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hep-th/0308175 SLAC-PUB-10142 SU-ITP-03/22 NSF-KITP-03-70

AdS and dS Entropy from String Junctions

or

The Function of Junction Conjunctions1 Apologies to Schoolhouse Rock circa 1973, http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/Conjunction.html

Eva Silverstein SLAC and Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94309

Abstract

Flux compactifications of string theory exhibiting the possibility of discretely tuning the cosmological constant to small values have been constructed. The highly tuned vacua in this discretuum have curvature radii which scale as large powers of the flux quantum numbers, exponential in the number of cycles in the compactification. By the arguments of Susskind/Witten (in the AdS case) and Gibbons/Hawking (in the dS case), we expect correspondingly large entropies associated with these vacua. If they are to provide a dual description of these vacua on their Coulomb branch, branes traded for the flux need to account for this entropy at the appropriate energy scale. In this note, we argue that simple string junctions and webs ending on the branes can account for this large entropy, obtaining a rough estimate for junction entropy that agrees with the existing rough estimates for the spacing of the discretuum. In particular, the brane entropy can account for the (A)dS entropy far away from string scale correspondence limits.

1. Introduction

One of the most interesting recent developments is the stabilization of moduli and construction of large classes of de Sitter and anti de Sitter flux compactifications . These models include cases in which the size of the compactification is hierarchically smaller than that of the (A)dS, by realizing the mechanism suggested in  (see also similar works \[5,,6,,7,,8\]). The recent models of KKLT  are of particular interest, as they produce four dimensional de Sitter as well as anti de Sitter vacua in a relatively well studied geometrical framework  admitting a low energy effective supersymmetric field theory description.2 The space of models described in  should be taken into account in any attempt to bound the number of vacua, and in comparing numbers of low energy SUSY vacua to vacua without low energy SUSY. Ultimately it is quite possible that nonsupersymmetric nongeometrical noncritical string backgrounds may be more generic than the better studied geometrical low energy SUSY backgrounds of critical string theory.

It is of interest to look for holographic duals of these new flux compactifications. In the de Sitter case, such a description could teach us a lot about the nature of dark energy (which in the real world is roughly seventy percent of the observed universe) as modeled in existing constructions.3 One may think about the problem of dark energy in string theory analogously to the problem of understanding black hole physics in string theory. There is no sense in which we try to “explain” the black hole mass independently of anything else, but we learn a lot about the physics of black holes by understanding the microscopic origin of their entropy . Even in the AdS case the new examples provide an interesting challenge. For four or fewer large dimensions, previous nonperturbative formulations such as matrix theory  and AdS/CFT  examples obtained via near horizon limits (such as $`AdS_2\times S^2\times X`$) have broken down due to infrared problems.

Unlike the flux compactifications on large Einstein spaces which have played a role in the AdS/CFT correspondence , the new examples are not (known to be) realized via a near horizon limit of any simple brane systems. Nonetheless, there are general arguments suggesting a similar holographic dual description. In the AdS case at least one expects a field theoretic dual via the relation  mapping gravitational Feynman diagrams in $`AdS_{d+1}`$ to conformally invariant Greens functions of a $`d`$-dimensional quantum field theory. This dictionary does not depend on the existence of a larger theory from which the AdS background is obtained as a near horizon limit.

In the dS case one also has a strong hint of a dual description, in that the Gibbons-Hawking entropy  associated with the horizon suggests a microphysical statistical mechanical origin that may well be associated to a holographic dual theory. Steps toward such a duality proposal using analogies to AdS/CFT have been made in  based on symmetries and the structure of quantum field theory in the global de Sitter geometry, and in  based on entropy counts and geometry of brane configurations realizing motion on the Coulomb branch of (A)dS flux compactications of string theory. In  some important issues were raised that need to be addressed in any duality proposal in the dS case. In  some proposals based on novel quantum gravity constructions have been made and investigated. In my view, our best hope for finding a dual formulation if one exists is to study the workings of explicit models.

In , a method for obtaining the dual theories for flux compactifications has been proposed, as summarized in  (see also ). The idea is simply to deform the system to the Coulomb branch, which introduces explicit brane domain walls  whose worldvolume content corresponds to that of the dual field theory on its Coulomb branch. For the AdS case, the solutions obtained by trading all the flux for branes in the infrared region of the geometry have the property that the solution caps off in the infrared, eliminating the AdS horizon. In the well understood AdS/CFT examples, the brane degrees of freedom at the scale of the VEV in this solution  account for the full set of degrees of freedom of the known dual field theory. In general flux compactifications, we would like to understand if this is the case.

In , we noted that the Bousso Polchinski tuning available for flux compactifications suggests dual field theories with entropy that is much greater than quadratic in the flux (and therefore brane) quantum numbers. This makes more pressing the question of whether the branes in a generic Coulomb branch configuration can account for such a large entropy when the (A)dS space is much larger than string scale in size. (When the (A)dS space is string scale in size, there is a “correspondence point” (cf ) at which the brane entropy scales like that of the (A)dS space if the brane entropy is quadratic in the flux quantum numbers .)

In this note, we show that the best current estimates for the number of flux vacua in the KKLT system  agrees with a simple estimate of the number of degrees of freedom available on the branes realizing the Coulomb branch of the system. That is, from an estimate of the number of flux vacua, one obtains an estimate of the smallest cosmological constant and therefore the largest (A)dS radius scale available in the models. Translating this to an entropy using the Bekenstein/Hawking, Susskind/Witten, and Gibbons/Hawking arguments, one can compare the result to an estimate of the number of degrees of freedom available on brane domain walls in the Coulomb branch configuration. The latter count requires the inclusion of string junctions and webs. We find that the two estimates agree within their theoretical error bars, though both estimates are most reliably considered as lower bounds. In this way we relate the statistics of flux vacua with the statistical mechanics of individual flux vacua.

We further present a heuristic explanation of why this comparison works (in our case and in the original case of AdS/CFT on the Coulomb branch) based on the Susskind Witten analysis of entropy in AdS vacua as a function of energy.

This result supports the idea that one can figure out the dual theory from the information about its Coulomb branch available directly on the gravity side, part of a program to determine the duals under current development  (see also \[2,,27\]).4 Other aspects of the analysis  include the relation between the vacua with fixed moduli on the gravity side and the structure of renormalization group fixed points on the field theory side, constraints on the quantum numbers on the two sides, and their structure under monodromies of the compactification. It improves our understanding of the (A)DS entropy discussed in  for the cases in which the cosmological constant is tuned to be very small.

This note is organized as follows. In §2 we review the Bousso Polchinski style estimate for the number of KKLT flux vacua. In §3 we review the deformation of the system to the Coulomb branch via brane domain walls and present our estimate for the number of degrees of freedom of the dual theory visible on the branes. We also present a heuristic explanation of the agreement between §2 and §3 based on the Susskind Witten analysis.

2. Statistics of Flux Vacua

The Bousso Polchinski mechanism predicts exponentially many vacua as a function of multiple input flux quantum numbers, as follows . A systematic approach to the problem of counting flux vacua was recently developed in . The basic idea is the following. One expects a limit on the strength of flux quantum numbers from back reaction on the geometry. There are $`b_3`$ RR flux quantum numbers $`Q_i,i=1,\mathrm{},b_3`$ and $`b_3`$ NS flux quantum numbers $`N_i,i=1,\mathrm{},b_3`$. If one expresses the expected limitation in the form

$$R^2\underset{i=1}{\overset{b_3}{}}\gamma _iQ_i^2+\alpha _iN_i^2<R_{max}^2$$

for some order one coefficients $`\alpha _i`$ and $`\gamma _i`$, then one obtains a total number of vacua which is of order

$$N_{vac}\frac{R_{max}^{2b_3}}{b_3!}$$

from the volume of the sphere in flux space containing the fluxes consistent with (2.1). (This assumes that each choice of flux leads to of order one vacua.)

