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# Large Scale Weather Control Using Nuclear Reactors

## 1  Transforming Deserts

In this paper we point out that Nuclear reactors can be used for large scale weather control, e.g., cause rain downpour over perennial drought areas such as - African Sahara, and create one of world s most fertile and lush regions. Heat from ground based nuclear reactors can be used to create a large scale low pressure region over Sahara, and pull moist air above Atlantic and Arabic Oceans into Northern Africa. Desert sand is essentially crushed powdered stone. It is common experience of anyone walking barefoot on a stone pavement in any large temple of India, that stone both heats and cools quickly. The stone is almost unbearably hot for bare feet in summer, and cold in winter. This is the reason for temperature extremes of both the unpopulated deserts, and the densely populated metropolises, which are essentially forests of stone and concrete.

Sahara air heats up during day and this creates a daily low-pressure region. The heat from Sahara surface escapes into outer space during the night, and resulting cooling creates a high-pressure region, which repels any moist air coming in from the Atlantic or Arabic Oceans. Thus the suction effect of low pressure regions during day heating is nullified. Saharan weather system is like a spring undergoing small contractions and expansions diurnal heating expansions, followed by nocturnal cooling contractions. Rapid cooling of desert air during night occurs because of lack of cloud cover, and absence of aerosols in desert air, which in other circumstances would trap the heat and prevent sharp temperature drop. The desert weather system is therefore inherently insufficient to pull moist Atlantic or Arabic Oceans air over to interior (non-coastal) regions, and cause regular rainfall. This is to be contrasted to regular yearly Monsoon over South Asian Sub-Continent. Green cover in Indian subcontinent generates aerosols in form of pollen grains, which help to trap heat, and thus prevent daily highs and lows of temperature and pressure. This enable formation of sustained low pressure region, which acts like a pump, to suck moist air from, Arabic Ocean, Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal; onto the Indian Plane. Thus long term Forest Sustained maintainence of a low pressure region over a large land mass is essential to draw moist air from an ocean, and cause large scale rainfall, over that region.

Sustained low pressure over Sahara could be achieved by

(1) Heating air by open air ground based nuclear reactors, during earlier part of night. (2) Injecting aerosols and providing cloud cover during evenings to reduce loss of heat during night to outer space.

As the incoming moist air from Atlantic and Arabic Oceans reaches interior Sahara regions during latter half of night, the nuclear reactors could be switched off, and the natural nightly cooling of desert air, combined with presence of artificially injected aerosols should lead to early morning rainfall. Existing weather codes running on Super Computers (Crays) in principle should be capable of modeling and refining this idea. Deserts such as Sahara (Africa), Gobi (China), Thar (Rajasthan, India), southern regions of north America (Mexico, Nevada, Texas, California) can virtually be wiped out from face of this earth. Deserts therefore are a species threatened with extinction.

The idea can actually be tested in India or Iraq. These countries already have nuclear reactors. Important issue in such a experiment is the height above the ground. Lets see what happens when an open air nuclear reactor is installed on desert plane. The reactors should be directly exposed to air, without any concrete building or housing, and switched on. As the heat content builds up, the ensuing local low pressure will start sucking air from neighboring regions. This will create a desert sand-storm. We see that now the energy of reactor is being used up in accelerating the sand particles. This means that a large part of the energy will not be available, to suck in moist air above oceans. We now also see that while energy from sun, does generate strong winds in desert, this energy is being used in accelerating sand particles in air, and is not getting used in bringing in moist ocean air. The sand thus is damping out the circulation being generated by heating of ground by sun, and heating of air close to ground by nuclear reactor.

Now I introduce reader to concept of boundary layer. When wind blows over ground, energy of wind is transferred to sand or dust particles on the ground, and sends them flying into air. This is really a form of friction between the stationary ground and moving air (wind). The region of wind near the ground therefore is moving slower because it is in the so called boundary layer , region of air slowed by friction from ground or boundary. If one glances up on a windy cloudy day, one notices, that clouds high up are moving faster while clouds closer to ground are moving slower or hardly moving. The reason is that closer clouds are in boundary layer. Therefore it is important to keep the reactor out of boundary layer, so that energy transferred from reactor to wind, does not get dissipated in sending sand spinning into air. What if the reactor is at a height of say 50 or 100 meters above ground? It can be installed on top of a TV tower or on roof a skyscraper. Now the winds being circulated will be generated 50 or 100 meters above ground, and will not dissipate all their energy in sucking sand particles from desert floor. However, a small quantity of lighter sand or dust particles will still be sucked into air, and sent high into atmosphere (1 to 2 Kilometers). We will have a large scale circulation build up in desert air, which will not be sand strom. These lighter and smaller dust particles sucked out from ground and sent spinning high into the atmosphere will act as natural aerosols - centers for formation of rain droplets.

Timed controlled use of nuclear reactors and Aerosol injections can be used to provide daily cloud cover and thus cool hot Indian Metropolises such as Delhi in summer, and reduce mass suffering of populace.

## 2  Melting Glaciers Military and Chess in Indian Sub-Continent

Weather control using Nuclear Reactors and Cray Super Computers; also has potential military applications. Its possible to use heat generated by nuclear reactors to control melt down of snow in Himalayan glaciers. These glaciers feed rivers, which run through plains of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and China. Thus, in principle, an enemy with nuclear power, and a good Intelligence, can install nuclear reactors in Himalayan Glaciers, and use them for disrupting economies of these nations. The whole process would look like a series of natural catastrophes. This Indirect Nuclear Threat (INT) has a very good chance of success in destroying an enemy, in contrast to the direct nuclear threat, which has only deterrence or preventive capability via MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. Vital question for countries in this region is - has a foreign power been actively pursuing this particular method of Indirect Nuclear Threat (INT)?

Lets consider the following issue of national and international interest, as a possible motive for application of this idea. Will the Western Capitalist Conglomerate really need Kashmir as Part of a Long Term Strategic Plan to overthrow the remaining twin threats Communism in China and Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan?

Precedents:

To support analysis of this issue, we cite in beginning following precedents.

(1) Economic breakdown of USSR (Communist Russia) was used to dismember the communist state. The issue whether the economic breakdown was a natural result of communist policies or caused by capitalist intelligence does not concern us in this paper.

(2) In Kosovo, plea of genocide lead to military intervention of UNO and physical occupation of Kosovo by NATO troops.

(3) India was befriended and latter deceived by China, and lost strategically important Himalayan peaks.

The first precedent tells us that economic breakdown can be used as an effective weapon for battling or neutralizing threat of an enemy nation. The second precedent tells us that western capitalism has perfected and demonstrated effectiveness of a new tactical weapon, which exploits weaknesses of local people of a geographical region. The new tactical weapon is

Combined use of international diplomacy (UNO), military strategy and technological know how, over a period of few years.

This eventually leads to the physical occupation of the geographical region by troops of western Capitalist nations, on humanitarian grounds. One notes that in Kosovo, it was the Muslim population, which was getting massacred, and the Christian Capitalists intervened as their saviors. A similar genocide of Muslims in Kashmir is likely to lead to a repeat UNO occupation of Kashmir. It appears that the Indian Nation may be heading for another deception by USA this time. India may loose rest of Kashmir to USA. We note with alarm that - USA already has the resource of a large number of existing spare nuclear reactors. These existing spare nuclear reactors were the power source of their older fleet of nuclear propelled submarines .

Its likely that this idea of using Indirect Nuclear Threat, emerged, as a result of brain storming on how to use or dispose of these old reactors. It s extremely likely, that the idea has already been successfully tested, in causing floods in Pakistan few years back. Support for such a thesis is provided by following reports

(1) Western civilians were airlifted to the Siachin Glacier region using helicopters by Pakistanis. Their purpose or motive was not clear. This happened just when the Pakistanis first moved into the region.

(2) Pakistani authorities captured smuggled radioactive nuclear fuel on Afghan-Pakistan border. Reasons for smuggling were not clear.

One can visualize that having demonstrated the success of this idea; the USA intelligence would have shifted to using newer and smaller, state of the art, nuclear reactors. Its likely that these new state of art small nuclear reactors are currently being deployed in Himalayan Glaciers to weaken or finish off the remaining fortresses of threats to western capitalist society Muslim Pakistan, and Communist China. Flooding of BrahmaPutra would effect Tibet, China and Bangladesh, while flooding of Sindhu would effect Pakistan. Flooding of Ganges and Yamuna can be used to weaken opposition to Christianity in Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and as a general tactical weapon.

On hindsight the communist Chinese military planners did well for themselves, to capture the Himalayan peaks in early sixties. The reason being that this geographical region contains glaciers and snow, which feeds the rivers, which flows through their planes. Strategically, it was a good move on part of Chinese, even though the idea of indirect nuclear threat (INT) may not even have occurred to the Chinese military planners.

In chess, as in warfare and life good strategic moves are moves designed to avoid loss through a short tactical combination. In any general conflict, such as war, chess etc., knowledge of opponent s plan can be used to neutralize the offensive. This is the reason for existence of intelligence agencies. However, if an opponent is given time to carry out a plan, due to lack of awareness on one s part, defeat becomes unavoidable. An ambitious chess player studies his and other players past losses to learn lessons for future games. It has been estimated that to become a chess grandmaster, one has to loose 500 tournament chess games. Aside from the strategic use of Himalayas Indirect Nuclear Threat. (INT) mentioned in this paper, its possible to tactically use the height advantage, with space-age weapons. USA may be having long terms plans for colonizing rest of Himalayas and use as a powerful platform for exercising world control.

