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# Intrinsic tunneling spectra of Bi₂(Sr₂₋ₓLaₓ)CuO₆

## Abstract

We have measured intrinsic-tunneling spectra of a single CuO-layer La-doped $`\mathrm{Bi}_2\mathrm{Sr}_{2\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{La}_\mathrm{x}\mathrm{CuO}_{6+\delta }`$ (Bi2201-Lax). Despite a difference of a factor of three in the optimal superconducting critical temperatures for Bi2201-La0.4 and Bi2212 (32 and 95 K, respectively) and different spectral energy scales, we find that the pseudogap vanishes at a similar characteristic temperature $`T^{}230300`$ K for both compounds. We find also that in Bi2201-Lax, PG humps are seen as sharp peaks and, in fact, even dominate the intrinsic spectra.

The existence of a pseudogap (PG) in the normal-state quasi-particle density of states (DOS) of high-temperature superconductors (HTS) was revealed in many experiments . The PG phenomenon attracts considerable attention because it is believed to be a key to the understanding of high-temperature superconductivity. Many groups tried to find a common relation between PG and superconductivity, and several models have been advanced . Two powerful surface probes, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and scanning tunneling spectroscopy, can directly access the DOS. They showed that in $`\mathrm{Bi}_2\mathrm{Sr}_2\mathrm{CaCu}_2\mathrm{O}_{8+\delta }`$ (Bi2212) and $`\mathrm{Bi}_2\mathrm{Sr}_2\mathrm{Cu}_1\mathrm{O}_{6+\delta }`$ (Bi2201), a PG in the normal state develops into the superconducting gap (SG) once phase coherence is established below the superconducting critical temperature $`T_c`$ . This favored the idea that PG is intimately connected to superconductivity and that it could be the signature of precursor pairing .

However, the $`c`$-axis inter-plane (intrinsic) tunneling , which allows access to the DOS from ”inside” a single crystal, resolved separate spectral features related to superconductivity and the pseudogap. Sharp SG peaks and shallow PG ”humps” coexist at low temperatures and have different temperature and magnetic-field dependencies  implying different origins of the PG and superconductivity. Most experiments have, so far, been restricted to Bi2212, and it is especially important to study a compound different from Bi2212 in order to make general conclusions.

Here we present for the first time intrinsic-tunneling spectra of single CuO-layer La-doped $`\mathrm{Bi}_2\mathrm{Sr}_{2\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{La}_\mathrm{x}\mathrm{CuO}_{6+\delta }`$ (Bi2201-Lax), having a much lower superconducting critical temperature ($`T_c^{max}32`$ vs. 95 K in Bi2212). It turns out that the characteristic pseudogap temperature, $`T^{}230300`$ K, is nearly the same for both compounds. We also find that PG humps are seen as sharp peaks that dominate the intrinsic spectra in Bi2201-Lax. This implies that the dips, which have been stressed , are much likely a result of the superposition of SG- and PG peaks in the present experiments.

We measured intrinsic tunneling spectra across mesas about 15-150 nm high and from $`4\times 4`$ to $`10\times 10`$ $`\mu `$m2 in area. Such mesas comprise $`N=10100`$ intrinsic tunnel junctions. The mesas were lithographically patterned on the surfaces of Bi2201-Lax single crystals . Details of the sample fabrication can be found elsewhere .

Fig. 1 shows current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of optimally doped Bi2201-La0.4 mesas with Tc $``$ 32 K. At small currents (main panel), there are $`N`$ = 18 hysteretic branches, every one corresponding to sequential switching of more and more intrinsic tunnel junctions from the superconducting to the normal state. When the bias current becomes larger than the superconducting critical current $`I_c^{max}`$ of the last (”strongest”) junction in the mesa, the I-V characteristic becomes single-valued, see Fig. 1a. This single-valued curve corresponds to the sum of the voltages across all $`N`$ junctions, $`V(I)=v_i(I)`$. For junctions with nearly equal $`v_i(I)`$, we set $`V(I)=Nv(I)`$, which allows deducing the average $`v(I)`$ per junction from the experimentally measured $`V(I)`$. The tunneling spectrum $`\sigma (v)\mathrm{d}I/\mathrm{d}v(v)`$ can then be obtained by a numerical differentiation of the $`v(I)`$-curve.

Fig. 2a shows $`\sigma (v)`$ for the Bi2201-La0.4 sample at several temperatures. Two sets of peaks are clearly seen at voltages of $`\pm v_s=11.5`$ and $`\pm v_p=17`$ mV per tunnel junction. The inner peaks rapidly smear with temperature and completely fade away close to $`T_c`$, implying that they are closely related to superconductivity. The outer ones, on the contrary, change very little and survive even at $`T>T_c`$, representing a pseudogap.

Surprisingly, both peaks are equally sharp at low temperatures, and the outer peaks are even higher than the inner ones. These spectra should be compared with a typical spectrum obtained on Bi2212 , see Fig. 2b, where the outer peaks (humps) are very shallow in agreement with many tunneling and ARPES studies . The humps and superconducting peaks are separated by ”dips” . In both compounds, the PG peaks persist nearly to room temperature, while the SG peaks disappear at $`T_c`$ .

Surface-tunneling and ARPES experiments usually show that the superconducting peaks at $`T<T_c`$ transform gradually into the pseudo-gap humps at $`T>T_c`$ . Such observations promote the idea that the humps and superconducting peaks have a common origin as in the model of precursor superconductivity . In this model, the superconductivity pairing actually starts at a temperature much higher than $`T_c`$, giving rise to partial depletion of the DOS (pseudogap). These pre-formed Cooper pairs form a coherent superconducting condensate first at a lower temperature, $`T_c`$, and the corresponding features of the tunneling spectra sharpen.

In contrast, the temperature evolution of the intrinsic spectra systematically shows that humps are distinct from superconducting peaks at all temperatures implying that the pseudo- and superconducting gaps are independent parameters and most likely have different origins, see Figs 2 and 3 and Refs. . It should be emphasized that the humps are obviously the leading features of the intrinsic tunneling spectra in the present experiments, with dips just being a result of a superposition of the superconducting peaks and humps at different voltages, contrary to Ref. .

Assuming that the peaks represent different energy gaps in the system, we can obtain numerical values for them, taking $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_s=v_s`$ and $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_p=v_p`$. Next, we take the temperature of the minimum in the $`c`$-axis resistance-versus-temperature curve, $`R_c(T)`$, as a measure of the characteristic pseudogap temperature $`T^{}`$. In the case of Bi2212, $`T^{}`$ coincides with $`T_\chi ^{}`$ determined from susceptibility measurements at all doping levels . In our experiments, $`T^{}`$ both for the Bi2212 and Bi2201 samples roughly matches the temperature when the depression of $`\sigma (0)`$ smears out and $`\sigma (V)`$ becomes convex with temperature. To illustrate this, we plot in Fig. 4 several intrinsic tunneling spectra of another Bi2201-La0.4 sample at temperatures around the minimum in $`R_c(T)`$. It is seen that the two rather broad PG peaks decrease in hight with temperature and eventually go under the bell-shaped background right near $`TT^{}`$.

The ratio $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_s/k_BT_c4.2`$ is close to the BCS value, while $`2\mathrm{\Delta }_p/k_BT^{}0.76`$ makes no sense. The ratio $`T^{}/T_c810`$ is much larger than values reported previously for pure Bi2201 and other HTS . Preliminary experiments with overdoped Bi2201-La0.2 (corresponding to a hole concentration $`p0.19`$ ) have shown that this ratio is $`34`$. For both overdoped and underdoped ($`x=0.6`$) samples, the quality of the resulting I-V curves was much worse than in Bi2212 for reasons unknown at the moment. They did not clearly show regularly spaced branches and it was difficult to determine the number of junctions. The intrinsic spectra on overdoped and underdoped samples also have strong PG humps, with the latter noticeably more smeared .

The doping dependencies $`T^{}(p)`$ together with $`T_c(p)`$ (taken from literature) are shown in Fig. 5. Data points represent the present experiments with $`T^{}`$ defined as above. The doping $`p`$ was assumed from the nominal La-content according to Ref. . The best-fit line through the data points for Bi2201-Lax lies above and is steeper than the $`T^{}(p)`$-line for Bi2212. It intersects the doping axis at $`p0.2`$, almost at $`p_c=0.19`$ indicated as a quantum critical point in several models .

An important result of this paper is that, despite a difference of a factor of three in the optimal $`T_c`$s, and different energy scales for the Bi2201-Lax\- and Bi2212 spectra (see Fig. 2), the corresponding $`T^{}(p)`$-lines are in close vicinity to each other, see Fig. 5. This fact agrees with the notion that superconductivity and pseudogap are independent phenomena, which has previously been proposed by earlier intrinsic-tunneling measurements on Bi2212 , as well as heat-capacity and nuclear-magnetic-resonance studies .

It may be argued that the coincidence simply suggests that the energy scale for the formation of preformed pairs is similar for Bi2201 and Bi2212; the large difference in $`T_c`$ between the two systems is due to the difference in the strength of the phase fluctuations. This argumentation does not agree well with another important result that the humps in Bi2201 are much stronger than in Bi2212 at one and the same temperature. Intense fluctuations in Bi2201 would be expected to smear the spectral features more efficiently.

Although we do not have a proper explanation for why PG humps are much stronger in Bi2201 than in Bi2212, we would like to outline two possible mechanisms.

One mechanism is associated with a saddle-point singularity (usually called van Hove singularity, VHS) in the vicinity of the $`(\pi ,0)`$ point of the Brillouin zone. The existence of the VHS follows from the band structure of a two-dimensional (2D) metal on a square lattice with hopping beyond nearest neighbors: $`ϵ_k=2t(\mathrm{cos}k_x+\mathrm{cos}k_y)+4t^{}\mathrm{cos}k_x\mathrm{cos}k_y.`$ The singularity lies below and close to the Fermi level, depending on $`t^{}0`$, and should result in two symmetric peaks in the tunneling conductance between two such metals. Below $`T_c`$, there should be two more (superconducting) peaks in the spectra . The VHS-scenario of the PG formation was studied theoretically by Markiewitcz  and Onufrieva et al .

