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# Proximity effect in superconductor Aharonov Bohm loop hybrid structures

## I Introduction

Recently the proximity effect has been probed as decaying oscillations of the density of states in $`s`$-wave superconductor ferromagnet hybrid structures  and a phase shift of half flux quantum in the diffraction pattern of a ferromagnetic $`0\pi `$ SQUID . Similar effects have been observed in $`d`$-wave  superconductor ferromagnet hybrid structures. Theoretical explanation has been given in the framework of the quasiclassical theory for $`s`$-wave  and $`d`$-wave case . In these structures the exchange field modulates the period of the pair amplitude oscillations.

Moreover much interest has been focused recently on the manipulation of entangled states which are formed by extracting Cooper pairs from the superconductor. For example a beam splitter has been proposed  and also several experiments that involve ferromagnetic electrodes connected to superconductors . These structures have acquired considerable interest the last years due to the possibility to use the $`\pi `$ states in solid state qubit implementation.

Moreover great experimental efforts have been devoted the last years to control the conductance in mesoscopic structures by phase sensitive methods. For example the differential conductance of a mesoscopic metallic loop in contact with two superconducting electrodes has been examined .

In this paper our goal is to explore several new aspects related to the control of the proximity effect in superconductor - Aharonov Bohm loop (AB) structures. The basic quantities which we calculate are the local density of states (LDOS), the pair amplitude, and persistent currents, as a function of the magnetic field, exchange field, loop size, position in the loop, and chemical potential in the loop atoms. We find that the quasiparticle properties of the hybrid structure are modulated by these parameters. The method that we use is based on exact diagonalizations of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations associated to the mean field solution of an extended Hubbard model. Our predictions from the simulations of this model are of interest in view of future STM spectroscopy experiments on nanostructures.

The article is organized as follows. In Sec. II we develop the model and discuss the formalism. In Sec. III we discuss the effect of the magnetic field on the LDOS. In Sec. IV we present the results for the calculation of the currents. Finally summary and discussions are presented in the last section.

## II BdG equations within the Hubbard model

The Hamiltonian for the Hubbard lattice model is

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`t{\displaystyle \underset{<i,j>\sigma }{}}c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{j\sigma }+\mu {\displaystyle \underset{i\sigma }{}}n_{i\sigma }+{\displaystyle \underset{i\sigma }{}}h_{i\sigma }n_{i\sigma }`$ (1)
$`+`$ $`V_0{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}n_in_i,`$ (2)
where $`i,j`$ are sites indices and the angle brackets indicate that the hopping is only to nearest neighbors, $`n_{i\sigma }=c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{i\sigma }`$ is the electron number operator in site $`i`$, $`\mu `$ is the chemical potential. $`h_{i\sigma }=h\sigma _z`$, is the exchange field in the ferromagnetic region and $`\sigma _z=\pm 1`$ is the eigenvalue of the $`z`$ component of the Pauli matrix. $`V_0`$ is the on site interaction strength which gives rise to superconductivity. Within the mean field approximation Eq. (2) is reduced to the Bogoliubov deGennes equations :

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}\widehat{\xi }\hfill & \widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}\hfill \\ \widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}^{}\hfill & \widehat{\xi }\hfill \end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cc}u_n(r_i)\hfill & \\ v_n(r_i)\hfill & \end{array}\right)=ϵ_{n\gamma _1}\left(\begin{array}{cc}u_n(r_i)\hfill & \\ v_n(r_i)\hfill & \end{array}\right),$$
(3)
$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}\widehat{\xi }\hfill & \widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}\hfill \\ \widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}^{}\hfill & \widehat{\xi }\hfill \end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cc}u_n(r_i)\hfill & \\ v_n(r_i)\hfill & \end{array}\right)=ϵ_{n\gamma _2}\left(\begin{array}{cc}u_n(r_i)\hfill & \\ v_n(r_i)\hfill & \end{array}\right),$$
(4)
such that

$$\widehat{\xi }u_{n\sigma }(r_i)=t\underset{\widehat{\delta }}{}u_{n\sigma }(r_i+\widehat{\delta })+(\mu ^I(r_i)+\mu )u_{n\sigma }(r_i)+h_i\sigma _zu_{n\sigma }(r_i),$$
(5)
$$\widehat{\mathrm{\Delta }}u_{n\sigma }(r_i)=\mathrm{\Delta }_0(r_i)u_{n\sigma }(r_i),$$
(6)
where the pair potential is defined by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_0(r_i)V_0<c_{}(r_i)c_{}(r_i)>.$$
(7)
Equations (3,4) are subject to the self consistency requirement

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_0(r_i)=V_0(r_i)F(r_i)=V_0(r_i)\underset{n}{}\left[u_n(r_i)v_n^{}(r_i)(1f(\beta ϵ_{n\gamma _1}))+u_n(r_i)v_n^{}(r_i)f(\beta ϵ_{n\gamma _2})\right],$$
(8)
$`F(r_i)`$ is the pair amplitude. We solve the above equations self consistently. The numerical procedure has been described elsewhere .

The LDOS at the $`i`$th site is given by

$$\rho _i(E)=\underset{n\sigma }{}\left[|u_{n\sigma }(r_i)|^2f^{^{}}(Eϵ_n)+|v_{n\sigma }(r_i)|^2f^{^{}}(E+ϵ_n)\right],$$
(9)
where $`f^{^{}}`$ is the derivative of the Fermi function,

$$f(ϵ)=\frac{1}{\mathrm{exp}(ϵ/k_BT)+1}$$
(10)
.

## III LDOS as a function of the magnetic field

We demonstrate in this section that the magnetic flux through a metallic or ferromagnetic AB loop which is connected to a superconductor as seen in Fig. 1 can be used to control the proximity effect in this hybrid structure. The magnetic flux through the loop is modeled as a factor $`e^{i\varphi }`$ where $`\varphi =2\pi \mathrm{\Phi }/\mathrm{\Phi }_0=2\pi f`$, in the hopping element, where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ is the unit of the flux quantum. In the calculation we used a small cluster of $`7\times 7`$ sites to model the superconductor and $`6`$ sites to model the metallic or ferromagnetic loop. The AB effect appears as periodic oscillations of the conductance of a ring as a function of the enclosed magnetic flux $`f`$.

### A isolated AB loop

We first study the case of an isolated AB loop. Magnetoresistance oscillations with period $`h/e`$ have been observed in Au ring along with weaker $`h/2e`$ oscillations . Also magnetoresistance oscillations of period $`h/2e`$ (corresponding to a superconducting flux quantum) were observed on a two dimensional honeycomb Mg network of loops and were attributed to weak localization effects . We present in Fig. 2 the LDOS versus energy for site $`0`$, for different values of the flux. The pair interaction in the superconductor is zero, and the ring is disconnected from the normal metal reservoir namely the corresponding hopping element of the tight binding Hamiltonian is zero. We see that the LDOS shows oscillations as a function of the applied magnetic flux $`f`$. Also the LDOS for finite exchange field can be obtained by adding the LDOS for spin up and spin down Hamiltonian, so the number of peaks is double.

### B AB loop in contact with normal metal reservoir

Secondly we would like to make a comparison of the results derived above with the case where AB loop is connected to a normal metal reservoir. We present in Fig. 3 the LDOS versus energy for site $`0`$, for different values of the flux. The basic results are summarized as follows. The LDOS shows again modulation with the applied flux. However the form of the LDOS is changed due to the exchange of electrons between the ring and the reservoir. For all values of the enclosed flux it presents a $`U`$-like form which is characteristic for chain of atoms.

### C superconductor-metallic AB loop

We discuss in the subsection the case where a metallic AB loop is connected to a superconductor. The quasiparticle properties in the ring are modified by the proximity effect. In the usual proximity effect in the superconductor normal metal bilayer the pair amplitude decays away from the interface inside the normal metal. However in the case of a normal metal loop in contact with a superconductor, the pair amplitude decays inside the loop, symmetrically around the site where the superconductor is connected to the loop (see the symmetry between sites $`1`$ and $`5`$ Fig. 4(a) for a $`6`$ sites loop and between sites $`1,2`$ in Fig. 4(b), for a $`3`$ sites loop). The pair amplitude changes with the magnetic flux. This may be related to size effects. The evolution of the LDOS around the loop is not periodic. The LDOS shows the $`U`$-like form which is characteristic of a line of atoms which changes as we move around the loop as seen in Fig. 5(a). Especially for $`f=4/8`$ it shows a pic at zero energy (see Fig. 5(b)). This means that the proximity effect becomes long ranged one for this particular value of the magnetic flux. However the evolution with respect to the enclosed magnetic flux is periodic. This is seen in Fig. 6 where the LDOS is presented for fixed site on the loop but for different values of the magnetic flux. We present only $`f<4/8`$ due to symmetry. So the proximity effect can be modulated by the AB magnetic flux.

### D superconductor-ferromagnetic AB loop

We now study a ferromagnetic AB loop in contact with a superconductor. When the magnetic flux is zero the proximity effect appears in the loop sites as oscillations of the pairing amplitude inside the ferromagnetic material. In the usual proximity effect in the superconductor ferromagnet bilayer the proximity effect appears as decaying oscillations of the pair amplitude with alternating sign away from the interface inside the ferromagnetic material. However due to the annular geometry of our structure the proximity effect appears symmetrically around the loop (note the symmetry between sites $`1`$ and $`5`$ in Fig. 7(a) for the $`6`$ site loop and between sites $`1`$ and $`2`$ for the $`3`$ site loop structure in Fig. 7(b)). A second difference is that the proximity effect oscillations for very small loop sizes are not decaying but are rather symmetric. As indicated in these figures the oscillations of pair amplitude inside the ferromagnetic material change as we change magnetic flux that is applied through the loop. The pair amplitude function returns to itself after one period in $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ is completed. The flux can change the amplitude of the oscillations but not the period.

