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# Observation of a new narrow charmonium state in exclusive 𝐵^±→𝐾^±𝜋⁺𝜋⁻𝐽/𝜓 decays

## I Introduction

A major experimental issue for the $`c\overline{c}`$ charmonium particle system is the missing (i.e., still unobserved) charmonium states that are expected to be below threshold for decays to open charm and, thus, are narrow. These include the $`n=1`$ singlet P state, the $`h_c(1\mathrm{P}),`$ and, possibly, the $`J^{PC}=2^+1^1\mathrm{D}_2\eta _{c2}`$ and $`J^{PC}=2^{}1^3\mathrm{D}_2\psi _2(1\mathrm{D})`$, the $`n=1`$ singlet and triplet spin-2 D states, which are narrow if their masses are below the $`D\overline{D^{}}`$ threshold. The observation of these states and the determination of their masses would provide useful information about the spin-dependence of the charmonium potential.

$`B`$ meson decays are a prolific source of charmonium particles. The large $`B`$ meson samples produced at $`B`$-factories provide excellent opportunities to search for the missing states. The Belle group recently reported the first observation of the $`\eta _c(2S)`$ via its $`K_SK^{}\pi ^+`$ decay channel in exclusive $`BKK_SK^{}\pi ^+`$ decays based on an analysis of 44.8M $`B\overline{B}`$ events skchoi . Strategies for finding the remaining missing states have been presented by Eichten, Lane and Quigg eichten ; they note that a narrow $`\psi _2(1\mathrm{D})`$ should have a substantial decay branching fraction for the $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi `$ final state. In this paper, we report on a search for a narrow peak in the $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi `$ mass spectrum from exclusive $`B^+K^+\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi `$ decays chargeconjugate  using a 152M $`B\overline{B}`$ event sample. The data were collected in the Belle detector at the KEKB energy-asymmetric $`e^+e^{}`$ collider, which operates at the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(4S)`$ resonance ($`\sqrt{s}=10.58`$ GeV). KEKB is described in detail in ref. kurokawa ; Belle is described in detail in ref. abashian .

## II $`B`$-meson signal selection

We use events that satisfy the Belle-standard hadronic-event selection requirements and have a pair of well identified oppositely charged electrons or muons with an invariant mass in the range $`3.076<M_\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{}<3.116`$ GeV, a loosely identified charged kaon and a pair of oppositely charged pions. In order to reject background from $`\gamma `$ conversion products and curling tracks, we require the $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ invariant mass to be greater than 0.4 GeV. To reduce the level of $`e^+e^{}q\overline{q}`$ ($`q=u,d,s\mathrm{or}c`$-quarks) continuum events in the sample, we also require $`R_2<0.4`$, where $`R_2`$ is the normalized Fox-Wolfram moment fox , and $`|\mathrm{cos}\theta _B|<0.8`$, where $`\theta _B`$ is the polar angle of the $`B`$-meson direction in the center-of-mass system (cms).

Candidate $`B^+K^+\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi `$ mesons are reconstructed using the energy difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }EE_B^{\mathrm{cms}}E_{\mathrm{beam}}^{\mathrm{cms}}`$ and the beam-energy constrained mass $`M_{\mathrm{bc}}\sqrt{(E_{\mathrm{beam}}^{\mathrm{cms}})^2(p_B^{\mathrm{cms}})^2}`$, where $`E_{\mathrm{beam}}^{\mathrm{cms}}`$ is the beam energy in the cms, and $`E_B^{\mathrm{cms}}`$ and $`p_B^{\mathrm{cms}}`$ are the cms energy and momentum of the $`B`$ candidate. The signal region is defined as 5.271 $`<M_{\mathrm{bc}}<`$ 5.289 GeV/$`c^2`$ and $`|\mathrm{\Delta }E|<`$ 0.030 GeV, which corresponds to $`\pm 3\sigma `$ and $`\pm 2.5\sigma `$ from the central values, respectively.

## III Results

Figure 1(a) shows the $`\mathrm{\Delta }MM(\pi ^+\pi ^{}\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{})M(\mathrm{}^+\mathrm{}^{})`$ mass distribution for events in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$-$`M_{\mathrm{bc}}`$ signal region. Here a large peak corresponding to $`\psi ^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi `$ is evident near 0.59 GeV. In addition there is a significant spike in the distribution near 0.77 GeV. Figure 1(b) shows the $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ distribution for a large sample of generic $`B\overline{B}`$ Monte Carlo (MC) events. Except for the prominent $`\psi ^{}`$ peak, the distribution is smooth and featureless. In the rest of this paper we use $`M(\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi )`$ determined from $`\mathrm{\Delta }M+M_{J/\psi }`$, where $`M_{J/\psi }`$ is PDG PDG  value for the $`J/\psi `$ mass.

In Fig. 2, we show the $`M_{\mathrm{bc}}`$ distributions for 5-MeV $`M(\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi )`$ bins for the $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ region around the spike at $`0.77`$ GeV. Here the $`|\mathrm{\Delta }E|<0.03`$ GeV requirement has been applied. Significant $`B`$-meson signals appear in the $`M(\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi )=3870`$ MeV mass bin and its immediately adjacent bins, but nowhere else. The curves in the figures indicate the results of fits to the distributions using a Gaussian function to represent the signal and the ARGUS function for the background ARGUS . Here the peak and width of the signal Gaussian are fixed at values determined from fitting $`M_{\mathrm{bc}}`$ distributions in the $`\psi ^{}`$ peak region.

### III.1 Fit results

The $`B`$-meson signal yields from the fits to the individual $`M_{\mathrm{bc}}`$ distributions are shown as the data points in Fig. 3(a). The curve is the result of a fit with a Gaussian signal function and a second-order polynomial to represent the background. The fit gives a signal yield of $`34.4\pm 6.5`$ events, a peak mass of $`M_X^{meas}=3871.4\pm 0.7`$ MeV, and a width of $`\sigma =3.4\pm 0.5`$ MeV. The signal significance is estimated to be $`\sqrt{2\mathrm{ln}(_0/_{max})}=8.6\sigma `$, where $`_{max}`$ and $`_0`$ are the likelihood values for the fitted signal yield and for a fit with the amplitude of the signal function fixed at zero, respectively. For comparison, we show in Fig. 3(b) the corresponding distribution and fit for the $`\psi ^{}`$ peak region. Here the fit results are: $`456.6\pm 22.4`$ events; $`M_\psi ^{}^{meas}=3685.6\pm 0.2`$ MeV; and $`\sigma =3.4\pm 0.2`$ MeV. The fitted widths for the $`\psi ^{}`$ and signal peaks are in good agreement; the fitted $`\psi ^{}`$ mass is 0.4 MeV below the PDG value of $`M_\psi ^{}^{PDG}=3686.00\pm 0.09`$ MeV.

