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# Exploring the sub-eV neutrino mass range with supernova neutrinos

## Abstract

A new method to study the effects of neutrino masses on a supernova neutrino signal is proposed. The method relies exclusively on the analysis of the full statistics of neutrino events, it is independent of astrophysical assumptions, and does not require the observation of any additional phenomenon to trace possible delays in the neutrino arrival times. The sensitivity of the method to the sub-eV neutrino mass range, defined as the capability of disentangling at 95% c.l. the case $`m_\nu =1`$eV from $`m_\nu =0`$, is tested by analyzing a set of synthetic neutrino samples modeled according to the signal that could be detected at SuperKamiokande. For a supernova at the Galactic center success is achieved in more than 50% of the cases. It is argued that a future Galactic supernova yielding several thousands of inverse $`\beta `$ decays might provide enough information to explore a neutrino mass range somewhat below $`1`$eV.

preprint: astro-ph/0306384preprint: UdeA-PE/03-09
During the past few years, the large amount of data collected by solar solar  and atmospheric atmospheric  neutrino experiments provided strong evidences for non vanishing neutrino masses. The recent KamLAND result kamland  on the depletion of the neutrino flux from nuclear power plants in Japan, gave a final confirmation of this picture. Since in the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics all neutrino species are massless, this constitutes the first direct evidence for new physics, and provides important informations for developing theories beyond the SM. However, to date all the evidences for neutrino masses come from oscillation experiments, that are only sensitive to mass square differences and cannot give any informations on single mass values. The importance of measuring the absolute value of neutrino masses cannot be understated. It is presently being addressed by means of a remarkably large number of different approaches, ranging from laboratory experiments to a plethora of methods that relay on cosmological considerations. Recent reviews can be found in absolutenumass . From the study of the end-point of the electron spectrum in tritium $`\beta `$-decay, laboratory experiments have been able to set the limit $`m_{\nu _e}<2.2`$eV tritiumlimit . This is already close to the sensitivity limit of on-going experiments. If neutrinos are Majorana particles, the non observation of neutrinoless double $`\beta `$ decay can constrain a particular combination of the three neutrino masses. Interpretation of these experimental results is difficult due to large theoretical uncertainties related to nuclear matrix elements calculations. This is reflected in a model dependent limit $`m_\nu ^{eff}<0.351.24`$eV absolutenumass ; doublebeta . A tight bound $`_im_{\nu _i}<0.7`$eV was recently set by the WMAP Collaboration WMAP  by combining measurements of cosmic microwave background anisotropies with data from bright galaxies redshift surveys Colless:2001gk  and other cosmological data. However, this limit becomes much looser if the set of assumptions on which it relies is relaxed (see Hannestad  for discussions of this point). Therefore it is quite important to keep looking for alternative ways to measure the neutrino masses. Model independent limits can be more reliably established by combining complementary experimental informations and, needless to say, it would be of utmost importance if the mass values could be measured by means of more than one independent method.

Already long time ago it was realized that Supernova (SN) neutrinos can provide valuable informations on the neutrino masses Zatsepin:1968 . The basic idea relies on the time-of-flight delay $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ that a neutrino of mass $`m_\nu `$ and energy $`E_\nu `$ traveling a distance $`L`$ would suffer with respect to a massless particle:

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }t}{L}=\frac{1}{v}1(\frac{5.1\mathrm{ms}}{10\mathrm{kpc}})\left(\frac{10\mathrm{MeV}}{E_\nu }\right)^2\left(\frac{m_\nu }{1\mathrm{eV}}\right)^2,$$
(1)
where for ultra-relativistic neutrinos we have used $`1/v=E_\nu /p_\nu 1+m_\nu ^2/2E_\nu ^2`$. The dispersion in the arrival time of about twenty electron anti-neutrinos from supernova SN1987A was used in the past to set the model independent limit $`m_{\overline{\nu }_e}<30`$eV Schramm:1987ra . This limit can become significantly tighter under some specific assumptions. For example a recent detailed reanalysis obtained, within the SN delayed explosion scenario, the limit $`m_{\overline{\nu }_e}<5.7`$eV Loredo:2001rx .

Since SN1987A, several efforts have been carried out to improve the sensitivity of the method, while awaiting for the next explosion within our Galaxy. Often, these approaches rely on “timing” events related to the collapse of the star core, that are used as benchmarks for measuring the neutrino delays. The emission of gravitational waves gravit1 ; gravit2 , the $`\nu _e`$ neutronization burst gravit2 , the initial steep raise of the neutrino luminosity steep , and the abrupt interruption of the neutrino signal due to a further collapse into a black hole blackhole  have been used to this aim. However, there are some drawbacks to these methods: firstly only neutrinos with arrival time close to the benchmarks are used, and they represent only a small fraction of the total; secondly the observation of the benchmark events is not always certain, and in any case some model dependence on the details of the SN explosion is generally introduced.

The method we want to propose is free from these drawbacks: it relies only on the measurement of the neutrinos energies and arrival times, and it uses the full statistics of the detected signal, thus allowing to extract the maximum of information. It is also remarkably independent of particular astrophysical assumptions, since no use is made of benchmarks events. The basic idea is the following: in the idealized case of vanishing experimental errors in the determination of the neutrino energies and arrival times, and assuming an arbitrarily large statistics and a perfectly black-body neutrino spectrum, one could use the events with energy above some suitable value $`E^{}`$ (to suppress the mass effects) to reconstruct very precisely the evolution in time of the neutrino flux and spectrum. Once the time dependence of the full signal is pinned down, the only parameter left to reconcile the time distribution of the low energy neutrinos with the high energy part of the signal would be the neutrino mass, that could then be nailed to its true value. Of course, none of the previous conditions is actually fulfilled. In water Čerenkov detectors as SuperKamiokande (SK) the uncertainty on relative timings is negligible; however, the errors in the energy measurements are important and must be properly taken in to account. The statistics is large but finite, and this not only represents a source of statistical uncertainty, but also implies an upper limit on the useful values of $`E^{}`$. Finally, the SN neutrino spectrum is not perfectly thermal neutrino-spectrum . Nevertheless, a good sensitivity to the mass survives and, as we will show, it will be possible to disentangle with a good confidence the two cases $`m_\nu =0`$ and 1 eV.

To test quantitatively the idea outlined above we proceed in two steps:

i) First we generate a set of synthetic neutrino signals, according to some suitable SN model. Neutrinos are then propagated from the SN to the detector assuming two different SN-Earth distances (10 and 20 kpc) and two different mass values $`m_\nu =0`$ and $`1`$eV. Finally, two different energy thresholds (5 and 10 MeV) are used for the detection. The result consists of several neutrino samples, that hopefully would not differ too much from a real SN signal.

ii) The signals are then analyzed with the main goal of disentangling with sufficient confidence the two cases $`m_\nu =0`$ and $`1`$eV. Only the SN-Earth distance is assumed to be known (this information could be obtained directly from optical observations or, with an uncertainty of the order of 25%, from a comparison of the measured total energy with a theoretical estimation of the binding energy released located ). Other quantities, like the spectral functions and the details of the time evolution of the neutrino flux, are inferred directly from the data.

Generation of the neutrino samples. The time evolution of the neutrino luminosity and average energy can be obtained from the results of SN explosions simulations burrows ; woosley ; totani ; lieben . In the present analysis we use the results of Woosley et al. woosley . This model is characterized by a rather hard neutrino spectrum ($`E_{\overline{\nu }_e}>20`$MeV) that results in a large number of detected events (8,800 in SK). Still this is a conservative choice, since it also implies a depletion in the number of low energy neutrinos with a corresponding loss of informations on the neutrino mass. Inside the protoneutron star neutrinos are in thermal equilibrium, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that the gross features of their energy spectrum after emission can still be described by a Fermi-Dirac distribution:

$$\widehat{S}(E_\nu ;\widehat{T}(t),\widehat{\eta })=\frac{E_\nu ^2/\widehat{T}^3(t)}{F_2(0,\widehat{\eta })\left(1+e^{E_\nu /\widehat{T}(t)\widehat{\eta }(t)}\right)},$$
(2)
where $`F_2(0,\widehat{\eta })`$ is defined in (4) and a ‘pinching’ factor $`\widehat{\eta }(t)`$ has been introduced to simulate spectral distortions neutrino-spectrum . From now on, quantities with a hat ($`\widehat{\eta }`$, $`\widehat{T}`$, …) represent inputs to the Monte Carlo (MC), while quantities without a hat will refer to results of data fitting. We define the Fermi functions and generalized Fermi integrals as:

$`f_n(x,\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{x^n}{1+e^{x\eta }}}`$ (3)
$`F_n(y,\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _y^{\mathrm{}}}f_n(x,\eta )𝑑x.`$ (4)
Using the time evolution of the average neutrino energy $`\overline{E_\nu }(t)`$ as given in fig. 3 of ref. woosley  and taking for simplicity $`\widehat{\eta }=3`$ neutrino-spectrum  constant, we compute the effective temperature that, together with $`\widehat{\eta }`$, determines the neutrino spectrum at the source:

$$\widehat{T}(t)=k_3\overline{E_\nu }(t),$$
(5)
where $`k_3F_2(0,3)/F_3(0,3)4`$. Given that the average energy is only mildly dependent on time woosley , we model the evolution of the neutrino flux $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}(t)`$ simply by taking it proportional to the luminosity as given in fig. 2 of ref. woosley .

In the SK detector, $`\overline{\nu }_e`$’s are detected through the inverse $`\beta `$ decay reaction $`\overline{\nu }_epe^+n`$ that has the energy threshold $`E_{\mathrm{react}}=m_e+\mathrm{\Delta }m_{np}1.8`$MeV, where $`m_e`$ is the electron mass and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{np}1.3`$MeV is the neutron to proton mass difference. The effect of the detection cross section $`\sigma (E_\nu )`$ Strumia:2003zx  is taken into account from the beginning by using the function $`\widehat{S}(E_\nu ;\widehat{T}(t),\widehat{\eta })\times \widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}(t)\times \sigma (E_\nu )`$ in the MC generator. Each SN neutrino is labeled by its emission time $`t_\nu `$ and by its energy $`E_\nu `$. The corresponding detected positron is also identified by an energy/time pair of values $`(E^e,t^e)`$. We generate $`E^e`$ according to a Gaussian distribution with central value $`E^e=E_\nu \mathrm{\Delta }m_{np}`$ and variance $`\sigma =0.15\sqrt{10\mathrm{MeV}/E^e}`$ that corresponds to the SK energy resolution SKresolution . Since the time resolution of the SK detector is very precise, no error is assigned to $`t^e`$. For massive neutrinos, we redefine $`t^e=t_\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }t_\nu `$ by including the appropriate delay $`\mathrm{\Delta }t_\nu =Lm_\nu ^2/2E_\nu ^2`$. A fixed number of 8,800 energy/time pairs $`(E_i^e,t_i^e)`$ is generated in each run. This corresponds to the expected number of $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ interactions within the SK fiducial volume for the spectrum of the model in woosley  and a SN at $`10`$kpc. For $`L=20`$kpc this number is resampled down by a factor of four. Next, positrons with energies below the detection threshold ($`E_{\mathrm{tr}}=5`$ or $`10`$Mev) are discarded, and as a last step the origin of the time axis is set in coincidence with the first positron detected ($`t_1^e=0`$) and each $`t_i^e`$ is accordingly redefined. For each set of values ($`E_{\mathrm{tr}},L,m_\nu `$) forty different samples are generated in this way.

Analysis of the neutrino signal. We analyze the neutrino signals by means of the likelihood function

$$=S(ϵ;T(t),\eta (t))\times \mathrm{\Phi }(t+\delta t;b,d,f)\times \sigma (ϵ).$$
(6)
The energy $`ϵ=E^e+\mathrm{\Delta }m_{np}`$ of each neutrino is inferred from the positron energy. The spectral function $`S`$ is assumed of the form (2) with a time dependent effective temperature $`T(t)`$ and pinching factor $`\eta (t)`$ fitted from the data. $`\mathrm{\Phi }(t+\delta t;b,d,f)`$ describes the time evolution of the neutrino flux, and the four parameters $`\delta t,b,d`$ and $`f`$ account for its location on the time axis and detailed shape. Finally, $`\sigma (ϵ)`$ is the neutrino cross section.

