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# Natural two-qubit gate for quantum computation using the 𝑋𝑌 interaction

## I Introduction

It is well known that there are universal sets of quantum gates which are sufficient to perform any unitary operation on an arbitrary number of qubits. For example, it has been shown that arbitrary one-bit operations together with a non-trivial two-qubit gate provide such a set Brylinski and Brylinski (2002); Bremner et al. (2002). Clearly, in order to perform an arbitrary computation with three or more qubits the computer needs to be capable of performing two-qubit operations between arbitrary pairs of qubits.

One possible universal set of gates is the set of arbitrary one-bit operations (i.e. all unitary transformations of a single qubit) together with the two-bit controlled NOT gate (CNOTBarenco et al. (1995). The CNOT operation is especially interesting since, to a certain extent, it can be treated as a “classical” gate originating from classical reversible computation. Gates of this type are important since there are schemes which can be transferred directly from classical reversible computation to quantum circuits. Thus the CNOT gate has become an ubiquitous reference in the design of quantum circuits. Correspondingly, the universality of a certain hardware setup is often demonstrated by providing ways how to obtain the CNOT gate (as well as arbitrary one-bit gates) by controlled manipulations of the system parameters.

Typically the formal solution for a computational task (e.g., a complex operation on several qubits, an error correction protocol etc.) is given in terms of a sequence of one-bit gates and CNOT operations. For practical reasons it is desirable to optimize these sequences according to certain criteria such as, e.g., the number of operations. On the one hand this helps to do as many computational steps as possible within a finite decoherence time, and on the other hand it renders the computation more stable with respect to computational errors.

The existence of a formal solution, however, does not mean that it can be implemented directly in a physical system. There are certain—rather general—hardware-related issues which have to be considered before. In quantum circuits for complex computational tasks it is assumed that two-qubit operations can be performed on *any* pair of qubits, i.e., that each qubit can be coupled with any other qubit. While for many practical implementations it is possible to couple each qubit to a few others it often appears difficult to realize a uniform (and tunable) coupling for *any* pair of qubits.

From a formal point of view, this is not a problem. Even if there is only nearest-neighbor coupling, two arbitrary qubits can be brought to interaction by consecutively swapping one of them with its nearest neighbor until the two considered qubits are next to each other. Then the two-bit operation is carried out and the swapping is reversed. However, from a practical point of view this workaround is rather unsatisfactory since it increases the number of operations and hence the length of the sequence considerably.

Apart from the “range of the interaction” there is another important issue related to the coupling. It depends on the microscopic coupling Hamiltonian whether or not it is easy to implement the CNOT gate (in particular, whether more than one “elementary” two-qubit gate is required to realize CNOT, see the discussion below). This seems to favor certain kinds of couplings with respect to others right from the start.

The aim of this work is to show that such hardware-related difficulties in practice may be overcome by adapting the design of the quantum circuits under consideration. While hardware properties seem to render the implementation more difficult we demonstrate that by combining just these properties an efficient implementation can be achieved. The paper is organized as follows. After introducing notations (Section II), we discuss possible interaction Hamiltonians for two qubits and the corresponding “elementary gates” (Section III). In Section IV we consider the properties of the so-called iSWAP gate in more detail. This gate appears to be a natural choice for the elementary two-qubit gate if the coupling is given by the $`XY`$ interaction. Finally we present two examples how complex networks can be implemented efficiently for the case that only nearest-neighbor $`XY`$ coupling is available (Section V).

## II Definitions and general assumptions

To fix ideas, let us first introduce the notation which will be used throughout the paper.

Each line in a quantum circuit denotes a single qubit, the operations act on these lines from the left to the right. One-qubit gates are usually denoted by a single box with the name of the operation (i.e. the matrix $`M`$):

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }.$$

Special one-bit gates are the rotations about the $`x`$ axis

$$R_x(\varphi )=e^{i\sigma _x\varphi /2}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}(\varphi /2)& i\mathrm{sin}(\varphi /2)\\ i\mathrm{sin}(\varphi /2)& \mathrm{cos}(\varphi /2)\end{array}\right)$$

and the $`z`$ axis

$$R_z(\varphi )=e^{i\sigma _z\varphi /2}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}e^{i\varphi /2}& 0\\ 0& e^{i\varphi /2}\end{array}\right).$$

These operations can be used to generate arbitrary one-bit operations; we denote them by   and    . The Hadamard transformation $`H`$ can be built by using $`x`$ and $`z`$ rotations:

$$\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 1\\ 1& 1\end{array}\right)=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }.$$

The two-bit CNOT operation is denoted by the following symbol

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& & & \\ & 1& & \\ & & 0& 1\\ & & 1& 0\end{array}\right).$$

Here we use the standard (computational) basis for qubits, where the basis states are ordered lexicographically, i.e., $`\{|00,|01,|10,|11\}`$.

Finally, the SWAP gate exchanges the states of two qubits. It can be obtained by using the CNOT gate:

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }.$$
(1)
The Hamiltonian of a quantum computing device can be written as

$$=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}_i+\underset{(i,j)}{}_{i,j}$$

where $`N`$ is the number of qubits, the first term describes the single-qubit parts $`_i`$ and the Hamiltonians $`_{i,j}`$ denote the interactions between the qubits. The sum is taken over all pairs $`(i,j)`$ of qubits which can be coupled at the hardware level. As we have mentioned before, one would like to have interaction terms for arbitrary pairs of qubits. However, often this will be difficult to realize. For example, in many of the proposed solid-state implementations nearest-neighbor coupling appears to be the standard choice (consider, e.g., electron spins in quantum dots coupled by tunnel junctions Loss and DiVincenzo (1998), excitonic qubits in quantum dots Biolatti et al. (2000), inductively coupled Josephson flux qubits Orlando et al. (1999), or Josephson charge qubits coupled by Josephson junctions Siewert et al. (2000)).

In the following we will assume that the $`N`$ qubits (on which arbitrary one-bit operations can be performed) are arranged in a chain or in a ring (i.e., a chain with periodic boundary conditions) with independently tunable nearest-neighbor interactions. The premise of only nearest-neighbor coupling appears to be weak enough to render the discussion sufficiently general.

## III Interaction Hamiltonians for qubits

In this section we will illustrate that, depending on the available coupling term $`_{i,j}`$, it is more or less difficult to generate the CNOT operation. On the other hand, for each type of coupling there are two-qubit gates which can be implemented in a straightforward manner *and* which can be viewed as *classical* gates (up to one-bit operations).

Although other choices for the interaction part of the Hamiltonian are possible we will focus on three different types of couplings: Firstly, the $`ZZ`$ interaction

$$_{i,j}^{ZZ}(E_{i,j}^{ZZ})=\frac{E_{i,j}^{ZZ}}{4}\sigma _z^{(i)}\sigma _z^{(j)},$$

which, e.g., can be realized for Josephson flux qubits Orlando et al. (1999) or for Josephson charge qubits coupled inductively Makhlin et al. (1999). Secondly, the $`JJ`$ or Heisenberg interaction

$$_{i,j}^{JJ}(E_{i,j}^{JJ})=\frac{E_{i,j}^{JJ}}{4}\left[\sigma _x^{(i)}\sigma _x^{(j)}+\sigma _y^{(i)}\sigma _y^{(j)}+\sigma _z^{(i)}\sigma _z^{(j)}\right],$$

which basically appears in systems where spins are coupled by the exchange interaction, for example spins in quantum dots interacting via a tunnel junction Loss and DiVincenzo (1998), nuclear spins in phosphorus-doped silicon devices Kane (1998), or spin-resonance transistors Vrijen et al. (2000); and finally the $`XY`$ interaction

$$_{i,j}^{XY}(E_{i,j}^{XY})=\frac{E_{i,j}^{XY}}{4}\left[\sigma _x^{(i)}\sigma _x^{(j)}+\sigma _y^{(i)}\sigma _y^{(j)}\right].$$

This type of coupling has been proposed for quantum dot spins coupled by a cavity Imamoḡlu et al. (1999), for Josephson charge qubits coupled by Josephson junctions Siewert et al. (2000), and for nuclear spins interacting via a two-dimensional electron gas Mozyrsky et al. (2001).

For the $`ZZ`$-interaction, the CNOT operation is indeed the natural two-bit operation since

$$\mathrm{exp}\left[i_{i,j}^{ZZ}(E_{i,j}^{ZZ})\frac{\pi }{E_{i,j}^{ZZ}}\right]=e^{i\pi /4}\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& & & \\ & i& & \\ & & i& \\ & & & 1\end{array}\right)$$

is equvialent to CNOT up to one-bit operations Makhlin (2000). As opposed to this, the Heisenberg interaction does not yield the CNOT operation directly, while

$$\mathrm{exp}\left[i_{i,j}^{JJ}(E_{i,j}^{JJ})\frac{\pi }{E_{i,j}^{JJ}}\right]=e^{i\pi /4}\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& & & \\ & 0& 1& \\ & 1& 0& \\ & & & 1\end{array}\right)$$

corresponds to the SWAP operation. Since SWAP cannot entangle two qubits one has to use alternative ways to produce CNOT, e.g., via the square root of SWAP (briefly denoted by $`\sqrt{\text{SWAP}}`$) which can be obtained by applying the Heisenberg Hamiltonian only for a time $`0.5\pi \mathrm{}/E_{i,j}^{JJ}`$. Then CNOT can be generated Loss and DiVincenzo (1998) via

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=$$

However, here $`\sqrt{\text{SWAP}}`$ has to be applied twice: the CNOT gate *cannot* be constructed by applying a $`_{i,j}^{JJ}`$-based gate only once Makhlin (2000). The converse is true for the construction of the SWAP operation using the $`ZZ`$ interaction: while CNOT can be obtained in one step, SWAP requires two two-bit operations.