### III.2 Mass determination and limits on the total width

We determine the mass of the signal peak by referencing to the well measured $`\psi ^{}`$ mass:

$$M_X=M_X^{meas}M_\psi ^{}^{meas}+M_\psi ^{}^{PDG}=3871.8\pm 0.7\mathrm{MeV}.$$

Here the error is statistical only. Since we reference $`M_X`$ to the precisely known PDG value for the $`\psi ^{}`$ mass, the systematic error is small. The $`M_\psi ^{}`$ measurement, which references the $`J/\psi `$ mass that is 590 MeV away, is within 0.4 MeV of the nominal PDG value. Variation of the mass scale from $`M_\psi ^{}`$ to the $`M_X`$ requires an extrapolation of only 186 MeV and, thus, can safely be expected to be less than this amount. We conservatively assign 0.4 MeV as the systematic error on the mass.

The fitted signal width is consistent with the resolution. To determine a 90% confidence-level (CL) upper limit on the total width, we repeat fits to the distribution in Fig. 3(a) using a resolution-broadened Breit-Wigner (BW) function to represent the signal. From the variation in $`2\mathrm{ln}()`$ with the input BW width we determine a 90% CL upper limit of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }<3.5`$ MeV.

### III.3 Di-pion mass distribution and product branching fraction

The open histogram in Fig. 4(a) shows the $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ invariant mass distribution for the $`M=3872`$ MeV signal region; the shaded histogram shows the corresponding distribution for events in the non-signal $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$-$`M_{\mathrm{bc}}`$ region, normalized to the signal area. The $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ invariant masses tend to cluster near the kinematic boundary, which is around the $`\rho `$ mass; the entries below the $`\rho `$ are consistent with background. Figure 4(b) shows the $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ mass distribution for the $`\psi ^{}`$ events. This distribution also peaks near the upper kinematic boundary, which in this case is near $`590`$ MeV.

Assuming equal acceptances for both channels, we determine a ratio of product branching fractions for $`B^+K^+X`$, $`X\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi `$ and $`B^+K^+\psi ^{}`$, $`\psi ^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi `$ to be

$$\frac{(B^+K^+X)\times (X\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi )}{(B^+K^+\psi ^{})\times (\psi ^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi )}=0.075\pm 0.014(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.007(\mathrm{syst}).$$

Here the systematic error includes possible different efficiencies for the $`M(\pi ^+\pi ^{})>0.4`$ GeV selection requirement for the two channels, estimated by comparing the $`\psi ^{}`$ yield with and without this requirement.

## IV Discussion

The mass of the observed state is higher than potential model expectations for the center-of-gravity (cog) of the $`1^3\mathrm{D}_{cJ}`$ states: the Cornell cornell  and the Buchmüller-Tye tye  potentials both give $`M_{\mathrm{cog}}(1\mathrm{D})=3810`$ MeV, which is 60 MeV below the observed state. (As the center state of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{cJ}^{}`$ triplet, one expects the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{c2}^{}`$ to be near the cog.) Moreover, the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{c1}^{}`$ state has been identified with the $`\psi ^{\prime \prime }(3770)`$. Identification of the observed state with the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{c2}^{}`$ state would imply a $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{c2}^{}^3\mathrm{D}_{c1}`$ splitting of $`100`$ MeV. On the other hand, complications due to effects of coupling to real $`D\overline{D}`$ and virtual $`D\overline{D^{}}`$ states may reduce the validity of potential model calculations for these states cornell ; rosner ; quigg .

The $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ invariant masses for the $`M=3872`$ MeV signal region concentrate near the upper kinematic boundary (Fig. 4(a)), as is also the case for $`\psi ^{}\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi `$ (Fig. 4(b)). For the $`M=3872`$ MeV signal region, however, the boundary corresponds to the mass of the $`\rho `$. The decay $`{}_{}{}^{3}D_{c2}^{}\rho J/\psi `$ is an isospin-violating process, and these are strongly suppressed in $`\psi ^{}J/\psi `$ transitions. With more data, we could determine whether or not the $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}`$ system is coming from $`\rho `$ meson decay, which could have important consequences for the interpretation of this state.

The measured mass of the state is within errors of the $`D^0\overline{D^0}`$ mass threshold ($`3871.3\pm 0.5`$ MeV PDG ). This would be expected for a loosely bound $`D\overline{D^{}}`$ multiquark “molecular state,” such as proposed by De Rujula, Georgi and Glashow in 1977 georgi .

## V Conclusion

We have observed a strong signal ($`8.6\sigma `$) for a state that decays to $`\pi ^+\pi ^{}J/\psi `$ with

$`M`$ $`=`$ $`3871.8\pm 0.7(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.4(\mathrm{syst})\mathrm{MeV}`$
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ $`<`$ $`3.5\mathrm{MeV}.`$
This mass value is about 60 MeV higher than potential model predictions for a 1D charmonium state and equal, within errors, to $`M_{D^0}+M_{D^0}`$. This coincidence with the $`D^0\overline{D^0}`$ mass threshold suggests that this may be a $`DD^{}`$ multiquark state.

## VI Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the KEKB accelerator group for the excellent operation of the KEKB accelerator. We acknowledge support from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; the Australian Research Council and the Australian Department of Industry, Science and Resources; the National Science Foundation of China under contract No. 10175071; the Department of Science and Technology of India; the BK21 program of the Ministry of Education of Korea and the CHEP SRC program of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation; the Polish State Committee for Scientific Research under contract No. 2P03B 01324; the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Russian Federation; the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of the Republic of Slovenia; the National Science Council and the Ministry of Education of Taiwan; and the U.S. Department of Energy.


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# Hot Spots and Pseudogaps for Hole- and Electron-Doped High-Temperature Superconductors.

## Model and methodology.

We study the square lattice Hubbard model with on-site Coulomb repulsion $`U`$. We set the first-neighbor hopping $`t`$ to unity, and introduce second-neighbor (diagonal) hopping $`t^{}=0.3t`$ and third-neighbor hopping $`t^{\prime \prime }=0.2t`$, as suggested by band structure calculations Andersen95 . The diagonal hopping $`t^{}`$ is a key ingredient to understand the Physics, even though its precise value can vary slightly between different compounds. It frustrates antiferromagnetic (AFM) order and removes particle-hole symmetry, thereby also allowing the AFM zone boundary to cross the Fermi surface. The third-neighbor hopping $`t^{\prime \prime }`$ makes the Fermi surface slightly bulge away from the intersection with the AFM zone boundary, as observed experimentally Armitage01 , and makes low-energy excitations more stable along the diagonal of the Brillouin zone.