## 3 Generating Cyclones using Nuclear Reactors - Storm-Bringer Cometh

Its even possible to generate severe cyclones using a nuclear reactor about 30 meters under the water in a sea such as Bay of Bengal. The nuclear reactors heat up the water, which in turn warms the air. Energy equivalent of many nuclear bombs can be injected into the atmosphere. The warmth in the atmosphere creates a local low-pressure region, and cooler air from neighboring areas starts moving towards it and assumes the form of a cyclone. Its possible to analyze how the resulting cyclone will move, using the Cray Super computers USA has for weather prediction. In an appropriate weather condition, and wind directions in Bay of Bengal, the method of Indirect nuclear threat (INT) may have actually been used to create the Orissa cyclone towards end of 1999 . The motive of the cyclone could be conversions to Christianity. One notes with concern the preceding Killing of the Australian missionary by so called Dara Singh in the region.

Also note that UNO had declared the 1990-2000 decade, as the decade of natural disasters. It appears to be part of propaganda of a long plan, already in an advanced stage of completion.

## 4 Melting Polar Ice Caps using Nuclear Reactors Global Flooding and Green House Brain Wash

There have been reports of thinning of ice cover in Arctic (North Pole). It has been attributed to Green House effect. It has been estimated that the North Pole s ice cap will be totally melted within next 50 years. The area will then be available for mining of oil deposits and other valuables. Its likely that the melting of North polar ice cap is being accomplished by nuclear reactors embedded within ice cap. It s likely that research on Green house effects, is part of propaganda to distract mass attention from actual causes. It s likely that Western Capitalist Oil and other mining corporations sponsor such a project. We may use the short hand Greenwash , for Green house brain wash inspired by the green color of US currency - dollar .

## 5 Conclusions

It was Einstein who first pointed out that matter was a hidden source of enormous energy, in the sense that matter could be converted into energy. Since almost the whole mass of an atom of matter resides in its nucleus, therefore this form of energy may be termed as nuclear energy . Einstein suffered a nervous breakdown when atomic energy was unleashed in a military application over Japan. Einstein had visited Japan in 1920s and liked the nation. His psychological suffering lasted for a period of nearly 5 years. Here we see first instance of successful application of nuclear energy how to drive Einstein mad . Other applications of Atomic energy to date include, nuclear power plants, nuclear propelled submarines and ships, and last but not the least, nuclear medicine. Modern Medical techniques of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan, are essentially medical applications of nuclear energy. Einstein s medical condition was possibly triggered as a Karmic back reaction , of hundreds of thousands who suffered in the nuclear blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fact that those who actually delivered the bomb did not suffer just indicates their minor role in chain of events. It appears that there may be a connection between nuclear energy and one s psychological state, which needs to be explored.

In this paper we have outlined large-scale weather control as another potential application of nuclear energy. The method is simplicity itself use the heat from a nuclear reactor to melt ice, or heat air and water. We observe that in these applications, the nuclear energy is doing the job of sun. One is reminded of Oppenheimer s experience of witnessing the first man-made nuclear explosion, brighter than a thousand suns . It would be worthwhile for world s government to see if such a mischief is being carried out unannounced in their backyards. It would be also worthwhile to explore if thinning Arctic ice cover and Global warming is a play of few mischievous capitalist boys .
In conclusion we cite the hit lead song from the film refugee which was partly instrumental in leading the author to these ideas. The film is about two lovebirds, separated by a man-made border. The lovers live near a river, which flows, through India into Pakistan. The first line of the song is as follows.
Panchi, Nadia, Pavan ke Jhonke; koi sarhad na inhein roke.
Sarhad Insanoo ke liye hei; Soocho, tumne aur maine kya paya Insaan hoke.

The translation reads -
No boundary stops Bird, River, and gusts of wind.
Boundaries are for humans; think, what you and I gained, by being human.


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# Atoms and molecules in lattices: condensates built on a shared vacuum

## Abstract

In optical lattices where each site is occupied in its lowest energy state by a superposition of zero, one and two atoms, one can in a controllable manner convert the atomic pair into a molecule while retaining the vacuum and one-atom amplitudes. The microscopic quantum coherence on each site between the vacuum and the single molecule component leads to a macroscopically populated molecular condensate when the lattice is removed.

In this paper we present a simple quantum optical analysis of the diffraction pattern of atoms and molecules released from a periodic potential. We show that removal of atom pairs from a lattice with low filling fraction may be used to reestablish a robust atomic interference pattern after dephasing has taken place due to collisional interaction. If the removal occurs by photoassociation, a molecular condensate may be produced and detected when the lattice is removed. We do not make use of the Mott-insulator phase transition dynamics Jaksch98 ; Jaksch02 . On the contrary, the existence of a superposition of vacuum and one or several atoms or molecules on every lattice site is crucial, and our proposal works ideally in the absense of atomic interactions.

Assume that an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate has been exposed to a lattice potential, which was turned on slowly enough for the spatial motion of the atoms to remain in the lowest energy state but too fast for the Mott insulator transition to have happened. This system is described as a single condensate in the $`q=0`$ state of the lowest Bloch band of the potential, which is, in case of a deep potential modulation, a superposition of Wannier states localized in each well. We assume that all the atoms in the $`m^{}th`$ well are well described by the $`m^{}th`$ Wannier function $`\varphi _m(x)=\varphi _0(xmL)`$.

If the entire many body wavefunction is described as a coherent state, i.e., an eigenstate of the atomic annihilation operators $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(x)`$, the state remains a coherent state, which factors exactly into a product state of coherent states populating the Wannier states, i.e., each site is populated by a superposition $`_nc_n|n_m`$ of zero, one, or more atoms, where the amplitudes $`c_n`$ can be parametrized by a single coefficient $`\beta `$: $`c_n=\mathrm{exp}(|\beta |^2/2)\beta ^n/\sqrt{n!}`$. Such superposition states do not reflect the conservation of atom number. The fluctuations in atom number on each lattice site, however, reflects the entanglement of the wells due to the splitting of the atoms - and it is a remarkable feature of coherent states that this entanglement is well accounted for by a product state (because a formal projection on a total number eigenstate with very many atoms, which indeed produces a non-separable state, does not change our physical predictions).

Since atoms are bound to occupy the ground states of the wells of the lattice, it is convenient to introduce the discrete set of atomic field operators that removes atoms from the Wannier mode functions rather than from a specific location in space. These are defined as

$$a_m=\varphi _m(x)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(x)𝑑x,$$
(1)
and they obey the standard commutator relations $`[a_m,a_m^{}^{}]=\delta _{m,m^{}}`$.

With the product wave function $`|\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Pi }_m(_nc_n|n_m)`$, the mean value of the mode annihilation operator in each well equals $`\alpha :=a_m=_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}c_{n1}^{}c_n\sqrt{n}`$, the number of atoms in each well equals $`n:=a_m^{}a_m=_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}|c_n|^2n`$, and we have the inter-well coherence $`a_m^{}^{}a_m=\alpha ^{}\alpha `$ for $`mm^{}`$. The short range interaction between atoms is a weak perturbation which causes a phase evolution of the $`c_n`$ amplitudes with a frequency $`\frac{U}{2}n(n1)`$. In the absense of tunneling between wells, the product form of the wave function remains exact, but the phase evolution leads to a reduction of the atomic field amplitude $`\alpha `$ since the terms $`c_{n1}^{}c_n\sqrt{n}`$ acquire different complex phases. The resulting disappearance of atomic interference has been observed in experiments Munichdiff ; Yalediff , and subsequent revivals when the phase differences reach multiples of $`2\pi `$ have also been shown Munichrevival .

We now turn to the special case of on the order of or less than unit mean occupancy of each well. The amplitudes on states with three or more atoms are small and we shall mainly focus on the lower $`n`$ components. Since $`|c_0^{}c_1+c_1^{}c_2\sqrt{2}|`$ may be smaller than $`|c_0^{}c_1|`$, it seems an interesting experiment to remove the component with two atoms from the state vector of each well. This can be done by a carefully designed photoassociation process Jaksch02 ; Javanainen ; Heinzen00 , making use of the fact that the two-atom component is in a fully determined initial state. Neglecting higher atomic occupancies, the resulting state vector becomes a product of two-species superposition states:

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Pi }_m(c_0|\text{vacuum}+c_1|\text{1 atom}+c_2|\text{1 molecule})_m.$$
(2)
In the state (2) we can readily determine the mean atomic amplitude and population, $`\alpha =c_0^{}c_1`$ and $`n=|c_1|^2`$. The mean amplitude acquires a finite robust value, which is not corrupted by the atom-atom interaction before or after the photoassociation. We may thus wait arbitrarily long before we remove the atomic pairs, and still the coherence reappears. Technically, we define condensate population as the largest eigenvalue of the one-body density matrix, and applying the basis of Wannier states, this matrix has the mean occupancy of the wells $`n`$ in the diagonal, and the squared amplitude $`|\alpha |^2`$ in all other positions. In a system with $`N`$ wells, the eigenvector with equal amplitude on each Wannier function has the largest eigenvalue of $`(N1)|\alpha |^2+n`$, i.e., in the limit of large $`N`$ the condensate fraction is $`|\alpha |^2/n`$. This is also the value predicted by the off-diagonal long-range order, $`a_m^{}a_m^{}=|\alpha |^2=n(|\alpha |^2/n)`$. It is interesting to note that in cases where $`c_2`$ is sufficiently dephased, photoassociation increases the value of $`|\alpha |^2`$ and hence both the total occupancy of the condensate and the condensate fraction increase by the removal of atoms. The state before photoassociation is a perfect, pure quantum state of the system, and it is related to the perfect condensate state by a unitary process - but the system cannot be described by a Gross-Pitaevskii wave function, and the one-body density matrix cannot distinguish a deterministically evolved phase from, e.g., a finite temperature decoherence effect.

