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# Discrete quantum gravity: a mechanism for selecting the value of fundamental constants *footnote **footnote *This essay received an ”honorable mention” in the 2003 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation – Ed.

## Abstract

Smolin has put forward the proposal that the universe fine tunes the values of its physical constants through a Darwinian selection process. Every time a black hole forms, a new universe is developed inside it that has different values for its physical constants from the ones in its progenitor. The most likely universe is the one which maximizes the number of black holes. Here we present a concrete quantum gravity calculation based on a recently proposed consistent discretization of the Einstein equations that shows that fundamental physical constants change in a random fashion when tunneling through a singularity.

Fundamental constants in nature need to fall within a rather narrow set of values for the universe to have its current form, in particular to accommodate life. When written in dimensionless form, unnaturally large ratios appear between various of the fundamental constants. Inflation has been proposed as a mechanism to account for several features of the universe, but it cannot explain the values of all fundamental physical constants nor provide a complete resolution to the hierarchy problem. A recent proposal due to Smolin  poses that the selection of the values of the fundamental physical constants happens through a Darwinian process. Whenever a universe develops a black hole a new universe forms within it with different values of the physical constants. The universes that are naturally selected are those such that the physical constants are such that they maximize the likelihood of formation of black holes. That allows such universes to reproduce more efficiently. This attractive proposal has the feature that it can be tested experimentally. It can be falsified by showing that the values of the physical constants are such that we are not at the maximum likelihood of formation of black holes. The proposal has been recently reconsidered by Bjorken . Several criticisms have been levied against these arguments. One of the problems up to now has been the lack of a detailed mechanism to account for the change of fundamental physical constants during the tunneling through a black hole.

In this paper we would like to discuss a detailed scenario in which changes in the fundamental physical constants can occur when tunneling through a singularity. Having a detailed scenario for tunneling might be interesting cosmologically even independently from Smolin’s Darwinian hypothesis .

The proposed scenario is based on the recently introduced consistent discretization technique for treating quantum general relativity on the lattice . The technique constructs a discrete theory on the lattice that represents an approximation to general relativity and such that all of its equations can be solved simultaneously (usual discretizations of general relativity produce an inconsistent set of equations). The discrete theories constructed with the new technique have several attractive features. Among them is the presence of well understood symmetries that provide a lattice representation of the symmetries of general relativity . This is quite novel, since it has been a long standing problem how to reconcile the continuous coordinate invariance of general relativity with the discreteness of a lattice framework.

In this letter we analyze a concrete example of a bounce through a singularity in the consistent lattice approach. We will consider a Friedman universe with a cosmological constant and a (very massive) scalar field. This is the simplest model we have found that exhibits bounce through a singularity. As discussed in , anisotropic models exhibit similar behavior. The approach to the singularity in the interior of a black hole can be modeled as an anisotropic cosmology and therefore the following discussion is of relevance to the behavior of the interior of a black hole. It should be noticed that several mechanisms have been postulated in the past for tunneling through a black hole. Some of these have been classical, postulating the development of a cosmological constant in the interior , quantum inspired modifications of general relativity , or path integral formulations of quantum gravity , but most of these have not been associated with changes in the fundamental physical constants, although see .

The Lagrangian for the model, written in terms of Ashtekar’s variables  is,

$$L=E\dot{A}+\pi \dot{\varphi }NE^2(A^2+(\mathrm{\Lambda }+m^2\varphi ^2)|E|)$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the cosmological constant, $`m`$ is the mass of the scalar field $`\varphi `$, $`\pi `$ is its canonically conjugate momentum and $`N`$ is the lapse with density weight minus one. The appearance of $`|E|`$ in the Lagrangian is due to the fact that the term cubic in $`E`$ is supposed to represent the spatial volume and therefore should be positive definite. In terms of the ordinary lapse $`\alpha `$ we have $`\alpha =N|E|^{3/2}`$.

We consider the evolution parameter to be a discrete variable. Then the Lagrangian becomes

$$L(n,n+1)=E_n(A_{n+1}A_n)+\pi _n(\varphi _{n+1}\varphi _n)N_nE_n^2(A_n^2+(\mathrm{\Lambda }+m^2\varphi _n^2)|E_n|)$$
(2)
The discrete time evolution is generated by a canonical transformation of type 1 whose generating function is given by $`L`$, viewed as a function of the configuration variables at instants $`n`$ and $`n+1`$. Evolution equations can be written for all the variables and their canonical momenta. The evolution equations are made consistent by determining the Lagrange multipliers $`N_n`$. The resulting equations can be reduced to ,

$`P_{n+1}^A`$ $`=`$ $`A_n^2\mathrm{\Theta }^1`$ (3)
$`A_{n+1}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3A_n^2P_n^A\mathrm{\Theta }}{2A_n}}`$ (4)
$`\varphi _{n+1}`$ $`=`$ $`\varphi _n`$ (5)
$`P_{n+1}^\varphi `$ $`=`$ $`P_n^\varphi \left(A_n^3P_n^A\mathrm{\Theta }A_n\right)m^2\varphi _n\mathrm{\Theta }^2`$ (6)
where $`\mathrm{\Theta }=\mathrm{\Lambda }+m^2\varphi _n^2`$. It should be noted that these equations preserve the symplectic structure, that is, the variables $`(P_{n+1}^A,A_{n+1})`$ have the same canonical Poisson brackets as $`(P_n^A,A_n)`$. To make contact with the variables of the continuum, we note that the triad $`E_n=P_{n+1}^A`$.

The discrete evolution equations have the feature that they avoid the singularity present in the continuum model for generic sets of initial data . In figure 1 we show a generic evolution near the region where classically one would encounter a singularity. One can see that the discrete theory, although approximating reasonably well the continuum behavior does not have the metric going through zero.

It should be noted that the resulting theory has no constraints, unlike the continuum theory . Therefore one does not confront the problem of finding “observables”, that is, quantities that have vanishing Poisson brackets with the constraints. The discrete theory has four phase space degrees of freedom and one can introduce four constants of motion. Three of these constants of motion do not depend explicitly on the evolution parameter $`n`$. Remarkably, two of them can be viewed as discretizations of the two independent observables of the continuum theory. Therefore the discrete theory has in a precise sense embedded in it the symmetries of the continuum theory . The symmetries are present in the discrete theory in the sense that there exist constants of the motion independent of the evolution parameter that one can use to generate canonical transformations representing the symmetries.