We use Cluster Perturbation Theory Senechal00  (CPT) to gain insight into the single-particle states of the Hubbard model and their relation to cuprate superconductors. The method can reproduce the spin-charge separation of one dimensional systems Senechal00  as well as the dispersion relations obtained in the large $`U`$ limit. It reduces to the exact result at $`U=0`$ and in the atomic limit ($`t_{ij}=0`$). It is based on exact diagonalizations of finite clusters that are coupled through strong-coupling perturbation theory. It basically amounts to replacing the exact self-energy by that of the cluster only Gros and Valenti (1994). The Green function calculated by CPT is made up of a set of discrete poles, like in ordinary exact diagonalizations, except that (i) more poles have substantial weight and (ii) they disperse continuously with wavevector, allowing for clear momentum distribution curves. The results presented here were calculated on $`12`$-site rectangular clusters. The resulting Green function is averaged over the ($`3\times 4`$) and ($`4\times 3`$) clusters to recover the original symmetry of the lattice. We checked that the main features are the same when using clusters of different shapes. Our finite energy resolution, of about $`0.12t`$, does not allow us to resolve effects related to superconductivity. We compare with ARPES experiments of similar resolution.

## The Mott transition.

We begin in Fig. 1 with a plot of the chemical potential $`\mu `$ as a function of doping for various values of the interaction strength. The different results in this figure are obtained from clusters of different sizes ranging from $`4`$ to $`13`$ sites with varying geometry. The smooth behavior of the function away from half-filling shows that the cluster sizes are large enough to provide reliable results. There is a jump in $`\mu `$ when $`U`$ is large enough, namely above $`U=6t`$ roughly. The jump in $`\mu `$ does not follow from a long-range ordered ground state since the basic clusters are finite. It is instead a clear manifestation of the Mott phenomenon.

Fig. 2 displays the single-particle spectral weight $`A(𝐤,\omega )`$ as a function of energy for wave vectors $`𝐤`$ along the high-symmetry directions shown in the inset. Only the $`\omega <0`$ domain of $`A(𝐤,\omega )`$ is accessible to ARPES. Fig. 2(a) illustrates the effect of increasing interaction strength on a near optimally hole-doped system while Fig. 2(b) does the same in the electron-doped case. Clearly, there is a range of frequencies where $`A(𝐤,\omega )=0`$ for all wave vectors. This is the Mott gap. At finite doping it always opens up away from zero energy when $`U`$ is sufficiently large. In the electron-doped case, $`\omega =0`$ is in the upper Hubbard band. The lower Hubbard band is at negative energies, as has been observed in ARPES Armitage et al. (2002). The overall narrowing of the band just below the Fermi level is more important in the electron-doped case. Also, the shape of the dispersion is different from that obtained in a mean-field AFM state Kusko02  and there is no clear doubling of the dispersion relation of the type that occurs in one dimension when there is spin-charge separation.

## Fermi surface plots and pseudogap.

We now move to the main point of our paper, namely the pseudogap and hot spots. The top two panels of Fig. 3 for a 17% hole-doped system represent the strength of $`A(𝐤,\omega )`$ at $`\omega =0`$. As a function of interaction strength, the intensity disappears gradually near the $`(\pi ,0)`$ and $`(0,\pi )`$ points, leaving zero-energy excitations only near the diagonal. Large values of $`U`$ $`\left(U>8t\right)`$ seem necessary to reproduce the experimentally observed spectral function of hole-doped systems Ronning03 , even more so on a 11% doped system (not shown). The lower panels show the imaginary part of the self-energy (or scattering rate) corresponding to the momentum-dispersion curve right above. For $`U=2t`$, the self-energy is very small overall, but has a maximum along the Fermi surface where the Fermi velocity is smallest (density of states largest); this illustrates how we depart from the Fermi liquid picture (in which $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\prime \prime }(0)=0`$) as we move towards intermediate coupling. At $`U=8t`$, the scattering rate is much larger and affects larger regions separated by roughly $`(\pi ,\pi )`$. In all cases a higher scattering rate leads to removal of spectral weight.

The electron-doped case is displayed in Fig. 4 for $`17\%`$ doping. At moderate $`U`$, the spectral intensity drops only at the intersection of the AFM Brillouin zone with the Fermi surface. However, for larger $`U`$, only the neighborhoods of $`(\pi ,0)`$ and $`(0,\pi )`$ survive. The latter situation is analogous to that observed by ARPES in electron underdoped systems and can be reproduced by calculations (not shown) with $`U`$ large at $`11\%`$ doping. At optimal doping however, ARPES results Armitage et al. (2002) look instead qualitatively like the upper left panel of Fig. 4.

## Hot spots and pseudogap.

The Fermi-surface points where the intensity decreases (Fig. 4) are called hot spots. However, a pseudogap is characterized not only by lower intensity at the Fermi energy, but also by a dispersive peak that stops short of crossing the Fermi surface. This experimentally well-known phenomenon is illustrated on Fig. 5, which shows energy dispersion curves for wave vectors along the $`(\pi ,0)(\pi ,\pi /2)`$ stretch in the hole-doped case (left) and along the diagonal in the electron-doped case (right). For small values of $`U`$, a well-defined quasiparticle exists at the Fermi level ($`\omega =0`$). At stronger coupling ($`U=8t`$), a pseudogap comparable to experimental observation is clearly visible at the Fermi level.

## Discussion: strong- and weak-coupling pseudogaps.

As in previous studies, the strong-coupling pseudogap Phillips03  is concomitant with the Mott gap but is clearly distinct from the latter. The Mott gap is a purely local (on-site) phenomenon that occurs for all wave vectors and is not tied to $`\omega =0`$. By contrast, the pseudogap occurs around $`\omega =0`$ and only in regions of the Fermi surface that are connected to other such regions by wave vectors that have a broad spread of radius $`\delta `$ around $`(\pi ,\pi )`$. The difference in the location of the pseudogap between hole- and electron underdoped cuprates follows by simply finding which points of the Fermi surface can be connected by $`(\pi ,\pi )`$, within $`\delta `$, to other Fermi surface points.