The intrinsic tunneling spectroscopy is perhaps the most feasible method where these VHS peaks can be detected. Ideal alignment of the single-crystalline electrodes assures that the intrinsic tunneling occurs with conservation of $`k_{x,y}`$ (specular tunneling). Such a tunneling would take account of the details of the Fermi surface, in particular, VHS. The $`\sigma (V)`$ should be calculated in terms of the spectral functions $`A(𝐤,E)`$  instead of the overall DOS . Then, the intrinsic tunneling conductivity, $`\sigma (V)`$, can be readily associated with the peculiar ARPES spectra at the $`(\pi ,0)`$ point where sharp peaks and humps are seen even at room temperature .

Since an intra-bilayer coupling between individual CuO planes is expected to smear VHS , the PG humps should be weaker in the double-layer Bi2212 as compared to the single-layer Bi2201. 2D VHS can also lead to charge- or spin-density waves , which would account for the large increase of $`R_c(T<T^{})`$, see Fig. 4.

Another mechanism for the sharp and strong PG peaks is the long-known resonant tunneling which, in application to HTS, was studied theoretically by Abrikosov .

Indeed, the Bi2212 and Bi2201 single crystals are by themselves just periodic multibarrier tunneling structures that are, by geometry, reminiscent of 2D semiconducting multilayer heterostructures. An overall transmission coefficient for tunneling through such structures is known to have several sharp peaks , which should be largely independent of superconductivity in the system making sort of ”background” for all other features.

Even one intrinsic junction consists of several layers. The intermediate double-BiO ones are situated inside the intrinsic tunneling barriers between the CuO2 ”electrodes” and therefore can represent wells and resonant centers. The PG signatures in optical and d.c. conductivities can be well modelled assuming that the $`c`$-axis tunneling involves these layers .

Although these suggested models are not supported here by any thorough analysis, they draw attention to quite simple mechanisms for experimental observations and invite to a more quantitative theoretical consideration.

In conclusion, we have experimentally found that despite quite different superconducting properties of Bi2201-Lax and Bi2212, their characteristic pseudogap temperatures are nearly the same, suggesting that the superconductivity and pseudogap are independent phenomena in HTS. Furthermore, the PG ”humps” are seen as strong and distinct features of Bi2201 intrinsic spectra, much stronger than previously reported. These new findings require further theoretical understanding.

###### Acknowledgements.

Financial support from the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (OXIDE program) is greatly appreciated.


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# Comments on the Hydrogen Atom Spectrum in the Noncommutative Space

## Abstract

There has been disagreement in the literature on whether the hydrogen atom spectrum receives any tree-level correction due to noncommutativity. Here we shall clarify the issue and show that indeed a general argument on the structure of proton as a nonelementary particle leads to the appearance of such corrections. As a showcase, we evaluate the corrections in a simple nonrelativistic quark model with a result in agreement with the previous one we had obtained by considering the electron moving in the external electric field of proton. Thus the previously obtained bound on the noncommutativity parameter, $`\theta <(10^4GeV)^2`$, using the Lamb shift data, remains valid.

Recently a large amount of research work has been devoted to the study of physics on noncommutative space-times and in particular noncommutative Moyal plane (for a review see, e.g., ). In these works both quantum mechanics (QM) and field theory on noncommutative spaces have been studied. Besides the theoretical interests, by comparing the results of noncommutative version of usual physical models with present data, lower bounds on the noncommutative scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}`$ have been obtained : as a conservative estimate, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}\stackrel{>}{_{}}110TeV`$.

In this commentary we would like to focus on the Hydrogen atom in the noncommutative space and re-analyze its spectrum. This system has previously been considered in  with a disagreement on the results. Here, through a more careful analysis we intend to clarify the discrepency. In  we have analyzed the Hydrogen atom in the noncommutative space considering the system described by a one-particle Schrodinger equation. Explicitly we considered the electron in an external Coulomb field; hence the system is described by

$`H|\psi =i\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{}{t}}|\psi `$with

$$H=\frac{\widehat{p}_e^2}{2m_e}+V(\widehat{x}_e),$$
(1)
where $`\widehat{x}_e`$ and $`\widehat{p}_e`$ are the phase space coordinates of the electron and

$`[\widehat{x}_e^i,\widehat{x}_e^j]`$ $`=`$ $`i\theta ^{ij},`$ (2)
$`[\widehat{x}_e^i,\widehat{p}_e^j]`$ $`=`$ $`i\mathrm{}\delta ^{ij},`$ (3)
$`[\widehat{p}_e^i,\widehat{p}_e^j]`$ $`=`$ $`0.`$ (4)
Then it is easy to see that the new coordinates $`x_i=\widehat{x}_i+\frac{1}{2\mathrm{}}\theta _{ij}\widehat{p}_j,p_i=\widehat{p}_i`$ satisfy the usual canonical commutation relations

$`[\widehat{x}_e^i,\widehat{x}_e^j]`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (5)
$`[\widehat{x}_e^i,\widehat{p}_e^j]`$ $`=`$ $`i\mathrm{}\delta ^{ij},`$ (6)
$`[\widehat{p}_e^i,\widehat{p}_e^j]`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (7)
and in terms of these “canonical” coordinates, the Hamiltonian takes the familiar form of usual Hydrogen atom plus noncommutative corrections (cf. Eq.(2.5) in Ref.),

$`V(r,p)={\displaystyle \frac{Ze^2}{r}}Ze^2{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{}{L}\stackrel{}{\theta }}{4\mathrm{}r^3}}+O(\theta ^2),`$ (8)
where $`\theta _i=ϵ_{ijk}\theta _{jk}`$, $`r=\sqrt{_ix_i^2}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{L}=\stackrel{}{r}\times \stackrel{}{p}`$. (The value of $`|\stackrel{}{\theta }|`$ is the inverse square of the noncommutative scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}`$.) From here we concluded that there exist noncommutative corrections to the spectrum and comparing our results with the data for the Lamb-shift experiments, we obtained the bound $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}\stackrel{>}{_{}}10TeV`$.

On the other hand, in a more detailed analysis, the nucleus (here the proton) which exerts the Coulomb potential should also be considered as a dynamical object. In other words, one should solve the two-body Schrodinger equation. For the noncommutative Hydrogen atom this has been done in Ref.. There it was assumed that the proton, similar to the electron, is described by NC QED . Based on this assumption and the fact that under charge conjugation $`\theta _{ij}`$ changes the sign , it was shown that the noncommutativity effects will not change the spectrum of this two-body problem at the tree level (cf. Eq.(28) of Ref.), in disagreement with the results of  (in particular, with the above Eq. (8)).

In this note we argue that in fact the assumption of Ref. that the effective noncommutativity parameter for proton is equal to that of electron with a minus sign is not physically valid. Therefore, the “cancellation” of noncommutativity effects is not complete and hence our previous results on the form (8) for the potential with the correction term, as well as on the lower bound on $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}`$ are indeed valid. The essential point is that the proton, due to the fact that it has structure and is a composite particle, cannot be described by NC QED (applicable to elementary particles). To systems such as positronium, however, the analysis of Ref.  is applicable, resulting in no corrections to the spectrum at the tree level, due to noncommutativity of space-time. Noting the conservative bounds on $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}\stackrel{>}{_{}}110TeV`$ obtained from other physical analysis , and that $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$, or the inverse of the proton size, is of the order of $`200MeV`$, we notice that $`\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}}1`$. In other words the QCD effects (here the internal structure of proton) become important much before the noncommutative effects. In short, proton in the noncommutative Hydrogen atom essentially behaves as a commutative particle.

A full analysis of the problem, however, needs a better understanding of the noncommutative Standard Model (NCSM). Unfortunately, despite several efforts in constructing such a model , a complete formulation of NCSM is not yet available. Therefore, to present a quantitave treatment of the issue with the above arguments, we try to takle the problem of finding an effective description of electromagnetic interactions of proton through a naive quark model. In such a model we can safely assume that inside the proton we deal with free quarks.

However, there still remains a major problem to be addressed: in the NCQED the only possible charges coupled to photon are $`\pm 1,0`$ . As a result quarks (with fractional charges) cannot be described by NCQED. Nevertheless, since we are interested only in first order effects in $`\theta `$, we can use NCQED vertices for quarks, ***One may also try to use the expressions given in Refs. for the vertices. In that case, although the numerical coefficients (for the second term in (8), as derived from (9) and (10)) would be slightly different from what we present here, the order of the bound on $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}`$ obtained in this way would be the same. though only up to first order in $`\theta `$. Then the effective electron-proton interaction is the sum of the electron-quark Coulomb potentials for $`u`$, $`u`$ and $`d`$ quarks, namely,

$$V=V_{u_1}+V_{u_2}+V_d.$$
(9)
The expressions for the potentials $`V_q`$ can be obtained, as usual, as the nonrelativistic limit of noncommutative one-photon exchange,

$$V_q=Qe^2V(\stackrel{}{x}_q+\frac{1}{4}\stackrel{}{\theta }\times \stackrel{}{K}_q),$$
(10)
where $`V(\stackrel{}{r})=\frac{1}{|\stackrel{}{r}|}`$, $`Q`$ is $`2/3`$ and $`1/3`$ for $`u`$ and $`d`$ quarks respectively, $`\stackrel{}{x}_q`$ is the relative separation of electron and the corresponding quark and $`\stackrel{}{K}_q`$ is $`\stackrel{}{P}_e+\stackrel{}{P}_u`$ for $`u`$ quark and $`\stackrel{}{P}_e\stackrel{}{P}_d`$ for $`d`$ quark ($`\stackrel{}{P}_u`$ and $`\stackrel{}{P}_d`$ are the momenta of the corresponding quarks). The expression (10) for the values of $`Q=+1`$ and $`\stackrel{}{K}_q=\stackrel{}{K}=\stackrel{}{P}_e+\stackrel{}{P}_p`$, with $`\stackrel{}{P}_p`$ the momentum of proton, formally coincides with Eq. (28) of Ref. . However, in Ref. this was used for the overall electron-proton potential.