In the KKLT models, this estimate may be given in terms of the quadratic form

$$L_{CY}HF$$

as follows. Dimensional reduction on a space with flux produces contributions to the four dimensional effective potential from the flux kinetic terms for the NS flux $`H_{NS}`$ and the Ramond flux $`F_{RR}`$

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_{flux}_{CY}\frac{1}{l_4^2}\frac{g_s^4}{V^2}\sqrt{g}\left(\left|F_{RR}\right|^2+\frac{1}{g_s^2}\left|H_{NS}\right|^2\right).$$

where we are in 4d Einstein frame and $`V`$ is the compactification volume in string units. This contribution takes the form

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_{flux}\underset{i=1}{\overset{b_3}{}}\left(c_iQ_i^2+a_iN_i^2\right)$$

where $`a_i`$ and $`c_i`$ are functions of the moduli, which in turn depend on the fluxes, and $`Q_i`$ and $`N_i`$ are the RR and NSNS flux quantum numbers on the 3-cycles in the compactification. (In asymmetric orbifold models such as  the dependence of $`a_i,c_i`$ on the moduli is eliminated for the geometrical moduli by using asymmetic orbifolding to freeze them at the string scale.)

If we pick the maximum flux scale $`R_{max}`$ such that the moduli-dependent coefficients $`a_i`$ and $`c_i`$ do not take extreme values in the solutions to the equations of motion, then one can relate $`L`$ to a positive definite quadratic form for each point on the moduli space solving the equations of motion.

That is, in the no scale models  appearing in KKLT, the Gauss’ law relation between $`LHF`$ and orientifold 3-plane and D3-brane charge

$$\frac{1}{2\left(2\pi \right)^4\left(\alpha ^{}\right)^2}HF=\frac{1}{4}\left(N_{O3}N_{\overline{O3}}\right)N_{D3}+N_{\overline{D3}}$$

translates via supersymmetry into a relation between the orientifold +D3-brane tension and $`L`$. In a zero energy vacuum of the no-scale approximation  to the effective potential, this tension $`HF`$ cancels the positive terms (2.1) in the potential. So for every solution to the equations of motion we wish to consider, a relation of the form

$$a_iN_i^2+c_iQ_i^2LR_{max}^2$$

holds, with $`a_i`$ and $`c_i`$ order one coefficients that depend on the fluxes. So rewriting $`R_{max}^2`$ as $`L_{max}`$ we can rewrite (2.1) as

$$N_{vac}\frac{L_{max}^{b_3}}{b_3!}$$

By integrating the number of vacua solving the equations of motion over the flux choices and moduli space with a suppression factor introduced for large fluxes to take into account (2.1),  found an estimate

$$N_{vac}\frac{\left(2\pi L_{max}\right)^K}{12\pi ^nn!K!}f\left(K\right)$$

where $`K=b_3`$ is the number of independent complex fluxes in the compactification, and where $`n=b_3/21`$ is the complex dimension of the complex structure moduli space of the Calabi-Yau threefold associated to the F theory compactification. $`f(K)`$ is an integral of flux-independent quantities over a fundamental domain of the moduli space.

If we take these vacua to be distributed roughly uniformly between cosmological constants of $`\pm \frac{1}{l_4^2}`$ (where $`l_4`$ is the four-dimensional Planck length), this predicts a minimum cosmological constant of magnitude

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_{min}\frac{1}{l_4^2N_{vac}}$$

corresponding to a maximum curvature radius $`L_{(A)dS}`$ of order

$$\left(L_{\left(A\right)dS}^{max}\right)^2l_4^2N_{vac}$$

among the elements of the discretuum of vacua predicted by the estimate (2.1)(2.1). This curvature scale in turn corresponds to an entropy of order

$$S_{max}\frac{\left(L_{\left(A\right)dS}^{max}\right)^2}{l_4^2}N_{vac}$$

as we will review in the next section. Taking the vacua to be uniformly distributed is a nontrivial assumption, since the vacua could instead accumulate around some particular values of the cosmological constant. We will see that this naive assumption fits with what we find for the entropy, though a much more thorough analysis of the distribution of vacua will ultimately be required.

This estimate, which may ultimately prove accurate as a count of the number of vacua, appears at least to be a lower bound on this number. For example, we expect more solutions to the equations fixing the complex structure and dilation moduli at the no scale level than the $`DW=0`$ solutions so far counted . In addition, when we saturate Gauss’ law with some number of threebranes as well as fluxes, the number of vacua of the threebrane theory comes into play and has not yet been estimated accurately while at the same time fixing the moduli.5 We thank S. Kachru for this caveat. There are almost certainly other classes of vacua such as  to be included in a full count as well, though the corresponding entropies for these may be studied independently.

3. Statistical Mechanics of Flux vacua

Given an (A)dS vacuum of radius $`L_{(A)dS}`$, we can associate a maximal entropy of order $`L_{AdS}^{d2}/l_d^{d2}`$ to a region of the spacetime contained in a 2-sphere of radius $`L_{(A)dS}`$. In the dS case, this is simply the Gibbons Hawking entropy . In the AdS case, this follows from applying the Bekenstein/Hawking entropy bound to AdS space, as was studied for AdS/CFT by Susskind and Witten .

We will apply the Susskind Witten analysis to the Coulomb branch configurations of our flux vacua in the AdS case. Let us first briefly review their analysis, generalizing trivially from the $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ context in which they applied it. One begins with an $`AdS_d/CFT_{d1}`$ dual pair, for which the CFT has $`n_{CFT}`$ degrees of freedom and therefore of order $`E^{(d2)n_{CFT}}`$ states in its spectrum as a function of energy scale $`E`$. Cut off this theory at a scale of order $`1/(L_{CFT}\delta )`$ for some $`\delta <1`$, where $`L_{CFT}`$ is the size of the sphere on which the CFT lives. The corresponding operation on the gravity side is to place an infrared cutoff in global AdS at a sphere of area $`L_{AdS}^{d2}/\delta ^{d2}`$ surrounding the origin. Since precise coefficients are not obtained by this analysis, for simplicity we may take $`\delta `$ somewhat smaller than but of order 1, so that the cutoff restricts us to of order one mode per degree of freedom on the $`S^{d2}`$ on which the CFT lives. The area of this $`S^{d2}`$ in Planck units, $`L_{AdS}^{d2}/l_d^{d2}`$, bounds the entropy that can fit inside the sphere on the gravity side. Susskind and Witten checked that this entropy is indeed $`N^2`$ in the gravity dual to the $`𝒩=4`$ $`U(N)`$ super Yang-Mills theory, using the relations $`L_{AdS}L_{S^5}(g_sN)^{1/4}l_s`$.

Said differently, the cutoff requires each degree of freedom to be excited with energy at most of order $`1/L_{AdS}`$. The total energy allowed below the cutoff is then $`E_T=n_{CFT}/L_{AdS}`$. From the corresponding gravity side cutoff at a sphere of area $`L_{AdS}^{d2}`$, we can independently identify this total energy $`E_T`$ as the mass $`M_{BH}^{(L_{AdS})}`$ of the largest black hole fitting within the region bounded by this area. In the $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ case, these two formulas for the energy scale of the cutoff agree, once we identify $`n_{CFT}`$ with $`N^2`$. This result is consistent with a naive extrapolation of the weak coupling relation $`n_{CFT}N^2`$ into the strong ’tHooft coupling regime.

This analysis keeps track of the moding of states on the sphere as well as the total entropy, and it illustrates a basic aspect of how the entropy is distributed in the AdS/CFT duality6 emphasized for example by S. Shenker: from the cutoff on the sphere, allowing only of order one mode on the $`S^{d2}`$ for of each of the $`n_{CFT}=N^2`$ degrees of freedom, one obtains the entropy which is numerically equal to one degree of freedom per Planck area but organized as $`n_{CFT}=N^2`$ degrees of freedom per $`L_{AdS}^3`$.