The modulation of the oscillations of the pair amplitude with $`f`$ induces additional effects in the LDOS seen in Fig. 8. When $`f=0`$ the ZEP in the LDOS practically does not change around the loop as seen in Fig. 8(a). This means that the proximity effect becomes long ranged as in the metallic loop case. The presence of the pic at $`f=0`$ which is absent in the case where $`h=0`$ is attributed to the exchange field. Namely the effect of the ferromagnetism is to shift the LDOS that corresponds to $`h=0`$ by an energy $`E=h`$, so that a peak appears at zero energy when the van Hove singularity crosses the Fermi energy. Also when $`f=2/8`$ (see Fig. 8(b)) a peak develops at zero energy. Moreover the LDOS is a periodic function of the applied magnetic flux as seen in Fig. 9 and it shows a different form for $`h=0`$ and $`h=2`$ (see Fig. 10).

Comparing with Figs. 2 and 3 we see that the main effect of the superconductor is to enhance the LDOS and also to induce long range proximity effects for certain values of $`f`$, e.g. $`f=4/8`$. The long range proximity effect appears in the LDOS as a peak at zero energy for some values of $`f`$.

## IV persistent currents

We would like in this section to describe the effect of the proximity effect on the persistent currents of a small loop that encloses magnetic flux and is coupled to a superconductor. For small isolated one dimensional metallic rings enclosing magnetic flux, the existence of persistent currents has been predicted in theory  and verified in magnetization response of isolated Cooper rings to a slowly varying magnetic flux . In isolated loops the relation of the persistent current as a function of the flux $`I(f)`$ is modulated by the loop circumference and the chemical potential. The relation $`I(f)`$ is periodic with period $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ and in some cases $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2`$.

We study first the case of an isolated AB loop. In this case one can give simple physical argument for the persistent currents as follows. The phase coherence of the wave function enters the calculation through the flux modulated boundary conditions

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_n(x+L)=\mathrm{exp}[2i\pi f]\mathrm{\Psi }_n(x),$$
(11)
where $`L`$ is the loop circumference. Then the current is $`I_n=\frac{ev_n}{L}`$ where $`v_n=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}}\frac{E_n}{k_n}`$. Then by identifying $`2\pi f`$ and $`kL`$ we have $`I_n=\frac{e}{h}\frac{E_n}{f}`$.

In our case the energy spectrum is obtained from the eigenvalues of the BdG Hamiltonian. Then the current for the $`n`$ state is $`I_n=\frac{e}{h}\frac{E_n}{f}`$. To calculate the total current we perform a summation over the eigenvalues of the system. We present in Fig. 11 the $`I(f)`$ relation for $`V_0=0`$ and hopping elements connecting the AB loop and the normal metal reservoir equal to zero, for different loop sizes and exchange fields. We see that the $`I(f)`$ relation changes with the loop size and exchange field depending on the number of electrons in the loop and presents linear variation with the applied flux.

We study then the case where $`V_0`$ equals zero, and the AB loop is connected to a normal metal reservoir. We present in Fig. 12 the $`I(f)`$ relation for different loop sizes and exchange fields. We see that the $`I(f)`$ relation changes with the loop size. Also for fixed loop size the $`I(f)`$ relation changes sign as we increase the exchange field and the critical current is reduced for large values of the exchange field. Moreover due to the presence of the electron exchange with the reservoir the $`I(f)`$ relation is not linear but is rounded.

We now turn to the case where the proximity effect is present. The pairing interaction in the superconductor is set equal to $`V_0=3.5`$. We present in Fig. 13 the $`I(f)`$ relation for different loop sizes and exchange fields. We see that the $`I(f)`$ relation is enhanced comparable to the case where $`V_0=0`$. Also the period of the $`I(f)`$ relation changes with the exchange field.

The modulation of the $`I(f)`$ relation with the exchange field is explained by the change of the number of electrons in the ring with the exchange field. Similar effects we observe when the chemical potential for the ring atoms is considered as modulation parameter. We present in Fig. 14 the $`I(f)`$ relation for $`V_0=3.5`$ and no exchange field for different loop sizes for different values of the chemical potential in the loop atoms. We see again that the $`I(f)`$ relation changes with the chemical potential in the loop atoms.

## V conclusions

We calculated the LDOS, the pair amplitude, and the persistent currents for superconductor - AB loop hybrid structures, within the extended lattice Hubbard model. The quasiparticle properties depend on the loop size the magnetic flux, the exchange field and the chemical potential in the loop atoms. The proximity effect modifies the LDOS and for particular values of the magnetic flux it shows long range character. Also it enhances the persistent currents in the loop and modifies in some cases the $`I(f)`$ relation.


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# The Redesigned BaBar Event Store: Believe the Hype

## I Introduction

The purpose of the event store is to provide durable persistence for physics event data evsdesign-ref  jacek-old-ref . The system must scale as the experiment continues, which currently means billions of physics events organized in millions of collections. All data must be persisted, and none of it may be thrown away. The system must allow access to data generated at any point in the experiment– from its inception to what’s currently being generated.

The system should always be available. It must provide reliable and robust operation without regular outages. Since the system is available to collaborators from over 70 institutions around the world, any outage is disruptive.

Data analysis and other high-level access is separated from event store persistence via an abstraction layer. This split in dependency permits the asynchronous development in transient and persistent code that is necessary in such a large and complex system. Without such a split, this redesign could be far more disruptive.

This paper describes the redesign of the BaBar Event Store, detailing the current situation, the motivation, the techniques, and implementation. Section I provides an overview of the paper, and section II describes the current system. Section III details the motivation and overall design of the redesign project. Section IV details the implementation, and Sections V and VI describe the estimated impact of this redesign and the status of this project, respectively. Section VII summarizes the project.

## II Past Work

### II.1 ODBMS back-end

The current, production BaBar event store is written on top of an Objectivity/DB object-oriented database management system (ODBMS) objy-ref . Using the Objectivity persistence gives our system useful primitives for atomic transactions, consistent fault-tolerant state, and durable storage that is designed to survive software and hardware faults.

### II.2 Abstracted Persistence

The current system abstracts the persistence layer in an effort to reduce dependence on the particulars of the underlying database implementation. This strategy stabilizes the client code against upgrades and other version changes of the persistent system.

### II.3 Flexible Architecture

The current system was designed to accomodate the demands of a new experiment that had not established specific needs or usage characteristics. The designers planned for these unknowns by building flexibility in many parts of the system, thus allowing the system to evolve as requirements and demands evolved. For event storage, this flexibility is centered around the concept of an “event.”

#### II.3.1 Transient Events

Transient events are represented very generally as typed bags of objects. The transient structure enforces nothing but this. Arbitrary types of data objects can be inserted in transient events with or without keys to identify them. This flexible interface is what is exported to high-level analysis code. In practice, objects stored in transient events can be categorized as: identification data, analysis data (“micro” and “mini” levels), and event store metadata. Identification data provides information about the event, i.e. the when? and where? of the event. Analysis data includes actual event data to be analyzed, i.e. the what? of the data. Event store metadata includes objects stored in the transient event to aid in conversion to and from persistence.

#### II.3.2 Persistent Events

The flexibility allowed by the transient event structure implies a certain level of flexibility in the persistent layer. An important vehicle of this flexibility is the concept of event headers, which provide indirection between the navigational and data parts of events, insulating both sides from each other’s code development. In the current system, the headers are actual persistent structures.

#### II.3.3 Event Management

To manage and make sense of billions of physics events, the event store exports an organizational concept of collections of events. Collections are named sets of events. A particular event is part of one or more collections, although it is only “owned” by one. Collections are identified through a hierarchical naming system, which allows the system to export some lightweight access control.

## III The Redesign

### III.1 Motivation

With a successful production system in place, what are the motivations for redesigning the system? The answers are threefold: *cost*, *performance*, *features*.

#### III.1.1 Cost

The event store currently grows at an estimated rate of 500GB per day jacek-current-ref . As the experiment continues, upgrades are made in data collecting, and the number of events collected grows. If past experience is any indication, this number grows faster than the famous Moore’s law. The redesign aims to stem the resulting deluge of data by reducing the amortized footprint per-event. This is the primary reason for the redesign.

#### III.1.2 Performance

The production system includes great flexibility, based on assumptions and expectations based on previous HEP experiments. Some aspects of this hailed flexibility had implementations that were costly in terms of both space and performance. By streamlining the persistent event structure and removing unneeded indirection, the redesign should yield significant gains in performance.

#### III.1.3 Features

With the needs of maintaining a stable production system a top priority, some features cannot be added without significant code changes. The redesign provides a convenient point at which a few important features may be added.111Details of these new features are specific and beyond the scope of this paper. An example is the introduction of a common DB ID object, which should aid system administration tremendously.

### III.2 Design

The redesign aims to utilize the accumulated administrative and maintenance experience of the running system to produce an optimized persistency system. Simple changes that produce simpler and more maintainable code are preferred over more elaborate designs. To be clear, the BaBar database group is not a physics analysis group by any definition, so the redesign is tightly focused on the structural parts of the event that are hidden to analysis.

#### III.2.1 Share redundant data

A lot of data is identical in successive events. Hand analysis of production events has identified a subset of fields in event objects that are changing slowly, if at all.222“Slowly changing” here means changing approximately every thousand events. Sharing these fields should result in substantial space savings.

#### III.2.2 Eliminate unused data

Some event fields are obsolete. Though we are not the experts on event data, we have identified a few parts to be obsolete with the help of physicists in BaBar. Some fields and data structures were borrowed from previous experiments and thus are good candidates for elimination.

#### III.2.3 Reorganize data into more efficient structures

Some existing data structures can be restructured into significantly more efficient structures, in terms of size and performance. For example, data structures whose contents rarely change can be stored more tightly, saving on precious persistent footprint, at the cost of more intelligent access code. In some cases, flexibility will be increased when the data is structured more appropriately for the usage that has been observed.

## IV Implementation

### IV.1 Overview

Figure 1 illustrates the current situation. The flexibility of the original design is obvious. Indirection is common, allowing the structure to scale to large numbers of data objects and arbitrary types without problems. The only problem is that its flexibility is heavyweight. Much of the structure is redundant, and identical over successive events.

Figure 2  illustrates the redesigned event model. Much indirection has been eliminated. The flexibility of the old system exists, but has been shared among events, making heavy demands on flexibility expensive, while the occasional utilization of flexibility is small to almost-negligible.