In Ref. Makhlin (2000) it was also shown that the $`XY`$ interaction Hamiltonian $`_{i,j}^{XY}`$ can *neither* generate the CNOT operation *nor* the SWAP operation by applying an $`XY`$-based gate only once. Nevertheless it is sufficient to build a CNOT gate. An appropriate “elementary” two-bit gate is the iSWAP operation which is obtained by applying $`_{i,j}^{XY}(E_{i,j}^{XY})`$ for a time $`t=\pi \mathrm{}/E_{i,j}^{XY}`$:

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }:=(\begin{array}{cccc}1& & & \\ & 0& i& \\ & i& 0& \\ & & & 1\end{array})=\mathrm{exp}[i_{i,j}^{XY}(E_{i,j}^{XY})\frac{\pi }{E_{i,j}^{XY}}].$$

It has been noted before that this gate is useful in order to generate more complex quantum operations Siewert and Fazio (2001); Kempe et al. (2001); Echternach et al. (2001).

By applying the iSWAP gate twice, the CNOT operation can be constructed

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }$$
(2)
We mention that in complex circuits the length of this sequence can be reduced by noting that the “outer” one-bit operations partially cancel out with preceding or subsequent one-bit gates.

Of course, also the SWAP operation can be built with iSWAP gates – either by substituting Eq. (2) in Eq. (1), or by applying the following sequence (which is considerably shorter):

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=$$

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }.$$
(3)
We mention that there exists also a proposal how to build the CNOT gate by using $`\sqrt{\text{iSWAP}}`$ (see Ref. Imamoḡlu et al. (1999)).

The close relation between the three types of Hamiltonians and the corresponding two-bit operations has been demonstrated rigorously in Ref. Vidal et al. (2002).

## IV  A natural gate for the $`XY`$ interaction

In the following we focus on the $`XY`$ interaction. As we have seen it can be used to generate a two-qubit gate which (together with single-bit rotations) is sufficient for universal quantum computation. However, neither CNOT nor SWAP can be realized directly by using only the interaction part of the Hamiltonian, in contrast to the $`ZZ`$ and the Heisenberg interaction. Now we are asking whether there exists a “natural” two-qubit operation similar to CNOT also for the $`XY`$-interaction, i.e. a gate which can be viewed as the quantum case of a classical reversible operation like the CNOT or the SWAP gate.

By analyzing the matrix of the iSWAP gate we see that it can be decomposed as

$$\text{iSWAP}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& & & \\ & 0& i& \\ & i& 0& \\ & & & 1\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& & & \\ & i& & \\ & & i& \\ & & & 1\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& & & \\ & 0& 1& \\ & 1& 0& \\ & & & 1\end{array}\right).$$

The second matrix represents the SWAP operation while the first matrix is equivalent to CNOT up to one-bit operations since

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }(\begin{array}{cccc}1& & & \\ & i& & \\ & & i& \\ & & & 1\end{array})\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }.$$

Thus it follows that the iSWAP gate is equivalent to a combination of CNOT and SWAP. The exact sequence is

$$\text{CNS}:=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }$$

For the sake of brevity, we introduce the name CNS (“CNOT+SWAP”) for the new gate.

Remarkably this combined gate requires only a single operation using the coupling Hamiltonian and can therefore be regarded as a natural gate in the sense explained above.

One is tempted to object that the combination of CNOT and SWAP makes the CNS gate difficult to handle. While this is true in principle, one may notice that in the case of qubit couplings only between nearest neighbors it is necessary to swap the qubit states anyhow (as we have discussed in Section I). Therefore one can try to exploit this feature by rearranging the circuit in such a way that CNOT and SWAP operations appear together and can be replaced by a CNS operation. Moreover, it should be mentioned that the CNS operation is considerably shorter than both the CNOT and the SWAP operation (realized with the $`XY`$ coupling); so even with an overhead of two-bit operations compared to a “standard” circuit (which uses CNOT and SWAP) the rearrangement of the network may yield an advantage in terms of the operation time required for the whole sequence.

## V Examples

In this section we discuss two examples in order to demonstrate that the CNS gate derived above is surprisingly powerful in efficiently implementing quantum circuits in systems with nearest-neighbor $`XY`$ interactions. As a simple example we first discuss the Toffoli gate. In order to show that the method works for more complex networks as well, we then present an implementation of the five-bit error correction found by DiVincenzo and Shor DiVincenzo and Shor (1996).

### V.1  The three-bit Toffoli gate

The three-bit Toffoli gate is the generalization of the CNOT gate with two control bits: it inverts the third bit if and only if the first two bits are in the $`|1`$ state. It is of special interest since it is the elementary gate for *classical* reversible computation. For this reason it often appears in circuits for tasks that also can be solved by classical reversible computers, e.g. the modular exponentiation used in Shor’s factoring algorithm Vedral et al. (1996).

There are various proposals to implement the Toffoli gate. The shortest one using the CNOT gate as the only two-bit gate is given in Ref. DiVincenzo (1998) (which is a simplification of the version in Ref. Barenco et al. (1995)) and involves six CNOT gates (the one-bit gates are given in Appendix A):

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }$$
(4)
We are considering systems with only nearest-neighbor interaction. As the Toffoli gate often appears as an element in a circuit with more than three qubits, interaction will be possible only between the qubit pairs 1-2 and 2-3, but not between qubits 1 and 3 (see Eq. (4)). Since in the circuit given above two of the CNOT gates are acting between qubits 1 and 3, one will have to swap one of the two qubits with qubit 2 in order to make qubits 1 and 3 nearest neighbors. This swapping has to be undone after the CNOT operation in order to bring the qubits back in the right order. Therefore one has to perform four SWAP operations in addition to the six CNOTs. The number of CNOT or iSWAP gates to build a SWAP gate is three. It turns out, however, that the CNOT operations between qubits $`1`$ and $`3`$ can be generated with only five (instead of seven) nearest-neighbor CNOTs. Thus one ends up with

* $`4+25=\mathrm{𝟏𝟒}`$ CNOT gates or
* $`62+43=\mathrm{𝟐𝟒}`$ iSWAP gates

required to obtain one Toffoli gate.

Now we rearrange the circuit to make use of the properties of the CNS gate. We have found the sequence

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=$$
(5)
which replaces five CNOT operations by CNS operations and requires only a single additional SWAP operation (i.e., in addition to the sequence in Eq. (5)) to correct for the fact that the sequence does not exactly implement the Toffoli gate but rather exchanges the qubits 1 and 2 (as can be seen easily by retracing the three lines in the circuit above). For the separate SWAP three iSWAPs have to be done according to Eq. (3). Thus, one finds that the total number of iSWAP gates needed to implement the Toffoli gate in a chain of qubits is

* $`51+12+13=\mathrm{𝟏𝟎}`$ iSWAP gates

compared to the $`24`$ iSWAP gates required for the “naive version” above.

Note that it is not necessarily a disadvantage to swap qubits 1 and 2 as in Eq. (5). Firstly, it can be regarded as a combination of the Toffoli gate and SWAP analogously to CNS. In fact, by replacing some of the CNOTs by CNS gates in the Toffoli network in Eq. (4) every possible permutation of the input bits can be achieved (amusingly, *except* the constant permutation), so one could try to exploit this in more complex circuits the same way as the fact that CNS is a combination of CNOT and SWAP.

Secondly, in quantum computing there are numerous circuits which first execute a sequence and then repeat the operations in the reverse order, e.g., to reset some ancilla qubits. In this case swapping of two qubits is often irrelevant (for examples of such circuits, see the network for the $`N`$-bit Toffoli gate in Ref. Barenco et al. (1995) or the circuit of the quantum adder in Ref. Vedral et al. (1996)).

### V.2  A five-bit error-correcting code

As a more advanced application where the use of CNS gates gives a considerable advantage over the simple “translation” of the network, we present an implementation of the five-bit error-correction network which was found by DiVincenzo and Shor DiVincenzo and Shor (1996). This network (see Fig. 1) can compensate arbitrary one-bit errors as long as they occur only in one of the encoding qubits at a time.

The protected qubit is encoded in five physical qubits 0 to 4 as a superposition of five-qubit states. The error correction network makes use of four ancilla bits which are initialized to $`|0`$ before the network is applied. After carrying out the sequence of operations the ancillae are measured (in the standard basis).

While the implementation of this circuit appears rather hopeless if there is no direct interaction between the ancillae and *each* encoding qubit, we will show that the CNS gate makes a straightforward implementation of this network possible. To this end, we consider a setup of nine qubits (five qubits encoding the protected state plus four ancilla bits) arranged in a ring, i.e. we have nearest-neighbor couplings with periodic boundary conditions.

By properly rearranging the gates, we obtain the circuit shown in Fig. 2.