The Susskind Witten analysis just reviewed was in the global AdS solution. We can apply it in the Poincare patch, corresponding to the CFT on Minkowski space $`M_{d1}`$. We do this by enforcing the Bekenstein bound corresponding to black brane solutions extending in the $`M_{d1}`$ directions. This leads again to $`N^2`$ degrees of freedom per $`L_{AdS}^{d2}`$ area along the $`d2`$ spatial directions of $`M_{d1}`$.

We would like to see how many of the $`n_{CFT}`$ degrees of freedom of the system become manifest on its Coulomb branch. Let us first review how the Coulomb branch arises from the gravity side point of view. It is obtained by introducing brane domain walls separated radially from the horizon. This reduces the flux in the bulk region on the side of the brane toward the horizon (let us call this the “IR side” since it corresponds to the IR region from the field theory point of view). The simplest such configuration, obtained in  for the $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ case, is to trade all the flux in this region for branes at a radial scale of order $`L_{AdS}`$. There being no flux supporting the compactification on the IR side of the branes, it shrinks down and caps off the solution at a finite radius in the IR direction, removing the horizon. In the solution , this region turns out to be smooth (in fact flat) ten dimensional space. In a general flux compactification, we do not know the precise solution but the absence of flux in this region means that the AdS horizon will be removed generically. This corresponds to the fact that a generic Coulomb branch configuration will lift most of the degrees of freedom of the theory to a scale of order the scale set by the VEVs. Also in a generic system there will be a potential on the Coulomb branch, so that the physical solutions are time dependent. I expect this will not preclude the counting and identification of degrees of freedom from the brane content on the gravity side.7 Another work that used off shell bubbles to illustrate a physics point is .

In the $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ case, we see $`N^2`$ degrees of freedom from stretched strings (“W bosons”) at the mass scale

$$\varphi \frac{L_{AdS}}{l_s^2}$$

of the VEVs of the diagonal scalar matrix elements. (There are also string oscillation modes on top of these including some at of order this energy scale, which have the same $`N`$ scaling.) These are electric degrees of freedom from the point of view of the spontaneously broken $`U(N)`$ gauge group on the manifest D3-branes of the  solution, and become massless as we return to the origin of the moduli space. In this sense, the $`N^2`$ degrees of freedom have become manifest on the Coulomb branch directly on the gravity side of the correspondence.

Let us clarify the energy scales involved in this analysis. We put the Susskind Witten cutoff originally at the radius $`L_{AdS}`$ corresponding to the total energy scale $`N^2/L_{AdS}`$. Exciting the stretched string “W bosons” individually fits within this cutoff, so we can exhibit the count of degrees of freedom by exciting them individually. But exciting all $`N^2`$ of them at the scale (3.1) would of course not fit inside the above cutoff, which as we discussed allows states up to to a total energy scale corresponding to $`N^2`$ degrees of freedom each excited only up to energy $`1/L_{AdS}`$. So if one wants to apply the Susskind Witten analysis to the system on the Coulomb branch, including energies up to the scale

$$E_{Cbranch}N^2\varphi $$

we need a larger cutoff (smaller $`\delta `$).

We can now ask in the more general flux compactifications of interest here  whether the brane degrees of freedom continue to account for the black hole entropy. That is, when we count the elementary degrees of freedom $`n_B`$ on the brane domain walls replacing all the flux to the IR end of the branes, at the mass scale of the VEV suggested by the geometry, is $`n_B`$ of order $`L_{AdS}^{d2}/l_d^{d2}`$? We will see that for the KKLT models, at the level of the estimate in §2 this saturation holds as well in our case, when we take into account string junction degrees of freedom living on the branes in the Coulomb branch of that system.

The branes in the KKLT construction consist of $`D5`$ and $`NS5`$ branes wrapped on $`b_3`$ 3-cycles of the compactification manifold of type IIB string theory, as well as of order $`HF`$ D3-branes ending on them according to the Gauss’ law constraint (2.1). $`Q_i`$ $`D5`$ and $`N_i`$ $`NS5`$ branes wrapped on the same cycle $`C_i`$ reduce to $`J_i`$ $`(p_i,q_i)`$ fivebranes where $`(p_i,q_i)=(Q_i/J_i,N_i/J_i)`$ are relatively prime integers. We will be interested in the highly tuned situation described in §2 in which the size of the Calabi-Yau is much smaller than the curvature radius of the $`AdS_4`$. In particular, let us consider all the length scales within the Calabi Yau to be somewhat bigger than string scale for control but not parametrically bigger as a function of the flux quantum numbers. Similarly, let us consider a situation with $`g_s`$ somewhat smaller than one but of order one.

The degrees of freedom on the branes consist of strings and string webs (combinations of string junctions) which are at a mass scale of order

$$m_\varphi \frac{1}{l_s}$$

which is the analogue of (3.1) in our system. The string and string web degrees of freedom can be electric from the point of view of the gauge group on each bunch of branes. When the classical mass and binding energy formulas are a good approximation, some string webs are stable at an energy scale of order (3.1) by virtue of being the lightest degrees of freedom with their quantum numbers. We will estimate the number of such degrees of freedom $`n_B`$ coming from string junctions that we can reliably obtain ending on these various branes, and see that they account for the entropy predicted on the gravity side (2.1)- (2.1).

$$n_BN_{vac}$$

with $`N_{vac}`$ given by (2.1).

We are interested in the number of degrees of freedom available on the $`N_5>>b_3`$ 5-branes and $`N_3>>b_3`$ 3-branes obtained from the $`AdS_4`$ solution by trading all the flux in the IR region of the geometry for branes. There will be multifundamental states arising from string webs (connected combinations of string junctions) with multiple external strings ending on the branes. String webs, discussed in many interesting papers such as  (including one relating them to black hole entropy ) are combinations of $`(p,q)`$ strings connected through three-string junction vertices. They satisfy a basic charge conservation condition

$$\underset{I}{}(p_I,q_I)=0$$

where $`I`$ runs over the strings entering any vertex (and therefore applies to the sum over external strings entering a string web).

We will start by studying junctions with one endpoint on each set of branes (indexed by their type and by the cycle they wrap or end on). This will produce an entropy accounting for the gravity side prediction. We will not analyze the details of the flux compactifications necessary to produce Coulomb branch configurations with sufficiently stable solutions to (3.1). It is clear that some such configurations exist, and our main goal is to explain how large entropies of order $`N_{vac}`$ (2.1)(2.1) can arise in any Coulomb branch configuration of branes.

Before proceeding to the count of junctions, let us note two issues we have not completely resolved. Firstly, junctions with more endpoints on each bunch of branes, which could be viewed as bound states of lower junctions, would lead to an entropy greater than the gravity side prediction (2.1)(2.1) if such states were considered separately. Secondly, the junctions we do consider with one endpoint on each bunch of branes can themselves be viewed as bound states of strings. The question is what degrees of freedom are elementary in the effective field theory at the energy scale determined by the Coulomb branch VEVs. These issues are similar to those in a somewhat similar situation in the black hole context in , where just the lowest junction connecting three sets of branes accounted for all the expected entropy. There is a heuristic argument, along the lines of the arguments in , that higher bound state junctions are less likely to constitute valid independent effective fields than the basic junctions with one endpoint on each bunch of branes, since the ratio of the binding energy of one constituent to the mass of the bound state decreases as the number of endpoints increases. Because of this, the lowest junctions are reliably counted but the higher ones are less and less under control as we increase the number of endpoints, keeping the size of the Calabi Yau fixed. Another argument due to  is that in some cases the lowest junction states connecting different bunches of branes ($`U(N)`$ factors in the brane system gauge group) can be related to elementary string states in dual quiver theories. These are not proofs that only the lowest junctions need be considered however, and leaves open the possibility that more entropy is available in the system than the naive Bousso Polchinski tuning predicts. In any case, we will account for at least the  estimate with the simplest controlled junction states, addressing the puzzle raised in .