The remaining two constants of motion vanish in the continuum limit. Let us concentrate on the one that is independent of the evolution parameter. It arises from considering the canonical transformation that generates time evolution as an exponentiation of a quantity that plays a role of generalized Hamiltonian for the discrete model (the model does not have a genuine Hamiltonian since time is discrete). The generalized Hamiltonian should therefore be preserved under evolution. If one recasts the evolution equation as,

$$A_{n+1}=A_n+\{A_n,H_n\}+\frac{1}{2!}\{\{A_n,H_n\},H_n\}+\mathrm{}$$
(7)
and similarly for the other variables, one can read off the “Hamiltonian”

$$H_n=\frac{𝒞_n^2}{4\mathrm{\Theta }A_n}\left[1+\underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}a_k\left(\frac{𝒞_n}{A_n^2}\right)^k\right]$$
(8)
where $`𝒞_n=\left(A_n^2P_n^A\mathrm{\Theta }\right)`$ is the discretization of the Hamiltonian constraint of the continuum theory and $`a_1=1/(3\times 4),a_2=1/(6\times 4^2),a_3=0,a_4=1/(6\times 4^4),a_5=1/(15\times 4^5),a_6=7/(10\times 4^6)`$ etc. The power series nature of the definition of this constant implies that it exists only where the series is convergent. Whenever it is, the finite canonical transformation can be written as an exponentiation of an infinitesimal canonical transformation (contact transformation). To understand this, notice that the canonical transformation that materializes the discrete evolution is singular when $`A_n=0`$ (see equation (4). This singularity separates the phase space into two disjoint regions $`A_n>0`$ and $`A_n<0`$. The contact transformation will fail to exist when the canonical transformation connects points that lie different disjoint regions, i.e. when $`\mathrm{sg}(A_{n+1})\mathrm{sg}(A_n)`$. This happens when $`3A_n^2P_n^A\mathrm{\Theta }<0`$. This in turn implies that the expansion parameter of the series (“normalized constraint”) $`|𝒞_n/A_n^2|>2`$. The prediction is therefore that this will be a conserved quantity until the evolution takes us over the singularity in the canonical transformation.

As seen in figure 2 the rate of expansion/contraction changes when tunneling through the singularity. The constant of the motion can be seen as an invariant characterization of such a rate. More precisely, the constant of the motion, which vanishes in the continuum limit, is a measure of how well the discrete theory is approximating the continuum one. What changes in the tunneling is the lattice spacing.

It is worthwhile noticing that the magnitude of the jump in the constant of the motion exhibits sensitive dependence on the initial condition of the problem. A small change in the initial values can lead to large changes in the behavior of the jump. To view it in another words, the rate of expansion after the tunneling loses correlation with respect to the rate of contraction before the tunneling. This can be seen in figure 3.

At this point the reader may wonder what is the connection between the calculation we presented of the “bounce” in the value of an observable in a model cosmology and the values of the fundamental physical constants. Of course, a detailed model involving interacting fields and local degrees of freedom will require a much larger calculational effort than what we are able to attempt at present. At this point, we can only present a heuristic argument. The argument is based on the fact that the observable we discussed is an invariant measure of the lattice separation. Therefore its value is connected with how refined the lattice spacing in the theory is. In this particular model, the lattice is only in the time-like direction, but one can expect that in more realistic models, with local degrees of freedom, similar behaviors will occur for the spatial lattice spacings. Now, in a lattice gauge theory the values of the fundamental physical constants are related to the bare values that appear in the Lagrangian through a limiting process in which one takes the lattice spacing to zero and also fine-tunes the bare parameters in such a way that the “dressed” physical constants are finite. More precisely, such a process is fine tuned for one observable, and then the same process predicts the values of other observables (at least for renormalizable theories). In the gravitational case we do not expect to have renormalizability in the traditional sense, so the proposal we are presenting is that the theory remains discrete. In the discrete theory there will exist states that approximate the continuum theory better than others and a measure of this will be given by the value of the observable we discuss. The value of the “dressed” physical constants will depend therefore on the bare values and on the value of the “spacing”. An invariant measure of the “spacing” in the lattice is given by the value of the “Hamiltonian” (8). In a situation with “fine” spacing its value will be small. In this scenario, the tunneling through the singularity we have exhibited will translate itself in a change in the value of the “Hamiltonian” and therefore in a change in the value of the fundamental constants.

The discussion up to now has been entirely classical. However, the discontinuity in the constant of the motion has a quantum counterpart. To quantize the system, one represents the quantum evolution via a unitary transformation that implements at the level of Heisenberg equations the discrete equations of motion associated with the canonical transformation we discussed above. We will not give the details here, some of them can be seen in . In the quantum theory, one can consider a state peaked around a classical solution and evolve it using the discrete evolution operator. One cannot directly promote the “Hamiltonian” to a quantum self-adjoint operator since it is not well defined near the bounce. However, one can take a finite number of terms of its expansion. This will approximate well (classically) the behavior of the “Hamiltonian” far away from the bounce. Such a finite expansion can be promoted to a self-adjoint quantum operator. This allows, for instance, to compute its expectation value before and after the point where one would have expected the big bang classically. Generically the values will be different, mirroring what we found in the classical theory.

The singularity that arises in the big bang has elements in common with the singularity in the interior of black holes. Although the cosmological model we studied in detail is not the one that has elements in common with the black hole interior, the feature we presented of tunneling through the singularity is expected to exist in a variety of models. Also, the details of how the changes occur could differ with different discretization schemes. We can therefore expect a similar phenomenon to be present in the interior of black holes, although the details may vary. Each black hole will have its singularity replaced by tunneling into a new universe, in which the dressed value of the fundamental constants will be different. The change in the values has elements of randomness in it. This allows to construct a picture of the universe in which “evolution” takes place every time a black hole is formed, as was the original proposal of “The life of the cosmos” .

We wish to thank D. Ahluwalia for comments. This work was supported by grants NSF-PHY0090091, funds of the Horace Hearne Jr. Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Fulbright Commission in Montevideo and PEDECIBA (Uruguay).


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# Non-interacting electrons and the metal-insulator transition in 2D with correlated impurities

(June 9, 2003)

## Abstract

While standard scaling arguments show that a system of non-interacting electrons in two dimensions and in the presence of uncorrelated disorder is insulating, in this work we discuss the case where inter-impurity correlations are included. We find that for point-like impurities and an infinite inter-impurity correlation length a mobility edge exists in 2D even if the individual impurity potentials are random. In the uncorrelated system we recover the scaling results, while in the intermediate regime for length scales comparable to the correlation length, the system behaves like a metal but with increasing fluctuations, before strong localization eventually takes over for length scales much larger than the correlation length. In the intermediate regime, the relevant length scale is not given by the elastic scattering length but by the inter-impurity correlation length, with important consequences for high mobility systems.

It is generally believed that a non-interacting two dimensional (2D) system in the presence of disorder is always insulating. This result is based on extensive work on scaling theory pioneered by the ’gang of four’ abrahams . It has also received considerable amount of numerical support mckinnon . The general statement can be summarized as follows. In scaling theory the localization length in 2D is given by $`Ł_c\lambda e^{\pi k_F\lambda /2}`$ lee , where $`\lambda `$ is the elastic scattering length. Hence, as soon as $`\lambda `$ is finite, the localization length is finite. However, because $`\lambda `$ appears in the exponent, when $`k_F\lambda >>1`$ the localization length can be extremely large and difficult to probe experimentally. In the standard Born approximation $`\lambda ^1n_I`$, where $`n_I`$ is the two-dimensional impurity concentration, hence, a non-zero $`n_I`$ would lead to a finite $`L_c`$. At zero temperature a finite localization length implies that the resistance diverges exponentially for a system size exceeding the localization length. Equivalently, for an infinite system, the resistance diverges when the temperature, $`T`$ tends to zero because the phase coherence length $`l_\varphi `$ is infinite at zero $`T`$.

When considering discrete models based on Anderson’s disordered tight binding model lee2  very similar results are obtained. All states are localized for any strength of disorder. These results apply only if all sites are uncorrelated. Indeed, even in 1D there exist special long and short range correlations in the disorder, which can lead to the existence of extended states in these systems flores . Similarly special systems can also be found in 2D hilke . The exact conditions under which these localization conditions apply has recently gained considerable interest because 2D electronic systems confined in a variety of semiconducting structures, such as Si-MOSFETs and p-type GaAs/AlGaAs have shown a strong metallic-like $`T`$-dependence of the resistance kravchenko ; hanein ; simmons  down to the lowest experimental $`T`$. In metallic, we understand a positive or vanishing derivative of the resistivity as a function of the temperature, i.e., $`\rho /T0`$.

