot}=\frac{8\pi ^2}{3}\left[\frac{\delta \varphi }{H}\right]Q_S^1.$$
(8)
The standard field theory analysis for the horizon-size perturbations tells us that the quantity $`[\delta \varphi /H]`$ is statistically determined, with a continuous gaussian statistical distribution of order unit width. The corresponding increment $`\delta S(8\pi ^2/3)Q_S^110^5`$ then is roughly the jump in the total observable cosmological entropy associated with the horizon-scale inflaton perturbations. This is much less than the increase given by Eq. (7) in the total information during an expansion time, of order $`Q_S^1`$ rather than $`Q_S^2`$. Presumably this can be attributed to the fact that almost all of the entropy growth is associated with the classical slow roll of the inflaton condensate, which leaves no imprint in the anisotropy.

Thus for any value of the inflationary Hubble constant, the horizon-size inflaton perturbations, which are the degrees of freedom frozen into our sky, contain only about $`10^5`$ bits per mode. For example, the fluctuations seen in the COBE map, with about 1000 pixels, intrinsically contain only about $`10^8`$ bits or 10 Megabytes. This could in principle be encoded in a color laptop display screen with no loss of information. If we had a dataset with enough resolution and a high enough signal-to-noise ratio, and knew the “encoding” (the projection of the quantum-gravity eigenstates onto the sky), we would find that the data could be fit surprisingly well using these modes, and that the fit would not improve with the addition of additional parameters. If there is substantial redundancy in the encoding, the number of distinguishable eigenstates could be much less than this limit, so a statistical search might find quantum-gravity signatures even in current datasets.

To put the same point more poetically: when the letters of the writing on the sky are known, the pattern will no longer appear as a meaningless jumble of random noise, and the significance of the whole pattern will be interpreted completely and transparently in terms of those letters— the eigenmodes of the inflationary system in fundamental theory. When that is done, we will know everything it is possible to know about the beginning. All we have done here is estimate how many letters there are.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by NSF grant AST-0098557 at the University of Washington.


text:
# Orbital and Super-Orbital Periods of 1E 1740.7–2942 and GRS 1758–258

## 1 Introduction

The Galactic-bulge x-ray sources  1E 1740.7–2942 and  GRS 1758–258 are generally called black-hole candidates due to the similarity of their x-ray spectral and timing behavior to that of  Cyg X–1 in its usual hard state. Like  Cyg X–1, both sources occasionally enter an intermediate or soft state, but the evolution of their spectral hardness and luminosity is very different (Smith, Heindl & Swank, 2002). Both have prominent, bright radio lobes about an arcminute in size (Mirabel et al., 1992; Rodríguez et al., 1992), while  Cyg X–1 does not (Martí et al., 1996), showing only a milliarcsecond jet near its core (Stirling et al., 2001).

The counterparts of  1E 1740.7–2942 and  GRS 1758–258 are unknown due to high extinction, therefore there are no orbital solutions or estimated masses. For  GRS 1758–258, Heindl & Smith (2002) recently used Chandra data to confirm the association of the x-ray source with the radio core source (”VLA-C”) and Cui et al. (2001) did the same for  1E 1740.7–2942. Marti et al. (1998) identified two candidate counterparts to VLA-C/ GRS 1758–258 in I- and K-band images. The brighter and closer candidate was found through multi-band photometry and near-infrared spectroscopy to be a likely K0 III giant. Revised astrometry (Rothstein et al., 2002) of infrared observations by Eikenberry et al. (2001a) confirm that this star (“star A”) is consistent with VLA-C at the 3$`\sigma `$ level. Martí et al. (2000) and Eikenberry et al. (2001a) agree on several possible high-mass candidates for the companion of  1E 1740.7–2942 in its more crowded and obscured field, but a low-mass companion would be unobservable at the current K-band sensitivity.

## 2 Observations

We use a five-year (1997–2001) series of observations by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) of  1E 1740.7–2942 and  GRS 1758–258 (Main et al., 1999; Smith et al., 2001; Smith, Heindl & Swank, 2002). The observations, each of 1000–1500 s, were taken approximately weekly in 1997–2000 and twice weekly since early 2001. Monthly observations in 1996 are too sparse to improve our results and are not included. Data cannot be taken from late November to late January of each year when the Sun is close to the Galactic Center.

We use the Proportional Counter Array (PCA), layer 1, in the range 2.5 to 25 keV. Instrumental background has been subtracted using the “faint source” model and Galactic diffuse emission has been subtracted using pointings to nearby fields without bright point sources. To compensate for gain changes, we accumulate counts in bands of constant energy, not channel number. We offset-point by about a half degree from each source to avoid nearby bright sources. Details of the offsets and background pointings are given in Main et al. (1999).

Since our orbital signals are small, we made two checks for systematic errors. Different observations use different subsets of the 5 detectors of the PCA. We repeated the entire analysis below using only the third detector, which is always on, and found no change except for the expected statistical degradation. Slight changes in the PCA field of view due to changes in the roll angle of the spacecraft take place over months, and so cannot mimic the shorter orbital periods.

## 3 Analysis and results

### 3.1 Orbital modulation

During long intervals of relatively stable hard state emission, these sources show low-amplitude modulations that are most naturally interpreted as orbital. Figures 1a and 2a show the 1997–2001 background-subtracted lightcurves from 12–25 keV. There are gaps due both to the annual solar constraint and to transitions to the intermediate and soft states (Smith et al., 2001; Smith, Heindl & Swank, 2002). Luminosity variations are so large during the state transitions and soft periods that they decrease the significance of the orbital measurements. The data cut is impartial in that only the spectral power-law photon index is used to determine which parts of the data to remove: it is harder than 2.0 in the surviving data.

We high-pass-filtered the data by subtracting out a smoothed version of the lightcurve (Figures 1a and 2a) leaving only high-frequency residuals (Figures 1b and 2b). To make the smoothed curve, we replaced each data point with a value generated by fitting a polynomial of order $`P`$ to all data within $`N`$ days of it. Raising $`N`$ or lowering $`P`$ increases the amount of smoothing. The figure shown is for $`N=10`$ and $`P=1`$, but the results are not highly sensitive to these values.

We then took a Lomb-Scargle periodogram of the residuals with the result shown in Figures 1c and 2c: peaks at $`12.73\pm 0.05`$ dy in  1E 1740.7–2942 and $`18.45\pm 0.10`$ dy in  GRS 1758–258. The errors are the half width at half maximum of the peaks. Although these values would be near the Nyquist frequency for weekly sampling, the irregularity in the sampling times extends the useful frequency range many times higher.

Figures 1d and 2d show the residuals folded on the best-fit periods and divided by the average count rate. The phases are referenced to 0h UT on 1 January 1996. The best-fit amplitudes are $`(3.43\pm 0.26)\%`$ for  1E 1740.7–2942 and $`(4.42\pm 0.32)\%`$ for  GRS 1758–258.

When the data from each source are divided into three roughly equal intervals, the orbital modulation is seen in all three as the highest periodogram peak in the range 1–30 dy. We also repeated the analysis in 2.5–4.0 keV, 4.0–6.0 keV, 6.0–8.0 keV, 8.0–10.0 keV, and 10.0–12.0 keV bands. The modulations are not as strong, but in every band they are the highest peaks from 1–30 dy. Neither the amplitude nor phase varies significantly with energy, although amplitude may increase slightly with energy in  1E 1740.7–2942 (Figure 3). The 2.5–4.0 keV band is not used for  1E 1740.7–2942 due to its high absorption column.