Let us study the junctions ending on the 3-branes and the fivebranes. First consider the endpoints on the 3-branes. Consider a generic situation where the ends of these 3-branes are distributed roughly uniformly over the $`b_3/2`$ pairs ofdual intersecting A and B cycles contributing to the anomalous $`HF`$ 3-brane charge. Because of Gauss’ Law (2.1), there are of order $`N_3L`$ D3-branes, and so of order $`L/(b_3/2)`$ per pair of dual A and B cycles. A junction with one end on each of the $`b_3/2`$ groups of $`2L/b_3`$ D3-branes has

$$n_3\left(\frac{2L}{b_3}\right)^{b_3/2}$$

ways to end on the threebranes. In our estimates we will account for the $`L`$-dependence and not reliably keep track of the prefactor’s dependence on $`b_3`$ (which is much smaller than $`L`$ in the regime of validity of the analysis), though the strongest factorial dependence on $`b_3`$ evident in (2.1) will arise naturally also in our estimate.

If the junction also ends on the $`(p,q)`$ fivebranes in all possible ways (again with a single endpoint per bunch of branes), then there is another factor in the entropy coming from the fivebranes, which we now compute. Since we have of order $`N_5/b_3`$ $`(p,q)`$ 5-branes per 3-cycle, we have of order $`n_5(N_5/b_3)^{b_3}`$ ways the endpoints can end on fivebranes.

Let us relate this to the quantity $`L`$ with respect to which the gravity side estimate (2.1) is expressed. Noting that

$$2N_5\underset{i=1}{\overset{b_3}{}}\left(\left|Q_i\right|+\left|N_i\right|\right)$$

and recalling from §2 that $`L_{i=1}^{b_3}(c_iQ_i^2+a_iN_i^2)`$ and using the fact that on average $`Q_iN_iN_5/b_3`$, we obtain the relation

$$L^{\frac{1}{2}}\frac{N_5}{b_3}\sqrt{2b_3}$$

This translates the fivebrane factor in the entropy to

$$n_5\left(L^{1/2}/\sqrt{b_3}\right)^{b_3}.$$

Putting the threebrane and fivebrane factors together, we obtain

$$S_{junctions}n_3n_5\left(\frac{L}{b_3}\right)^{b_3}$$

The gravity side estimate (2.1) does not determine the function of $`K=b_3`$ multiplying the $`L^K/K!`$ factor, though  offered some arguments that it was subdominant in its $`K`$ dependence to the factorial in the denominator. At this level, (3.1) from the lowest junctions with charge on all the sets of branes agrees with the gravity side estimate (2.1)(2.1)(2.1).

Incidentally, one obtains the same estimate if one considers junctions ending only on 5-branes if one decomposes the $`(p,q)`$ 5-branes back into separate D and NS 5-branes.

Having recovered the entropy directly on the branes of our system, a result similar to that obtained above for the $`𝒩=4`$ SYM theory on its Coulomb branch, it is interesting to ask if this is a coincidence or should have been expected. The following is a heuristic argument for the agreement based on the above Susskind Witten analysis on the Coulomb branch.

Let us first consider the $`𝒩=4`$ super Yang-Mills theory. If we consider the gravity side geometry out on the Coulomb branch in a configuration in which all of the IR flux has been traded for branes , this corresponds to a field theory configuration in which the off diagonal matrix degrees of freedom have been lifted to the scale $`m_\varphi `$ of the VEVs. The density of states of the system for energies $`E<N^2m_\varphi `$ scales like

$$\mathrm{\Omega }\left(E\right)_{Cbranch}E^{cN}$$

which is much slower growth with energy than the undeformed CFT scaling like

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_{CFT}\left(E\right)E^{c^{}N^2}$$

for some constants $`c,c^{}`$. This means that in the dual  solution for the Coulomb branch, the black hole solutions saturating the entropy at a given energy $`E_0<N^2m_\varphi `$ contain parametrically fewer states (i.e. have entropy of order $`N`$ rather than $`N^2`$) than those in the full $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ geometry at the same energy scale $`E_0`$.

If we now move the VEV scale $`m_\varphi `$ down in energy to somewhat below $`E_0/N^2`$, so that the branes go behind the black hole horizon, then the two solutions (pure AdS and Coulomb branch) agree for energies above $`E_0`$. In particular, the branes contribute enough entropy to enhance the Coulomb branch black hole density of states to (3.1) at energy $`E_0`$ rather than just (3.1). This makes it clear why the brane states saturated the order $`N^2`$ entropy (up to order one factors we do not control by these considerations).

Now in the more general flux compactifications of interest here, we are again applying the procedure of trading all the IR flux for branes. This again removes the flux stabilizing the compactification, and probably caps off the solution in the IR. This again suggests that the black holes in the capped off Coulomb branch solution will have parametrically fewer states than in the full AdS geometry at a given energy scale. As in the above discussion of the $`AdS_5`$ case, pushing the branes back behind the horizon will produce again a black hole saturating the entropy bound up to the energy scale $`E_0`$. I therefore find it very plausible that the branes in a KLT-like Coulomb branch configuration in a general flux compactification will saturate the entropy and will provide a reliable indicator of the content of the holographic dual theory. This bolsters considerably the case for obtaining the content of the dual quantum field theory from the branes on the Coulomb branch of the background .

There is a simple lesson from this analysis regarding the distribution of the entropy. As emphasized above, in the Susskind Witten analysis in ordinary AdS/CFT, the entropy is organized as $`n_{CFT}`$ degrees of freedom per $`L_{(A)dS}`$ area. Both in AdS and in dS flux compactifications, one can obtain numerological agreement with the expected entropy in a situation where the entropy is organized into one mode per string area per intrinsic degree of freedom, rather than being organized into $`n_{CFT}`$ degrees of freedom each excited by one mode per $`L_{(A)dS}^{d2}`$ area (as discussed in §7 of ). This estimate is based on there being of order $`Q^2`$ degrees of freedom in a system with $`Q`$ branes coming from open string degrees of freedom. In this paper, we have seen that because their number scales like larger than quadratic powers of the flux (brane) quantum numbers, junction states can account for the expected entropy $`n_{junction}N_{vac}`$, arranged in the expected way as $`n_{junction}`$ states per $`(A)dS`$ area rather than as one per string area.

It will be very interesting to see if and how refinements of the statistical analysis (keeping track of the specific configurations required to tune the cosmological constant to be very small) continue to lead to agreement between the two sides of the putative duality. In this note we have not addressed any aspect of the distribution of flux vacua admitting large numbers of degrees of freedom, but have only seen that it is possible and very natural for string junction states to account for the large entropy predicted for some vacua by the Bousso Polchinski mechanism.

Acknowlegements

I am very grateful to M. Fabinger and S. Hellerman, as well as X. Liu, for useful discussions and collaboration on the larger program . I would also like to thank S. Kachru for many explanations of the workings of Calabi Yau flux compactifications. In addition I have benefited from helpful comments on (A)dS entropy from R. Bousso, M. Kleban, S. Shenker, and L. Susskind and on string junctions from D. Berenstein, O. de Wolfe, and R. Leigh. I would like to thank the hospitality of Strings 2003, the Benasque Center for Science, the Globe Bookstore in Prague, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Air Canada, KLM, Czech Airlines, and Lufthansa for hospitality while this work was carried out. Financial support comes from the DOE under contract DE-AC03-76SF00515 and by the NSF under contract 9870115. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY99-07949.