Because in these systems disorder is always present, which is expected to lead to localization, most of the recent theories have considered interactions between electrons abrahams2  as a possible mechanism for the metallic behavior. In this work, we consider instead the case of correlations between impurities, which leads to a genuine metal-insulator transition for an infinite inter-impurity correlation length $`l\mathrm{}`$ for the non-interacting 2D disordered system (with random potentials). Moreover, for a finite $`l`$, the crossover to localization is determined by $`l`$ and not $`\lambda `$.

We start by considering the standard disordered tight binding Anderson model in 2D:

$$\psi _{n+1,m}+\psi _{n1,m}+\psi _{n,m+1}+\psi _{n,m1}=(EV_{n,m})\psi _{n,m}.$$
(1)
When $`V_{n,m}=0`$ we recover the free particle case with solutions of the type $`\psi _{n,m}=e^{ikn}e^{ipm}`$ and eigenvalues $`E=2\mathrm{cos}(k)+2\mathrm{cos}(p)`$. When $`V_{n,m}`$ is random and uncorrelated, scaling theory predicts that all states are localized for any disorder strength. The same result holds in 1D. However, when the potential is correlated the situation becomes very different. In 1D, when only every 2nd site is random, i.e., $`V_{2n}=0`$ and $`V_{2n+1}`$ is random $`\psi _n=\mathrm{cos}(n\pi /2)`$ is an extended solution of the disordered system, with energy $`E=0`$. In this model only one energy has an infinite localization length and since at all other energies all states are localized there is no band of extended states hilke3 . However, when we consider a similar potential in 2D something very interesting happens.

When defining $`V_{2n,m}=0`$ and $`V_{2n+1,m}`$ as random, we can write a solution to equ. 1 as $`\psi _{n,m}=\mathrm{cos}(n\pi /2)e^{ikm}`$, corresponding to $`E=2\mathrm{cos}(k)`$. Clearly, this is a fully extended state. The difference in the 2D case compared to 1D is that we now have a band of extended states for $`2E2`$. For every energy in this band there is exactly one wave-function, which can be written in this form, hence there is no degeneracy. Therefore, when evaluating the two-terminal conductance of the system one obtains $`G=2e^2/h`$ for $`2E_F2`$ and $`G=0`$ otherwise, since all other states are localized. This gives rise to a band of extended states around the band center very similar to the 3D Anderson model, which leads to a metal-insulator transition when the Fermi energy crosses $`E=2`$ and $`E=2`$. Similarly, when only the $`V_{an,m}`$’s are random, but all other potentials are zero, the system has conductance steps at $`E=\pm 2+2\mathrm{cos}(l\pi /a)`$, with $`l=1,2,3,\mathrm{},a1`$ and $`a`$ an integer $`a2`$. We have evaluated the conductance numerically as a function of the Fermi energy and the results are presented in fig. 1. In order to calculate the temperature dependence of the resistance we simply used $`G(T)=𝑑Ef_T^{}(EE_F)G(E)`$, where $`f_T`$ is the Fermi-Dirac distribution function. For non-interacting electrons this is the dominant temperature dependence since inelastic scattering is strongly suppressed at low temperatures. Moreover, because $`E_F`$ is equivalent to the density, this system exhibits a genuine metal-insulator transition as a function of density.

The continuous case can be treated in an analogous way by considering $`\delta `$-impurities with random amplitudes on a lattice, which is similar to the 1D case discussed in ref. hilke2 . In this case the random potential is $`V(x,y)=_{n,m}V_{n,m}(y)\delta (nax)\delta (may)`$, where $`V_{n,m}`$ are random. The special energies for the conductance steps are now given by $`E=n^2`$ in units of $`\mathrm{}^2\pi ^2/2ma^2`$, where $`a`$ is the corresponding lattice constant of the random impurities and $`n=1,2,\mathrm{}`$. The corresponding conducting wave-functions (extended states) are simply given by $`\psi (x,y)=sin(n\pi x/a)e^{iky}`$ for $`E=n^2+(ka/\pi )^2`$. In the inset of fig. 2 the zero temperature conductance, $`G`$, is shown as a function of the Fermi energy.

The temperature dependence is shown for different values of $`E_F`$ in fig. 2. Hence, in this simple model in which $`\delta `$ impurities are on a lattice with random amplitudes, we have a $`E_F`$ induced metal-insulator transition at $`E_C`$, independent of the disorder strength. The temperature dependence was obtained by using the Fermi-Dirac distribution $`R^1=𝑑Ef_T^{}(EE_F)G(E)`$. It is quite striking to note that the overall shapes of the curves are very similar to the experimental ones in high mobility 2D systems hanein . The temperature scale in these experiments is typically close to the Fermi temperature $`T_F`$, which is of the order of 1K and very similar to the relevant scale in our simple model.

In the above discussion we considered the two-terminal conductance of the system. Experimentally, this is the quantity which is normally measured. However, in order to neglect the contact resistance, four terminal measurements are typically performed, but at zero magnetic field this is equivalent to a two terminal measurement assuming zero contact resistance. In addition, in 2D the value of the conductance is converted to conductivity by taking into account the geometry of the sample. Hence the conductivity in our case would be $`\sigma =G/\mathrm{}`$, where $`\mathrm{}`$ is the number of squares or geometrical factor. Since the conductance of our model does not depend on the geometry or length of the sample, our system would have an infinite conductivity if the sample was infinitely long but finite in width and of zero conductivity if infinitely wide and of finite length. At first this does not seem physical but if one considers that each experimental system has a finite $`l_\varphi `$ at non-zero $`T`$, which is equal in every direction for an isotropic system, the relevant geometry is close to a square. This is very reasonable because for any practical comparison with experiments, quantum effects such as localization can only occur within $`l_\varphi `$. Indeed, we could model the experimental system as a network of quantum coherent squares coupled classically and we would recover $`\sigma =G`$, which is the expected result in which the value of the critical conductivity does not depend on the geometry. This normalization was used for all figures.

Experimentally, a large applied parallel magnetic field tends to exponentially increase the resistivity yoon . In a non-interacting picture a parallel field would simply shift the two spin subbands and therefore not significantly alter the overall behavior, although it could decrease the critical transition density. However, when comparing to experimental systems in a parallel field other effects become very important too. For instance, the 2D plane is not entirely flat because there are micron sized in-plane deviations, which are of the order of 4 to 30nm high vertically willet , which can allow random fluxes to penetrate the 2D system and induces additional localization. These effects are beyond the scope of this work and will not be considered further.

Coming back to our model, where the disorder is confined to a regular lattice, we could show that there is a well defined metal-insulator transition, very similar to the experimental situation. However, impurities do not usually form a perfect crystal during the growth process. They are more likely to be somewhat correlated but not to the extent to form a lattice. In order to generalize our model, we start by considering the case, where the impurities are uncorrelated $`l=0`$ and where the density of impurities is low before we turn to the more general case of arbitrary $`l`$.