The labels 0 to 4 on the lines denote the five qubits of the error-correcting code and, correspondingly, a<sub>0</sub>, a<sub>1</sub>, a<sub>3</sub> and a<sub>4</sub> are the labels of the four ancilla bits for the $`M_i`$s (see Fig. 1). After the application of the network the four ancillae have to be measured and the corresponding operations on the five bits to correct the error syndrome have to be applied. Then the ancillae have to be reset to the $`|0`$ state. For the whole setup, only one separate CNOT is necessary, all other CNOT gates can be replaced by CNS gates. Separate SWAP operations are not required at all. One may notice that the two-bit operations in this network can be done in parallel which makes the execution of the whole sequence considerably faster <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1 Formally a parallel execution looks feasible also if the network can be implemented with physical couplings between arbitrary pairs of bits, in particular between the ancillae and *each* encoding qubit. Note, however, that in such schemes there is typically only *one* channel which mediates the coupling between the various qubits Imamoḡlu et al. (1999); Makhlin et al. (1999). Consequently, simultaneous execution of several two-qubit operations would result in $`N`$-qubit dynamics ($`N>2`$) which is to be excluded. Therefore, in certain cases application of nearest-neighbor coupling appears to be even more powerful than coupling between arbitrary pairs of qubits. .

The equivalence of the networks in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 is explained in detail in Appendix B. Note that this implementation of the error-correcting code leaves the qubits in the original order, but *rotates* them by three bits. Therefore one has to keep track of the position of each bit. In any case, after three subsequent applications of the error correction scheme the encoding bits are back in their original order. As to the ancilla bits, their order is changed in a well-defined way. This has to be taken into account for the interpretation of the measurement outcome. After the measurement, the order of the ancillae is irrelevant since they are re-initialized to $`|0`$.

Until now, we have achieved an efficient implementation of the five-bit error-correction code using the CNS gate as an elementary building block. Let us conclude this discussion by studying the implementation closer to the hardware level. In order to realize the network in a setup of qubits with nearest-neighbor $`XY`$ interaction, one can rewrite the circuit in Fig. 2 in terms of iSWAP operations. The sequence can be simplified considerably (see Appendix C). The result is illustrated in Fig. 3. If we assume that the energies in the one-bit and two-bit part of the Hamiltionan are of the order $`E_{\mathrm{typ}}^{1\mathrm{bit}}`$ and $`E_{\mathrm{typ}}^{2\mathrm{bit}}`$, respectively, the total operation time of the sequence (without measurement, correction step and resetting the ancillae) is $`2.5\pi \mathrm{}/E_{\mathrm{typ}}^{1\mathrm{bit}}+5\pi \mathrm{}/E_{\mathrm{typ}}^{2\mathrm{bit}}`$.

We mention that efficient solutions for similar tasks in error correction have been developed also in Refs. Braunstein and Smolin (1997); Burkard et al. (1999).

## VI Conclusions

A considerable part of the research efforts in quantum computation is devoted either to the development of quantum circuits to formally solve a given computational task (one could call this sector ‘development of algorithms’), or to the practical implementation of specific algorithms for a given type of hardware. We have studied questions residing in the domain of problems between these two sectors. We have focused on aspects which are common to different types of hardware and which may affect the feasibility of the practical implementation of existing formal solutions.

In particular we have discussed two hardware-related problems which seem to render the physical implementation of quantum networks difficult: *i)* coupling between arbitrary pairs of qubits cannot be achieved for all hardware proposals; *ii)* depending on the implementation, certain two-qubit gates are more or less difficult to realize.

While at first glance these hardware properties seem to imply that hardware for quantum computation has to meet very specific demands that are hard to realize, our results indicate a much more optimistic conclusion. We have demonstrated that the $`XY`$ interaction—which is neither capable of realizing a CNOT nor a SWAP gate directly—is surprisingly powerful in implementing certain quantum networks. This has been achieved by realizing that the CNS gate is a combination of the CNOT gate and the SWAP operation which can be obtained with a single two-qubit step.

Moreover, our examples illustrate that this gate overcomes the problems arising from the hardware property *i)* mentioned above in a natural way. The built-in SWAP makes an efficient implementation possible even if only nearest-neighbor interaction between the qubits is available. This approach may devise ways how to tackle this difficulty also for other types of two-qubit interactions. Interestingly, our solutions display the possibility of parallel execution of operations at the hardware level. Finally we mention that the same methods work equally well also for networks other than those presented in this article. Similar solutions can be found, e.g., for the Quantum Fourier Transform (see, e.g., Ref. Cleve et al. (1998)), for the quantum adder described in Ref. Draper (2000) (which is adding two quantum numbers), or for an adder which is adding one classical to one quantum number Beauregard (2002). This suggests the applicability of the ideas presented here for a wide range of quantum networks.

## Acknowledgement

We are grateful to J. L. Dodd for pointing out to us Ref. Brylinski and Brylinski (2002).

## Appendix A One-bit gates used for the Toffoli gate

The one-bit gates which were used for the three-bit Toffoli gate in Section V.1 are (up to normalization factors):

$$\begin{array}{cc}A=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& \\ & i\end{array}\right),& B=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 1\sqrt{2}\\ \sqrt{2}1& 1\end{array}\right),\\ & \\ C=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& \sqrt{2}1\\ i(\sqrt{2}1)& i\end{array}\right),& D=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& e^{i\pi /4}\end{array}\right).\end{array}$$

## Appendix B Equivalence of the error correcting networks

We need to show that the two error correction circuits in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 are equivalent, i.e., that they correspond to the same unitary. To this end we note that gates which have no bits in common commute trivially. Further, two subsequent CNOT operations commute if they act on the same target bit (in our case this means that they have the ancilla in common). Also two CNOT gates with the same control bit and different targets commute as long as the control bit is not modified by a single Hadamard operation between them.

Starting from these observations, the question whether the two error correcting networks are identical reduces to proving that the two marked blocks in

(6)
do commute.

This can be seen as follows. First, choose the Hadamard transformed basis for the ancillae (we will denote them by $`\widehat{a}_i`$). In this basis, the CNOT gates originally enclosed by Hadamard operations become CNOTs with control and target reversed, i.e., controlled $`\sigma _x`$ operations. The other CNOT gates turn into controlled phase flips (i.e., controlled $`\sigma _z`$ operations), analogously. Thus, the network in Eq. (6) corresponds to

$$\text{ }\text{}.$$
(7)
In this representation, it becomes obvious that the two blocks indeed do commute: if at least one $`\widehat{a}_i`$ is zero, one of the two controlled operations on each qubit $`0`$ and $`4`$ is the identity, and the operations commute. On the other hand, if $`\widehat{a}_1=\widehat{a}_3=1`$, exchanging $`\sigma _x`$ and $`\sigma _z`$ on one bit results in a global minus sign. Changing the order of the two blocks in Eq. (7) corresponds to two simultaneous changes of this kind and leaves the all-over result unchanged. Therefore, the networks in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 are identical.

## Appendix C Simplifications for circuits with iSWAP

In this appendix, we briefly describe the methods which can be used for the simplification of a network like the one presented for the five-bit error correction circuit in Section V.2. We will consider rotations about the $`x`$ and the $`z`$-axis, and the iSWAP operation as the basic building blocks for the implementation. All other operations will be expressed in terms of these operations. Although the application of the ideas is rather straightforward it is difficult to provide formal recipes how to use them.

*1. One-bit simplifications.*  First, rotations about the same axis can be collected, e.g.:

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }$$

Clearly, rotations by an angle of $`2\pi `$ can be dropped. Operation time can be saved by applying a $`\pi /2`$ rotation instead of a $`+3\pi /2`$ one.

A more sophisticated problem is the simplification of compound expressions of $`x`$ *and* $`z`$-rotations. To this end, the following ways to express the Hadamard transformation are useful:

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=$$

$$=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }$$

By choosing the appropriate way to represent the Hadamard transformations in the network (or by sometimes “artificially” creating one of these triples, for example by inserting a pair of operations whose product is unity) and replacing it by another one, considerable simplifications can be achieved. The applicability of these simplifications becomes particularly apparent if the single-bit operations are considered in the context of two-bit operations.

*2. Two-bit simplifications.*  There is essentially only one way to simplify two-bit expressions for circuits containing iSWAP:

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ }=\text{ }\text{ }\text{}\text{ },$$

i.e., $`z`$-rotations “commute” with iSWAP if simultaneosly the $`z`$-rotation is flipped to the other qubit.

*3. Ancilla simplifications.*  Finally, one can apply also one-bit simplifications to the ancilla bits which are possible due to the fact that we know the initial state of the ancilla and, moreover, the ancillae are measured in the $`\{|0,|1\}`$ basis at the end.

At the beginning of the error-correction sequence, the ancillae are set to $`|0`$. Therefore, $`z`$-rotations immediately after the initialization can be omitted (since global phases are not important).

Further, let us assume the ancilla is in the state $`a|0+b|1`$ just before the measurement. As the measurement is performed in the $`\{|0,|1\}`$ basis, a $`z`$ rotation before the measurement would not affect the result. Therefore, also these $`z`$ rotation need not be considered.


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# Shock waves in two-dimensional granular flow: effects of rough walls and polydispersity

## I Introduction

Density waves can occur in various granular flow systems such as funnels and hoppers brown , pipes matsushita , and hour glasses verveen . In previous experiments, we studied the formation of kinematic shock waves which propagate against the main flow in a two-dimensional system of balls rolling in a small angle funnel vd96 ; hd99 ; hd00 . A sketch of the setup used is shown in Fig. 1(a)-(b). In this earlier work, the walls of the funnel were smooth, and the balls were of equal size (monodisperse flow). In the present work, we study what happens when we break the peculiarities of this smooth wall/monodisperse system by either (i) making the walls of the funnel rough (Fig. 1(c)), or (ii) taking “polydisperse” mixtures of balls of different sizes (Fig. 1(d)).