The spectral functions. The two spectral functions $`T(t)`$ and $`\eta (t)`$ are determined by fitting the first and second momentum of the energy distribution to the mean energy $`\overline{E_\nu }`$ and mean squared energy $`\overline{E_\nu ^2}`$ of the incoming neutrino flux (prior to detection). Given a set of $`n`$ neutrinos with measured energies $`(ϵ_1,ϵ_2,\mathrm{}.ϵ_n)`$, and assuming for the cross section the approximate form $`\sigma (ϵ)ϵ^2`$, we have:

$$\overline{E_\nu }\frac{_iϵ_i^1}{_iϵ_i^2};\overline{E_\nu ^2}\frac{n}{_iϵ_i^2}.$$
(7)
From (1) we see that the typical neutrino delays are at most of the order of few milliseconds. This is much shorter than the time scale over which sizable variations of the spectral functions are likely to occur burrows ; woosley ; totani ; lieben . Therefore, by binning over sufficiently large time windows we can ensure that the determination of $`T`$ and $`\eta `$ for each bin will not be affected by the delays. We use a set of 20 windows of size increasing from 50 ms to 2 s, distributed over a signal duration 20 s. After this time the neutrino flux is assumed to be too low to provide additional informations. To reduce further the possible effects of mass induced time delays, only neutrinos with energy larger than $`E^{}=15`$MeV are used. For each time window \[$`t_a`$, $`t_{a+1}`$\] we perform a least square fit to the following quantities:

$`\overline{E_\nu }(T,\eta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{F_3(y,\eta )}{F_2(y,\eta )}}T,`$ (8)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{E_\nu ^2}(T,\eta )}{\left[\overline{E_\nu }(T,\eta )\right]^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{F_2(y,\eta )F_4(y,\eta )}{F_3^2(y,\eta )}},`$ (9)
where the functions $`F_n(y,\eta )`$ defined in (4), depend on the temperature through $`y=E^{}/T`$. This yields the ‘best’ values $`T(\overline{t}_a)`$ and $`\eta (\overline{t}_a)`$ at $`\overline{t}_a=(t_a+t_{a+1})/2`$. Finally, in order to obtain two smooth continuous functions, the points $`T(\overline{t}_a)`$ and $`\eta (\overline{t}_a)`$ are interpolated with two half integer power polynomials $`P_{T,\eta }_lc_lt^{l/2}`$ with $`l=0,1,2,\mathrm{}10`$ for $`T`$ and $`l=0,1,3,5`$ for $`\eta `$. In fig. 1 the functions $`\widehat{T}(t)`$ and $`\widehat{\eta }=3`$ used in the MC (thick lines) are compared with forty fits to neutrino samples generated with $`m_\nu =0`$ and $`L=10`$kpc. These results remain unchanged for $`m_\nu =1`$eV, while for $`L=20`$kpc, due to the reduced statistics, the fits show a somewhat wider dispersion.

The neutrino flux. Even if the details of the neutrino flux evolution with time are not known, its gross features can be predicted on rather solid theoretical grounds. It is expected that a sharp exponential rise, with a time scale of tenths of milliseconds, is followed by a power law decay, with a time scale of several seconds. We model this behavior by means of a parametric analytical function in which, roughly speaking, two parameters describe the rising and decaying rates, and a third one accounts for the transition point:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }(t;b,d,f){\displaystyle \frac{e^{ft^m}}{(1+bt^n)^d}}\{\begin{array}{cc}e^{ft^m}\hfill & (t0)\hfill \\ t^{nd}\hfill & (t\mathrm{}).\hfill \end{array}`$ (12)
This function can reproduce reasonably well the results of different models woosley ; totani ; burrows ; lieben . The two exponents $`m`$ and $`n`$ are fixed to suitable integer values by means of a preliminary rough fitting procedure to the data, and then are held constant throughout the analysis of all the samples. For the model in woosley  we use $`n=8`$ and $`m=2`$. Finally, since the origin of times was arbitrarily set in coincidence with the detection of the first neutrino while $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ vanishes at $`t=0`$, a fourth parameter $`\delta t`$ is required to let $`\mathrm{\Phi }(t+\delta t)`$ freely shift along the time axis.

The likelihood analysis. The minimization of the negative log-likelihood is carried out by means of the package MINUIT minuit . To avoid double minimums, we minimize with respect to the square of the neutrino mass. Given a value of $`m_\nu ^2`$ the time delay of each neutrino is computed according to its energy $`ϵ_i`$, and subtracted from its arrival time $`t_i`$. The log-likelihood for the new array of times is then evaluated, and minimized with respect to the other parameters $`b,d,f`$ and $`\delta t`$. This proceeds until the absolute minimum is found in the full five dimensional parameter space. There is a subtlety related to the cases when, especially for large test masses, a neutrino is migrated to an early time where $`\mathrm{\Phi }=0`$. The problem is not just a numerical one of logarithm overflow. Due to the uncertainty in the energy measurement, the firsts neutrinos detected can end up in such a position without necessarily implying that the corresponding distribution has vanishing probability. To account for this, for the relevant neutrinos the energy uncertainty is converted into an uncertainty in the new time position, and the corresponding contribution to the likelihood is evaluated by convolving $`(t)`$ in (12) with a Gaussian of the appropriated width. In fig. 2 the results of the fitted fluxes for 40 samples with $`L=10`$kpc, $`E_{\mathrm{tr}}=5`$MeV and $`m_\nu =0`$eV are compared with the function $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}(t)`$ used in the MC generator (thick line).

Results. Our results are summarized in fig. 3 and in table 1. Fig. 3 depicts the results of the mass fits for two sets of 40 samples with $`E_{\mathrm{tr}}=5`$MeV, $`L=10`$kpc, $`\widehat{m}_\nu =0`$ (circles) and $`\widehat{m}_\nu =1`$eV (squares). The data points have been ordered with increasing value of the best fit mass to put in evidence the difference between the two cases. Error bars correspond to 95% c.l., where the lower (upper) limit is computed by integrating the likelihood from $`m_\nu ^2=\mathrm{}`$ ($`\mathrm{}`$) until reaching the 95% of the area, while minimizing with respect to the other parameters. We have checked that the limits do not change much if the integration is restricted to the physical region $`m_\nu ^2>0`$.

Table 1 summarizes some results of the mass fitting. For each set of parameters ($`E_{\mathrm{tr}},L,\widehat{m}_\nu `$) we have analyzed 40 samples. The first raw gives the percentage of times in which the 95% c.l. lower limit $`m_\nu ^l`$ is larger than the input mass $`\widehat{m}_\nu `$. The second raw refers to the cases when the upper limit $`m_\nu ^u`$ is smaller than $`\widehat{m}_\nu `$. Number in parentheses correspond to $`L=20`$kpc. These figures characterize the percentage of ‘failures’ of the method, that therefore appears to be reliable in about 90%-95% of the cases. The third row gives the percentage of times when $`m_\nu =0`$ is excluded at 95% c.l. when the signal is generated with $`\widehat{m}_\nu =1`$eV. This characterizes the power of the method for excluding a massless neutrino. We see that in the most favorable case ($`E_{\mathrm{tr}}=5`$MeV, $`L=10`$kpc) the method is successful in more than 50% of the cases. The following three raws give the average over the 40 samples of the mass square best fit and of the 95% c.l. lower and upper limits (only for $`L=10`$kpc). These last figures are just intended to give an idea of the quality of the fits (they would be fully meaningful only if 40 SN could be observed).

From the results in the table it is apparent that low energy neutrinos are crucial for the sensitivity of the method, and therefore a low detection threshold is very important. With $`E_{\mathrm{tr}}=5`$MeV the massless case is excluded in about 50% of the cases, while this drops to 25% when $`E_{\mathrm{tr}}=10`$MeV. Also, with the higher energy treshold the fluctuations of the results over the 40 runs is doubled (last three rows). Unfortunately, there could be a dangerous background in the energy range between 5 and 10 MeV, represented by photons originating from neutral current reactions off <sup>16</sup>O mainly produced by the more energetic $`\mu `$ and $`\tau `$ neutrinos oxygen . Softer neutrino spectra, like for example the ones predicted by the model of Totani et al. totani , would have the double benefit of drastically reducing this background, while at the same time raising the number of $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ emitted in the 5-10 MeV energy range from about 7% of the present analysis to about 20%. In this case a better sensitivity to the mass could be expected. We should also mention that very recently it has been suggested that water Čerencov detectors could be modified to allow tagging of the inverse $`\beta `$ decay neutrons Beacom:2003nk . This would eliminate the background from neutral current reactions and allow for lower thresholds.

Numerical spectrum and neutrino oscillations. The previous results have been derived relying on two main simplifying approximations for the neutrinos energy spectrum: 1) the neutrino energies have been generated assuming the ‘pinched’ Fermi-Dirac spectrum given in eq. (2) and fitted, as was described above, with a similar two-parameters energy distribution; 2) no effects of the neutrino oscillations were included in the analysis. In order to evaluate to what extent the sensitivity of the method could be affected by these approximations, we have run a set of simulations in which the neutrino energies were generated according to the shapes of the numerical spectra given by Janka and Hillebrandt in neutrino-spectrum . A time dependent energy rescaling of the spectral shapes was introduced to reproduce properly the time evolution of the mean energies as given in woosley . We stress that since a two parameters Fermi-Dirac distribution fits rather accurately the spectra obtained from the numerical simulations, dropping our first simplification does not affect sensibly the numerical results.

Neutrino oscillations can produce a composite spectrum corresponding to an admixture of the original $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ spectrum with a harder component due to $`\overline{\nu }_x`$ ($`x=\mu ,\tau `$) Lunardini:2003eh . Clearly, the resulting spectral distortions will depend in first place on the size of the $`\overline{\nu }_e\overline{\nu }_x`$ spectral differences. While it is often stated that these differences could be quite sizable, and could yield up to a factor of two hierarchy between the $`\overline{\nu }_x`$ and $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ average energies burrows ; woosley ; totani ; lieben , recent and more complete analysis of SN neutrino spectra formation KeilRaffeltJanka  indicate that this is not the case: the inclusion of important interaction rates that were neglected in previous works yields spectral differences that are only of the order of 10% KeilRaffeltJanka . At this level, identifying the two components of a mixed spectrum would be a difficult task, and could represent a real challenge for the study of SN neutrino oscillations in the $`\overline{\nu }_e\overline{\nu }_x`$ channel. However, for what concerns our analysis, this ensures that the results discussed above are not affected much by neutrino oscillations. To keep on the safe side, we have tested the sensitivity of our method to oscillation effects by running a set of simulations using the results of Woosley et al. woosley  for which, as a consequence of negelcting important neutrino reactions KeilRaffeltJanka , the spectral differences are extreme ($`\overline{E}_{\overline{\nu }_x}2\overline{E}_{\overline{\nu }_e}`$). As we will show, even in this (probably unrealistic) case, we find that the loss in sensitivity to the neutrino mass is small. We can conclude that the effects of neutrino oscillations do not endanger the applicability of our method and neither its overall sensitivity to the neutrino mass.

As is discussed in Lunardini:2003eh , depending on the type of the neutrino mass hierarchy (normal or inverted) and on the size of $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{13}`$ (large $`>10^4`$ or very small $`<10^6`$), neutrino oscillations could i) harden the $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ spectrum through a complete spectral swap with $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$ (inverted hierarchy, large $`\theta _{13}`$) ii) mix the $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ spectrum with a fraction of about $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12}1/4`$ of harder neutrinos (in the other cases). (The region $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{13}10^610^4`$ would produce spectra with an intermediate amount of mixing.) The first case can be studied without modifications in our procedure. Clearly, a different spectrum would imply somewhat different numerical results; however, this is analogous to the unavoidable uncertainty related to the choice of the particular SN model since, for example, the $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ mean energies that have been used in the present analysis woosley  are quite close to the $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$ mean energies of the model of Totani et al. totani  . The second case is more interesting since, for large spectral differences, fitting a composite spectrum with just one effective spectral temperature and one pinching parameter could degrade somewhat the sensitivity.

We have carried out an analysis of forty neutrino samples with a mixed composite spectrum as would result from a normal mass hierarchy, $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12}1/4`$ and large $`\theta _{13}`$. The original $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ and $`\overline{\nu }_x`$ fluxes taken from woosley  are depicted in fig. 4 and compared with the composite $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ flux at the detection point, as well as with our maximum likelihood fits. The relative normalization of the fluxes was computed assuming flavor equipartition of the integrated luminosities and the time dependent average energies given in woosley . A similar comparison between the mean energies of the two spectral components, the average energy of the mixed spectrum and the average energies obtained from Fermi-Dirac distributions with fitted spectral parameters $`\widehat{T}(t)`$ and $`\widehat{\eta }(t)`$ is depicted in fig. 5.