Despite the importance of $`(\pi ,\pi )`$, the strong-coupling pseudogap is not caused by long-range AFM correlations. Indeed, (a) Our lattices do not exhibit long-range order (b) We verified that the results are not very sensitive to $`t^{}`$ (frustration) (c) Fig. 5 shows that at $`U>8t`$ the pseudogap is of order $`t`$, only weakly dependent on $`U`$ and does not scale as the antiferromagnetic coupling $`J=4t^2/U`$, in contrast with previous studies Phillips03 ; Haule02 . This pseudogap would therefore persist in the $`U\mathrm{}`$ limit of the Hubbard model, where hopping between sites is constrained by the impossibility of double occupancy and where $`t`$ is the relevant energy scale. For a case where it is possible to study the size dependence of the strong-coupling pseudogap at fixed doping, we verified that the results are size independent, suggesting again the short-range nature of the phenomenon. Longer range correlations at the AFM wave vector might only reinforce the strong-coupling pseudogap that already exists in the presence of short-range correlations. The location of this strong-coupling pseudogap, in both electron- and hole-doped cases, coincides with the predictions of the umklapp mechanism FurukawaRice , which does not need long-range correlations. However, a proper strong-coupling extension of the umklapp mechanism is still needed.

Signs of a pseudogap also occur at weak coupling. This is illustrated by the hot spots that are visible in the electron-doped case at $`U=4t`$ in Fig. 4, upper panel. Contrary to the $`U=8t`$ case, these hot spots (a) are located precisely at the intersection with the AFM zone boundary (b) they generally correspond to a cluster shape dependent depression in $`A(𝐤,\omega )`$ and not to a genuine pseudogap. We attribute these results to the short correlation lengths (limited to the cluster size) in CPT and conclude that we are seeing the onset of the true pseudogap that, as expected from the presence of true gaps in the itinerant antiferromagnet Markiewicz , would be induced by large AFM correlation lengths Kyung02 . We find, as in Ref. Kyung02 , that the interaction strength $`U`$ cannot be larger than $`U6t`$ to preserve this kind of pseudogap where $`\omega =0`$ excitations persist near the diagonal.

Since experiments on optimally-doped electron superconductors do find large AFM correlation lengths Greven03  as well as $`\omega =0`$ single-particle excitations Armitage01  near the diagonal, the pseudogap mechanism in this case should be the weak-coupling one $`(U6t)`$ Kyung02 ; Markiewicz . This value of $`U`$ is smaller than, but not too different from, that necessary for a sizeable Mott gap at half-filling. This may be understood as follows. The contribution to the value of $`U`$ that comes from simple Thomas-Fermi screening scales like $`(\mu /n)`$. Fig. 1 clearly shows that this quantity, beginning at $`U>4t`$, is smaller for electron-doped than for hole-doped systems, demonstrating the internal consistency of a picture where the value of $`U`$ decreases as one goes from the hole- to the electron-doped systems. Ref. Kyung02  presents additional arguments for a smaller $`U`$.

To summarize, we illustrated two ways in which a Fermi liquid can be destroyed by a pseudogap and found that a unified picture of $`A(𝐤,\omega )`$ in the cuprates emerges from the $`tt^{}t^{\prime \prime }U`$ model if we allow $`U`$ to decrease as the concentration of electrons increases.

###### Acknowledgements.

We are indebted to B. Kyung, V. Hankevych, K. Le Hur and J. Hopkinson for useful discussions. The present work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Tier I Canada Research Chair Program (A.-M.S.T.).


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# Normal metal - insulator - superconductor interferometer

## Abstract

Hybrid normal metal - insulator - superconductor microstructures suitable for studying an interference of electrons were fabricated. The structures consist of a superconducting loop connected to a normal metal electrode through a tunnel barrier . An optical interferometer with a beam splitter can be considered as a classical analogue for this system. All measurements were performed at temperatures well below 1 K. The interference can be observed as periodic oscillations of the tunnel current (voltage) through the junction at fixed bias voltage (current) as a function of a perpendicular magnetic field. The magnitude of the oscillations depends on the bias point. It reaches a maximum at energy $`eV`$ which is close to the superconducting gap and decreases with an increase of temperature. Surprisingly, the period of the oscillations in units of magnetic flux $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is equal neither to $`h/e`$ nor to $`h/2e`$, but significantly exceeds these values for larger loop circumferences. The origin of the phenomena is not clear.

The simplest optical interferometer consists of a beam splitter, a pair of mirrors and an opaque screen. The repositioning of the mirrors causes variation of the light intensity at a given point on the screen. In conventional passive media (e.g. air) the wavelength of light is not altered along the optical path. A sharp interference pattern requires only a monochromatic source of light. In the same way, a metal loop with two electrodes can be considered as an analogue to the described optical interferometer. One node corresponds to the electron beam splitter and the second node - to the ’screen’. The total current through both paths (at a fixed voltage, for example) is then equivalent to the light intensity. Certainly, one can alter the ’interference pattern’ in the usual way by changing the loop geometry. However, there is a more convenient way of doing this: the application of a perpendicular magnetic field. The conductivity of a normal metal loop is periodic in units of magnetic flux quantum $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }=\varphi _0^N=h/e`$, where $`e`$ is the electron charge Umbach . Contrary to optics, the phase of the electron wave function inside a normal metal interferometer can be randomly altered due to inelastic scattering. Thus, the size of the loop is limited by the phase breaking length $`\mathrm{}_\phi `$. Micron-size metal structures at low temperatures ($`T<1`$ K) are subject to this limit Mesoscopic book . The utilisation of superconductors should eliminate this size limitation due to macroscopic quantum coherence. The only problem is that in the pure superconducting state, resistive measurements are useless. Other system parameters such as magnetisation or the critical temperature Little-Parks , Tinkham book  should be measured.