The crucial experimental parameters characterizing the flow geometry are the funnel opening angle $`\beta `$ and the funnel outlet width $`D`$. For smooth wall/monodisperse flows the most important features of the shock waves were found to be the following vd96 ; hd99 ; hd00 : (i) For $`\beta >0`$, the rolling grains tend to locally form triangular lattices which lead to the creation of shock waves predominantly at particular sites in the funnel where close packing occurs. (ii) The velocities $`U`$ of the shocks are, in good approximation, a function of the rescaled width $`w(x)/D`$ only. Here $`x`$ is the coordinate along the funnel (Fig. 1(b)) and $`w(x)`$ denotes the funnel width at position $`x`$.

As we will show below, by making the walls rough or the flow polydisperse, the triangular packing can (partially) be suppressed. We have studied the shock statistics and the behavior of individual balls as in previous work hd99 ; hd00 , and will present here the results for the creation and propagation of shocks in these systems in the pipe flow (parallel walls) and in the small angle, intermittent flow regime hd99 ; hd00 . We have also investigated, using ball tracking, the formation of shear bands for rough walls and the effects of completely stationary shock packings in polydisperse flows.

Recently, a number of related experiments on two-dimensional flow have been performed. Tsai et al.tsai  studied a system close to our rough wall pipe flow experiment, and included the effect of partially blocking the outlet. Reydellet et al. reydellet  studied a falling vertical column of balls where ball-ball interactions are dominated by collisions, and the rolling of balls does play a minor role. Finally, Le Pennec et al. pennec  studied two-dimensional rolling flows of small glass balls in flow geometries with very large funnel angles.

The experimental setup and methods of analysis have been described in detail elsewhere hd99 ; hd00  and we summarize the essential aspects here. A sketch of the setup is shown in Fig. 1(a) and the important geometric parameters are shown in Fig. 1(b). The balls roll on a coated Lexan plane (with inclination $`\theta =4.1^{}`$) in a single layer, in a funnel formed by aluminum walls and covered by a transparent lid. The granular material is comprised of 50000 brass balls of 3.18 mm diameter in the monodisperse case, while details of the polydisperse mixtures are discussed in section III. The rough walls were made by glueing linked rows of balls of nearly the same diameter as the rolling balls to the original smooth walls (Fig. 1(c)). The walls are straight for $`200`$ cm and curve smoothly at the top to form a reservoir. They can be moved to vary the outlet width $`D`$ (0-35 mm) and the funnel half angle $`\beta `$ ($`0^{}3^{}`$). A light box is placed below the funnel to illuminate the balls from below, and a video camera is placed above the system. Snapshots of a small part of the funnel show the effect of rough walls (Fig. 1(c)) and polydispersity (Fig. 1(d)) on the packing of the balls.

The paper is structured as follows: In Section II we present data based on monodisperse flows between rough walls. Shock wave statistics for both intermittent flows ($`\beta >0^{}`$) and for pipe flows ($`\beta =0^{}`$) are discussed, and we also study data based on ball tracking. In Section III we investigate the effect of various degrees of polydispersity in flow between smooth walls. Finally, in Appendix A, we discuss some similarities with traffic flow.

## II Rough walls

The basic phenomenology of the formation of shock waves is illustrated in Fig. 2, which shows ten subsequent snapshots of the balls in a small section near the outlet of the rough wall funnel. In dense regions, which may occur due to a combination of geometric effects (the finite funnel angle $`\beta `$) and the inelastic nature of the collisions, kinetic energy is dissipated rapidly and so the balls here have a lower velocity than the balls in dilute regions. This leads to kinematic shock waves, in which the balls become almost stationary and tend to pack in a lattice which extends from wall to wall. In such a region, both energy and momentum are efficiently transferred to the walls. Shocks grow in the upstream direction due to incoming, high velocity balls, and dissolve in the downstream direction due to the action of the (effective) gravity which eventually accelerates the balls again. To analyze these shocks, we recorded $`29`$ second movies of $`37`$ cm sections of the flow (usually at $`220`$ frames/s), and applied ball tracking software hd00 , gaining detailed knowledge of the position, velocity and acceleration of the individual balls (see Section II.3).

In many cases, however, one may be more interested in the overall features of the shocks and not so much in the individual balls. For such analysis, sequences of images taken at $`60`$ frames/s and covering $`100`$ cm sections of the funnel were averaged in the transverse direction to obtain a one-dimensional relative density profile. An example of a space-time plot of this relative density $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }(x,t)`$ is shown in Fig. 3 for two different sets of parameters. From these the position of a shock wave and its creation site, average local velocity $`U(x)`$ and frequency $`\nu (x)`$ can be determined. As with smooth walls, shock waves between rough walls are easily distinguished by eye hd99 . They are created at various positions in the funnel and there are some noticeable interactions between shocks. As in earlier work on smooth walls, shock waves are created more often at large funnel angles and for small values of $`D`$. The shock velocity $`U`$ is generally observed to grow with increasing $`\beta `$, $`x`$ and decreasing $`D`$.

### II.1 $`\beta >0`$

We will study now in detail the statistics of shock creation, velocity and frequency, based on density data taken for $`D`$ ranging from 15 to 30 mm, and for $`\beta `$ ranging from $`0.1^{}`$ up to $`1.2^{}`$. The case of pipe flow ($`\beta =0`$), where rough and smooth walls show very different behavior, will be studied in section II.2, and some results following from ball tracking are discussed in section II.3.

#### II.1.1 Shock creation

The monodispersity of the balls permits them to form close packed triangular lattices at certain packing sites $`x=\chi _i`$ in the funnel. For smooth walls, the positions of these packing sites are given by

$$\chi _i=\frac{2r+\sqrt{3}r(i1)D}{2\mathrm{tan}\beta },$$
(1)
where $`i`$ is an integer and $`r`$ is the ball radius hd99 . In a funnel with smooth walls, packing effects are rather pronounced as shown in Fig. 18 of hd99 .

For rough walls, it is slightly more difficult to give an estimate of where one expects packing sites. It is, for example, not obvious whether the value of $`D`$ (which is the minimum distance between the two rough walls) is the relevant parameter. We have found that packing effects persist from small $`D`$, but are washed out for larger funnel outlets. This is illustrated in Fig. 4 which shows the manually counted shock creation rates for two different values of $`D`$ as a function of the local width $`w`$ (this aligns possible packing sites). Clearly, packing effects are present for $`D=20`$ mm, but are washed out for $`D=25`$ mm. This is consisted with the $`D=15`$ mm and $`D=30`$ mm data sets, although in these cases it is difficult to obtain a precise estimate for the shock creation rates. A comparison of the data shown in Fig. 4 to data on the shock creation rates in smooth funnels, as shown in the top of Fig. 12, confirms that rough walls suppress the effects of packing.

We therefore have shown that packing effects are suppressed in sufficiently wide rough wall flow, and that in this case shock waves are created everywhere in the funnel with equal probability.

#### II.1.2 Shock velocity

From the density fields, we can obtain the local shock velocity $`U(x)`$ using the shock detection algorithm RGE (Relative density contrast Gradient Edge detection) RGEnote . This is a refinement of the GE-method described in detail in hd99 , and is used to measure $`U(x)`$ and $`\nu (x)`$. The shock velocities obtained with this method for forty different sets of parameters are shown in Fig. 5(a) as a function of the local funnel width $`w(x)`$. This already indicates a clustering of the data in groups given by the funnel outlet $`D`$. When the data is replotted against the dimensionless parameter $`w(x)/D`$ as in Fig. 5(b), there is a fairly good data collapse with $`U(x)79[w(x)/D0.73]`$ cm/s. A similar scaling ($`U(x)64[w(x)/D0.14]`$ cm/s) was observed for smooth wallshd99 ; hd00 . Experiments with one rough and one smooth wall, which we will refer to as “semi rough” (not shown) gave a more disordered flow with a decent data collapse of $`U(x)83[w(x)/D0.57]`$ cm/s, which falls between rough wall and smooth wall data for low $`w(x)/D`$ (see Fig. 7(a)). Therefore we conclude that the roughness of the walls leads, in general, to a slowing down of the shock waves.

In the data collapse Fig. 5(b) there seems to be a trend for wide funnels to have slightly larger velocities. Some of the $`D=30`$ mm data sets had problems with static buildup at the outlet during parts of the experiment which is likely to have affected shock statistics (increasing $`U(x)`$ and $`\nu (x)`$) near the outlet. It is also possible that for larger outlet widths the data for rough walls becomes more comparable to those of smooth wall systems. Nevertheless, we find that the shock velocity is in good approximation a function of the local rescaled width $`w(x)/D`$ only, both for smooth and rough walls.

#### II.1.3 Shock frequency

From the density plots we can also obtain the local shock frequencies $`\nu (x)`$ using the RGE algorithm RGEnote . In Fig. 6(a) we show the shock frequencies for our rough wall data as a function of $`w(x)`$. While some packing site periodicity is still visible for $`D=15`$ mm, for larger values of $`D`$ the curves are fairly smooth and we will discuss the data-collapse that occurs there.