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# Photometrical Review of Open Cluster M25

## 1. Introduction

The galactic cluster M25 is a moderately young open star cluster (Sandage 1963 San63 ). Its 2000.00 position on the celestial sphere is $`\alpha =18^h31.6^m\&\delta =19^{}15^{^{}}`$ and $`\mathrm{}=13.92^{}\&b=5.05^{}`$. The Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-print) shows that the cluster M25 has several bright stars and many of intermediate brightness superposed upon numerous faint background stars. This system has a lot of irregular interstellar matter due to its location near the galactic plane (Landolt 1964 Lan64 ; Schmidt 1977 Sch77 ). Also, there is a dark lane of absorbing matter passing near the center of the cluster (Serkowski 1965 Ser65 ; Schmidt 1982 Sch82 ). A Cepheid Variable (U-Sgr) with a period of 6.745241d lies near the center of the cluster (Wallerstein 1957 Wal57 ; Shobbrook 1992 Sho92 ).

Many previous studies have been performed on this cluster since 1957, e.g. Feast 1957 Fea57 ; Wallerstein 1957 Wal57 ; Irwin 1958 Irw58 ; Sandage 1960 San60 ; Johnson 1960a Joh60a ; Wampler et al. 1961 Wam61 ; Landolt 1964 Lan64 ; Serkowski 1965 Ser65 ; Graham 1967 Gra67 ; Schmidt 1977 Sch77 ; van den Bergh 1978 Van78 ; Schmidt 1982 Sch82 ; Stephen 1989 Ste89 ; Luck et al. 2000 Luc00 ; and Tadross et al. 2002 Tad02 .

It is noted that there is a deficiency of observations in U-band, and only observations down to 15.5th visual magnitude are available. This certainly will make it difficult to define the main sequence of the cluster and consequently affect the estimation of the main photometric parameters. So, the main data of van den Bergh (1978)Van78 , Landolt (1964)Lan64  and Stephen (1989)Ste89  have been used after being reduced to van den Bergh’s system in the present study.

## 2. Photometric analysis of M25

### 2.1. Reddening

The interstellar reddening across the cluster has been determined using its color-color diagram (CCD), as shown in Fig 1. The curve represents the standard zero age main sequence (ZAMS) as taken from Schmidt-Kaler (1982)SchK82 . The slope of the reddening line has been considered to be 0.72, as given by Johnson & Morgan (1953)Joh53 . A line parallel to the reddening line has been drawn for every point on the CCD. The intersection of this line with the ZAMS-curve gives the intrinsic values of the color indices assuming that the star lies on the main sequence. The reddening of any star lying below the kink of the ZAMS-curve is ambiguous and may have two or three possible values. For this reason, the best reading that is consistent with the cluster distance has been accepted.

§ A histogram of E(B-V) has been constructed for all members of the cluster. A range of the reddening from 0.30 mag to 0.70 mag has been obtained as shown in Fig 2. The model value for all the cluster stars is 0.48 mag (solid line), and 0.50 mag (dashed line) for the members with unambiguous reddening. The maximum and minimum values of the reddening estimated by Burki’s method (1975)Bur75 , Fig 3, come out to be 0.63 mag & 0.37 mag respectively. The difference between the maximum and minimum reddening has found to be $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$E(B-V)= 0.26 mag, which is larger than the natural dispersion of the cluster (0.11 mag) according to Burki’s criterion. This indicates that the reddening across the cluster is non-uniform.

§ The Q-method of Johnson & Morgan (1953)Joh53  has been applied to estimate the maximum and minimum reddening of the cluster. It’s found E(B-V)max= 1.20 mag & E(B-V)min= 0.35 mag. Also the difference between the maximum and minimum excesses, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$E(B-V), is found to be greater than Burki’s (1975)Bur75  limit of the natural dispersion.

§ From the relation between the color excesses and the distance modulii of the cluster members, Fig 4; the reddening is found to range from 0.15 to 1.00 mag, and the mean excess changes with the mean distance from 0.47 to 0.52 mag, Fig 5.

§ The cluster reddening has been also estimated from the spectral classifications of Wampler et al (1961)Wam61 , Feast (1957)Fea57 , Wallerstien (1957)Wal57 , and Wallerstien (1960)Wal60  data. The mean value of the reddening has been calculated to be 0.47 mag (18 stars), 0.45 mag (29 stars) and 0.46 mag (8 stars) respectively. Intercomparisons of E(B-V) values for the three investigators have been established in the sense of 3-color photometric data minus the spectroscopic ones as shown in Fig 6. In this respect, we found that Wampler’s spectroscopic data is in a good agreement with the photometric data than those of Feast and Wallerstien.

The mean reddening value of the cluster has been taken to be 0.50 mag, which is in a good agreement with those obtained above. It coincides with Johnson & Beckers’ methods (see section 3).

### 2.2. Interstellar absorption

It is assumed that there is a constant ratio between the total visual absorption Av and the color excess E(B-V), which depends on the nature of the dust grains. Blanco (1955)Bla55  has shown that this ratio is not always constant and it seems to be uniform except for a very few anomalous directions in the sky; e.g., Orion nebula. Moffat & Schmidt-Kaler (1976)Mof76  have revised the ratio of total visual absorption to selective color excess in the long wavelength band from the relation \[Av/E(B-V)=R \] assuming the constant R is 3.25 for most directions in the sky. Applying this relation in the direction to the cluster under investigation, the total visual absorption Av is found equal 1.62 mag.

## 3. Distance

According to Johnson’s (1960b)Joh60b  method, the reddening can be obtained by shifting the standard CCD-curve of Schmidt-Kaler (1982)SchK82  on to the apparent CCD-curve of the cluster in the direction of the reddening line; the slope of this line has been considered to be 0.72 as explained by Johnson & Morgan (1953)Joh53 ; this yields an excess of 0.50 mag. From the coincidence of the corrected sequence of the cluster’s color-magnitude diagram, CMD-curve, with the standard one of Schmidt-Kaler (1982)SchK82 , the apparent distance modulus is found to be 10.55 mag. Subtracting the total visual absorption, the true distance modulus is found to be 8.93 mag.

§ Becker’s (1972)Bec72  method has been applied, where the intrinsic standard CMDs of Schmidt-Kaler (1982)SchK82  have been superposed on the apparent ones of the cluster \[V,(B-V) & V,(U-B)\] under some conditions assumed by Becker & Stock (1954)Bec54 . The well known Becker’s table has been constructed, Table 1, where the apparent distance modulii V-Mv in the first column are plotted versus $`\mathrm{}`$E(U-B)o-c values in the last column, Fig 7. The true apparent distance at which $`\mathrm{}`$E = 0.0 is found to be 10.58 mag; it’s conforming with a color excess of about 0.50 mag. After subtracting the total visual absorption, the true distance modulus is found to be 8.96 mag.

§ A histogram of Vo-Mv has been constructed for all the cluster members as shown in Fig 8. The model value for the cluster is found to be 8.65 mag (solid line), while for unambiguous members (stars which are above the kink of the CCD-curve as shown in Fig 1), it is found to be 8.75 mag (dashed line). Then the mean distance modulus is equal to 8.70 mag.

§ From the relation between the distance modulii and color excesses, Fig 5, we could infer that the cluster modulus has a distance range from 7.75 mag to 10.20 mag and, as a consequence, an average value of 8.98 mag.

§ From the empirical mean evolutionary deviation curve of Johnson (1960b)Joh60b , Fig 9; an estimation of the distance modulus of 9.10 mag to the cluster could be achieved.

§ Using the spectroscopic data of Wampler et al (1961)Wam61 , Feast (1957)Fea57 , Wallerstein (1957)Wal57 , and Wallerstein (1960)Wal60 . The mean modulus of the cluster is found to be 8.25 mag (18 stars), 8.18 mag (29 stars), and 8.24 mag (8 stars) respectively. It is noticed that Wampler’s spectroscopic results are in a good agreement with the 3-color photometric data than those obtained by Feast and Wallerstein, Fig 10.