#### IV.1.1 Event Structure

The original design allowed essentially the same flexibility in persistency that the transient system provided. The redesign takes advantage of the fact that events and their associated data, once created, are very rarely changed. Each event’s set of data objects is different in content, but the *types* of data objects attached to an event are stable and almost identical over the life of a particular job. With this in mind, we have altered the persistent event structure to reuse data where possible, and store data more space efficiently.

#### IV.1.2 Event Tags

No single analysis task involves processing the entire contents of the Event Store. Some form of coarse pre-selection is necessary in order to efficiently arrange events and collections into logical hierarchies, and provide a suitable jump-off point for end-user analysis jobs that focus on a sample of events. Event tags facilitate this coarse pre-selection. When an event is reconstructed from raw detector information or simulation data, its corresponding event tag is also created and associated with it.

Definition A Tag contains arrays of attributes that effectively summarize an event’s state. Tags are intended to be relatively small compared to the overall event size to facilitate rapid filtering. Tag attributes (also known as *bits* or *fields*) have a value of a distinct data type and are identified by a string name.

Descriptors Each Tag is considered to be unique but attribute names are common among large runs of events so we choose to store these names in a single object shared among many events. This object is called a Tag Descriptor and is simply a look-up table for Tag attributes. Each attribute name has a unique key that is used to dereference the arrays in each Tag and access the value associated with the attribute.

In the current Event Store, a single Tag Descriptor is held in each event collection. This seemed like a reasonable solution back in 1997 but it has some serious implications. Analysis jobs can read events from multiple input sources and produce new output collections. These output collections are described as sparse because they can refer to a diverse group of events that may have very little in common. Events’ Tags may even have different attributes but because they are stored in the same collection they must share one Tag Descriptor instance. This results in the creation of bloated Tag objects that contain every single possible attribute in order to ensure consistency throughout the collection. Not only does this waste space, it is very misleading since we have no real way of determining if an attribute is valid for a given Tag.

### IV.2 Sharing Redundant Data

#### IV.2.1 Common Objects

Careful analysis of currently persisted events in the system show that many fields in the event change slowly– i.e. their values are identical over hundreds(or more) of events. Why not place these fields in a single object, and store a reference to that object in each event with those fields? This is the idea behind the common object. The current redesign system allows for a single common object for event data, eschewing different common objects for different fields (providing a higher granularity of sharing) because potential gain is limited, and probably smaller than the extra pointers needed to store, not to mention the added maintenance complexity.

Transient events each store a standard object called AbsEventID, which contains fields used to identify an event. Since BaBar event jobs require, and thus assume existence of this object, its contents can be stored directly in the event without incurring the overhead of a separate persistent object. Some fields of this object(the event ID) change often, and others rarely. The latter fields are placed in the common object. These sets of fields are labeled the *dynamic* and *static* fragments of the event ID.

#### IV.2.2 Event Headers

The multi-leveled “event header” structure is flexible and allows simple updating. However, the structure involves many persistent objects. Since the structure is constant over many objects, it makes sense to store a compacted representation of the structure instead of the structure itself. This makes updating the structure expensive, but since structural updates are rare, the benefits in size are worth it.

An event’s data objects are stored in “headers”, which have arbitrary keys(names in character-string format). The data objects themselves are keyed according to key(character-string format again) and type. In the redesign, all of an event’s data objects are stored in a single array, and the keying information is stored in packed strings and offloaded to the common object, where they can be shared.

#### IV.2.3 Tag Descriptor

For the redesign, we decided to apply the common object concept by removing the single Tag Descriptor from the collection and sharing it directly among Event Tags that have identical attribute lists. There would be no possibility of adding attributes to a Tag Descriptor. If a matching Tag Descriptor could not be found for an Event Tag, a new one would be created. A sparse collection can now contain Event Tags that use different descriptors. 333 Recall that this situation would force the current system to use a single collection-owned descriptor, and thus bloat the size of every tag, assuming the tag layouts were compatible in the first place.

### IV.3 Eliminating Obsolete Data

#### IV.3.1 General Approach

As event store database developers, we do not have the expertise to declare data obsolete, unneeded, or unnecessary. However, we can observe the system, and our observations point to a number of fields and values which do not seem used. BaBar physicists have confirmed that many of these fields and values are, indeed, obsolete. Thus the redesign includes elimination of these fields. Any field may be added or restored, but the redesigned system will no longer include these unused fields by default.

Tag Attributes On average, more than 500 attributes are defined for each Event Tag in the production system. We contacted the physics group who confirmed that several attributes were obsolete. Also, some attributes were used during the initial creation of events but were not needed for any subsequent filtering. In order to handle such cases, the redesign will feature an updated Tag interface that will allow the creation of *transient-only* attributes that are never stored in persistent Tags/Descriptors.

## V Impact

Since 2000, BaBar disk space has been SLAC’s largest single Computing budget expense. The Event Store (navigational \+ data components) accounts for 97% of the 800TB+ BaBar database. Most of these files are migrated to tape but Event Store navigation objects–the target of this redesign– are the most frequently accessed so they should be disk resident when possible.

Conservative estimates indicate that the redesign results in an 80% reduction in the navigation component size (2.2kB to 0.5kB per event). Without benchmarks, performance gains are hard to quantify but using fewer, smaller and less frequently accessed persistent objects will only improve I/O latency. We look forward to running head-to-head comparisons.

## VI Project Status

The implementation is progressing at a rapid pace. We will soon halt schema development and focus on testing core functionality while establishing backward compatibility guidelines to ensure that users can access data produced by the original Event Store. Up to this point, we have kept our code independent of the central BaBar development release cycle to avoid disruption. The eventual merge will take place soon.

## VII Conclusion

The original BaBar Event Store was designed before its operation and use were understood. Its successful design has enabled it to well exceed the original design requirements, scaling to a level beyond anyone’s expectations. Using its generous flexibility, BaBar Event Store developers were able to extend, modify and tune the system every step of the way. As the experiment continued and the Event Store grew, accumulated experience showed room for improvement in size. Now armed with this experience, the redesign aims to dramatically reduce the Event Store’s persistent footprint.

The Event Store Redesign project has succeeded in meeting its goals. The overall size of the persistent event has been significantly reduced by eliminating redundancy via common objects, removing obsolete data and carefully re-organizing for more efficient access to persistent data. Most importantly, backwards compatibility has been preserved.

###### Acknowledgements.

We wish to acknowledge David Quarrie and Simon Patton for their work on the original BaBar event store evsdesign-ref . With their careful design, the system has been able to scale well beyond the original specifications.


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# On the influence of noise on chaos in nearly Hamiltonian systems

## I Introduction

From the point of view of chaotic dynamics, the Hamiltonian systems are marked out by the omnipresence of chaos: for nearly any Hamiltonian system with not less than one and a half degrees of freedom (with the exemption of completely integrable models that are non-robust and therefore exceptionally rare) the chaotic motion is possible for some initial conditions. On the contrary, for the dissipative systems of the same complexity of the structure chaotic motion on strange attractors either could be attained only in limited domains of the parameter space or is inaccessible at all 1 ; 2 .

Inclusion of the dissipative terms, even arbitrarily small, in the canonical equations of motion of the Hamiltonian system can change the character of the motion drastically. In particular, such addition can banish the chaos: for example, for the autonomous Hamiltonian systems with added (viscous) damping the only possible attractors are stable fixed points. It must be noted that this abrupt change may be basically formal, resulting from the presence of the transition to the infinite time limit in the rigorous definitions of important characteristics of chaotic motion, like the Lyapunov exponent and correlators of dynamic variables. In many experimentally relevant models the ratio of the dissipation $`\gamma `$ to the typical frequency of motion $`\omega `$ may take very small values. Thus, for radiation damping of vibrations of polyatomic molecules one has $`\gamma /\omega 10^{10}`$; the same order of magnitude of $`\gamma /\omega `$ turns out for the tidal friction of the celestial bodies of the Solar system. In these situations the duration of the ”transient chaos” phase $`T\gamma ^1`$ is so long that accurate determination of characteristics of the chaotic motion can be carried out without the account of dissipation.

Physically the introduction of dissipation in the equations of motion is a form of description of the interaction of an isolated (in the zeroth approximation) system with its environment - a ”heat bath” with practically infinite number of degrees of freedom, continuous spectrum of eigenfrequencies and internal dynamics that is independent of the state of the selected system. This heat bath may be considered also as a source of noise - that is, acting on the selected system random forces, whose statistical characteristics are determined by the properties of the heat bath alone. The problem of simultaneous influence of small dissipation and weak noise on the features of chaotic motion in the originally Hamiltonian non-autonomous system is the main concern of this paper.

The studies of the influence of noise on chaotic motion were pioneered by Lieberman and Lichtenberg 3  just by analysis of the effect of fluctuations on the Hamiltonian non-autonomous system. However, the modern paradigm of the domain was formed later by Crutchfield and Huberman 4 ; 5  who switched the attention to the exploration of strongly dissipative systems (see late review 6 ). The influence of noise on the Hamiltonian systems has been discussed recently in the context of the problem of decay of metastable chaotic states 7 ; 8 , but in general the field doesn’t seem to be fully investigated.

On the contrary, the influence of small dissipation on the Hamiltonian chaos is well understood: Afraimovich, Rabinovich, and Ugodnikov 9  have shown, that with switching on a small dissipation phase trajectories of stable periodic motions of the Hamiltonian non-autonomous systems become attractors with regular motion, and chaos disappears. With the further increase of $`\gamma `$ these attractors may lose their stability; annihilation of the last one turns the system back into chaotic motion on a strange attractor, that resembles the chaotic motion of the original Hamiltonian system. This pattern needs two specifications. First, the strange attractor may emerge before vanishing of the last of regular ones - the system could be multistable. This case, mentioned in 9  as ”logically possible”, will be met in our model. Secondly, if the Hamiltonian system has no islands of stability that correspond to periodic motion, then the transition from Hamiltonian to dissipative chaos can occur immediately. This case, apparently, will be present in our model too.

The aforesaid permits to specify the main problem of our paper: what intensity of noise is necessary to restore the chaos, repressed by dissipation?