For the mass fits we have taken $`E_{\mathrm{tr}}=5`$MeV and $`L=10`$kpc. Since we are essentially interested in the loss of sensitivity to the neutrino mass with respect to the non-oscillation case, we have been searching for a mass value that can reproduce results similar to those of the band plot in fig. 3 (namely, for a signal generated with $`\widehat{m}_\nu 0`$ we require the massless case to be excluded at 95% c.l. in at least 50% of the runs). As is shown in fig. 6 our requirement is fullfilled for $`\widehat{m}_\nu =1.2`$eV, to be compared with $`\widehat{m}_\nu =1.0`$eV for the non-oscillation case. We conclude that even in the unrealistic case of extremely large spectral differences between the components of a mixed spectrum, fitting the data with a single two parameters Fermi-Dirac distribution does not degrade much the numerical results for the mass estimate. Given that the most recent results suggest that the $`\overline{\nu }_e`$ and $`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$ spectra are in fact not very different KeilRaffeltJanka , the use of more complicated bimodal energy distributions to improve the mass fits is probably not justified.

Before concluding, a few remarks are in order. In this work we have not carried out any deep study aimed to optimize the single fits to each different neutrino sample (windows size, interpolating functions $`P_{T,\eta }`$, specific flux function parameters). A large number of different sets of data have been analized through the very same procedure, in order to collect enough informations about the sensitivity of the method in a reasonable amount of time. It is clear to us that optimizing the overall procedure in order to analze a specific sample (as would certainly be the case with a signal from a real SN) can improve the sensitivity and shrink somewhat the uncertainties on $`m_\nu ^2`$.

Besides the effects of neutrino oscillations that were briefly analyzed in the last paragraph, a few other issues could deserve further investigation. For example, assuming that the SK signal could be combined with negligible uncertainty on the absolute timing with the signal detected at KamLAND, the much better energy resolution and the lower threshold of this last detector could enhance the sensitivity to the neutrino mass. It also remains to see what sensitivity could be achieved with a statistics one order of magnitude larger, as would be available with the megaton neutrino detectors presently under study HyperK ; UNO ; TITAND .

Acknowledgments.

We acknowledge conversations with H.-T. Janka, G. Raffelt and in particular with A. Yu. Smirnov. J.I.Z. acknowledges hospitality from the Abdus Salam ICTP in Trieste (Italy) during the final stage of this research, and Colciencias for a scholarship for Doctoral Sudies. This work was supported in part by Colciencias in Colombia under contract 1115-05-13809.


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# 1 Flavor asymmetry of polarized sea in various models, compared with preliminary data from HERMES. The error bars indicate statistical errors, while the shaded band refers to systematic uncertainties. Adapted from Fig. 4 of Ref.[].

FLAVOR ASYMMETRY OF THE
POLARIZED LIGHT SEA: MODELS VS. DATA

V. Baronea, T. Calarcob, A. Dragoc and M.C. Simanid

aDi.S.T.A., Università del Piemonte Orientale “A. Avogadro”,
and INFN, Gruppo Coll. di Alessandria, 15100 Alessandria, Italy
b ECT\*, Villa Tambosi, I-38050 Villazzano (Trento), Italy
cDipartimento di Fisica, Università di Ferrara,
and INFN, Sezione di Ferrara, 44100 Ferrara, Italy
d Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA

Abstract

The flavor asymmetry of the polarized light sea, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}`$, discriminates between different model calculations of helicity densities. We show that the chiral chromodielectric model, differently from models based on a $`1/N_c`$ expansion, predicts a small value for this asymmetry, what seems in agreement with preliminary HERMES data.

1. Following the discovery that the quark contribution to the spin of the nucleon is surprisingly small , a considerable experimental effort was made to elucidate the details of the helicity densities of valence, sea and glue (for reviews on longitudinal spin physics, see ). On the other theoretical side, many models have been studied and most of them reproduce the gross features of the spin content of the nucleon, namely the $`g_1`$ structure function and the singlet distribution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }=_f(\mathrm{\Delta }f+\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f})`$. In order to discriminate between the models, one has to look at the quark and antiquark helicity densities for each separate flavor. This has been a lacking piece of information until last year, when the HERMES Collaboration at DESY, measuring semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering, succeeded in extracting the polarizations of $`u,\overline{u},d,\overline{d},s+\overline{s}`$ . Thus, HERMES experiment opened for the first time the possibility to test model results against data. To this purpose, non-singlet distributions are especially interesting because their evolution does not involve the polarized gluon density: as a consequence, they can be predicted in a more reliable way, without any extra assumption on the constituent polarized glue.

In what follows, our attention will be directed to the isoscalar and isovector combinations of antiquark densities,

$`\overline{f}_+(x)=\overline{u}(x)+\overline{d}(x),\overline{f}_{}(x)=\overline{u}(x)\overline{d}(x),`$ (1)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_+(x)=\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}(x)+\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}(x),\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}(x)=\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}(x)\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}(x).`$ (2)
The two classes of models most widely used for computing quark distributions, i.e. the chiral quark soliton model (CQSM, based on a $`1/N_c`$ expansion) and the bag-like confinement models – including the chiral chromodielectric model (CDM) –, make very different predictions for the relative weight of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_+`$, and of $`\overline{f}_+`$ and $`\overline{f}_{}`$. In particular, in the $`1/N_c`$ expansion, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}`$ is a leading quantity compared to $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_+`$ and $`\overline{f}_{}`$, hence it is expected to be large (in absolute value) and to satisfy the inequalities (which may be, as a matter of fact, strong inequalities)

$`|\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}|>|\overline{u}\overline{d}|,`$ (3)
$`|\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}|>|\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}+\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}|.`$ (4)
On the contrary, we shall show that the chromodielectric model predicts a small value for the polarized flavor asymmetry $`\mathrm{\Delta }f_{}`$, and reversed signs for the inequalities (3, 4). The HERMES preliminary data, although affected by relatively large uncertainties, seem indeed to favor a small $`\mathrm{\Delta }f_{}`$.

2. Let us start from the field-theoretical expressions of the quark and antiquark helicity distributions, i.e.

$`\mathrm{\Delta }f(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}\xi ^{}}{4\pi }e^{ixp^+\xi ^{}}N|\overline{\psi }(0)\gamma ^+\gamma _5\psi (0,\xi ^{},0_{})|N},`$ (5)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}\xi ^{}}{4\pi }e^{ixp^+\xi ^{}}N|\mathrm{Tr}\gamma ^+\gamma _5\psi (0)\overline{\psi }(0,\xi ^{},0_{})|N}.`$ (6)
Quark models provide the matrix elements in the nucleon state, which cannot be calculated in perturbative QCD.

In a (projected) mean-field approximation, eqs. (5, 6) can be rewritten in terms of single–particle quark or antiquark matrix elements. For the quark distribution one has  (the expression for antiquarks is similar)

$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ $`f(x)`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha }{}}{\displaystyle \underset{m}{}}P(f,\alpha ,m)`$ (7)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}^3𝒑_\alpha }{(2\pi )^3\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}p_\alpha ^0}A_\alpha (p_\alpha )\delta [(1x)p^+p_\alpha ^+]\overline{\phi }(p_\alpha ,m)\gamma ^+\gamma _5\phi (p_\alpha ,m)},`$
where $`\phi `$ is the single-quark wave function, $`m`$ is the projection of the quark spin along the direction of the nucleon’s spin, $`P(f,\alpha ,m)`$ is the probability of extracting a quark of flavor $`f`$ and spin $`m`$ leaving a state generically labeled by the quantum number $`\alpha `$. The overlap function $`A_\alpha (p_\alpha )`$ contains the details of the intermediate states and of the projection used to obtain a nucleon with definite linear momentum from a three–quark bag (see for instance ). The intermediate states which contribute to (7) are $`2q`$ and $`3q1\overline{q}`$ states for the quark distribution, and $`4q`$ states for the antiquark distribution.

The model of the nucleon that we adopt is the chiral chromodielectric model (CDM) . The Lagrangian of the CDM is

$``$ $`=`$ $`i\overline{\psi }\gamma ^\mu _\mu \psi +{\displaystyle \frac{g}{\chi }}\overline{\psi }\left(\sigma +i\gamma _5𝝉\mathbf{}𝝅\right)\psi `$ (8)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(_\mu \chi \right)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}M^2\chi ^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(_\mu \sigma \right)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(_\mu 𝝅\right)^2U(\sigma ,𝝅),`$
where $`U(\sigma ,𝝅)`$ is the usual mexican-hat potential. $``$ describes a system of interacting quarks, pions, sigmas and a scalar-isoscalar chiral singlet field $`\chi `$. The parameters of the model are: the chiral meson masses $`m_\pi =0.14`$ GeV, $`m_\sigma =1.2`$ GeV, the pion decay constant $`f_\pi =93`$ MeV, the quark–meson coupling constant $`g`$, and the mass $`M`$ of the $`\chi `$ field. The parameters $`g`$ and $`M`$, which are the only free parameters of the model, are fixed by reproducing the average nucleon-delta mass and the isoscalar radius of the proton. The technique used to compute the physical nucleon state $`|N`$ is based on a double projection of the mean-field solution on linear and angular momentum eigenstates. It is a standard procedure and we refer the reader to  for details about it.

An important point to notice is that the intermediate states labeled by $`\alpha `$ in eq. (7) are computed within the CDM in a parameter-free manner. The flavor asymmetries of the distribution functions arise from the differences between the intermediate states left out by a $`u`$ or a $`d`$ quark (antiquark) (the relevant formalism can be found in Ref.) and therefore the results for these asymmetries are genuine predictions of the model. The two sources of the flavor asymmetry in this approach are therefore the Pauli principle and the splitting of the masses of the intermediate $`4q`$ states, due to pion exchange corrections. A crucial check of the reliability of our calculation comes from the fulfillment of the valence number sum rule, that we found to be saturated within few percent . Another non-trivial test is provided by the Soffer inequality , which turns out to be satisfied by all quark and antiquark distributions of our model.

Finally, we recall that the distributions computed in a quark model describe the nucleon at some low scale $`\mu ^2`$ (the “model scale”). They are used as the input of the Altarelli–Parisi evolution from $`\mu ^2`$ to a larger scale. In previous works  we determined the model scale by comparing the model prediction for the valence momentum with the experimental value and found $`\mu ^2=0.16`$ GeV2.

3. We computed various combinations of the isovector and isoscalar distributions (1, 2). Our result for the polarized flavor asymmetry $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}=\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}`$, evolved in leading-order QCD to the momentum scale of HERMES data, $`Q^2=2.5`$ GeV2, is shown in Fig. 1 (solid line). We find that $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}`$ is quite small and essentially zero for $`x\text{ }>0.1`$. In Fig. 2 we plot the ratio of the polarized to the unpolarized asymmetry, $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d})/(\overline{d}\overline{u})`$, at $`Q^2=2.5`$ GeV2. This ratio is less than unity in the whole $`x`$ range (for the meaning of the data points in Fig. 2, see below). Finally, Fig. 3 shows the isovector to isoscalar ratio $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}/\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_+`$ predicted by the CDM at the model scale $`\mu ^2`$ and at the scale of the HERMES experiment. This ratio must be taken with a grain of salt, since $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_+`$ has been evolved under the hypothesis of vanishing gluon polarization at the starting scale, which might be a simplistic assumption.

We must recall that a negative feature of the CDM is that it yields single-quark wave functions that are very much peaked in momentum space. Therefore quark distribution functions vanish too rapidly, typically above $`x0.6`$. Also antiquark distributions vanish very fast. However, we expect that the ratios presented in Figs. 2–3 should not be much affected by this behavior.