§ The distance modulus of the cluster has been obtained by fitting the ZAMS-curves of Schmidt-Kaler (1982)SchK82  to the lower portions of the \[Vo , (B-V)o\] and \[Vo , (U-B)o\] diagrams of the cluster as shown in Figs 11 & 12. The mean value of the distance modulus comes out to be 8.93 mag.

§ The mean distance modulus of the cluster has been calculated from the whole individual modulii of the members

(V-Mv)o = 8.82 mag $`\pm `$ 0.006 (standard error of the mean)

§ The classical Cepheid U-Sgr (star no 1457 in the present work) is found to have a distance modulus ranging from 8.95 mag to 8.99 mag according to Wolfgang (1988)Wol88  and Visvanatha (1989)Vis89  respectively. This value is in a good agreement with the present distance of the cluster.

The assigned mean distance modulus of the cluster is then 8.89 mag. This corresponds to a distance of 600 pc to it.

The cluster’s distances from the galactic plane Z and from the galactic center Rgc have been calculated to be -52.82 pc and 7.92 kpc respectively.

## 4. Membership analysis

The assignment of membership or non-membership based on the photometric analysis is very difficult in this cluster because the presence of differential reddening all over the cluster. The uncertainty about membership increases for faint stars those are merging with crowded galactic field. So that the discrimination of the physical members of the cluster from the field stars could be better achieved by studying the radial velocities and relative proper motions.

In the present work, our assignment of membership probabilities has been based on the position of each star in the long wave-length and short wave-length CMDs of the cluster with the proper motion studies of Stephen (1989)Ste89 . Also, the distance, the color excess and the spectral type have been taken into account in our decisions about some stars. Hence, 115 stars are regarded as members based on their good positions in the two CMs, distance, proper motion membership probabilities ($`>`$ 50%), color excess, and spectral type ranges.

From the studies, which have only BV observations, almost 120 stars have been added to the cluster as probable members based on their location near the ZAMS-curve of the long wave-length CMD, as shown in Fig 13. Also, the proper motion membership probabilities ($`>`$ 50%) have been taken into account. Therefore, the mean distance and reddening of these stars are found to be in a good agreement with the distance modulus and reddening ranges of the cluster. So that, the cluster M25 may be contain at least 230 stars as members and probable members.

Moreover, the free reddened CMDs of the cluster have been used to separate the doubt members from the normal ones as follows:

\- According the previous studies, stars no 60, 118, & 127 are classified as foreground stars and stars no 11, 20, 51, 56, 73, & 534 as background ones. In the present work, based on our considerations, the stars no 11 & 20 have accounted as probable members.

\- Stars no J1 & J106 taken from Johnson’s (1960a)Joh60a  sequence are regarded as members because they are consistent with our conditions for the cluster members, then they have been added to the present sequence.

\- Stephen (1989)Ste89  suggested that the star no 73 is a cluster member with a proper motion membership probability of 94%. While, Feast’s (1957)Fea57  and Schmidt’s (1977)Sch77  studies support our suggestion to regard this star as a non-member one.

\- Stars no 19 & 45 have the brightest magnitudes in the CMDs and almost have the same radial velocity of the cluster (Feast 1957Fea57 , Wallerstien 1957Wal57  & Wallerstien 1960Wal60 ). So, Feast & Evan (1967)Fea67  classified them as variable members supported by Wampler et al (1961)Wam61 , Schmidt (1977)Sch77  & Schmidt (1982)Sch82 .

\- The two stars no 82 & 885 are classified as evolved stars and found by Schmidt (1984)Sch84  to be yellow giant cluster members. Accordingly, it is suggested that the cluster M25 contains three evolved stars: the Cepheid U-Sgr; and the two giants no 82 & no 885.

## 5. The field stars

Most stars, which haven’t enough evidences supporting their membership to the cluster have been regarded as background field stars. This field is found to contain at least 1000 faint stars, as shown in Fig 14. Their distribution in the long wave-length CMD has a lower main sequence than that of the cluster members, Fig 15. The fit of the standard long wave-length CMD of Schmidt-Kaler (1982)SchK82  with the apparent one of the cluster’s field has shown that these stars have a distance modulus of 12.30 mag and color excess of 0.67 mag. This result is coinciding with the fact that the color excess and absorption increase with distance.

## 6. Age of the cluster

In the previous studies of M25, Wampler’s (1961)Wam61  UBV-photometry yields an age of the cluster lies between Mermilliod’s (1981)Mer81  age groups $`\alpha `$-persei and IC 4665, i.e. between 3.6 and 5.1 x 107 yr. On the other hand, the age of the cluster has been estimated by Tosi (1979)Tos79  as 8.9 x 107 yr, and by Strobel (1989)Str89  as 108 yr. In the present work, the age has been estimated using Sandage’s (1957)San57  relation (Mv-log t) where the visual absolute magnitude Mv of the turn off point of the cluster main sequence is found to lie at (B-V)t = -1.2 mag; this value related to log t of 7.95, i.e. an age of 9.1 x 107 yr.

As an additional check, the age of the cluster has been estimated using the isochrones curves of Barbaro et al (1969)Bar69 , which yields an age of 9.8 x 107 yr. Our estimation of the age shows a range from 9.1 x 107 to 9.8 x 107 yr. This estimation is greater than that obtained by Mermilliod’s (1981)Mer81 , smaller than what given by Strobel (1989)Str89 , and almost in a good agreement with that obtained by Tosi (1979)Tos79 .

## 7. Conclusions

The mean values of reddening and distance are found to be 0.50 mag and 600 pc respectively. The Cepheid variable U-Sgr has been used to support our distance estimation to the cluster. The cluster’s distances from the galactic plane Z and from the galactic center Rgc have been calculated to be -52.82 pc and 7.92 kpc respectively. The median age of the cluster has been achieved to get an age range from 9.1 x 107 to 9.8 x 107 yr. The membership analysis has been analyzed and about 120 stars have been added to the cluster as probable members based on their good location in CMDs, distance modulus, color excess and the proper motion membership probabilities ($`>`$ 50%).

## Acknowledgment

We want to thank Prof. Dr. Roland Buser (Basel Univ., Switzerland) for his critically reading the original task of this work, and for his valuable discussions during his visitation to Egypt.


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# A Neutron Elastic Diffuse Scattering Study of PMN

## I Introduction

Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 (PMN) is a typical relaxor ferroelectric that has a broad and strongly frequency-dependent dielectric constant. This system has attracted much attention in the last few years, because of the discovery of an ultrahigh piezoelectric response in solid solutions with PbTiO3 (PT) near the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) Park and Shrout (1997). Pure PMN is considered to be a prototype relaxor, and has been studied extensively in recent years Ye (1998). Nevertheless, certain aspects of this system are not fully understood. Unlike one of its close analogues, Pb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3 (PZN), PMN remains cubic below the (field-induced) Curie temperature $`T_C213`$ K Bonneau et al. (1989); de Mathan et al. (1991), and was believed to exhibit no macroscopic ferroelectric phase transition in zero field.

Efforts to understand the dynamical properties of relaxors have focused on the polar nanoregions (PNR) present in these compounds. Burns and Dacol Burns and Dacol (1983) found that on cooling such systems, PNR start to form at temperatures a few hundred degrees above $`T_C`$. This temperature was later called the “Burns Temperature” $`T_d`$, $`T_d620`$ K for PMN. Neutron scattering measurements Naberezhnov et al. (1999); Vakhrushev et al. (1989) have demonstrated that diffuse scattering appears in PMN between 600 K and 650 K, consistent with previous optical measurements by Burns and Dacol. The diffuse intensity that develops in relaxors below $`T_d`$ has been identified with the PNR. Various neutron and x-ray measurements on diffuse scattering have been carried out in order to investigate how PNR are formed, and to determine average sizes and polarizations (atomic shifts) at different temperatures Hirota et al. (2002); Dkhil et al. (2001); You and Zhang (1997); La-Orauttapong et al. (2001). Phonon contributions have always been a potential source of contamination in diffuse scattering measurements. In this paper, we present, and attempt to interpret, elastic diffuse scattering measurements on pure PMN.