We should emphasize that the expressions (10) are valid up to the first order in $`\theta `$. Expanding (10) to the first order in $`\theta `$, it is evident that the effective Coulomb potential of proton and electron does not only depend on the Hydrogen atom center of mass momentum, which is the sum of electron and proton momenta, $`\stackrel{}{P}_e+\stackrel{}{P}_p=\stackrel{}{P}_e+\stackrel{}{P}_{u_1}+\stackrel{}{P}_{u_2}+\stackrel{}{P}_d`$, invalidating the result of Ref..

As a by-product, based on a similar quark model consideration on the electric dipole moment of neutron, one obtains the noncommutativity correction

$$\stackrel{}{d}_n^{NC}\underset{i}{}|Q_i|\stackrel{}{\theta }\times \stackrel{}{P_{q_i}}$$

with $`|\stackrel{}{P}_u||\stackrel{}{P}_d|\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}200MeV`$ and therefore in this model $`|\stackrel{}{d}_n^{NC}|e\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}}{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}^2}`$. Using the experimental upper bound of $`|\stackrel{}{d}_n|<0.63\times 10^{25}e\mathrm{cm}`$ , one obtains the lower bound $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NC}\stackrel{>}{_{}}200TeV`$.

The work of M.C. and A.T. is partially supported by the Academy of Finland, under the Project No. 54023. The work of M.M. Sh.-J. is supported in part by NSF grant PHYS-9870115 and in part by funds from the Stanford Institue for Theoretical Physics.


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# How Irrelevant Operators affect the Determination of Fractional Charge

## Abstract

We show that the inclusion of irrelevant terms in the hamiltonian describing tunneling between edge states in the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) can lead to a variety of non perturbative behaviors in intermediate energy regimes, and, in particular, affect crucially the determination of charge through shot noise measurements. We show, for instance, that certain combinations of relevant and irrelevant terms can lead to an effective measured charge $`\nu e`$ in the strong backscattering limit and an effective measured charge $`e`$ in the weak backscattering limit, in sharp contrast with standard perturbative expectations. This provides a possible scenario to explain the experimental observations by Heiblum et al., which are so far not understood.

Recent experiments Comforti  have raised the possibility that Laughlin quasiparticles (LQPs) Laughlin  may be able to tunnel through very high barriers in a FQHE tunneling experiment if the beam of LQPs is diluted. This is unexpected. Conventional wisdom says instead that in the limit of strong pinching, the quantum Hall fluid is split into two pieces. The vicinity of this limit, if it can be described perturbatively, can only involve tunneling of electrons from one half to the other, and noise experiments should give an effective carrier charge equal to $`e`$. The experimental observations Comforti  \- an effective tunneling charge as low as $`0.45e`$ for a measured transparency of only $`0.1`$ \- seems to be counterintuitive. Furthermore, unpublished experiments by Chung et al. ComfortiI  revealed an effective tunneling charge $`e`$ for a full beam of LQPs incident on an almost open quantum point contact. Both of these surprising observations are so far not understood. In a recent work, Kane and Fisher KaneFisher02  investigated by a mix of perturbative and non perturbative techniques, the tunneling of diluted beams of LQPs in a set up similar to the one in Ref. Comforti , and found no evidence for the tunneling of LQPs through high barriers. In this letter, we consider, using techniques of integrable field theory, tunneling hamiltonians in a strongly non perturbative region, where irrelevant terms play a major role. We show that, as a result of strong interactions, it is in fact very possible to measure an effective tunneling charge $`\nu e`$ in a region of small transparency and $`e`$ in a region of high transparency, a result at odds with perturbative intuition. We use the electron charge as unit and set $`h1`$ from now on.

Let us first recall the standard theoretical set-up for this problem. After bosonizing the chiral edges action, and performing some folding transformations, the hamiltonian with only the most relevant term included is the boundary sine-Gordon model KFold :

$$H=\frac{1}{2}_{\mathrm{}}^0\left[(_x\varphi )^2+\mathrm{\Pi }^2\right]+v\mathrm{cos}\sqrt{2\pi \nu }\varphi (0).$$
(1)
This model is integrable GhoZam , and DC current and noise can be calculated FLSI ; FLSII . In the weak backscattering limit, obtained at small $`v`$ or large energies, the backscattered current is small, and the noise is determined by incoherent tunneling of LQPs of charge $`\nu `$. On the other hand, in the strong backscattering limit, the transmitted current is small, and the noise is determined by incoherent tunneling of electrons. We exclusively consider the case of zero temperature, $`T=0`$, in this note. The exact solution of the hamiltonian relies crucially on an integrable quasiparticle description. At zero bias, $`V=0`$, the ground state of the theory is just the vacuum with neither kinks nor breathers; the quasiparticles are in fact defined as excitations above this vacuum. For $`V>0`$, kinks of charge unity start filling the vacuum. Unfolding the theory (1) gives rise to right moving particles only, and we parameterize their energy and momentum by $`ϵ=p=e^\theta `$, $`\theta `$ the rapidity. The new ground state is made of kinks occupying the range $`\theta (\mathrm{},A]`$; in other words, the filling fractions are $`f_+(\theta ,V)=1`$ for $`\theta <A`$ and $`f_+(\theta ,V)=0`$ for $`\theta >A`$. The surface of the sea is approximately $`A\mathrm{ln}(V)`$, but computing $`A`$ exactly requires some technology due to the kink interaction. There are no antikinks nor breathers in the sea at $`T=0`$, so their densities do not appear in this analysis. For ease of notation, we define $`\rho (\theta )n_+(\theta ,V)f_+(\theta ,V)|_{T=0}`$. At $`T=0`$ the quantization of allowed momenta reads:

$$2\pi \rho (\theta )=e^\theta +2\pi _{\mathrm{}}^A\mathrm{\Phi }(\theta \theta ^{})\rho (\theta ^{})𝑑\theta ^{},$$
(2)
where $`\rho =0\text{ in }[A,\mathrm{})`$, and $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\frac{1}{2i\pi }\frac{d}{d\theta }S_{++}(\theta )`$ follows from the kink-kink scattering matrix in the bulk. A straightforward exercise in Fourier transforms and Wiener Hopf integral equations FLSbig  leads to $`e^A=\frac{V}{2}\frac{G_+(0)}{G_+(i)}`$, and thus,

$$\stackrel{~}{\rho }(\omega )=\frac{1}{2i\pi }\frac{G_{}(\omega )G_+(i)}{\omega i}e^{(i\omega +1)A}.$$
(3)
where the kernels have been defined as ($`\gamma =\frac{1}{\nu }1`$)

$$G_+=\sqrt{2\pi (\gamma +1)}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(i(1+\gamma )\omega /2\gamma )}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(i\omega /2\gamma )\mathrm{\Gamma }(1/2i\omega /2)}e^{i\omega \mathrm{\Delta }},$$
(4)
and $`G_{}(\omega )=G_+(\omega )`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{ln}\gamma \frac{1+\gamma }{2\gamma }\mathrm{ln}(1+\gamma )`$.

It is important to stress that the quantization of the bulk theory (we neglect finite length effects here) is independent of the boundary interaction. The mere choice of the quasiparticle basis however does depend crucially on this interaction; in fact, it is chosen precisely in such a way that the quasiparticles scatter one by one, without particle production, on the boundary. This is described by a scattering matrix element $`Q`$, in terms of which the current reads FLSbig

$$I(V,T_B)=_{\mathrm{}}^A\rho (\theta )\left|Q\left(\theta \theta _B\right)\right|^2𝑑\theta $$
(5)
with $`|Q|^2=1/(1+\mathrm{exp}[2(11/\nu )(\theta \theta _B)])`$. Here, $`\theta _B`$ is a measure of the strength of the tunneling term in (1), $`e^{\theta _B}v^{\frac{1}{1\nu }}`$. Similarly, the noise can be written as

$$S(V,T_B)=_{\mathrm{}}^A\rho (\theta )\left(\left|Q\left(\theta \theta _B\right)\right|^2\left|Q\left(\theta \theta _B\right)\right|^4\right)𝑑\theta .$$
(6)
In terms of renormalization group theory (RG), the boundary interaction induces a flow from Neumann (N) to Dirichlet (D) boundary conditions. It is widely believed that these are the only possible conformal boundary conditions for the compact boson. The whole operator content at the strong backscattering (D) fixed point can be determined using general considerations of conformal invariance Affleck : the allowed operators have dimension $`h_D=n^2/\nu `$ modulo integers, where $`n`$ is an integer. We stress that there is no operator of dimension $`\nu `$ at this fixed point. Instead, the most relevant operator has $`h=1/\nu `$. This operator is $`\mathrm{cos}\sqrt{2\pi /\nu }\stackrel{~}{\varphi }`$ ($`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }`$ being the dual of the field $`\varphi `$) and corresponds to transfer of charge unity.

The allowed operators at the weak backscattering (N) fixed point have dimensions $`h_N=\nu m^2`$ modulo integers, where $`m`$ is an integer. The tunneling of LQPs at this fixed point corresponds to $`m=1`$, and to the most relevant operator in its vicinity. Note that since $`\nu `$ is the inverse of an (odd) integer, the operator of dimension $`h=1/\nu `$ is allowed near this fixed point. This operator conforms to tunneling of a bunch of $`1/\nu `$ LQPs – in a sense an electron – in the weak backscattering limit.

The two types of tunneling charges can be identified theoretically and experimentally using the noise. Near the high energy fixed point, the noise as well as the backscattered current are due to rare tunnelings of LQPs, so $`S\nu (I_0I)`$, while near the low energy fixed point, the noise as well as the current are due to tunneling of electrons, so $`SI`$. These results may appear to contradict the fact that in the integrable approach, the quasiparticles always have charge unity. What happens of course is that in the weak backscattering limit, these quasiparticles have non negligible probabilities of tunneling, so the term $`|Q|^4`$ is of the same order than $`|Q|^2`$, resulting into a slope $`(\nu )`$.