Let us now turn our attention to the molecules prepared in the lattice. It is clear from the state (2), that the atomic and molecular states are quite equivalent: there is a molecular population $`n_M=|c_2|^2`$ per lattice site, and there is a mean molecular field of $`\alpha _M=c_0^{}c_2`$. The above analysis of condensate population and fraction thus applies to the molecules if $`n`$ and $`\alpha `$ are replaced by $`n_M`$ and $`\alpha _M`$. The preparation of molecular condensates has received quite some interest, in particular with the recent experiments at JILA Claussen , where coherent oscillations between an atomic condensate and a condensate of very loosely bound molecules are observed and agree well with a detailed theory of collision dynamics near a Feschback resonance Holland , see also Burnettmol . In addition to the detailed binary collision dynamics, it is necessary to represent correctly the many-body dynamics in the case where many atoms are converted into molecules. In comparison, our analysis is much simpler since there is either nothing or just a single atom or just a single molecule in every lattice site (as long as the truncation of the atomic state above two atoms is a valid approximation). There is accordingly just a single population independent coupling between the relevant states $`|n=2\text{atoms}`$ and $`|n_M=1\text{molecule}`$. From an experimental point of view our molecules can be prepared in a deeper bound molecular state, selected coherently by the coupling laser fields rather than by Feshbach collision dynamics, and they are prepared in a spatial condensate for which the phase coherence can be readily detected by diffraction experiments similar to the ones applied to atoms in Munichdiff , see below.

Our proposal may also be compared with the suggestion by Jaksch et al. Jaksch02 , where the Mott-insulator dynamics is used to prepare a lattice with precisely two atoms per site, these atoms are transferred into a molecule, and the molecular Mott-insulator is subsequently melted to yield the molecular condensate. Our proposal emphasizes a simple but spectacular phenomenon: a zero-quantum amplitude is enough to yield a mean field, and hence the condensate establishes itself simply by the production of molecules out of the two-atom component of the atomic state. This is so, because the atomic vacuum is of course also a molecular vacuum (as well as a vacuum for larger molecules, butterflies and freight trains). On the experimental side, the molecular condensate may ideally be created from an atomic condensate of non-interacting particles, and we only need to transfer the atoms slowly enough into the lattice to have a well-specified initial state for the photo-association process.

The analysis is quite simple and fully analytical in the limit of very weakly populated sites. Also for a larger mean number of atoms on each site the conversion into molecules will lead to a molecular mean field, i.e., a molecular condensate. To investigate this, we have solved numerically the time evolution of the simple photoassociation Hamiltonian

$$H_{PA}=\underset{m}{}\chi (a_m^2b_m^{}+(a_m^{})^2b_m)$$
(3)
where $`b_m`$ is the operator of annihilation of a molecule at site $`m`$. Starting with a coherent atomic state, the Hamiltonian (3) introduces in every lattice well a superposition state $`c_{n,n_M}(t)|n,n_M`$, from which the mean number of molecules and the mean molecular field is readily calculated. The results of such calculation are shown in Fig.1. It shows the number of molecules and the absolute square of the molecular field as functions of time: the conversion is oscillatory in time, and to optimize the coherent molecular component, one should stop the photoassociation process after a time interval depending on the number of atoms per lattice site. For simplicity we did not incorporate atom-atom interactions or interactions between the atoms and molecules in these calculations since our main focus is on lattices with low population.

In the above analysis we have shown that the on-site mean field amplitude and population mathematically determine the condensate fraction. These quantities are directly measurable by the diffraction occuring when the particles are released from the lattice. The detection of the diffraction pattern has precisely been the hall mark of coherence Munichdiff ; Yalediff , and coherence decay and revivals Munichrevival  in experiments, and we present here a brief theoretical description, linking the diffraction pattern directly to our quantities $`n`$ and $`\alpha `$.

If one introduces a complete and orthonormal set of wavefunctions $`\{\varphi _{m,l}\}`$, where $`\varphi _{m,0}=\varphi _m`$ are the Wannier functions applied above, and $`\{\varphi _{m,l}\}`$ with $`l>0`$ are higher excited states centered on the $`m^{th}`$ lattice site, the commutator relations $`[\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(x),\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}^{}(x^{})]=\delta (xx^{})`$, lead to $`[a_{m,l},a_{m^{},l^{}}^{}]=\delta _{m,m^{}}\delta _{l,l^{}}`$, with the mode annihilation operators defined through

$$a_{m,l}=\varphi _{m,l}(x)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(x)𝑑x.$$
(4)
We shall need expressions for the position dependent annihilation operators in terms of the mode functions,

$`\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(x)={\displaystyle \underset{m,l}{}}a_{m,l}\varphi _{m,l}(x)`$
$`=a_{\overline{m}}\varphi _{\overline{m}}(x)+\delta \widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(x),`$ (5)
where in the second line we include only explicitly the Wannier state $`\varphi _{\overline{m}}`$, where $`\overline{m}`$ enumerates the well which is most close to the position coordinate $`x`$, and where the ’noise-term’ $`\delta \widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(x)`$ represents all other modes, which are either unoccupied $`(l>0)`$ or which have no support at the location $`x`$, ($`m\overline{m}`$). This noise term does not contribute to atom counting signals.

In experiments on trapped condensates, the spatial properties of the atomic cloud are detected by releasing the cloud and letting it expand. In case of the weakly filled lattices, one may neglect interactions during the expansion, and the final spatial distribution hence maps the momentum distribution of the atoms in the lattice. We determine the momentum distribution by writing the atomic field operator that annihilates an atom with momentum $`\mathrm{}k`$, in terms of the spatial field operators:

$`\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(k)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }}}{\displaystyle 𝑑xe^{ikx}\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(x)}`$
$`={\displaystyle \underset{\overline{m}}{}}a_{\overline{m}}e^{ik\overline{m}L}\varphi (k)+\delta \widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(k),`$ (6)
where $`\varphi (k)`$ is the Fourier transfom of the Wannier function $`\varphi _0(x)`$, and where $`\delta \widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(k)`$ is a vacuum noise field with zero mean and zero intensity. Although the quantity $`\overline{m}`$ originally appeared as a complicated index, depending on $`x`$, the integral over all positions leads to a sum over all positive and negative integer values for $`\overline{m}`$, i.e., it has become a conventional summation index. The number of atoms with momentum $`\mathrm{}k`$ is given by the expectation value of the operator $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}^{}(k)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(k)`$:

$`\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}^{}(k)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(k)=|\varphi (k)|^2{\displaystyle \underset{m,m^{}}{}}e^{i(mm^{})kL}a_m^{}^{}a_m.`$ (7)
Thus

$`\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}^{}(k)\widehat{\mathrm{\Psi }}(k)`$
$`=N|\varphi (k)|^2\left((n|\alpha |^2)+|\alpha |^2{\displaystyle \underset{q}{}}\delta (kq{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{L}})\right),`$ (8)
where $`N`$ is the (large) number of lattice sites. The sum over $`q`$ gives rise to a comb at lattice momenta $`q\frac{2\pi }{L}`$ with a modulation proportional to the square of the mean field amplitude. This comb sits on top of a flat background caused by the incoherent population of the wells, and the whole distribution is comprised within the width of the single well momentum distribution $`|\varphi (k)|^2`$.

A diffraction pattern in the molecular distribution is the clear signature of a molecular condensate. By counting the released atoms or the molecules on a position sensitive detector the values of $`n`$ and $`\alpha `$ and thus the condensate fraction can by determined.

In summary, we have presented a method which by photoassociative removal of atoms can at the same time return an atomic system to a state with a macroscopic population of a single quantum state and prepare a molecular system with a similar macroscopic population. Weak fields owe their mean amplitude to the existence of both vacuum and single quantum excitations, and the molecular condensate exists due to the molecular vacuum component being already populated in the atomic condensate.

Eq.(Atoms and molecules in lattices: condensates built on a shared vacuum) relates the diffraction pattern to the mean field amplitudes existing prior to the detection. Two independently prepared condensates also show interference Ketterlediff . It has been demonstrated theoretically, Theorydiff , that this interference builds up as a consequence of the first random detection events, and that one can think of the state of the two condensates without initial mean fields as a statistical mixture of states with different relative phases Klausdiff , which all yield interference patterns but with different offsets. This same mechanism is not at work when atoms or molecules emerge from a large number of independent sites, since the uniform distribution of the phase variable at every site has vanishing probability to produce the regular progression of the phase over several sites needed for a high visibility diffraction pattern.

Our approach is quantum optical in nature: by carefully selected unitary operations we generate from a given initial state a final desired state of the system. This implies that the formal properties of the state vector of the system are made to the design, but the dynamical properties of the system may have only little in common with the properties usually ascribed to a Bose-Einstein condensate. Since the state is not the ground state or the thermodynamic equilibrium state under an applied Hamiltonian, it will not act in the same way as such a state under external perturbations, cf. for example the issue of superfluidity, discussed recently in a similar physical set-up as ours Roth . Our approach, however, suggests the possibility to create an approximation to the ground state or thermal equilibrium state of a given Hamiltonian, which can be subsequently turned on and in this way prepare states that might otherwise only be produced after prohibitively long time scales.