A number of normal metal-insulator-superconductor (N-I-S) microstructures has been fabricated. They can be considered as a solid-state analogue of an optical interferometer with a beam splitter. A closed loop of aluminium is overlapped at one point by a copper electrode through a thin oxide barrier (Fig. 1). At sufficiently low temperatures, aluminium becomes superconducting. Due to the macroscopic phase coherence, there is no random alternation of the electron phase inside the loop of a superconducting interferometer, while the finite resistance of the whole N-I-S system enables electric measurements. Structures were fabricated by two-angle metal evaporation through an e-beam patterned double layer P(MMA-MAA)/PMMA mask. Typical aluminium thickness $`d_{Al}`$ was $``$ 35 nm and the line width $``$ 120 nm for small samples. For larger loops ($`>`$ 10 $`\mu `$m) 250 nm lines were used. Before deposition of the top copper electrode ($`d_{Cu}`$ 30 nm) the aluminium surface was oxidised in $`O_2`$ atmosphere at a pressure of about 1 mbar for 1 to 2 minutes. The nominal overlapping area between copper and aluminium was about 100 nm $`\times `$ 100 nm. The tunnel resistance at room temperature varied from sample to sample from roughly 1 to 60 $`k\mathrm{\Omega }`$, increasing by $``$ 20% while cooling down to liquid helium temperatures. The majority of experiments were made in a voltage-biased mode (Fig. 1). The derivative of the variation of the current with respect to the voltage, $`dI/dV(V)`$ characteristic, was measured by lock-in technique by using a $``$ 1 $`\mu `$V ac modulation of the biasing voltage. Current biased dependencies were also studied. The resistance of the metal parts was roughly a few tens of Ohms. Thus, the dominating part of the voltage drop was due to the tunnel barrier. Experiments were made in a $`{}_{}{}^{3}He^4He`$ dilution refrigerator placed inside an electromagnetically shielded room. Only battery powered front-end amplifiers were kept inside the room. These were connected to the remaining electronics outside through carefully shielded coaxial cables carrying analogue signals. Three stages of filtering were used. Firstly, Spectrum Control 51-390-305 filters with -80 dB cut-off at 300 kHz were placed on top of the cryostat at room temperature. A second stage was located at $``$ 1K point consisting of capacitive and inductive C-L-C elements (220 nF, 2.2 mH, 220 nF) forming a $`\pi `$-filter. The last stage was made of $``$ 30 cm Thermocoax Philips cable Zorin  which was thermally anchored to the sample stage. The utilisation of filters at room temperature resulted in marginal improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio, while the performance of the $`\pi `$-filter at 1 K appeared to be crucial since no reasonable signal-to-noise ratio could be obtained without it. Magnetic fields up to 30 mT were generated by various 2 or 4 layer superconducting coils wound directly on outside of the the refrigerator’s vacuum canister. The coil inputs leading to the current source were also filtered. Magnetic field sweeps (step-by-step) were made rather slowly ($``$ 2 $`÷`$ 5 s/point). In some cases a car battery was connected through a decade resistor block and was used as a current source. The Earth’s magnetic field was not screened. The latter may explain a small offset of the magnetic field ($``$ 0.05 mT) which appears in the data presented below.

At zero magnetic field the current-voltage characteristics, $`I(V,B=0)`$, show typical behaviour for N-I-S junctions (Fig. 2a). Hereafter the superconducting gap energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is defined as $`\mathrm{\Delta }=eV_{gap}`$, where $`V_{gap}`$ corresponds to the maximum of the $`dI/dV(V)`$ dependencies. This assumption is quite justified at temperatures well below the critical temperature of superconducting electrode when the $`dI/dV(V)`$ characteristic is ’sharp’. The majority of measurements were made at temperatures $`<`$ 500 mK, while the critical temperature $`T_c`$ of the co-deposited aluminium layers was about $``$ 1.3 K.

The application of a perpendicular magnetic field modifies the I(V, B=const) dependencies in a non-monotonous way (Fig. 2b). Sweeping the field at a constant voltage bias demonstrates the nature of the dependency more profoundly. In this case, the I(V=const, B) characteristics are quasi-periodic with respect to the magnetic field (Fig. 3). The monotonous envelope behaviour can be qualitatively explained by the reduction of the superconducting energy gap by magnetic field. The period of oscillations $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_I\mathrm{\Delta }B(V=const,B)`$ is not constant, but drops by a few factors at high fields (Fig. 3, inset). As the last phenomenon is not well understood, hereafter only the low field data ($`B`$ 2 mT) is considered, where the magnitude and the period of oscillations are field-independent. The $`I(V=const,B)`$ dependencies are essentially hysteretic (Fig. 4). Phenomenologically one may state that the $`I(V=const,B)`$ characteristics form a set of ’parabolas’, where allowed current states ’jump’ from neighbouring branches of parabolas, depending on the direction of the magnetic field sweep. Within the range of fields corresponding to a single ’parabola’ dependencies are not hysteretic. The $`I(V=const,B)`$ characteristics are well reproducible and become noisy at biases $`V`$ noticeably higher than the gap voltage $`V_{gap}`$. The normalised magnitudes of current oscillations $`\mathrm{\Delta }I/I_{max}`$ as function of the normalised bias voltage $`V/V_{gap}`$ for several samples with various loop size are plotted in Fig. 5. There are at least two common features. Firstly, the function $`\mathrm{\Delta }I/I_{max}(V/V_{gap})`$ has a maximum slightly below the gap voltage $`V/Vgap`$ $``$ 0.7 $`÷`$ 0.8. Secondly, this maximum is pronounced at lower temperatures and becomes smeared at temperatures higher than $``$ 500 mK. Surprisingly, the normalized magnitude of oscillations $`\mathrm{\Delta }I/I_{max}`$ reaches nearly 100% at sufficiently low temperatures. As a comparison, the Aharonov-Bohm effect in micron-size normal metal rings has the magnitude $`\mathrm{\Delta }R/R<10^3`$ Umbach , while in a micron-size superconducting aluminium ring the magnitude of the critical temperature oscillations (Little-Parks effect) is $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_c/T_c<10^2`$ Mosch L-P  , nonlocality . The maximum magnitude of the current oscillations decreases slightly with an increase of the loop diameter, but the effect is still well pronounced even for a loop size as high as 25 $`\mu `$m (Fig. 7). For small size loops ($`<`$ 3 $`\mu `$m) no correlation between the maximum magnitude of current oscillations and the tunnel resistance in the range from 3 $`k\mathrm{\Omega }`$ to 60 $`k\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has been found. For loops with the side $`L>`$ 5 $`\mu `$m no effect has been detected for structures with tunnel resistance $`R_T>`$ 8 $`k\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

For a given size of loop, the period of current oscillations $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_I`$ in low fields depends slightly on the bias voltage and increases by $``$ 15% below the gap (Fig. 6 and Fig. 8c). The effect is more pronounced at low temperatures (Fig. 6). Probably, the most surprising feature is the absolute value of the period of current oscillations $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_I`$ in units of magnetic flux quantum $`\varphi _0`$. The period increases with an increase of the loop size and reaches a value $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_I/\varphi _034\pm 3`$ for the largest 25 $`\mu `$m $`\times `$ 25 $`\mu `$m structure (Fig. 7). The uncertainty in the definition of the effective loop area, due to the finite line width, cannot account for a such high value of discrepancy. Although the majority of experiments were made in the voltage biased mode $`I(V=const,B)`$, the current biased dependencies $`V(I=const,B)`$ were also measured (Fig. 8). Qualitatively, the same oscillating behaviour with hysteresis in the magnetic field was observed. However, there are several important differences. Firstly, the shapes of the voltage and the current oscillations differ: the $`V(I=const,B)`$ ’parabolas’ are ’upside-down’ (Fig. 8a). Secondly, the normalized magnitude of the voltage oscillations is much smaller than the corresponding current variation taken at the same point of the I-V characteristic (Fig. 8b). Thirdly, the period of the voltage oscillations $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_V`$ is smaller than the corresponding period of the current oscillations $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_I`$ (Fig. 8c).