For the numerical calculation we considered the tight-binding equation (1) with finite extent $`L`$ in the $`n`$ direction and infinite in $`m`$. Without disorder we have plane wave solutions of the type $`\psi _{n,m}^{(p)}=\mathrm{sin}(np\pi /L)e^{ikm}`$, with $`E=2\mathrm{cos}(p\pi /L)+2\mathrm{cos}(k)`$. This system can be viewed as a quasi-1D quantum wire, where the degeneracy of states depends on $`L`$ and $`E`$ and the conductance is simply $`2e^2/h`$ multiplied by the degeneracy. In the middle of this system we now add $`N_I`$ punctual impurities in a rectangle of size (width=L)$`\times `$(length=L). Since contacts are made by diffusing a metal into the 2D layer, the metal side of the contact has a much larger electron density than the 2D. Therefore, to model the effect of contacts we have considered the following situation. Instead of using a source and drain region of the same size as the disordered region, we consider a much larger (essentially infinite) contact point to the disordered region. The model is illustrated in fig. 3, where the source and drain region has no disorder and is much wider than the disordered region. Hence, the wide regions correspond to the metal contacts, whereas the disordered narrow region corresponds to the 2D system under study. We evaluated numerically the conductance of the system using standard transfer matrix techniques and show the conductance as a function of the number of impurities for different sizes of the disordered region in fig. 3. In our model we used a square geometry $`L\times L`$, which has the particularity that at the band center the conductance $`G`$ is independent of $`L`$ for $`V=0`$ and $`\sigma =G`$. The curves were obtained by averaging over ten different disorder configurations.

Fig. 3, clearly shows that $`\sigma `$ only depends on the number of impurities and not on the size of the system. Hence the dependence is simply $`\sigma (N_I)=\sigma (L^2n_I)`$. This dependence holds for the entire range until $`\sigma `$ saturates to the value where $`n_I1`$. At large enough number of impurities and in the strong localization regime we have an excellent fit to the expression $`\sigma (N_I)e^{\alpha \sqrt{N_I}}e^{\alpha \sqrt{n_I}L}`$, where $`\alpha `$ depends only on the impurity strength and $`L_c^1=\alpha \sqrt{n_I}`$. The quality of the fit and the simplicity of the fitting expression is quite remarkable. This result also implies that for any non-zero uncorrelated impurity density the system is always insulating, which is consistent with scaling analysis.

However, when the impurities are distributed on a lattice, i.e., $`l=\mathrm{}`$, like in fig. 1, we also obtain a universal dependence only on $`N_I`$ independent of $`L`$, i.e., $`\sigma (N_I)`$. The result is shown in fig. 4. The only difference here is that $`\sigma (N_I\mathrm{})=2e^2/h`$ instead of zero. For this data set we considered that only every second site is random, which in this case leads to a metallic conductance of $`2e^2/h`$ at the band center. This data set was obtained without averaging over different disorder configurations and each data point represents an independent impurity configuration.

We now consider the most interesting case, where we change the inter-impurity correlation length $`l`$. The results in fig. 5 illustrate three cases ($`l=0,l0,l=\mathrm{}`$) for a fixed system size $`L`$ since $`\sigma `$ does not depend explicitly on $`L`$ but only on $`N_I`$. In order to vary $`l`$ we chose to introduce two types of impurities $`N_I^{corr}`$ and $`N_I^{uncorr}`$ and $`N_I=N_I^{corr}+N_I^{uncorr}`$. The $`N_I^{corr}`$ impurities will fall randomly on the lattice (of spacing 4 for fig. 5), whereas the $`N_I^{uncorr}`$ impurities are not correlated to any site. The correlation length is therefore given by the density of uncorrelated impurities $`l=L^2/N_I^{uncorr}`$.

Overall, the conductivity remains metallic for length scales comparable to the correlation length and the conductance fluctuations are close to zero in this metallic regime. For length scales exceeding the correlation length we first have increasing conductance fluctuations before the system eventually localizes at large enough length scales $`Ll`$ with a localization length equal to the uncorrelated case. The fluctuations in the intermediate regime are much larger than for the uncorrelated system and constitute an important signature of the correlation in the ”metallic”-like state. Interestingly, a very similar enhancement of the conductance fluctuations is seen close to the transition from the metallic to insulating behavior in Si-MOSFET systems and GaAs popovic . In our model of correlated impurities it is therefore the inter-impurity correlation length $`l`$, which controls the range of metallic behavior and not the semiclassical elastic scattering length $`\lambda `$, which can be much smaller than $`l`$. Hence, a large $`l`$ can significantly enhance the range of metallic behavior in 2D, which constitutes one of the the main results of this article. This is in stark contrast to the case where the impurity range is increased. Indeed, in this case it was shown that a larger impurity range enhances localization if impurities remain uncorrelated beal . The situation with correlated impurities was not considered. Hence, this shows that inter-impurity correlations suppress localization whereas large impurity ranges enhance localization. In an applied perpendicular magnetic field, it was recently shown that a long-range disorder potential might induce a metal-insulator transition efetov  too. Clearly, correlations between impurities have a significant impact on the localization properties and have to be considered when comparing to experimental systems.

In conclusion, we have analyzed the impact of inter-impurity correlations on the localization properties of a non-interacting 2D electronic system. For impurities on a lattice and with random potentials, corresponding to an infinite inter-impurity correlation length, the system exhibits a true metal-insulator transition. A finite correlation length enhances the scale over which the system is conducting before the system is eventually localized. A large correlation length can explain the large conductance fluctuations and metallic behavior of experimental systems. We also showed that the conductivity is only a function of the number of impurities, $`N_I`$ and that the localization length is given by $`L_cN_I^{1/2}`$ for $`Ll`$.

We would like to acknowledge helpful discussions with Boris Ischi and Hong Guo and financial support from NSERC and FCAR.


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# A numerical code to study the variability of Blazar emission

## 1 Introduction

*Blazars*, are objects which emit energy in the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and are characterized by a variability which scales from long to short period. To understand the real nature of *Blazar*, we need multiwavelenght simultaneous data, and we need to be able to analyze these data and to do numerical predictions to discriminate between the theoretical models. To the light of these simple but constraining remarks, we decide to write a simulator able to simulate the *Blazar* energetic and temporal behavior. A large effort has been produced to ensure a numerical precision enough high to use this code to analyze data too. This work represents just the first step of our project, which will have many future developments. To make our simulation as complete as possible, we decided to implement the simulation of disk variability too. In the section *2* we present the simulation of the disk, section *3* is dedicated to show how we can reproduce light curve both for SSC and EC model, taking into account for time crossing effects.