We demonstrated by simulations that our process neither creates spurious signals nor destroys real ones. To look for spurious signals, we randomly permuted the values of each triplet of data points in Figures 1a and 2a. This creates data with the same sampling times, average, and long-term evolution as the real set but with any high-frequency signals destroyed. A thousand differently-permuted datasets were analyzed for each source, giving the coarse histograms in Figures 1c and 2c, which show the highest power seen in one-day-wide period bins in any of the 1000 trials. It is clear that peaks the size of the real signals do not occur.

To test the usefulness of the high-pass filtering, we added to the original data small sinusoidal signals with 3% to 20% of the mean flux and 10–20 dy periods. We then did the analysis with and without filtering. We found that filtering improves the sensitivity to artificial signals by a factor of 2 to 4, varying with the period and data set. Artificial signals with the amplitude of the real ones can be seen, but only by filtering first, proving the necessity of the procedure.

### 3.2 Super-orbital period modulation

To search for longer periods, we combined data (Zhang et al., 1997) from the Burst and Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory with our RXTE/PCA data, extrapolating the PCA data to the BATSE range of 20–100 keV. For most black holes in the hard state this is not a bad approximation: only beyond 100 keV do the spectra steepen significantly. Figures 4 and 5 show the combined lightcurves and their periodograms. The major dips in the lightcurves all correspond to softenings of the spectra.

The periodogram for  1E 1740.7–2942 shows a clear peak around 600 dy. Each individual 600-dy cycle is visible if the single low point from BATSE in 1993 is included. The data for  GRS 1758–258 are less conclusive. The BATSE data are poorer for  GRS 1758–258, due in part to its slightly lower luminosity but probably also to the proximity of the bright Z-source GX 5–1.

## 4 Interpretation

If the 12- and 18-dy modulations are orbital, then the companions of  1E 1740.7–2942 and  GRS 1758–258 must be giant stars to fill their Roche lobes. For  GRS 1758–258, infrared observations rule out a high-mass companion (Martí et al., 1998; Eikenberry et al., 2001a) and therefore make wind accretion less likely. Star A of Martí et al. (1998), a K0 III giant, would almost exactly fill its Roche lobe with a 10M companion and an 18-dy orbit (Smith, Heindl & Swank, 2000; Rothstein et al., 2002). Perhaps both systems have companions on the first giant branch and are in a long-lived evolutionary phase with accretion driven by the gradual nuclear evolution and expansion of the secondaries, as has been suggested for long-period neutron-star binaries like  Cyg X–2 (Webbink, Rappaport & Savonije, 1983). King et al. (1997), however, found that such systems should have unstable disks and appear as transients if the primary is a black hole.

Low-amplitude ($``$7%) x-ray modulation with a similar shape was recently discovered in another persistently luminous black-hole candidate,  LMC X–3, at its previously-known orbital period of 1.7 dy (Boyd, Smale & Dolan, 2001).  Cyg X–1 also shows low-amplitude orbital x-ray modulation, which is not observed in the soft state. Wen et al. (1999) offered two interpretations: partial absorption by the optically thin wind of the secondary (see also Brocksopp et al., 1999), and partial obscuration of an extended emission region (corona) by the accretion stream. The lack of modulation in the soft state was explained in the first picture by increased ionization and decreased mass in the wind, and in the second picture by shrinkage of the corona.

Because their amplitude and phase are independent of energy (Figure 3), the modulations of  1E 1740.7–2942 and  GRS 1758–258 are consistent with an extended emission region and an optically thick absorber such as the companion star. Wind absorption would produce more modulation at lower energy, as is seen in  Cyg X–1 (Brocksopp et al., 1999). Assuming the secondary itself is the occulter, then given the size and inclination of the binaries we could determine the size of the hard-state emission region from the amplitude of the modulation. We are planning infrared observations of star A over the orbit to determine the primary mass, system size, and inclination using radial velocity, velocity broadening, and ellipsoidal modulation measurements.

The prominent radio lobes of  1E 1740.7–2942 and  GRS 1758–258, appearing far from the core sources, imply strong collimation of the jets. Spruit, Foglizzo, & Stehle (1997) show that in a jet collimated by the poloidal magnetic field of an accretion disk, collimation is proportional to the ratio of the outer to inner disk radii. The very large disks implied by the long binary periods in these systems may support this model.

The 600-dy super-orbital periods we report here are the longest seen in any system so far.  Her X–1 and  LMC X–4 have very regular long x-ray periods, about 35 dy and 30 dy respectively (Tananbaum et al., 1972; Lang et al., 1981), which are explained by disk precession with periodic partial obscuration of the x-ray emitting regions (e.g. Wijers & Pringle, 1999). Jet precession at a period of about 162 dy is observed via Doppler shifts of emission lines in  SS 433 (Margon et al., 1979; Eikenberry et al., 2001b), and is presumed to be caused by precession of the disk. Other systems, such as the black-hole candidate  LMC X–3, show more irregular variations, associated with spectral state changes that are not consistent with disk obscuration (Paul, Kitamoto & Makino, 2000; Wilms et al., 2001). Brocksopp, Groot, & Wilms (2001) review recent models of long-period variability involving changes in accretion rate either due to a limit cycle caused by x-ray evaporation of the outer parts of the accretion disk (Shields et al., 1986) or changes in the companion which cause it to fill its Roche lobe only occasionally (Wu et al., 2001).  Cyg X–1 in different epochs has been reported to show long periods at 294 dy and 142 dy (Priedhorsky, Terrell, & Holt, 1983; Brocksopp et al., 1999).

Ogilvie & Dubus (2001) calculated the susceptibility of disks in x-ray binaries to radiation-driven warping. We find the binary separations of  1E 1740.7–2942 and  GRS 1758–258 to be about (2.5–5)$`\times 10^{12}`$ cm for black hole masses of 3–20 M. Using Figure 7 of Ogilvie & Dubus (2001), we find that for a secondary of 1.1 M (i.e. star A), black hole masses greater than 6 M fall in the “indeterminate instability zone”, with possible cycling between flat and warped disks. Such cycling might explain long, semi-regular periods with spectral changes, even with constant mass transfer from the companion. For lower masses of the primary, the systems would fall in the regime of persistent warping and stable precession, as in  SS 433.

A recent observation of  GRS 1758–258, however, suggests that variations in accretion do play a role in its long-term variability. An extreme luminosity drop is visible at about 2002.25 in Figure 5. Smith et al. (2001) found that  GRS 1758–258 entered a soft state suddenly and then decayed exponentially with a one-month timescale. Exponentially decaying emission in the soft state is easily explained by the steady draining of a thin accretion disk with little or no mass input.

This work was supported by NASA grant NAG5-7265.


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# Self-consistent solution of the Kohn-Sham equations for systems with inhomogeneous electron gas

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The gas of the interacted electrons is usually described within Kohn-Sham approximation by the set of Poisson and Schrödinger equations with an effective potential for the single-particle wave functions. The solution can be obtained using many-step iteration procedure. The well known difficulty in this task is that the wave functions obtained after every iteration step give the distribution of electron density which is not correspond to the boundary conditions for the Coulomb potential. As a result, either it is impossible to obtain the solution for the next iteration step or some parameters of the system are to be changed, for example, the density of the positive charge. The proposed new iterative scheme for solving Kohn-Sham equations is freed up of necessity to modify parameters of the system while iteration process.