The rest of the text is organized as follows. In Sec. II the basic model is introduced. Sections III and IV treat two mechanisms of restoration of chaos by noise: fluctuation transfer to domains of local instability and parametric destabilization of motion within stability islands. Sec. V treats the influence of strong noise on the Lyapunov exponent and correlation functions of chaotic motion. Sec. VI contains the summary of results and their discussion.

## II THE BASIC MODEL

We start from the well-known periodically kicked rotor - the non-autonomous model with the Hamiltonian

$$H(I,\theta ,t)=\frac{I^2}{2}+K\mathrm{cos}\theta \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\delta \left(tn\right),$$
(1)
where $`I`$ and $`\theta `$ are the dynamic variables (canonically conjugated momentum - action and coordinate - angle), $`K`$ is the control parameter, and $`\delta (z)`$ is the Dirac delta-function. The stroboscopic mapping that links values of dynamic variables at the moments of time $`n0`$ and $`n+10`$, preceding two consequent kicks,

$$I^{}=I+K\mathrm{sin}\theta ,\theta ^{}=\theta +I^{},$$
(2)
is known as the standard, or Chirikov - Taylor, mapping and thoroughly studied 10 .

The generalization of the model (1) that includes dissipation and noise will be described by the equation of motion for the angular variable

$$\ddot{\theta }+\gamma \dot{\theta }K\mathrm{sin}\theta \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\delta \left(tn\right)=\xi \left(t\right),$$
(3)
where $`\gamma `$ is the damping constant. The $`\xi (t)`$ in the RHS is the Langevin random force, that is a stationary, distributed by a Gaussian law, $`\delta `$-correlated random process (white noise) with zero mean and the correlator

$$\xi \left(t\right)\xi \left(t+\tau \right)=2\gamma \mathrm{\Theta }\delta \left(\tau \right),$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{\Theta }=k_BT`$ is the noise temperature in energy units (in the system of scales of the model). The model given by Eqs. (3) and (4) has three parameters: $`K,\gamma `$ and $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$. We shall restrict ourselves by the domain of small damping, $`\gamma 1`$, where the system is nearly Hamiltonian.

In the absence of noise, at $`\mathrm{\Theta }=0`$, the stroboscopic mapping for this model is given by equations

$$I^{}=a\left(I+K\mathrm{sin}\theta \right),\theta ^{}=\theta +b\left(I+K\mathrm{sin}\theta \right),$$
(5)
where

$$a=e^\gamma ,b=\gamma ^1(1e^\gamma ).$$
(6)
The two-parameter mapping given by Eqs. (5) is a special case of the four-parameter Zaslavsky mapping, that has been introduced in 11  and studied in 12 ; 13 ; 14 . The main efforts of these studies were applied to the case $`\gamma 1`$. Here we describe in brief the properties of our model for the case of small damping, $`\gamma 1`$.

At small and moderate values of the control parameter $`K`$ the most important attractor of the mapping Eqs. (5) is the fixed point $`I=0,\theta =\pi `$, that is stable in the range

$$K<K_1=\frac{2\left(1+a\right)}{b}4\left(1+\frac{7}{12}\gamma ^2\right).$$
(7)
For $`K>K_1`$ the leading attractor is the symmetric cycle $`C_2^s`$ of two points that are related by equations $`I^{}=I,\theta ^{}=2\pi \theta `$. It is stable while

$$K<K_2=\frac{\pi \left(1+a\right)}{b}2\pi \left(1+\frac{7}{12}\gamma ^2\right).$$
(8)
For $`K>K_2`$ the leading attractors are two asymmetric cycles of length two $`C_2^{a1}`$ and $`C_2^{a2}`$. The phase coordinates of their points are related by equations $`I^{}=I`$, $`\theta ^{}=\pi +\theta `$. They are stable in the domain

$`K<K_3={\displaystyle \frac{1}{b}}\sqrt{\pi ^2\left(1+a\right)^2+3+a^2}`$
$`2\sqrt{\pi ^2+1}\left(1+0.152\gamma \right).`$ (9)
In general case the system defined by Eqs. (5) is multistable. From the first of these equations it follows that the strip

$$\left|I\right|I_+=\frac{K}{\mathrm{exp}\gamma 1}$$
(10)
is the trap (the absorbing set) of the system: any phase trajectory that comes within this strip never leaves it. To determine the comparative roles of basins of attraction of strange and regular attractors of the model the fraction $`f`$ of chaotic trajectories among the set with random initial conditions, uniformly distributed within the trap, was calculated. The results are presented in Fig. 1.

It can be seen that the strange attractor is born within the domain of stability of the cycle $`C_2^s`$, and after the loss of stability of cycles $`C_2^{a1}`$ and $`C_2^{a2}`$, in the range $`K>K_3(\gamma )`$, it remains the only apparent attractor of the system.

For $`\mathrm{\Theta }>0`$ the stroboscopic mapping for the system Eq. (3) has the form

$`I^{}`$ $`=`$ $`a\left(I+K\mathrm{sin}\theta \right)+\upsilon ,`$
$`\theta ^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\theta +b\left(I+K\mathrm{sin}\theta \right)+\phi ,`$ (11)
where $`\upsilon `$ and $`\phi `$ are the random increments (fluctuations) of action and angle for the unit interval of time. Fluctuations $`\upsilon `$ and $`\phi `$ at the moment of time $`t`$ after the beginning of the motion with definite initial conditions have the Gaussian distributions with the dispersions

$`D_\upsilon `$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Theta }\left(1e^{2\gamma t}\right),`$
$`D_\phi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Theta }}{\gamma ^2}}\left(2\gamma t3+4e^{\gamma t}e^{2\gamma t}\right)`$ (12)
respectively . In our case $`\gamma t\gamma 1`$ and the expressions Eqs. (II) could be replaced by their asymptotics

$$D_\upsilon =2\gamma \mathrm{\Theta },D_\phi =\frac{2}{3}\gamma \mathrm{\Theta }.$$
(13)
Fluctuations $`\upsilon `$ and $`\phi `$ are positively correlated; that has clear physical meaning: positive increment in velocity (that is numerically equal to the action) at the unit interval of time leads, most probably, to the positive increment of coordinate. The correlator $`M=\upsilon \phi `$ by the moment $`t`$ after the beginning of motion can be calculated by the method described in :

$$M=\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }}{\gamma }\left(1e^{\gamma t}\right)^2.$$
(14)
For $`\gamma t\gamma 1`$ the asymptotic value of this correlator is $`M=\mathrm{\Theta }\gamma `$. The joint distribution of fluctuations of action and angle has the form

$$w(\upsilon ,\phi )=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2\pi \gamma \mathrm{\Theta }}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{1}{\gamma \mathrm{\Theta }}\left(3\phi ^23\phi \upsilon +\upsilon ^2\right)\right].$$
(15)
In the presence of noise the phase trajectory can reach any point of the phase space of the system. However, for finite $`\gamma `$ the system with overwhelming probability will stay in the strip with limited action values that is much narrower than the trap given by Eq. (10). For the description of this domain of concentration of the probability density the term ”attractor” will be used.

## III THE THRESHOLD OF CHAOS: TRANSFER TO THE DOMAIN OF LOCAL INSTABILITY

The condition of existence of chaos is, by definition, the positive value of the Lyapunov exponent $`\sigma `$. Numerical calculation show, that in our model at moderate values of $`K5.4`$, when the motion of the system in the absence of noise is regular, the Lyapunov exponent increases with $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ and at some value of $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0`$ passes through zero.

We turn to the theoretical description of the onset of chaos. For conservative (area-preserving) mappings with strong chaos rather accurate estimate for the Lyapunov exponent could be obtained by averaging of the local instability index - the logarithm of the maximal in absolute value eigenvalue of the stability matrix - over the domain of chaotic motion 10 ; 16 . Since our model is nearly Hamiltonian, we may try to use this approach.

The stability matrix for the mapping given by Eqs. (II) is

$$A=\left|\begin{array}{cc}a& aK\mathrm{cos}\theta \\ b& 1+bK\mathrm{cos}\theta \end{array}\right|$$
(16)
The local instability index depends only on the angle $`\theta `$; for $`K<4`$

$$\sigma \left(\theta \right)=\mathrm{ln}\left|\frac{S}{2}+\sqrt{\left(\frac{S}{2}\right)^2D}\right|,$$
(17)
where $`S=a+1+bK\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ is the trace of $`A`$ and $`D=a`$ is its determinant. For small $`\gamma `$ almost everywhere in the interval $`\pi /2<\theta <3\pi /2`$ the index is negative and constant, $`\sigma (\theta )=\gamma /2`$, and the motion is locally stable. Most probably the system stays in this domain, but under the influence of noise it can sporadically enter the domains of local instability. For large enough values of $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ their contribution can compensate the weak squeezing of phase trajectories in the central part of the attractor.

### III.1 Small $`K`$

For small values $`K1`$ in the absence of damping ($`\gamma =0`$) the evolution of the periodically kicked rotor nearly everywhere in the phase space can be described by the time averaged (and thus time-independent) Hamiltonian of the system, that is given by Eq. (1):

$$\overline{H}(I,\theta )=\overline{H(I,\theta ,t)}=\frac{I^2}{2}+K\mathrm{cos}\theta .$$
(18)
For an autonomous Hamiltonian system the inclusion of viscous damping and connection to the Langevin (white noise) heat bath lead to the canonical distribution of probability in the phase space

$$W(I,\theta )=N\mathrm{exp}\frac{\overline{H}(I,\theta )}{\mathrm{\Theta }},$$
(19)
where $`N`$ is the normalization constant. For the averaging $`\sigma =\sigma \left(\theta \right)`$ one needs to know the angular distribution $`W(\theta )`$. Its normalized form could be found from Eqs. (18) and (19):

$$W\left(\theta \right)=\frac{1}{2\pi I_0\left(K\mathrm{/}\mathrm{\Theta }\right)}\mathrm{exp}\frac{K}{\mathrm{\Theta }}\mathrm{cos}\theta ,$$
(20)
where $`I_0(z)`$ is the zeroth order modified Bessel function of the first kind. Since nearly all probability density is concentrated in the stability interval, where $`\mathrm{cos}\theta <0`$, the contribution of this domain to the averaged value is

$$\sigma _{}\frac{\gamma }{2}.$$
(21)
To calculate the contributions of zones of local instability we neglect the damping; then we have $`\sigma \left(\theta \right)\sqrt{K\mathrm{cos}\theta }`$. Positive contribution of two instability strips could be estimated by the integral

$$\sigma _+\frac{1}{\pi I_0\left(K\mathrm{/}\mathrm{\Theta }\right)}\underset{3\pi /2}{\overset{2\pi }{}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{K}{\mathrm{\Theta }}\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\sqrt{K\mathrm{cos}\theta }𝑑\theta .$$
(22)
The threshold values $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0`$ found by averaging of the local instability index and by direct numerical calculation are compared in Fig. 2.