From the data shown in Fig. 6(a) it appears that $`\nu `$ goes to zero when $`w(x)D`$, i.e., near the outlet. Replotting the data then as function of $`w(x)/D1`$ (not shown) confirmed this, and indicated that to achieve data collapse, one needs to plot the product $`\nu (x)D`$ as a function of $`w(x)/D1`$. Finally, in contrast to the shock velocity, the frequency clearly grows non-linearly with $`w(x)/D1`$. On a log-log plot, it appears that $`\nu D`$ scales as $`(w(x)/D1)^p`$, with an exponent $`p`$ around 0.7 (Fig. 6(b)). While the scaling range is to small to determine whether such powerlaw scaling holds asymptotically, it is a useful way of collapsing our data, as also is shown in Fig. 6(c) Note that significant deviations can be seen for larger values of $`w(x)/D`$. The data falling below the curve in Fig. 6(c) mainly belong to data sets with $`D=15`$ mm $`\beta 0.5^{}`$ where the RGE method tends to underestimate $`\nu (x)`$ for large $`x`$,$`\beta `$ RGEnote .

In a previous paper hd99 , which discussed the shock dynamics for smooth funnels, the issue of $`\nu (x)`$ data collapse was not discussed Dnunote . Reprocessing of this smooth wall data employing the RGE algorithm does show a decent data collapse where $`\nu (x)D=1.9(1)(w(x)/D1)^{0.7(1)}`$, but the number of old data sets with $`D10`$ mm that gives reliable $`\nu (x)`$-data is insufficient to judge whether $`\nu (x)D`$ or $`\nu (x)`$ gives a better data collapse. We will discuss this issue below for weakly polydisperse mixtures in smooth funnels in Section III.0.2, where more data is available.

Note that the shock frequency for smooth walls is generally less than half the frequency for rough walls. However, since we believe that shock waves are, in general, produced by disturbances in the flow, this should not be a big surprise: rough walls produce more disturbances.

Data obtained from flows with one rough wall and one smooth wall (“semi rough”) confirm this intuitive picture, since we find a decent data collapse of $`\nu (x)D3.4(1)(w(x)/D1)^{0.7(1)}`$ cm/s (not shown). This is right between the fits for the rough wall and smooth wall data discussed above.

#### II.1.4 Rough wall intermittent flow: conclusion

The rough walls allow us to suppress packing effects, so that two simple scaling laws for the shock velocity and frequency emerge:

$`U(x)`$ $``$ $`\alpha _1(w(x)/D\alpha _2)`$ (2)
$`\nu (x)`$ $``$ $`D^1\alpha _3(w(x)/D1)^{0.7}`$ (3)
The fitting coefficients $`\alpha _1,\alpha _2`$ and $`\alpha _3`$ vary with the roughness of the walls. In Fig. 7 we show the best fits for data obtained for rough walls, semi-rough walls, smooth walls and smooth walls / weakly polydisperse balls (discussed in detail in Section III.0.2). The fits are all made in the interval $`1w(x)/D2.5`$ for consistency.

As shown in Fig. 7(a), changes in the boundaries have a weak effect on $`\alpha _1`$, but substantially affect $`\alpha _2`$. The old smooth wall data for the velocity seems to deviate a little from this trend, and we do not know the reason for this. For the frequency, the roughness of the walls has a profound influence on the prefactor $`\alpha _3`$. For small angle funnels, rough walls promote the occurrence of shock waves, but do not affect their propagation velocity substantially.

### II.2 Pipe flow

The behavior of shocks in pipe flow ($`\beta =0^{}`$) can be expected to be rather different from those in intermittent flow ($`\beta 0.1^{}`$) since for pipe flow there is no “geometric” source for the formation of shock waves, and dissipative collisions are now presumably the dominant origin of shock wave formation.

Indeed, for smooth walls the (few) shock waves that are generated never reach the reservoir and consequently the flow rate (and indirectly all other flow properties) are entirely determined by the reservoir outflow vd96 ; hd99 . Surprisingly, the qualitative features of pipeflow with rough walls are similar to the intermittent flows. For example, many shocks do travel upwards and reach the reservoir.

Similar to smooth wall pipe flow, the rough wall pipe flow is extremely sensitive to exact experimental conditions and consequently the statistics obtained for these flows is bound to be more noisy. In fact, as we will see below, subtle problems near the outflow area render part of the data unusable. The analysis of shock properties is further hampered by the fact that the RGE shock identification method RGEnote  used above has problems detecting some shocks with $`U<1520`$ cm/s. We have therefore decided to use an alternative method, based on space-time correlation functions, to obtain a measure of the velocity, and determine their frequency based on a simple threshold algorithm (see Appendix B).

Based on these methods, we have determined the shock velocities for rough wall pipe flow. We find that the data for the lower part of the funnel ($`0<x<100`$ cm) does not show any systematic trend, and often here data sets show a complicated mixture of periods of stationary shocks and moving shocks. We think that this is due to experimental problems (in particular static charge buildup near the funnel outlet in some measurements). In later runs, when we studied the upper funnel ($`100<x<200`$ cm), these problems were solved. Here we find that the shock velocity is essentially independent of the width $`D`$, apart from some effects near the outflow of the reservoir (see Fig. 8(a)).

The shock frequencies decrease with $`D`$, but do not show a clear trend with $`x`$. Rescaling the frequency with $`D`$, we find that $`\nu D`$ is fairly constant, for $`D`$ ranging from 15 mm to 30 mm (see Fig. 8(b)). Again, most data for ($`0<x<100cm`$) does not show any systematic behavior, due to the large amount of stationary shocks.

Using the linear fits of $`U(x)`$ and $`\nu (x)D`$ sinilar to Section II.1, we find $`U(w(x)=D)21`$ cm/s and $`\nu (w(x)=D)D0.8`$ cm/s. Considering the systematic differences between RGE based and space/time correlation based measurements of $`U(x)`$ there is a fairly good correspondence between the pipe flow shock wave data from the $`x>100`$ cm part of the funnel and the shock wave behavior for $`\beta >0^{}`$ flows. This suggest that the mechanisms of shock wave propagation are not too different after all.

We conclude that in good approximation, rough wall shock flow is dominated by shocks that are created mainly near the outflow region, travel upward with fairly constant velocity and whose frequency decreases as $`1/D`$.

### II.3 Ball tracking

We have processed detailed films such as shown in Fig. 2 to obtain ball trajectories (details of this method are described in hd00 ). From the full set of ball trajectories, we have constructed continuous one-dimensional Eulerian fields of the relative density $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }(x,t)`$, velocity $`v(x,t)`$, and acceleration $`a(x,t)`$hd00 . A comparison of the acceleration fields for rough and smooth walls indicates that the flow for smooth walls has more disturbances and the shocks are less sharply defined.

We have previously shown (Appendix C in hd00 ) that smooth wall flows are reasonably one-dimensional, i.e., the density, velocity and acceleration fields do not show a strong dependence on $`y`$, the coordinate across the funnel. This is no longer true for rough wall flows as shown in Fig. 9. The velocity $`<v_x>`$ as a function of the transverse coordinate $`y`$ is shown for various pipe flows in Fig. 9(a) and for $`\beta >0^{}`$ flows in Fig. 9(b). In both cases do we find that $`<v_x>`$ drops off near the boundaries, and this effect is most pronounced for pipe flow and small angle flow. A number of different flow behavior could underly these statistics, the most obvious being: (i) The flow has a shear component near the walls, i.e., balls near walls move typically slower than in the bulk. (ii) In shock packings the flow reaches from wall to wall, but in fast regions (between shocks) balls near walls are repulsed. In this interpretation, balls in fast regions are repelled from the boundaries, and this transverse momentum is absorbed via ball-ball interactions in the funnel center, leaving the regions near the walls relatively empty.

To resolve this ambiguity we plot histograms of the $`y`$ positions of balls with their $`v_x`$ in a certain interval in Fig. 9(c) (for pipe flow) and in Fig. 9(d) (for $`\beta =0.4^{}`$ flow). If reason (ii) would dominate, the histogram of the slowest balls (in shock regions) should be fairly flat, but this is not the case and therefore we conclude that there is an important shear component to the flow.

The $`y`$ dependence of the $`y`$ component of the granular temperature, $`T_y:=<v_y^2>`$, is shown in Fig. 9(e) for pipe flow and in Fig. 9(f) for $`\beta >0^{}`$ flow. For the $`D=15`$ mm pipe flow, $`T_y(y)`$ is constant while the wider pipe flows exhibit a more quiet region in the center – perhaps consistent with the “transverse momentum sink” mentioned in (ii) above. The $`\beta >0^{}`$ flows in Fig. 9(f) are denser and slower, showing that in dense flows ($`\beta =1^{}`$, $`\beta =2^{}`$) transverse momentum is absorbed immediately and the profile is flat. The “transverse heat sink” does not play a role here.

## III Polydisperse flows

To suppress the close packing effects that occur for monodisperse balls rolling in smooth funnels, we have also explored flows of balls of mixed sizes. We have studied shock waves for four different mixtures, which we will refer to as mixture I-IV in increasing order of “polydispersity” (see table 1).

A crucial and unexpected effect of polydispersity can be seen in the space-time plots of the density such as Fig. 10. For a weakly polydisperse mixture (mix I in Fig. 10(a)) the shocks appear to display similar behavior as for monodisperse balls, but for increasingly polydisperse mixtures, shock waves lead to the blocking of finite fractions of the funnel. Here all balls are stationary for a finite time interval. Some clear examples of this “freezing” can be see for mix IV in Fig. 10(b), for $`x80cm`$ and $`t3.5s`$. The occurrence of finite blocked fractions can be interpreted in terms of a competition between the leading and trailing edge of a shock. For strongly polydisperse mixtures, the velocity of the trailing edge of the shock where the shocks dissolve, is lower than that of the leading edge where the shock grows due to incoming balls. As a function of its lifetime, a shock will therefore spread out, and finite regions of the funnel will be blocked. In contrast, when one would generate an extended blocked area in a monodisperse flows, it appears that the velocity of the trailing edge is larger than that of the leading edge. Such a shock would then shrink, until leading and trailing edge come very close together and the shock looses its spatial extent.