## 2 SELF-CONSISTENCY PROCEDURE

The self-consistent electron density is constructed as the solution of the Kohn-Sham equations.

$$\frac{1}{2}^2\psi _\mathrm{E}(z)+(Eu_{\mathrm{eff}}(z))\psi _\mathrm{E}(z)=0$$
(1)
$$u_{\mathrm{eff}}=u(z)+u_{\mathrm{xc}}(z)$$

$$^2u=(N_\mathrm{D}n(z))$$
(2)
Here $`N_\mathrm{D}`$ is the density of the positive background, $`u`$ is the Coulomb potential energy of electron and $`u_{\mathrm{xc}}`$ is the exchange-correlation potential energy, which we assume in the local-density approximation.

We represent the total electron density as a sum

$$n(z)=n_{\mathrm{ind}}(z)+n_{\mathrm{qu}}(z),$$
(3)
where induced electron density depends on the potential as follows

$$n_{\mathrm{ind}}(z)=(\mu u_{\mathrm{eff}}(z))^{3/2}.$$

This expression is the usual quasi-classical solution of Eq.(1) averaged over Fermi wavelength scale and

$$n_{\mathrm{qu}}(z)=2\underset{\mathrm{E}\mathrm{E}_\mathrm{F}}{}|\psi _\mathrm{E}|^2(z)n_{\mathrm{ind}}(z)$$

will be named as the quantum electron density.

Using Eq.(3) Poisson equation can be rewritten in a new form

$$^2u+n_{\mathrm{ind}}[u]=N_\mathrm{D}n_{\mathrm{qu}}(z)$$
(4)
The total iteration scheme can be described as following

$$\begin{array}{c}i=0,1,\mathrm{},\text{ }n_{\mathrm{qu}}^0=0\hfill \\ ^2u^i+n_{\mathrm{ind}}(u^i)=N_\mathrm{D}n_{\mathrm{qu}}^i(z)\hfill \\ \frac{1}{2}^2\psi _\mathrm{E}^i(z)+(Eu_{\mathrm{eff}}^i(z))\psi _\mathrm{E}^i(z)=0\hfill \\ n_{\mathrm{qu}}^{i+1}=_{\mathrm{E}\mathrm{E}_\mathrm{F}}|\psi _\mathrm{E}^i|^2(z)n_{\mathrm{ind}}^i\left[u_{\mathrm{eff}}^i\right]\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)
This procedure was tested in solving the self-consistent set of the equations for two tasks within the jellium model:
1. Semi-infinite electron gas which is bounded by self-consistent potential
2. Semi-infinite electron gas which is bounded by infinite potential barrier.

## 3 SEMI-INFINITE ELECTRON GAS BOUNDED BY SELF-CONSISTENT POTENTIAL

Using the local-density approximation for exchange and correlation potentials we calculated the self-consistent distribution of the electrons and the work function in the wide range of the bulk electron densities. All computations were done in the framework of the jellium model, where the positive ions are replaced by the uniform background of positive-charge density. This background fills the half-space $`z0`$ and is neutralized by the electron density. Figure 1 shows the distributions of electron density and effective potential calculated self-consistently for $`R_\mathrm{s}=4`$. These curves are compared with the corresponding results from , where the straight iteration scheme was claimed not converging (see , Appendix B) and authors did have to use, in fact, variational method for solving Eqs. (1-2). Our iteration scheme (5) allows to obtain the self-consistent answer through the straight solution of Kohn-Sham equation set.

According to the well-known Budd-Vannimenus theorem , the self-consistent potential must satisfy to the follow sum rule

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{B}=u(0)u(\mathrm{})=\overline{n}\frac{dϵ(\overline{n})}{d\overline{n}}.$$
(6)
Here $`ϵ`$ is an energy per one electron for the homogeneous electron gas. Substituting the explicit expression for $`ϵ`$, it is easy to calculate $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{B}`$ as the function of the electron density. The same parameter obtained from our self-consistent solution we denote as $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SC}}`$. As it can be seen in Table I, parameters $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{B}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SC}}`$ are in a good agreement. This fact is the independent evidence that our solution is fully self-consistent .

The work function is defined as

$$W=u_{\mathrm{eff}}(\mathrm{})\mu .$$

The dependence of the self-consistently calculated $`W_{\mathrm{SC}}`$ on Wigner-Seitz parameter $`R_s`$ is shown in Figure 2 in companion with results of not fully self-consistent calculations in -. This figure provides comparative analysis of work function calculations obtained by different technique.

TABLE I. Electron density dependence of the work function
Rs WSC(eV) $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{B}`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{SC}}`$    0.5 3.21 0.358 0.358  1.0 3.40 0.317 0.317  1.3 3.51 0.291 0.291  1.5 3.60 0.274 0.274  1.65 3.63 0.261 0.261  1.8 3.64 0.248 0.248  2.07 3.60 0.224 0.224  2.3 3.53 0.204 0.204  3.28 3.12 0.115 0.115  3.99 2.87 0.051 0.063  4.96 2.51 -0.048 -0.041  5.23 2.46 -0.075 -0.074

## 4 SEMI-INFINITE ELECTRON GAS BOUNDED BY INFINITE POTENTIAL BARRIER

In this section we apply our iteration scheme for calculating self-consistent electron density in the case of electron gas bounded by infinite potential barrier. The positive charge and the electrons fill the half-space $`z0`$. The task was considered with accounting for the external electric field perpendicular to the surface plane. The presence of the electric field modifies the boundary condition for Coulomb potential at the surface. Using the results of this task, the capacitance of a tunnel structure can be estimated.

Figure 3 demonstrates the distributions of electron density, effective and Coulomb potentials for $`R_s=2.07`$ calculated by our technique. The solution of this task can be used for an estimation of the capacitance of a real finite-height barrier structure. The structure consists of two $`n`$doped semiconductor half-spaces, separated by a potential barrier of width $`d`$. The total capacitance is $`C=dQ/dV`$, where $`Q`$is a total charge in the semiconductor lead and $`V=u(\mathrm{})u(\mathrm{})`$ is the voltage drop over the structure. Our calculations corresponds to the non-transparent infinitely high barrier with $`d=0`$ and give us the maximum achievable specific capacitance in barrier structures.

In Figure 4 we plot the dependences of the capacitance on $`R_s`$calculated within the different approximations.

The partial support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Researches is gratefully acknowledged.


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# Strong rejuvenation in a chiral-glass superconductor

## Abstract

The glassy paramagnetic Meissner phase of a Bi2Sr2CaCu2Ox superconductor ($`x`$ = 8.18) is investigated by squid magnetometry, using “dc-memory” experiments employed earlier to study spin glasses. The temperature dependence of the zero-field-cooled and thermo-remanent magnetization is recorded on re-heating after specific cooling protocols, in which single or multiple halts are performed at constant temperatures. The ’spin’ states equilibrated during the halts are retrieved on re-heating. The observed memory and rejuvenation effects are similar to those observed in Heisenberg-like spin glasses.