The authors have no solid explanation for the mentioned phenomena. The most confusing feature is the deviation of the period of oscillations in the magnetic field from the expected value $`h/e`$ or $`h/2e`$. The allowed states of a superconducting ring differ by the phase change accumulated over the circumference of the loop. The energy of the $`n`$-th state is given by Glazman :

$$_n=\frac{2\pi ^2\mathrm{}^2n_s\sigma }{m^{}S}(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }}{\varphi _0^S}+n)^2,$$
(1)
where $`n_s`$ is the density of superconducting electrons, $`m^{}`$ is the effective electron mass, $`\sigma `$ \- cross section area of the wire, forming the loop, $`S`$ \- the loop’s circumference, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the magnetic flux through the area of the loop, and $`\varphi _0^S=h/2e`$ is the superconducting flux quantum. The persistent current is proportional to the derivative of the energy, $`IdE/d\mathrm{\Phi }`$, and shows the characteristic sawtooth behavior with a period $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_I=\varphi _0^S`$. What is measured in the experiment is the transport current throught the whole N-I-S structure (Fig. 1), and not the persistent current. However, any explanation based on purely ’superconducting’ considerations should result in a $`h/2e`$ periodicity independent of the size of the system (Fig. 7), range of the magnetic fields (Fig. 2) and the measuring mode (voltage or current bias)(Fig.8).

In present measurements three different coils were used, each being calibrated at room temperature and at 4.2 K. The data was found to be quantitatively consistent. The coils were wound directly on the metal vacuum shield of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}He^4He`$ dilution refrigerator. The canister material (welded stainless steel) and the sample chamber (copper) contained no superconducting alloys, which might have attenuated the magnetic field. Nevertheless, a control test was made. A pure aluminium 5 $`\mu `$m $`\times `$ 5 $`\mu `$m loop which contained no other materials and no tunnel junctions was fabricated. Oscillations of the sample’s conductivity, while in a resistive state (Little-Parks effect) Little-Parks , were measured using the same experimental set-up. Due to a geometrical pre-factor the magnitude of the effect was rather small $`\mathrm{\Delta }R/R\mathrm{\Delta }T_c/T_c(\xi /L)^2(n\mathrm{\Phi }/\varphi _0^S)^2`$ ($`\xi `$ being the superconducting coherence length and $`L`$ is the loop side) Tinkham book , but still the oscillating behaviour R(B) was reliably characterised. The period of oscillations was equal to the expected value $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }=\varphi _0^S=h/2e`$ within a reasonable accuracy $`<`$ 5%. The data gives the confidence that the observed periodicity in the N-I-S systems is not a product of the measurement hardware artefacts. It is important to mention that the deviation of the period of the Little-Parks oscillations in mesoscopic superconductors from constant behaviour Mosch-square  is associated with the formation of a superconducting sheath at high magnetic fields of relatively ’bulk’ systems (essentially not one-dimensional). The deviation of the period of oscillations $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_I`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_V`$ from $`h/2e`$ in N-I-S quasi-one-dimensional structures (particularly, those with the loop side $`L`$ larger than a few $`\mu `$m) can by no means be explained by the mentioned effect Mosch-square .

A possible alternative explanation is a multiple vortex penetration within the superconducting ’walls’ of the structures while in a mixed state. However, the effective core size of a single vortex is about the dirty-limit coherence length $`\xi (\mathrm{}\xi _0)^{1/2}`$ 150 nm ($`\mathrm{}`$ being the mean free path and $`\xi _0`$ is BCS coherence length), and is not much smaller than the line width of the studied N-I-S structures. Thus, there is not enough room for vortices to fit within the ’walls’ of the superconducting loop. The period of oscillations originating from the possible vortex penetration within the Cu-AlO-Al overlapping area (Fig. 1) is too small compared to the experimantally observed. It should not depend on the loop size, being randomly varying for each particular sample close to nominal $``$ 100 nm x 100 nm. Additionally, the penetration of a magnetic vortex inside a type-II superconductor requires the overcoming of a temperature-dependent potential barrier. The latter results in non-monotonous, strongly hysteretic, random (non-periodic) magnetic field patterns, which are essentially temperature dependent. The observed oscillations are reasonably periodic, well reproducible and the periods $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_I`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_V`$ are nearly temperature independent. The test structure which consisted of a solid 5 $`\mu `$m x 5 $`\mu `$m square overlapped through a tunnel barrier by a copper electrode was studied. The I-V characteristic was of a conventional type for a N-I-S system (Fig. 2), while the variation of the current in a magnetic field $`I(V=const,B)`$ showed complicated non-monotonous behaviour with no signs of periodicity. This behaviour agreed with the expectations, mentioned above. Thus, the origin of oscillations due to multiple vortex penetration in the studied N-I-S quasi-one-dimensional systems should be ruled out.

It has been proposed Esteve private  that oscillating behaviour in our geometry might originate from the modification of the energy gap and the density of states by the screening (and transport) currents when the flux threads the loop. Certainly, such effect should contribute to some extent, but a noticeable impact is only expected at high magnetic fields (currents) comparable to the critical ones Sanchez . More importantly, the periodicity should be equal to the usual ’superconducting’ value $`h/2e`$.

Most likely, similar oscillating behaviour have been reported for a single-electron-transistor (SET) composed of superconducting central island in a form of a loop Jap SET . The period of oscillations was found to be sometimes higher than $`h/2e`$. Furthermore, it was not constant in a magnetic field and was different for voltage and current biased modes. Unfortunately, no solid explanation applicable to our geometry has been proposed Jap SET .