We have measured, employing ball tracking methods, the velocities of individual balls in shocks, and some representative results are shown in Fig. 11(a). The ball tracking method has not been specifically fine tuned for polydisperse flow, which leads to a slightly noisier determination of $`v_x`$. The overall picture that emerges is that in monodisperse flows, balls almost never stop completely in a shock (notice that for the example in Fig. 11(a) the minimum velocity of the balls in monodisperse shocks indeed stays finite). In Mix I, complete stopping of balls in a shock occurs only in a minority of the shocks, but its occurrence increases with polydispersity and $`x`$: In Mix III complete stopping of balls occurs in most shocks that have propagated for more than $`2040`$ cm and do not have another shock right in front of them and in Mix IV blocking occurs essentially in all shocks.

To quantify this behavior further, we have measured (based on density space-time diagrams), for fixed values of $`\beta `$ and $`D`$ the fraction of time that the balls are stuck in such a stationary shock as a function of $`x`$ (see Fig. 11(b)). This data confirms what we already observed in Fig. 10: the amount of blockage increases both with $`x`$ and with the strength of the polydispersity. The increase with $`x`$ can be understood simply from the observation that for strongly polydisperse mixtures shocks spread out during their lifespan, and since shocks travel upwards, the amount of blocked channel grows with $`x`$.

One possible explanation we can find for the increase of this blocking with polydispersity is the occurrence of 3D effects. One can imagine that in a shock wave, bigger balls that are squeezed between small balls are lifted from the support on which they roll. When such shock dissolves, small balls have to move over a finite distance before the bigger balls can start to roll, leading to a finite blocking time.

#### III.0.1 Shock creation

The polydispersity has two effects on the shock creation. One could have anticipated that for stronger polydispersity the periodic packing sites become irrelevant, but as we see from Fig. 12, what happens in addition is that all shocks are generated near the outflow of the funnel, an effect that can also be observed when comparing the density space-time diagram Fig. 10.

#### III.0.2 Breakdown of scaling of $`U(x)`$ and $`\nu (x)D`$

Using the RGE method we have studied to what extend the scaling of $`U(x)`$ and $`\nu (x)D`$ with $`w(x)/D`$ holds. In Fig. 13(a)-(b) we have plotted $`U(x)`$ and $`\nu (x)`$ for $`\beta =0.4^{}`$ and $`D=10`$ mm for the four polydisperse mixtures. For mix I, both $`U(x)`$ and $`\nu (x)`$ grow fairly linearly with the usual packing site related variations hd99 . For mix II the behavior is similar but both $`U(x)`$ and $`\nu (x)`$ become flatter for large $`x`$. For the stronger polydisperse mixtures III and IV strong deviations from the monodisperse or weakly polydisperse case are observed. The shock velocity $`U(x)`$ grows rapidly for small $`x`$, then peaks and subsequently begins to drop for larger $`x`$. The shock frequencies $`\nu (x)`$ in mix III and IV behave similar to that of monodisperse/weakly polydisperse flows at small $`x`$ but become constant at larger $`x`$. This is fully consistent with the data in Fig. 12 that shows that for strong polydisperse mixtures, all shocks are created near the outlet.

Based on the similarity between weak polydisperse and monodisperse flows we plot $`U(x)`$ vs. $`w(x)/D`$ for mix I in Fig. 13(c). Apart from packing site variations the data collapse is reasonably good, so in this respect the weakly polydisperse flow behaves as a monodisperse flow. Linear fits of the data in Fig. 13(c) yield $`U(x)74[w(x)/D0.18]`$ cm/s. It is perhaps surprising that the mix I shock velocities are higher than those found for smooth wall monodisperse flows (see Section II.1).

The frequency deserves some more attention. When we plot $`\nu (x)D`$ vs. $`w(x)/D`$ in Fig. 13(d) the data collapse is not very convincing, especially for large $`x`$ where the rescaled frequency is widely spread. This may be due to beginning effects of polydispersity (causing $`\nu `$ to drop for high $`x`$ as shown in Fig. 13(b)) or partial failure of the RGE algorithm. This algorithm tends to discard weak shocks at high $`\beta `$, $`x`$ since the density contrast of the shocks becomes very small there (See hd99 ; RGEnote ). Since $`D=7`$ mm data (highest shock frequency and lowest density contrast) show the biggest deviation the latter reason may be the most important.

Despite the deviations for high $`x`$ there seems to be a data collapse of $`\nu (x)D`$ vs. $`w(x)/D`$ which is superior to $`\nu (x)`$ vs. $`w(x)/D`$: Together with the re-analysis of the older data hd99  discussed in Section II.1.3 this lead us to believe that the scaling of $`\nu (x)D`$ with $`w(x)/D`$ is a feature of both rough wall and smooth wall flows. Power Law fits of the data in Fig. 13(d) yield $`\nu (x)D1.6(1)(w(x)/D1)^{0.7(1)}`$ cm/s. That the shock frequencies of mix I are slightly lower than for monodisperse flows is not surprising, since polydispersity generally seems to make it harder for shock waves to form anywhere else than near the outflow of the funnel.

For the $`U(x)`$, $`\nu (x)`$ statistics based on mix III density data shown in Fig. 13(e)-(f) there is data collapse for neither $`U(x)`$ nor $`\nu (x)D`$ vs. $`w(x)/D`$. All $`U(x)`$ curves in Fig. 13(e) show the same pattern of rapid growth towards a maximum value after which a moderate decline sets in. We have found no clear pattern in the $`x`$ and $`U`$ values of the peaks, and there seems to be no $`w(x)/D`$ scaling involved. The $`\nu (x)D`$ data for mix III shown in Fig. 13(f) displays growth at low $`x`$ followed by a plateau, but there is no clear trend in this plateau value. It seems likely that both types of deviation from the monodisperse scaling relations are linked to the stagnant regions behind shocks and thus to the 3-dimensional packing effects discussed above.

The $`U(x)`$ and $`\nu (x)`$ data for polydisperse mix II (not shown) are similar more to mix I, while the mix IV data (not shown) are similar to the mix III data.

In conclusion, we find that for sufficiently strong polydispersity, the nature of the shock waves changes qualitatively, and that scaling relations that hold for monodisperse flows in either smooth or rough funnels break down.

## IV Discussion

This work, in combination with earlier work on smooth wall/ monodisperse flows hd99 ; hd00 , leads to a number of conclusions about the effects of funnel geometry, wall roughness and inelastic dissipation. It is well-known that the dissipation occurring in ball-ball and ball-wall collisions is enhanced by the rolling nature of the ball motion rolling ; however, the precise value of the effective coefficient of restitution is presumably not of large importance for the phenomenology. In particular, the frequency and velocity scaling for monodisperse and weakly polydisperse systems are very similar (see Fig. 7), even though for weakly polydisperse flows dissipation seems enhanced. For strongly polydisperse flow, where dissipations seems very strong, we unfortunately loose the 2D nature of the experiment.

In the case of smooth walls and monodisperse flows, packing effects become very important, and they tend to obscure scaling law. Possibly the simplest case is then the combination of rough walls and monodisperse flows (or, to a lesser degree, smooth walls and weakly polydisperse flows). The rough walls have the additional advantage that they make the system less sensitive to small perturbations (which are inevitably present for “smooth” walls).

The scaling laws for shock velocity and frequency, Eqs. 2-3, are the main result of our work. Since these laws also approximately hold for smooth walls etc, their main origin must lie in the geometry of the experiment. That the shock velocity and frequency depend on $`x`$ via $`w(x)/D`$ is not surprising, since this is the most obvious way in which $`x`$ can be made non-dimensional (we do not expect the ball diameter to play an important role). The fact that $`\nu (x)D`$ and not $`\nu `$ scales is harder to understand, and may point at certain relevant velocity scales (note that both $`U`$ and $`\nu D`$ have the dimension of velocity). Two dimensional quantities that characterize the system are the effective ball-acceleration $`a_{\text{eff}}`$ (related to the inclination) and $`D`$, but these two quantities alone are not sufficient to provide for the correct scaling factors, since a velocity scale would be $`\sqrt{Da_{\text{eff}}}`$, and a frequency scale would be $`\sqrt{a_{\text{eff}}/D}`$, which both show scaling with $`D`$ different from what is observed.

We believe that the underlying reason for the occurrence of the scaling laws is an important open question that deserves further study. Our data indicates that details of the ball-ball or ball-wall interactions are not important (although rough walls lead to more frequent shocks, they do not alter the nature of the scaling), which suggests that a relatively straight-forward model may capture the phenomenology here. Indeed, for pipeflow, where the geometrical cause of shock formation dissapears, leads to quite fragile behavior, which only in the case of rough walls seems to reproducable and similar to small funnel angle behavior.

However, to make such a model one seems to need additional information about the relation between ball densities and velocities on the one hand, and shock frequencies and velocities on the other.

Finally, shock waves have also been studied in some other geometries. Tsai et al. tsai  examined a two-dimensional rolling pipe flow of $`3.2`$ mm steel spheres between rough walls. Partial blockage of the funnel outlet was used as an additional system parameter. These authors performed high resolution ball tracking measurements of small ($`12`$ cm) sections of the funnel and obtained detailed local measurements of $`v(x,t)`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }(x,t)`$, $`T_y(x,t)`$, and $`v_x(y)`$. For an almost unblocked flow with $`D=19`$ mm they found $`\nu 0.4`$ 1/s and $`U14`$ cm/s, which is consistent with our data.