While superconductors exhibit a negative susceptibility, a positive field cooled magnetization has been observed in several high temperature superconducting systems when cooled in sufficiently low magnetic fields.pme ; pme2 ; pme3  This phenomenon is referred to as the paramagnetic Meissner effect (PME), and can in certain cases be related to the appearance of spontaneous magnetic moments below $`T_c`$, created by spontaneous orbital currents associated with superconducting loops containing an odd number of $`\pi `$-junctionspijunc ; pme3  (i.e. Josephson junctions inducing a phase shift of $`\pi `$).

The PME has been observed in Bi-2212 materials prepared by various methods. An especially striking PME is found in melt-cast crystalspme2  of Bi2Sr2CaCu2Ox ($`x`$ = 8.18); these melt-cast samplestem  have densely packed large grains with a strongly polydomain microstructure which is assumed to favor the creation of $`\pi `$-loops. The low temperature paramagnetic Meissner (PM) state of such a material has been found to exhibit glassy dynamics, including aging and memory phenomena.evieprl ; evieejb  In ordinary spin glasses, such as the Ising-like Fe0.5Mn0.5TiO3 \[ito, \] and the isotropic (Heisenberg-like) dilute magnetic alloys Cu(Mn) and Ag(Mn),Young ; granberg  a random distribution of the magnetic interaction yields magnetic disorder and frustration. Similarly, the glassiness of the PM state of the melt-cast sample may originate from a network with a random distribution of 0- and $`\pi `$-junctions within and in-between the superconducting grains.KawJPS ; kawamura2

In the present paper, the glassy PM state is investigated by recording the zero-field cooled and thermo-remanent magnetization after specific cooling protocols. Earlier reported aging and memory characteristicsevieprl ; evieejb  are re-confirmed. The main focus of this investigation is put on the observation of strong rejuvenation effects quite similar to those observed in an isotropic Cu(Mn) or Ag(Mn) spin glass, in which the existence of a spin glass phase is suggested to arise from a chiral glass transition. Kaw ; Dor

Magnetization measurements were performed on a granular Bi2Sr2CaCu2Ox sample, with $`x`$ = 8.18 (Bi2212), manufactured by a melt-cast process.pme2 ; tem  The onset of superconductivity occurs at $`T_c`$ $``$ 87 K. The temperature dependence of the zero-field cooled (ZFC), field cooled (FC) and thermo remanent (TRM) magnetization was recorded on re-heating from the lowest temperature using a non-commercial low-field Superconducting QUantum Interference Device (SQUID) magnetometer.magnusson  The dc magnetic field (from 0.01 Oe to 1 Oe) employed in the experiments is generated by a small superconductive solenoid coil always working in persistent mode during measurements; a small background field of 0.6 mOe was compensated. The magnetization is recorded while keeping the sample stationary, in the center of the third coil of a third order gradiometer.

In the case of the ZFC (resp. TRM) magnetization, temperature stops were performed during cooling. In these experiments, the sample was rapidly cooled ($``$ 4K/min) in zero magnetic field (resp. a small magnetic field) from a reference temperature $`T_{\mathrm{ref}}`$ = 95 K above $`T_c`$ down to a temperature $`T_s`$ below the critical temperature, at which a halt was made for some duration (1 000 s or 10 000 s). The cooling was then resumed down to the lowest temperature (60 K), and a small magnetic field was applied (resp. cut to zero). The magnetization was then recorded on re-heating (heating rate $`1`$ K/min). Experiments including two or more stops were performed. ZFC and TRM relaxation were also recorded at the stop temperatures for comparison. In the relaxation experiments, the sample was rapidly cooled from $`T_{\mathrm{ref}}`$ to the measurement temperature $`T_m(=T_s)`$ in zero magnetic field (ZFC case), and after a wait time, $`t_w`$, a small magnetic field was switched on, and the magnetization recorded with time.

Figure 1 shows the temperature dependence of the ZFC, FC and TRM magnetization of Bi2212, recorded on re-heating using different magnetic fields. The different curves superpose as $`M_{\mathrm{FC}}`$-$`M_{\mathrm{ZFC}}`$=$`M_{\mathrm{TRM}}`$ for all the magnetic fields employed. At low temperatures, the shielding is complete, and in an applied magnetic field of $`H=1`$ Oe, Bi2212 behaves as an ordinary superconductor, with a large diamagnetic response up to $`T_c`$. In smaller fields, a large PME is observed, as evidenced by the FC results in Fig. 1(b) and the ZFC data in Fig. 1(a) at temperatures close to $`T_c`$. The low temperature PM state exhibits, as mentioned above, dynamical features typical to those of spin glasses. ZFC relaxation experiments are useful to investigate aging properties in spin glasses.relaxdc  The relaxation of the low-frequency ac-susceptibility can also be recorded, and employed to investigate e.g. memory effectsrelaxac  in glassy materials. When cooling from above the spin glass transition temperature $`T_g`$, a halt at constant temperature $`T_s`$ below $`T_g`$ is made during $`t_s`$, allowing the system to relax to-wards its equilibrium state at $`T_s`$; this equilibrated state becomes frozen in on further cooling, and is retrieved on reheating. In the case of the glassy PM state of Bi-2212, the effect of the aging on the dcevieprl  relaxation is small and consequently also the relaxation of the acevieejb  susceptibility is small, which makes difficult the above described ac-memory experiments.note  “Dc-memory” experiments, using a dc magnetic field (which in our measurement system yields a more stable signal than the ac-experiments) can instead be performed. Such experiments include single or multiple stops at different temperature below the critical temperature of Bi-2212. During these halts, the applied magnetic field value is kept constant (i.e. zero in the ZFC case and $`H`$ for the TRM). The validity of the method has been justified using conventional spin glasses,memoagmn ; memoising  and it has been used to enlighten fundamental differences between different glassy systems.pero

Dc-memory experiments are performed using the temperature dependence of the ZFC and TRM magnetization. Figure 2(a) and (b) shows the influence of a 10 000 s temperature stop at $`T_s`$ = 82 K on the ZFC (resp. TRM) curve. The ZFC (resp. TRM) curve corresponding to the stop experiment lies below (resp. above) a reference curve measured with the same cooling and heating rates (cf. corresponding experiments in ref. ). In both cases, as in ordinary spin glasses, the “spin” configuration established during the equilibration at $`T_s`$ during the stop has been frozen in on further cooling and is retrieved on re-heating. As seen in Figure 2(c), which shows the difference plots of two pairs of magnetization curves, the ’dips’ corresponding to the relaxation of the magnetization at $`T_s`$ are small in magnitude \[$`3`$% of $`M(T_s=82\mathrm{K})`$\], but well defined.