We would like to acknowledge the hospitality of the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT) during the Summer Program on Bose-Einstein condensation.


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# Recurrent Nightmares? : Measurement Theory in de Sitter Space

## 1 Introduction

A remarkable series of recent observations -( for a recent review see ), indicate that we live in an accelerating universe. It is quite tempting to speculate that the source of this acceleration is a small positive cosmological constant. If this is indeed the case, we would be living in an asymptotic de Sitter (AsdS) space. Some years ago, we argued  that the quantum theory of such a universe has a finite dimensional Hilbert space.

Loosely speaking, a quantum version of the principle of general covariance would seem to suggest that a physical clock must be a quantum observable. This in turn suggests, that the clocks in an AsdS universe can only have discrete ”ticks and tocks” and moreover it seems inevitable that these devices can only measure a finite total time interval. The spectrum of any observable in a finite dimensional quantum system is discrete and bounded.

At the present time, we only have a rigorous understanding of theories of quantum gravity with asymptotic timelike or null boundaries. In these systems, time evolution is governed by asymptotic symmetries, and we can imagine all clocks to be sitting at infinity. The measuring devices in such a universe can be considered to be arbitrarily large and classical, without having any effect on the scattering111We use the word scattering as a shorthand both for the true scattering matrix in asymptotically flat spacetimes, and the boundary observables of asymptotically AdS spacetimes. experiments that they are measuring. This is not true in an AsdS universe. The purpose of the present paper is to address the question of what can actually be measured in such a universe.

In the absence of a complete proposal for the quantum theory of AsdS spaces, we rely on the intuition provided by the Wheeler-DeWitt formulation of quantum gravity to address these questions. We will find that the statement that physical clocks are operators in the physical Hilbert space of a general covariant system, is not a formal property of Wheeler-DeWitt quantization. Rather, we are led to a description of such a system in terms of a collection of different, more or less conventional, Hamiltonian evolutions on the physical subspace. These evolution operators do not in general commute with each other. We have previously suggested that this lack of commutativity is the origin of Black Hole Complementarity and have generalized this notion to other spacetimes with horizons.

We will then argue that in a true quantum theory of cosmological spacetimes, continuous time evolution is probably an illusion. Furthermore, by studying actual measurements in AsdS spacetimes, we will argue that no reliable measurements can be made over arbitrarily long periods of time. We suggest that this means that the Poincare recurrences of the mathematical formalism have no operational meaning . Finally, we argue that, as a consequence of the inevitable imprecision in measurements, there is no single mathematical theory of quantum AsdS spacetimes. Rather, there is a collection of different time evolution operators, which will make mathematical predictions for all possible measurements, with differences that are smaller than the fundamental imprecision of the measurements themselves. It is only in the limit of vanishing cosmological constant that precise mathematical statements have operational meaning. Equivalently, in this limit, there are scaling observables (in the sense of the renormalization group) that are universal, while many of the corrections to scaling are in principle unobservable.

The plan of this paper is as follows:

In the next section, we briefly review the arguments for a finite number of physical states in AsdS universes, and introduce a distinction between localizable states and horizon states. We then review the formal Wheeler-DeWitt quantization of gravity and its implication for the nature of clocks. In section III we review our understanding of quantum measurement theory. In particular we emphasize that it depends to a large extent on the locality properties of quantum field theory. In AsdS spaces, and on the horizons of black holes, there are many low energy states that cannot be simultaneously described by quantum field theory. While almost classical measuring devices might be constructed for other quantum systems with large numbers of states, we know too little about horizon states to describe a measurement theory for them, which does not involve a localized external observer. Thus, we will restrict our attention to localizable measurements. In section IV, we show that very simple estimates for localizable measurements, imply that the time for a quantum fluctuation to fuzz out the classical pointer positions of any localized measuring device in AsdS space is much smaller than the dS recurrence time. This is the central point of this paper. We also identify a set of measurements in dS space which asymptote to the S-matrix observables of asymptotically flat space, and explore the relation between these idealized observables and observations made by a localized timelike observer. Finally, we comment on the likelihood that time evolution in cosmological spacetimes is fundamentally discrete.

We should also mention that other authors have touched on the issue of the limitations of measurement in asymptotic de Sitter spaces , ,.

## 2 Infinite aspirations and finite reality

### 2.1 The phase space of AsdS gravity

Much of the recent literature on dS space is focused on the attempt to construct gauge invariant meta-observables, which are analogs of the boundary correlators of the AdS/CFT correspondence. We believe that these attempts are misguided, both because these meta-observables are mathematically ill-defined, and because (and this is a central message of the present paper) physical measurements in AsdS spaces have (in principle) limited precision. In a sense we will try to make precise in section IV, this imprecision can be viewed as a lack of ”gauge invariance” of real measurements.

One way to approach this problem222Which is different from the arguments we have previously given in published work. is to think of the phase space of classical gravity; the space of solutions with given boundary conditions. We are used to thinking about the space of solutions to a field theory by invoking the Cauchy-Kowalevska (CK) theorem to map it into the space of initial conditions on a fixed spacelike slice. We believe that in General relativity, this theorem is misleading because of the generic occurrence of singularities. We have very little knowledge about global existence theorems for GR. The CK philosophy leads us to to view GR as a field theory. Instead we believe (invoking a conservative version of the Cosmic Censorship conjecture) that generic solutions with scattering boundary conditions lead at most to spacelike singularities cloaked behind black hole horizons. The Bekenstein-Hawking formula for black hole entropy, and the parametrization of phase space by scattering data, then lead us to a holographic counting of the degrees of freedom of GR.

Let us apply these ideas to AsdS spaces. Consider generic boundary conditions on either of $`_\pm `$. The present authors (and probably a number of relativists before them) have conjectured that apart from a compact submanifold in boundary condition space, such solutions have a spacelike singularity of Big Bang or Big Crunch type333G. Horowitz has informed us that he and N. Itzhaki have found a proof of this result in certain circumstances.. Intuitively444We work in global coordinates. Energy refers to the nonconserved global time translation operator. Energy density is covariantly conserved in the dS background geometry. We can use it at a good physical parameter to the extent that the dS background is undisturbed by the perturbation we are studying., if we inject too much energy at the boundary, the energy density reaches that at which black holes as large as the spatial sphere form, before the sphere shrinks below some finite size. We will call this minimal size the ”radius at the singularity”. The singularities for different solutions, will occur at different values of the radius at the singularity, because black holes of different sizes will be formed. Thus, we believe that, apart from the compact subspace of the naive asymptotic phase space, for which global solutions are nonsingular or contain black holes smaller than the minimal dS radius, the existence of solutions depends on the resolution of singularities. Furthermore it seems clear that solutions in which the singularity occurs at different radii should not be considered part of the same theory555We are not claiming that all of these solutions describe sensible quantum theories, only that , if they do, then solutions with different radii at the singularity, correspond to different quantum systems. The consequence of this point of view is that the space of asymptotically dS solutions of GR ((generically) either in the past or future, but not both) breaks up into compact subspaces. Each such subspace, upon quantization , should lead to a finite number of physical quantum states.

One of these quantum theories corresponds to solutions, which are AsdS both in the past and the future. We think of this as the quantum theory of idealized dS space. Among the future AsdS spaces with a Big Bang singularity, we imagine that there is at least one subspace, which defines a sensible quantum theory that describes the Universe we observe. In the rest of this paper we will explore the idealized dS quantum theory, since the issues we address have nothing to do with the Big Bang.

### 2.2 Wheeler DeWitt quantization

The residual gauge invariances of the synchronous gauge in General Relativity are the freedom of choice of the initial spatial slice, and spatial reparametrizations of that slice. Correspondingly, there are two classes of constraints:

$$_i(𝐱)=0$$
(1)
$$(𝐱)=0.$$
(2)
The first set merely state that physical quantities are diffeomorphism invariant on the spatial slice. They are kinematical, and easy to solve. The second constraint is the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, which is dynamical.

The essential point we want to make is simplified, if we further choose the gauge, so that only a global reparametrization of time is allowed. Then the Wheeler-DeWitt constraint becomes, upon formal canonical quantization, a single, hyperbolic differential equation:

$$[G^{ij}(\varphi )_i_j+U(\varphi )]\mathrm{\Psi }=0$$
(3)
The $`\varphi `$ are the canonical coordinates of the system and the DeWitt metric $`G_{ij}`$ has signature $`(1,N)`$. The wave function $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ might be a finite dimensional vector of wave functions, and the potential $`U`$ might be a matrix in this finite dimensional space. The simplest example of a time reparametrization invariant system is the relativistic particle. In this case the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is just the Klein-Gordon equation. String theory teaches us that in order for this equation to make sense at the quantum level, one must generally include contributions from Fadeev-Popov ghosts in the Wheeler-DeWitt operator. However, it is not our intention to propose Wheeler-DeWitt quantization as a rigorous approach to a realistic theory of quantum gravity, so we will ignore this technicality.

The space of wave functions on which the Wheeler-DeWitt operator acts is not a Hilbert space. It is only the solution space of the equation which is to be interpreted as the physical Hilbert space of the system. Solutions of the WD equation are parametrized, according to the CK theorem by the values of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and its normal derivative, on a spacelike surface in the space of variables $`\varphi ^i`$. In a correct quantum theory, this solution space, or some subspace of it, will carry a positive definite inner product. Note that the solution of the WD equation will define a one parameter set of vectors in this physical Hilbert space. The inner product should be defined in such a way that it does not depend on which spacelike slice in field space it is evaluated on. Then the one parameter set of vectors will be related by unitary evolution in the Hilbert space.