Reydellet et al. reydellet  studied $`1.5`$ mm metallic balls in a vertical pipe flow with rough walls. The balls were not rolling on a support, and the rolling of balls supposedly played less of a role than in our experiments. They qualitatively observed the existence of upwards propagating shock waves, using a “double flash technique” to study local ball velocities and made measurements similar to those in our Fig. 9. Note that their funnel was not continuously refilled from a reservoir and thus their studies were limited to the transient behavior. All our experiments are preceded by a $`>30`$ sec. flow in order to avoid such transient behaviors.

Finally, Le Pennec et al. pennec  studied a 2-dimensional rolling flow of 1 mm glass balls in flow geometries with very large $`\beta `$ (mostly $`30^{}`$), large $`D`$ (typically 10-120 ball diameters) at various flow plane inclinations. Due to the different geometry it is hard to make any direct comparison, although these authors did measure shock velocities and frequencies.

### Summary

The packing effects that we observed in earlier work on monodisperse, smooth walled flow hd99 ; hd00  can be suppressed by either making the sidewalls rough or using polydisperse mixtures of balls. For rough walls, we find that there are more shock waves than for smooth walls as a result of the greater disturbances in this flow. In earlier work hd99  on smooth wall flows we found that the average shock speed $`U(x)`$ scales with $`w(x)/D`$. We have found a similar scaling for rough walls and observed that also $`\nu (x)D`$ scales with $`w(x)/D`$ for both rough and smooth walls Dnunote . By using ball tracking methods we shed light on the shear flow properties for rough walled flows.

In polydisperse flows between smooth walls we find that our scaling relations persist for very weak polydispersity, but breaks down for stronger polydispersity. This breakdown is most likely caused by weak 3-dimensional effects in the packing of shock waves which apparently lead to partial blocking of the funnel. By using ball tracking methods we shed light on the shock structure and on the extended stationary shock packings found in strong polydisperse flows.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors wish to thank Christian Veje for making the original rough walls. P.D. would like to thank Statens Naturvidenskabelige Forskningsråd (Danish Research Council) for support. MvH would like to thank CATS for continuing hospitality. *

## Appendix A Comparison with traffic flow

To compare our flows to traffic flows, small angle, or preferably pipe flows should be considered. In earlier work we made comparisons between smooth wall funnel flows with nonzero $`\beta `$ and traffic flows hd00 . In smooth wall pipe flows, shock waves are extremely fragile, and such a comparison is not meaningful. For the rough wall pipe flow discussed here, however, such a comparison can be made in principle. In addition, we will discuss our results for rough wall funnel flows in terms of traffic flows.

It is commonly assumed that there are three flow types in traffic flow, namely, uncongested flow (a steady flow of vehicles at low to moderate densities, queue flow (a slow flow of near maximum density), and queue discharge (a flow of vehicles accelerating out of a queue flow) wolf . Traffic data are usually represented as $`v(q)`$ (speed/flow relation) or as $`q(\rho )`$ (fundamental diagram), where $`q=\rho v`$ is the flow rate.

In Fig. 14(a)-(b) we show grey scale histograms of $`(q,v)`$ and $`(\stackrel{~}{\rho },q)`$ for a rough wall pipe flow ($`\beta =0^{}`$, $`D=15`$ mm). Note that we use the relative density $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ instead of $`\rho `$. The average values, corresponding to $`v(q)`$ and $`q(\stackrel{~}{\rho })`$, are shown as solid lines. In Fig. 14(a), we observe regions corresponding to queue flow and queue discharge, but there is no region corresponding to uncongested flow. As shown in Fig. 14(b), the flow rate $`q(\stackrel{~}{\rho })`$ has a parabolic shape with a peak value around $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }=0.6`$.

For larger values of $`D`$ (not shown), the flow rates exhibit similar parabolic behavior, albeit with larger typical values of $`v`$ and $`q`$, and with the $`q(\stackrel{~}{\rho })`$ “parabola” skewed towards lower $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ ($`\stackrel{~}{\rho }=0.40.5`$ for $`D=20`$ mm, $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }=0.20.4`$ for $`D=25`$ mm).

Figs. 14c-d show the corresponding diagrams for small angle, rough wall funnel flow at $`\beta =0.4^{},D=20`$ mm. We find queue flow and queue discharge but no uncongested flow, similar to what we found in earlier work on smooth wall funnel flow hd00 . In Fig. 14 we observe a parabolic shaped $`q(\stackrel{~}{\rho })`$. Similar plots for higher $`\beta `$ (not shown) exhibit “parabolas” skewed towards higher values of $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$.

## Appendix B Velocity and frequency determination for pipeflow

The method to obtain shock velocities for pipeflow data is illustrated in Fig. 15. First of all, to highlight the shocks that occur in the density plots, some smoothing and differentiation is applied yielding a field $`s(x,t)`$ as shown in Fig. 15(a). Clearly, shocks are now visible as bright streaks (high values of $`s`$) in a fairly even background. The temporal averages of the spatiotemporal correlation function $`C(x,\mathrm{\Delta }x,\mathrm{\Delta }t):=𝑑ts(x,t)s(x+\mathrm{\Delta }x,t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$, two examples of which are shown in Fig. 15(b-c) for x=130 and 170 cm, clearly show a dominant direction in space-time that can be associated with the local dominant velocity of the shocks: this method of shock velocity determination works over the whole range of parameters considered. In comparison to the RGE method, this method is more local, and often gives a slightly smaller estimate for the velocities (order of 10-20 %). This is presumably due to the fact that shocks have a tendency to perform intermittent jumps forward, making their dominant local velocity smaller than the typical velocity obtained over longer timescales. Some effect of these jumps shows up in the correlation functions, where the bright streak tends to bend for larger correlation distances and time intervals.

To obtain the frequency from $`s(x,t)`$ is fairly straightforward: after choosing an appropriate threshold, one obtains two-color images like shown in Fig. 15(d). A simple algorithm suffices to count, for a fixed value of $`x`$, the number of shock waves that occur.


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# Edinburgh-2002/12 Excitations of the nucleon with dynamical fermions

## Abstract

We measure the spectrum of low-lying nucleon resonances using Bayesian fitting methods. We compare the masses obtained in the quenched approximation to those obtained with two flavours of dynamical fermions at a matched lattice spacing. At the pion masses employed in our simulations, we find that the mass of the first positive-parity nucleon excitation is always greater than that of the parity partner of the nucleon.

The observed spectrum of excited nucleon states contains some puzzles, such as the anomalously light masses of the Roper $`N^{}(1440)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(1405)`$. Neither of these states naturally lies within the quark model, and this had led to speculation as to whether they are really three quark states. This spectrum, at least in principle, is accessible to lattice QCD calculations. In this study we extract the masses of the nucleon ($`N^+`$), its parity partner ($`N^{}`$) and the lightest positive-parity excitation ($`N^+`$) and examine their ordering.

Lattice determinations of the nucleon mass generally use the following three interpolation operators:

$`N_1^{1/2+}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_{ijk}(u_i^TC\gamma _5d_j)u_k,`$ (1)
$`N_2^{1/2+}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_{ijk}(u_i^TCd_j)\gamma _5u_k,`$ (2)
$`N_3^{1/2+}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_{ijk}(u_i^TC\gamma _4\gamma _5d_j)u_k.`$ (3)
These operators have an overlap with both positive- and negative-parity states, but on a lattice with (anti-)periodic boundary conditions we can use the parity projection operator $`\frac{1}{2}(1\pm \gamma _4)`$ to delineate forward and backward propagating states of opposite parities. The time dependence of the parity projected correlators is then

$$C_\pm (t)=\underset{n}{}A_n^\pm e^{M_n^\pm t}+A_n^{}e^{M_n^{}(N_tt)}.$$
(4)
The “diquark” part of $`N_{1,3}`$ couples the upper spinor components, whilst the $`N_2`$ operator couples upper and lower components, and so vanishes in the non-relativistic limit. The expectation, confirmed by the data, is that the $`N_{1,3}`$ operators give a much better overlap with the nucleon ground state while the $`N_2`$ operator has an overlap with the lowest positive-parity nucleon excitation.

For the negative-parity states the signal is short lived , so the choice of fit range may lead to a substantial systematic uncertainty. The aim of Bayesian fitting is to eliminate this uncertainty . Furthermore, by fitting all the data, it may be possible to measure the contribution from excited states. The number of exponentials $`N_{\mathrm{exp}}`$ is chosen such that the results for the ground and first excited states are stable if $`N_{\mathrm{exp}}`$ is increased. The ground-state priors were guessed from the correlator data at large temporal separations using the effective mass,

$$M^{\mathrm{eff}}(t)=\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{C(t+1)}{C(t)}\right),$$
(5)
and priors for the mass splitting and excited state amplitudes obtained using $`\mathrm{\Delta }M=M_1^{\mathrm{eff}}(\tau )M_0^{\mathrm{eff}}(t)`$, where $`\tau <t`$, and $`M_1^{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is determined from the correlator $`C^{}`$ with the ground state prior contribution subtracted. This ensures that the minimisation algorithm starts in the neighbourhood of the global minimum of $`\chi ^2`$. The width of the priors is chosen to be larger than the splitting. Furthermore, the fits are more stable if both $`M_0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ are constrained to be positive, so instead of fitting to eqn (4) we fit the following expression to the data

$$f(t)=\underset{n}{}A_n\mathrm{exp}\left[\underset{m=0}{\overset{n}{}}e^{\lambda _m}t\right]$$
(6)
where $`\lambda _k=\mathrm{ln}\mu _k`$, $`\mu _0=m_0`$ and $`\mu _k=M_kM_{k1}`$.