As mentioned earlier, the helicity densities have been also computed in the chiral quark soliton model (CQSM) . This model describes the nucleon as a state of $`N_c`$ valence quarks bound by a self-consistent hedgehog-like pion field. In the large-$`N_c`$ limit the distribution functions are calculated by a $`1/N_c`$ expansion. A clearcut prediction of the CQSM is that the isovector polarized antiquark distribution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}`$ is a leading quantity compared to the isoscalar distribution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_+`$ and to the isovector unpolarized distribution $`\overline{f}_{}`$, which both vanish at lowest order in $`1/N_c`$. Thus, one has in the CQSM

$$\frac{|\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}|}{|\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_+|}N_c1,\frac{|\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}|}{|\overline{f}_{}|}N_c1,$$
(9)
and $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}|`$ is expected to be large. These behaviors are a direct consequence of the $`1/N_c`$ expansion and do not depend on the approximations used to calculate the distributions. The values of the two ratios (9) can be read out from the results presented in  and , respectively. The order of magnitude is (the spread corresponds to the variation over the experimentally accessible $`x`$ range)

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}}{\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}+\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}}23,\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}}{\overline{d}\overline{u}}34$$
(10)
The differences between the CDM and the CQSM predictions are therefore very large and can be fully appreciated in Fig. 1. The observables plotted in the three figures are extremely sensitive to the model used for computing them, and their accurate experimental determination would allow a definite test of the theory.

Let us take a look at the available data. The quantity measured by HERMES is the semi-inclusive cross section asymmetry $`A_1^h`$. In leading-order QCD and under the assumption that the transverse spin structure function $`g_2`$ vanishes, $`A_1^h`$ reads

$$A_1^h(x,Q^2)=\frac{1+R(x,Q^2)}{1+\gamma ^2}\frac{_fe_f^2\mathrm{\Delta }f(x,Q^2)D_f^h(z,Q^2)dz}{_fe_f^2f(x,Q^2)D_f^h(z,Q^2)dz}.$$
(11)
Here $`R=\sigma _L/\sigma _T`$ is the longitudinal to transverse photo-absorption cross section ratio, $`\gamma =2m_Nx/Q`$, and $`D_f^h`$ are the fragmentation functions of flavor $`f`$ into an hadron $`h`$ carrying a fraction $`z`$ of the initial quark momentum. By combining data on hydrogen and deuterium targets and detecting final state pions and kaons in the range $`0.2<z<0.8`$, HERMES extracted separately $`\mathrm{\Delta }u`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }d`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }s+\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{s}`$. As shown in Fig. 1, the isovector antiquark distribution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}=\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}`$ is found to be small and compatible with zero. This is still a preliminary result, affected by significant statistical and systematic errors, but it is reproduced reasonably well by our model (see Fig. 1). On the contrary, the large value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}`$ predicted by the CQSM (dashed curve in Fig. 1) seems to be discarded by the data (the dotted curve is the prediction of the statistical model of Bourrely et al. , that we do not discuss here). In Fig. 2 we divided the HERMES data by the unpolarized asymmetry $`\overline{d}\overline{u}`$ as given by the CTEQ5LO parameterization , which is essentially driven by the Drell-Yan data. We attributed to the CTEQ5LO fit an absolute uncertainty of $`10\%`$ in the relevant range of $`x`$, mimicking in this way the Drell-Yan errors. The resulting points are plotted with the propagated errors and the total error bars are dominated by the large uncertainties on $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{u}\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{d}`$. Once more, the agreement with the CDM prediction (solid line) is fairly good, while the high CQSM values seem to be excluded.

4. Before coming to the conclusions, we would like to comment on some technicalities concerning the model calculation of antiquark densities. Let us first notice that, if we adhere to the definition (5) of quark distributions, the variable $`x=k^+/p^+`$ (where $`k^+`$ is the light-cone quark momentum) is not constrained a priori to be positive. It turns out that there is a relation connecting quark and antiquark distributions, which are obtained by continuing $`x`$ to negative values. For helicity distributions this relation is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}(x)=\mathrm{\Delta }f(x).$$
(12)
In some approaches, including that of , the antiquark distributions are computed by means of (12). This is, in principle, an unsafe procedure. The reason is that there are semi-connected diagrams that contribute to the distributions for $`x<0`$, whereas in computing these distributions in the physical region only connected diagrams should be considered (indeed, this defines the parton model, as pointed out by Jaffe ). Our approach has no such problem: the antiquark distributions are calculated directly from their field-theoretical expression (6), by inserting a complete set of intermediate states, as explained above. Incidentally, we notice that the different techniques adopted for computing the antiquark distributions are probably at the origin of the sign discrepancy between the transversity sea distributions computed in  and in .

5. In summary, we showed that the chiral chromodielectric model and the chiral quark soliton model predict very different behaviors for the polarized isovector distribution $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}`$ and for the ratios of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}`$ to the unpolarized isovector distribution, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}/\overline{f}_{}`$, and to the polarized isoscalar distribution, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}/\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_+`$. The recent preliminary HERMES data favor the CDM results and exclude the large value for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{f}_{}`$ predicted by the CQSM. Hopefully, more precise data in the next future will say a conclusive word about the whole question.

It is a pleasure to thank Paola Ferretti Dalpiaz for various useful discussions.


text:
# Effective ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopoles from pure SU(3) gauge theory

## I Introduction

In two recent papers vdsin1  vdsin2  it was pointed out that quantized SU(2) gauge theory in some approximation is equivalent to a U(1) gauge theory plus a scalar field, i.e. a pure SU(2) gauge theory reduces to a smaller U(1) abelian subgroup plus a symmetry breaking effective Higgs field. The postulate underlying this construction was that in some situations the SU(2) gauge fields can be decomposed into ordered and disordered phases. For the ordered phase the components of the SU(2) field have non-zero quantum average $`a_\mu ^a0`$, while the disordered phase has a zero average $`A_\mu ^m=0`$. Nevertheless, it is postulated that the condensate of the disordered phase is non-zero (i.e. $`A_\mu ^mA_\nu ^n0`$, ) so that it therefore possesses a non-zero energy. Under these conditions the pure SU(2) gauge theory is equivalent to the Ginzburg - Landau theory interacting with the U(1) gauge field.

The aim of this paper is to extend these results to the SU(3) gauge theory. There are interesting differences between the previous SU(2) $``$ U(1) reduction and the present SU(3) $``$ SU(2) reduction. For the SU(2)$``$U(1) case the gauge field, $`a_\mu ^a`$, of the subgroup belongs to an Abelian subgroup U(1), and therefore does not have self-interaction terms like $`(a_\mu ^aa^{a\mu })^2`$. In the SU(3)$``$SU(2) case the gauge fields, $`a_\mu ^a`$ ($`a=1,2,3`$), belong to a non-Abelian subgroup SU(2), and these gauge field do have self-interaction terms like $`(a_\mu ^aa^{a\mu })^2`$. These terms are expected to change some results in comparison with the case investigated in Refs. vdsin2 . In particular in vdsin2  after the reduction from SU(2) $``$ U(1) we obtained an effective Ginzburg-Landau Lagrangian of the form which gives rise to Nielsen-Olesen flux tube solutions no . In the present case we will find that the SU(3) $``$ SU(2) reduction yields an effective Georgi-Glashow gg  Lagrangian which has t’ Hooft-Polyakov monopole solutions thp . The mass of the monopole solutions is inversely proportional to the square of the coupling constant and directly proportional to the mass scale or the mass of the relevant gauge bosons. The monopoles which occur in Grand Unified Theories like SU(5) are therefore extremely massive since the gauge bosons have masses of order $`10^{15}`$ GeV and the couplings constants are perturbatively small so that the monopoles would have masses greater than $`10^{15}`$ GeV. For the effective Yang-Mills-Higgs Lagrangian derived here the coupling constant and mass scale would be that of SU(3) – the coupling constant would be of order $`1`$ and the mass scale would be of order $`\mathrm{\Lambda }200`$ MeV. Thus these monopole solutions would have a mass which would allow them to play a physical role in low energy scale physics. We offer some speculation that such solutions may play a role in the nucleon spin puzzle emc . The main point to be made is that while pure Yang-Mills theories are proven not to have classical finite energy solutions coleman  deser , in the present case we perform a semi-quantization of the system, and find that finite energy monopole solutions arise not from the classical theory, but from the quantized theory.

## II SU(3)$``$SU(2) + coset decomposition

In this section the reduction of SU(3) to SU(2) is defined. We follow the conventions of Ref. kondo1 . Starting with the SU(3) gauge group with generators $`T^B`$, we define the SU(3) gauge fields, $`𝒜_\mu =𝒜_\mu ^BT^B`$. Let SU(2) be a subgroup of SU(3) and SU(3)/SU(2) is a coset. Then the gauge field $`𝒜_\mu `$ can be decomposed as

$`𝒜_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`𝒜_\mu ^BT^B=a_\mu ^aT^a+A_\mu ^mT^m,`$ (1)
$`a_\mu ^a`$ $``$ $`SU(2)\text{and}A_\mu ^mSU(3)/SU(2)`$ (2)
where the indices $`a,b,c\mathrm{}`$ belongs to the subgroup SU(2) and $`m,n,\mathrm{}`$to the coset SU(3)/SU(2); $`B`$ are SU(3) indices. Based on this the field strength can be decomposed as

$$_{\mu \nu }^BT^B=_{\mu \nu }^aT^a+_{\mu \nu }^mT^m$$
(3)
where

$`_{\mu \nu }^a`$ $`=`$ $`h_{\mu \nu }^a+\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu }^aSU(2),`$ (4)
$`h_{\mu \nu }^a`$ $`=`$ $`_\mu a_\nu ^a_\nu a_\mu ^a+gϵ^{abc}a_\mu ^ba_\nu ^cSU(2),`$ (5)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu }^a`$ $`=`$ $`gf^{amn}A_\mu ^mA_\nu ^nSU(2),`$ (6)
$`_{\mu \nu }^m`$ $`=`$ $`F_{\mu \nu }^m+G_{\mu \nu }^mSU(3)/SU(2),`$ (7)
$`F_{\mu \nu }^m`$ $`=`$ $`_\mu A_\nu ^m_\nu A_\mu ^m+gf^{mnp}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pSU(3)/SU(2),`$ (8)
$`G_{\mu \nu }^m`$ $`=`$ $`gf^{mnb}\left(A_\mu ^na_\nu ^bA_\nu ^na_\mu ^b\right)SU(3)/SU(2)`$ (9)
where $`f^{ABC}`$ are the structure constants of SU(3), $`ϵ^{abc}=f^{abc}`$ are the structure constants of SU(2). The SU(3) Yang-Mills field equations can be decomposed as

$`d_\nu \left(h^{a\mu \nu }+\mathrm{\Phi }^{a\mu \nu }\right)`$ $`=`$ $`gf^{amn}A_\nu ^m\left(F^{n\mu \nu }+G^{n\mu \nu }\right),`$ (10)
$`D_\nu \left(F^{m\mu \nu }+G^{m\mu \nu }\right)`$ $`=`$ $`gf^{mnb}\left[A_\nu ^n\left(h^{b\mu \nu }+\mathrm{\Phi }^{b\mu \nu }\right)a_\nu ^b\left(F^{n\mu \nu }+G^{n\mu \nu }\right)\right]`$ (11)
where $`d_\nu [\mathrm{}]^a=_\nu [\mathrm{}]^a+f^{abc}a_\nu ^b[\mathrm{}]^c`$ is the covariant derivative on the subgroup SU(2) and $`D_\nu [\mathrm{}]^m=_\nu [\mathrm{}]^m+f^{mnp}A_\nu ^n[\mathrm{}]^p`$

## III Heisenberg quantization for QCD

In the rest of the paper we will apply a modification of the Heisenberg quantization technique to the system defined in the previous section. In quantizing the classical system given in Eqs. (10) - (11) via Heisenberg’s method heis  one first replaces the classical fields by field operators $`a_\mu ^a\widehat{a}_\mu ^a`$ and $`A_\mu ^m\widehat{A}_\mu ^m`$. This yields non-linear, coupled, differential equations for the field operators. One then uses these equations to determine the expectation values for the field operators $`\widehat{a}_\mu ^a`$ and $`\widehat{A}_\mu ^m`$ (e.g. $`\widehat{a}_\mu ^a`$, where $`\mathrm{}=Q|\mathrm{}|Q`$ and $`|Q`$ is some quantum state). One can also use these equations to determine the expectation values of operators that are built up from the fundamental operators $`\widehat{a}_\mu ^a`$ and $`\widehat{A}_\mu ^m`$. For example, the “electric” field operator, $`\widehat{E}_z^a=_0\widehat{a}_z^a_z\widehat{a}_0^a`$ giving the expectation $`\widehat{E}_z^a`$. The simple gauge field expectation values, $`𝒜_\mu (x)`$, are obtained by taking the expectation of the operator version of Eqs. (10) (11) with respect to some quantum state $`|Q`$. One problem in using these equations to obtain expectation values like $`A_\mu ^m`$, is that these equations involve not only powers or derivatives of $`A_\mu ^m`$ (i.e. terms like $`_\alpha A_\mu ^m`$ or $`_\alpha _\beta A_\mu ^m`$) but also contain terms like $`𝒢_{\mu \nu }^{mn}=A_\mu ^mA_\nu ^n`$. Starting with the operator version of Eqs. (10)– (11) one can generate an operator differential equation for the product $`\widehat{A}_\mu ^m\widehat{A}_\nu ^n`$ thus allowing the determination of the Green’s function $`𝒢_{\mu \nu }^{mn}`$. However this equation will in turn contain other, higher order Green’s functions. Repeating these steps leads to an infinite set of equations connecting Green’s functions of ever increasing order. This procedure is very similar to the field correlators approach in QCD (for a review, see giacomo ). In Ref. simonov  a set of self coupled equations for such field correlators is given. This construction, leading to an infinite set of coupled, differential equations, does not have an exact, analytical solution and so must be handled using some approximation.

