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# Calibration Infrastructure for the GLAST LAT

## I Introduction

A calibration dataset as used here is information describing some aspect of the state of the the GLAST LAT which may change with time. Examples include hardware status bits, electronics gains and alignment information. The Calibration Infrastructure provides services to write and access such datasets, particularly those needed for the earliest stages of event processing. Information collectively known as IRFs (instrument response functions) used in higher-level analyses will be managed by a different facility.

### I.1 The Instrument

The GLAST LAT is scheduled for launch in 2006. Although an astronomical instrument, it consists of active components familiar to high-energy physicists: a silicon strip tracker, a cesium iodide crystal calorimeter, and an ACD (anti-coincidence detector) consisting of scintillating tiles. However, unlike the prototypical HEP detector of today,

* There is no significant ambient magnetic field.
* There is no beamline, hence no reason for circular symmetry. Detector components are almost all box-like and aligned along orthogonal axes.
* The detetector is small, both in size and, except for silicon strips, in number of components.

The last especially has impact on the calibration infrastructure design. The amount and complexity of data to be managed is much less than in a typical HEP experiment, so much less that we need pay only minimal attention to efficient use of storage and have no need for especially clever organizational and searching schemes.

## II Requirements

Although storage and cpu resources required for LAT data processing are relatively modest, the processing pipeline is no simpler than for standard HEP experiments; we still need “one of everything” as well as considerable flexibility both for developers and for end-users. In particular, the calibration infrastructure

* must support prototypes as well as flight instrument (but can assume that no job will concern itself with more than one instrument).
* must support remote use, even disconnected use.
* must provide transparent access to appropriate calibration data for event analysis. In particular, each calibration data set has a validity time interval associated with it. If the timestamp of the event being analyzed is outside the validity interval of the in-memory calibration, a new calibration whose validity interval includes the timestamp must be fetched without special intervention by the client.
* must provide comprehensive, even if primitive, access for clients with a more diagnostic slant.

Like any other component of standard processing, the calibration infrastructure software must be robust. Performance and resource requirements are not stringent, but they cannot be ignored, either. The calibration infrastructure should in no respect be a bottleneck.

### II.1 Software Environment

All offline software must build and run in at least two environments: Linux with gcc and Windows with Visual Studio. Developers are split between the two. Pipeline processing takes place on the SLAC Linux farm.

We prefer to use, and almost universally do use, tools which are both free and open source: free because we cannot ask collaborators to pay exorbitant per-seat charges and open source so that we can make patches immediately ourselves if necessary. Several of our most critical tools have come from elsewhere within the high-energy physics community. One such is the Gaudi framework. GaudiRef  The calibration infrastructure adheres to the Gaudi model of conversion from persistent to in-memory (“transient”) data.

## III Data and Metadata

It is extremely important that the collection of calibrations be readily searchable by various criteria: type of calibration, validity interval, instrument calibrated, flavor,111An application-defined string associated with the calibration which may, for example, indicate intended use, such as “digi”. Defaults to “vanilla”. etc. However, once the desired calibration data set is found, the chief clients of calibration typically want access to the complete calibration data set, not just some extracted piece. In essence each calibration data set is comprised of two components with different functional requirements. One is the bulk data, the calibration information about the instrument, such as a collection of pedestals. Since the entire collection will be read into memory before use by most applications, the internal organization does not have to be particularly well-matched to access patterns of the applications, but it should be self-describing and, for large data sets, reasonably compact. The other component is metadata, information about the bulk data. The amount of metadata per calibration is small and its structure is uniform across all calibration types so that it can be readily searched.

### III.1 Metadata

A natural storage format for the metadata is in a relational database table. MySQL satisfies our functional requirements and is moreover free, open-source and straightforward to use. Each calibration is registered by entering a new row in the table. The columns in the table fall into three categories: those used primarily in searching (calibration type, start and end of validity interval, and several others), those used to access the bulk data (such as a filename and an indicator of format), and those which contain information primarily intended for human readers, such as a text description of the conditions under which the calibration was done. See Table 1 for the complete list

### III.2 Data formats

Currently only XML is used for bulk data; support for ROOT is in development. Using a human-readable format has been an aid in debugging the new system, but XML is not well-suited to data sets involving large numbers of floating-point values. New calibrations of this nature will be written as ROOT files as soon as full support is available. There will be no need to convert old files since the file format is discovered dynamically from the metadata for each data set.

Another potential drawback of XML files compared to a binary format like ROOT is their bulk. If space becomes a problem support for a third format, compressed XML, will be added. Typical calibration files now in use are reduced by about a factor of 100 by standard compression techniques.

## IV Analysis Client Interface

### IV.1 Standard Gaudi Model

The Gaudi Detector Data Service, Persistency Service, and Conversion Service paradigms provide much of what is needed to meet the requirements of GLAST analysis clients, though only the Persistency Service could be used untouched. The most straightforward use of these services might go something like this:

* The client asks the Data Service for calibration information while processing an event
* If data is present and current, we’re done.
* Otherwise the Data Service requests data from the Persistency Service
* The Persistency Service determines the appropriate Conversion Service for data in question and makes a request
* The Conversion Service finds the correct Converter for this type of calibration data and invokes it
* The Converter finds persistent form of correct data and reconstitutes it to the appropriate in-memory location

The collaborating services pass a data structure known as an opaque address among themselves which contains whatever information is needed to identify and convert the persistent form of the dataset. This data structure must be retrievable from the initial client request, which typically identifies a dataset by its location in the data hierarchy known as the TDS (Transient Data Store). The correct dataset is further implicitly determined by the timestamp of the event currently being processed.

### IV.2 Double Conversion

The two constituents of a GLAST LAT calibration dataset are each converted more or less according to the above scheme. First the metadata is converted. Since there is only one kind of metadata, there is no need for separate converters; the conversion is handled directly by the MySQL Conversion Service. The result of this conversion is to determine the physical form of the bulk data (e.g., XML), form a suitable opaque address incorporating the access information from the metadata, and invoke the Persistency Service again with this address. The conversion service finds the correct converter. In the case of XML bulk data, a base converter class parses the XML into a DOM in-memory representation, handles conversion of data common to all calibration types, such as certain fields from the metadata, then invokes a method which has been overridden by derived classes in order to handle the calibration type-specific data.

### IV.3 Transient Data Store (TDS) Organization

Since analysis clients generally need access to an entire calibration dataset the TDS hierarchy (sometimes referred to as /bf TCDS, for Transient Calibration Data Store, to distinguish it from the event TDS) is simple and uniform, with all the data stored only in leaf nodes, as shown in Figure 1. There is a root node, a second level corresponding to calibration type, and a third level, the leaves, representing flavor. This organization allows multiple flavors of a single calibration type to be accessible concurrently. A “vanilla” leaf node is always present for each calibration type. Other flavor nodes are determined at run time from job options parameters.

## V An Example Analysis Client

The first calibration types to be supported were dead and hot channel lists for the tracker. Tracker utility software already included several Gaudi services; adding a Bad Strips Service was a natural extension.

Hot channels and dead channels are kept as separate datasets by the Calibration Infrastructure; it is not even necessarily the case that they are generated at the same time or from the same input. However analysis applications typically want a single merged list of bad channels. The Bad Strips Service and an associated Gaudi algorithm, TkrCalibAlg, are responsible for the merging and for insuring that the list is kept up to date. Active elements and the flow of data in this process can be seen in Figure 2. For each new event,

* The algorithm verifies that dead and hot channel data are in the TCDS and causes them to be updated (to datasets whose validity interval includes the timestamp of the current event) if necessary
* It checks to see if the serial number (here just the serial number entry for the corresponding MySQL row, but any unique identifier would do) of either dataset has changed.
* If so, it asks the Bad Strips Service to merge the new datasets.
* Analysis algorithms may now use the Bad Strips Service to access the merged and updated bad strips list.

An additional benefit of this design, incorporating a separate tracker utility layer, is that the full machinery of the Calibration Infrastructure may be bypassed in case it is not needed, for example with MC data.

### V.1 Other clients

The initial focus has been on supporting analysis clients in the Gaudi environment. For non-Gaudi clients, tools for access to the Calibration Infrastructure and the data it maintains are so far rudimentary, but comprise a suitable base for more complete and formalized services, particularly for access to the metadata, as the project matures.

Creation of new bulk datasets typically happens outside Gaudi and is not a function of the Calibration Infrastructure. It is the responsibility of the detector subsystems to provide such data in a supported format; that is, one which the Infrastructure conversion services can convert. A new dataset becomes generally available after it has been registered (which is an Infrastructure function) by writing a new row in the metadata table. Similarly, non-Gaudi applications may use callable Infrastructure services to read or search the metadata database (or may use SQL queries directly), but in most cases the public API for bulk data for such applications is just the format of the data.

## VI Improvements and Extensions

### VI.1 Metadata management

For a robust production environment, additional tools to access and manage the metadata will be necessary. Write access to the database is already restricted, but even legitimate writers can make mistakes. Several kinds of errors can and should be caught. Consistency and completeness checks can catch more subtle problems involving more than one row.

### VI.2 Production database alternatives

The production MySQL database and bulk data at SLAC are not conveniently accessible for all users. We plan to provide mirrors for production European users. Since the dataIdent field of the metadata (which identifies the bulk data belonging to a particular calibration) may and typically does contain environment variables, the metadata itself may be left untouched in the mirrors.

Isolated developers present a somewhat different problem. They may be disconnected from the network entirely, but their needs are typically less: they don’t need access to all calibrations. One way, already successfully demonstrated, to provide a fully-local calibration infrastructure is to install a MySQL server on the user’s machine, fill it with a dump of the contents of the production database, and copy over bulk data files as needed. Another possibility which avoids the complex process of MySQL installation would be to provide an alternate implementation of the metadata storage and access, such as a simple ascii file representation of the metadata for a minimal collection of calibrations.

### VI.3 Additional calibration types and formats

So far only a fraction of the total number of expected calibration types are supported by the Calibration Infrastructure; others will be implemented as required by clients.

ROOT is the preferred choice for calibration files involving many floating point numbers, both because it is a compact binary format and because it is already heavily used for persistent event data and as an analysis platform. A ROOT Conversion Service is under development.