The calculation was performed using the standard Wilson gluon action, and the non-perturbatively $`𝒪(a)`$-improved Sheikholeslami-Wohlert action. Lattice artefacts thus appear in the spectrum at $`𝒪(a^2)`$. The values of $`\beta `$ and $`\kappa ^{\mathrm{sea}}`$ for the coarsest quenched (Q) and the dynamical-fermion (DF) ensembles were chosen so that the lattice spacing is the same. The light hadron spectrum has already been determined by the UKQCD collaboration for $`\beta =6.2`$ and $`\beta =6.0`$  and for DF matched ensembles . The $`N^{}`$ masses have also been determined for $`\beta =6.2`$ and $`\beta =6.0`$ .

We perform simultaneous fits to both the local-local and smeared-local correlators of both parities. However, for the lightest two DF ensembles the limited number of configurations only allows a fit to the local-local correlator. Thus we only fit to one correlator for all the DF ensembles. The dependence of the extracted masses on the number of exponentials $`N_{\mathrm{exp}}`$ is shown in figure 1, together with the priors, shown as the open symbols. The results are stable when $`N_{\mathrm{exp}}>10`$, corresponding to five states of each parity. For $`\beta =\{6.2,6.0\}`$ we use $`N_{\mathrm{exp}}=12`$, and for the DF and matched Q ensembles we use $`N_{\mathrm{exp}}=10`$.

The spectrum as determined from the operators $`N_{1,3}`$ ($`N_1`$ hereafter) and $`N_2`$ is shown in figure 2; we find consistency between the masses of $`N^{}`$ using the two operators, and between the excited-state mass $`N_1^+`$ and ground-state mass $`N_2^+`$. However, as the quark mass is decreased the data quickly become very noisy, and at lighter quark masses, the masses from the $`N_2`$ operator are larger than those from the $`N_1`$. Only a simple linear chiral extrapolation is attempted as the data is too noisy for a more sophisticated approach.

The comparison between the Q and DF ensembles at matched lattice spacing is shown in figure 3, revealing no systematic difference between the Q and DF results. In all cases the mass of $`N^+`$ is above that of $`N^{}`$. Furthermore the positive-parity excited state mass obtained from $`N_1`$ is consistent with the ground-state mass obtained from $`N_2`$, except at light quark masses where the latter becomes very noisy. Finally, the lattice spacing dependence of the measured masses on the quenched ensemble is shown in figure 4.

We have measured the nucleon spectrum and found that the masses are ordered according to $`N^+>N^{}>N^+`$ for both the Q and DF data at all measured quark masses and lattice spacings, thus providing little evidence for the Roper resonance as a simple three-quark nucleon excitation. However, there are several caveats. The statistical quality of the data is poor. The spatial extent is only around $`1.7\mathrm{fm}`$, though a comparison with a calculation of both the $`N^+`$ and $`N^{}`$ masses on a lattice of around twice that volume at $`\beta =6.0`$ suggests that at these quark masses the finite-volume corrections are small ; such a comparison has not been performed for $`N^+`$. Finally, the quark masses are still large, with the smallest DF $`m_{PS}/m_V=0.7`$. A calculation in the quenched approximation to QCD using overlap fermions with pseudoscalar masses as light as 200 MeV indicates a dramatic cross-over between $`N^{}`$ and $`N^+`$ at light quark masses .

The experimental study of the nucleon resonances is a crucial tool for investigating the nature of the QCD interaction. Lattice calculations have a vital role both in interpreting the data, and in guiding future experimental searches.

CMM acknowledges grants PPARC PPA/P/S/1998/00255, PPA/GS/1997/00655, EU HPRN-CT-2000-00145-Hadrons/LatticeQCD, and thanks C.T.H. Davies for useful discussions. This work was supported in part by DOE contract DE-AC05-84ER40150 under which the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.


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# Untitled Document

Performance of the low light level CCD camera for speckle imaging

S. K. Saha e-mail: sks@iiap.ernet.in, vchin@iiap.ernet.in and V. Chinnappan

Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore 560 034, India.

Abstract. A new generation CCD detector called low light level CCD (L3CCD) that performs like an intensified CCD without incorporating a micro channel plate (MCP) for light amplification was procured and tested. A series of short exposure images with millisecond integration time has been obtained. The L3CCD is cooled to about $`80^{}`$ C by Peltier cooling.

Key words: interferometer, speckle imaging, L3CCD camera.

1. Introduction

High resolution imagery requires a high quality sensor that helps in obtaining snap shots of very high time resolution, depending on the dwell time of the speckle pattern, of the order of either (i) frame integration of 50 Hz, or (ii) photon recording rates of a few MHz. Recent development of a non-intensified low light level charge coupled device (L3CCD) which effectively the reduces readout noise to less than one electron rms has enabled substantial internal gain within the CCD before the signal reaches the output amplifier (Mackay et al. 2001). Such a detector shows promise for quantitative measurement of diffraction-limited stellar images with suitable instruments, such as a speckle interferometer. We have procured one such system from the Andor technology recently for recording specklegrams of a few interesting objects, viz., close binary stars, active galactic nuclei (AGN) etc., at the 2.34 meter Vainu Bappu Telescope using the speckle interferometer developed by Saha et al. (1999).

2. Salient features of L3CCD

In general, an intensified CCD (ICCD) detector consists of an image intensifier (MCP) coupled to a CCD camera. The major disadvantages of ICCD is the high voltage operation which affects its usages at high humidity and its susceptibility to damage when more light is allowed to fall on to the intensifier. Another drawback of such system is the poor gain statistics results in the introduction of a noise factor between 2 and 3.5.

In the L3CCD camera, no safety measures are required under bright light. The system is provided with Peltier cooling that operates to - 65C with air-cooling and with further additional water circulation, it reaches -80C. The performance of this cooling system is comparable with a liquid nitrogen cooled cryostats. The L3CCD is a frame transfer device where the image store and readout register are of conventional design that operates typically at 10 volts. But there is an extended section of gain register between the normal serial register and the final detection node which operates at much higher amplitude (typically at 40-50 volts). This large voltage creates an avalanche multiplication which thereby increases the number of electrons in the charge packets, thus producing a gain. Adjustment of the gain is possible with fine control of the voltage. All the output signals above a threshold may be counted as photon events provided the incoming photon flux is of a sufficiently low intensity that no more than one electron is generated in any pixel during the integration period, and the dark noise is zero, and the gain is set at a suitable level with respect to the amplifier read noise.

The L3CCD camera system that we have procured has 576$`\times `$288 pixels of size 20$`\times `$30$`\mu `$m2 in the image area. The storage section contains 591 columns and 288 rows. The physical area of the chip is $`11.52\times 8.64`$ mm. It has the provision to change the gain from 1 to 1000 by software. The noise at 1 MHz read rate is 0.1 e. Each pixel data is digitized to 16 bit resolution. The system has full vertical binning mode suitable for spectroscopy, single scan for regular astronomical imaging with long integration time, kinetic series acquisition, and the frame transfer mode with region of interest that can have short integration time in the order of milliseconds. Several hundreds of frames in a series can be recorded in this mode. For speckle observations, the kinetic mode acquisition mode was used.

3. Performance

We have tested this L3CCD both at the laboratory, as well as at the 2.34 m VBT, VBO, Kavalur. The performance was found to be satisfactory. The dark count was found to be 0.001 e/pixel/second at -80 and the saturation signal was about 52, 000 counts/pixel. Without external power supply and using the internal PC power, the Peltier cooler reached the set temperature of $`50^{}C`$ from the ambient temperature of $`20^{}C`$ within 11 minutes.

On 15th December, 2001, we have recorded an image of the star, HD36151 (mv 6.5) at the Cassegrain focus of 2.34 m VBT, VBO, Kavalur, with an exposure time of 10 msec, with the software gain set to 150, and a CCD sensitivity of 6.14 e per A/D count. The recorded image shows 50,000 counts. It may be noted here that the software gain can be varied from 1 to 255, which nonlinearly corresponds to an actual gain of 1 to 1000. A 12th magnitude star with an integration time of 10 msec. has been recorded as well. The count was found to be about 2000; software gain was set to 200.

3. Discussion

For experiments like speckle imaging (Labeyrie, 1970) and adaptive optics where the integration time is dictated by the atmospheric coherence time, which is normally of the order of a few milliseconds, this L3CCD may be more suitable than the MCP-based detectors. For the selective image reconstruction technique (Dantowitz et al. 2000), where a few sharpest images are selected from a large dataset of short-exposures images, L3CCD detector will provide important advantages (Baldwin et al. 2001).

References

Baldwin J. E., Tubbs R. N., Cox G. C., Mackay C. D., Wilson R. W., and Anderson M. I., 2001, A & A., 368, L1.

Dantowitz R. F., Teare S., and Kozubal M., 2000, A J, 119, 2455.

Labeyrie A., 1970, A & A., 6, 85.

Mackay C. D., Tubbs R. N., Bell R., Burt R., and Moody I., 2000, SPIE, 4306.

Saha S. K., Sudheendra G., Umesh Chandra A., Chinnappan V., 1999, Experimental Astronomy. 9, 39.