Operators are only well determined if there is a Hilbert space of quantum states. Thus we need to ask about the definition of the quantum states $`|Q`$ in the above construction. The resolution to this problem is as follows: There is an one-to-one correspondence between a given quantum state $`|Q`$ and the infinite set of quantum expectation values over any product of field operators, $`𝒢_{\mu \nu \mathrm{}}^{mn\mathrm{}}(x_1,x_2\mathrm{})=Q|A_\mu ^m(x_1)A_\nu ^n(x_2)\mathrm{}|Q`$. So if all the Green’s functions – $`𝒢_{\mu \nu \mathrm{}}^{mn\mathrm{}}(x_1,x_2\mathrm{})`$ – are known then the quantum states, $`|Q`$ are known, i.e. the action of $`|Q`$ on any product of field operators $`\widehat{A}_\mu ^m(x_1)\widehat{A}_\nu ^n(x_2)\mathrm{}`$ is known. The Green’s functions are determined from the above, infinite set of equations (following Heisenberg’s idea).

Another problem associated with products of field operators like $`\widehat{A}_\mu ^m(x)\widehat{A}_\nu ^n(x)`$ is that the two operators occur at the same point. For non-interacting field it is well known that such products have a singularity. In this paper we are considering interacting fields so it is not known if a singularity would arise for such products of operators evaluated at the same point. Physically it is hypothesized that there are situations in interacting field theories where these singularities do not occur (e.g. for flux tubes in Abelian or non-Abelian theory quantities like the “electric” field inside the tube, $`E_z^a<\mathrm{}`$, and energy density $`\epsilon (x)=(E_z^a)^2<\mathrm{}`$ are nonsingular). Here we take as an assumption that such singularities do not occur.

## IV Basic assumptions

It is evident that the full and exact quantization is impossible in this case. Thus we have to look for some simplification in order to obtain equations which can be analyzed. Our basic aim is cut off the infinite equations set using some simplifying assumptions. For this purpose we have to have ansätzen for the following 2 and 4-points Green’s functions : $`A_\mu ^m(y)A_\nu ^n(x)`$, $`a_\alpha ^a(x)a_\beta ^b(y)A_\mu ^m(z)A_\nu ^n(u)`$ and $`A_\alpha ^m(x)A_\beta ^n(y)A_\mu ^p(z)A_\nu ^q(u)`$. At first we assume that there are two phases

1. The gauge field components $`a_\mu ^a`$ (a=1,2,3 $`a_\mu ^aSU(2)`$) belonging to the small subgroup SU(2) are in an ordered phase. Mathematically this means that

$$a_\mu ^a(x)=(a_\mu ^a(x))_{cl}.$$
(12)
The subscript means that this is the classical field. Thus we are treating these components as effectively classical gauge fields in the first approximation.
2. The gauge field components $`A_\mu ^m`$ (m=4,5, … , 8 and $`A_\mu ^mSU(3)/SU(2)`$) belonging to the coset SU(3)/SU(2) are in a disordered phase (or in other words - a condensate), but have non-zero energy. In mathematical terms this means that

$$A_\mu ^m(x)=0,\text{but}A_\mu ^m(x)A_\nu ^n(x)0.$$
(13)
Later we will postulate a specific, and physically reasonable form for the non-zero term.
3. There is not correlation between ordered (classical) and disordered (quantum) phases

$$f(a_\mu ^a)g(A_\nu ^m)=f(a_\mu ^a)g(A_\mu ^m)$$
(14)
Later we will give a specific form for this correlation in a 4-point Green’s function.

## V Derivation of an effective Lagrangian

Our quantization procedure will derivate from the Heisenberg method in that we will take the expectation of the Lagrangian rather than for the equations of motions. Thus we will obtain an effective Lagrangian rather than approximate equations of motion. The Lagrangian we obtain from the original SU(3) pure gauge theory is an effective SU(2) Yang-Mills-Higgs system which has monopole solutions. The averaged Lagrangian is

$$=\frac{1}{4}_{\mu \nu }^A^{A\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{4}\left(_{\mu \nu }^a^{a\mu \nu }+_{\mu \nu }^m^{m\mu \nu }\right)$$
(15)
here $`^{a\mu \nu }`$ and $`^{m\mu \nu }`$ are defined by equations (4)-(9).

### V.1 Calculation of $`_{\mu \nu }^a^{a\mu \nu }`$

We begin by calculating the first term on the r.h.s. of equation (15)

$$_{\mu \nu }^a^{a\mu \nu }=h_{\mu \nu }^ah^{a\mu \nu }+2h_{\mu \nu }^a\mathrm{\Phi }^{a\mu \nu }+\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mu \nu }^a\mathrm{\Phi }^{a\mu \nu }.$$
(16)
Immediately we see that the first term on the r.h.s. of this equation is SU(2) Lagrangian as we assume that $`a_\mu ^a`$ and $`h_{\mu \nu }^a`$ are the classical quantities and consequently

$$h_{\mu \nu }^ah^{a\mu \nu }h_{\mu \nu }^ah^{a\mu \nu }.$$
(17)
The second term in equation (15) is

$$h_{\mu \nu }^a\mathrm{\Phi }^{a\mu \nu }=gf^{amn}\left(_\mu a_\nu ^a_\nu a_\mu ^a\right)A^{m\mu }A^{n\nu }+gf^{abc}f^{amn}a_\mu ^ba_\nu ^cA^{m\mu }A^{n\nu }.$$
(18)
Using assumptions 1 and 3 from the previous section these terms become

$$a_\alpha ^a(x)A_\mu ^m(y)A_\nu ^n(z)=a_\alpha ^a(x)A_\mu ^m(y)A_\nu ^n(z)=\eta _{\mu \nu }a_\alpha ^a(x)𝒢^{mn}(y,z)$$
(19)
and

$$a_\alpha ^a(x)a_\beta ^b(y)A_\mu ^m(z)A_\nu ^n(u)=a_\alpha ^a(x)a_\beta ^b(y)\eta _{\mu \nu }𝒢^{mn}(z,u)$$
(20)
The function $`𝒢^{mn}(x,y)`$ is the 2-point correlator (Green’s function) for the disordered phase. Because of the bosonic character of the coset gauge fields $`𝒢^{mn}(x,y)`$ must be symmetric under exchange of these fields. Also by assumption 2 of the last section this expectation should be non-zero. We take the form for this 2-point correlator to be

$$A_\mu ^m(y)A_\nu ^n(x)=\frac{1}{3}\eta _{\mu \nu }f^{mpb}f^{npc}\varphi ^b(y)\varphi ^c(x)=\eta _{\mu \nu }𝒢^{mn}(y,x)$$
(21)
with

$$𝒢^{mn}(y,x)=\frac{1}{3}f^{mpb}f^{npc}\varphi ^b(y)\varphi ^c(x)$$
(22)
here $`\varphi ^a`$ is a real SU(2) triplet scalar fields. Thus we have replaced the coset gauge fields by an effective scalar field, which will be the scalar field in our effective SU(2)-scalar system. The factor of $`\frac{1}{3}`$ is introduced so that the effective scalar field, $`\varphi `$, will have the correct coefficent for the kinetic energy term. If we were to take the scalar field to be constant ($`\varphi ^a(x)const.`$) then (21) and (22) would represent an effective mass-like, condensation term of the coset gauge fields. With this we find that the middle term vanishes

$$h_{\mu \nu }^a\mathrm{\Phi }^{a\mu \nu }=g\eta ^{\mu \nu }\left(f^{amn}\left(_\mu a_\nu ^a(x)_\nu a_\mu ^a(x)\right)𝒢^{mn}(x,x)+gf^{amn}f^{abc}a_\mu ^b(x)a_\nu ^c(x)𝒢^{mn}(x,x)\right)=0$$
(23)
The last term which is quartic in the coset gauge fields will be considered at the end. Up to this point the SU(2) part of the Lagrangian is

$$_{\mu \nu }^a^{a\mu \nu }=h_{\mu \nu }^ah^{a\mu \nu }+g^2f^{anp}f^{an^{}p^{}}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pA^{n^{}\mu }A^{p^{}\nu }.$$
(24)
### V.2 Calculation of $`_{\mu \nu }^m^{m\mu \nu }`$

Next we work on the coset part of the Lagrangian

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill _{\mu \nu }^m^{m\mu \nu }=\left[\left(_\mu A_\nu ^mgf^{mnb}A_\nu ^na_\mu ^b\right)\left(_\nu A_\mu ^mgf^{mnb}A_\mu ^na_\nu ^b\right)+gf^{mnp}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^p\right]^2& =\hfill \\ \hfill 2\left(_\mu A_\nu ^mgf^{mnb}A_\nu ^na_\mu ^b\right)^22\left(_\mu A_\nu ^mgf^{mnb}A_\nu ^na_\mu ^b\right)\left(^\nu A^{m\mu }gf^{mn^{}b^{}}A^{n^{}\mu }a^{b^{}\nu }\right)+\\ \hfill 4g\left(_\mu A_\nu ^mgf^{bmn^{}}A_\nu ^n^{}a_\mu ^b\right)f^{mnp}A^{n\mu }A^{p\nu }+g^2f^{mnp}f^{mn^{}p^{}}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pA^{n^{}\mu }A^{p^{}\nu }.\end{array}$$
(25)
First we calculate

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill 2\left(_\mu A_\nu ^m\right)^2=2_{y\mu }A_\nu ^m(y)_x^\mu A^{m\nu }(x)|_{y=x}=2_{y\mu }_x^\mu A_\nu ^m(y)A^{m\nu }(x)|_{y=x}& =\hfill \\ \hfill \frac{2}{3}\eta _\nu ^\nu f^{mpb}f^{mpc}_\mu \varphi ^b^\mu \varphi ^c=\frac{8}{3}_\mu \varphi ^a^\mu \varphi ^a& .\hfill \end{array}$$
(26)
Analogously

$$2_\mu A_\nu ^m(y)^\nu A^{m\mu }(x)|_{y=x}=\frac{2}{3}\eta _\nu ^\mu f^{mpb}f^{mpc}_\mu \varphi ^b^\nu \varphi ^c=\frac{2}{3}_\mu \varphi ^a^\mu \varphi ^a.$$
(27)
The next term is

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill 4g\left(_\mu A_\nu ^m\right)f^{amn}A^{n\nu }a^{a\mu }=4gf^{amn}a^{a\mu }\left(_\mu A_\nu ^m\right)A^{n\nu }=4gf^{amn}a^{a\mu }(x)\left(_{y\mu }A_\nu ^m(y)\right)A^{n\nu }(x)|_{y=x}& =\hfill \\ \hfill \frac{4}{3}g\eta _\nu ^\nu f^{amn}a^{a\mu }f^{mpb}f^{npc}_\mu \varphi ^b\varphi ^c=\frac{16}{3}ga^{a\mu }\left(f^{amn}f^{cnp}f^{bpm}\right)_\mu \varphi ^b\varphi ^c=\frac{8}{3}gϵ^{abc}a^{a\mu }_\mu \varphi ^b\varphi ^c& \end{array}$$
(28)
using $`f^{amn}f^{cnp}f^{bpm}=\frac{1}{2}ϵ^{acb}`$. Analogously

$$4gf^{amn}A_\nu ^n(y)a_\mu ^a(y)\left(_x^\nu A^{m\mu }(x)\right)|_{y=x}=\frac{4}{3}g\left(f^{amn}f^{bnp}f^{cpm}\right)a^{a\mu }\varphi ^b^\mu \varphi ^c=\frac{2}{3}gϵ^{abc}a^{a\mu }_\mu \varphi ^b\varphi ^c.$$
(29)
Using (21) the next term is