## II Experiment

The experiment was carried out using the Disk Chopper Spectrometer (DCS) Copley and Cook (2003) at the NIST Center for Neutron Research. The sample was a high quality single crystal of PMN with $`0.1^{}`$ mosaic, and a mass of 3.25 g, grown at the Simon Fraser University in Canada. A number of neutron scattering studies using this crystal have already been published Gehring et al. (2001); Hirota et al. (2002); Wakimoto et al. (2002a, b). The room temperature lattice parameter is $`a=4.04`$ Å. At each of several temperatures, time-of-flight spectra were collected for each of at least 51 successive crystal orientations $`0.5^{}`$ apart using 325 detectors with active dimensions in and normal to the scattering plane of $``$ 31 mm and 400 mm respectively. The DCS detectors are located 4000 mm from the sample at scattering angles from $`5^{}`$ to $`140^{}`$. At an incident neutron wavelength of 5.5 Å, the FWHM (full width at half maximum) of the elastic resolution function was $``$ 0.085meV, and the time between pulses at the sample is 9 ms, effectively eliminating frame overlap. Data were collected near a (100) Bragg peak in the (hk0) scattering plane. The choice of a low $`Q`$ reflection helps minimize phonon and multiphonon contributions.

## III Results and Discussion

In Fig. 1, we show the neutron diffuse scattering around a (100) peak in the (hk0) plane measured at different temperatures. Compared with similar x-ray measurements, our neutron scattering measurements have much higher energy resolution, and almost all phonon contributions can be removed by integrating the scattering over an appropriate energy range, $`0.075`$ meV either side of the elastic peak position. In fact, the energy spectra show that there is no significant scattering intensity outside this integral range, i.e., phonon contributions are indeed very small around the (100) Bragg peak. The remaining low energy phonon contributions included within this energy integral (phonons with energy transfer $`|\mathrm{}\omega |0.075`$ meV) can also be estimated, because phonon intensity increases with temperature, while the elastic diffuse scattering intensity decreases. Since no change in lineshape with temperature was observed, we believe that phonon contributions to the elastic diffuse scattering intensity are negligible.

Comparing the data sets plotted in Fig. 1, one can clearly see that diffuse scattering develops around the (100) peak with decreasing temperature. At $`650`$ K, the “butterfly”-shaped diffuse scattering intensity pattern observed at low temperatures is absent, and only a small trace of intensity transverse to the wave vector $`Q=(1,0,0)`$ remains. An enlarged plot of the diffuse scattering intensity measured at 200 K is given in Fig. 2. The diffuse scattering intensity has a “butterfly” shape and extends from the Bragg peak along (110) and (1$`\overline{1}`$0) directions. Previous x-ray diffuse scattering measurements Takesue et al. (2001) show that the polarizations of the PNR are along {111} directions in PMN, and the local symmetry is rhombohedral. This {111} type polarization gives the “butterfly” shaped diffuse intensity pattern in the (hk0) plane. The present elastic diffuse scattering results are in good agreement with the x-ray results. Recent neutron diffuse scattering measurements in the (hhk) scattering plane by S.-H. Lee et al. Lee et al. (2003) provide additional evidence to support the {111} type polarization in PMN.

Fig. 3 shows cuts through the data along the (1$`\overline{1}`$0) direction at three selected temperatures. At 400 K, which is well above $`T_C`$, the diffuse scattering intensity is already measurable. At higher temperatures, the diffuse scattering intensity becomes even weaker and harder to measure. We use a simple Lorentzian function to describe the spatial correlation of the atomic displacements contributing to the diffuse scattering:

$$I_{diff}=\frac{I_0\mathrm{\Gamma }}{\pi (q^2+\mathrm{\Gamma }^2)},$$

where $`I_0`$ is the integrated diffuse scattering intensity, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1/\xi `$ is the inverse of the real space correlation length $`\xi `$, and $`q`$ is the length of the wave vector measured from the (100) Bragg position. Fig. 3 shows the results of fits to the Lorentzian, plus a Gaussian that describes the central Bragg peak, and a flat background. We have been able to obtain good fits using this model. The fitting parameters are the integrated intensity $`I_0`$ and the half width at half maximum $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ of the Lorentzian, the intensity and width of the central Gaussian, and a flat background. $`I_0`$ and $`\xi =1/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ are plotted in Fig. 4.

In Table. 1, we list the integrated diffuse scattering intensity $`I_0`$, correlation length $`\xi `$, and the intensity at a selected wave vector $`Q=(1.05,0.05,0)`$ vs temperature T. The elastic diffuse scattering starts to be noticeable around $`T`$400 K, much below $`T_d620`$ K. The “correlation length” $`\xi `$ is a direct measure of the length scale of the static PNR. According to our results, the PNR are small when they first appear at high temperatures, with average sizes around 15 Å (see Fig. 4). Both the spatial correlation length of the atomic displacements and the integrated intensity of the diffuse scattering increase on cooling, even at temperatures below $`T_C`$ (Fig. 4). At low temperatures the length scale of the PNR reaches $``$65 Å.

From $`T=300`$ K to $`100`$ K, the volume of a single PNR ($`V\xi ^3`$) increases by a factor of $``$60, yet the integrated intensity only increases by a factor of $``$10. Writing $`I_0`$ as the product $`N\xi ^3|𝐐\delta |^\mathrm{𝟐}`$, where $`N`$ is the total number of PNR and $`\delta `$ is the average displacement of atoms within the PNR, we conclude that $`N|𝐐\delta |^\mathrm{𝟐}`$ increases on cooling from high temperatures and then drops dramatically at around $`T_C`$, remaining roughly constant below $`T_C`$. This is illustrated in Fig. 5 which shows $`I_0/\xi ^3`$ as a function of $`T`$. A likely scenario is that on cooling below $`T_C`$, $`\delta `$ remains relatively constant whereas $`N`$ decreases as the smaller PNR merge together.

Previous inelastic neutron scattering measurements on PMN Wakimoto et al. (2002a) have shown that the transverse optic (TO) mode phonon become overdamped near the zone center, starting at $`T_d600`$ K, which is roughly the temperature at which the PNR start to appear. We believe that the overdamping of the soft TO mode phonon is directly associated with the formation of the PNR. In other words, the PNR may originate from the condensation of the soft TO mode. Reexamining the neutron diffuse data on PMN by Vakhrushev et al. Vakhrushev et al. (1995), Hirota et al. Hirota et al. (2002) have proposed a new interpretation of the atomic displacements derived from the data. The atomic displacements can be decomposed into the sum of two terms with comparable magnitudes: $`\delta _{soft}+\delta _{shift}`$. $`\delta _{soft}`$ values satisfy the center-of-mass condition and are consistent with the values derived from inelastic scattering intensities from the soft TO mode. The other term, $`\delta _{shift}`$, shows that the PNR are shifted along their polar directions relative to the surrounding lattices. This “uniform phase shift” has established convincing connections between the diffuse scattering from the PNR and the condensation of soft TO mode phonons. It is important to note that the magnitude of $`\delta _{shift}`$ is comparable to $`\delta _{soft}`$, which can be estimated to be around 1/10 of the lattice spacing. This large phase shift creates a huge energy barrier, preventing these polar regions from merging into the surrounding lattices.