If $`K/\mathrm{\Theta }1`$, the integral can be calculated analytically: replacing the Bessel function by its asymptotics for large value of the argument, and approximating the cosine by the linear function, we obtain:

$$\sigma _+\sqrt{\frac{1}{2K}}\mathrm{\Theta }\mathrm{exp}\frac{K}{\mathrm{\Theta }}.$$
(23)
From the condition $`\sigma =\sigma _{}+\sigma _+=0`$ the threshold value of temperature is determined by the root of the equation

$$\gamma =\sqrt{\frac{2}{K}}\mathrm{\Theta }_0\mathrm{exp}\frac{K}{\mathrm{\Theta }_0}.$$
(24)
This expression yields the asymptotic dependence of the temperature threshold of chaos for small $`K`$: it has the form

$$\mathrm{\Theta }_0\frac{K}{\left|\mathrm{ln}\gamma \right|}$$
(25)
and possesses a logarithmic accuracy.

### III.2 Large $`K`$

The results of the previous subsection shows that for small $`K`$ the threshold $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0`$ grows with the increase of the control parameter $`K`$, $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0K`$. On the other hand, as it was noted in the Sec. II (see Fig. 1), for $`K>K_3`$ chaos in the dissipative system exists (apparently for any initial conditions) even without any noise. For the reasons of continuity we may expect that there may exist a range of values of $`K`$ where the dependence $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0(K)`$ at the constant damping $`\gamma `$ is decreasing. The numerical calculation confirms this suggestion (see Fig. 3).

For the area-preserving mapping Eq. (2), reduced to the basic square $`\left(0I<2\pi \right)\times \left(0\theta <2\pi \right)`$, for large $`K`$ the chaotic motion takes place in the chaotic component that covers the largest part of the phase space (for $`K>2`$ the measure of the chaotic component $`\mu (K)>0.78`$). For the system with damping and noise Eq. (II) we shall retain the name ”chaotic component” for the part of the attractor that includes the points of the chaotic component of the conservative system, and the complementary part will be referred to as ”islands of stability”. Limiting ourselves to the case $`K<4`$, we will take into account only one island of stability that surrounds the stable fixed point $`I=0,\theta =\pi `$.

Some properties of chaotic motion of the system with damping and noise in the chaotic component could be described by the following simple model. The action variable for one time step receives the increment $`\mathrm{\Delta }IK\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ with the averaged square value $`\mathrm{\Delta }I^2K^2\mathrm{/}2`$. For the motion in the chaotic component the correlations of the consequent values of $`\theta `$ are small 17 ; 18 , and we can depict the evolution of the system as the motion of the rotor with the damping $`\gamma `$ under the influence of some Langevin force, a white noise coming from the source with an effective temperature $`\mathrm{\Theta }^{}`$. From Eq. (13) we have the estimate $`\mathrm{\Theta }^{}K^2/4\gamma 1`$. In this approximation the distribution of phase density in the chaotic component will become canonical one, with uniform distribution of angles and the Gaussian distribution of action,

$$W_c(I,\theta )=\sqrt{\frac{\gamma }{2\pi ^3K^2}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{2\gamma }{K^2}I^2\right).$$
(26)
This expression is applicable for small $`\gamma `$ and large $`K`$.

Let’s assume that in the island of stability the probability density also has the distribution of the canonical form

$$W_i(I,\theta )=N\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\stackrel{~}{H}(I,\theta )}{\mathrm{\Theta }}\right),$$
(27)
where $`\stackrel{~}{H}(I,\theta )`$ is an effective Hamiltonian (a function that is constant on the invariant curves of the standard mapping (2)), and $`N`$ is the normalization constant. This assumption is plausible in view of Eq. (19); additional support for it will be obtained in the next section.

If $`\gamma `$ and $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ are sufficiently small, then the phase trajectory can leave the island of stability or return to it only by passing through the narrow strip of the width $`\delta \sqrt{\gamma \mathrm{\Theta }}`$ along the border of the island of stability. The probability $`P`$ of finding a phase point in the chaotic component could be found from the balance considerations by equalizing $`W_c`$ and $`W_i`$ on this border. For $`P1`$ we can neglect the non-uniformity of the distribution Eq. (26) in action and obtain the estimate

$$P=N\sqrt{\frac{2\pi ^3K^2}{\gamma }}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{\mathrm{\Theta }}\right),$$
(28)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the value of the effective Hamiltonian $`\stackrel{~}{H}(I,\theta )`$ on the border of the island of stability. At present we can not calculate this quantity analytically, but from its value taken from the numerical calculations (and depending only on $`K`$) by Eq.(28) we can find the dependence of $`P`$ on $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ and $`\gamma `$.

In the numerical experiment the basic square $`\left(0I<2\pi \right)\times \left(0\theta <2\pi \right)`$ has been separated into $`10^4`$ cells. A chaotic trajectory of the standard mapping Eq. (2) in this square was calculated for $`10^5`$ time steps, and all cells, in which the trajectory came at least once, were marked as the mask of the chaotic component. Then for the trajectories of the system with damping and noise Eq.(II) the probability $`P`$ has been calculated as the fraction of points of the trajectory whose projections on the basic square got into one of the cells of the mask.

The results of numerical calculations for the values $`K=3`$ and $`\gamma =0.05`$ are shown in Fig. 4. Fit of the linear dependence of $`\mathrm{ln}P`$ on the inverse temperature $`\beta =\mathrm{\Theta }^1`$ for these points gives values $`\mathrm{\Delta }=1.07`$ and $`N=0.057`$.

From the assumption that the motion inside the stability island gives to the Lyapunov exponent the negative contribution $`\sigma _{}=\gamma /2`$, and that the positive contribution from the motion in the chaotic component is $`\sigma _+=\sigma \left(K\right)P`$, where $`\sigma (K)`$ is the Lyapunov exponent value of the Hamiltonian system, for the temperature threshold of chaos we obtain the equation

$$\mathrm{\Theta }_0=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\left(K\right)}{\mathrm{ln}\left[\sigma \left(K\right)N\sqrt{8\pi ^3K^2\gamma ^3}\right]}.$$
(29)
The threshold values $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0`$ found by calculating the probability of transfer to the chaotic component by this formula and by direct numerical calculation are compared in Fig. 5. From the Eq. (29) it is seen that essentially $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0`$ is proportional to the ”activation energy” $`\mathrm{\Delta }(K)`$; the dependence on other parameters is only logarithmic. The general behaviour of the dependence on Fig. 3 could be explained by decrease of the size of the stability island with the increase of $`K`$; the dip around $`K=4`$ reflects the restructurization of the regular attractor.

## IV THE THRESHOLD OF CHAOS: PARAMETRIC DESTABILIZATION IN THE ISLANDS OF STABILITY

Although the agreement between the theoretical curve and the numerical points in Fig. 5 is rather convincing, the increase of discrepancy at very small $`\gamma `$ is strange: just in this domain the damping must have especially little influence, and the picture of transfer between the island of stability and the chaotic component promises to be asymptotically exact. Furthermore, this discrepancies could not be neglected from the quantitative point of view, since for the sharp dependence of $`P(\mathrm{\Theta })`$ small variations of $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ at low temperatures produce large changes in the positive contribution to the Lyapunov exponent $`\sigma _+=\sigma \left(K\right)P`$. For example, for $`K=3`$ and $`\gamma =0.01`$ substitution of the numerically found value $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0=0.086`$ in the Eq. (28) gives $`P=2.610^5`$ and $`\sigma _+=1.810^5=3.510^3(\gamma /2)`$. Thus we must conclude that there exists another mechanism creating the instability that acts on the parts of phase trajectories that are localized within the islands of stability.

In the domain $`2<K<4`$, in which the island of stability surrounds the fixed stable point $`I=0,\theta =\pi `$, we can consider the dynamic variables $`x=\theta \pi `$ and $`y=I`$ to be small. Then by substitution $`\mathrm{cos}x1x^2/2`$ the matrix of stability could be represented in the form

$$\stackrel{~}{A}=\left|\begin{array}{cc}a& aK+a\eta \\ b& 1bK+b\eta \end{array}\right|,$$
(30)
where $`\eta =Kx^2/2`$ are small corrections. The quantities $`\eta `$ are fluctuating under the influence of noise and could be treated as random. The stochastic modulation of parameters of the mapping leads to destabilization of the motion. The corresponding exponent of instability $`\sigma _+`$ we will calculate in the conservative approximation, since the contribution to the common Lyapunov exponent from damping $`\sigma _{}=\gamma /2`$ and from stochastic modulation $`\sigma _+`$ for small $`\gamma `$ are additive.