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill 2g^2f^{dmn}A_\nu ^na_\mu ^df^{d^{}mn^{}}A^{n^{}\nu }a^{d^{}\mu }=2g^2f^{dmn}a_\mu ^df^{d^{}mn^{}}a^{d^{}\mu }A_\nu ^nA^{n^{}\nu }& =\hfill \\ \hfill \frac{2}{3}\eta _\nu ^\nu \left(f^{dmn}f^{d^{}mn^{}}f^{npb}f^{n^{}pc}\right)\left(a_\mu ^da^{d^{}\mu }\varphi ^b\varphi ^c\right)=\frac{8}{3}g^2E^{d^{}dbc}a_\mu ^da^{d^{}\mu }\varphi ^b\varphi ^c& \end{array}$$
(30)
here $`E^{d^{}dbc}=f^{d^{}n^{}m}f^{dmn}f^{bnp}f^{cpn^{}}`$ and its components are

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill E^{aaaa}=E^{1111}=E^{2222}=E^{3333}=\frac{1}{4}& \\ \hfill E^{aabb}=E^{1122}=E^{1133}=E^{2211}=E^{2233}=E^{3311}=E^{3322}=\frac{1}{4}& \\ \hfill E^{abab}=E^{1212}=E^{1221}=E^{1313}=E^{1331}=E^{2121}=E^{2112}=E^{1313}=E^{3113}=E^{3232}=E^{3223}=\frac{1}{4}.& \end{array}$$
(31)
We now note that $`E^{d^{}dbc}a_\mu ^da^{d^{}\mu }\varphi ^b\varphi ^c=\frac{1}{4}(ϵ^{abc}ϵ^{ab^{}c^{}}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ca^{b^{}\mu }\varphi ^c^{}+a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c)`$. Thus (30) becomes

$$2g^2f^{dmn}A_\nu ^na_\mu ^df^{d^{}mn^{}}A^{n^{}\nu }a^{d^{}\mu }=\frac{2g^2}{3}(ϵ^{abc}ϵ^{ab^{}c^{}}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ca^{b^{}\mu }\varphi ^c^{}+a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c)$$
(32)
Analogously

$$2g^2f^{dmn}A_\nu ^na_\mu ^df^{d^{}mn^{}}A^{n^{}\mu }a^{d^{}\nu }=\frac{g^2}{6}(ϵ^{abc}ϵ^{ab^{}c^{}}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ca^{b^{}\mu }\varphi ^c^{}+a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c)$$
(33)
Finally, there are the terms that involve three coset fields (e.g. $`f^{mnp}(_\mu A_\nu ^mA^{n\mu }A^{p\nu })`$ and $`f^{bmn^{}}f^{mnp}a_\mu ^bA_\nu ^n^{}A^{n\mu }A^{p\nu }`$) The term involving the derivative is

$$f^{mnp}(_{y\mu }A_\nu ^m(y))A^{n\mu }(x)A^{p\nu }(z)$$
(34)
Since the gauge fields must be symmetric under exchange, and because of the antisymmetry of the of $`f^{mnp}`$ this term vanishes. Next the terms involving three coset fields and one $`SU(2)`$ field we will approximate as

$$f^{bmn^{}}f^{mnp}a_\mu ^bA_\nu ^n^{}A^{n\mu }A^{p\nu }\frac{1}{3}f^{bmn^{}}f^{mnp}a_\mu ^b\left(A_\nu ^n^{}A^{n\mu }A^{p\nu }+A_\nu ^n^{}A^{n\mu }A^{p\nu }+A_\nu ^n^{}A^{p\nu }A^{n\mu }\right)$$
(35)
By the second assumption in the previous section, $`A_\mu ^m(x)=0`$, this term also vanishes. Thus

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill _{\mu \nu }^m^{m\mu \nu }=2_\mu \varphi ^a^\mu \varphi ^a+2gϵ^{abc}a^{a\mu }_\mu \varphi ^b\varphi ^c\frac{g^2}{2}ϵ^{abc}ϵ^{ab^{}c^{}}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ca^{b^{}\mu }\varphi ^c^{}& \\ \hfill \frac{g^2}{2}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c+g^2f^{mnp}f^{mn^{}p^{}}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pA^{n^{}\mu }A^{p^{}\nu }& =\hfill \\ \hfill 2\left(_\mu \varphi ^a+\frac{g}{2}ϵ^{abc}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^c\right)^2\frac{g^2}{2}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c+g^2f^{mnp}f^{mn^{}p^{}}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pA^{n^{}\mu }A^{p^{}\nu }.\end{array}$$
(36)
The full averaged Lagrangian is

$$\frac{1}{4}_{\mu \nu }^A^{A\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{4}h_{\mu \nu }^ah^{a\mu \nu }+\frac{1}{2}\left(_\mu \varphi ^a+\frac{g}{2}ϵ^{abc}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^c\right)^2+\frac{g^2}{2}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c\frac{1}{4}g^2f^{Anp}f^{An^{}p^{}}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pA^{n^{}\mu }A^{p^{}\nu }.$$
(37)
where we have collected the quartic terms from eq. (24) and (36) together into $`f^{Anp}f^{An^{}p^{}}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pA^{n^{}\mu }A^{p^{}\nu }`$.

### V.3 The quartic term

In this section we show that the quartic term – $`f^{Anp}f^{An^{}p^{}}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pA^{n^{}\mu }A^{p^{}\nu }`$ – from eq. (37) becomes an effective $`\lambda \varphi ^4`$ interaction term for the effective scalar field introduced in eq. (21). Just as in eq. (21) where a quadratic gauge field expression was replaced by a quadratic effective scalar field expression, here we replace the quartic gauge field term by a quartic scalar field term

$$A_\alpha ^m(x)A_\beta ^n(y)A_\mu ^p(z)A_\nu ^q(u)=\left(E_{1,abcd}^{mnpq}\eta _{\alpha \beta }\eta _{\mu \nu }+E_{2,abcd}^{mpnq}\eta _{\alpha \mu }\eta _{\beta \nu }+E_{3,abcd}^{mqnp}\eta _{\alpha \nu }\eta _{\beta \mu }\right)\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^b(y)\varphi ^c(z)\varphi ^d(u)$$
(38)
here $`E_{1,abcd}^{mnpq},E_{2,abcd}^{mpnq},E_{3,abcd}^{mqnp}`$ are constants. Because of the bosonic character of the gauge fields in (38) the indices of these constants in conjunction with the indices of the $`\eta _{\alpha \beta }`$’s must reflect symmetry under exchange of the fields. The simplest choice that satisfies this requirement is

$$A_\alpha ^m(x)A_\beta ^n(y)A_\mu ^p(z)A_\nu ^q(u)=\left(\delta ^{mn}\delta ^{pq}\eta _{\alpha \beta }\eta _{\mu \nu }+\delta ^{mp}\delta ^{nq}\eta _{\alpha \mu }\eta _{\beta \nu }+\delta ^{mq}\delta ^{np}\eta _{\alpha \nu }\eta _{\beta \mu }\right)e_{abcd}\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^b(y)\varphi ^c(z)\varphi ^d(u)$$
(39)
This choice of taking the constants from eq. (38) to be products of Kronecker deltas and fixing $`a=b=c=d`$ for the lower indices, satisfies the bosonic character requirement for the gauge fields, and is equivalent to the reduction used for the quartic term in vdsin2 . Evaluating eq. (39) at one spacetime point (i.e. $`x=y=z=u`$) and contracting the indices to conform to quartic term in eq. (37) gives

$$A_\alpha ^m(x)A_\beta ^n(x)A_\mu ^p(x)A_\nu ^q(x)=\left(\delta ^{mn}\delta ^{pq}\eta _{\mu \nu }\eta ^{\mu \nu }+\delta ^{mp}\delta ^{nq}\eta _\mu ^\mu \eta _\nu ^\nu +\delta ^{mq}\delta ^{np}\eta _\mu ^\nu \eta _\nu ^\mu \right)\left(\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^a(x)\right)^2$$
(40)
where the constants $`e_{abcd}`$ are chosen that at the point $`x=y=z=u`$

$$e_{abcd}=\frac{1}{3}\left(\delta _{ab}\delta _{cd}+\delta _{ac}\delta _{bd}+\delta _{ad}\delta _{bc}\right).$$
(41)
This expression can be further simplified to

$$A_\mu ^mA_\nu ^nA^{p\mu }A^{q\nu }=\left(4\delta ^{mn}\delta ^{pq}+16\delta ^{mp}\delta ^{nq}+4\delta ^{mq}\delta ^{np}\right)\left(\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^a(x)\right)^2.$$
(42)
Substituting this into the original quartic term of eq. (37) yields

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill f^{Anp}f^{An^{}p^{}}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pA^{n^{}\mu }A^{p^{}\nu }=(4f^{Ann}f^{An^{}n^{}}+16f^{Anp}f^{Anp}+4f^{Anp}f^{Apn})\left(\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^a(x)\right)^2& \\ \hfill =12f^{Anp}f^{Anp}\left(\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^a(x)\right)^2\end{array}$$
(43)
where the antisymmetry property of the structure constants has been used. Using the explicit expression for the structure constants ($`f^{123}=1;f^{147}=f^{246}=f^{257}=f^{345}=f^{516}=f^{637}=\frac{1}{2};f^{458}=f^{678}=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}`$ plus those related to these by permutations), and recalling that the index $`A`$ runs from $`18`$ while the indices $`n,p`$ run from $`48`$ one can show that $`f^{Anp}f^{Anp}=12`$ ($`f^{123}`$ and related constants do not contribute to this expression). Combining these results transforms the quartic term in eq. (37) as

$$\frac{1}{4}g^2f^{Anp}f^{An^{}p^{}}A_\mu ^nA_\nu ^pA^{n^{}\mu }A^{p^{}\nu }=36g^2\left(\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^a(x)\right)^2\lambda \left(\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^a(x)\right)^2$$
(44)
This has transformed the quartic gauge field term of the coset fields into a quartic interaction term for the effective scalar field. Substituting this result back into the averaged Lagrangian of eq. (37) we find

$$\frac{1}{4}_{\mu \nu }^A^{A\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{4}h_{\mu \nu }^ah^{a\mu \nu }+\frac{1}{2}\left(_\mu \varphi ^a+\frac{g}{2}ϵ^{abc}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^c\right)^2+\frac{g^2}{2}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c\lambda \left(\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^a(x)\right)^2$$
(45)
The original pure SU(3) gauge theory has been transformed into an SU(2) gauge theory coupled to an effective triplet scalar field. This is similar to the Georgi-Glashow gg  Lagrangian except for the presence of the term $`\frac{g^2}{2}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c`$ and the absence of a negative mass term for $`\varphi ^a`$ of the form $`m^2\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^a(x)`$.

The Georgi-Glashow Lagrangian is known to have topological monopole solutions thp  which have the form

$$\varphi ^a=\frac{x^af(r)}{gr^2};a_0^a=0;a_i^a=\frac{ϵ_{aib}x^b[1h(r)]}{gr^2}$$
(46)
where $`f(r)`$ and $`h(r)`$ are functions determined by the field equations. For this form of the scalar and SU(2) gauge fields the term, $`\frac{g^2}{2}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c`$, vanishes from the Lagrangian in eq. (45) by the antisymmetry of $`ϵ_{aib}`$ and the symmetry of $`x^ax^b`$. Thus for the monopole ansatz of eq. (46) the Lagrangian in (45) becomes equivalent to the Georgi-Glashow Lagrangian minus only the mass term for the scalar field.