Figure 3 shows the relaxation of the ZFC, FC, and TRM magnetization at different temperatures. As in conventional spin glasses, the FC relaxation is small,fcrelax ; memoagmn  and for all temperatures the equality $`M_{\mathrm{ZFC}}(t)M_{\mathrm{ZFC}}(0.4\mathrm{s})`$ = - \[$`M_{\mathrm{TRM}}(t)M_{\mathrm{TRM}}(0.4\mathrm{s})`$\] is closely satisfied. The relaxation of the magnetization becomes smaller with decreasing temperature and the relaxation is larger for the $`t_w=0`$ s curves than for the $`t_w=\mathrm{10\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ s curves, revealing non-equilibrium dynamics - the system ages. Also, it is seen that the influence of the aging decreases with decreasing temperature. To relate these ZFC and TRM relaxation curves with the memory curves in Figure 2(a) we look specifically at the ZFC relaxation curves measured at $`T_m=82`$ K. It is seen that at an observation time of $`30`$ s (corresponding to the effective observation time of the magnetization measurement on heating), the relaxation curve measured directly after reaching $`T_m`$ lies significantly above the curve measured after a wait time of 10 000 s, just as the magnetization curve without a stop lies above the magnetization curve measured with a stop in Figure 2(a). A closer examination even shows that the difference between the magnetization observed at 82 K in the dc-memory curves is closely equal to the difference between the ZFC relaxation curves at an observation time of 30 s for the $`t_w=0`$ s and the $`t_w=\mathrm{10\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ s curves. These dc-memory results have their correspondence in ac-memory experiments. The level of the out-of-phase component of the ac-susceptibility is governed by the cooling rate employed in the experiments, yielding an “effective age” of the system. The susceptibility decays in magnitude during a stop at constant temperature,relaxac  as the system equilibrates and this lower level is retrieved on re-heating the sample.

As seen in Fig. 2(c), the influence of a stop at a temperature $`T_s`$ = 82 K extends to neighboring temperatures, between 80 and 84 K. Outside this range the magnetization curve recorded after a stop is nearly identical to the reference one. A similar feature is observed in ac-measurements, in which the susceptibility recovers its cooling-rate governed level on further cooling. It is common in this case to speak about rejuvenation, since the system appears younger, or reinitialized, at lower temperature. Using this analogy, one can also speak about rejuvenation in the dc-memory experiments.

The rejuvenation phenomena indicate that, outside an overlap region, the equilibration of the system at a temperature below the glass transition has no influence on the spin configuration at another temperature. Due to the chaotic naturebray ; petra  of the glassy phase, the equilibrium state at one temperature is distinct from the one of a higher temperature, so that the relaxation at the lower temperature is not affected by the first equilibration at the higher one.note2  This is illustrated is Fig. 4, which shows the difference plots of magnetization curves recorded after two stops at different temperatures. In Fig. 4(a), the sample is first cooled to $`T_{s_1}`$ = 82 K, and after a 10 000 s stop, cooled to $`T_{s_2}`$ = 79 K where a second 10 000 s stop is performed. As in the single stop experiments, the cooling is then resumed to the lowest temperature and the magnetization (the ZFC magnetization in this case) is recorded on re-heating. The results of only single stops at $`T_s=82`$ K and $`T_s=79`$ K are added for comparison. As mentioned above, the aging at $`T_{s_1}`$ is not influenced by the second equilibration at $`T_{s_2}`$, and vice-versa, the equilibration at $`T_{s_2}`$ is not affected by a first aging at $`T_{s_1}`$. These observations can be interpreted to reveal temperature chaos,bray  similar to that observed in conventional spin glasses.relaxac ; memoagmn ; memoising ; pero ; petra ; vince  The two “memory dips” are sharp, and nearly distinct. If the second temperature stop is performed at a lower temperature, as in Fig. 4(b), the two dips are completely separated; similar quite sharp and separated memory dips have also been observed in Cu(Mn) and Ag(Mn) glasses.relaxac ; vince  In the Ising case,memoising  the dips are much broader, and the overlap between neighboring temperatures seems larger than in the Heisenberg-like spin glasses.vince  As seen in Fig. 5, the dips are so sharp that multiple stops can be performed (4 in the present case), and all equilibrations can be retrieved on re-heating. It is interesting to note that the chiral glass model proposed by H. Kawamura kawamura1 ; kawamura2  can be used to describe both the glassy phase of the PME phase of our Bi-2212 sample and the Heisenberg spin glass.takayama  A small amount of anisotropy may indeed exist in Heisenberg spin glasses, due to dipolar interaction and the scattering of the charge carriers by non magnetic impurities (Dzaloshinsky-Moriya interaction). In this case, the presence of frustration will induce a spin chirality,villain  and as for the PME sample, the frustration will be affected by the chirality of the non co-planar spin configuration.kawamura1

The occurrence of a positive field cooled magnetization (PME) in superconductors is a phenomenon that is driven by different mechanisms in different systems.Gam ; Ric  In Bi-2212 the PME is likely to arise from the existence of $`\pi `$-junctions and supercurrent loops with odd numbers of such junctions. In our current melt cast Bi-2212 system, the existence of spontaneous aging must necessarily relate to a frustrated collective state, which is created from a network of interacting 0- and $`\pi `$-junction. The phenomenology of the aging behavior observed for the current Bi-2212 sample has some striking similarities with that of Heisenberg spin glasses, both of which systems may be pictured by a chiral glass model.kawamura1

Financial support from the Swedish Research Council (VR) is acknowledged. A.G. acknowledges the ISP of Uppsala University for administrating and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment of Thailand for financing a fellowship for research in Sweden.


text:
# Poisson geometry and the Kashiwara-Vergne conjecture

## 1. Introduction

In 1977 Duflo  established the local solvability of bi-invariant differential operators on arbitrary finite-dimensional Lie groups $`G`$. In a subsequent paper, Kashiwara-Vergne  conjectured a property of the Campbell-Hausdorff series that would imply Duflo’s result as well as a more general statement on convolution of (germs of) invariant distributions. They proved this property (cf. Section 2 below) for solvable Lie algebras.

Except for case $`𝔤=𝔰𝔩(2,)`$ proved by Rouvière , there had not been much progress on the conjecture for more than twenty years until Vergne  settled the case of quadratic Lie algebras. Shortly after, results for the general case were obtained in  using Kontsevich’s approach to deformation quantization.

In this note we will give a new proof of the Kashiwara-Vergne conjecture for quadratic Lie algebras, using ideas from Poisson geometry. We will introduce a family of Poisson structures $`P_t`$ on a neighborhood of the origin in $`𝔤\times 𝔤`$, with the property that the diagonal action of $`G`$ is Hamiltonian, with moment map $`\mathrm{\Phi }_t(X,Y)=\frac{1}{t}\mathrm{log}(e^{tX}e^{tY})`$. Using Moser’s argument we will define a time dependent vector field $`v_t`$ interpolating the Poisson structures and moment maps, and in particular relating addition $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=X+Y`$ and multiplication $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1=\mathrm{log}(e^Xe^Y)`$. We will see that Moser’s vector field directly gives a solution to the Kashiwara-Vergne problem.

Acknowledgements. We would like to thank Michele Vergne for explaining to us the ideas behind  and , and helpful discussions.

## 2. Geometric formulation of the Kashiwara-Vergne property

Let $`𝔤`$ be a finite dimensional Lie algebra, and $`G`$ the corresponding simply connected Lie group. Choose an open neighborhood $`U𝔤`$ of $`0`$, such that the exponential map $`\mathrm{exp}:𝔤G,Xe^X`$ is a diffeomorphism over $`U`$. Denote by $`\mathrm{log}:\mathrm{exp}(U)𝔤`$ the inverse. Let $`V𝔤\times 𝔤`$ be a convex open neighborhood of the origin, with the property that $`e^Xe^Y\mathrm{exp}(U)`$ for $`(X,Y)V`$. Given $`F:V𝔤`$ denote by $`F\delta _X`$ the vector field $`f\frac{d}{ds}|_{s=0}f(X+sF(X,Y),Y),fC^{\mathrm{}}(V),`$ and by $`\delta _Xf`$ the $`\mathrm{End}(𝔤)`$-valued function, $`a\frac{d}{ds}|_{s=0}f(X+sa,Y),a𝔤`$. Similarly, define $`F\delta _Y`$ and $`\delta _Yf`$.