## 2 Simulation of a light curve of an accretion disk, by cellular automata

The rapid quasi-fractal variability of *Blazar* is one of the main signature for their temporal behavior. This kind of variability is common to many astrophysical objects (sun spot, galactic accretion disk around black hole ecc….). The Cellar Automata (CA) (Mineshige, Ouchi & Nishimori, 1994), (Takeuchi, Mineshige & Negoro, 1995) is a fast and efficient way to simulate this variability, without the need of solving differential equations. In this work we used CA to simulate the variability of the accretion disk emission. In *Blazar* the jet axis is close to the observer line of sight, so luminous fluxes are dominated by the jet emission. This led us to the understanding that the X-ray fluctuation, are due mostly to the emitting blob, and not to the disk. Therefore to have a quantitative indication about the behavior of an accretion disk acting around a super massive Black Hole (BH) ($`m>10^8M_{}`$), we try to simulate the disk emission of the Seyfert galaxies, which have not significative contribute from jet emission. The analysis of the X-ray light curves for these objects (Hayashida et al., 1998), shows a behavior similar to the *1/f* noise, so the PSD of these light curves has almost the following form $`PSDf^\alpha `$ with the slope $`\alpha `$ in the range $`12`$. We than model our disk, tuning the input parameter, to obtain all the physical characteristic that are supposed to belong to an accretion disk around a super massive BH. We performed many simulation, and in fig 1 we show just the result closest to the condition we believe more realistic. To model the surface density of the disk, we used a parametrization (Takeuchi & Mineshige, 1997), which relates the steady (Shakura & Sunyaev, 1973) with the critical regime in the following way

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{crit}(r)=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{steady}(r)[1+\eta (rR_{crit})/(r_{out}r_{inner})]$$
(1)
The parameter $`\eta `$ is fixed at the value of 0.5, while the value of $`R_{crit}`$, has been varied from 10 to 90 $`R_S`$. We found that the slope of the PSD, varies with $`R_{crit}`$. The value of the slope closest to those of the Syfert galaxies is for $`R_{crit}=50`$. We noted how the slope change with the gradual mass flow $`\dot{m}_{grad}`$ too, in good agreement with other simulations (Xiong,Witta & Bao, 2000).

## 3 Reprocessing the disk variability by the blob, a mechanism to explain ERC variability

We simulate the temporal evolution of the emitting plasma in the blob (Kataoka, J., et al., 2000),(Chiaberge & Ghisellini, 1999), solving numerically the Fokker Planck equation, following the method of Chang & Cooper (Chang & Cooper, 1970), and obtain light curves both for synchrotron (Inoue & Takahara, 1996), (Rybicki & Lightman, 1979) and IC/EC (Band & Grindlay, 1985), (Blumenthal& Gould, 1970), (Dermer & Schlickeiser, 2002) emission. Than we reprocess these light curves taking into account for time crossing effects. Here we present a simulation in which the light curve of the disk (showed in fig. 1) constitutes the external photon field for the EC mechanism. We than assume that the Broad Line Region (BLR) reflection of the disk luminosity (with an reflectivity $`\chi `$=0.0001) generates a quasi-isotropic photon field, and do not take into account for the radiation coming straightly from the disk. This light curve has a typical time scale in the disk frame of about $`10^4s`$. Our simulator take into account for the relativistic transformation for time and frequencies, between the disk-BLR frame and the blob frame and between the blob and the earth. In this simulation we assume that the blob moves toward the BLR with a typical $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=10`$, so we use a beaming factor $`\delta =10`$ for every the transformation. In fig 2 we report the result for two different values of $`R`$: $`10^{15}cm`$ and $`510^{14}cm`$. The number of slices into which we divide the blob is such that the time crossing of each slice in the blob frame is of 100 s, that is much shorter than $`10^4/\delta s`$ which is the time scale variability of the disk seen by the blob frame.

## 4 Conclusions

One of the main goal of our work, was understanding the connections between the accretion disk variability, and it’s reprocessing by the emitting blob. We observed that the luminosity fluctuations, that are present in the disk, are seen by the observer, if the blob radius is such that photon time crossing is not much larger than typical disk variability time scale. In the future we aim to explore the connection between the disk instability and the disk fueling to the light of the internal shock scenario, to simulate the synchrotron rapid variability too, using a self consistent physical model.


text:
# Simple solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics for systems with ellipsoidal symmetry

## 1 Introduction

Recently, new families of exact analytic solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics have been found in a Hungarian-Brazilian collaboration. The simplest case corresponds to the (1+1)-dimensional expansions : it consists of a class of 1-dimensional scaling flows with a proper-time dependent pressure, but characterized with an arbitrary rapidity distribution and a temperature field that is coupled to the rapidity distribution, thus overcoming one of the shortcomings of the well-known Hwa-Bjorken solution , which has a flat rapidity distribution. Physically, the situation described in  may characterize e.g. soft collisions of hadrons at high bombarding energies. These solutions are obtained for a broad class of equations of state that may include massive particles and an arbitrary constant of proportionality between the kinetic energy density and the pressure. The (1+1)-dimensional solutions have been generalized to the case of cylindrical symmetry in ref. , describing a physical situation that may correspond to central collisions of heavy ions at ultra-relativistic colliding energies, thus, overcoming another shortcoming of Hwa-Bjorken solution, which contains no transverse flow. These exact analytic solutions, reported in refs. , are associated to each non-negative scaling function $`𝒱(s)`$ that satisfies the normalization condition $`𝒱(0)=1`$, where the argument $`s`$ is a scaling variable that guarantees the self-similarity of the solutions. Here we present a broader class of solutions belonging to this new family of exact solutions. In particular, we shall describe two classes of ellipsoidally symmetric solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics, that may be relevant for the study of non-central collisions of heavy ions at relativistic bombarding energies.

In general, exact analytic resolution of 3 dimensional relativistic hydrodynamics is a difficult task due to the highly non-linear nature of these equations. The complications are sometimes simplified by assuming idealized boundary conditions and simplified equations of state (e.g. infinite bombarding energy and a massless relativistic gas in the case of Hwa-Bjorken’s solution ). A more realistic but analytically more complicated solution had been found by Khalatnikov , following Landau’s basic ideas , that gave rise to the hydrodynamical approach in high-energy physics. Both of these solutions are frequently utilized as the basis for estimations of various observables in ultra-relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions .

Analytic solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics were also reported recently in refs. . However, these solutions are valid only at the softest point of the equation of state. For more realistic situations, the (1+3)-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamical equations are frequently solved using various numerical methods, for example, recent solutions were obtained with the help of smoothed-particle hydrodynamics in refs. .

The exact analytic solutions, reported here, are generalizations of the results of refs.  to the case of 3-dimensional relativistic expansions with less and less symmetry. However, we emphasize that these results also correspond to generalizations of earlier analytic solutions of non-relativistic hydrodynamics. The first solutions of this kind have been found by Zimányi, Bondorf and Garpman (ZBG) in 1978 . The key aspect of the ZBG solution is its self-similarity, this property is kept in all the subsequent generalizations including cylindrical or ellipsoidal symmetries and relativistic flows. The ZBG solution has been generalized to the case of spheroidally symmetric expansions in ref. , to spherically symmetric Gaussian expansions in ref. . From the point of view of the relativistic generalizations, an important stepping stone was made in ref.  when a scaling function has been introduced for the spherically symmetric non-relativistic solutions of hydrodynamics. This was the first case when a whole new family of solutions has been found, that assigned an independent solution for every (differentiable and integrable) scaling function that satisfied the requirement of positivity $`𝒯(s)>0`$ and normalized as $`𝒯(0)=1`$. The ZBG and the spherical Gaussian solutions appeared as special choices for the functional form of the scaling function $`𝒯(s)`$. The Gaussian family of spherical solutions has been generalized to Gaussian ellipsoidal expansions in refs. . Recently, the whole family of self-similar ellipsoidally symmetric non-relativisitic solutions of hydrodynamics has been found in ref. . In the present paper, we report on the generalization of this family of solutions to the case of relativistic expansions with ellipsoidal symmetry and introduce new families of relativistic solutions with even less than ellipsoidal symmetry. All the solutions reported here have non-trivial non-relativistic limiting behaviour.