One often tries to give an intuitive description of this mathematical procedure by arguing that the physical meaning of time reparametrization is that clocks must be chosen to be physical objects. The choice of gauge, which reduces the full-blown WD equation to a hyperbolic PDE with only one negative eigenvalue of $`G_{ij}`$ is “a choice of physical clock”. Note however that the clock variable is not a quantum variable in the physical Hilbert space. Rather, it defines a one parameter family of states in the physical Hilbert space, much like a classical time variable.

In fact, the problem of constructing a positive metric subspace of WD solution space can only be solved in a general manner in the semiclassical approximation. Here one chooses a class of solutions of the WD equation of the form (the justification for this form depends on the details of the WD equation)

$$\mathrm{\Psi }e^{i\frac{S(t)}{ϵ}}\psi (t,\varphi ^k),$$
(4)
where $`ϵ`$ is a parameter whose small size justifies the WKB approximation. $`t`$ is a particular combination of the coordinates $`\varphi ^i`$, which parametrizes a spacelike slicing of a particular classical solution of the system $`\psi `$ satisfies a time dependent Schrodinger equation

$$i_t\psi =H(t)\psi $$
(5)
and the solutions of this equation have a well known time independent , positive, scalar product, if $`H(t)`$ is Hermitian.

In general, for a given classical solution of the system, there may be many ways to choose the time slicing. Each of these defines a different unitary evolution on the same Hilbert space. There is no reason for these different evolution operators to commute with each other, at any time. This leads to a quantum complementarity between the observations of observers using different classical coordinate systems. In a quantized theory with general coordinate invariance there is no reason to expect to be able to discuss simultaneously, the observations of two observers using different coordinate systems. The authors have argued that this is the origin of Black Hole Complementarity.

Beyond the semiclassical approximation, there are apparent problems with the straightfoward WD approach. The Klein-Gordon example provides some insight into these problems. In that context they have to do with the mixing of positive and negative frequency modes (in general the scalar product is positive only on one of these subspaces) and the necessity for second quantization. There is no satisfactory resolution of these problems. For this and other reasons (principally the spatially local parametrization of phase space - which seems to us incompatible with holography), we do not believe that the WD equation provides a correct definition of a quantized theory of gravity.

However, it seems extremely plausible that certain features of WD quantization will survive in a well defined quantum theory of gravity. The existence of many equivalent but complementary time evolution operators (which generally do not have a time independent Hamiltonian) would seem to be a general consequence of combining quantum mechanics with general covariance. We will argue later that there may be contexts in which time evolution is discrete rather than continuous, but that does not change the general structure in a drastic way.

## 3 Measurement theory and locality

At the heart of the quantum theory of measurement is Von Neumann’s theorem that unitary evolution can take a product state

$$|A_0>c_s|s>$$

into an entangled state

$$c_s|A_s>|s>$$

. We think of $`|s>`$ as a complete orthonormal basis of the quantum system to be measured, while the states $`|A_i>`$ are states of the apparatus. Von Neumann shows that the apparatus states in the entangled state can be chosen orthonormal. Indeed, unitary evolution can take any state in the tensor product Hilbert space into any other with the same norm. If the $`|A_s>`$ are orthonormal, expectation values of an arbitrary system operator $`O_s`$ in the entangled state, are given by

$$<O_s>=|c_s|^2<s|O_s|s>$$
(6)
This is the expression for the classical expectation value of a quantity in a probability distribution $`P_s=|c_s|^2`$. Quantum interference has disappeared. We say that we have measured those operators of the system, which are diagonal in the $`|s>`$ basis.

The problem with this argument is that the apparatus itself is a quantum system and we can imagine reexpressing this same entangled state in terms of another orthonormal basis for apparatus states. Then the same measurement can be interpreted as measuring something else. In the case where the $`c_s`$ are all equal we can interpret the same time evolution as a measurement of operators which do not commute with the $`|s>`$ projectors. Very clear discussions of this problem can be found, for example, in .

Much recent literature on this problem has focused on the resolution of this ambiguity, ”the choice of pointer basis”, by environmentally induced superselection, i.e. the interaction of the apparatus with an unobserved environment. It is often stated that the size of the apparatus cannot by itself resolve this ambiguity.

Our own understanding of the measurement problem is somewhat different , and does depend on the size of the Hilbert space of the apparatus. At present it also depends on a good approximate description of the physics of the apparatus by (perhaps cut-off) local field theory. As orientation for this discussion let us remind the reader of the discussion of spontaneous symmetry breaking in field theory (or more general occurrences of moduli spaces of vacua). In particular we want to draw attention to the well known fact that one is not allowed to make superpositions of states which have different constant expectation values of a scalar field. The essential reason for this is locality. The Hilbert space of a field theory is constructed by acting with local operators on a single Poincare invariant vacuum state. States with different Poincare invariant expectation values cannot be related to each other by local operations.

This principle is valid for cutoff field theories, and it even has implications for large but finite systems. In the latter, states with different expectation values can communicate with each other via local operations, but their overlaps are of order $`e^V`$ where $`V`$ is the volume of the system in cutoff units. Furthermore, although in systems with a symmetry, states with expectation values of symmetry breaking fields are not energy eigenstates, the quantum tunneling amplitudes that convert such an initial state into a properly symmetric eigenstate are exponentially small. Thus, in a large but finite system there are long lived states that have expectation values of quantities that are macroscopically distinguishable. In fact such states are members of huge subspaces of the Hilbert space which have almost the same value for these macroscopic operators. The expectation values are thus robust in the sense that many local operations on the system do not change them (or change them by inverse powers of $`V`$). Of course, local operations that dump huge amounts of energy onto a finite system can change macroscopic expectation values666For example, inserting a tiny, but macroscopic, amount of antimatter into any piece of laboratory equipment, will disrupt its ability to measure anything., but there is a wide range of perturbations which do not.

Our understanding of measurement theory is based on such macroscopic observables in local field theory. For us, a measuring device must be huge in microscopic terms, and have many more states than the system it is measuring. It must have macro-observables like the expectation values of scalars in field theory, which take on almost the same value in a finite fraction of the states of the apparatus. The overlap between states with different values of the macro-observables must be very small, and tunable to zero as the size of the apparatus goes to infinity. Large classes of perturbations of the apparatus must leave the subspaces with fixed macroobservables invariant, with very high probability. Cutoff local field theory for a finite volume system provides us with many explicit examples of systems with these properties. There may be other examples, but to our knowledge there does not exist a systematic theory of nonlocal measuring devices.

Notice several points about our description: the exact orthogonality of the $`A_s>`$ assumed in Von Neumann’s discussion is unnecessary. It is sufficient that the overlaps of different pointer states are exponentially small at larger pointer size. We do not then recover an idealized measurement as expressed in the axioms of the Copenhagen interpretation. The expectation values in the entangled state do not reproduce the classical probability sum rules exactly but only up to exponentially small corrections. The volume that appears in these exponentials is that of the pointer rather than of the whole apparatus. Finally, these remarks imply that for a finite apparatus the whole concept of measurement is only an approximation. Not only are the classical probabilities achieved only in an approximate manner, but the measurements are not exactly robust. Given a long enough time, quantum fluctuations of the pointer will nullify the utility of the apparatus as a measuring device. Ideal Copenhagen measurements are only achieved in the limit of infinite apparatus.

The above discussion ignores the interaction of the apparatus with its environment - that is the effects which are taken into account for environmentally induced superselection. These are important for ordinary experiments, but not, we believe, for the idealized ”maximally accurate” experiments in dS space that we will study in the next section. That is, while we accept the fact that environmentally induced superselection may be quantitatively important in understanding the behavior of many everyday measuring devices, we do not believe that environmental decoherence is necessary to the construction of a sensible measurement theory. In particular, in the next section we will discuss idealized measurements in dS space in situations where the measuring apparatus does not seem to have much of an environment. We claim that large, approximately local, devices are capable of making almost ideal quantum measurements without the benefit of an environment. A measurement consists of entangling a complete set of basis states of the measured system with macroscopic, approximately orthogonal, states of the apparatus. In the limit of infinite apparatus size, macroscopic states become orthogonal superselection sectors. It is possible that other large systems can also act as measuring devices. In particular, black hole and cosmological horizons are repositories of large numbers of quantum states. It is possible, but beyond our current capabilities to prove, that horizons or pieces of them, can act as measuring devices.

## 4 Measuring de Sitter

In any accurate measurement, one wants to minimize the effect of the apparatus on the measured system. We want to correlate the states of the system prepared in some experiment, with macroscopic apparatus states, without having the apparatus interfere with the experiment. In a theory of gravity this is difficult because any apparatus has a long range, unscreenable, interaction with any experiment. The Newtonian estimate of the strength of this interaction is $`\frac{G_NM}{R}`$, where $`M`$ is the mass of the apparatus, and $`R`$ is its minimal distance from the experiment. We could try to minimize this interaction by making $`M`$ very small, but this interferes with our ability to make the large, almost classical, devices required by measurement theory. The only alternative, is to make the distance $`R`$ very large.