Interestingly, hamiltonians with irrelevant terms added to the basic tunneling term in (1) are also solvable. Some technical points of such a model were already discussed in the case $`\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ in Ref. EKS , where the hamiltonian

$`H={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^0}\left[(_x\varphi )^2+\mathrm{\Pi }^2\right]+v_1\mathrm{cos}\sqrt{2\pi \nu }\varphi (0)`$
$`+v_2\mathrm{cos}\sqrt{2\pi /\nu }\varphi (0)+v_3\mathrm{\Pi }(0)^2`$ (7)
was considered. Here, the $`v_1`$-term corresponds to tunneling of LQPs, the $`v_2`$-term to tunneling of electrons, and the $`v_3`$-term to an on-site density-density interaction on the constriction. The on-site density-density interaction reveals the reasonable assumption that electron forward scattering is stronger on the constriction than in the bulk. The basis of quasiparticles is the same as before, and it was shown in Ref. EKS  that the only change is the boundary scattering matrix, which follows from

$`P+Q`$ $`=`$ $`i\mathrm{coth}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta \theta _B^3}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{i\pi }{4}}\right)`$ (8)
$`PQ`$ $`=`$ $`i\mathrm{tanh}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta \theta _B^1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{i\pi }{4}}\right)\mathrm{coth}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta \theta _B^2}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{i\pi }{4}}\right)`$
The relation between the bare parameters $`v_i`$ and the parameters in the scattering matrix $`\theta _B^i`$ is a bit complicated (it also depends on the regularization procedure adopted). However, it simplifies in the limit of small bare couplings where we find, up to irrelevant numerical factors, $`v_1e^{\theta _B^1/2}`$, $`v_2\left(e^{\theta _B^2}+e^{\theta _B^3}\right)`$, and $`v_3\left(e^{\theta _B^2}e^{\theta _B^3}\right)`$. In the case $`\nu =1/2`$, the particles have a trivial interaction in the bulk, so the density is simply $`\rho =e^\theta `$, and the Fermi momentum $`e^A=V/2`$. Assuming bare couplings are all rather small, we restrict to the regime $`\theta _B^1<<\theta _B^2,\theta _B^3`$.

The interplay of the different terms can lead to several kinds of behaviors. We only discuss here the question of effective tunneling charges. Thus, the curves representing the noise $`S/V`$ as a function of the current $`I/V`$ are considered. With a single tunneling term, see Eq. (1), these curves have a single branch going from the origin to the point $`I/V=\nu `$. The most interesting feature of such a graph is its slope at the two extremities: near $`I/V=0`$ the slope is unity corresponding to tunneling of electrons, and near $`I/V=\nu `$ the slope is $`(\nu )`$ corresponding to tunneling of LQPs with charge $`\nu `$.

If we include irrelevant terms under the choice that $`\theta _B^2\theta _B^3`$, the results are similar to the ones obtained with a single tunneling term. This can be explicitely seen by considering a particle with energy $`e^\theta `$; the boundary conditions it will see depend on the magnitude of $`\theta `$, giving rise to two different energy domains:

$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}& & \theta _B^3& & \theta _B^2& & \theta _B^1& & \\ & P0& & & & P0& & Pi& \\ & Qi& & & & Qi& & Q0& \\ & N& & & & N& & D& \end{array}$$
(9)
As the energy scale is increased - corresponding, for instance, to the increase of the applied voltage - the system successively sees D, then N boundary conditions, just like in the case with a single perturbation. Irrelevant terms do not have any strong qualitative effect.

It turns however out that things are quite different if there is a ‘resonance’ between the $`\mathrm{cos}\sqrt{2\pi /\nu }\varphi `$ and $`(\mathrm{\Pi })^2`$ terms. This corresponds to $`\theta _B^3\theta _B^2\theta _B^1`$ (similar results are also obtained when $`\theta _B^2\theta _B^3\theta _B^1`$.) The meaning of the ‘resonance’ between the two irrelevant terms is not entirely clear: technically, it corresponds to having the term of dimension 2 being the regularized square of the bare tunneling term, as $`\mathrm{cos}\sqrt{\pi }\varphi \mathrm{cos}\sqrt{\pi }\varphi \mathrm{cos}2\sqrt{\pi }\varphi +(\varphi )^2`$. In that case, a variety of behaviors appears between the two energy scales $`e^{\theta _B^2}`$ and $`e^{\theta _B^3}`$ and strongly counterintuitive properties can be observed. If we consider again a particle with energy $`e^\theta `$, the boundary conditions it will see now fall within four energy domains:

$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}& & \theta _B^3& & \theta _B^2& & \theta _B^1& & \\ & P0& & Pi& & P0& & Pi& \\ & Qi& & Q0& & Qi& & Q0& \\ & N& & D& & N& & D& \end{array}$$
(10)
Consequently, as the energy scale is increased, the system successively sees D, then N, then D, then N boundary conditions.

In the presence of the three tunneling terms, and restricting to the situation $`\theta _B^3\theta _B^2\theta _B^1`$ , the current upon increasing the voltage increases from $`0`$ to a value very close to $`I/V\nu `$, then goes back to a value very close to $`I/V0`$, then back to $`I/V=\nu `$. Only the two extremes are truly reached, and correspond to the fixed points that were mentioned before.

Of special interest are then the evolution of the noise, and especially the slopes of $`S`$ versus $`I`$ near the fixed points, as illustrated in Fig. 1.

Of course, a slope unity is observed at a real low energy $`V\theta _B^1`$. In that case, all particles in the reservoir see D boundary conditions, $`|Q|^2`$ is always very small, $`|Q|^4`$ negligible compared to it. While the $`N`$ fixed point is initially approached with a slope $`(\nu )`$ (corresponding to the tunneling of LQPs) it is left, as the voltage is increased, with a slope $`(1)`$ instead of $`(\nu )`$. This conforms to the tunneling process of $`1/\nu `$ LQPs from one edge to the other and was recently observed by Chung et al. ComfortiI .

As the voltage is increased ever further and the strong backscattering fixed point is approached again, the slope is equal to $`\nu `$ and not unity. In a naive perturbative analysis, one would study the vicinity of the strong backscattering fixed point and conclude that such a slope is not possible since there is no corresponding operator - physically, LQPs cannot tunnel ‘out’ of the quantum Hall fluid, where only electrons are known to exist. However, one should not forget that the strong backscattering fixed point is never actually reached on our trajectory - and presumably, what happens is that the slope $`\nu `$ cannot be understood perturbatively in the vicinity of that fixed point. Rather, in this case $`\nu =1/2`$, there are indications that the RG trajectory gets close to another fixed point, characterized by D boundary conditions with $`\varphi `$ pinned to values $`\varphi (0)=\frac{2n\pi }{\sqrt{4\pi }}`$. The slope $`1/2`$ could then be interpreted perturbatively in the limit of that fixed point. The situation bears some resemblance to the case of resonant tunneling discussed in Ref. KFold , where the slope would be interpreted as resulting from the tunneling of ‘half electrons’, that is (whole) electrons tunneling through an island. However, the situation is different here: the hamiltonian is not the resonant tunneling hamiltonian. For $`\nu =1/2`$, the resonant tunneling term $`\mathrm{cos}2\sqrt{2\pi \nu }\varphi (0)`$ is irrelevant and would not lead to the phenomena described above. Nevertheless, our findings might be interpreted in a way that the scattering potential effectively creates an ‘island’ at intermediate energy scales.

A drawback of the foregoing scenario is that, to observe the slope $`\nu `$ at fixed $`\theta _B`$’s, the strong backscattering limit has to be approached along an increasing voltage. This can easily be remedied however. One can for instance consider instead fixing $`V`$, and changing the $`\theta _B`$’s - corresponding to changing the backscattering potential in an experiment. Fig. 2 shows the noise and current for a particular trajectory where $`\theta _B^1`$ is increased while $`\theta _B^2`$ and $`\theta _B^3`$ are decreased.

This corresponds to increasing simultaneously the three scattering terms - hence, ‘pinching the point contact’. In that case, we find that, depending on the voltage, one can apparently approach the strong backscattering limit with a slope $`\nu =1/2`$. As emphasized in the inset of Fig. 2, in the very strong backscattering limit ($`S/V,I/V0.005`$) the slope $`\nu =1/2`$ reverts to a slope unity, the expected perturbative result. What we see is that, for an appropriate choice of parameters, the domain where this perturbative result can be observed is very small, while it is possible to get instead a slope $`\nu =1/2`$ over a large domain, and very close to the strong backscattering limit.

Although the foregoing results are obtained for $`\nu =1/2`$, they should reflect general properties of the field theory for all values of $`\nu \frac{1}{2}`$, that is in the “attractive regime” of the boundary sine-Gordon model. We thus expect that these properties will be observed at all filling fractions $`\nu =\frac{1}{t}`$ with $`t>1`$ an odd integer. Since these are the filling factors, where chiral edge excitations are responsible for transport in real FQHE devices, the field theories (1) and (7) provide a valid description of the tunneling phenomena in such systems.

In any case, it is possible to carry out, to some extent, an analysis similar to the $`\nu =1/2`$ one for arbitrary $`\nu `$, based on the fact that the hamiltonian (7) is integrable. A minor difference is that we do not know the correspondence between the hamiltonian and the reflection matrix, which was afforded by the free fermion representation in the case $`\nu =1/2`$ . A more important difference is that, for $`\nu <1/2`$, the second cosine is not the least irrelevant one, which makes the integrable hamiltonian rather non generic. Now, for hamiltonian (7), general considerations ensure that the reflection matrix differs from the usual ones by CDD phase factors (that is, factors which preserve all the symmetries and physical properties of the scattering matrices GhoZam ), and therefore must have the general form (recall $`\gamma =\frac{1}{\nu }1`$):

$`P+Q`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left[i\chi _g(\theta )\right]\mathrm{coth}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta \theta _B^3}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{i\pi }{4}}\right)`$
$`PQ`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left[i\chi _g(\theta )\right]\mathrm{tanh}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\gamma (\theta \theta _B^1)}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{i\pi }{4}}\right)`$ (11)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{coth}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\theta \theta _B^2}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{i\pi }{4}}\right).`$
The transmission probability $`|Q|^2`$ can then be extracted from these expressions, and current and noise computed as for $`\nu =1/2`$. Similar results are observed, with the main difference that the slopes near the weak and strong backscattering limit are not restricted to unity and $`\nu `$ any longer: intermediate values can appear, cf. Fig. 3.

Remarkably, slopes varying between $`1/3`$ and unity were observed in the noise experiments on FQHE devices at filling fraction $`\nu =1/3`$ in Ref. Comforti .