Conjecture (Kashiwara-Vergne) There exist $`𝔤`$-valued analytic functions $`A,B`$ on a neighborhood of the origin of $`𝔤\times 𝔤`$, with $`A(0,0)=B(0,0)=0`$, such that

(1)
$$\mathrm{log}(e^Ye^X)XY=(1e^{\mathrm{ad}_X})A(X,Y)+(e^{\mathrm{ad}_Y}1)B(X,Y)$$

and

(2)
$$\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{ad}_X\delta _X(A)+\mathrm{ad}_Y\delta _Y(B))=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{tr}\left(\frac{\mathrm{ad}_X}{e^{\mathrm{ad}_X}1}+\frac{\mathrm{ad}_Y}{e^{\mathrm{ad}_Y}1}\frac{\mathrm{ad}_Z}{e^{\mathrm{ad}_Z}1}1\right)$$

where $`Z=\mathrm{log}(e^Xe^Y)`$.

Kashiwara-Vergne arrived at these conditions from simple and natural geometric considerations. They considered a deformation of the Lie bracket $`[,]_t=t[,]`$ and examined the limit $`t0`$ where the Lie algebra becomes Abelian. Retracing their argument, one has the following equivalent formulation of the Conjecture. Consider the vector field $`v`$ and the $`𝔤`$-valued function $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ on $`V`$ given by

(3)
$$v=(\mathrm{ad}_XA)\delta _X+(\mathrm{ad}_YB)\delta _Y,\mathrm{\Phi }(X,Y)=\mathrm{log}(e^Xe^Y).$$

Let $`m_t:VV`$ denote multiplication by $`t[0,1]`$, and rescale $`v_t=\frac{1}{t}m_t^{}v`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_t=\frac{1}{t}m_t^{}\mathrm{\Phi }`$. (Note that this is well-defined even for $`t=0`$, and that $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0(X,Y)=X+Y`$.) Let $`J(X)=det\left(\frac{1e^{\mathrm{ad}_X}}{\mathrm{ad}_X}\right)`$ be the Jacobian of the exponential map, and denote by $`\kappa _tC^{\mathrm{}}(V)`$ the combination,

(4)
$$\kappa _t(X,Y)=\frac{J^{1/2}(tX)J^{1/2}(tY)}{J^{1/2}(t\mathrm{\Phi }_t)}.$$

Let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ denote a translation invariant volume form on $`𝔤\times 𝔤`$.

###### Proposition 2.1 (Kashiwara-Vergne).

Suppose $`𝔤`$ is unimodular. Then (1), (2) are respectively equivalent to the statements that the vector field $`v_t`$ intertwines the maps $`\mathrm{\Phi }_t`$ and the volume forms $`\kappa _t\mathrm{\Gamma }`$:

(5)
$$(\frac{}{t}+v_t)\mathrm{\Phi }_t=0,(\frac{}{t}+v_t)(\kappa _t\mathrm{\Gamma })=0.$$

For the proof, see , p.255–257. The unimodularity assumption enters the reformulation of (2), since the left hand side is the divergence of $`v`$ in this case.

## 3. Poisson geometry

Our approach to the Kashiwara-Vergne conjecture requires some elementary concepts from Poisson geometry, which we briefly review in this Section.

### 3.1. Basic definitions

A Poisson manifold is a manifold $`M`$, equipped with a bi-vector field $`PC^{\mathrm{}}(M,^2TM)`$ such that the Schouten bracket $`[P,P]`$ vanishes. Let $`P^{\mathrm{}}:T^{}MTM`$ be the bundle map defined by $`P`$, i.e. $`P^{\mathrm{}}(a)=P(a,)`$ for all covectors $`a`$. The Poisson structure gives rise to a generalized foliation of $`M`$, such that the tangent bundle to any leaf $`LM`$ equals $`P^{\mathrm{}}(T^{}M)|_L`$. Each leaf carries a symplectic form $`\omega _L`$ given as the inverse of $`P|_L`$. Let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_L`$ denote the symplectic volume form on $`L`$.

For any function $`HC^{\mathrm{}}(M)`$ one defines the Hamiltonian vector field $`v_H=P^{\mathrm{}}(\mathrm{d}H)`$. An action of a Lie group $`G`$ on $`M`$ is called Hamiltonian if there exists an equivariant moment map $`\mathrm{\Phi }C^{\mathrm{}}(M,𝔤^{})`$ with $`X_M=v_{\mathrm{\Phi },X}`$, where $`X_M=\frac{d}{dt}|_{t=0}\mathrm{exp}(tX)`$ is the vector field generated by $`X𝔤`$. Equivalently, the restriction of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ to any symplectic leaf is a moment map in the sense of symplectic geometry. For any Lie group $`G`$, the dual of the Lie algebra $`𝔤^{}`$ carries a unique Kirillov Poisson structure such that the identity map is a moment map for the co-adjoint action. Its symplectic leafs are the co-adjoint orbits. For any volume form $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ on a Poisson manifold $`(M,P)`$, one defines the modular vector field by $`w_\mathrm{\Gamma }(H)=\mathrm{div}_\mathrm{\Gamma }(v_H)`$. The modular vector field for $`M=𝔤^{}`$ is given by modular character: That is, $`w=_a\mathrm{tr}(\mathrm{ad}(e_a))\frac{}{\mu _a}`$ where $`e_a`$ is a basis of $`𝔤`$ and $`\mu _a`$ the dual coordinates on $`𝔤^{}`$. In particular, $`w=0`$ for unimodular Lie algebras.

###### Lemma 3.1.

Let $`M`$ be a Poisson manifold and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ be a volume form on $`M`$. Suppose that the modular vector field vanishes. Then, for any vector field $`v`$ of the form $`v=_iF_iv_{H_i}`$, with smooth functions $`F_i,H_i`$, one has

$$\mathrm{div}_\mathrm{\Gamma }(v)|_L=\mathrm{div}_{\mathrm{\Lambda }_L}(v|_L).$$

for all symplectic leafs $`L`$.

###### Proof.

We have $`\mathrm{div}_{\mathrm{\Lambda }_L}(v_{H_i}|_L)=0`$ since Hamiltonian vector fields preserve the symplectic form, and we have $`\mathrm{div}_\mathrm{\Gamma }(v_{H_i})|_L=0`$ since the modular vector field vanishes. Hence, both sides equal the restriction of $`_iv_{H_i}(F_i)`$ to $`L`$. ∎

### 3.2. Gauge transformations

There is an easy way of constructing new Hamiltonian Poisson structures out of given ones referred to as ‘gauge transformations’ in Poisson geometry. It will be convenient to state this using the language of equivariant de Rham theory. Let $`M`$ be a $`G`$-manifold, where $`G`$ is a connected Lie group. One defines a complex of equivariant differential forms $`(\mathrm{\Omega }_G^{}(M),\mathrm{d}_G)`$, where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_G(M)`$ is the space of polynomial maps $`\alpha :𝔤\mathrm{\Omega }(M)`$ satisfying the equivariance condition, $`\alpha ([Y,X])+L_{Y_M}\alpha (X)=0`$. The equivariant differential is defined as $`(\mathrm{d}_G\alpha )(X)=\mathrm{d}\alpha (X)\iota _{X_M}\alpha (X)`$. One introduces a grading on $`\mathrm{\Omega }_G(M)`$ by declaring that $`\mathrm{deg}(\alpha )=2k+l`$ if $`X\alpha (X)`$ is a homogeneous polynomial of degree $`k`$ with values in $`\mathrm{\Omega }^l(M)`$. In particular, equivariant 2-forms are sums $`\sigma _G(\xi )=\sigma +\mathrm{\Psi },\xi `$ where $`\sigma `$ is an invariant 2-form and $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ an equivariant map into $`𝔤^{}`$. Note that these definitions extend to local $`G`$-actions (equivalently, Lie algebra actions).