This simple estimate is a powerful hint that the only well defined mathematical observables in a quantum theory of gravity should be scattering data. That this is indeed the case in string theory is well known, and has led to a lot of angst about the appropriate observables in dS space. Our approach to this problem will be to rely on the idea that asymptotically flat space is a limit of dS space. Thus, there should be mathematical quantities in any quantum theory of dS space, which approach the flat space S-matrix as the cosmological constant goes to zero. As in any limiting situation, there may be ambiguities in what these quantities are for finite values of the cosmological constant. Our strategy in this paper will be to find a physical definition of these approximate S-matrix quantities. We will find that they do not correspond to observations that can be made by local observers in dS space. We will then try to elucidate the connection between these two kinds of measurement. Throughout our discussion, we will ignore the special complications of four dimensions, where the flat space S-matrix does not exist because of the infrared problems of graviton bremstrahlung.

Measurement theory in dS space is caught in a web of contradictory requirements. To minimize quantum fluctuations in our apparatus, we must make it large. This requires us to move it far away from the experiment, but the existence of a cosmological horizon makes it difficult to do this. A related problem is the putative existence of only a finite number of states in dS space. Any measurement in such a finite system consists of a split of the states into those of a “system” and those of an apparatus. A bound on the total number of states means that the apparatus cannot approach the classical behavior required of an ideal measuring apparatus.

There is a further problem, which we encounter if we attempt to make our apparatus stationary with respect to the frame of the experiment. It then becomes impossible to move it far away. If we consider a sequence of stationary measuring devices, closer and closer to the horizon of the experiment, the later devices in the sequence find themselves in a hotter and hotter environment. Eventually they are destroyed by Hawking radiation.

This indicates that the best experiments one can do in dS space are those performed by machines freely falling with respect to the experiment, machines that will eventually go outside the experiment’s cosmological horizon. We consider experiments whose “active radius” remains finite as the dS radius goes to infinity. By active radius, we mean the radius outside of which the experiment can (with some accuracy) be said to consist of freely moving particles in Minkowski spacetime. Of course, if we really want to get precise answers, we have to let the active radius go to infinity with the dS radius.

We consider machine trajectories whose closest approach to the experiment goes to infinity as a power, $`R_{dS}^\alpha ;\alpha <1`$, of the dS radius. Such machines can be taken to have a mass $`\mu `$, which scales like $`\mu R_{dS}^\beta `$. As long as $`\beta \alpha <0`$, the gravitational effect of the detector on the experiment, will vanish as the dS radius goes to infinity. Thus, we can make very massive, freely falling machines, whose gravitational effect on the experiment is negligible.

Further constraints come from the requirement that our machines are approximately described by local field theory. We emphasize that this requirement would not be fundamental if we could learn how to manipulate the internal states of black holes or the cosmological horizon to make measuring devices. If we rely on “current technology” then the best we can do is to use the high energy density of states of a field theory to make our measuring devices. These then have an energy and entropy density,

$$\rho T^4;\sigma T^3$$
(7)
The requirement that a machine made out of such conformal stuff not collapse into a black hole, restricts its total entropy to scale like $`R^{3/2}`$ where $`R`$ is the linear size of the (roughly isotropic) machine. This is the same power law that one obtains for the entropy of a starlike solution of the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov (TOV) equations  We have seen above that $`R`$ can scale at most like a power of $`R_{dS}`$ less than $`\alpha `$.

Now the crucial point is that the tunneling amplitudes between macroscopic state of the apparatus are of order $`N_{ap}^p`$ where $`p`$ is an exponent of order one and $`N_{ap}`$ the number of states of the apparatus. This is a consequence of the fact that if we write the Hilbert space for a local system as a tensor product of spaces of localized states, then by definition two macrostates different from each other by an amount of order one in each of a finite fraction of the factors. The total number of states is

$$N_{ap}=n^k$$
(8)
where $`n`$ is the number of local states and $`k`$ the number of localized factors. The overlap between two macrostates is

$$<\mathrm{\Psi }_1|\mathrm{\Psi }_2>\underset{i=1\mathrm{}ak}{}o_i,$$
(9)
where $`a`$ is a fraction of order one and each $`o_i`$ is a local overlap, a number less than one, but of order one. This is of order $`N_{ap}^p`$, as claimed.

Putting together these results, we find that the tunneling time between different macrostates representing different pointer positions on our measuring device, is of order $`e^{cR^{3/2}}`$, where $`R`$ is the size of the device. It is clear that $`R`$ can scale at most like some power , from the scaling law of the TOV equations, the size scales like the mass: $`RR_{dS}^\beta `$, where as shown above, $`\beta <\alpha <1`$ if we want to avoid interference between the device and the experiment. Thus, the tunneling time between macrostates of any sensible local measuring apparatus in dS space, is much shorter than the Poincare recurrence time. Indeed, for a dS radius corresponding to the observed acceleration of the universe, the recurrence time is so long that it is essentially the same number expressed in seconds as it is in units of the tunneling time of the largest possible apparatus in dS space. As a consequence, no local measurement (which, in our current state of ignorance of horizon physics means no measurement we know how to describe) can be made over time periods remotely comparable to the recurrence time. A mathematical description of dS space may contain the phenomenon of Poincare recurrence, but there is no apparent way to test this mathematical conclusion by experiment. Quantum fluctuations in the measuring device will wipe out all memory of measurements long before the recurrence occurs.

Environmentally induced decoherence could lengthen the time period of utility of a quantum measuring device. This is certainly an important quantitative effect for normal laboratory equipment. Indeed, it has been claimed that the decoherence due to interaction with the solar wind at the orbit of Saturn is necessary to explain the classical rotational behavior of one of its satellites, Hyperion . However, the experiments we are contemplating take place in an environment much more rarefied than interplanetary space. We are discussing observables in dS space that approach the S-matrix of an asymptotically flat spacetime in the limit of vanishing cosmological constant. The latter describes the behavior of finite numbers of particles in an infinite empty universe. There is no environment around to help the idealized “S-matrix meters” decohere, and we must rely on the superselection inherent in the behavior of these large local machines to perform measurements.

Finally we note that even if we could build measuring devices from the cosmological horizon states, we would find that the tunneling time between pointer macrostates of the horizon would be much smaller than the recurrence time, since such states could at most carry a finite fraction of the total entropy.

It is obvious that, given the size of the cosmological constant implied by observations, these restrictions on measurement have no practical content. The technological restrictions implied by our own local nature will, forever, make the measurements we can actually do much less accurate than these bounds would allow them to be. The significance of these bounds is to call into question the utility of discussing the recurrence time scale and to show that no mathematical quantum theory of AsdS space can be unique.

Indeed, it is clear that there must be many Hamiltonian descriptions of the same system, whose predictions are sufficiently similar that no conceivable experiment could distinguish them. The complete set of observables in a quantum system with a finite number of states, can only be measured by an infinite external measuring device. Any self measurement in such a system requires a split of the states into observer and observed, and an intrinsic uncertainty in measurements as a consequence of the quantum fluctuations of the measuring device. If we cannot measure all the mathematical consequences of a given definition of observables, then there will be many different mathematical theories which have the same consequences for all measurements. We view this as a kind of gauge equivalence, related to the infamous Problem of Time in the WD quantization of gravity. The Problem of Time in a closed universe is the absence of a preferred definition of time evolution. Different choices of time evolution are formally related by gauge invariance. But there are no gauge invariant operators. Our discussion of measurement theory in a finite system, leads to a similar conclusion: different choices of Hamiltonian with indistinguishable consequences for measurements777 The Problem of Time is more general and involves gauge equivalence between observers whose experience is measurably different. For example, the principle of Cosmological Complementarity, which we related to the Problem of Time, says that in the late stages of our AsdS universe, the observations of people in the Sombrero galaxy are gauge equivalent to our own. Each of us views his own physics as local, and his erstwhile companion’s physics as a quantum fluctuation on the event horizon. .

### 4.1 Local observations

The measurements we have been discussing so far are not realistic measurements from the point of view of a local observer in dS space. The machines that measure initial and final states of particles at different angles in our scattering experiment are outside each other’s event horizons. There is, until we take the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }0`$ limit, no single observer who can collect all of this information. We now want to discuss actual measurements by an observer gravitationally (or otherwise) bound to the experimental apparatus (the accelerator, not the detectors). As far as we have been able to tell, the most accurate and nondestructive measurements this observer can make on his experiment consists of receiving information from the free falling “S-matrix meters” that we have discussed previously. That is, one must equip those devices with a signaling mechanism, which can send photons or other messenger particles back to the observer at the center of the experiment’s horizon volume.

It is clear that the local observer can garner less information than is available to the freely falling machines. There are two separate effects here. First of all, as the machines approach the horizon, and their disturbance of the experiment goes to zero, the photons they emit are redshifted. For any fixed lower frequency cutoff on the local observer’s photon detection system, there will come a time when signals from the freely falling machine are undetectable. Furthermore, the photons sent to the center from the freely falling machine are accelerated. Thus, they will experience interaction with the Hawking radiation. As the machine approaches the horizon, this radiation gets hotter and denser. These random interactions will tend to destroy the information contained in the signal sent to the local observer. Thus, we can understand, in terms of relation between the S-matrix meters and local observations, the fact that the local observer finds the universe to be in a mixed state, while the S-matrix observations retain their quantum mechanical purity.

A final constraint on the accuracy of measurements made by a local observer comes from the fact that he is immersed in thermal bath at the dS temperature. Although this temperature scales like $`1/R_{dS}`$, the probability for a catastrophic burst of photons or the nucleation of a black hole which would engulf him is nonzero. The timescale between such events is, again, much less than the recurrence time. This phenomenon also occurs for the freely falling S-matrix meters. However, since their size is taken to scale to infinity with the dS radius, the effect can be made small in the limit of infinite radius. The predictions for the limiting Minkowski theory will be precise quantum measurements.