### VI.4 Parameters database

GLAST offline has as yet no formal mechanism for keeping track of the many parameters that go into a particular software run. Blessed collections of such parameters share many attributes with calibrations. The Calibration Infrastructure or a near-clone could be used for this purpose.

## VII Conclusions

The Calibration Infrastructure is in active use for several tracker and calorimeter calibrations. There is much to do before the full facility as envisioned is in place, and certain features of even the current limited implementation have not been thoroughtly exercised, but there is no reason to doubt that the design will accommodate all currently-anticipated future needs.

###### Acknowledgements.

The author wishes to thank Andrea Valassi (CERN) for guidance in the design of the two-stage conversion process and Leon Rochester (SLAC) for suggesting the concept of flavor and for contributing to the design and implementation of the bad strips architecture. Work supported by Department of Energy contract DE-AC03-76SF00515.


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# Field-Induced Magnetic Order and Simultaneous Lattice Deformation in TlCuCl3

## Abstract

We report the results of Cu and Cl nuclear magnetic resonance experiments (NMR) and thermal expansion measurements in magnetic fields in the coupled dimer spin system TlCuCl3. We found that the field-induced antiferromagnetic transition as confirmed by the splitting of NMR lines is slightly discontinuous. The abrupt change of the electric field gradient at the Cl sites, as well as the sizable change of the lattice constants, across the phase boundary indicate that the magnetic order is accompanied by simultaneous lattice deformation.

Quantum phase transitions in spin systems induced by magnetic field have attracted considerable recent interest rice031 ; chaboussant981 ; kodama021 ; shimamura971 ; oosawa991 ; giamarchi991 ; nikuni001 ; oosawa011 . An important class of materials is formed by antiferromagnets with a collective singlet ground state at zero field separated by a energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ from the first excited triplet. A magnetic field $`H`$ reduces the gap as $`\mathrm{\Delta }(H)=\mathrm{\Delta }g\mu _BH`$. At $`T=0`$, a finite magnetization appears above the critical field $`H_c=\mathrm{\Delta }/g\mu _B`$. Since antiferromagnetic interactions acting among the field-induced spin moments will tilt the magnetization into two sublattices, a Néel order perpendicular to the external field is expected above $`H_c`$. This process can be described as the Bose-Einstein condensation of triplet magnons giamarchi991 ; nikuni001 , since the creation operator of the lowest energy magnon is equivalent to the transverse component of the staggered magnetization. With further increasing the field, some materials show magnetization plateaus at fractional values of the fully saturated moment shimamura971 ; kodama021 , indicating localization of triplets and formation of a superstructure. A wider variety of exotic phases may be expected in the presence of spin-phonon coupling or orbital degeneracy. It is important that these phase transitions can be controlled precisely by tuning the field value, which sets the chemical potential for triplets. Thus spin systems in magnetic field provide valuable opportunities to test theories on strongly correlated quantum systems.

TlCuCl3 is a system of three-dimensionally (3D) coupled dimers formed by $`S`$=1/2 spins of Cu2+ ions with a singlet ground state oosawa991 ; oosawa011 . Although the crystal structure (monoclinic $`P2_1/c`$ space group) contains Cu2Cl6 zigzag chains extending along the $`a`$-axis as a subunit (Fig. 1willett631 , inelastic neutron scattering experiments revealed fully three-dimensional dispersions of triplet magnons oosawa021 ; cavadini011 , from which the exchange interactions have been determined. The minimum excitation energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }0.5`$ meV occurs at $`Q=(0,0,1)`$. The static transverse magnetic order has been observed at the same $`Q`$ above a temperature-dependent critical field $`H_c(T)`$ with $`(g/2)H_c(0)=5.7`$ T tanaka011 . Since the dispersion width (7 meV) is much larger than the excitation gap at zero field, the density of triplets is small when the field is close to $`H_c`$ and the system can be considered as interacting dilute Bose gas. In fact, mean field nikuni001  and RPA analysis matsumoto021  of boson model were applied successfully to explain the peculiar shape of the magnetization curve, as well as the excitation spectrum as a function of magnetic field cavadini021 ; ruegg031 ; ruegg032  in a semi-quantitative manner.

In this letter we report the results of Cu and Cl nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments and thermal expansion measurements on TlCuCl3 near the critical field. The antiferromagnetic order was confirmed by the splitting of NMR lines. The staggered magnetization develops discontinuously and the paramagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases coexist in a narrow region in the $`HT`$ plane, pointing to a weakly first order phase transition. We found also that the electric field gradient (EFG) at the Cl sites changes abruptly across the phase boundary, indicating that a lattice deformation occurs simultaneously at the magnetic transition. This is further confirmed by a sizable change of the lattice parameter measured by strain gauge technique in magnetic field .

As shown in Fig. 1, a monoclinic unit-cell of TlCuCl3 contains four formula units. When the magnetic field is along or perpendicular to the $`b`$-axis, the four units give identical NMR lines. All the measurements were performed in the external field perpendicular both to the $`b`$-axis and approximately to the (10$`\overline{2}`$) plane. Thus one Cu and three Cl sites should be distinguished. There are six Cu NMR lines in the absence of magnetic order: each of the two spin-3/2 isotopes, 63Cu and 65Cu, generates three lines split by electric quadrupole interaction. The Cu NMR data were taken on the central transition (–1/2$``$1/2) line from 63Cu. For Cl NMR, we found that 18 lines (three quadrupole split lines for each of two spin-3/2 isotopes, 35Cl and 37Cl, from three sites) are congested in a relatively narrow frequency range. Fortunately, a pair of outermost lines corresponding to the low-frequency quadrupole satellite of 37Cl and high-frequency satellite of 35Cl from the same Cl site are isolated from other lines. We used these lines to obtain Cl NMR data, although we have been unable to assign the specific sites to which these lines correspond. The thermal expansion was measured by the strain gauge technique. The strain gauge was calibrated using the spontaneous strain along the $`a`$-axis at the phase transition in $`\alpha ^{}`$-NaV2O5 koeppen981 . The gauge was attached to the (10$`\overline{2}`$) plane along the $`b`$-axis. To correct for the magneto-resistance of the gauge, the curves taken in different fields have been shifted to merge at high temperatures.

Figure 2 shows the frequency shifts for the central transition of 63Cu (a) and for the pair of Cl satellites (b) as a function of temperature at $`H=8.56`$ T. The shifts are defined as $`{}_{}{}^{n}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu ={}_{}{}^{n}\nu {}_{}{}^{n}\gamma H`$, where $`{}_{}{}^{n}\nu `$ is the peak frequency of $`n`$-th nuclei with the gyromagnetic ratio $`{}_{}{}^{n}\gamma `$. The main feature is the splitting of all lines into two branches $`{}_{}{}^{n}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu ^\pm `$ below 5.6 K, which coincides the Néel temperature ($`T_\mathrm{N}`$) for $`H[10\overline{2}]`$ at 8.56 T oosawa011 .

Generally, the shift of 63Cu NMR is the sum of the magnetic and quadrupolar parts. For the central transition, the quadrupolar part contains only the second and higher order terms $`{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{Q}^{(2)}`$. The magnetic part is due only to the uniform magnetization $`{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{u}`$ above $`T_\mathrm{N}`$, but contribution from the staggered magnetization $`{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{s}`$ adds below $`T_\mathrm{N}`$. Thus $`{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu ={}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{u}+{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{Q}^{(2)}`$ above $`T_N`$ and $`{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu ^\pm ={}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{u}+{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{Q}^{(2)}\pm {}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{s}`$ below $`T_N`$. It should be noted that even though the staggered magnetization is perpendicular to the external field, anisotropic hyperfine interactions generally produce a finite component of staggered local field at the nuclei, $`{}_{}{}^{n}h_{\mathrm{s}}^{}={}_{}{}^{n}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{s}/{}_{}{}^{n}\gamma `$, parallel to the external field. The staggered contribution below TN cancels for the mean value $`\overline{{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }({}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu ^++{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu ^{})/2={}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{u}+{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{Q}^{(2)}`$.

We plot $`{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ (for $`TT_N`$), $`\overline{{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }`$ (for $`TT_N`$) and $`{}_{}{}^{63}h_{\mathrm{s}}^{}`$ against temperature in Fig. 3 (a) and (b). Since the temperature variation of $`{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{Q}^{(2)}`$ below 7 K is expected to be negligibly small, the change of $`{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ and $`\overline{{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }`$ should be due to the temperature variation of the uniform magnetic shift, $`{}_{}{}^{63}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{u}`$. Indeed, the plot in Fig. 3(a) is quite similar to the temperature dependence of the bulk magnetization oosawa991 , including the characteristic cusp-like minimum at $`T_\mathrm{N}`$.

The staggered local field $`{}_{}{}^{63}h_{\mathrm{s}}^{}`$ rises very sharply at $`T_\mathrm{N}`$. The spectrum at 5.5 K consists of a single line originating from the paramagnetic phase and a pair of split lines coming from the antiferromagnetic phase. With increasing temperature, the intensity of the latter vanishes within about 0.2 K. The same feature was seen in the evolution of the Cl NMR spectra as shown in Fig. 3(c). At 5.6 K, one can clearly see the coexistence of a single peak and a pair of split peaks. Moreover, tracking the temperature evolution from 5.2 K upwards, one notices that the split lines do not merge to become a single line. Instead, the intensity of the split lines vanishes between 5.7 and 5.8 K, while the interval of the splitting is still finite. We observed no hysteresis for up and down temperature sweep. The coexistence of two phases is clearly due to some kind of disorder. The appearance of the split spectrum, however, indicates that the staggered magnetization develops discontinuously upon entering into the antiferromagnetic phase. Thus the transition is weakly first order. We also observed the same feature at a fixed temperature $`T=3.5`$ K with increasing magnetic field across the phase boundary near 6.3 T.