The transformation of variables determined by matrices Eq. (30) at $`\gamma =0`$ can be reduced to the three-term recurrent relation for the angular variable:

$$x_{n+1}\left(2K\eta _n\right)x_n+x_{n1}=0.$$
(31)
This expression can be interpreted as an equation for amplitudes $`x_n`$ of the stationary wave function in the quantum one-dimensional tight-binding model with unit non-diagonal matrix elements (transfer integrals) between adjacent sites, random site energies $`\eta _n`$ and the energy eigenvalue $`E=2K`$ (one-dimensional chain with diagonal disorder). The calculation of the Lyapunov exponent for this system was carried out in the context of the theory of Anderson localization. For the case in which $`\eta _n`$ are independent random variables with zero mean, $`\eta =0`$, and small dispersion, $`\eta ^21`$, the Lyapunov exponent has been calculated by Derrida and Gardner 19 . Correlations between consequent values of $`\eta _n`$ were taken into account by Tessieri and Izrailev 20 . The stochastic Lyapunov exponent is proportional to the dispersion of fluctuating parameter $`\eta `$:

$$\sigma _+=\frac{\eta ^2}{2\left(4KK^2\right)}C\left(\omega \right).$$
(32)
The correlation factor $`C(\omega )`$ in this expression has the form

$$C\left(\omega \right)=1+2\underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}b_\eta \left(k\right)\mathrm{cos}\left(2\omega k\right),$$
(33)
where $`b_\eta (k)`$ are normalized correlation functions of the random variable $`\eta `$, $`b_\eta \left(k\right)=\eta _i\eta _{i+k}\mathrm{/}\eta ^2`$, and

$$\omega =\mathrm{arccos}\frac{2K}{2}$$
(34)
is the average angle of rotation of a vector by the linearized standard mapping. Formula Eq. (32) is applicable for the values of $`K`$ that are not too close to $`K=0`$ or $`K=4`$. In our case $`\eta 0`$, but we can include this value in the parameter $`K`$; this renormalization will change its value into $`\stackrel{~}{K}=K\left(1x^2\mathrm{/}2\right)`$. In what follows we shall retain the designation $`\eta `$ for the fluctuating quantity with zero mean, $`\eta =K\left(x^2x^2\right)\mathrm{/}2`$. To use the expression Eq. (32) we have to determine statistical characteristics of the variable $`\eta `$: its dispersion and correlation function. It must be noted at once that for calculation of these quantities the account of damping is essential.

### IV.1 Invariant density in the island of stability

Since for low temperatures $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ the phase trajectory nearly all the time is located in the vicinity of the stable fixed point, for finding the invariant distribution of the probability density $`W(x,y)`$ we may use the linearized mapping $`\widehat{L}`$,

$$x^{}=by+\left(1bK\right)x,y^{}=ayaKx.$$
(35)
The motion of the system on a unit time interval can be separated into two stages: the first is the evolution under the mapping Eq. (35), the second is addition of the fluctuation increments (cf. Eq. (II)). The probability of coming in the vicinity of the point $`(u,v)`$ after the first stage is proportional to the value of the invariant density in the vicinity of its prototype $`\widehat{L}^1(u,v)`$. The influence of noise can be described by the convolution of the obtained distribution with the distribution of fluctuation increments $`w(\upsilon ,\phi )`$ Eq. (15). Thus for the invariant density we obtain the following integral equation:

$$W(x,y)=a^1𝑑u𝑑vW(u\frac{b}{a}v,Ku+\frac{1bK}{a}v)\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2\pi \gamma \mathrm{\Theta }}\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{1}{\gamma \mathrm{\Theta }}\left[3\left(ux\right)^23\left(ux\right)\left(vy\right)+\left(vy\right)^2\right]\right\}.$$
(36)
We will look for its solution in the form of a canonical distribution with the effective Hamiltonian, that is bilinear in action $`y`$ and angle $`x`$:

$$W(x,y)=\mathrm{exp}\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Theta }}\left(Ax^2+Bxy+Cy^2\right).$$
(37)
After substitution of this expression in Eq. (36), integration and equivalizing the coefficients at the identical powers of dynamic variables, in the lowest order in $`\gamma `$ we obtain the parameters of the function Eq. (37):

$$A=\frac{3K}{6K},B=\frac{3K}{6K},C=\frac{3}{6K}.$$
(38)
Now we can calculate the moments of dynamic variables, e.g.

$$x^2=\frac{122K}{12K3K^2}\mathrm{\Theta },xy=\frac{6K}{123K}\mathrm{\Theta },$$
(39)
and the dispersion of the fluctuating quantity,

$$\eta ^2=\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{122K}{123K}\right)^2\mathrm{\Theta }^2,$$
(40)
that enters in the RHS of Eq. (32).

### IV.2 Correlation function

With the known form of the invariant density, the correlation function of the angular variable $`x`$ could be calculated by the direct integration. For the linearized mapping Eq. (35) the values of $`B_x\left(n\right)=x_ix_{i+n}`$ could be expressed through two moments, $`x^2`$ and $`xy`$. For example,

$`B_x\left(0\right)=x^2B_x\left(1\right)=\left(1bK\right)x^2+bxy,`$
(41)
$`B_x\left(2\right)=\left(1bK\left(2+a\right)+b^2K^2\right)x^2`$
$`+b\left(abK+1\right)xy.`$ (42)
For small $`\gamma `$ the normalized correlation function $`b_x\left(n\right)=B_x\left(n\right)\mathrm{/}B_x\left(0\right)`$ can be expressed in the form

$$b_x\left(n\right)=\mathrm{cos}\left(\stackrel{~}{\omega }n\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\gamma }{2}n\right).$$
(43)
Here the tilde over $`\omega `$ reminds that the renormalized value of $`\stackrel{~}{K}`$ must be used in calculations. This formula is compared to the numerical calculations in Fig. 6.

The normalized correlation function of the fluctuating variable $`\eta `$ can be calculated in a similar way:

$$b_\eta \left(n\right)=\mathrm{cos}^2\left(\stackrel{~}{\omega }n\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(\gamma n\right).$$
(44)
With this expression one can calculate the correlation factor $`C(\omega )`$ (see Eq. (33)). For small $`\gamma `$ it is given by the expression $`C\left(\omega \right)\left(2\gamma \right)^1`$. With it from the condition $`\sigma _{}+\sigma _+=0`$ follows the estimate of the temperature threshold of chaos

$$\mathrm{\Theta }_0=2\sqrt{4KK^2}\frac{123K}{122K}\gamma .$$
(45)
This formula is too crude for the practical application: it gives only the estimate of $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0`$ from below. Here is the reason for this limitation: the expressions Eqs. (43) and (44) for the correlation functions are valid only for small temperatures, $`\mathrm{\Theta }\gamma `$. For larger values the nonlinear terms that are present in the exact mapping Eq. (II) change the frequency of oscillations of the correlation function $`b_\eta (n)`$ (see Fig. 6(b)); by this they spoil the resonance with the cosine factor under the summation sign in Eq. (33) and considerably decrease the value of $`C(\omega )`$, down to the value about 2-3 on the threshold of chaos. The numerical calculation shows that around $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0`$ the temperature dependence of the Lyapunov exponent is accurately described by the formula

$$\sigma =\frac{\gamma }{2}+\kappa \mathrm{\Theta }^2$$
(46)
with a coefficient $`\kappa `$ about unity. From Eq. (46) the simple approximation for the temperature threshold follows:

$$\mathrm{\Theta }_0c\sqrt{\gamma },$$
(47)
where constant $`c`$ is about unity. The fit of the law Eq. (47) to the points in Fig. 5 gives $`c0.88`$.

## V STRONG NOISE

In this section we will look at the effects of noise with temperature much higher than the chaos threshold $`\mathrm{\Theta }_0`$.

### V.1 The Lyapunov exponent

With the increase of the noise temperature the Lyapunov exponent increases monotonously and tends to some finite limit $`\sigma _{\mathrm{}}`$ (see Fig. 7).

Since with the increase of noise the typical values of increments of the angle ($`\phi `$) and of the action ($`\upsilon `$) grow, $`\phi \upsilon \sqrt{\gamma \mathrm{\Theta }}`$ (see Eq. (13)), for $`\mathrm{\Theta }\gamma ^1`$ all correlations of dynamical variables vanish. Therefore the limiting value $`\sigma _{\mathrm{}}`$ is equal to the Lyapunov exponent of the infinite product of the matrices Eq. (17) with uncorrelated values of $`\theta `$, uniformely distributed in the interval $`0\theta <2\pi `$. For small $`K`$ the value of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{}}`$ can be calculated from the result of 19  for the localization length at the band edge, namely:

$$\sigma _{\mathrm{}}=\frac{\gamma }{2}+0.229K^{2\mathrm{/}3}.$$
(48)
The dependence given by this equation is in good agreement with the numerical data up to the value of $`K1`$ (see Fig. 8).

It may be noted that from Eq. (48) it follows that for a given value of damping $`\gamma `$ there exist a range of values of the control parameter $`K<3.23\gamma ^{3\mathrm{/}2}`$ in which chaos could not be reached for any intensity of the noise. For large values $`K3`$ the limit $`\sigma _{\mathrm{}}`$ does not differ noticeably from the Lyapunov exponent $`\sigma (K)`$ of the original Hamiltonian system.

### V.2 The angular correlations

In the theory of the standard mapping it is customary to study the angular correlations through the properties of the variable $`s=\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ 17 ; 18 . From the symmetry considerations it has zero mean: $`s=0`$.

Let’s consider the correlation of two consequent values of this variable:

$$B_s\left(1\right)=\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}\theta ^{}.$$
(49)
When the invariant density $`W(I,\theta )`$ is known, the calculation of the correlation Eq. (49) is reduced to the two-fold integration. For small $`K`$ the distribution can be taken as the canonical one with the averaged Hamiltonian Eq. (18). With approximating the angular distribution by the Gaussian function, for small damping $`\gamma `$ we have the expression

$$B_s\left(1\right)=\frac{1}{2}\left(1\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{2\mathrm{\Theta }}{K}\right)\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Theta }}{2}\right).$$
(50)
It is compared to the numerical data in Fig. 9(a).

For large values of $`K2`$ and small temperatures the value of $`B_s(1)`$ could be calculated from the distribution Eq. (37):

$$B_s\left(1\right)=\left(1K\right)x^2+xy=\frac{128K+K^2}{12K3K^2}\mathrm{\Theta }.$$
(51)
It is compared to the numerical data in Fig. 9(b). The numerical calculation shows in this case the decrease of $`B_s(1)`$ with $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ for sufficiently high temperatures. The reason for it is qualitatively clear. We have two competing contributions to $`B_s(1)`$: a negative one from the island of stability and a smaller positive one from the motion in the chaotic component. The increase of the temperature leads to the increase of the probability $`P`$ of the motion within the chaotic component, that eventually suppresses the negative contribution. The way of accurate calculation of $`B_s(1)`$ for high temperatures at present is not known.