### 4.2 Discrete time?

This subsection is not strongly correlated with the rest of the article. We include it because our original speculations about physical clocks suggested a discrete and finite time evolution. We have already seen that, although the mathematical formalism appears to be compatible with arbitrarily long times, we cannot set up measuring devices within the system that could measure correlations over (much less than) a Poincare recurrence time.

It is certainly true that the static Hamiltonian in dS space has a maximal eigenvalue, corresponding to the Nariai black hole. Standard discussions of the energy time uncertainty relation then imply that we cannot set up time measurements of intervals shorter than the inverse of this energy. In a certain sense then, our intuition is correct.

A more formal argument that time evolution is discrete comes from our proposal for describing quantum mechanical Big Bang cosmologies . Here, the results of all possible experiments done by a local observer are described by a sequence of Hilbert spaces of (multiplicatively) increasing, finite, dimension. A given Hilbert space describes all experiments that could have been done in the causal past of a given point in spacetime. Time evolution along a particular timelike trajectory must be compatible with the state of the system breaking up into tensor factors at earlier times, with one factor describing all data that could have been accumulated inside of the particle horizon at a given point on the trajectory. Since Hilbert space dimensions are discrete, there is a natural discrete breakup of the time interval.

If we look at typical FRW cosmologies, the Fischler Susskind Bousso (FSB) area of the particle horizon scales like a power of the cosmological time. Thus, the minimal increase in area, corresponds to a smaller and smaller increase in cosmological time, as time goes by. The time resolution becomes finer and finer, and goes to zero if the particle horizon eventually becomes infinite888Note that this is in perfect accord with arguments based on the energy-time uncertainty relation. An observer with a larger particle horizon can access states of higher energy and therefore has a finer time resolution.. However, in AsdS space, there is an ultimate limit to this increase in resolution, because the particle horizon ceases its growth.

## 5 Conclusions

We have argued that a universe which asymptotically approaches dS space presents a serious challenge as to what is observable within that universe and how precise the measurement of such an observable can ever be.

We have shown that the essential limitation arises from the existence of an event horizon and the ability to describe AsdS space by a finite dimensional Hilbert space. In a nutshell, the necessity to separate the measuring device from the experiment such as to minimize the gravitational interaction, as well as availability of only a finite number of states to build detection devices, limits in principle the time period during which a measurement is ”reasonably” sharp. The time after which the pointers on any conceivable local measuring device suffer uncontrollable quantum fluctuations is much shorter than the Poincare recurrence time.

One of the consequences of these considerations not discussed in the text is that an inflationary epoch, for example due to a slowly rolling inflaton, in an AsdS universe is limited to be much shorter than a recurrence time. The reasons for such limitation is again the availability of a finite number of states to describe the dynamics of a scalar field. The quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field will wipe out the classical slow roll on a time scale shorter than the recurrence time. Therefore, although one can write down classical cosmologies in which an arbitrary number of e-foldings of inflation are followed by an AsdS era with any value of the cosmological constant smaller than the inflationary vacuum energy, many of these models will be ruined by quantum fluctuations.

It may be possible to model such dynamics by imposing a q-deformed algebra on the creation and annihilation operators of the inflaton, where the deformation parameter is the N-th root of unity and N is an integer commensurate with the finite number of the states. It seems clear that, for the value of the cosmological constant consistent with observations, the constraints on inflationary models are very mild. Even $`10^{10}`$ e-foldings of conventional slow roll inflation would be compatible with the constraints of our AsdS universe.

Our considerations suggest that any mathematical description of AsdS space is of limited utility. That is, there will be many different mathematical theories compatible with all possible experimental measurements, within the fundamental limitations on experimental accuracy. Furthermore, although a mathematical theory of AsdS space may describe arbitrarily long time scales, the recurrence time puts an upper bound on the operational meaning of any such description. Within the limits of “current technology”, in which measurement theory is based on local devices, the actual operational limits on measurement time scales are dramatically smaller than the recurrence time. Only if one could learn to exploit and manipulate properties of horizon microstates could one approach measurements that would be robust over a recurrence time.

Separate arguments suggest a fundamental limit on the resolution of time measurements in an AsdS space.

It is possible to take a pessimistic view of these limitations. In some sense they mean that if spacetime is AsdS, then the ideal goal of the theoretical physicist viz., to obtain a mathematically precise Theory of Everything is unattainable. One might be tempted to view this as a philosophical argument against the interpretation of current observations in terms of a cosmological constant. We reject such pessimism and its associated philosophical prejudices. In fact, the idealistic goal of a mathematical Theory of Everything seems a bit naive to us. Physics was developed as a way of explaining the behavior of isolated systems. The idea of experiments and ideally precise measurements presumes a precise, or at least infinitely refinable, separation between observer and observed. Quantum mechanics, which must (in our view) be interpreted in terms of infinitely large measuring devices, makes this idealization even more difficult to achieve. It seems almost inevitable that these mathematical idealizations should fail when applied to the whole universe, at least if it has a finite number of states.

The question of whether the universe has a finite or infinite number of states should be answered by experiment rather than philosophical prejudice 999The annoying question of what fixes the number of states if it is finite, cannot be answered in an experimentally testable way. Perhaps a sufficiently elegant theoretical answer to this question would calm our uneasiness about this point. . Classically, one can build models of scalar fields with metastable minima, which can mimic an arbitrary cosmological constant for long periods of time, but then relax to an infinite FRW future. In such models, it makes sense to talk about times much longer than the Poincare recurrence time of the temporarily dS universe. Indeed, this is quite analogous to our interpretation of observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background in terms of super-horizon size fluctuations of an inflationary universe. If what we are experiencing today is a second period of temporary inflation, it is not clear that measurements made by local observers prior to the end of inflation will be able to distinguish such a model from a true cosmological constant. Such local measurements would be subject to the constraints discussed in this paper. It would appear that only observers living after the Second Inflationary Era ends could verify the existence of Poincare recurrences.

However, if the conjecture of , relating supersymmetry breaking to the cosmological constant, and the existence of a true cosmological horizon with a fixed finite number of states is correct, then we will be able to interpret the measurement of superpartner masses as a verification of the fact that the universe is finite. Such a verification would imply that a mathematical Theory of Everything did not exist and would signal that we have reached the limits of theoretical physics. Given the apparent value of the cosmological constant, these limitations are of no practical relevance, nor will they ever be. Philosophical reservations about such a view of the world seem to us to have little relevance to the real enterprise of physics. This has always been to give a simple explanation of the regularities we see in nature. Even with an extremely optimistic estimate of what our observational capabilities might be in the distant future, there is no danger that the fundamental limits to observation in AsdS spacetimes will ever effect the outcome of a real measurement.

###### Acknowledgments.

We would like to thank Edoardo di Napoli, Amir Kashani-Poor, Hong Liu, Bob McNees, Jay Park and Philippe Pouliot for useful discussions. The research of W. F. and S. P. is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0071512. The research of T.B. was supported in part by DOE grant number DE-FG03-92ER40689.


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# Thermodynamic Compressibility of a Two-Dimensional Electron System: Signature of a Droplet State

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## Abstract

We have used a field-penetration method to measure thermodynamic compressibility of a moderately interacting two-dimensional electron system ($`r_s`$ $``$ 0.5-3) in a three terminal GaAs/AlGaAs device, fabricated with an epitaxial lift-off technique. We found that the density and temperature dependencies of the compressibility are qualitatively different from that observed in earlier studies of the 2D hole system, where interaction energies are considerably stronger. We show that the observed characteristics can be described by the recently developed formalism for compressibility of the droplet state.

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The apparent metal-insulator transition discovered in low-density, high mobility Si, SiGe and GaAs based two-dimensional semiconductor systems continues to capture much interest in the general condensed matter physics community . Although the experimental work in this research area has been predominately transport studies, there is recent work, both experimental  and theoretical  devoted to the study of the thermodynamic compressibility of the interaction of disordered two-dimensional systems, in the context of the 2D metal - insulator transition.

In our earlier measurement of a strongly correlated two-dimensional hole system (2DHS) in a p-type GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, we found that the negative inverse-compressibility at low-densities reaches a minimum value at the apparent metal-insulator transition and than increases dramatically with further decreasing density. The results show a strong correlation between the qualitative change in thermodynamic compressibility and the transport signature of the 2D metal-insulator transition. In that experiment, the 2DHS has a rather strong correlation due to the heavy effective mass. The dimensionless parameter $`r_s`$ which measures the ratio of the correlation energy to the Fermi energy ranges between 5 to 25 and the qualitative change in the compressibility was observed at $`r_s`$=13. To understand whether this behavior is specific to strongly correlated systems and how it is linked to the 2D metal-insulator transition, we have studied another two-dimensional electron system (2DES) where interactions are much weaker, $`r_s`$ = 0.5-3. There is no transition in the transport. We found that the compressibility behavior in the present system is qualitatively different from that observed in the 2DHS system. Its density dependence can be well described by the theory  of percolating droplet states.