In the present work we simply postulate that the effective scalar field develops a negative mass term of the form $`\frac{m^2}{2}(\varphi ^a\varphi ^a)`$ which is added by hand to the Lagrangian of (45) to yield

$$\frac{1}{4}h_{\mu \nu }^ah^{a\mu \nu }+\frac{1}{2}\left(_\mu \varphi ^a+\frac{g}{2}ϵ^{abc}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^c\right)^2+\frac{m^2}{2}(\varphi ^a\varphi ^a)\lambda \left(\varphi ^a(x)\varphi ^a(x)\right)^2+\frac{g^2}{2}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c$$
(47)
The scalar field now has the standard symmetry breaking form and this effective Lagrangian has finite energy ’t Hooft-Polyakov solutions (the last term should not alter the monopole construction since it vanishes under the ansatz in (46)).

Our final result given in (47) depends on several crucial assumptions (e.g. the existence of the negative mass term $`\frac{m^2}{2}(\varphi ^a\varphi ^a)`$). In the next section we make some remarks and discuss possible motivations for some of the major assumptions.

## VI Remarks/speculations about mass $`m^2(\varphi ^a)^2`$ and $`a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c`$ terms

First we would like to emphasize that the calculations presented here are nonperturbative in the following sense. It is well known that perturbative techniques do not work in QCD. The degrees of freedom dealt with in this paper have been split into two phases. The first phase is an order phase which is treated as an effectively classical degree of freedom. Perturbations around corresponding solutions probably can be calculated perturbatively using something like Feynman diagram technique. The second phase is a purely quantum, nonperturbative degree of freedom. In the first approximation these degrees of freedom can be calculated with our simplifications presented above. We can assume that as above in the first case the perturbations around the correlators (Green’s function (22)) can be calculated using something like Feynman diagram techniques.

In counting the degrees of freedom there is an apparent mismatch between the final and initial degrees of freedom. The averaged Lagrangian (47) has $`3\times 2=6`$ (for $`a_\mu ^b`$) + 3 (for $`\varphi ^a`$) = 9 degrees of freedom, while the initial SU(3), QCD Lagrangian has $`8\times 2=16`$ degrees of freedom. Thus there is an apparent shortfall of 16 - 9 = 7 degrees of freedom. This shortfall occurs in eqs. (21) (22) where $`5\times 2=10`$ degrees of freedom from the coset gauge fields, $`A_\mu ^m`$, are put into $`3`$ degrees of freedom, $`\varphi ^a(x)`$. Our postulate is that QCD has nonperturbative and perturbative degrees of freedom. The initial SU(3) Lagrangian contains both kinds of degrees of freedom. The final effective Lagrangian in eq. (47) contains the nonperturbative degrees of freedom – the SU(2) gauge fields $`a_\mu ^a`$ and the effective scalar fields, $`\varphi ^a(x)`$. The missing degrees of freedom are assumed to be the perturbative ones which remain after the compression from $`A_\mu ^m`$ to $`\varphi ^a(x)`$. These degrees of freedom are handled using standard and perturbative techniques. In this paper our focus has been the nonperturbative degrees of freedom.

We now give a few remarks about the $`m^2(\varphi ^a)^2`$ and $`g^2a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c`$ terms. The last term, $`g^2a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c`$, violates the SU(2) gauge invariance of averaged Lagrangian (47). The initial QCD Lagrangian is SU(3) gauge invariant, and we attempt to reduce this to an SU(2) invariant one (with the presence of the Higgs type scalar field this may be a hidden SU(2) symmetry). But the Lagrangian (47) contains terms which are not SU(2) invariant. What has become of this desired SU(2) invariance? One possibility is that the averaging, $`Q\left|\mathrm{}\right|Q`$, must be taken over all different gauge configurations or copies. This is closely connected with the Gribov ambiguity gribov  where a gauge is picked, but different gauge configurations satisfy the chosen condition. In the perturbative regime where one does an expansion in powers of the coupling constant the Gribov ambiguity is not picked up since the different gauge copies are related by a term which is inversely proportional to the coupling constant, which will therefore not be noticed in a perturbative expansion. In the present case since we dealing with the nonperturbative regime we must address this averaging over different gauge copies. We make the assumption that after this averaging over different gauge copies that all SU(2) gauge invariant terms in (47) remain the same, but gauge non-invariant like $`g^2a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c`$ term will go to zero. This question is very complicated and will be considered more fully in future work.

We conclude with a few comments about the generation of a mass term $`m^2(\varphi ^a)^2`$. In Ref. vdsin2  the tachyonic mass term from the effective scalar field in the SU(2) $``$ U(1) reduction was effected via the condensation of ghost fields that arose from fixing to the Maximal Abelian Gauge dudal . In the present case this mechanism is not directly applicable, since we are reducing from a non-Abelian to a smaller non-Abelian group rather than an Abelian group. It is possible that a similar ghost condensation mechanism occurs in the present non-Abelian to non-Abelian reduction. Another option is that the appropriate mass term could develop via the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism coleman1  where radiative corrections to the effective scalar field produce a symmetry breaking mass term for $`\varphi ^a`$. Yet another option for generating the correct mass term for the scalar field is to assume that the SU(2) gauge field (not the field $`\varphi ^a`$) develops a positive mass condensate about which the form of the ansatz in eq. (46) is a fluctuation. For example

$$a_0^a=0;a_i^a=\frac{m}{g}\delta _i^a+\stackrel{~}{a}_i^a$$
(48)
where $`\stackrel{~}{a}_i^a`$ is a fluctuation about the first term. If $`\stackrel{~}{a}_i^a`$ takes the form of the monopole ansatz in eq. (46) then one finds that $`a_\mu ^aa^{b\mu }=\frac{m^2}{g^2}\delta ^{ab}+monopoleterm`$; the cross term goes away due to the symmetry of $`\delta _{ia}`$ and antisymmetry of $`ϵ_{aib}`$. In this way the last term in (47) would give rise to the tachyonic mass term

$$\frac{g^2}{2}a_\mu ^b\varphi ^ba^{c\mu }\varphi ^c\frac{m^2}{2}\varphi ^a\varphi ^a+\frac{g^2}{2}\stackrel{~}{a}_\mu ^b\varphi ^b\stackrel{~}{a}^{c\mu }\varphi ^c.$$
(49)
This is the most economical method for generating the mass term for $`\varphi ^a`$, since it turns the unwanted last term of (47) into the desired tachyonic mass. The Lagrangian (47) in terms of $`\stackrel{~}{a}_\mu ^a`$ is almost identical to the Lagrangian in terms of the original $`a_\mu ^a`$, since the two gauge fields are related by a constant shift. The only additional, different term comes from the covariant derivative of the effect scalar field, $`\varphi ^a`$. A final possibility is that the symmetry breaking mass term can result as a consequence of a change of the operator description for strongly nonlinear fields as in ref. dzhun .

In conclusion we would like to emphasize that the problems considered here are nonperturbative problems in QCD and therefore have the same complexity as confinement.

## VII Physical Consequences

The effective Lagrangian arrived at in (47) is of the form that yields finite energy monopole solutions thp . It has been shown coleman  deser  that classical Yang-Mills theory do not have finite energy solutions i.e. there are no classical glueballs. The scalar field is crucial to having finite energy field configuration. In the present work an effective scalar field is introduced via the quantization of the coset field, $`A_\mu ^n`$. From this one can conclude that even though pure, classical Yang-Mills theory does not have finite energy, static field configurations, a quantized Yang-Mills may support such configurations. Other works have given similar conclusions: In galstov  finite energy solutions were found for the non-Abelian Born-Infeld system. In pavlovsky  it was shown that a modified Yang-Mills Lagrangian (with the modifications speculated to come from quantization) had finite energy solutions. Thus the monopole solutions of the effective Lagrangian (47) can be viewed as a type of color magnetic glueball, since both the SU(2) field, $`a_\mu ^a`$, and the effective scalar field, $`\varphi ^a`$, come from a pure SU(3) Yang-Mills theory.

The mass of the monopole solutions is inversely proportional to the square of the coupling constant and directly proportional to the mass scale. If the original SU(3) Lagrangian is associated with the strong interaction then the coupling will be of order $`1`$ and the mass scale will be of order $`\mathrm{\Lambda }200`$ MeV. Thus unlike the monopoles in Grand Unified Theories, which have masses greater than $`10^{15}`$ GeV, the monopoles of the effective Lagrangian (47) would have a mass which would allow them to have physical consequences at low energy scales.

One physical use of these low energy scale monopoles would be to explain confinement via the dual superconducting model mandelstam . In the dual superconductor model of confinement a condensate of color monopoles/antimonopoles is hypothesized to form. This is in analogy to the Cooper pair condensate which consists of electrically charged electrons. The color monopole condensate then exhibits the Meissner effect with respect to color electric fields (i.e. the condensate tries to exclude color electric flux). Two color electric charged particles placed in this condensate would then have their color electric flux squeezed into a thin flux tube or string between the color charges nambu . This would confine the two color charges, since as one tried to separate them the energy density would rise linearly with the distance, rather than falling off with the inverse distance as for a Coulomb potential. Another possible physical application for the monopole solutions would be to contribute to the explanation of the proton spin puzzle. Beginning with the European Muon Collaboration (EMC) emc  experiment it was realized that contrary to the simple quark model, the spin of the proton comes not only from the spins of the valence quarks, but has other contributions. The monopole configurations could provide a possible contribution to the proton spin in the form of field angular momentum. In refs. rebbi  it was demonstrated that the combination of a monopole solution plus a particle carrying the “electric” charge of the theory gave rise to a field angular momentum for the composite system. If the color monopole solutions of (47) arose inside the proton they would combine with the color electric, valence quarks to give gluonic field angular momentum contributions to the total proton spin. The field angular of a “monopole-electric charge” composite depends on the “magnetic” and “electric” charges. For the case in refs. rebbi  and also in the present case the field angular momentum would be have a magnitude of $`\mathrm{}`$, and would thus be a major contributor to the total spin of the proton.

This approach to scalar fields as a condensate of nonperturbative degrees of freedom of gauge fields may have interesting applications for gravity where scalar fields have various applications: inflation, boson stars, non-Abelian black holes and so on. Our approach allows us to speculate that these scalar fields are constructed from certain nonperturbative degrees of freedom of non-Abelian gauge fields.

## VIII Acknowledgments

VD is very grateful to the ISTC grant KR-677 for the financial support. The work of DS is partially supported by a 2003 COBASE grant.


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# Quantum and classical diffusion in small-world networks

## Abstract

We study numerically quantum diffusion of a particle on small-world networks by integrating the time-dependent Schrödinger equation with a localized initial state. The participation ratio, which corresponds to the number of visited sites in the case of classical diffusion, as a function of time is measured and the corresponding diffusion time $`\tau `$ is computed. In a local regular network, i.e., in the network with the rewiring probability $`p=0`$, the diffusion time depends on the network size $`N`$ as $`\tau N`$, while the behavior $`\tau \mathrm{log}N`$ is observed as $`p`$ becomes finite. Such fast diffusion of a particle on a complex network suggests that the small-world transition is also the fast-world transition from a dynamic point of view. The classical diffusion behavior is also studied and compared with the quantum behavior.

There has been a surge of research activity on various aspects of complex networks since some important features of real networks were successfully explained by simple model networks. ref:review ; ref:WS ; ref:BA  In particular, the Watts-Strogatz (WS) model ref:WS  was the first to produce networks with small-world behavior, characterized by the path length increasing logarithmically with the network size. Subsequently, a number of studies have been performed on such complex networks, focused mostly on structural properties of the networks. On the other hand, vertices of a real network may have some internal degrees of freedom, interwoven with the structure of the network. Motivated by this observation, a group of papers have also investigated statistical mechanical models defined on complex networks. For example, spin models like the Ising model and the $`XY`$ model on WS networks have been shown to undergo finite-temperature phase transitions of the mean-field nature, ref:smallIsing ; ref:XY  disclosing the role of long-range interactions along the shortcuts. In some cases the time-development of the network structure may be coupled to the dynamics of degrees of freedom defined on vertices. Still the study of vertex dynamics without considering its influence on the network structure can be useful as a first step toward the complete understanding. In this spirit, dynamic models defined on networks draw much attention: Epidemic spreading as well as classical diffusion on complex networks have been studied, ref:diff ; ref:epidemic  and very recently, the dynamic universality class of the $`XY`$ model on the WS network has been identified. ref:dynamicXY

Properties of a quantum mechanical model put on a complex network have also been studied with respect to the spectral properties of the Laplacian operator ref:spec  and the localization-delocalization transition in the presence of site disorder. ref:quantum  In this work we consider quantum as well as classical diffusion of a particle on the WS network without site disorder, and investigate how the diffusion time scales with the network size. It is well known that as soon as the WS network (of size $`N`$) has a finite fraction of shortcuts, it undergoes the small-world transition that the characteristic path length $`l`$ changes its behavior from $`lN`$ to $`\mathrm{log}N`$ref:WS ; ref:Newman  ¿From the dynamic point of view, this change from the large-world to the small-world behavior is expected to be accompanied by a sharp change in the behavior of the diffusion time: If the world is small, the traveling time around the world should also be short. Indeed the diffusion time $`\tau `$ associated with the participation ratio is observed to change the size dependence from $`\tau N`$ to $`\mathrm{log}N`$, which is to be compared with the case of classical diffusion: $`\tau N^2`$ to $`N`$.