Suppose $`(M,P_0,\mathrm{\Phi }_0)`$ is a Hamiltonian Poisson $`G`$-manifold, and $`\sigma _G=\sigma +\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Omega }_G^2(M)`$ an equivariant cocycle. Let $`\sigma ^{\mathrm{}}:TMT^{}M`$ be the bundle map defined by $`\sigma `$. Assume that $`det(1+\sigma ^{\mathrm{}}P_0^{\mathrm{}})>0`$ everywhere. Then there is a well-defined bivector field $`P_1`$ on $`M`$ such that

(6)
$$P_1^{\mathrm{}}=P_0^{\mathrm{}}(1+\sigma ^{\mathrm{}}P_0^{\mathrm{}})^1.$$

Let $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1=\mathrm{\Phi }_0\mathrm{\Psi }`$. Then $`(M,P_1,\mathrm{\Phi }_1)`$ is again a Hamiltonian Poisson $`G`$-manifold, with the same symplectic leafs as $`P_0`$. For any leaf $`L`$, the equivariant symplectic forms $`(\omega _j)_G=\omega _j\mathrm{\Phi }_j|_L`$ are related by $`(\omega _1)_G=(\omega _0)_G+\iota _L^{}\sigma _G`$, and the volume forms by $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{L,1}=\lambda |_L\mathrm{\Lambda }_{L,0}`$ where $`\lambda =det^{1/2}(1+\sigma ^{\mathrm{}}P_0^{\mathrm{}})`$.

### 3.3. Moser’s trick for Poisson manifolds

Let $`M`$ be a $`G`$-manifold, with a family of Hamiltonian Poisson structures $`(P_t,\mathrm{\Phi }_t)`$ depending smoothly on $`t`$, where the symplectic foliation is independent of $`t`$. Suppose there exists a family of invariant 1-forms $`\alpha _t\mathrm{\Omega }^1(M)^G`$, depending smoothly on $`t`$, such that for every symplectic leaf $`\iota _L:LM`$,

$$d_G(\iota _L^{}\alpha _t)=\frac{d(\omega _t)_G}{dt}.$$

We will call $`v_t=P_t^{\mathrm{}}(\alpha _t)`$ the Moser vector field. Restricting to symplectic leafs, the usual equivariant Moser’s trick from symplectic geometry (cf. \[7, Theorem 7.3\] or \[3, Lemma 3.4\]) shows that $`v_t`$ intertwines the Poisson structures and moment maps:

$$(\frac{}{t}+v_t)\mathrm{\Phi }_t=0,(\frac{}{t}+v_t)P_t=0.$$

Furthermore, if $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ is a volume form on $`M`$ with vanishing modular vector field with respect to $`P_0`$, a straightforward calculation, using Lemma 3.1, shows that

$$(\frac{}{t}+v_t)\mathrm{\Gamma }_t=0,$$

where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_t=\lambda _t\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ with $`\lambda _t=det^{1/2}(1+\sigma _t^{\mathrm{}}P_0^{\mathrm{}})`$.

## 4. Proof of the Kashiwara-Vergne conjecture for quadratic $`𝔤`$

### 4.1. Deformation of the Kirillov Poisson structure

Suppose $`𝔤`$ is a quadratic Lie algebra. That is, $`𝔤`$ comes equipped with a non-degenerate invariant symmetric bilinear form $``$, used to identify $`𝔤^{}𝔤`$. Quadratic Lie algebras are unimodular. Let $`P_0`$ denote the Poisson structure on $`𝔤\times 𝔤`$ given as a product of Kirillov Poisson structures. The moment map for the diagonal $`G`$-action is the sum $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0(X,Y)=X+Y.`$ Our goal is to find an equivariantly closed equivariant 2-form $`\sigma _G=\sigma +\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Omega }_G^2(V)`$ such that $`\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Phi }_0\mathrm{\Phi }_1`$, where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1(X,Y)=\mathrm{log}(e^Xe^Y).`$ The construction is motivated by ideas from the theory of group-valued moment maps, introduced in . Let $`\theta ^L,\theta ^R\mathrm{\Omega }^1(G,𝔤)`$ denote the left/right invariant Maurer-Cartan on $`G`$. Let $`G`$ act on itself by conjugation, and let $`\eta _G\mathrm{\Omega }_G^3(G)`$ be the equivariant Cartan 3-form

$$\eta _G(X)=\frac{1}{12}\theta ^L[\theta ^L,\theta ^L]\frac{1}{2}(\theta ^L+\theta ^R)X.$$

It is well-known that $`\mathrm{d}_G\eta _G=0`$. One easily calculates the pull-back of this form under group multiplication $`\mathrm{Mult}:G\times GG`$:

(7)
$$\mathrm{Mult}^{}\eta _G=\eta _G^1+\eta _G^2\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{d}_G(\theta ^{L,1}\theta ^{R,2})$$

where the superscripts $`1,2`$ denote pull-back to the respective $`G`$-factor.

Define an equivariant 2-form $`\varpi _G\mathrm{\Omega }_G^2(𝔤)`$ by applying the de Rham homotopy operator for the vector space $`𝔤`$ to $`\mathrm{exp}^{}\eta _G\mathrm{\Omega }_G^3(𝔤)`$. The form degree $`0`$ part of $`\varpi _G`$ is minus the identity map $`𝔤𝔤,YY`$, so that $`\varpi _G(X)=\varpi YX`$ at $`Y𝔤`$. (See \[2, Section 6.2\] or \[12, Section 2\] for an explicit formula for the form degree 2 part $`\varpi `$.) We now define $`\sigma _G=\sigma +\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Omega }_G^2(V)`$ by

$$\sigma _G=\mathrm{\Phi }_1^{}\varpi _G\varpi _G^1\varpi _G^2+\frac{1}{2}(\mathrm{exp}^{}\theta ^L)^1(\mathrm{exp}^{}\theta ^R)^2.$$

Notice that $`\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Phi }_1\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ as desired, and $`\mathrm{d}_G\sigma _G=0`$ by (7). Since $`P_0`$ vanishes at the origin, it follows (choosing $`V`$ smaller if necessary) that $`1+\sigma ^{\mathrm{}}P_0^{\mathrm{}}`$ is invertible over $`V`$. Hence (6) defines a new $`G`$-equivariant Poisson structure $`P_1`$ on $`V`$, with moment map $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1(X,Y)=\mathrm{log}(e^Xe^Y)`$.