Several possibile explanations of the reported phenomena have been outlined above. All of them are related to ’purely superconducting’ properties. Experiments involving N-I-S tunnel junctions allow one to pump nonequilibrium quasiparticles from a normal electrode into a superconductor. These nonequilibrium excitations have finite lifetimes (relaxation lengths) and may interfere at shorter scales. Relaxation of nonequilibrium quasiparticles inside a superconductor has been studied intensively over 20 years ago Clarke in Gray , Tidecks . Formation of a Cooper pair from injected quasiparticles with energy $`E`$ is governed at least by three processes. The corresponding lifetimes are: quasiparticle scattering ($`\tau _S`$), branch imbalance ($`\tau _Q`$) and recombination ($`\tau _R`$). The first process is responsible for quasiparticle scattering with the emission/absorption of a phonon. The second process equalises the population of electron-like and hole-like excitations. The third process governs the recombination of the two quasiparticles above the gap into a Cooper pair at the Fermi level. It has been shown theoretically that all the mentioned lifetimes tend to infinity at energies $`E`$ of the order of the superconducting gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, and all decrease rapidly at higher excitations Kaplan . The majority of experiments at that time were performed close to a superconducting critical temperature. The low temperature limit was studied very poorly. However, some data can still be found. For example, the charge imbalance relaxation time for aluminium at $`TT_c`$ was measured, and it can easily exceed $``$ 10 ns Clarke in Gray . To the knowledge of the authors, the subject of nonequilibrium quasiparticle interference has never been addressed neither theoretically, nor experimentally. If a reasonable assumption is made that there are no other inelastic mechanisms involved, the quasiparticle phase breaking time should be equal to the smallest of the lifetimes mentioned above : $`\tau _\phi ^Q=min(\tau _S,\tau _R,\tau _Q)`$. Following Kaplan  one comes to a conclusion that, at injection energies $`eV\mathrm{\Delta }`$ , the nonequilibrium quasiparticles can preserve their phase on macroscopic distances $`\mathrm{}_\phi ^Q(\tau _\phi ^QD)^{1/2}`$, where $`D`$ is the diffusion coefficient (about 100 $`cm^2/s`$ for studied aluminium films).

By associating the observed oscillations with the interference of nonequilibrium quasiparticles, one can qualitatively explain some features of the phenomena. The positions of the maxima $`\mathrm{\Delta }I/I_{max}(V/V_{gap})`$, which appear close to the gap energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }=eV_{gap}`$ (Fig. 5), is related to the maximum of the energy dependence of the quasiparticle density of states exactly at $`E=\mathrm{\Delta }`$. Thus, at energies $`E\mathrm{\Delta }`$ more quasiparticles can participate in interference. The corresponding temperature behaviour (Fig. 5) reflects the ’sharpening’ of the quasiparticle density of states energy dependence with the decrease of the temperature. However, there are several serious objections against such a proposal. Firstly, the oscillations do not decay rapidly at excitations below the energy gap (Fig. 5). Secondly, as the current on I-V characteristics is still finite at $`eV<\mathrm{\Delta }`$ (Fig. 2), this means that either quasiparticles or Cooper pairs do transport the current. One might expect a doubling of the period of oscillations from $`h/e`$ to $`h/2e`$ while sweeping the bias voltage through the gap value $`V_{gap}`$. However, nothing definite happens when this is done (Fig. 6). Thirdly, 5$`\mu `$m $`\times `$ 5$`\mu `$m S-I-S structure (all aluminium ) showed the oscillating behaviour. The shape of the $`I(V=const,B)`$ dependencies apeared to be different from the Cu-AlO-Al system, but the period was close to the N-I-S case. Finally, the last problem is the absolute value of the oscillation period. Assuming that the periodicity $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }=h/q`$ originates from the interference of quasiparticles, one should require that these nonequilibrium excitations have fractional charge $`q<e`$. Mathematical treatment has been described Tinkham book . The effective charge of a quasiparticle changes continuously from electron-like $`q_k=(u_k^2v_k^2)=\xi _k/E_k1`$ to hole-like $`q_k1`$ as one goes from outside to inside the Fermi surface. The effective charge $`q_k`$ is much smaller than unity as $`E_k`$ approaches the energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. Here $`E_k=(\mathrm{\Delta }^2+\xi _k^2)^{1/2}`$, $`\xi _k`$ is the one-electron energy of state $`k`$, and $`v_k`$, $`u_k`$ are BCS occupation probabilities. Unfortunately, it looks very doubtful if this mathematical formalism represents the ’real’ charge, which is responsible for the electric current in N-I-S systems. Probably, shot noise experiments are required to answer this question. Additionally, it is not clear why for the wide range of injection energies $`eV`$ the charge becomes ’more fractional’ as the size of the loop increases. The origin of the difference of periods in current and voltage biased modes (Fig. 8) is by no means clear. Probably, an interplay between the transport current, set by the external source, and the screening supercurrent is important for the explanation.

In summary, an unusual oscillating phenomenon has been observed in N-I-S non-single-connected microstructures (Fig.1). The results of measurements on various structures with differnet geometry are quite consistent. Probably, the most surprising is the period of oscillations in units of magnetic flux, which noticeable exceeds the value $`h/e`$ for larger loops (Fig. 7). The authors have no solid explanation of the observed phenomena. Further experiments and theoretical analysis are required.

The authors would like to acknowledge D. Esteve and J. Pekola for their helpful discussions, and D. Agar for the help with the manuscript. The work was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grant 01-02-17427) and the Academy of Finland under the Finnish Centre of Excellence Program 2000-2005 No. 44875, Nuclear and Condensed Matter Program at JYFL.

Also at Moscow State University, Department of Physics, Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow 119899, Russia.


text:
# 1 Comparison of annealed and quenched versions of simple Galam model. The order parameter 𝑀 is the number of individuals with +1 opinion minus that of –1 opinion, divided by the total population.

Simulation of Galam’s contrarian opinions

on percolative lattices

D. Stauffer1 and J.S. Sá Martins2

Laboratoire PMMH, Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielle, 10 rue Vauquelin, F-75231 Paris, Euroland

1 Visiting from Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University, D-50923 Köln, Euroland; stauffer@thp.uni-koeln.de

2 Visiting from Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal Fluminense; Av. Litorânea s/n, Boa Viagem, Niterói 24210-340, RJ, Brazil; jssm@if.uff.br

Abstract: Galam’s model of people voting always against the majority is shown to give for the quenched case different results than the original annealed model. For people diffusing on a lattice, Galam’s phase transitions happen only at higher concentrations of people.

Galam  suggested a model of opinion formation with a small minority of what he called “contrarians”, who always have the opinion opposite of that of the majority. He found a phase transition without contrarians such that the opinion which is initially shared by more than half of the agents after sufficiently many iterations is shared by everyone: Total polarization. With a small fraction $`a`$ of contrarians the phase transition stays at 1/2 but leads no longer to total polarization. Above a critical fraction $`a_c=1/6`$ the phase transition vanishes, and the two possible opinions are shared each by half the agents. (Since $`a`$ and $`1a`$ seem to be equivalent we take $`a1/2.`$) Analogously, spinodal decomposition in a Glauber-kinetic Ising model gives a spontaneous magnetization of 100 percent at zero temperaure $`T`$, a spontaneous magnetization below 100 % for $`0<T<T_c`$, and no spontaneous magnetization for $`T`$ above the critical temperature $`T_c`$. We now test if this analogy between contrarians and temperature remains valid if we get rid of Galam’s restriction that always three people meet and form a majority opinion. Our generalization then also allows to study the effect of a bias , that one of the two opinions (“status quo”) is taken in the case of a tie vote. The simulation methods are similar to .