We emphasize that the discontinuity of the transition observed by NMR is not in contradiction with the continuous development of the antiferromagnetic Bragg peaks observed by neutron diffraction experiments tanaka011 . The intensity of the Bragg peaks represents square of the staggered moment averaged over the entire sample volume. If the volume fraction of the antiferromagnetic phase changes continuously over a finite temperature window near $`T_\mathrm{N}`$ as evidenced by the evolution of the Cl NMR spectrum, a locally discontinuous transition should look like a continuous one when averaged over the entire volume.

Another important feature of the field-induced transition was revealed by the behavior of the quadrupole splitting of the Cl NMR spectrum. Above $`T_\mathrm{N}`$, the shifts for the high-frequency 35Cl satellite and low-frequency 37Cl satellites plotted in Fig. 2b are expressed by

$`{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _H`$ $`=`$ $`{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{u}+{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(2)}+{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)},`$
$`{}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _L`$ $`=`$ $`{}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{u}+{}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(2)}{}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)},`$ (1)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}`$ is the first-order quadrupole shift. This is determined by the magnitude of the electric field gradient along the external field direction. The temperature dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}`$ reflects the change of lattice parameters and ionic charge distribution within a unit cell. Below $`T_\mathrm{N}`$, the staggered shift adds to eqs. (1): $`{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _H^\pm ={}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _H\pm {}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{s}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _L^\pm ={}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _L\pm {}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{s}`$. Note that $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{s}`$ cancels for the mean values, $`\overline{{}_{}{}^{n}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{H(L)}}({}_{}{}^{n}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{H(L)}^++{}_{}{}^{n}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{H(L)}^{})/2`$, so below $`T_\mathrm{N}`$ $`\overline{{}_{}{}^{n}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{H(L)}}`$ replaces the left-hand side of eqs. (1). Using the isotopic ratio of each term in eqs. (1)

$`{}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{u}/{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _\mathrm{u}`$ $`=`$ $`{}_{}{}^{37}\gamma /{}_{}{}^{35}\gamma r_\gamma 0.83,`$
$`{}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}/{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`{}_{}{}^{37}Q/{}_{}{}^{35}Qr_Q0.79,`$ (2)
$`{}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(2)}/{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(2)}`$ $`=`$ $`r_Q^2/r_\gamma 0.87,`$
where $`{}_{}{}^{n}Q`$ is the quadrupole moment of the $`n`$-th nucleus, one obtains $`{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}`$ as

$`\left(r_\gamma {}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _H{}_{}{}^{37}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _L\right)/\left(r_\gamma +r_Q\right)`$
$`={}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}+{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(2)}\left(r_\gamma r_Q\right)/r_\gamma {}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}`$ (3)
for $`T>T_\mathrm{N}`$. For $`T<T_\mathrm{N}`$, $`{}_{}{}^{n}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{H(L)}`$ should be replaced by $`\overline{{}_{}{}^{n}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _{H(L)}}`$. Since $`{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(2)}{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}`$ and $`\left(r_\gamma r_Q\right)/r_\gamma =0.05`$, the second term in the right-hand side can be safely neglected.

The temperature dependence of $`{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}`$ is plotted in Fig. 4(a). There is a clear jump in $`{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}`$ at $`T_N`$, indicating a sudden change in the atomic positions and/or lattice parameters. The change of lattice parameters was directly detected by the thermal expansion measurements. In Fig. 4(b), the relative change of the crystal size along the $`b`$-axis, $`\mathrm{\Delta }b/b`$, is plotted against temperature for different magnetic fields. Anomalous expansion is observed below a field-dependent onset temperature, which coincides with $`T_N`$. The magnitude of the strain is linear in field as shown in the insert in Fig. 4(b). Measurement of the strain along the $`a`$-axis has shown that $`\mathrm{\Delta }a/a`$ is negative and an order of magnitude smaller than $`\mathrm{\Delta }b/b`$. The $`c`$-axis strain could not be measured properly. The change of the lattice parameters, however, is very small and this alone would not be sufficient to account for the large change of $`{}_{}{}^{35}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu _Q^{(1)}`$. There must be sizable displacement of the ionic positions within a unit cell.

The results presented so far convincingly demonstrate that lattice deformation occurs simultaneously with the magnetic phase transition. Thus the Bose-Einstein condensation scenario within a pure spin model is not adequate and spin-phonon coupling has to be taken into account for quantitative description of the field induced phase transition. Strong spin-phonon coupling has been also suggested by the recent observation of pressure-induced antiferromagnetic order oosawa031 . It is known in classical magnets that strong enough magneto-elastic coupling turns an otherwise second order magnetic transition into a first order one accompaning magnetostriction ito781 . It is likely that similar mechanism works in the present case of a quantum phase transitions. However, It is still possibile that specifc interactions among bosons in this material is the driving force for the first order transition.

The fact that the transition is only marginally discontinuous is also indicated by quasi-critical slowing down of the spin fluctuations observed by the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate measurements.

The spin-lattice relaxation rate, $`1/T_1`$, of 63Cu nuclei is plotted against temperature in Fig. 5 for the external fields of 4.8 T, 5.2 T (the zero-temperature critical field), and 8.5 T. The inset shows the field dependence of $`1/T_1`$ at 1.5 K. The data at 8.5 T clearly shows a sharp peak at $`T_N`$. Above 8 K, $`1/T_1`$ increases approximately as $`T^3`$. Such temperature dependence indicate that the major weight of the spin fluctuations has energy scale much larger than $`T_N`$. At lower temperatures, the relaxation rate at 4.8 T switches to linear $`T`$-dependence, and $`1/T_1`$ at 5.2 T is nearly independent of temperature. The relaxation rate at the phase boundary is sharply peaked, as seen in the $`T`$-dependence at $`H=8.5`$ T and in the $`H`$-dependence at $`T=1.5`$ K. Such behavior of $`1/T_1`$ is due to slowing down of the fluctuations of staggered moments in the vicinity of the phase boundary, which is common for continuous antiferromagnetic transitions.

In conclusion, we clarified some new features of the field-induced magnetic order in TlCuCl3. Splitting of the NMR peaks in the field-induced phase reveals a long range Néel order. The staggered local field is shown to arise discontinuously, indicating that the transition is weakly first-order. Sizable deformation of the lattice due to the magnetic ordering is detected in both NMR and thermal expansion measurements, which implies strong spin-phonon coupling and possibly explains the first-order nature of the transition. The spin-lattice relaxation rate is sharply peaked at the phase boundary due to quasi-critical slowing down of the fluctuations of staggered magnetization.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors acknowledge fruitful discussions with K. Ueda and M. Zhitomirsky. The work is supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Area (B) on “Field-induced new quantum phenomena in magnetic systems” from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan. The research activity of O.V. in Japan was supported by the Japan Society for Promotion of Science.


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# Spectral function of electron-phonon models by cluster perturbation theory

## I Introduction

Spectral properties, such as the one-electron spectral function, provide valuable insight into the usually complex physics of strongly correlated systems. However, reliable results for such quantities are difficult to obtain. Analytical methods are often restricted to very simple limiting cases, and results can usually not be extended to more general situations. Two remarkable exceptions are the Holstein model with linear electron dispersionGunnarsson et al. (1994); Meden et al. (1994) and the Hubbard model,Lieb and Wu (1968) both in one dimension, which have been solved exactly. To study more general models, numerical methods such as Exact Diagonalization (ED) and Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) have received much attention over the last decades. ED methods allow very accurate calculations of ground-state as well as finite-temperature spectral properties, but are restricted to rather small clusters due to the large dimension of the corresponding Hilbert space. QMC can be used to obtain results on large clusters even in higher dimensions, but here the sign-problem and the ill-posed analytic continuation required to obtain dynamic correlation functions for real frequencies are detrimental for many interesting applications.

The recently developed cluster perturbation theorySénéchal et al. (2000, 2002) (CPT) marks an important improvement of the situation. It is based on a break-up of the infinite system into identical, finite clusters, on which the one-electron Green function is calculated exactly. Then, the hopping between clusters is treated within strong-coupling perturbation theoryPairault et al. (1998, 2000) (SCPT). The method has been successfully used for various Hubbard models, to calculate spectral functions, as well as other quantities of interest, both for zeroSénéchal et al. (2000, 2002); Dahnken et al. (2002) and finite temperature.Aichhorn et al. (2003) Although the concept of CPT relies on a model with local interactions only, it has also been applied with some success to the $`tJ`$ model.Zacher et al. (2000, 2002) For the calculation of the cluster Green function, the ED Lanczos method (for a review see Ref. Dagotto, 1994) can be used.

For the case of coupled electron-phonon systems, such as the Holstein model and its various extensions–e.g. the Holstein-Hubbard or the Holstein double-exchange model– the application of ED methods is hampered by the infinite number of possible phonon configurations, which gives rise to a rapidly growing requirement of computer memory and/or CPU time as the number of lattice sites or phonon states increases. Consequently, standard ED methods–employing some kind of Hilbert space truncation–are restricted to very small clusters, especially for low phonon frequency and/or strong electron-phonon coupling. Again improved methods such as DMRG, or the use of variational phonon bases allow to extend the accessible parameter range. Nevertheless, as electron-phonon interaction has been identified as an important ingredient in, e.g., high-temperature superconductorsBar-Yam et al. (1992) and manganitesEdwards (2002), further progress along these lines is highly desirable.

In this paper, we show that CPT can be successfully applied to electron-phonon models with a (local) coupling of the Holstein type.Holstein (1959) We present results for the one-electron spectral function of the Holstein polaron, i.e. the Holstein model with one electron, in one and two dimensions. The Holstein polaron problem has been investigated intensively in the past, and a wealth of information about its spectral properties is available. We find that the use of CPT strongly reduces finite-size effects, giving results which are much closer to the thermodynamic limit than the corresponding ED data. Additionally, we consider the special case of a completely saturated ferromagnetic state at zero temperature in the Holstein double-exchange modelGreen (2001) for colossal magnetoresistive manganites. The latter is then equivalent to the Holstein model of spinless fermions, and we combine the exact atomic-limit one-particle Green function with CPT for a single-site cluster to calculate the spectral function at quarter-filling. The results of this simple approach agree well with the previously developed many-body coherent potential approximation.Edwards et al. (1999); Green and Edwards (1999); Green (2001); Hohenadler and Edwards (2002); Edwards (2002)

The paper is organized as follows: In Sec. II we give a review of CPT. Sec. III discusses the application to the Holstein polaron, while the SCPT for the many-electron case is presented in Sec. IV. Finally, Sec. V contains our conclusions.