The low-dimensional tight-binding electron system has been studied extensively in relation to the localization transition in the presence of disorder. In the absence of disorder, the energy eigenstate of a tight-binding electron on a local regular lattice is always in the extended state due to the Bloch theorem. Here we consider the tight-binding electron on the WS network, described by the time-dependent Schrödinger equation

$$i\frac{|\mathrm{\Psi }}{t}=H|\mathrm{\Psi },$$
(1)
where we have set $`\mathrm{}1`$ and the ket $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ has the position representation $`\mathrm{\Psi }_nn|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ at the $`n`$th vertex. The Hamiltonian in the position representation takes the form

$$H_{nn^{}}=H_{n^{}n}=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{\Delta }\hfill & \text{for }n^{}\mathrm{\Lambda }_n\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{otherwise,}\hfill \end{array}$$
(2)
where the on-site energy has been assumed to be uniform and set equal to zero ($`H_{nn}0`$), $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the hopping energy, and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_n`$ represents the set of neighbors of vertex $`n`$. For example, in a local regular network with the connection range $`r=1`$, we have $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_n=\{n1,n+1\}`$.

The WS network is constructed according to the standard procedure in Ref. ref:WS, : A one-dimensional (1D) local regular network with the connection range $`r`$ is built first, then with the rewiring probability $`p`$ each local edge is rewired to a randomly chosen other vertex. (See Fig. 1, illustrating the case $`r=2`$.) Once the WS network is constructed in this way, we normalize the time $`t`$ in units of $`1/\mathrm{\Delta }`$, and integrate the time-dependent Schrödinger equation given by Eqs. (1) and (2) numerically by means of the fourth order Runge-Kutta method with the discrete time step $`\delta t=0.01`$, starting from the initial condition that the electron is localized at randomly chosen vertex $`m`$, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Psi }_n(t=0)=\delta _{n,m}`$. For simplicity, we set the initial position $`m0`$.

In the absence of shortcuts, the analytic solution of Eq. (1) is easily found: ref:r1  In the simplest case of $`r=1`$, the Fourier transformation $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_k=_n\mathrm{\Psi }_ne^{ink}`$ yields

$$i\frac{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_k}{t}=(e^{ik}+e^{ik})\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_k=2\mathrm{cos}k\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_k,$$
(3)
which in turn leads to

$$\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_k(t)=\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_k(0)e^{2it\mathrm{cos}k}.$$
(4)
The inverse Fourier transformation

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_n=\frac{1}{N}\underset{k}{}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_ke^{ink}$$
(5)
in the limit of $`N\mathrm{}`$, combined with the Jacobi-Anger expansion $`e^{iz\mathrm{cos}\theta }=_{m=N}^Ni^mJ_m(z)e^{im\theta }`$ gives the solution

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_n(t)|=|J_n(2t)|$$
(6)
with the Bessel function $`J_n`$ of the order $`n`$. For $`r=2`$, it is straightforward to obtain $`\mathrm{\Psi }_n(t)=_p(i)^{np}J_{n2p}(2t)J_p(2t)`$.

As time proceeds, the initial localized state diffuses and eventually evolves to an extended state in which $`\mathrm{\Psi }_n0`$ at any $`n`$. Figure 2 shows such diffusion of the wave packet on the WS network with the connection range $`r=2`$ for the rewiring probability $`p=0`$ and $`0.2`$. It is clearly shown that diffusion occurs much faster in (b), namely, for $`p0`$. In this case as soon as the wave packet diffuses to a nearby end point of a shortcut, the other end of the shortcut becomes a new center for diffusion at the next time step, resulting in faster spread of the wave packet.

To describe the diffusion of the wave packet, one may measure the variance of the wave packet, ref:GHE  $`\sigma ^2(t)=\mathrm{\Psi }(t)|x^2|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)\mathrm{\Psi }(t)|x|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)^2`$ with the one-dimensional position $`x`$ on the network. However, the variance $`\sigma ^2`$ tends to overestimate the diffusion of the wave packet. As an example, consider a state where the wave packet is localized at two vertices separated by a distance $`O(N)`$. Although the state is well localized in the sense that the particle can be detected only at a few number of sites, the variance has a very large value $`O(N^2)`$. This is in contrast with a local network, where the particle can hop to only locally connected nearby sites and thus $`\sigma ^2`$ may be used as a measure of the diffusion without any confusion. To avoid this difficulty with $`\sigma ^2`$, we instead consider the participation ratio $`P_Q(t)`$ as a function of time:

$$P_Q(t)\frac{_n|\mathrm{\Psi }_n(t)|^2}{_n|\mathrm{\Psi }_n(t)|^4},$$
(7)
which has the value unity for a wave packet localized completely at one site. For a completely extended state, on the other hand, we have $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_n|^21/N`$ and accordingly, the participation ratio $`P_QN`$. The initial localized state with $`P_Q(t=0)=1`$ thus evolves to the extended state with $`P_Q(t\mathrm{})=O(N)`$ as the time-dependent Schrödinger equation is integrated in time.

With Eq. (6) and the asymptotic form of the Bessel function, a lengthy but straightforward calculation leads to the asymptotic behavior $`P_Q(t)t`$ on the 1D regular network (without shortcuts) regardless of the range. On a $`d`$-dimensional (regular) network, Eq. (2) still allows the analytic solution $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{n_1n_2\mathrm{}n_d}(t)|=|J_{n_1}(2t)\mathrm{}J_{n_d}(2t)|`$, producing the behavior $`P_Q(t)t^d`$. To characterize diffusion, we define the diffusion time $`\tau `$ associated with the participation ratio by the condition

$$P_Q(t=\tau )=cN$$
(8)
with a constant $`c`$ between zero and unity. For a $`d`$-dimensional network, we thus have the scaling behavior

$$\tau N^{1/d}.$$
(9)
For the WS network with shortcuts, the participation ratio in Eq. (7) is computed numerically at given time $`t`$ and the diffusion time $`\tau `$ is measured from the condition in Eq. (8), where we choose the numerical factor $`c=0.25`$. Other choice for the value of $`c`$ does not make any qualitative difference in the scaling behavior of $`\tau `$, only if it is not too close to zero or unity.

In Fig. 3, we display the diffusion time $`\tau `$ depending on the size $`N`$ at various values of the rewiring probability $`p`$. Here the participation ratio $`P_Q(t)`$ has been computed for 3000 different network realizations with given parameters $`N`$, $`r`$, and $`p`$, over which averages have been taken. It is observed that the dependence on $`N`$ changes crucially as $`p`$ is increased: At $`p=0`$, the linear behavior $`\tau N`$ is indeed observed in agreement with the analytical result while the inset manifests the dependence $`\tau \mathrm{log}N`$ for $`p=0.5`$. We have not systematically investigated the scaling behavior at smaller values of $`p`$; this is difficult from the computational point of view since $`N`$ needs to be increased much to avoid finite-size effects. Nevertheless it is very plausible to conclude that the behavior $`\tau \mathrm{log}N`$ persists as far as $`p`$ is nonzero. The observed change of the scaling behavior from $`\tau N`$ to $`\mathrm{log}N`$ is very interesting in comparison with the change of the characteristic path length from $`lN`$ to $`\mathrm{log}N`$ already observed. ref:WS  This suggests that the small-world transition at $`p=0`$, separating the large-world behavior ($`lN`$) from the small-world behavior ($`l\mathrm{log}N`$), is also the fast-world transition between the slow-world behavior ($`\tau N`$) and the fast-world behavior ($`\tau \mathrm{log}N`$) from the dynamical point of view. Note also that, in view of Eq. (9) for a $`d`$-dimensional system, such logarithmic behavior apparently indicates that the effective dimension of the WS network is infinite, which is consistent with the observation of the mean-field nature. ref:smallIsing ; ref:XY

In Fig. 4, the diffusion time $`\tau `$ versus the rewiring probability $`p`$ is displayed for various network sizes. As the size $`N`$ becomes larger, the region described well by the relation $`\tau p^1`$ covers a broader range of $`p`$, suggesting that the power-law behavior $`\tau p^1`$ is valid at any nonzero value of $`p`$ in the thermodynamic limit. The monotonic decrease of $`\tau `$ with $`p`$ is easily understood: The more shortcut end points exist, the faster the diffusion is, as discussed above. Such anomalous quantum diffusion, observed in this work for complex networks, has also been investigated in various quasiperiodic quantum systems ref:GHE ; ref:quasiperiodic  as well as in quantum systems which have classically chaotic counterparts. ref:chaos

For comparison, we also consider briefly diffusion of a classical particle on the WS network. The particle is put on a randomly chosen vertex of the WS network constructed as before, then allowed to hop to one of its neighboring vertices, chosen randomly at each time. While the return probability in such classical diffusion was examined, ref:diff  it is appropriate here to consider, by analogy with the quantum mechanical participation ratio $`P_Q(t)`$, the number of vertices visited by the particle during time $`t`$, denoted by $`P_C(t)`$. Note that this has the two limiting values: $`P_C(t=0)=1`$ and $`P_C(t\mathrm{})=N`$, which are the same as those of $`P_Q`$. We thus call $`P_C`$ the classical participation ratio for convenience. The diffusion time $`\tau `$ for the classical diffusion is then determined by

$$P_C(t=\tau )=0.1N,$$
(10)
where the use of numerical values other than 0.1 again does not change the scaling behavior of $`\tau `$. In the absence of shortcuts ($`p=0`$), the WS network reduces to the simple one-dimensional local regular network, where it is known ref:rw  $`P_C(t)t^{1/2}`$, and consequently we have the behavior $`\tau N^2`$.

Figure 5 shows the diffusion time $`\tau `$ versus the size $`N`$ of the WS network for various values of the rewiring probability $`p`$. As in the quantum case, $`P_C(t)`$ has been computed for 3000 different network realizations and averages over them have been taken. As expected, for $`p=0`$ corresponding to the local one-dimensional lattice, the standard behavior $`\tau N^2`$ is observed. In sharp contrast, at any nonzero value of $`p`$ the diffusion time displays the behavior $`\tau N`$, demonstrating that classical diffusion on the WS network changes dramatically as soon as $`p`$ takes a nonzero value. This behavior $`\tau N`$ is also consistent with the infinite effective dimension of the WS network, in view of the known result that $`P_C(t)t`$ for dimension $`d3`$.ref:rw  Comparing this observation for classical diffusion with the previous one for quantum diffusion, one can draw in both cases the conclusion that the small-world transition at $`p=0`$, associated with the change of the scaling behavior of the characteristic path length $`l`$, is accompanied by the fast-world transition in the dynamic view point, where the exponent $`a`$ in the relaxation behavior $`\tau N^a`$ changes to $`a1`$. On the other hand, Fig. 6, where $`\tau `$ versus $`p`$ for classical diffusion is plotted, shows that the behavior $`\tau p^1`$ observed for quantum diffusion (see Fig. 4) does not appear in classical diffusion.

In summary, we have investigated both quantum diffusion and classical diffusion on Watts-Strogatz small-world networks. To describe these, we have introduced the participation ratio and determine the diffusion time. The obtained scaling behaviors of the diffusion time, as summarized in Table 1, show dramatic changes as one increases the rewiring probability from zero to a nonzero value. This is reminiscent of the small-world transition in the scaling behavior of the characteristic path length $`l`$ from the small-world regime $`lN`$ to the large-world regime $`l\mathrm{log}N`$, and suggests that the small-world transition can also be termed the fast-world transition.

We thank H. Park for useful discussions and acknowledge the partial support from the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation through Grant No. R14-2002-062-01000-0 (BJK) and through the SKOREA program as well as from the Ministry of Education of Korea through the BK21 project (MYC). Numerical simulations have been performed on the computer cluster Iceberg at Ajou University.