In conclusion, we have shown that the inclusion of irrelevant terms of a reasonable magnitude can lead to situations, where the effective charge extracted from the slope of the shot noise takes counterintuitive values. Although we have not precisely investigated the experimental scenario of diluted beams incident on a quantum point contact, our predictions could well be important to describe the so far unexplained experimental results in Ref. Comforti . We believe that at intermediate energies irrelevant operators are generally important. Therefore, non perturbative analyses are essential to interpret transport experiments at finite temperature and applied voltage.

We thank Y. C. Chung, R. Egger, H. Grabert, M. Heiblum, and C. L. Kane for helpful discussions. HS benefitted from the kind hospitality of the Freiburg Physics Department while this work was carried out, and was supported by the DOE and the Humboldt Foundation. BT was supported by the DFG and the LSF program.


text:
# On the energy-momentum tensor in non-commutative gauge theories

## Abstract

We study the properties of the energy-momentum tensor in non-commutative gauge theories by coupling them to a weak external gravitational field. In particular, we show that the stress tensor of such a theory coincides exactly with that derived from a theory where a Seiberg-Witten map has been implemented (namely, the procedure is commutative). Various other interesting features are also discussed.

Non-commutative field theories seiberg ; douglas  have been of much interest in recent years following developments in superstring theory. In such theories, the natural parameter of non-commutativity, $`\theta ^{\mu \nu }`$, is a dimensionful quantity. It is assumed to be a constant anti-symmetric tensor and this leads to a violation of Lorentz invariance in such theories, which also puts a bound on the magnitude of the parameter of non-commutativity carrol . In view of these, it is expected that scale invariance is also violated and correspondingly, the energy-momentum tensor has been studied in non-commutative gauge theories from several points of view bichl ; grimstrup ; kruglov ; dorn .

In non-commutative gauge theories, there is a map known as the Seiberg-Witten map seiberg , which ensures the gauge equivalence between the non-commutative theory and that of an ordinary gauge theory defined on a commutative space. A surprising outcome of these studies grimstrup , which use an improved Belinfante method jackiw , is that the energy momentum tensor of the non-commutative theory, upon using the Seiberg-Witten map, does not coincide with the energy-momentum tensor of the theory obtained from this map. Namely, the Seiberg-Witten map and the derivation of the energy-momentum tensor do not seem to commute. In this brief report, we study this question by coupling the non-commutative gauge theory (with and without the Seiberg-Witten map) to gravity das ; ooguri ; barcelos . We show that the energy-momentum tensors derived by this method do coincide, namely the map commutes with the derivation of the energy-momentum tensor. The energy-momentum tensors are shown to be manifestly symmetric and traceless, but conserved covariantly. It is shown that it is possible to obtain, from this, a conserved tensor which, however, is neither symmetric and traceless and coincides with the one obtained from the improved Belinfante method. We shall discuss here, for simplicity, only the non-commutative $`U(1)`$ gauge theory, although the above conclusions naturally extend to the $`U(N)`$ case.

The non-commutative $`U(1)`$ theory is described by the gauge invariant action

$$S=\frac{1}{4}d^4x\widehat{F}_{\mu \nu }\widehat{F}^{\mu \nu }$$
(1)
where the star product of two functions is defined by

$$A(x)B(x)=e^{\frac{i}{2}\theta ^{\mu \nu }_\mu ^\eta _\nu ^\xi }A(x+\eta )B(x+\xi )|_{\eta =\xi =0}$$
(2)
and the field strength tensor has the form

$$\widehat{F}_{\mu \nu }=_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu _\nu \widehat{A}_\mu i(\widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{A}_\nu \widehat{A}_\nu \widehat{A}_\mu )$$
(3)
where $`\widehat{A}_\mu `$ denotes the $`U(1)`$ gauge field defined on a non-commutative space. The Euler-Lagrange equations following from (1) lead to

$$\widehat{D}_\mu \widehat{F}^{\mu \nu }=_\mu \widehat{F}^{\mu \nu }i(\widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{F}^{\mu \nu }\widehat{F}^{\mu \nu }\widehat{A}_\mu )=0$$
(4)
By coupling the theory in (1) to a weak external gravitational field, we obtain

$$S=\frac{1}{4}d^4x\sqrt{g}g^{\mu \lambda }g^{\nu \rho }\widehat{F}_{\mu \nu }\widehat{F}_{\lambda \rho }$$
(5)
where $`g`$ denotes the determinant of the metric with a signature $`(+,,,)`$. The energy-momentum tensor of the theory can now be obtained as

$$\widehat{T}_{\mu \nu }=\frac{2}{\sqrt{g}}\frac{\delta S}{\delta g^{\mu \nu }}|_{g^{\mu \nu }=\eta ^{\mu \nu }}$$
(6)
We note that the star product involving the metric is not of consequence since the metric is set to the Minkowski metric at the end. It follows now in a straight forward manner that, for the theory in (1),

$$\widehat{T}_{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{2}\left(\widehat{F}_{\mu \lambda }\widehat{F}_\nu ^\lambda +\widehat{F}_{\nu \lambda }\widehat{F}_\mu ^\lambda \frac{1}{2}\eta _{\mu \nu }\widehat{F}_{\lambda \rho }\widehat{F}^{\lambda \rho }\right)$$
(7)
This tensor is manifestly symmetric and traceless and coincides with the one obtained through the conventional derivation in grimstrup . Furthermore, using the equations of motion (4) as well as Bianchi identity, it can be checked that this tensor is covariantly conserved, namely,

$$\widehat{D}_\mu \widehat{T}^{\mu \nu }=0$$
(8)
In this theory, the Seiberg-Witten map, to leading order in $`\theta ^{\mu \nu }`$, leads to the correspondence

$`\widehat{A}_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`A_\mu {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\theta ^{\alpha \beta }A_\alpha (_\beta A_\mu +F_{\beta \mu })+O(\theta ^2)`$
$`\widehat{F}_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`F_{\mu \nu }\theta ^{\alpha \beta }(F_{\mu \alpha }F_{\beta \nu }+A_\alpha _\beta F_{\mu \nu })+O(\theta ^2)=F_{\mu \nu }\left((F\theta F)_{\mu \nu }+(A\theta )F_{\mu \nu }\right)+O(\theta ^2)`$ (9)
where we have used an obvious matrix notation for simplicity. Here, the variables without a “hat” correspond to quantities defined on a commutative space and correspondingly

$$F_{\mu \nu }=_\mu A_\nu _\nu A_\mu $$
(10)
Substituting the map (9) into (1), we obtain, to order $`\theta `$,

$$S=\frac{1}{4}d^4x\left[(1\frac{1}{2}\theta ^{\alpha \beta }F_{\alpha \beta })F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }+2\mathrm{T}\mathrm{r}(\theta F^3)_\beta \left(\theta ^{\alpha \beta }A_\alpha F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }\right)\right]$$
(11)
Although a total divergence does not contribute to the equations of motion and is normally neglected in flat space-time, it does contribute to the energy-momentum tensor das  and that is the reason why we have manifestly kept such a term in (11). The Euler-Lagrange equations following from this action lead to

$$_\mu \left[(1\frac{1}{2}\theta ^{\alpha \beta }F_{\alpha \beta })F^{\mu \nu }\left((F^2\theta )^{\mu \nu }+(F\theta F)^{\mu \nu }+(\theta F^2)^{\mu \nu }\right)\frac{1}{4}\theta ^{\mu \nu }F_{\lambda \rho }F^{\lambda \rho }\right]=0$$
(12)
Furthermore, by coupling (11) to a weak external gravitational field, we can derive the energy-momentum tensor, as in (6), to obtain

$`T_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\theta ^{\alpha \beta }F_{\alpha \beta })\left(F_{\mu \lambda }F_\nu ^\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\eta _{\mu \nu }F_{\lambda \rho }F^{\lambda \rho }\right)\left((F\theta F^2)_{\mu \nu }+(F\theta F^2)_{\nu \mu }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\eta _{\mu \nu }\mathrm{Tr}(F\theta F^2)\right)`$ (13)
$`+_\beta \left(\theta ^{\alpha \beta }A_\alpha (F_{\mu \lambda }F_\nu ^\lambda {\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\eta _{\mu \nu }F_{\lambda \rho }F^{\lambda \rho })\right)`$
We note that the energy-momentum tensor is manifestly symmetric and traceless as is $`\widehat{T}_{\mu \nu }`$ in (7). Furthermore, it can be easily checked that, under the Seiberg-Witten map in (9) to leading order in $`\theta `$,

$$\widehat{T}_{\mu \nu }=T_{\mu \nu }$$
(14)
Namely, the energy-momentum tensor of the non-commutative theory, under a Seiberg-Witten map, goes over to that obtained from a theory with the map so that the process is commutative. Furthermore, under a Seiberg-Witten map to the leading order in $`\theta `$, eq. (4) gives

$$_\mu \left[(1\frac{1}{2}\theta ^{\alpha \beta }F_{\alpha \beta })F^{\mu \nu }(F\theta F)^{\mu \nu }(\theta F^2)^{\mu \nu }\right]=0$$
(15)
The dynamical equations (12) and (15) do not seem to coincide at first sight. However, it is easy to check, with the help of the relation (which holds to linear order in $`\theta `$),

$$_\mu \left[(F^2\theta )^{\mu \nu }+\frac{1}{4}\theta ^{\mu \nu }F_{\lambda \rho }F^{\lambda \rho }\right]=0$$
(16)
that the dynamical equations following from the non-commutative theory go over, under a Seiberg-Witten map, to the ones following from the deformed theory under the same map.