## 2 The equations of relativistic hydrodynamics.

Let us adopt the following notational conventions: the coordinates are $`x^\mu =(t,𝐫)=(t,r_x,r_y,r_z)`$, $`x_\mu =(t,r_x,r_y,r_z)`$ and the metric tensor is $`g^{\mu \nu }=g_{\mu \nu }=\text{diag}(1,1,1,1)`$. The relativistic continuity and energy-momentum-conservation equations are

$`_\mu (nu^\mu )`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (1)
$`_\nu T^{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (2)
where $`nn(x)`$ is the conserved number density, $`u^\mu u^\mu (x)=\gamma (1,𝐯)`$ is the four-velocity, with $`u^\mu u_\mu =1`$, and $`T^{\mu \nu }`$ is the energy-momentum tensor. We assume perfect fluid,

$$T^{\mu \nu }=(ϵ+p)u^\mu u^\nu pg^{\mu \nu },$$
(3)
where $`ϵ`$ stands for the relativistic energy density and $`p`$ is the pressure.

From general thermodynamical considerations and the perfectness of the fluid one can show that the expansion is adiabatic,

$$_\mu (\sigma u^\mu )=0,$$
(4)
where $`\sigma `$ stands for the entrophy density.

For the equations of state, we assume a gas that may contain massive conserved quanta,

$`ϵ`$ $`=`$ $`mn+\kappa p,`$ (5)
$`p`$ $`=`$ $`nT.`$ (6)
These equations have two free parameters, $`m`$ and $`\kappa `$. Non-relativistic hydrodynamics of ideal gases corresponds to the limiting case of $`𝐯^21`$ and $`\kappa =\frac{3}{2}`$. Our solutions, presented below, exist for all values of $`m0`$ and $`\kappa >0`$.

Using the continuity equation (1) and the equations of state (5,6), the energy-momentum-conservation equations, (2) can be transformed to the Euler and temperature equations,

$`u_\nu u^\mu _\mu p+(ϵ+p)u^\mu _\mu u_\nu _\nu p`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (7)
$`u^\mu _\mu T+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa }}T_\mu u^\mu =0.`$ (8)
Expressing the energy density and the pressure in the 3 independent components of the relativistic Euler equation in terms of $`n`$ and $`T`$ with the help of the equations of state, (5,6), one obtains a closed system of 5 equations (the continuity, the Euler and the temperature equations) in terms of 5 variables, $`n`$, $`T`$ and $`𝐯=(v_x,v_y,v_z)`$.

## 3 Self-similar, ellipsoidally symmetric ansatz

We search for self-similar solutions in which the isotherms at each instant are ellipsoidal surfaces, where the number density is also constant. We do not discuss here how the major axes of these ellipsoids may be rotated in the frame of observation. We describe the solution in the natural System of Ellipsoidal Expansion (SEE) , where the coordinate axes point to the pricipal directions of the expansion. Let us now define the following scaling variable

$$s=\frac{r_x^2}{X^2}+\frac{r_y^2}{Y^2}+\frac{r_z^2}{Z^2},$$
(9)
where the scale parameters $`X=X(t)`$, $`Y=Y(t)`$ and $`Z=Z(t)`$ are assumed to depend only on the time variable $`t`$. The condition $`s=const.`$, at each instant $`t`$, defines the isotherms mentioned above. As these surfaces are ellipsoids, the solutions belonging to this class will be characterized by ellipsoidal symmetry. We assume a self-similar expansion of Hubble type, with possibly different Hubble constants in all the pricipal directions of the expansion:

$`v_x(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{X}}{X}}r_x,`$ (10)
$`v_y(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{Y}}{Y}}r_y,`$ (11)
$`v_z(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{Z}}{Z}}r_z.`$ (12)
where $`\dot{A}=dA(t)/dt`$ stands for the derivative of the scale parameter $`A=\{X,Y,Z\}`$ with respect to time $`t`$.

As a straightforward generalization of the results derived in refs , we find the following new family of ellipsoidally symmetric, exact analytic solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics:

$`s`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_x^2}{\dot{X}_0^2t^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{r_y^2}{\dot{Y}_0^2t^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{r_z^2}{\dot{Z}_0^2t^2}},`$ (13)
$`𝐯`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{𝐫}{t}}\mathrm{or}u^\mu ={\displaystyle \frac{x^\mu }{\tau }},`$ (14)
$`n(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`n_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _0}{\tau }}\right)^3𝒱(s),`$ (15)
$`p(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`p_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _0}{\tau }}\right)^{3+3/\kappa },`$ (16)
$`T(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`T_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _0}{\tau }}\right)^{3/\kappa }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒱(s)}},`$ (17)
where $`\tau =\sqrt{t^2𝐫^2}`$, $`p_0=n_0T_0`$, $`\dot{X}_0`$, $`\dot{Y}_0`$, $`\dot{Z}_0`$ are constants and $`𝒱(s)`$ is an arbitrary positive, differentiable function of the scaling variable $`s`$ normalized such that $`𝒱(0)=1`$. The temperature distribution also depends on the scaling variable $`s`$ through a scaling function $`𝒯(s)`$, which happens to be $`𝒯(s)=1/𝒱(s)`$. Note that the pressure $`p`$ depends only on $`\tau `$.

An interesting property of this solution is that the flow and the pressure fields are spherically symmetric, however, the other thermodynamical quantities such as the temperature or density distributions are characterized by ellipsoidal symmetry.

The lack of acceleration is reflected by the equations

$`X`$ $`=`$ $`\dot{X}_0t,`$ (18)
$`Y`$ $`=`$ $`\dot{Y}_0t,`$ (19)
$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`\dot{Z}_0t.`$ (20)
In this family of new solutions, the flow is three-dimensional, accelerationless Hubble-type, $`u^\mu =x^\mu /\tau `$, which gives

$$u^\mu _\mu u_\nu =0.$$
(21)
This property, together with the $`s`$-independence of pressure fields, guarantees that the Euler equation be satisfied regardless of the mass $`m`$ and the value of $`\kappa `$. We have found new, self-similar, scaling solutions to the continuity and the temperature equations with ellipsoidal symmetry. Thus a new hydrodynamical solution is assigned to each scaling function $`𝒱(s)=1/𝒯(s)`$, similarly to the cases of the ellipsoidally symmetric, non-relativistic solutions of ref. .

## 4 Phase transitions and freeze-out

The simplest case of the previously discussed new family of exact solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics is given by the choice of $`𝒱(s)=1`$. In this case, the temperature is constant on a hypersurface characterized by a constant proper-time, and all the other thermodynamical parameters are constants on these surfaces as well. Thus these parameters depend on $`\tau `$ only, similarly to the Hwa-Bjorken solution .

It is possible to generalize the equations of state, (5,6)to characterize a new phase of matter and then describe the rehadronization of a “Quark Matter” (QM) state to a Hadron gas (H) in a model similar to that of Gyulassy and Matsui . For simplicity, from now on we refer to the the equations of state (5,6), describing massive, conserved quanta, as that of a hadron gas and index the variables with subscript H. To phenomenologically describe a new phase, which includes constituent quarks and anti-quarks (Q), characterized by their mass and by a vacuum pressure, we generalize the equations of state to

$`\epsilon _Q`$ $`=`$ $`m_Qn_Q+\lambda _\epsilon n_QT+B,`$ (22)
$`p_Q`$ $`=`$ $`\lambda _pn_QTB,`$ (23)
where $`\lambda _\epsilon `$ and $`\lambda _p`$ are constants. Let us introduce the notation $`\kappa _Q=\lambda _\epsilon /\lambda _p`$. With this simple ansatz, the form of the relativistic Euler and temperature equations does not change and we obtain the same form of the solutions for $`n`$, $`T`$ and $`𝐯`$ as before, however, with modified boundary conditions corresponding to modified constants of integration. We may refer to this new phase as a kind of quark matter, providing simple model equations of state for massive quarks, and a bag constant corresponding to color deconfinement. The gluons are assumed to be integrated out, providing mass for the quarks. Such a picture is qualitatively supported by phenomenological fits to the lattice QCD equation of state with quarks that pick up the constitutent mass around $`T_c`$ and gluons that carry big effective mass in the same temperature domain .