## II Cluster perturbation theory

The basic idea of CPTSénéchal et al. (2000, 2002) is to divide the infinite lattice into identical clusters, each containing $`N`$ lattice sites. Adopting the notation of Ref. Sénéchal et al., 2002, the Hamiltonian of the system is written in the form $`H=H_0+V`$ where

$$H_0=\underset{𝑹}{}H_0^𝑹,V=\underset{\stackrel{𝑹,𝑹^{\mathbf{}}}{a,b}}{}V_{a,b}^{𝑹,𝑹^{\mathbf{}}}c_{𝑹a}^{}c_{𝑹^{\mathbf{}}b}^{}.$$
(1)
In the most general formulation of CPT,Sénéchal et al. (2002) the subscripts $`a`$, $`b`$ denote different orbitals within a cluster, but here we restrict ourselves to the case of one orbital per site so that $`a`$, $`b=1,\mathrm{},N`$. The vectors $`𝑹`$, $`𝑹^{\mathbf{}}`$ correspond to sites in the superlattice of clusters (see Ref. Sénéchal et al., 2002). In Eq. (1), $`H_0^𝑹`$ represents a Hamiltonian of a single cluster–containing local interactions only–and $`V`$ describes the hopping between clusters, i.e. the hopping amplitude between site $`a`$ of cluster $`𝑹`$ and site $`b`$ of cluster $`𝑹^{\mathbf{}}`$ is given by the matrix element $`V_{a,b}^{𝑹,𝑹^{\mathbf{}}}`$. Although long-range hopping can also be included,Sénéchal et al. (2002) we shall only consider models with nearest-neighbor hopping so that $`V_{a,b}^{𝑹,𝑹^{\mathbf{}}}=t`$ for neighboring sites $`a`$, $`b`$ in adjacent clusters $`𝑹`$, $`𝑹^{\mathbf{}}`$. Within CPT, an approximation for the Green function of the original system, $`𝒢(𝒌,ϵ)`$, is obtained using an analytical strong-coupling perturbation expansion up to first order of the inter-cluster hopping $`V`$ (for details of the derivation see Ref. Sénéchal et al., 2002). The resulting equation relating the Green function of the original lattice to the energy-dependent cluster Green function $`G(z)`$ readsSénéchal et al. (2000, 2002)

$$𝒢_{ab}(𝑸,z)=\left(\frac{G(z)}{1V(𝑸)G(z)}\right)_{a,b}.$$
(2)
Here $`z=ϵ+\mathrm{i}\eta `$, $`G(z)`$ and $`V(𝑸)`$ stand for $`N\times N`$ matrices, and the inter-cluster hopping $`V`$ has been partially Fourier-transformed exploiting the translational symmetry of the cluster superlattice, with $`𝑸`$ being a wave vector of the reduced Brillouin zone.Sénéchal et al. (2002) Finally, the Green function $`𝒢_{ab}`$ can be transformed from the mixed representation of Eq. (2), real space within a cluster and reciprocal space between clusters, usingSénéchal et al. (2002)

$$𝒢(𝒌,z)=\frac{1}{N}\underset{a,b=1}{\overset{N}{}}𝒢_{ab}(𝒌,z)\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}𝒌(𝒓_a𝒓_b)}$$
(3)
to obtain the familiar representation of the one-electron Green function. $`𝒢(𝒌,z)`$ as given by Eqs. (2) and (3) becomes exact in the atomic limit $`t=0`$ (Refs. Sénéchal et al., 2000, 2002). Moreover, it also reduces to the exact result for the case of non-interacting electronsSénéchal et al. (2000, 2002) since, in this case, Eq. (2) corresponds to the exact resummation of the perturbation series. Finally, CPT also becomes exact in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ (Refs. Sénéchal et al., 2000, 2002). The one-electron cluster Green function at zero temperature

$`G_{ab}(ϵ)=`$ $`\mathrm{\Omega }\left|c_a{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z(H_0E_0)}}c_b^{}\right|\mathrm{\Omega }`$ (4)
$`+\mathrm{\Omega }\left|c_b^{}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z+(H_0E_0)}}c_a\right|\mathrm{\Omega }`$
can be calculated exactly for any pair of site indices $`a`$, $`b`$ in the cluster using, e.g., the Lanczos method. Here $`E_0`$ is the energy of the ground state $`|\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of the cluster, and a spin index has been suppressed in the notation. The two parts of the Green function matrix $`G_{ab}`$ correspond to adding or removing an electron to/from $`|\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Finally, the one-electron spectral function is defined as

$$A(𝒌,ϵ)=\pi ^1\underset{\eta 0^+}{lim}\text{Im}𝒢(𝒌,ϵ+\mathrm{i}\eta ).$$
(5)
Since CPT is based on a perturbation expansion in the inter-cluster hopping, the method can be expected to work especially well in the strong-coupling regime. This is also illustrated by the fact that it becomes exact in the atomic limit, as mentioned above. On the other hand, for weak or intermediate coupling, the electronic kinetic energy is not small compared to the local interactions. Consequently, the size of the cluster has to be large enough in order to obtain accurate results. In fact, from previous applications of CPT, e.g., to the one- and two-dimensional Hubbard model,Sénéchal et al. (2000, 2002); Dahnken et al. (2002) the cluster size $`N`$ emerged as the main control parameter of the method. In the case of the one-dimensional Hubbard model, for example, $`N=1`$ is identical to the Hubbard I approximation,Hubbard (1963) while $`N=2`$ already gives a spectral function that contains most of the relevant features such as short-range antiferromagnetic ordering.Sénéchal et al. (2002) With increasing $`N`$, the CPT Green function approaches systematically the exact result for the infinite system. For identical cluster size, the CPT spectrum contains many more poles with significant residues than the corresponding results of ED. In fact, also in the 1D Hubbard model, the spectrum obtained with CPT on a four-site cluster is already comparable in quality to the ED spectrum for $`N=12`$ (Refs. Sénéchal et al., 2000, 2002). An additional advantage of CPT is the possibility to evaluate $`A(𝒌,ϵ)`$ at continuous wavevectors $`𝒌`$, in contrast to ED which restricts $`𝒌`$ to the $`N`$ vectors of the first Brillouin zone of the cluster, of which only $`N/2+1`$ are physically distinct. Finally, finite temperature Lanczos methods can also be combined with CPT to calculate thermodynamic properties.Aichhorn et al. (2003)

Concerning the application of the Lanczos method to calculate the cluster Green function $`G_{ab}`$, it is important to stress the need for open boundary conditions (BCs). Attempts have been made to use periodic BCs and subtract the corresponding terms afterward in the perturbative treatment of the inter-cluster hopping, but it has been found that the accuracy of the results is much better for the case of open BCs. Although the latter are physically more intuitive in connection with CPT, the calculation of the cluster Green function with the Lanczos method becomes more difficult as one cannot exploit translational symmetry. Other symmetries such as the inversion group can be used in principle, but are usually not as effective in saving computer memory by reducing the size of the corresponding Hamiltonian matrix and Lanczos vectors.

We want to point out that CPT does not in principle rely on the ED method. In fact, the cluster Green function may be calculated using any method available.Sénéchal et al. (2002) Indeed we will see in Sec. IV that it is possible to combine the exact analytic solution for the atomic-limit Green function with CPT, to obtain results which agree surprisingly well with the many-body coherent potential approximation.Hohenadler and Edwards (2002)

In addition to the spectral function considered here, other physical properties of the system can also be calculated with CPT. This includes, e.g., the ground state energy of the infinite system, the electronic kinetic energy or the Fermi surface.Sénéchal et al. (2002) The strength of CPT lies in the calculation of the one-particle Green function and related quantities such as the density of states. The numerical effort is relatively small compared to more sophisticated methods like DMRG or QMC. An additional advantage of CPT is the fact that it can easily be applied also to two-dimensional systems, in contrast to, e.g., DMRG. Finally, an important disadvantage of CPT should be mentioned: Within the current formulation, two-particle Green functions cannot be calculated. Consequently, it is not possible to compute, e.g., the dc conductivity or other interesting two-particle correlation functions.

## III Holstein polaron

The Hamiltonian of the Holstein modelHolstein (1959) reads

$`H=`$ $`t{\displaystyle \underset{ij\sigma }{}}(c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{j\sigma }^{}+\text{h.c})+\omega {\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}b_i^{}b_i`$ (6)
$`g{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}n_i(b_i^{}+b_i),`$
where $`c_{i\sigma }^{}`$ ($`c_{i\sigma }^{}`$) and $`b_i^{}`$ ($`b_i`$) are creation (annihilation) operators for an electron with spin $`\sigma `$ and a phonon of frequency $`\omega `$ at lattice site $`i`$, respectively. The electron occupation number is defined as $`n_i=_\sigma n_{i\sigma }`$ with $`n_{i\sigma }=c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{i\sigma }`$, and the parameters of the model are the hopping integral for nearest-neighbor hopping, $`t`$, and the electron-phonon coupling strength, denoted as $`g`$. It is common to define a dimensionless coupling parameter $`\lambda =g^2/(2\omega W)`$, where $`2W`$ is the bandwidth of the bare electron band, and a dimensionless phonon frequency $`\overline{\omega }=\omega /t`$. The Holstein model can then be described using only these two parameters. Moreover, we shall express all energies in units of $`t`$. As mentioned above, here we only consider the one-electron limit of Hamiltonian (6) which is also called the Holstein polaron problem. Although there is only a single electron in the system, the coupling to the phonons makes it a complex many-body problem, which has been the focus of much theoretical work. The restriction to one electron greatly simplifies calculations with the Lanczos method since both, the number of required phonon statesMarsiglio (1995) and the number of electron configurations grow noticeably with the number of particles. However, in Sec. IV, we will use the exact result for the atomic-limit Green function and CPT for a single-site cluster to calculate the spectral function of the Holstein model of spinless fermions at quarter-filling.