Since the dynamical equations as well as the energy-momentum tensors of the two theories are the same (to linear order in $`\theta `$), it follows from (8) that

$$_\mu T^{\mu \nu }=_\mu \left[(\theta FT^{(0)})^{\mu \nu }_\beta (\theta ^{\alpha \beta }A_\alpha T^{(0)\mu \nu })\right]$$
(17)
where $`T^{(0)\mu \nu }`$ corresponds to the energy-momentum tensor with $`\theta =0`$. Thus, we see that the energy-momentum tensor of the Seiberg-Witten deformed theory is not conserved in the ordinary sense, which is a reflection of the covariant conservation of the stress tensor in the non-commutative theory. However, it is clear that we can define a modified energy-momentum tensor

$`\overline{T}^{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`T^{\mu \nu }(\theta FT^{(0)})^{\mu \nu }+_\beta (\theta ^{\alpha \beta }A_\alpha T^{(0)\mu \nu })`$ (18)
$`=`$ $`(1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\theta ^{\alpha \beta }F_{\alpha \beta })(F^{\mu \lambda }F_\lambda ^\nu {\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\eta ^{\mu \nu }F_{\lambda \rho }F^{\lambda \rho })\left((F\theta F^2)^{\mu \nu }+(F\theta F^2)^{\nu \mu }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\eta ^{\mu \nu }\mathrm{Tr}(F\theta F^2)\right)`$
$`(\theta FT^{(0)})^{\mu \nu }`$
which will be conserved, namely,

$$_\mu \overline{T}^{\mu \nu }=0$$
(19)
However, this tensor is no longer symmetric or traceless because of the last term in (18). Furthermore, it coincides with the energy-momentum tensor derived from the improved Belinfante method.

Acknowledgment:

This work was supported in part by US DOE Grant number DE-FG 02-91ER40685, by CNPq and FAPESP, Brasil.


text:
# In-medium spectral change of 𝜔 mesons as a probe of QCD four-quark condensate

## I Introduction

The experiments with the detector system HADES lit1  at the heavy-ion synchrotron SIS at GSI (Darmstadt) are mainly aimed at measuring in-medium modifications of the light vector mesons via the $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ decay channel with high accuracy. At higher beam energies, experiments of the CERES collaboration lit2  at CERN SPS evidenced already hints to noticeable modifications of the dilepton spectrum which can be reproduced under the assumption of a strong melting of the $`\rho `$ meson in a dense, strongly interacting medium at temperature close to the chiral transition lit9 ; lit3 ; lit4 .

The great interest in studying properties of the light mesons in a hot/dense nuclear medium is caused by the expectation to find further evidences of the chiral symmetry restoration at finite temperature and baryon density. There are various theoretical indications concerning an important sensitivity of the meson spectral function to the partial restoration of the chiral symmetry in strongly interacting matter. In particular, at finite temperature the vector and axial-vector meson correlators become mixed in accordance with in-medium Weinberg sum rules lit5 ; lit6 . Such a mixing causes an increasing degeneracy between vector and axial-vector spectral functions which would manifest themselves as a decrease of the $`\rho `$ and $`A_1`$ meson mass splitting, for instance. Similarly, the degeneracy of scalar ($`\sigma `$ channel) and pseudo-scalar ($`\pi `$ channel) correlators found in lattice QCD lit7  can lead to a considerable enhancement of the $`\sigma `$ meson spectral function at finite temperature and density lit8 .

In spite of substantial efforts undertaken to understand the nature of vector mesons in a dense medium there is so far no unique and widely accepted quantitative picture of their in-medium behavior. The Brown and Rho conjecture lit9  on the direct interlocking of vector meson masses and chiral quark condensate $`\overline{q}q_n`$ supplemented by the vector manifestation of chiral symmetry in medium lit10 ; lit11  predict a strong and quantitatively the same decrease of the in-medium $`\rho `$ and $`\omega `$ meson masses.

At the same time, model calculations based on various effective Lagrangians (cf. lit3 ) predict rather moderate and different mass shifts for $`\rho `$ and $`\omega `$ mesons in a dense medium. In order ”to match” both sets of predictions one has to go beyond simplifications made in the above mentioned approaches: The in-medium vector meson mass shift is governed not only by $`\overline{q}q_n`$ but also by condensates of higher order to be calculated beyond mean-field approximation. Further, effective Lagrangian models are dealing with the scattering amplitudes in free space, so that the effects related to the in-medium change of the QCD condensates are hidden or even washed out.

The very consistent way to incorporate in-medium QCD condensates is trough QCD sum rules lit12 ; lit13 . As pointed out in our , the in-medium mass shift of the $`\rho `$ and $`\omega `$ mesons is dominated by the dependence of the four-quark condensate on the density. In the present letter we concentrate on the in-medium $`\omega `$ meson since the effect of the four-quark condensate is most pronounced for the isoscalar channel. Within the Borel QCD sum rule approach we go beyond the mean field approximation and use the linear density dependence of the four-quark condensate. We employ for the hadronic spectral function a constraint based on the general structure of the $`\omega `$ meson in-medium propagator with imaginary part of the self-energy delivered by an effective chiral Lagrangian. Our QCD sum rule evaluations show that the in-medium change of the four-quark condensate plays indeed a crucial rule for modifications of the $`\omega `$ spectral function. In particular, the sign of the $`\omega `$ meson mass shift is changed by variation of a parameter which describes the strength of the density dependence of the four-quark condensate. Since the difference of the vector and axial vector correlators is proportional to the four-quark condensate, the sign of the $`\omega `$ meson mass shift, measured via the $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ channel, can serve as a tool for determining how fast the strongly interacting matter approaches the chiral symmetry restoration with increasing density.

## II QCD sum rule equations

Within QCD sum rules the in-medium $`\omega `$ meson is considered as a resonance in the current-current correlation function $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{\mu \nu }(q,n)=id^4x\mathrm{e}^{iqx}𝒯\mathrm{J}_\mu (x)\mathrm{J}_\nu (0)_n,`$ where $`q_\mu =(E,𝐪)`$ is the $`\omega `$ meson four-momentum, $`𝒯`$ denotes the time ordered product of the $`\omega `$ meson current operators $`\mathrm{J}_\mu (x)\mathrm{J}_\nu (0)`$, and $`\mathrm{}_n`$ stands for the expectation value in the medium. In what follows, we focus on the ground state of the baryonic matter approximated by a Fermi gas with nucleon density $`n`$. In terms of quark field operators, the $`\omega `$ meson current is given by $`\mathrm{J}_\mu (x)=\frac{1}{2}(\overline{\mathrm{u}}\gamma _\mu \mathrm{u}+\overline{\mathrm{d}}\gamma _\mu \mathrm{d})`$. At zero momentum, $`𝐪=0`$, in the rest frame of the matter the correlator can be reduced to $`\frac{1}{3}\mathrm{\Pi }_\mu ^\mu (q^2,n)=\mathrm{\Pi }(q^2,n)`$ for $`q^2<0`$. The correlator $`\mathrm{\Pi }(q^2,n)`$ satisfies the twice subtracted dispersion relation, which can be written with $`Q^2q^2=E^2`$ as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Pi }(Q^2)}{Q^2}}={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Pi }(0)}{Q^2}}\mathrm{\Pi }^{^{}}(0)Q^2{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑s{\displaystyle \frac{R(s)}{s(s+Q^2)}},`$ (1)
with $`\mathrm{\Pi }(0)=\mathrm{\Pi }(q^2=0,n)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }^{^{}}(0)=(d\mathrm{\Pi }(q^2)/dq^2)|_{q^2=0}`$ as subtraction constants and $`R(s)=\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Pi }(s,n)/(\pi s)`$.

As usual in QCD sum rules (QSR) lit12 ; lit13 , for large values of $`Q^2`$ one can evaluate the l.h.s. of eq. (1) by the operator product expansion (OPE) $`\mathrm{\Pi }(Q^2)/Q^2=c_0\mathrm{ln}(Q^2)+_{i=1}^{\mathrm{}}c_i/Q^{2i}`$, where the coefficients $`c_i`$ include the well known Wilson coefficients and the expectation values of the corresponding products of quark and gluon field operators, i.e. condensates.

Performing a Borel transformation of the dispersion relation eq. (1) with appropriate mass parameter $`M^2`$ and taking into account the OPE one gets the basic QSR equation

$`\mathrm{\Pi }(0)+{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑sR(s)\mathrm{e}^{s/M^2}=M^2c_0+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{c_i}{(i1)!M^{2(i1)}}}.`$ (2)
The general structure of the coefficients $`c_i`$ up to $`i=3`$ is given, for instance, in lit15 . In order to calculate the density dependence of the condensates entering the coefficients $`c_{0\mathrm{}3}`$ we employ the standard linear density approximation, which is valid for not too large density. This gives for the chiral quark condensate $`\overline{q}q_n=\overline{q}q_0+\frac{\sigma _N}{2m_q}n`$, where both the light quark masses and their condensates are taken to be the same, i.e., $`m_q=m_u=m_d=7`$ MeV and $`\overline{q}q=\overline{u}u=\overline{d}d`$ with $`\overline{q}q_0=(245\mathrm{M}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V})^3`$. The nucleon sigma term is $`\sigma _N=45`$ MeV.

The gluon condensate is obtained as usual employing the QCD trace anomaly $`\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }\mathrm{G}^2_n=\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }\mathrm{G}^2_0\frac{8}{9}M_N^0n,`$ where $`\alpha _s=0.38`$ is the QCD coupling constant and $`M_N^0=770`$ MeV is the nucleon mass in the chiral limit. The vacuum gluon condensate is $`\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }\mathrm{G}^2_0=(0.33\mathrm{GeV})^3`$.

The coefficient $`c_3`$ in eq. (2) contains also the four-quark condensates $`(\overline{q}\gamma _\mu \lambda ^aq)^2_n`$ and $`(\overline{q}\gamma _\mu \gamma ^5\lambda ^aq)^2_n`$. The standard approach to estimate their density dependence consists in the mean-field approximation. Within such an approximation the four-quark condensates are proportional to $`\overline{q}q_n^2`$ and their density dependence is actually governed by the square of the chiral quark condensate. Keeping in mind the important role of the four-quark condensate for the in-medium modifications of the $`\omega `$ meson our  we go beyond the above mean-field approximation and employ the following parameterization

$`(\overline{q}\gamma _\mu \gamma ^5\lambda ^aq)^2_n=(\overline{q}\gamma _\mu \lambda ^aq)^2_n={\displaystyle \frac{16}{9}}\overline{q}q_0^2\kappa _0\left[1+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _N}{\kappa _0}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _N}{m_q\overline{q}q_0}}n\right].`$ (3)
In vacuum, $`n=0`$, the parameter $`\kappa _0`$ reflects a deviation from the vacuum saturation assumption. The case $`\kappa _0=1`$ corresponds obviously to the exact vacuum saturation as used, for instance, in lit15 . To control the deviation of the in-medium four-quark condensate from the mean-field approximation we introduce the parameter $`\kappa _N`$. The limit $`\kappa _N=\kappa _0`$ recovers the mean-field approximation, while the case $`\kappa _N>\kappa _0`$ ($`\kappa _N<\kappa _0`$) is related to a stronger (weaker) density dependence compared to the mean-field approximation. Below we vary the parameter $`\kappa _N`$ to estimate the contribution of the four-quark condensates to the QSR with respect to the main trends of the in-medium modification of the $`\omega `$ meson spectral function.