Thence both for small and large values of the control parameter $`K`$ the increase of the noise temperature (from zero) induces first the increase of the correlation of the consequent values of the angular variable $`s=\mathrm{sin}\theta `$ up to some maximal value, and then its decrease.

## VI CONCLUSION

Above we have studied the model of periodically kicked rotor with added damping and white noise. We expect that some of the established features and relations are typical and will hold at least qualitatively for many representative non-autonomous Hamiltonian systems with chaotic motion. With this in view, in this Section we summarize main results of this paper in a generalized way. Since the growth of the control parameter of the standard mapping $`K`$ increases both the amount (given by the invariant measure $`\mu `$ of the chaotic component) and the intensity (given by Lyapunov exponent $`\sigma `$) of chaos we will refer to $`K`$ as to the strength of chaos. In what follows (as well as everywhere above) the Lyapunov exponent denotes the largest of the characteristic exponents of the stroboscopic mapping of the system that can take negative as well as positive values (one have to keep in view that for systems - flows with finite phase velocity there is always one zero characteristic Lyapunov exponent that corresponds to evolution of the infinitesimal displacement along the phase trajectory).

1. If chaos in a Hamiltonian system is suppressed by addition of small dissipation, then addition of white noise can, as a rule, restore the chaotic motion. The exception is found only for very weak chaos, when the system remains regular at arbitrarily intense noise (see Sec. V.A). The increase of the noise intensity raises the Lyapunov exponent. In wide context this fact is not quite trivial, since there is an example of the system for which noise diminishes the (positive) Lyapunov exponent, eventually turning it negative 21 .

2. The temperature threshold of chaos depends on the strength of chaos of the Hamiltonian system in a non-monotonous way (see Fig. 3). For weak chaos it increases with the strength (in our model – by linear law, see Eq. (25)), since the effective ”potential well” corresponding to the island of stability becomes deeper, whereas for strong chaos the threshold decreases due to the shrinking of the islands of stability.

3. There are two essentially different mechanisms of the chaotization of motion by noise. The first one is the fluctuational transfer of the motion from the stability island to the locally unstable regions of the phase space; its contribution to the Lyapunov exponent depends on the noise temperature by the ”activation law”, $`\sigma _+\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{\Theta })`$ (see Eqs. (23) and (28) and Fig. 4). The second is the parametric destabilization inside the islands of stability created by small fluctuations of nonlinear terms of the stroboscopic mapping; its contribution to the Lyapunov exponent depends on the noise temperature by the power law, $`\sigma _+\mathrm{\Theta }^2`$ (see Eqs. (32) and (40) and Fig. 7). Any one of these mechanisms could be dominating, depending on the combination of parameters.

4. Around the threshold of chaos the motion of the system with damping and noise differs strongly from the chaotic motion of the original Hamiltonian system. It is concentrated mainly within the islands of stability with only rare excursions to the domain of the phase space occupied by the chaotic component of the prototype. In this aspect the restoration of chaos ”by noise” differs radically from the restoration of chaos ”by damping” 9 . The similarity to the original motion could be reached in the domain of strong chaos and high noise temperatures $`\mathrm{\Theta }1`$ (see Fig. 7).

Lastly it must be noted that the existence of the range of parameters where the transition from Hamiltonian to dissipative chaos is immediate (see Fig. 1) may be specific for the studied model of periodically kicked rotor. In this range the influence of noise on chaos has qualitative peculiarities: e.g. the increase of noise could reduce the Lyapunov exponent (for $`K=7`$ and $`\gamma =0.1`$ at $`\mathrm{\Theta }=0`$ $`\sigma =1.260(3)`$, and at $`\mathrm{\Theta }=100`$ $`\sigma =1.228(3)`$). The scenario of the immediate transition and related problems for noisy systems may deserve a special study.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by the ”Russian Scientific Schools” program (grant # NSh - 1909.2003.2).


text:
# Photon-exchange effects on photon-pair transmission

## Abstract

It has been proposed that photon-exchange effects in atom-photon interactions could lead to greatly enhanced optical nonlinearities. These might have widespread application (e.g. quantum information). Here we demonstrate experimentally that such exchange effects can indeed enhance the probability of real absorption of photon pairs. Using nonclassical pairs of photons with variable time separation, we observe a maximum suppression of pair transmission by at least 5% with respect to the result for uncorrelated photons.

Exchange effects play a rich and central role in quantum physics, and are linked with phenomena as diverse as the Pauli exclusion principle and Bose condensation. For both fermions and bosons they result in a modification of the effect of inter-particle interaction from what would be predicted for distinguishable particles, and can often be thought of as leading to a new effective interaction between indistinguishable particles. Photons are bosons, and are usually thought to interact with each other, via their coupling with material media, very weakly. For example, the usual Kerr nonlinearity, which is well-known to grow linearly with the atom density in the interaction region chi3  rarely produces phase shifts larger than $`10^{10}`$ for a pair of photons. This can be enhanced using schemes employing cavity QED qed , electromagnetically-induced transparency and slow light eit , or interference-based nonlinearities switchnlo . However, the technical difficulties that plague these protocols have led many who seek an effective photon-photon interaction for applications in quantum computing and information processing to turn instead to the use of linear optics and conditional detection klm ; otherklmlikeschemes  to simulate such an effect. Could an exchange effect instead be leveraged to lead to an effective photon nonlinearity at the few photon level?

Six years ago Jim Franson franson ; otherfranson  argued that indeed photon-exchange interactions in an atomic system might give rise to a very strong effective nonlinearity. The process requires a pair of photons at frequencies $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$, and a pair of atoms $`A`$ and $`B`$. Exchange would occur when atom $`A`$ nonresonantly ‘absorbs’ photon $`1`$ and emits photon $`2`$, while atom $`B`$ absorbs photon $`2`$ and emits photon $`1`$. Franson predicted that this exchange-based nonlinear effect would grow as the square of the atom density and could be significant at the two-photon level in a sufficiently dense sample. This proposed effect has been the subject of significant controversy antifranson , and has not yet been verified in the laboratory.

In this letter we present both a theoretical motivation and experimental realization of a simpler photon-exchange effect, one that involves real transitions in matter rather than virtual transitions. Consider the two-photon absorption probability for like-polarized photons travelling in the same direction in a one-dimensional system. This can easily be calculated in perturbation theory. We consider a two-photon state initially described as:

$$|A,B=𝒩(A,B)𝑑\omega 𝑑\omega ^{}f_A(\omega )f_B(\omega ^{})a^{}(\omega )a^{}(\omega ^{})|0,$$
(1)
where $`a^{}(\omega )`$ is a raising operator for a photon of frequency $`\omega `$, $`f_{A(B)}(\omega )`$ is the frequency amplitude function for an individual photon $`A(B)`$, and $`𝒩(A,B)=\left(1+\left|f_A^{}(\omega )f_B(\omega )𝑑\omega \right|^2\right)^{1/2}`$ is a normalization constant, $`f_{A(B)}(\omega )`$ are two amplitude functions for frequency $`\omega `$, and $`a^{}(\omega )`$ is the raising operator for a photon of frequency $`\omega `$. Under these conditions, the probability of absorbing both photons, $`P_{AB},`$ can be expressed in terms of the single-photon absorption probabilities $`P_A`$ and $`P_B`$:

$$P_{AB}=P_AP_B\left(\frac{1+\xi _{AB}}{1+\upsilon _{AB}}\right),$$
(2)
where $`\upsilon _{AB}`$ is the square of the overlap integral, $`\left|𝑑\omega f_A^{}(\omega )f_B(\omega )\right|^21`$, and

$$\xi _{AB}=\frac{\left|𝑑\omega g(\omega )f_A^{}(\omega )f_B(\omega )\right|^2}{\left[𝑑\omega g(\omega )\left|f_A(\omega )\right|^2\right]\left[𝑑\omega g(\omega )\left|f_B(\omega )\right|^2\right]},$$
(3)
where $`g(\omega )`$ is the absorption spectrum of the medium. For independent absorption events we expect $`P_{AB}=P_AP_B;`$ therefore correlated absorption probabilities come from cases where $`\upsilon _{AB}`$ $`\xi _{AB}.`$ Such a case can be set up if the two photons are separated in time, but pass through a medium with a narrow absorption feature of width, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega _a`$. Since the photons do not overlap, $`\upsilon _{AB}0`$. Provided that the absorber has a coherence time, $`\tau 1/\mathrm{\Delta }\omega _a`$, longer than the delay between the photons, we may have $`\xi _{AB}0.`$ In other words, if the photons are distinguishable before absorption, but become (mostly) indistinguishable if absorbed, we may have $`P_{AB}>P_AP_B`$ – an enhancement of the two-photon absorption. In cases where the photon delays are much longer than the coherence time of the absorber, or when the photons are perfectly overlapped, $`P_{AB}=P_AP_B`$, as expected in the absence of any nonlinear effects.

It is possible to move beyond a perturbative approach with a photon-wavefunction picture, even for two-photon states $`|A,B`$ which are not restricted to one-dimension (as in Eq. 1). But in that one-dimensional limit (as in Eq. 1), in the absence of any absorber the coincidence detection rate of two ideal detectors at positions $`z_1`$, $`z_2`$ and at times $`t_1`$, $`t_2`$ is proportional to,

$$w^{(2)}(z_1,z_2,t_1,t_2)=\left|𝒩(A,B)\right|^2\left[\begin{array}{c}|\psi _A(z_1,t_1)|^2|\psi _B(z_2,t_2)|^2+|\psi _A(z_2,t_2)|^2|\psi _B(z_1,t_1)|^2\\ +\psi _A^{}(z_1,t_1)\psi _B(z_1,t_1)\psi _B^{}(z_2,t_2)\psi _A(z_2,t_2)\\ +\psi _A^{}(z_2,t_2)\psi _B(z_2,t_2)\psi _B^{}(z_1,t_1)\psi _A(z_1,t_1).\end{array}\right].$$
(4)
The first-order photon wavefunctions, $`\psi _{A(B)}(z,t)`$, satisfy $`E^+(z,t)|A(B)=\psi _{A(B)}(z,t)|0`$, where $`E^+(z,t)`$ is the positive frequency component of the electric field operator, and $`|A(B)=𝑑\omega f_{A(B)}(\omega )a^{}(\omega )|0`$ is a single-photon state. The last two terms on the right-hand side of Eq. 4 are the exchange terms. In the absence of these terms, the coincidence detection rate is proportional to the sum of the product of the individual photon detection rates at either detector, which is characteristic of independent detection events. Applying this wavefunction description to a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer hom , one can show that the Hong-Ou-Mandel dip is simply a manifestation of photon exchange. Considering now the presence of an absorbing medium, the photon wavefunctions allow one to see the underlying physics in which, in this case, destructive interference occurs between the detection events. The wavefunctions, perhaps initially nonoverlapping before passage throught the absorbing medium, may no longer be after their passage through it. Thus there can be interference effects in the subsequent detection, and a corresponding reduction in the two-photon transmission probability below the uncorrelated-absorption prediction. This is the experimental signature we seek.