Following other authors,Ranninger and Thibblin (1992); Marsiglio (1993); Alexandrov et al. (1994); Fehske et al. (1997); Robin (1997); de Mello and Ranninger (1997) we calculate the Green function

$$𝒢(𝒌,ϵ)=0\left|c_𝒌\frac{1}{ϵH}c_𝒌^{}\right|0,$$
(7)
where $`|0`$ represents the ground state of the phonons and the vacuum state for the electrons. The spin index can be suppressed due to the symmetry of the problem. The corresponding one-electron spectral function is given by Eq. (5).

Compared to the class of Hubbard models for which CPT has been originally developed, we are facing an additional difficulty arising from the à priori infinite number of allowed phonon states. We employ a widely used truncation schemeMarsiglio (1993) of the phonon Hilbert space which is spanned by the basis states

$$|r_{\text{ph}}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{1}{\sqrt{\nu _i^{(r)}!}}\left(b_i^{}\right)^{\nu _i^{(r)}}|0_{\text{ph}},$$
(8)
where $`\nu _i^{(r)}`$ denotes the number of phonons at lattice site $`i`$. Now the truncation consists in restricting the basis states to the subset with

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\nu _i^{(r)}N_{\text{ph}}$$
(9)
leading to $`(N_{\text{ph}}+N1)!/(N_{\text{ph}}!(N1)!)`$ allowed phonon configurations. The convergence of the results with $`N_{\text{ph}}`$ can be monitored using the ground-state energy $`E`$ of the cluster with open BCs. In all results of this paper, $`N_{\text{ph}}`$ was chosen such that the relative error for the ground state with one electron, $`|E(N_{\text{ph}}+1)E(N_{\text{ph}})|/|E(N_{\text{ph}})|`$, was smaller than $`10^5`$. We find that convergence of $`E`$ also ensures a well-converged spectral function. Moreover, the influence of the number of phonons kept in the calculation is much larger for the incoherent part of the spectrum than for the coherent, low-energy quasi-particle peak which determines $`E`$ (see Sec. III.1). Finally, a refined truncation scheme which allows for extremely accurate results (relative error $`<10^7`$) has been proposed by Wellein et al. Wellein et al. (1996).

Before we come to a discussion of the results obtained with CPT, we want to comment on some of the existing work on spectral properties of the Holstein polaron. As indicated before, the most reliable method to calculate dynamic quantities, such as $`A(𝒌,ϵ)`$, is ED which has been used extensively in the past. Ranninger and Thibblin (1992); Marsiglio (1993); Alexandrov et al. (1994); Wellein et al. (1996); Wellein and Fehske (1997); Fehske et al. (1997, 2000); de Mello and Ranninger (1997); Robin (1997) Most of this work has focused on the polaron band structure $`E(𝒌)`$ instead of the spectral function, since it is often easier to interpret, especially in the strong-coupling regime where the structure of $`A(𝒌,ϵ)`$ is rather complicated. However, as pointed out by Wellein et al.,Wellein et al. (1996) the two quantities are closely related. In fact the position of the lowest-energy peak in $`A(𝒌,ϵ)`$, obtained from the Green function (7), follows exactly the polaron band structure as we vary $`𝒌`$. Moreover, as discussed by Wellein and Fehske,Wellein and Fehske (1997) the integral over this first peak is equivalent to the quasi-particle (QP) weight $`z(𝒌)=|\psi _{0,𝒌}^{(1)}|c_𝒌^{}|0|^2`$, where $`\psi _{0,𝒌}^{(1)}`$ denotes the lowest-energy single-polaron state in the sector with total momentum $`𝒌`$. Other numerical methods which have been used to calculate the spectrum of the Holstein polaron include DMRGJeckelmann and White (1998); Zhang et al. (1999) (in one dimension), finite-cluster strong coupling perturbation theoryStephan (1996) (1D, 2D), QMCKornilovitch (1998, 1999) (1D–3D), and variational methodsRomero et al. (1999); Bonča et al. (1999); Ku et al. (2002) (1D–4D).

### III.1 Comparison with Exact Diagonalization

As mentioned above, the critical parameter of CPT is the number of sites in the cluster. To demonstrate the advantage of CPT over the standard ED method (see, e.g., Ref. Marsiglio, 1993) we present in Fig. 1 the spectral function $`A(0,ϵ)`$ in one dimension for different cluster sizes $`N`$. We chose $`\overline{\omega }=2`$ and $`\lambda =0.5`$, which is the regime where an extended polaron exists (see, e.g., Ref. Wellein et al., 1996). Consequently, significant finite-size effects can be expected for small clusters, which is exactly what we see in the ED results. For the latter periodic BCs have been used. Fig. 1 clearly shows that the shape of the large QP peak at $`ϵ2.4`$ changes very little with increasing $`N`$ for both, ED and CPT, but a noticeable shift can be observed in the case of the ED spectra as we go from $`N=2`$ to $`N=4`$. The influence of $`N`$ is much larger for the incoherent part of the spectrum, which lies about a distance $`\overline{\omega }`$ above the QP peak. The ED spectra display sharp, well-separated peaks, whereas the corresponding CPT data–containing many more poles–resembles much closer the expected results for an infinite system. The latter has been investigated by MarsiglioMarsiglio (1993) using Migdal-Eliashberg theory. For the same parameters, he found that the QP peak remains almost unchanged as $`N\mathrm{}`$, while the incoherent part evolves into a continuous band that fits well to the CPT results even for rather small clusters $`N6`$. We have also compared $`A(k,ϵ)`$ for $`k0`$, and the observed influence of finite-size effects agrees perfectly with previous work of Wellein and Fehske:Wellein and Fehske (1997) As $`k`$ increases from $`k=0`$ to $`k=\pi `$, the size of the polaron increases, and the deviations of the ED data from the CPT results become larger. In the strong-coupling or small-polaron regime, not shown here, finite-size effects are known to be small. Consequently, even for very small clusters, ED and CPT both give well-converged results for the QP peak which determines, e.g., the ground-state energy. However, in the case of ED, the incoherent part of the spectrum for wavevector $`k`$, corresponding to excitations of an electron with momentum $`q`$ and a phonon with momentum $`kq`$, still exhibits the typical multi-peak structure of a finite system, whereas the CPT results again reproduce much better the incoherent band found in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, as mentioned in Sec. II, CPT allows to calculate $`A(k,ϵ)`$ for continuous $`k`$, while ED on a $`N`$-site cluster is restricted to $`N/2+1`$ physically non-equivalent wavevectors.

A closer look at the CPT results in Fig. 1 reveals small additional peaks–not present in the ED spectra–which move from the incoherent part of $`A(k,ϵ)`$ towards the QP peak with increasing $`N`$. Additional calculations for larger clusters have shown that these peaks vanish systematically with increasing $`N`$, so that the CPT spectrum approaches the exact result in the thermodynamic limit $`N=\mathrm{}`$, as expected. Consequently, these peaks are not a defect of CPT, but represent finite-size effects which arise from the approximate treatment of inter-cluster hopping. The latter, in combination with the open BCs used to calculate the cluster Green function, leads to a system which does not have perfect translational symmetry. The situation is equivalent to ED with open BCs: For $`N\mathrm{}`$ the spectrum approaches the results of an infinite cluster. However, in contrast to CPT, the effects for finite $`N`$ are much more significant. Moreover, these finite-size effects manifest themselves in a slightly different way than in the case of periodic BCs, where no additional peaks–showing the afore mentioned behavior–are found. In the case of CPT, already for the small cluster sizes shown in Fig. 1, the spectral weight of these additional peaks is extremely small compared to the rest of the spectrum. For other values of $`\overline{\omega }`$ and $`\lambda `$, a similar behavior has been found. Although not discussed by the authors, similar effects can also be expected for the case of the Hubbard model,Sénéchal et al. (2000, 2002); Dahnken et al. (2002) although they may be larger for the Holstein polaron due to the higher sensitivity of phonon-excitations to the BCs.

### III.2 Results: One dimension

In one dimension, the general picture emerging from previous work on the Holstein polaron problem is as follows (see e.g. Ref. Wellein et al., 1996 and references therein): In the non-adiabatic regime ($`\overline{\omega }>1`$), a so-called Lang-Firsov polaron is formed which, due to the instant response of the phonons to the electronic motion, represents a very localized object. As the electron-phonon coupling increases, its mobility or effective hopping amplitude exhibits a gradual decrease, and for strong coupling a nearly-localized small polaron moving in an exponentially narrow band exists. In contrast, in the adiabatic ($`\overline{\omega }<1`$), weak-coupling regime the electron drags with it an extended cloud of phonons. This object is usually called a ‘large polaron’. At $`\lambda 1`$, a sharp but continuousLowen (1988) transition to a less mobile small Holstein polaron takes place. The two conditions for small-polaron formation, independent of the value of $`\overline{\omega }`$, are $`\lambda >1`$ and $`\lambda /\overline{\omega }>0.5`$.Wellein et al. (1996) Moreover, as pointed out by Capone et al.,Capone et al. (1997) the formation of small polarons is determined by $`\lambda >1`$ for $`\overline{\omega }<1`$ and by $`\lambda /\overline{\omega }>0.5`$ for $`\overline{\omega }>1`$. Here we restrict ourselves to the most interesting regime of phonon energies comparable to the electronic hopping, i.e. $`\overline{\omega }1`$. For intermediate $`\overline{\omega }`$ and $`\lambda `$, no reliable analytical methods exist, so that numerical approaches represent the most important source of information.