Using the above condensates and usual Wilson coefficients we get the coefficients $`c_{0\mathrm{}3}`$ as

$`c_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\pi ^2}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }}\right),c_1={\displaystyle \frac{3m_q^2}{4\pi ^2}},`$
$`c_2`$ $`=`$ $`m_q\overline{q}q_0+{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _N}{2}}n+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{24}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _s}{\pi }}G^2_0{\displaystyle \frac{8}{9}}M_N^0n\right]+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}A_2M_Nn,`$
$`c_3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{112}{81}}\pi \alpha _s\kappa _0\overline{q}q_0^2\left[1+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _N}{\kappa _0}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _N}{m_q\overline{q}q_0}}n\right]{\displaystyle \frac{5}{12}}A_4M_N^3n.`$ (4)
The last terms in $`c_{2,3}`$ correspond to the derivative condensates from nonscalar operators as a consequence of the breaking of Lorentz invariance in the medium. These condensates are proportional to the moments $`A_i=2\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}𝑑xx^{i1}\left[q_N(x,\mu ^2)+\overline{q}_N(x,\mu ^2)\right]`$ of quark and antiquark distributions $`q_N,\overline{q}_N`$ inside the nucleon at a scale $`\mu ^2=1\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ (see for details lit13 ). Our choice of the moments $`A_2`$ and $`A_4`$ is 1.02 and 0.12, respectively.

To model the hadronic side of the QSR eq. (2) we make the standard separation of the $`\omega `$ meson spectral density into resonance part and continuum contribution by means of the threshold parameter $`s_0`$:

$`R(s,n)=F{\displaystyle \frac{S(s,n)}{s}}\mathrm{\Theta }(s_0s)+c_0\mathrm{\Theta }(ss_0),`$ (5)
where $`S(s,n)`$ stands for the resonance peak in the spectral function; the normalization $`F`$ is unimportant for the following consideration. In the majority of the QCD sum rule evaluations, the zero-width approximation lit13  or some schematic parameterization of $`S`$ lit16  are employed. In contrast to this, we use here a more realistic ansatz for the resonance spectral density $`S`$ based on the general structure of the in-medium vector meson propagator in the vicinity to the pole mass,

$`S(s,n)={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Sigma }(s,n)}{(sm_\omega ^2(n))^2+(\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Sigma }(s,n))^2}}`$ (6)
with $`\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Sigma }(s,n)`$ as imaginary part of the in-medium $`\omega `$ meson self-energy and $`m_\omega (n)`$ as its physical mass. In eq. (6), the real part of the self–energy is absorbed in $`m_\omega (n)`$, which is determined by the QCD sum rule eq. (2). As a result (see below), the in-medium change of the QCD condensates causes global modifications of the $`\omega `$ meson spectral function, in addition to the collision broadening. (An analogous approach was used in lit17 .)

Within the linear density approximation the $`\omega `$ meson self-energy is given by

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }(E,n)=\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mathrm{vac}}(E)nT^{\omega N}(E),`$ (7)
where $`E=\sqrt{s}`$ is the $`\omega `$ meson energy, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mathrm{vac}}(E)=\mathrm{\Sigma }(E,n=0)`$ and $`T^{\omega N}(E)`$ is the off-shell forward $`\omega `$-nucleon scattering amplitude in free space. Note, that the three-momentum of $`\omega `$ mesons in eq. (7) is still zero, and nucleons are also assumed to be at rest. We take the needed $`\mathrm{Im}T^{\omega N}(E)`$ from an effective Lagrangian lit14 , which is based on vector meson dominance and chiral SU(3) dynamics. The dominant contribution to $`\mathrm{Im}T^{\omega N}(E)`$ in the region $`E\stackrel{<}{}1`$ GeV comes from the processes $`\omega N\pi N`$ (at $`E<0.6`$ GeV) and $`\omega N\rho N\pi \pi N`$ (at $`E>0.6`$ GeV), see lit14  for details. The process $`\omega N\pi N`$ is at least partially under experimental control, while the contribution from the reaction $`\omega N\rho N\pi \pi N`$ appears to be sensitive to the poorly known meson-baryon form factors. However, this uncertainty does not spoil the results below. For definiteness, in Fig. 1 we plot $`\mathrm{Im}T^{\omega N}(E)`$ employed in our QSR evaluations. To simplify the calculations we also take $`\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mathrm{vac}}(E)\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mathrm{vac}}(E=m_\omega ^{\mathrm{vac}})=m_\omega ^{\mathrm{vac}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_\omega ^{\mathrm{vac}}`$, where $`m_\omega ^{\mathrm{vac}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\omega ^{\mathrm{vac}}`$ are the vacuum $`\omega `$ meson mass and decay width, respectively.

Following lit14  we use for the subtraction constant $`\mathrm{\Pi }(0)=9n/(4M_N)`$ which is actually the Thomson limit of the $`\omega N`$ scattering process, but also coincides with the Landau damping term elaborated in lit18  for the hadronic spectral function entering the dispersion relation without subtractions. For details about the relation of subtraction constants and the Landau damping we refer the interested reader to lit19 .

## III Results of QCD sum rule evaluation

Taking the ratio of eq. (2) to its derivative with respect to $`M^2`$, and using eq. (5) one gets

$`{\displaystyle \frac{_0^{s_0}𝑑sS(s,n)\mathrm{e}^{s/M^2}}{_0^{s_0}𝑑sS(s,n)s^1\mathrm{e}^{s/M^2}}}={\displaystyle \frac{c_0M^2[1\left(1+s_0M^2\right)\mathrm{e}^{s_0/M^2}]c_2M^2c_3M^4}{c_0\left(1\mathrm{e}^{s_0/M^2}\right)+c_1M^2+c_2M^4+\frac{1}{2}c_3M^6\frac{9n}{4M_N}M^2}}`$ (8)
with the coefficients $`c_{0\mathrm{}3}`$ from eq. (4) and the spectral function $`S(s,n)`$ from eqs. (6) and (7). One has to solve eq. (8) to find the mass parameter $`m_\omega (n,M^2,s_0)`$. At a given density $`n`$, the continuum threshold $`s_0`$ is determined by requiring maximum flatness of $`m_\omega (M^2)`$ within the Borel window $`M_{\mathrm{min}}\mathrm{}M_{\mathrm{max}}`$. The minimum Borel mass $`M_{\mathrm{min}}`$ is obtained such that the terms of order $`𝒪(M^6)`$ on the OPE side contribute not more than 10% lit16 ; lit20 . According to our experience our , $`m_\omega (M^2)`$ is not very sensitive to variations of $`M_{\mathrm{max}}`$. We therefore fix the maximum Borel mass by $`M_{\mathrm{max}}^2=2\mathrm{GeV}^2`$. To get the $`\omega `$ meson mass $`m_\omega `$ we average finally $`m_\omega (M^2)`$ within the Borel mass window.

The value of $`\kappa _0`$ in eq. (3) is related to such a choice of the chiral condensate $`\overline{q}q_0`$ which adjusts the vacuum $`\omega `$ meson mass to $`m_\omega (n=0)=782`$ MeV resulting in $`\kappa _0=3`$. The ratio $`\kappa _N/\kappa _0`$ in the parameterization (3) is restricted by the conditions $`q_4=(\overline{q}\gamma _\mu \lambda ^aq)^2_n0`$ with increasing density and $`q_40`$, so that one gets $`0\kappa _N\stackrel{<}{}4`$ as numerical limits.

The results of our QSR evaluations for $`m_\omega (n)`$ for $`\kappa _N=1\mathrm{}4`$ are exhibited in Fig. 2. The in-medium mass of the $`\omega `$ meson changes even qualitatively under variation of the parameter $`\kappa _N`$: for $`\kappa _N<2.7`$, $`m_\omega `$ increases with density, while for $`\kappa _N>2.7`$ it drops. From the above considerations one can conclude that the sign of the in-medium mass shift is directly related to the density dependence of the four-quark condensate.

In Fig. 3 we display the in-medium change of the $`\omega `$ meson spectral function $`S(E)`$, given by eq. (6) and calculated with density dependent mass $`m_\omega (n)`$. The in-medium spectral change is still seen to be dominated by the density dependence of the four-quark condensate. The dependence of the peak position as a function of the density $`n`$ and the four-quark parameter $`\kappa _N`$ is the same as for $`m_\omega `$. One can also observe that for the positive mass shift (say, for $`\kappa _N=2`$) the width increases with density, while for a negative mass shift (say, for $`\kappa _N=3`$) it appears to be approximately constant. In both cases we obtain a considerable ”melting” of the in-medium $`\omega `$ meson: at $`n=n_0`$ the height of the resonance peak drops more than by a factor of 5. For $`\kappa _N=2.5`$ the shift of the peak is small; also here the peak is broadened.

Because of the strong ”melting” of the in-medium $`\omega `$ meson, an identification of its spectral change in matter will be an experimental challenge. Moreover, in heavy-ion collisions one can expect also an additional broadening of the signal due to the collective expansion of the matter lit21 . Nevertheless, the high precision measurements planned with HADES give a chance to observe at least an ”in-medium shoulder” which supplements the vacuum peak. Whether such a shoulder will occur at the right or left hand side of the vacuum peak is directly governed by the strength of the density dependence of the four-quark condensate.