First, we present a Monte Carlo simulation of the Galam contrarian model, for two different implementations of contrarianism. At the start, every agent has one of two possible opinions (spins) $`\pm 1`$ selected randomly, with a given initial probability of, say, the up opinion. At each time step, $`3`$ agents are selected at random and form a local group; their opinions are then updated accordingly to a majority rule: winner takes all, and all $`3`$ agents have the same opinion at the end. Contrarians are those agents that disagree with the majority, and after an update end up with the minority opinion. In the annealed implementation of contrarians, for which Ref.  presents an analytical solution, when a local group is to have its opinion updated, a fixed fraction $`a`$ of the agents is randomly chosen to be contrarian. An individual that is tossed as a contrarian in one time step may act as a non-contrarian in the next. For a more realistic quenched contrarianism version, on the other hand, a fraction $`a`$ of the population is randomly selected as contrarians at the beginning of the simulation, and they keep this character throughout the dynamics.

The results, shown in Figure 1, confirm the analytically derived critical fraction of contrarians if these are annealed ($`a_c=0.17`$). Above this concentration, no majority is formed in the long run and one gets the hung scenario refered to in . For the quenched version, the hung scenario is still present, but now the critical fraction of contrarians is much higher. Our estimate for its value is $`a_c=0.39`$.

All runs had the same parameters: the total population was $`10,000`$, results were averaged over the final $`10,000`$ steps out of a total of $`500,000`$ updates, and also averaged over $`100`$ different samples, with an initial probability of the $`+1`$ opinion (up spin) equal to $`0.45`$ as in .

After this simulation close to the original Galam model, we now present Monte Carlo simulations of interacting agents diffusing on a square lattice. Initially we distribute agents randomly with concentration $`x`$ on a hypercubic lattice in $`d`$ dimensions. Thus they form small percolative clusters with $`s=1,2,3,\mathrm{}`$ sites. (In Galam’s analytically solved model, all clusters had the same odd number of agents, like $`s=3`$.) Every agent has one of two possible opinions $`\pm 1`$, selected randomly, just like in the original model. At each iteration every agent makes (typically) three diffusion steps, i.e. it selects randomly one of the $`2d`$ nearest neighbours and moves there if the site is empty. The moving agent carries its opinion with it. In this way a new percolative cluster distribution is formed. Then each cluster of agents determines the majority opinion within that cluster; and all agents within that cluster are then convinced by this opinion. In the case of a tie vote for even $`s`$, impossible for the $`s=3`$ case of  but possible in , the majority opinion is found randomly if we simulate no bias, and it is $`1`$ or “status quo” if we simulate bias. After this exchange of opinions for all clusters, one iteration is finished and the next starts with diffusion of agents, as above.

The contrarian people are stubborn agents, forming a random fraction $`a`$ of all agents, and carrying their stubbornness with them while diffusing: quenched. Their opinion is always opposite to that of the cluster to which they belong, even if that opinion was determined randomly. Similar effects were simulated in the Sznajd model .

Our simulations without contrarians and without bias gave in all ten $`L\times L`$ square lattices a complete consensus, either all opinions $`+1`$ or all opinions $`1`$, about equally often; the average time to reach this consensus increases from 225 for $`L=11`$ to about 27,000 for $`L=71`$. With a small fraction of contrarians on small lattices still a complete consensus is reached, but this artifact vanishes for a larger number of contrarians and a finite observation time. The “magnetization” $`m`$ is the number of up opinions minus the number of down opinions and fluctuates wildly, having positive and negative values. We thus take its root-mean-square $`M`$ as order parameter, $`M^2=<m^2>/L^d`$ where the brackets indicate a time average. We also average $`M`$ in Fig. 2 over all time intervals and samples. Fig. 3 repeats some of these data to show that $`M`$ vanishes as $`1/L`$, as is expected from fluctuations in finite two-dimensional systems. Thus for $`x=1/4`$ this percolation model does not show a positive order parameter like a spontaneous magnetization, for small $`a`$, and thus also no upper critical fraction of contrarians, in contrast to the simple model of .

An entirely different picture evolves if the concentration $`x`$ of agents on the square lattice is doubled from $`x=1/4`$ to $`x=1/2`$. Now, starting from half the opinions up and half down, after thousands of iterations a wide consensus evolves: one opinion is much more frequent that the other; thus we have ferromagnetism in the Ising-model analogy, for not too large temperature (= contrarian fraction $`a`$). Then it is more practical to start with 90 percent of the opinions up and 10 percent down and to check whether this initial majority survives (ferromagnetism) or is replaced by about equal numbers of $`+1`$ and $`1`$. Fig. 4 shows an example of how we determined the critical $`a_c`$, and Fig. 5 summarizes the resulting phase diagram $`a_c(x)`$: Similar to a dilute Ising model, we have ferromagnetism (widespread consensus) only above some minimum agent concentration $`x0.3`$ and then only for low enough contrarian fractions $`a`$. (This method of starting with positive order parameters and watching them changing their signs works if the system size goes to infinity for a fixed long observation time.)

For $`x`$ above the percolation threshold of $`0.593`$ we find ferromagnetism with small fluctuations in the magnetization, except near $`a=1/2`$ (not shown); apparently the initial orientation of the infinite cluster dominates the system.

For three dimensions, at $`x=1/10`$ the critical contrarian fraction is about $`0.03`$ while at $`x=1/6`$ it is near $`0.09`$; in four dimensions the corresponding $`a_c`$ values are $`0.09`$ and $`0.26`$.

Very different are the results when the bias is switched on, such that a cluster with evenly divided opinions always agrees on the status quo $`(1)`$. Starting again with $`90\%`$ of the votes at $`+1`$, we arrive at a majority for $`1`$ at low concentrations $`x`$, while for $`x`$ above the percolation threshold the majority stays at $`+1`$, as shown in Fig. 6.

In summary, only for large enough agent concentrations $`x`$, but below the percolation threshold, do our results look similar to those of Galam . The infinite cluster for $`x`$ above the percolation threshold prevents the emergence of another opinion and might be interpreted as a dictatorship.

Acknowledgements: We thank PMMH at ESPCI for the warm hospitality and Sorin Tănase-Nicola for help with the computer facilities. JSSM acknowledges funding from the Brazilian agencies CNPq and FAPERJ.