In Fig. 2 we present results for $`A(k,ϵ)`$ for $`\overline{\omega }=0.8`$, $`\lambda =0.25`$ and $`N=14`$, as well as a density plot of the same data. As mentioned before, the spectrum consists of a low-lying QP peak and an incoherent part at higher energies. The physics behind the observed behavior of $`A(k,ϵ)`$ has been discussed, e.g., by Stephan,Stephan (1996) and is typical for electronic systems weakly interacting with dispersionless optical phonons. For small $`k`$, most of the spectral weight resides in the QP peak which corresponds to a weakly-dressed electron. For the case considered here, in which the phonon energy lies inside the bare electron band, electron and phonon hybridize and repel each other near the point where they would be degenerate, i.e. for $`|E(k)E(0)|\overline{\omega }`$. This coincides with the region where the flattening of the polaron band occurs and, in fact, for larger $`k`$ the phonon becomes the lowest-energy excitation. However, most of the spectral weight is contained in the broad, incoherent band which follows the free-electron dispersion. The density plot in Fig. 2 also contains data for the polaron band structure $`E(k)`$ which has been obtained by Bonča et al. Bonča et al. (1999) using their variational ED method. The latter has been shown to give very accurate results for the infinite system, although it becomes somewhat less accurate in the strong coupling regime and for large values of $`k`$ (Ref. Bonča et al., 1999). As mentioned before, $`E(k)`$ corresponds to the lowest-energy band in $`A(k,ϵ)`$ and we find very good agreement with our data throughout the Brillouin zone.

Fig. 3 shows results for a similar phonon frequency $`\overline{\omega }=1.0`$ but for stronger electron-phonon coupling $`\lambda =0.5`$ and $`N=12`$. Compared to the weak-coupling case discussed above, the polaron band is separated more clearly from the incoherent part of the spectrum and, as expected, the band-width is further reduced. Additionally, even more spectral weight has been transfered to the high-energy, incoherent band. On top of that, a gap shows up in the upper band at about $`k=\pi /2`$. Again the polaron band fits very well the results for $`E(k)`$ of Bonča et al. Bonča et al. (1999)

We next consider the case of intermediate coupling $`\lambda =1.0`$, with $`\overline{\omega }=1`$ and $`N=8`$ (Fig. 4). For these parameters, an extended polaron exists which still has a relatively large band-width, compared to the small-polaron case discussed below. Moreover, the incoherent part of the spectrum has split up into several sub-bands separated in energy by $`\overline{\omega }`$, which correspond to excitations of an electron and one or more phonons. As before, we find very good agreement between the low-energy band in $`A(k,ϵ)`$ and the polaron band energy $`E(k)`$ calculated by Bonča.Bonča

Finally, in Fig. 5, we report the spectral function for $`\overline{\omega }=1`$ and $`\lambda =2.0`$. The results have been obtained using only a four-site cluster, which is sufficient to get very good agreement with Bonča’s data for $`E(k)`$, with only minor deviations at large values of $`k`$ where finite-size effects are most pronounced, as discussed in Sec. III.1. This is a consequence of the predominantly local effects in the strong-coupling regime, which also manifest themselves in terms of a very narrow polaron band.

### III.3 Results: Two dimensions

To illustrate the applicability of CPT, we also calculated the spectral function of the Holstein polaron on a 2D cluster with $`N=8`$, which has the shape of a tilted square. In contrast to CPT in one dimension, the choice for the shape of the cluster is not unique, and different clusters may lead to slightly different results. This possibility has been investigated for the Hubbard model, and the effect of the cluster shape on $`A(𝒌,ϵ)`$ was found to be rather small.Sénéchal et al. (2002) For the case of the Holstein polaron, where the physics is dominated by local correlations, the influence of the geometry of the cluster is expected to be even smaller.

As discussed, e.g., by Wellein et al.,Wellein et al. (1996) similar to 1D, a small polaron is formed in two dimensions provided that $`\lambda >1`$ and $`\lambda /\overline{\omega }>0.5`$. While the behavior in the non-adiabatic regime ($`\overline{\omega }>1`$) is only weakly affected by dimensionality,Wellein et al. (1996); Capone et al. (1998) important differences exist in the adiabatic regime $`\overline{\omega }<1`$: In contrast to the one-dimensional case, where a large polaron is formed for any $`\lambda >0`$, the electron remains quasi-free for $`\lambda <1`$, as indicated by an almost unaffected effective hopping amplitude. Moreover, for the same value of $`\overline{\omega }`$, the cross-over to a small polaron at $`\lambda 1`$ is much sharper in 2D than in 1D.

Here we simply aim to demonstrate the possibility of calculating the 2D spectral function with CPT. Therefore, we restrict ourselves to one set of parameters, namely $`\overline{\omega }=2.0`$ and $`\lambda =0.945`$, which has also been treated using finite-cluster strong-coupling perturbation theoryStephan (1996). In contrast to standard SCPT based on the Lang-Firsov transformation, the latter has been shown to give reliable results also for intermediate $`\lambda `$ and $`\overline{\omega }`$, which is a consequence of the inclusion of longer-ranged effects.Stephan (1996); Wellein and Fehske (1997) While in the 1D case the density plot of $`A(𝒌,ϵ)`$ contains all 100 values of $`k`$ used in CPT, in two dimensions we have used 400 points in $`𝒌`$ space. However only 60, lying along $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\text{MX}\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, are shown in Fig. 6.

From the above discussion, and for the parameters considered here, we expect a rather broad polaron band. This is clearly confirmed by the spectral function shown in Fig. 6, and the lowest-energy band in our data resembles closely the findings of Stephan (Fig. 2 of Ref. Stephan, 1996). In particular, similar to the one-dimensional case considered in Sec. III.2, a flattening of the polaron band near $`(\pi /2,\pi )`$ is found which has also been noted by Wellein et al. Wellein et al. (1996) Above the polaron band, also similar to 1D, there lie several other incoherent bands which correspond to multi-phonon excitations and are therefore separated in energy by $`\overline{\omega }`$.

In summary, the results of this section clearly demonstrate that CPT is applicable not only in the strong-coupling regime, but also for weak and intermediate electron-phonon interaction. The quality of the resulting spectra is superior to ED data for the same cluster size, and very good agreement has been found with the variational method of Bonča et al. Bonča et al. (1999) in one dimension. Moreover, we have shown that CPT also allows accurate calculations of $`A(𝒌,ϵ)`$ in two dimensions.

## IV Many-electron case

In the last section, we have restricted ourselves to the Holstein model with one electron. Although CPT has been successfully applied, e.g., to the many-electron Hubbard model,Sénéchal et al. (2000, 2002); Dahnken et al. (2002); Aichhorn et al. (2003) the electron-phonon coupling in the Holstein model greatly complicates calculations using Lanczos ED. For finite electron density, we combine CPT with the exact analytic result for the Green function in the atomic limit. For the atomic limit, the Green function has been obtained for many models using the equation-of-motion method,Mahan (1990) and here it will allow us to obtain results for the many-electron case which will be compared with the many-body coherent potential approximation discussed below.

### IV.1 Many-body coherent potential approximation

Extending previous work of Edwards et al. Edwards et al. (1999); Green and Edwards (1999) for the pure double-exchange (DE) model (see, e.g., Ref. Edwards, 2002), GreenGreen (2001) studied the Holstein-DE model using a many-body coherent potential approximation (CPA) which, owing to the more complicated form of the Holstein-DE Hamiltonian, constitutes a considerable extension of the Hubbard III approximation.Hubbard (1964) The many-body CPA successfully describes many aspects of the manganites, and we refer the reader to a recent review of this work by Edwards.Edwards (2002) Here we only consider the special case of a completely saturated ferromagnetic state at temperature $`T=0`$, with all itinerant spins having $``$ spin, say. Consequently, the DE term which couples local and itinerant spinsEdwards (2002) becomes merely a constant shift in energy, and the Holstein-DE model is equivalent to the pure Holstein model of spinless fermions, i.e. with no doubly-occupied sites.Hohenadler and Edwards (2002) An important feature of the many-body CPA is that the one-electron Green function reduces to the exact atomic limit for $`t=0`$, which takes the formHohenadler and Edwards (2002)

$$G_{}^{\text{AL}}(ϵ)=\mathrm{e}^\alpha \left\{\frac{1}{ϵ}+\underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{\alpha ^r}{r!}\left(\frac{n}{ϵ+\omega r}+\frac{1n}{ϵ\omega r}\right)\right\},$$
(10)
where $`\alpha =g^2/\omega ^2`$ and the polaron binding energy $`(g^2/\omega )n`$ ($`n=0`$, 1) has been absorbed into the chemical potential. The general result for $`G^{\text{AL}}`$ of the Holstein model with electrons of both spins has been given by Green,Green (2001) and we drop the spin-index in the sequel. As discussed by Edwards,Edwards (2002) for an elliptic density of states, the local Green function $`𝒢(z)`$ for complex energy $`z`$ satisfies the CPA equation

$$𝒢(z)=G^{\text{AL}}(zW^2𝒢/4)$$
(11)
and the self-energy can be obtained fromEdwards (2002)

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(z)=z𝒢^1W^2𝒢/4.$$
(12)
Finally, the one-electron spectral function is given by

$$A(𝒌,ϵ)=\pi ^1\text{Im}[zϵ_𝒌\mathrm{\Sigma }(z)],$$
(13)
where

$$ϵ_𝒌=2t\underset{m=1}{\overset{3}{}}\mathrm{cos}k_m$$
(14)
is the band energy for wavevector $`𝒌`$.

In order to compare with angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) data on the bilayer manganite $`\mathrm{La}_{1.2}\mathrm{Sr}_{1.8}\mathrm{Mn}_2\mathrm{O}_7`$, nominally with $`n=0.6`$, Hohenadler and Edwards chose a strong-electron phonon coupling $`g/W=0.2`$, as deduced from the low Curie temperature of this material.Hohenadler and Edwards (2002) To simplify calculations, they also used $`n=0.5`$ for which case the chemical potential $`\mu =0`$ by symmetry. We want to point out that the many-body CPA assumes a homogeneous system, so that no tendencies toward charge-density-wave order occur as $`n`$ is varied.Green (2001) As in previous work,Green (2001) Hohenadler and Edwards used $`W=1`$eV and $`\omega /W=0.05`$ (see also Ref. Edwards, 2002). The resultsHohenadler and Edwards (2002) for $`A(𝒌,ϵ)`$, shown in Fig. 7, support the theory of Alexandrov and BratkovskyAlexandrov and Bratkovsky (1999) that in these manganites, small polarons exist in the ferromagnetic state. A similar interpretation of the experimental data–based on standard small-polaron theory–had also been given by Dessau et al.Dessau et al. (1998) Well away from the Fermi surface, a well-defined peak exists which broadens as $`𝒌`$ approaches the Fermi level $`E_\text{F}`$ at $`y=0.5`$. If $`y`$ is increased further, most of the spectral weight is transfered above $`E_\text{F}`$. Moreover, the peaks never approach the Fermi level closely, in agreement with the experimental data. This indicates the existence of a pseudogap in the one-electron density of states. However, in the gap, there exist small polaron sub-bands (see Fig. 4 of Ref. Green, 2001) and one of them, at the Fermi level, presumably gives rise to the low but finite conductivity of the system. As discussed by Edwards,Edwards (2002) the many-body CPA does not give coherent states with infinite lifetime at the Fermi level, even for $`T=0`$. This is typical for any CPA, and here it leads to an incoherent polaron sub-band around the Fermi level. Nevertheless, outside the central band around $`E_\text{F}`$, the imaginary part of the self-energy displays the correct behavior, i.e. it vanishes in the gap, between the polaron bands.