To measure the thermodynamic compressibility, we have used a field penetration technique, developed initially by Eisenstein. Unique to our setup, the 2DES is sandwiched between two metal electrodes (the front and back gate) as shown in the inset of Fig. 1. By using an epitaxial lift-off technique for removing the MBE substrate, we were able to place a back-gate at a distance of 1000 nm from the 2DES, while the front gate is 167 nm away. The samples used in this experiment were cut from an n-type GaAs/AlxGa1-xAs wafer fabricated by molecular beam epitaxy. A 70 Å Al.30Ga.70As undoped spacer was used with an atomic planar doping layer of Si just above with a concentration of $`1.5\times 10^{12}cm^2`$. The rest of the sample, designed specifically to do the substrate removal, was identical to the one used for the 2DHS compressibility study . The mobility of the sample was $`186,000cm^2/Vs`$ at a density of about $`n=6\times 10^{11}cm^2`$ when the sample was unbiased. The wafer was carefully designed so that the mobility of the carriers was comparable to that in the 2DHS studied earlier.

To perform the experiment, we applied a 10 mV AC excitation voltage $`V_{ac}`$ to the front gate. A DC voltage $`V_g`$ was superimposed to control the carrier density. With the 2DES grounded, the penetration current from the front gate to the back gate was detected by a lock-in amplifier at an excitation frequency of 100 Hz. The frequency was chosen in such a way as to maximize our signal-to-noise ratio while remaining in a frequency independent regime.

As described before, by modeling the system as a distributed circuit, both the quantum capacitance $`C_q`$ and the resistance $`R_s`$ of the channel for the 2D carriers could be extracted individually based on the measured values for the in-phase $`I_x`$ and $`90^o`$ phase $`I_y`$ current components:

$$I=\frac{i\omega C_1C_2V_{ac}}{C_1+C_2}\left[1\left(\frac{C_q}{C_1+C_2+C_q}\right)\frac{\mathrm{tanh}(\alpha )}{\alpha }\right],$$
(1)
$$\alpha =\sqrt{i\omega \frac{C_q(C_1+C_2)}{C_1+C_2+C_q}R_s}.$$
(2)
where $`\omega `$ is the frequency of the excitation voltage, and $`C_1`$ and $`C_2`$ are the geometric capacitances between the front and back gates with respect to the 2D layer.

The quantum capacitance per unit area $`c_q`$ is related to the compressibility, $`\kappa =\left(\frac{dn}{d\mu }\right)/n^2`$, by $`c_q=e^2\left(\frac{dn}{d\mu }\right)`$, where $`\mu `$ is the chemical potential and $`n`$ is the carrier density.

Figure 1 shows both the in-phase $`I_x`$ and $`90^o`$ phase $`I_y`$ components of the penetrating current as a function of the gate voltage for five different temperatures ranging from 0.28 K to 1.2 K. The d$`\mu `$/dn value, which is inversely proportional to the compressibility, is extracted and plotted in Figure 2 as a function of the $`r_s`$ value in the bottom axis. At 100 Hz, d$`\mu `$/dn is almost directly proportional to $`I_x`$. There are important differences between this curve and the same curve for the 2DHS. First, it is immediately apparent from the data in Figure 1 that the resistive component of the signal does not have a temperature independent crossing point like that for the 2DHS. This should be expected from a sample with only weak to strong localization crossover behavior as shown in the transport measurements. The transport properties of the 2DES can be understood in terms of the more conventional scaling theory.  Secondly, d$`\mu `$/dn for the 2DES gas is positive everywhere. At high densities, this dependence is expected. As one can see from the quantitative agreement with the Hartree-Folk (HF) approximation calculation for low $`r_s`$ values.. Since the effective mass of electrons in GaAs is only 0.067 times the rest mass of an electron (roughly 5 times less than the effective mass of the holes in GaAs), the maximum $`r_s`$ value of this particular system is only about 3 for the lowest density studied here. Positive compressibility means that the kinetic energy is always greater than the exchange energy for the present system. Third, although there is still a minimum in d$`\mu `$/dn, just like that observed in the 2DHS, the turn-around is not nearly as sharp as is the case for that system and occurs at a density of roughly ($`r_s=1.4`$). Finally, the temperature dependence of d$`\mu /dn`$ is rather strong, in contrast to what is observed in the 2DHS where d$`\mu /dn`$ is temperature independent for a large range of temperatures from 0.3 K to 4.2 K.

Over the years, it has been suggested that the interacting 2D electrons in the presence of disorder can be understood by the droplet, or puddle, model.  In this model, the electrons are separated into “liquid” droplets with local density higher than the average density and “gas” islands with lower density. For a given disorder, due to the potential fluctuation of the donors, as the Fermi energy is decreased, the “gas” region increases. In this model, a cross-over from metallic behavior to insulating behavior should be seen around the percolation threshold.

Specifically, the thermodynamic compressibility has been recently calculated by Shi and Xie for an interacting system within the local density approximation (LDA). The LDA result produced a “turn-around” in $`d\mu /dn`$ which appears to be similar to that observed in the 2DHS system.  Furthermore, the LDA calculation was in good agreement with numerical simulations using “liquid” droplets and “gas” islands.

Following the work of Shi and Xie, we have calculated the compressibility numerically using LDA for the experimental parameters and found that the basic characteristics of the electron data can be well described by the formalism of the LDA.

In the LDA calculation, the local density ($`n_{eff}`$) rather than the average density, is used to determine the total energy of the system. The local density is assumed to be $`n_{eff}=n/f(n)`$, where $`f(n)`$ is the fractional area of the high density region. The chemical potential is therefore:

$$\mu (n)=d(\epsilon _0(n_{eff})n)/dn,$$
(3)
where $`\epsilon _0`$ is the energy density for the uniform electrons and is given by:

$$\epsilon =\frac{1}{2}\epsilon _{Fermi}+\epsilon _{exchange}=\frac{\pi \mathrm{}^2n}{2m^{}}\frac{4}{3}\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\frac{e^2}{4\pi ϵ}n^{\frac{1}{2}},$$
(4)
where $`ϵ`$ is the dielectric constant of the host material and $`m^{}`$ is the effective mass of the 2DES.

The chemical potential and $`d\mu /dn`$ are calculated numerically. As shown in Figure 3, the LDA approximation describes the data rather well in the high temperature limit. To fit the data we use the following relation for $`f(n)`$:

$$f(n)=\frac{1}{(1+(n_0/n)^\alpha )}$$
(5)
$`n_0`$=$`1.6\times 10^{11}cm^2`$ and $`\alpha `$=2.0 have been used to produce the theoretical curve in the figure. It turns out that the numerical fit is very sensitive to the value of $`\alpha `$ and $`n_0`$. Small deviations of about 10 percent from $`n_0`$=$`1.6\times 10^{11}cm^2`$ or $`\alpha `$=2.0 dramatically effect the curve in such a way that we can no longer qualitatively fit the data. Incidentally, the value of $`\alpha `$ of 2.0 is very close to that of 2.3 used to fit the numerical simulation by Shi and Xie  for off-plane, un-correlated charge impurities and this parameter should depend on the form of the disorder potential. We do not understand why the data at lower temperatures or lower densities deviate from the theoretical curve. It is possible that the temperature dependence of the size of the lower density islands is allowing the field to penetrate to the back gate more easily at the lowest temperatures. This could create a temperature dependence in $`f(n)`$ in equation 5, which could explain a temperature dependent $`d\mu /dn`$ curve. However, it is unlikely that the temperature dependence would come about from a single temperature dependent parameter in the above equation.

It is important to note that the accurate data fit in Figure 3 to the theoretical curve should not give the impression that the droplet model explains all experimental data for different systems. In fact, Figure 4 shows that the LDA does not fit the data for the 2DHS density dependence of $`d\mu /dp`$ at all. To compare with the data in reference  we cannot find parameters of $`\alpha `$ and $`n_0`$ which would fit the curve even qualitatively. Incidentally, we can match the data with an expression which contains a mathematical singularity, which of course is inconsistent with that for percolation. As an example, we plot a curve of the LDA using $`f(n)=(1(n_0/p)^\beta )`$. A reasonable fit is obtained with $`n_0`$= $`3.5\times 10^{10}cm^2`$ and $`\beta `$ = 0.06. This observation implies that the physics of the 2DHS which appears in the large $`r_s`$ regime, CANNOT be described by the droplet model.

The necessity of a singularity in f further suggests that there is a phase transition in the 2DHS system. This observation further supports the notion that the non-analytical behavior of the thermodynamic compressibility is consistent with the unusual signature of the metal-insulator transition observed in the transport for the same sample. Indeed there are theories describing the 2D metal-insulator transition as a phase transition from a liquid to a Wigner glass state or from a paramagnetic state to a spontaneously ordered ferromagnetic sate . It is difficult to determine the existence of these potential states from these measurements due to the absence of a quantitative analysis of the compressibility of the Wigner glass state or the ordered ferromagnetic state. For example, the compressibility of a Wigner crystal, in the absence of disorder, is known theoretically  to be only twice that for a liquid in the HF theory. However, compressibility for a glass state, in the presence of realistic disorder, has not yet been calculated.

It is reasonable to speculate about why the droplet model is more appropriate to describe the smaller $`r_s`$ system. It is now a rather common view that the interaction can suppress the effect of disorder. As shown in the numerical simulation, as $`r_s`$ becomes more important the system tends to keep the electron density as uniform as possible to minimize the Coulomb interaction. So for the strongly interacting heavy mass hole system, it is possible that the droplet state is largely suppressed.

In summary, we have measured the compressibility of a moderately interacting 2D electron system ($`r_s`$ $``$ 0.5-3). We revealed qualitative differences between this system and that observed earlier in a 2D hole system, where interactions are considerably stronger. We found that the compressibility data for the 2DES can be described in the framework of the droplet state model using the local density approximation.

We would like to thank M. Sarachik and X. C. Xie for useful discussions. This work is supported by NSF under grant # DMR 0071969.