To investigate the exchange-induced suppression of two-photon transmission we used the basic system sketched in Fig. 1. There are essentially three parts to both the experiment and the theory: state preparation, evolution, and detection. The quantum state of interest is a normalized two-photon state where both photons have the same polarization, same spectrum and a variable inter-photon time delay. This state evolves as it passes through an absorptive medium which has some resonant absorption feature in the centre of the photon spectrum. Finally, the photon pairs that emerge from the medium are counted.

The two-photon states were created in the setup shown in Fig. 2. The setup is similar to a polarization-based Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometer hom ; sasha  whereby the desired two-photon state is post-selected through the detection of a photon pair. Specifically, we used a collinear type-II phase-matched parametric down-conversion source (0.1-mm thick BBO) pumped by the second harmonic of a Ti:Sapphire laser. The second harmonic was centred at 405nm (with a bandwidth of 7nm FWHM) and created pairs of photons each with centre wavelengths of 810nm. The photon pairs exit from the source such that one has vertical polarization and the other horizontal. We control the relative time delay between the photons by passing them through a modified Babinet compensator. After the variable delay, a polarizer is placed in the photons’ path at 45$`^{}.`$ With the polarizer in the system, any photon pairs transmitted through this polarizer are polarized at 45, with a time separation determined by the Babinet. This serves as the source of two-photon states required by the theoretical work. From HOM interference hom , we expect an increase in the number of photon pairs created near zero delay as the photons tend to pair up. We measure the rate of photon-pair production for each delay, in the absence of any absorber, and use this to normalize our subsequent absorption experiment.

The theory also requires an absorber with an absorption feature narrower than the bandwidth of the photon pairs. From our down-conversion source, we obtain photon pairs with a FWHM power spectrum of over $`100`$nm. We used a dielectric interference filter (CVI F10-810-4-1.00) as an effective absorbing medium. The back of the filter was blacked-out, and so any light transmitted through it was discarded. The reflectivity of the filter shows a 10 nm wide dip centred at 810nm. The reflected light rhus plays the role of light nominally transmitted through an absorber with a 10nm absorption feature, and we refer to it as such below. It should be noted that a gaseous atomic sample could be used if one used a narrower bandwidth down-conversion source oushapiro .

We began by examining the reflection from a broadband dielectric mirror in order to measure the number of reflected photon pairs as a function of delay using a cascaded pair of SPCMs (Perkin Elmer SPCM-AQR-13) 4-photon . This data set shows any changes in the efficiency of two-photon state production, which will be divided out. Then the interference filter (with the blacked-out back) is placed directly in front of a broadband dielectric mirror. With the filter in place, we measured the number of remaining photon pairs in the reflection. We monitored the detectors’ singles rates and their coincidence rate in the experiment.

Fig. 3 shows the rates of photon-pair detection (solid circles) and singles rate (small open diamonds) at one of the detectors as a function of the time delay between the photons. Fig. 3a shows the data taken with the broadband mirror in place. It clearly shows that the two-photon state preparation becomes much more efficient at zero delay. This increased pairing is due to HOM interference hom . In our experimental results, the rate of photon pair production at zero delay is $`55\%`$ larger than that at large time delays, whereas perfect HOM interference leads to a doubling of the rate. As one would expect from a HOM interferometer with low collection or detection efficiencies, the singles rate is featureless at the $`1\%`$ level as a function of the time delay between the photons boga . Fitting the data in Fig. 3a under the assumption of identical gaussian power spectra for the two photons yielded a FWHM of 129nm.

Fig. 3b shows the data taken with the interference filter in place. The most striking difference from the previous figure is the drop in the number of photon pairs detected at a delay of approximately $`\pm 10`$ fs. There is a second, more subtle, difference in that the number of photon pairs at zero delay is enhanced by only $`42\%`$ over the rate at large time delays with the filter in place. The singles rate in Fig. 3b also shows no dependence on the time delay at the $`1\%`$ level.

The ratio of the data in Fig. 3b to Fig. 3a is shown in Fig. 4 as solid circles. This ratio normalizes the data for changes in the production efficiency of two-photon states and shows the photon pair reflection probability given a two-photon input. To reduce the noise on the data points a 5-point average was taken. We compare the observed rate of photon pair transmission at $`\pm 10`$ fs to long- and zero-time delays. The normalized photon-pair detection ratio at $`10`$ fs is $`15\%`$ less than that at long delays and $`5\%`$ less than that at zero; the ratio at $`+10`$ fs is about $`17\%`$ less than at long delays and $`7\%`$ less than that at zero. The asymmetry in the data may be due to dispersion effects in the nonlinear crystal dipshape . Fig. 4 also shows the theoretical predictions for the coincidence rate ratio as a function of the time delay between the photons in two different regimes using gaussian spectra and a gaussian absorption feature. The two different curves correspond to photon spectra that are initially uncorrelated (solid curve), as in Eq. 1, and where the sum of the photon energies is a constant (dotted curve). The first regime describes the light produced from a down-conversion source with a broadband pump laser after sufficiently narrow bandpass filtering, whereas the second describes down-conversion created by a CW laser mete ; grice . The curves are both scaled to their coincidence rate at very large time delays. The drop in the ratio measured at zero delay which is not predicted by the theory. In our theoretical description, the photons are perfectly indistinguishable at zero time delay. Thus, passing through the absorbing medium can do nothing to change their degree of distinguishability and the rate of photon-pair absorption is that of uncorrelated events. In our experiment, however, the photons are still partially distinguishable even at zero delay due to imperfect spectral and spatial mode-matching. When some light is absorbed by the medium, the overlap between the photon wavefunctions are changed and this leads to an additional effect at zero delay. Photon-exchange terms are responsible for at least the $`5\%`$ change in the photon pair transmission through our absorbing media at $`\pm 10`$ fs.

In both situations, the enhanced region of photon absorption occurs at approximately $`\pm 10`$ fs, in good agreement with experiment. The $`5\%`$ suppression in the rate of photon-pair transmission is on the order of that predicted by our theory, but a more accurate comparison will require better data or a more complete theory that includes imperfect spatial- and spectral-mode matching. The shape of our experimental curve is in better agreement with the theoretical curve with no frequency correlations where the transmission reaches its long delay value at about $`\pm 20`$ fs. The theory for perfect frequency correlations shows suppressed transmission over much longer times. In our experiment we are actually between these two extreme regimes; our ultrafast-pump laser has a bandwidth of about $`7`$ nm. From preliminary calculations, we have found that by accounting for partial frequency correlations, suppression in photon pair transmission can be enhanced over the case with no correlations without significantly changing the shape of the curve. It is clear from the theory that these correlations can greatly influence the photon-pair transmission probability. Such a striking dependence on these correlations makes this technique useful for measuring them.

In summary, we have observed that photon-exchange effects can give rise to nonlinear behaviour on the pair-transmission probability. Like-polarized photon pairs with a variable inter-particle delay have been shown to exhibit suppressed two-photon transmission through a linearly absorbing medium – an experimental signature of exchange enhancement of photon-pair absorption. This suppression occurs for delays that are longer than the photons’ coherence times but shorter than the coherence time of the absorber. Further work is needed to understand the limits on the applicability of such exchange effects to nonlinear optics and quantum information.

This work was funded by Photonics Research Ontario, NSERC, and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (F49620-01-1-0468).

Fig. 1. The system of interest. A two-photon state with a variable time delay between the like-polarized photons impinges on an absorbing medium. The light that passes through the absorption region is detected by a photon-pair detector. The probability of absorbing a photon pair can depend very strongly on the delay.

Fig. 2. The experimental setup. The state preparation is accomplished using the output of a polarization-based HOM interferometer hom ; sasha . BBO is a $`\beta `$-barium borate nonlinear crystal phase-matched for type-II down-conversion; PBS is a polarizing beamsplitter; SPCMs are single photon counters; Pol. is a polarizer. The pump laser is separated from the down-conversion beams using a fused silica prism (not shown). The two-photon state is prepared conditioned on successful post-selection of a photon pair after the polarizer. Once prepared in the right quantum state, the light reflects from either a broadband dielectric mirror or a removable interference filter (I.F.) (CVI F10-810-1.00-4) (to simulate a medium with a very broad absorption line). The two-photon state is prepared conditionally, when both photons are transmitted through the 45-degree polarizer. This 45-degree polarized light is then split at a polarizing beamsplitter which has a single-photon detector in each output. The PBS acts as a 50/50 beamsplitter on the 45 polarized photons which allows the pair of SPCMs to act as a two-photon detector.

Fig. 3. Experimental data. The coincidence rate (solid circles) and a singles rate (small open diamonds) as a function of the inter-photon delay are shown in the case where a) the ‘absorber’ (interference filter) is removed and when b) the ‘absorber’ is in place.

Fig. 4. Experimental and theoretical normalized ratio of coincidence rates. Plotted is the normalized ratio of the coincidence rates of Fig. 3b to Fig. 3a. The maximum drop in the coincidence rate ratio occurs for delays of $`\pm 10`$ fs and is at least 5% less than the rate at zero delay. The data have been normalized to the average rate over the delay, $`\left|\tau \right|20`$fs. The theoretical predictions are also shown. The case where there are initially no frequency correlations between the two photons is shown as a solid curve. The case where the frequencies sum to a well-defined value is shown as a dotted curve.