We now scale the Poisson structure on $`V`$, by setting $`P_t:=tm_t^{}P_1`$ for $`0<t1`$, with moment map $`\mathrm{\Phi }_t`$. Since $`tm_t^{}P_0=P_0`$, we see that

$$P_t^{\mathrm{}}=P_0^{\mathrm{}}(1+\sigma _t^{\mathrm{}}P_0^{\mathrm{}})^1,$$

where $`\sigma _t=t^1m_t^{}\sigma `$. Since $`\sigma `$ is a 2-form, $`lim_{t0}\sigma _t=0`$, and therefore $`P_0=lim_{t0}P_t`$. Let $`\alpha _t=\frac{1}{t^2}m_t^{}\alpha _1\mathrm{\Omega }^1(V)`$ be the family of 1-forms obtained by applying the de Rham homotopy operator to the closed 2-forms $`\frac{d\sigma _t}{dt}`$. Since $`P_t=tm_t^{}P_1`$, the Moser vector field $`v_t=P_t^{\mathrm{}}(\alpha _t)`$ scales according to $`v_t=\frac{1}{t}m_t^{}v_1`$. Note that $`\alpha _t`$ vanishes at the origin, as does any form in the image of the homotopy operator.

To write $`v_1`$ in the form (3), define $`𝔤`$-valued functions $`A,B`$ on $`V`$, vanishing at the origin, by

$$(1+\sigma _1^{\mathrm{}}P_0^{\mathrm{}})^1\alpha _1=A\mathrm{d}X+B\mathrm{d}Y.$$

Then $`P_0^{\mathrm{}}(A\mathrm{d}X+B\mathrm{d}Y)=v_1`$, showing that $`v_1`$ is given by (3).

### 4.2. A solution to the Kashiwara-Vergne problem

We now show that the vector field $`v=v_1`$ provides a solution to the Kashiwara-Vergne conjecture in the form (5). The first condition $`(\frac{}{t}+v_t)\mathrm{\Phi }_t=0`$ is automatic since $`v_t`$ is a Moser vector field. Since the modular vector field for the Kirillov Poisson structure of a unimodular Lie algebra vanishes, the second condition $`(\frac{}{t}+v_t)\kappa _t\mathrm{\Gamma }=0`$ holds if and only if $`v_t`$ intertwines the volume forms $`\kappa _t|_𝒪\mathrm{\Lambda }_𝒪`$ on products of orbits $`𝒪=𝒪_1\times 𝒪_2`$, where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_𝒪`$ is the symplectic volume form on $`𝒪`$. By the following Proposition, the Moser vector field $`v_t`$ does indeed have this property.

###### Proposition 4.1.

For any product of orbits $`𝒪=𝒪_1\times 𝒪_2V`$, the volume form $`\kappa _t|_𝒪\mathrm{\Lambda }_𝒪`$ is the Liouville form of $`𝒪`$ with respect to the Poisson structure $`P_t`$.

Letting $`\omega _𝒪`$ denote the symplectic form on $`𝒪`$, this Lemma says that the top form degree part of $`\mathrm{exp}(\omega _𝒪+\iota _𝒪^{}\sigma _t)`$ equals the top form degree part of $`\kappa _t|_𝒪\mathrm{exp}(\omega _𝒪)`$. It is possible, but tedious, to prove this by a direct check of the equality $`\kappa _t=det^{1/2}(1+\sigma _t^{\mathrm{}}P_0^{\mathrm{}})=\lambda _t`$. An alternative route uses the theory of group-valued moment maps . We briefly summarize the features of this theory needed here:

(i) Suppose $`M`$ is a $`G`$-manifold, and $`\omega _G=\omega \mathrm{\Phi }`$ an equivariant cocycle with $`\omega `$ non-degenerate. Let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ be the Liouville form defined as the top form degree part of $`\mathrm{exp}\omega `$. Let $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }=\omega _G\mathrm{\Phi }^{}\varpi _G`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}=\mathrm{exp}\mathrm{\Phi }:MG`$. Then $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }`$ is non-degenerate near $`\mathrm{\Phi }^1(0)`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ satisfies the moment map condition for group-valued moment maps, $`\mathrm{d}_G\stackrel{~}{\omega }+\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}^{}\eta _G=0`$. Let $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ be the top form degree part of $`\mathrm{exp}(\stackrel{~}{\omega })`$, divided by the function $`det^{1/2}(\frac{1}{2}(\mathrm{Ad}_\mathrm{\Phi }+1))`$. Then $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=(\mathrm{\Phi }^{}J^{1/2})\mathrm{\Lambda }.`$

(ii) Suppose $`M_1,M_2`$ are two $`G`$-manifolds, equipped with equivariant maps $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_j:M_jG`$ and invariant 2-forms $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }_j`$ satisfying $`\mathrm{d}_G\stackrel{~}{\omega }_j+\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_j^{}\eta _G=0`$. Suppose for simplicity that $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }_j`$ are non-degenerate. Let $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_j`$ be defined as in the last paragraph. Let $`M_1\times M_2`$ be equipped with the diagonal $`G`$-action, group-valued moment map $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}=\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2`$, and 2-form $`\stackrel{~}{\omega }=\stackrel{~}{\omega }_1+\stackrel{~}{\omega }_2+\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1^{}\theta ^L\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2^{}\theta ^R.`$ Then $`\mathrm{d}_G\stackrel{~}{\omega }+\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}^{}\eta _G=0`$, and the volume form $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ constructed from $`\stackrel{~}{\omega },\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ is simply the direct product $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_1\times \stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_2`$.

These facts are proved in . (The results in that paper were stated for $`𝔤`$ is compact, but the proofs work for quadratic $`𝔤`$, with obvious modifications.) In our case, we start out with two coadjoint orbits $`𝒪_j`$, with moment maps $`\mathrm{\Phi }_j`$ the inclusion into $`𝔤`$. Let $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_j`$ be the Liouville forms. “Exponentiating” as in (i), the group-valued moment maps $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_j`$ are $`\mathrm{exp}\mathrm{\Phi }_j`$, and the volume forms become $`J^{1/2}\mathrm{\Lambda }_j`$. Taking the product as in (ii), $`𝒪_1\times 𝒪_2`$ becomes a space with group-valued moment map $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}(X,Y)e^Xe^Y`$ and volume form $`J^{1/2}(X)J^{1/2}(Y)\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\mathrm{\Lambda }_1\times \mathrm{\Lambda }_2`$. Using (i) in reverse, $`𝒪_1\times 𝒪_2`$ becomes a Hamiltonian $`G`$-space in the usual sense, with moment map $`\mathrm{\Phi }(X,Y)=\mathrm{log}(e^Xe^Y)`$ and equivariant symplectic form $`\omega _G+(\mathrm{\Phi }_1,\mathrm{\Phi }_2)^{}\sigma _G`$. The Liouville volume form is $`\frac{J^{1/2}(X)J^{1/2}(Y)}{J^{1/2}(Z)}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. This yields a proof of Proposition 4.1 for $`t=1`$, the general case follows by rescaling the given bilinear form on $`𝔤`$.

###### Remark 4.2.

Our solution to the Kashiwara-Vergne problem for quadratic Lie algebras differs from Vergne’s solution in , although the ingredients are very similar. A common feature of both solutions is that they are, in fact, independent of the quadratic form.