## IV Summary

In summary we have found that, within the Borel QCD sum rule approach, the in-medium spectral change of the $`\omega `$ meson is dominated by the density dependence of the four-quark condensate. We go beyond the standard mean-field approximation and vary with the parameter $`\kappa _N`$ the strength of the four-quark condensate dependence on the density. The sign of the $`\omega `$ meson in-medium mass shift and the resonance peak position are shown to be governed by the value of $`\kappa _N`$. We find a strong ”melting effect” of the in-medium $`\omega `$ meson resonance. Only for positive mass shift we observe a considerable broadening of the in-medium $`\omega `$ meson spectral function.

The in-medium $`\omega `$ meson spectral change, in particular the sign of the mass shift, to be looked for via the $`\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^{}`$ channel with the HADES detector in heavy-ion collisions, can give an important information on the yet unknown density dependence of the four-quark condensate and consequently on the chiral symmetry restoration in a dense nuclear medium.
Acknowledgments: We thank E. G. Drukarev, R. Hofmann, V. I. Zakharov and G. M. Ziovjev for useful discussions. O. P. P. acknowledges the warm hospitality of the nuclear theory group in the Research Center Rossendorf. This work is supported by BMBF 06DR921, STCU 15a, CERN-INTAS 2000-349, NATO-2000-PST CLG 977 482.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The SANC project of Ref.  has several purposes. The intermediate goal is to summarize and consolidate the effort of the last three decades in calculating Standard Model radiative corrections for LEP, in a well organized calculational environment for future reference. However, it is aimed not only at training young researchers and students, but at some remaining calculational projects for LEP as well.

SANC provides an Internet-oriented, graphic interface platform, which is meant to serve as a starting point for longer term research efforts in the area of the higher order (multi-loop) calculations within the SM and beyond, for the experiments at future high energy colliders. An important lesson from the LEP experiments  is that the desirable way of providing theoretical predictions is in the form of Monte Carlo event generators. This aspect has been taken into account in the development of SANC from an early stage of its development.

The currently available version of SANC can construct one-loop spin amplitudes for the decays of the gauge bosons $`W`$ and $`Z`$ and Higgs boson $`H`$. All of the Born and one-loop-corrected spin amplitudes are generated interactively from scratch111The form2 codes related to the review of ref.  were exploited at the early stage of the SANC development.  by SANC with the help of the algebraic package Form3  in the form of Fortran77 source codes, and are then used in the MC generation/intgration part of the package. For the moment, SANC features single real photon emission, in the calculations of the total rate and decay spectra of the $`Bf\overline{f}(\gamma )`$ process. The complete spin polarization density matrix of the decaying boson is taken into account as well.

The integration, with the Monte Carlo method, over the three (two)-body final state is done without any approximation (in particular small mass approximation is not used). The program provides MC events with constant weight (unweighted events). The whole system is, therefore, fairly self-contained and complete222That is why it may be valuable for teaching and training..

It is of the utmost importance for such a new system to precisely reproduce known results. Concerning virtual corrections, comparisons were performed with the calculations of refs. . The precise comparisons with the FeynArt package  were made in  as well.

Our paper is organized as follows: in the next section we describe in detail the set of observables chosen for tests and the input parameter set-ups for comparisons SANC with KORALZ  and SANC PHOTOS . Section 3 is devoted to a discussion of SANC technical reliability in the domain of QED bremsstrahlung. To this end, comparisons with KORALZ and leading-log distributions from PHOTOS are collected. Section 4 describes comparisons of SANC with PHOTOS, focusing on the non-leading contributions in $`W`$ and $`H`$ decays and on the relevant discussion of PHOTOS physical uncertainties. The summary in section 5 closes the paper.

## 2 Initialization set-ups for SANC , KORALZ and PHOTOS runs

In the following sections we compare predictions from the programs SANC, KORALZ and PHOTOS. It is essential that the initialization be identical in all cases and close to the physical reality; in particular the following options are set in the three programs:

* In SANC we switch off the EW part of the radiative corrections. The soft photon limit is kept at 0.005 of the decaying particle mass.
* In KORALZ we switch to the $`𝒪(\alpha )`$ mode of operation (no exponentiation) with final state bremsstrahlung only. We set the CMS energy equal to the $`Z`$ mass. The $`s`$-channel $`\gamma `$ exchange is switched off and the soft photon limit is kept at 0.01 of the “beam energy”.
* In PHOTOS we switch off the double bremsstrahlung corrections but we keep interference effects. The soft/hard photon limit is kept at 0.005 of the decaying particle mass. For the generation of the Born-level two-body decays, we use the Monte Carlo generation from SANC.

To visualize the differences (or the agreement) between the calculations, we choose a certain class of (pseudo-)observables, more precisely the one-dimensional distributions, which are quite similar to the one used in the first tests of PHOTOS reported in . To visualize the usually small differences, we plot ratios of the predictions from two programs rather than the distributions themselves.

List of observables:

* -A- Photon energy in the decaying particle rest frame: this observable is sensitive mainly to the leading-log (i.e. collinear) non-infrared (i.e. not soft) component of the distributions.
* -B- Energy of the final state charged particle: as in the previous case this observable is sensitive mainly to the leading-log (i.e. collinear) non-infrared (i.e. not soft) component of the distributions.
* -C- Angle of the photon with respect to one of the charged final state particles: this observable is sensitive mainly to the non-collinear (i.e. non-leading-log) but soft (i.e. infrared) component of the distributions.
* -D- Acollinearity angle of the final state charged particles: this observable is sensitive mainly to the non-collinear (i.e. non-leading-log) and non-soft (i.e. non-infrared) component of the distributions.

## 3 Technical tests of SANC

Let us first cross check SANC predictions in the case of $`Z\mu ^+\mu ^{}`$ decay and for the real photon emission with KORALZ. The corresponding part of the KORALZ code, essentially an improved emulation of the MC program MUSTRAL , was thorougly tested over two decades and is an excellent candidate for the benchmark test for SANC matrix-element and phase-space generation. It can be noted that the phase-space parametrization of the single photon emission in SANC, although developed independently, is essentially the same as in KORALB .

As we can see from figs. 1 and 2 the level of the agreement for all distributions of the types A, B, C and D is satisfactory, at the level of better than 0.5% (or at the level of statistical error). We have checked that the $`𝒪(\alpha )`$ FSR correction to the total decay rate calculated as a difference of SANC results, with FSR on and off, agrees well with the standard factor $`1+\frac{3}{4}\frac{\alpha }{\pi }=1.001743`$. In fact we get $`1.001733\pm 2.8\times 10^5`$. The agreement is thus better than $`10^4`$. We can thus conclude that SANC is “commissioned” for the $`Z`$ decay.

In the case of the $`W`$ and Higgs decay we rely on the comparison with PHOTOS. Due to the incomplete one-loop QED in PHOTOS we cannot, in priciple, expect the agreement for the decay distributions A, B to be better than the order of $`\frac{1}{\mathrm{ln}m_B^2/m_\mu ^2}`$ 7%. We see in fig. 3 for Higgs boson decay and in fig. 5 for $`W`$ decay, that this is indeed the case. In fact, the agreement is much better in the case of the Higgs boson decay. In figs. 4 and 6 we see the angular distributions of the photon with respect to the charged fermion (observable C). Here, in principle, the agreement should not be worse than $`\frac{1}{\mathrm{ln}m_B/E_\gamma ^{min}}`$ 20% for the photon emitted in directions far from the charged particle and $`\frac{1}{\mathrm{ln}m_B^2/m_\mu ^2\mathrm{ln}m_B/E_\gamma ^{min}}`$ 1.4% for directions close to the charged particle. This is indeed the case.

## 4 Physical uncertainties of PHOTOS in $`W`$ and $`H`$ decay

In the case of testing $`H`$ and $`W`$ decays, the comparisons of PHOTOS with the “matrix-element” type calculations were never accounted for in a well documented way. The following discussion will give us a chance systematically evaluate uncertainties of PHOTOS for these two decays.

In the case of the Linear Collider studies and many scenarios for new physics, the cross section for the production of the Higgs boson can be quite large. In the case of sophisticated observables, the reconstruction of the reference frames of the intermediate states requires good control of the bremsstrahlung corrections. Our comparison shows that, in the case of the Higgs boson decay, the approximation used in PHOTOS works much better than could be expected from its design principles. In fact it provides results difficult to distinguish from the “matrix-element” ones in the case of all observables A to D (figs. 3 and 4).

At LEP2, the production and decay of $`W`$ pairs is now being combined for all four LEP2 experiments, and uncertainties due to bremsstrahlung in $`W`$ decay are important. PHOTOS is part of one of the main programs (YFSWW3) used in the LEP2 analysis of the $`W`$-pair data. Our tests will provide an estimate of the size of the uncertainties, due to use of PHOTOS. If they turn out to be sizeable, the improvements will need to be implemented either into the PHOTOS algorithm or by other means.

In figs. 5 and 6, we see that up to leading order, the distributions agree with the “matrix element” results provided by SANC. There is, however, no exceptionally good agreement observed in the previous case of $`H`$ decay.

This point requires further study, before planning improvements of PHOTOS. In particular, a comparison of PHOTOS with another available matrix-element calculation of $`\tau e\nu \overline{\nu }(\gamma )`$, e.g. from TAUOLA  , should also be repeated to check if a pattern of discrepancy similar to that for $`W`$ decay is observed. The $`W`$ channel is of importance for some studies  of LHC Higgs discovery potential as well, see also .

## 5 Summary

We have successfully tested SANC versus KORALZ in case of the $`Z`$ decay. In this way we have verified the technical correctness of SANC, e.g. its phase-space generation and QED correction amplitudes.

In case of $`W`$ and $`H`$ decays, we have checked that SANC agrees with the leading order QED calculation provided by the PHOTOS Monte Carlo. These comparisons allow us to evaluate the size of missing non-leading terms in PHOTOS. In the case of $`H`$ decays, we have found that PHOTOS results are exceptionally good – differences with SANC are indistinguishable from zero and below 1% everywhere. In the case of $`W`$ decay, PHOTOS predictions are within 7% for the end parts of the spectra affected by the leading-log corrections and within 20% for the angular part of the distributions, where the infrared-induced logarithm dominates over non-infrared non-leading terms only. The differences are up to 40% in the phase-space regions where only non-leading corrections contribute to the matrix element. We can conclude that results from all three programs for all four observables agree within the expected precision ranges.

## Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank D. Bardin and B.F.L. Ward for useful discussions.