### IV.2 SCPT

In this section we use the exact result for the atomic-limit Green function of the Holstein model of spinless fermions, $`G^{\text{AL}}`$ (Eq. (10)), and combine it with CPT to compare the resulting spectrum with the many-body CPA. For this case of a single-site cluster ($`ab`$), Eqs. (2) and (3) reduce to a single equation for the one-electron Green functionSénéchal et al. (2002)

$$𝒢(𝒌,z)=\frac{G^{\text{AL}}(z)}{1ϵ_𝒌G^{\text{AL}}(z)}=\frac{1}{zϵ_𝒌\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\text{AL}}(z)}$$
(15)
with $`z=ϵ+\mathrm{i}\eta `$ and $`ϵ_𝒌`$ as defined by Eq. (14). Hence, as mentioned before, CPT for $`N=1`$ is equivalent to the Hubbard I approximation,Hubbard (1963) but here with the more complicated atomic-limit Green function of the Holstein model given by Eq. (10). In the sequel, we shall refer to this approximation as SCPT. This is justified by the fact that the approach becomes exact for $`t=0`$. Historically, a similar strong-coupling expansion for the Hubbard modelPairault et al. (1998, 2000)–including higher order corrections–has been the starting point for the development of CPT.

Before we discuss the results, we would like to comment on the quality of the SCPT used here: While the many-body CPA requires a self-consistent, iterative solution of Eq. (11), the SCPT Green function is obtained from the Lehmann representation of the atomic-limit Green function (10), and the subsequent use of the resulting self-energy $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\text{AL}}`$ in Eq. (15). Similar to the original Hubbard I approximation,Hubbard (1963) the resulting Green function consists of delta peaks corresponding to states with infinite lifetime. However, due to the poles in the self-energy, there are no states at the Fermi level and the system is not a Fermi liquid. As in the many-body CPA, $`𝒢`$ depends on $`𝒌`$ only through the band energy $`ϵ_𝒌`$, whereas the self-energy is local. This reliance on the atomic limit is reasonable in the strong-coupling regime considered here, where small polarons move in an extremely narrow band. Consequently, the simple perturbative treatment of the hopping term can be expected to give sensible results. Nevertheless, in SCPT, we have to use an artificial imaginary part $`\eta `$–which does not depend on energy–to obtain peaks of finite width. Although for large enough $`\eta `$ there will be states at the Fermi level, the latter have only finite lifetime even for $`T=0`$. Hence, both SCPT and the many-body CPA never give a Fermi liquid, but the self-consistent CPA Green function yields an imaginary part of the self-energy that shows the correct, strong energy-dependence except for the region inside the very small, incoherent polaron band around $`E_\text{F}`$, as discussed in Sec. IV.1. Thus, as could be expected from the Hubbard I-like approximation in Eq. (15), the many-body CPA is superior to SCPT, although both approaches become exact in the atomic limit.

The spectral function obtained with SCPT using Eq. (5), also shown in Fig. 7, resembles quite closely the results of Hohenadler and Edwards.Hohenadler and Edwards (2002) Although there are some differences concerning the width and the position of the peaks, the overall behavior is very similar. In particular, the broadening of the QP peak near the Fermi surface at $`y=0.5`$ is well reproduced. Clearly, the success of SCPT consists in a surprisingly good agreement with the CPA data for all $`𝒌`$. Despite this agreement, CPT fails to reproduce the polaron sub-bands, and the sharp edge to the pseudogap for large values of $`y`$. Moreover, the gap is larger than in the CPA data. These shortcomings are a consequence of the rather crude approximation. Nevertheless, keeping in mind the simplicity of the ansatz, the agreement with the many-body CPA is satisfactory. We would like to point out that the SCPT presented here can also be generalized to the Holstein-DE model with quantum spins (e.g. $`S=3/2`$ appropriate for the manganitesEdwards (2002)) and at finite temperature, using the atomic-limit Green function given by Edwards.Edwards (2002) Finally, the approximation could be systematically improved by increasing the number of sites in the cluster, which is exactly the idea behind CPT.

However, for $`N>1`$ the cluster Green function can no longer be calculated analytically and one has to resort to numerical methods such as ED as in Sec. III. Such calculations are extremely difficult for the case of quarter-filled two- or three dimensional clusters, small phonon frequency and strong electron-phonon coupling. Future work along these lines–employing optimized phonon approachesWeiße et al. (2000) (see also Sec. V)–is highly desirable in order to assess the quality of the many-body CPA results.

## V Conclusions

We have applied cluster perturbation theory to the Holstein polaron problem in one and two dimensions, and comparison with existing work has revealed very good agreement. In combination with the Lanczos method to calculate the cluster Green function, the method gives reliable results for the one-electron spectral function $`A(𝒌,ϵ)`$, which become exact in the weak- and strong-coupling limit, $`\lambda =0`$ and $`t=0`$, respectively, and for the case of an infinite cluster. Calculations for continuous values of the wavevector $`𝒌`$ are possible and, more importantly, finite-size effects are significantly reduced compared to standard ED. Our results extend previous applications of CPT to Hubbard and $`tJ`$ models, showing that the method is also well-suited for electron-phonon models with local interactions. As pointed out before, for more than one electron in the system, it becomes increasingly difficult to include enough phonon states so as to obtain converged results. Future work may therefore combine optimized phonon approachesWeiße et al. (2000) and CPT to investigate more complicated problems such as the many-electron case, or extended models including, e.g., a Hubbard term. The major advantage of such an approach is the possibility of using relatively small clusters while still obtaining results which are only weakly influenced by finite-size effects.

Additionally, we have used the exact atomic-limit Green function of the Holstein model of spinless fermions, to calculate the spectral function for the case quarter-filling and strong electron-phonon coupling. The results of this approximation at the Hubbard I level agree surprisingly well with the many-body CPA.

###### Acknowledgements.

M.H. and M.A. were supported by DOC \[Doctoral Scholarship Program of the Austrian Academy of Sciences\]. We are grateful to Janez Bonča for providing us with previously unpublished data, and we acknowledge helpful discussions with David Sénéchal and Maria Daghofer. Finally, we would like to thank David M. Edwards for making valuable comments on the manuscript.


text:
# The CDF Silicon Vertex TriggerTalk presented at the 9th Pisa Meeting on Advanced Detectors, La Biodola, Isola d’Elba, May 25-31, 2003.

## 1 CDF TRIGGER OVERVIEW

The recently upgraded Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experiment  pursues a broad physics program at Fermilab’s Tevatron proton-antiproton collider, comprising topics as diverse as top quark production and charmed meson decay. In the present Tevatron data-taking period (“Run 2”), the c.m. energy is $`\sqrt{s}=1.96`$ TeV, the bunch-crossing interval is 396 ns (with a possible upgrade to 132 ns for high luminosity), and peak luminosities are $`0.5\times 10^{32}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$ to date and climbing toward a goal of $`2\times 10^{32}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$. CDF’s new drift chamber  and silicon detector  are discussed in detail elsewhere in these proceedings.

One challenge for a hadron collider experiment is to extract signals of interest efficiently from much larger backgrounds. To illustrate the orders of magnitude, the total inelastic cross-section at the Tevatron is about 50 mb, while the $`b`$-quark cross-section within CDF’s acceptance (transverse momentum $`p_T>6`$ GeV, rapidity $`|y|<1`$) is about 10 $`\mu `$b, and the $`t`$-quark cross-section is about 5 pb. At luminosities above $`0.35\times 10^{32}\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1`$, the mean number of interactions per beam crossing exceeds 1. Reducing the 1.7 MHz beam-crossing rate to CDF’s 70 Hz DAQ output rate implies a trigger rejection of 25000.

Good background rejection in the trigger requires fast identification of distinctive signal signatures. In the CDF trigger, many important signatures exploit fast charged-particle track reconstruction in the bending plane of the spectrometer, transverse to the beam axis. The trigger matches drift chamber tracks with EM calorimeter showers, muon chamber stubs, and silicon detector data, respectively, to identify electrons, muons, and $`b`$ and $`c`$ daughters.

CDF uses a three-level trigger. On each beam crossing (396 or 132 ns), the entire front end digitizes (silicon samples and holds). A 5.5 $`\mu `$s pipeline of programmable logic forms axial drift chamber tracks and can match these with calorimeter and muon-chamber data. On Level 1 accept, front-end boards store the event to one of four buffers (silicon digitizes and transmits to the silicon trigger and event builder). Level 2 processing, with about 30 $`\mu `$s latency, adds fast silicon tracking, calorimeter clustering, and EM calorimeter shower-max data. The final Level 2 decision is made in software on a single-board computer, so a wider range of thresholds and derived quantities is possible (e.g. transverse mass of muon track pairs), even for information that is in principle available at Level 1. On Level 2 accept, front-end VME crates transmit to the event builder. At Level 3, a farm of 250 commodity PCs runs full event reconstruction. This is the first stage at which three-dimensional tracks (e.g. for invariant mass calculation) are available. Events passing Level 3 are written to disk.