Using the above ansatz for the equations of state, we obtain the following solution for the pressure:

$$p_Q=(p_{0,Q}+B)\left(\frac{\tau _0}{\tau }\right)^{3+3/\kappa _Q}B.$$
(24)
If we chose $`B>0`$ and $`\lambda _p>1`$, then at low temperatures the state consisting of non-relativistic massive ideal gas will be stable, and at some critical temperature $`T_c`$ the pressure of the two phases is balanced. However, at high temperatures, the pressure of the new phase will be larger than that of the hadronic matter, as $`\lambda _p>1`$, hence at high temperatures this phase will be the stable one.

The critical temperature, $`T_c`$ is defined by

$$n_HT_c=\lambda _pn_QT_cB.$$
(25)
For the hydrodynamical description, the specification of $`n_H`$ and $`n_Q`$ as a function of e.g. a temperature and chemical potential is not necessary, any thermodinamically consistent form can be included into the hydro solutions that we focus on. Hence the above equation may indicate, if $`n_H`$ and $`n_Q`$ are expressed as a function of the temperature and the (baryo)chemical potential, that the critical temperature may become density dependent.

One can show that the expansion is adiabatic if the matter consists of only one of the phases. We may assume, that the expansion is adiabatic also during the period of phase coexistence, and describe the phase transition with the help of a Maxwell construction. This case is similar to the construction discussed by Gyulassy and Matsui in case of a massless ideal gas . Let us denote the entrophy density of the two phases by $`s_Q`$ and $`s_H`$, and the volume fraction of the two phases by $`f_Q`$ and $`f_H=1f_Q`$, respectively. The proper-time dependence of the entrophy density is then given by

$$s(\tau )=f_Q(\tau )s_{Q,c}+(1f_Q(\tau ))s_{H,c}.$$
(26)
At the beginning of the phase transition, at $`\tau =\tau _{Q,c}`$ the whole system consists of “Quark Matter”, that is $`f_Q(\tau _{Q,c})=1`$. By the time the phase transition ends, one obtains $`f_Q(\tau _{H,c})=0`$. As the well known steps of the Maxwell construction can be copied from the case without conserved charges, for further details we simply refer to section 6.2.3 of ref. .

Starting the hydrodynamical expansion from a quark matter initial state, the form of our hydrodynamical solution becomes unmodified even during the phase transition, and the coasting type of hydrodynamical evolution can be continued at a fixed $`T_c`$, from $`\tau _{Q,c}`$ to $`\tau _{H,c}`$ untill all matter is transformed to hadronic matter. Then one can continue the same kind of coasting solution untill the hadronic matter freezes out.

This expansion takes usually a long time, which is difficult to justify by experimental evidences. However, the same kind of hydrodynamical solution can be matched with a non-equilibrium type of phase transition, the sudden rehadronization and a simultaneous freeze-out of hadrons from a supercooled Quark Matter, as described in greater details in refs. . Then in the same model one may reach a deeply supercooled Quark Matter state, and the transition to the hadron gas may proceed via a mechanical instability, associated with a negative pressure state, governed by the conservation of matter, energy and momentum and the impossibility of an entrophy decrease in a deflagration through a hypersurface with a time-like normal vector at $`\tau =\tau _{TD}`$,

$`\left[T^{\mu \nu }dfn_\nu \right]`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (27)
$`\left[nu^\nu dfn_\nu \right]`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (28)
$`\left[su^\nu dfn_\nu \right]`$ $``$ $`0,`$ (29)
where $`dfn_\nu d\sigma _\nu `$ is the normal-vector of the $`\tau =\tau _{TD}`$ hypersurface. These equations and inequality can be solved very similarly to ref. , that discussed the case of a transition from a massless ideal quark-gluon plasma (QGP) to a massless hadron gas. The lack of acceleration, and the invariance of the equations of state for rescaling the temperature and for adding a vacuum energy term are the essential reasons why earlier considerations that discussed phase transitions for massless particles can be straigthforwardly implemented to our new family of exact hydrodynamical solutions that describe the phase transitions and expansions of massive quanta.

Recently, a new method has been proposed to evaluate particle emission from hydrodynamically evolving, locally thermalized sources, that generalizes the Cooper-Frye freeze-out conditions for systems with volume emission . This method, based on the method of escaping probabilities, can also be applied to evaluate the particle spectra and correlation functions from the new hydrodynamical solutions, as the non-relativistic form of the solutions corresponds to the limiting behaviour that was discussed in ref. .

## 5 Factorized solutions

From the structure of the new family of solutions presented above, it is obvious how to generate further new solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics.

Observe that a modified version of the scaling variable of eq. (13) can be defined, and another family of the same kind of ellipsoidal solutions can be generated by introducing

$`s^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_x^2}{\dot{X}_0^2\tau ^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{r_y^2}{\dot{Y}_0^2\tau ^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{r_z^2}{\dot{Z}_0^2\tau ^2}},`$ (30)
$`X^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\dot{X}_0\tau ,`$ (31)
$`Y^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\dot{Y}_0\tau ,`$ (32)
$`Z^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\dot{Z}_0\tau ,`$ (33)
where the dots should be understood as derivatives with respect to $`\tau `$. Mathematically, the modified scaling variable solves the relativistic hydro equations, because it also satisfies the requirement

$$u^\mu _\mu s=u^\mu _\mu s^{}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0},$$
(34)
if the flow is scaling. This condition can be considered also as the criterium of a “good” scaling variable, and satisfied by the following independent sets of variables:

$`s_x`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_x^2}{t^2}},`$ (35)
$`s_y`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_y^2}{t^2}},`$ (36)
$`s_z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_z^2}{t^2}},`$ (37)
or alternatively,

$`s_x^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_x^2}{\tau ^2}},`$ (38)
$`s_y^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_y^2}{\tau ^2}},`$ (39)
$`s_z^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_z^2}{\tau ^2}}.`$ (40)
All of the 6 scale variables defined above satisfy eq. (34) if the flow profile is of a 3-dimensional scaling type, $`u^\mu =x^\mu /\tau `$.

As the relationship $`𝒱(s)=1/𝒯(s)`$ holds in the class of solutions we present here, if we assume a factorized form for the scaling function of the density, we automatically generate a factorized form for the scaling function of the temperature, hence it becomes easy to generate further new solutions. Let us define the scaling functions $`𝒱_x(s_x)`$, $`𝒱_y(s_y)`$ and $`𝒱_z(s_z)`$ that are positive, differentiable and satisfying $`𝒱_x(0)=𝒱_y(0)=𝒱_z(0)=1`$, otherwise being abritrary and independent from each other. Then, a new type of hydro solutions reads

$`𝐯`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{𝐫}{t}}\mathrm{or}u^\mu ={\displaystyle \frac{x^\mu }{\tau }},`$ (41)
$`n(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`n_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _0}{\tau }}\right)^3𝒱_x(s_x)𝒱_y(s_y)𝒱_z(s_z),`$ (42)
$`(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`p_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _0}{\tau }}\right)^{3+3/\kappa },`$ (43)
$`T(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`T_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _0}{\tau }}\right)^{3/\kappa }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒱_x(s_x)}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒱_y(s_y)}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒱_z(s_z)}}.`$ (44)
Note that this form of solution is invariant for a change of the scaling variables and the scales as $`(s_x,s_y,s_z)(s_x^{},s_y^{},s_z^{})`$ and $`(X,Y,Z)(X^{},Y^{},Z^{})`$, with the time derivatives in the definitions of the Hubble flow field, eqs. (10-12) understood as derivations with respect to $`\tau `$ as in eqs. (30-33).

## 6 General form of solutions, beyond ellipsoidal symmetry

The key point in checking that the above factorized forms indeed solve the equations of relativistic hydrodynamics is that the comoving derivatives of the scaling functions, $`u_\mu ^\mu 𝒱_i(s_i)`$, are proportional to $`u^\mu _\mu s_i`$, hence vanish. This is, together with $`u^\mu _\mu u_\nu =0`$, the essential property of the scaling solutions.

We find that the most general form of the scaling variable is

$$\overline{s}=F(s_x,s_y,s_z)G(s_x^{},s_y^{},s_z^{}),$$
(45)
which means that any function of scaling variables $`(s_x,s_y,s_z)`$ or $`(s_x^{},s_y^{},s_z^{})`$ can be utilized as a new scaling variable. Indeed, we have

$$u_\mu ^\mu F(s_x,s_y,s_z)=\underset{i=x,y,z}{}\frac{F}{s_i}u_\mu ^\mu s_i=0.$$
(46)
which yields the generalized form of the new family of solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics:

$`𝐯`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{𝐫}{t}}\mathrm{or}u^\mu ={\displaystyle \frac{x^\mu }{\tau }},`$ (47)
$`n(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`n_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _0}{\tau }}\right)^3𝒱(\overline{s}),`$ (48)
$`p(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`p_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _0}{\tau }}\right)^{3+3/\kappa },`$ (49)
$`T(t,𝐫)`$ $`=`$ $`T_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{\tau _0}{\tau }}\right)^{3/\kappa }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒱(\overline{s})}},`$ (50)
with the constraint that $`𝒱(0)=1`$. For example, if we choose $`\overline{s}=s_x+s_y+s_z`$, we obtain solutions with ellipsoidal symmetry, however, one may choose $`\overline{s}=s_x+s_ys_z`$ to obtain solutions where the isotherms are one-sheeted hyperboloids, or $`\overline{s}=s_xs_y+s_z`$ where the temperature and the density are constants on two-sheeted hyperboloids. In fact the possibilities are infinitely rich.

## 7 Non-relativistic limiting behaviour

As the considered equation of state contains mass as a free parameter, it is possible to study the non-relativistic limiting case of these new relativistic solutions. The local thermal motion is non-relativistic if $`mT`$, the flow is non-relativistic in the region of $`|𝐫|t`$, which implies $`\tau t`$ and relates the relativistic solutions with ellipsoidal symmetry to the asymptotic, large time behaviour of the ellipsoidally symmetric, non-relativistic solutions of refs. . Let us recapitulate here the general form of the non-relativistic solutions of fireball hydrodynamics .

The definition of the scaling variable $`s`$ coincides with that of eq. (9). The solution for the flow field coincides with that of eqs. (10-12). The scaling function for the temperature, $`𝒯(s)`$ is utilized to express the solution for the NR density and temperature fields as

$`n`$ $`=`$ $`n_0{\displaystyle \frac{X_0Y_0Z_0}{XYZ}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒯(s)}}\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{m(\dot{X}_{\mathrm{as}}^2+\dot{Y}_{\mathrm{as}}^2+\dot{Z}_{\mathrm{as}}^2)}{T_0}}{\displaystyle _0^s}𝑑u{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒯(u)}}\right],`$ (51)
$`T`$ $`=`$ $`T_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{X_0Y_0Z_0}{XYZ}}\right)^{1/\kappa }𝒯(s).`$ (52)
The large time behaviour of these non-relativistic, self-similar, ellipsoidal solutions of hydrodynamics is characterized by constant values of $`(\dot{X}_{\mathrm{as}},\dot{Y}_{\mathrm{as}},\dot{Z}_{\mathrm{as}})`$, which implies that for asymptotically long times a scaling flow field develops also in these non-relativistic solutions, $`𝐯𝐫/t`$. In the exponential factor that appears in this non-relativisitic solution for $`n`$ we may expand the inverse scaling function $`1/𝒯(u)`$ as a polinomial in $`u`$. Keeping the leading order terms, and performing the integration, we find that the exponential factor will be approximately a Gaussian factor. However, the widths of the Gaussians in all the directions will be proportional to the time. As we have assumed that $`|𝐫|t`$, this exponential factor yields a factor of $`1+𝒪(𝐫^2/t^2)`$, hence we find the general asymptotic behaviour of the non-relativistic solutions to be the same form  as the general solution of the relativistic solution of the hydrodynamical equations:

$`n_{\mathrm{as}}`$ $``$ $`n_{\mathrm{as}}{\displaystyle \frac{t_0^3}{t^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{𝒯(s)}},`$ (53)
$`T_{\mathrm{as}}`$ $``$ $`T_{\mathrm{as}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{t_0}{t}}\right)^{3/\kappa }𝒯(s).`$ (54)
Due to the rescaling, the constants of normalization $`n_{\mathrm{as}}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{as}}`$ are different from $`n_0`$ and $`T_0`$.

## 8 Summary

We have generalized the recently found new family of solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics to the case of expanding fireballs with ellipsoidal symmetry. The solutions contain an arbitrary scaling function $`𝒱(s)`$, restricted only by non-negativity and by the requirement of $`𝒱(0)=1`$, a very rich set of possible scaling variabes $`s`$, and 5 important parameters, the mass $`m`$, the parameter $`\kappa `$ of the equation of state, the scale parameters $`\dot{X}_0`$, $`\dot{Y}_0`$ and $`\dot{Z}_0`$. Furthermore, we generalized the equations of state to describe a phase transition from a deconfined state consisting of massive (constituent) quarks and antiquarks to a state consisting of massive hadrons. Based on the scaling properties of the equations of state, as well as on the coasting nature of the expansion, we have shown that both the usual adiabatic Maxwell construction as well as the fast, non-equilibrium time-like deflagrations can be constructed and described within the considered class of hydrodynamical solutions.

We expect that some of these solutions of relativistic hydrodynamics may have future applications in non-central collisions of heavy ions at relativistic bombarding energies, a topic of great current research interest.

## Acknowledgments

T. Cs. would like to Y. Hama and G. Krein for kind hospitality during his stay at USP and IFT, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and M. Gyulassy for his kind hospitality at Columbia University, New York. This work has been supported by a NATO Science Fellowship (Cs.T.), the OTKA grants T026435, T029158 and T034269 of Hungary, the NWO - OTKA grant N 25487 of The Netherlands and Hungary, the FAPESP grants 99/09113-3 00/04422-7 and 02/11344-8 of São Paulo, Brazil, and by the US DOE grants DE-FG02-93ER40764 and DE-FG02-01ER41190.