While some optimization remains to be done, the maximum output at L1/L2/L3 is approximately 35000/350/70 Hz. Each of these rates is an order of magnitude higher than in CDF’s 1992-96 running period. In addition, drift chamber tracking has moved from L2 to L1, and silicon tracking has moved from offline to L2. These three changes allow CDF to collect large samples of fully hadronic bottom and charm decays, by requiring two drift chamber tracks at L1, requiring each track to have a significant (at least 120 $`\mu `$m) impact parameter at L2, and performing full software tracking at L3 to confirm the hardware tracking. The samples made possible by CDF’s front-end, trigger, and DAQ upgrades have yielded novel physics results  at an early stage of Run 2.

CDF’s Level 1 drift chamber hardware track processor, XFT , is a cornerstone of the CDF trigger. For every bunch crossing, with 1.9 $`\mu `$s latency, it finds tracks of $`p_T>1.5`$ GeV with 96% efficiency. XFT obtains coarse hit data (two time bins) from each axial drift chamber wire, finds line segments in the 12 measurement layers of each axial superlayer, then links segments from these four superlayers to form track candidates. XFT’s resolutions, $`\sigma (\frac{1}{p_T})=1.7\%/\mathrm{GeV}`$ and $`\sigma (\varphi _0)=5`$ mrad, are only about a factor of 10 coarser than those of the offline reconstruction.

## 2 SVT TRACK PROCESSING

For each event passing Level 1, the Silicon Vertex Trigger (SVT)  swims each XFT track into the silicon detector, associates silicon hit data from four detector planes, and produces a transverse impact parameter measurement of 35 $`\mu `$m resolution (50 $`\mu `$m when convoluted with the beam spot) with a mean latency of 24 $`\mu `$s, 9 $`\mu `$s of which are spent waiting for the first silicon data. SVT’s impact parameter resolution for $`p_T2`$ GeV is comparable to that of offline tracks that do not use Layer 00 (mounted on the beam pipe), which is not yet available in SVT.

For fiducial offline muon tracks from $`J/\psi `$ decay, having $`p_T>1.5`$ GeV and hits in the four silicon planes used by SVT, measured SVT efficiency is 85%. The most suitable definition of efficiency in a given context depends on what one aims to optimize: restricting the denominator to $`p_T>2`$ GeV increases the efficiency to 90%, while relaxing the requirements on which layers contain offline silicon hits reduces the efficiency to 70%, and looser fiducial requirements reduce the efficiency further; the ultimate denominator for SVT would be all XFT-matched offline silicon tracks that are useful for physics analysis.

SVT is a system of 150 custom 9U VME boards containing FPGAs, RAMs, FIFOs, and one ASIC design. CPUs are used only for initialization and monitoring. SVT’s input comprises 144 optical fibers, 1 Gbit/s each, and one 0.2 Mbit/s LVDS cable; its output is one 0.7 Mbit/s LVDS cable.

Three key features allow SVT to carry out in 15 $`\mu `$s a silicon track reconstruction that typically requires $`𝒪(0.1\mathrm{s})`$ in software: a highly parallel/pipelined architecture, custom VLSI pattern recognition, and a linear track fit in fast FPGAs.

The silicon detector’s modular, symmetric geometry lends itself to parallel processing. SVT’s first stage, converting a sparsified list of channel numbers and pulse heights into charge-weighted hit centroids, processes $`12\times 6\times 5`$ (azimuthal $`\times `$ longitudinal $`\times `$ radial) silicon planes in 360 identical FPGAs. The overall structure of SVT reflects the detector’s 12-fold azimuthal symmetry. Each $`30^{}`$ azimuthal slice is processed in its own asynchronous, data-driven pipeline that first computes hit centroids, then finds coincidences to form track candidates, then fits the silicon hits and drift chamber track for each candidate to extract circle parameters and a goodness of fit.

In SVT’s usual configuration, a track candidate requires a coincidence of an XFT track and hits in a specified four (out of five available) silicon layers. To define a coincidence, each detector plane is divided into bins of programmable width, typically 250-700 $`\mu `$m, and XFT tracks are swum to the outer radius of the silicon detector and binned with 3 mm typical width. For each $`30^{}`$ slice, the set of 32K most probable coincidences (“patterns”) is computed offline in a Monte Carlo program and loaded into 256 custom VLSI associative memory (AM) chips. For every event, each binned hit is presented in parallel to the 256 AM chips, and the hit mask for each of the 128 patterns per chip is accumulated in parallel. When the last hit has been read, a priority encoder enumerates the patterns for which all five layers have a matching hit. The processing time is thus linear in the total number of hits in each slice and linear in the number of matched patterns.

There is no exact linear relationship between the transverse parameters $`c`$, $`\varphi `$, $`d`$ of a track in a solenoidal field and the coordinates at which the track meets a set of flat detector planes: the coordinates are more closely linear in $`\frac{c}{\mathrm{cos}^3\varphi }`$, $`\mathrm{tan}\varphi `$, and $`\frac{d}{\mathrm{cos}\varphi }`$. But for $`p_T>2`$ GeV, $`|d|<1`$ mm, $`|\varphi |<15^{}`$, a linear fit biases $`d`$ by at most a few percent. By linear regression to Monte Carlo data, we derive the $`3\times 6`$ coefficients $`𝐕`$ and 3 intercepts $`\stackrel{}{p}_0`$ relating $`\stackrel{}{p}=(c,\varphi ,d)`$ to the vector $`\stackrel{}{x}`$ of $`c_{\mathrm{XFT}}`$, $`\varphi _{\mathrm{XFT}}`$, and four silicon hits: $`\stackrel{}{p}=\stackrel{}{p}_0+𝐕\stackrel{}{x}`$. The same regression produces coefficients $`𝐂`$ and intercepts $`\stackrel{}{\chi }_0`$, corresponding to the fit’s 3 degrees of freedom, with which we calculate constraints $`\stackrel{}{\chi }=\stackrel{}{\chi _0}+𝐂\stackrel{}{x}`$ and the usual $`\chi ^2=|\stackrel{}{\chi }|^2`$. In the start-of-run download, we precompute $`\stackrel{}{p}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\chi }`$ for the coordinates at the edge of each pattern and store them in flash memory. Using each candidate’s pattern ID as a hint, the fitter board computes corrections to $`\stackrel{}{p}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\chi }`$ with respect to the pattern edge, using 8-bit multiplication in 6 parallel FPGAs, in 250 ns per fitted track. Tracks passing programmable goodness-of-fit cuts propagate downstream.

## 3 SVT DIAGNOSTIC FEATURES

An SVT whose processing time, resolution, or inefficiency were 20-30% larger would still have enabled novel physics results at CDF. But an SVT that could not be commissioned quickly or operated reliably would have been a failure. Several design features of SVT contributed to its rapid commissioning and reliable operation.

The essence of SVT’s component-based architecture is captured by the SVT cable and the SVT Merger board. Nearly all SVT internal data—hit centroids, drift chamber tracks, pattern IDs, track candidates, and fitted SVT tracks—travel as LVDS signals on common 26-conductor-pair cables carrying data bits, a data strobe, a flow-control signal, and a ground pair. The data are variable-length packets of 21-bit words, plus end-packet and end-event bits. Data fan-in and fan-out are performed inside FPGAs, not on backplanes, by a universal Merger board that concatenates event data for up to four SVT cable inputs and provides two SVT cable outputs. Every fan-in stage compares event IDs for its sources and can drive a backplane error line on mismatch. A parity bit for each cable-event provides a basic check of data integrity. It is illustrative of SVT’s design strategy that the SVT cable and Merger board were prototyped and tested before the boards to cluster hits, find and fit tracks, etc.

The Merger board is reminiscent of the fan-in/fan-out modules found in NIM trigger electronics, and lends itself to the same kind of inventive ad-hoc cabling for producing quick results in test stands and during system commissioning.

On each end of every SVT cable is a circular memory buffer that records—as a logic state analyzer—the last $`10^5`$ words sent or received on that cable. Comparing a sender’s output buffer with a receiver’s input buffer checks data transmission. Comparing a board’s input and output with emulation software checks data processing. The memories also serve as sources and sinks of test patterns for testing single boards, a small chain of boards, a slice of SVT, SVT as a standalone system, or the data paths to SVT’s external sources and sink. The buffers can be frozen and read by monitoring software parasitically during data-taking, and all of SVT’s buffers can be frozen together, via backplane signals, when any board detects an error condition, such as invalid data.

By polling SVT’s circular memories during beam running, large samples of track and hit data, pattern IDs, etc.—unbiased by L2 or L3 trigger decisions—are sampled and statistically analyzed to monitor data quality. A beam-finding program monitors $`10^7`$ tracks per hour, fitting and reporting to the accelerator control network an updated Tevatron beamline fit every 30 seconds. The beam fit is also written to the DAQ event record and used to correct in-situ every SVT track’s impact parameter for the sinusoidal bias vs $`\varphi `$ resulting from the beamline’s offset from the detector origin, so that the trigger is immune to modest beam offsets.

The flexibility of FPGAs has been exploited throughout SVT, enabling SVT to adapt to unforseen circumstances when commissioning the detector and trigger as a whole. Later boards had the benefit of more flexible programmable chips. In particular, the board that subtracts the beam offset track-by-track—the last SVT board to be built—illustrates well both the utility of modern FPGAs and the virtue of a component-based architecture. It was designed as a clean-up board, beyond the SVT baseline, to ensure that at most one SVT track is output per XFT track. SVT’s modularity allowed this final processing stage to be added seamlessly. Progress in FPGA technology allowed the board to consist essentially of input circuitry \+ large FPGA + output circuitry. With this design, it was straightforward to adapt the board to subtract a sinusoidal beam offset—which proved more convenient than the baseline plan to steer the Tevatron beam. This clean-up board has found even further uses, such as recording SVT’s event-by-event processing time into the DAQ event record and online monitor.

In conclusion, the Silicon Vertex Trigger has been commissioned and operated successfully for CDF’s first year of Run 2 physics data. Among the key reasons for this system’s success are its modular architecture and its ability to sink and source test data at a wide range of pipeline stages, both in tests and during beam runs. SVT’s flexibility and diagnostic features were particularly valuable during the CDF commissioning period.