Recently, Gehring et al. have performed measurements that unambiguously established a true ferroelectric soft mode in PMN Gehring et al. (2001). Further inelastic neutron scattering studies by Wakimoto et al. Wakimoto et al. (2002a) show that the soft mode extends to much lower temperatures below $`T_C`$, and that the phonon energy squared $`(\mathrm{}\omega _0)^2`$, which is inversely proportional to the dielectric constant $`ϵ`$, increases linearly with decreasing temperature. These results represent a dynamical signature of a ferroelectric phase below $`T_C`$. The phase below $`T_C`$ is now believed to be the recently discovered phase X Xu et al. (2003a, b), which exhibits an average cubic structure. However, unlike conventional ferroelectric phase transitions, no macroscopic (rhombohedral) lattice distortion has been observed. The decoupling of the lattice distortion from the ferroelectric polarization is quite intriguing, and we believe that the interaction between the PNR and the surrounding lattices is the key in solving this puzzle.

Our current understanding of PNR in relaxor systems can be described as follows: At the Burns temperature $`T_d`$, the soft TO phonon mode becomes overdamped near the zone center, and starts to condense into PNR. These regions form with local polarizations along {111} directions and are shifted uniformly along their individual polarization direction. The number and size of PNR in the system increases with cooling. At the phase transition $`T=T_C`$, a large scale overall “freezing” of the PNR occurs. Small PNR merge into larger ones and the total volume of PNR in the system keeps increasing. The related ferroelectric soft mode lifetime increases below $`T_C`$, and the overdamping near the zone center disappears. A macroscopic ferroelectric polar phase without lattice distortion is then established. Below $`T_C`$ the size of the PNR can grow slowly with further cooling. However, if the coupling between the PNR and the surrounding lattice is not sufficiently strong, as is the case in pure PMN, then the energy barrier created by the uniform phase shift would prevent the PNR from merging further and forming macroscopic lattice distortions. The resulting phase will have a polar lattice of average cubic structure, but with embedded (rhombohedrally) polarized PNR.

In addition to neutron and x-ray diffuse scattering measurements, recent Raman studies Svitelskiy et al. (2003) and specific heat measurements Moriya et al. (2003) have also provided useful information on PNR in PMN. We are planning to carry out further diffuse scattering measurements on a series of relaxor systems in the near future.

In summary, we have shown high resolution neutron elastic diffuse scattering data from PMN in the temperature range of 10 K to 650 K. The formation and development of PNR at temperatures above, around, and below $`T_C`$ have been carefully studied. A merging of smaller PNR into larger ones occurs at the ferroelectric phase transition, while further growth of the PNR into macroscopic rhombohedral domains can not be achieved below $`T_C`$.

## IV Acknowledgments

We would like to thank S.-H. Lee, S. B. Vakhrushev, D. Viehland, and Z.-G. Ye for stimulating discussions. Financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy under contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886, and the National Science Foundation under Agreement No. DMR-0086210 is also gratefully acknowledged.


text:
# Neutrinos under Strong Magnetic Fields11footnote 1Talk given at the Fourth Tropical Workshop on Particle Physics and Cosmology, Cairns, Australia, June 9-13, 2003

## 1 Introduction

A wide spectrum of strong magnetic fields can be found and predicted in nature. Magnetic fields can be as strong as $`10^{12}10^{13}`$ Gauss in the surface of typical radio pulsars , an even stronger ($`10^{14}10^{15}`$ Gauss) in magnetars (with interior fields that may range up to $`10^{16}10^{17}`$ Gauss) . Superconducting magnetic strings, if created after inflation, could generate fields of $`10^{30}`$ Gauss in their vicinity . Primordial magnetic fields of $`10^{24}`$ Gauss at the electroweak (EW) scale have been proposed as the possible origin of the seed field needed to generate through galactic dynamo effect the large-scale magnetic fields observed in a number of galaxies, and galaxy clusters .

Strong magnetic fields can affect matter since they confine electrons perpendicular to its direction and consequently increase the atom binding energies. This effect can create matter bound states as molecular chains, magnetized three-dimensional condensed matter, etc. . On the other hand, strong enough magnetic fields have also important quantum electrodynamics effects, as the modification of the dielectric property of the medium, the polarization of photon modes  and the nonlinear photon splitting .

In this talk we present the effect of strong magnetic fields on the neutrino energy spectrum , and discuss its consequences for neutrino oscillations. Although the neutrino, being a neutral particle, cannot directly interact with the magnetic field, we know that its propagation can be modified in the presence of an external field through quantum corrections. As shown below, in the presence of a strong magnetic field ($`M_W^2Bm_e^2`$, where $`M_W`$ and $`m_e`$ are the W-boson and electron masses respectively) the modification of the neutrino energy, due to one-loop corrections of the self-energy operator at finite temperature, gives rise to a resonant level-crossing condition in neutrino oscillations that is linear in the Fermi coupling constant. As known, in the weak-field approximation linear order modifications of the neutrino energy only appears in charged media  (at zero field this is the well known MSW effect ).

Taking into account that the particle-antiparticle asymmetry of the universe is at the level of $`10^{10}10^9`$, the cosmological medium can be considered neutral, therefore for primordial neutrino oscillations the MSW effect can be disregarded. Nevertheless, if a strong primordial magnetic field was present during the neutrino decoupling era, the results we will discuss can be significant for cosmology, and specifically for primordial nucleosynthesis.

In this talk we will also report some recent results  on neutrino propagation in a constant hypermagnetic field. Effects of different nature in the presence of primordial hypermagnetic fields have been also considered by several authors . If a primordial magnetic field existed prior to the EW phase transition, only its U(1) gauge component, i.e. the hypermagnetic field, would penetrate the EW plasma for infinitely long times. Its non-Abelian component would decay because of its infrared magnetic mass $`g^2T`$, which is generated non-perturbatively through the non-linear interactions of the non-Abelian fields in the thermal bath . On the other hand, for Abelian and non-Abelian electric fields a Debye screening will be always generated by thermal effects producing a short-range decay for both fields . Hence, the only large scale primordial field that can penetrate the EW symmetric phase is the hypermagnetic field.

By studying the finite-temperature neutrino dispersion relations in the chiral phase of the EW model in the presence of a strong hypermagnetic field, we will show that the hypermagnetic field counteracts the thermal effect responsible for the creation of effective masses for the chiral leptons . As a consequence, in the strong field approximation, where leptons are basically constrained to the lower Landau level (LLL), we find that neutrinos behave as massless particles with an anisotropic propagation.

## 2 Neutrino Self-Energy in Strong Magnetic Field

To obtain the quantum correction to neutrino energy in a magnetized thermal bath, we should calculate the neutrino self-energy in the presence of a magnetic field at finite temperature. As it is known, the neutrino self-energy operator is a Lorentz scalar that can be formed in the spinorial space taking the contractions with all the independent elements of the Dirac ring. From its explicit chirality it reduces to

$$(p)=R\overline{}(p)L,\overline{}(p)=V_\mu \gamma ^\mu $$
(1)
where $`L,R=\frac{1}{2}(1\pm \gamma _5)`$ are the chiral-projector operators, and $`V_\mu `$ is a Lorentz vector that in covariant notation can be given as a superposition of four basic vectors formed from the characteristic tensors of the corresponding problem. In the present case

$$\overline{}(p)=ap\text{/}_{}+bp\text{/}_{}+cp^\mu \widehat{\stackrel{~}{F}}_{\mu \nu }\gamma ^\nu +idp^\mu \widehat{F}_{\mu \nu }\gamma ^\nu .$$
(2)
The presence of the magnetic field, given through the dimensionless magnetic field tensor $`\widehat{F}_{\mu \nu }`$ and its dual $`\widehat{\stackrel{~}{F}}_{\mu \nu }`$, allows the covariant separation in (2) between longitudinal and transverse momentum terms that naturally appears in magnetic backgrounds

$$p\text{/}_{}=p^\mu \widehat{\stackrel{~}{F}}_{\mu \rho }\widehat{\stackrel{~}{F}}_{\rho \nu }\gamma ^\nu ,p\text{/}_{}=p^\mu \widehat{F}_{\mu \rho }\widehat{F}_{\rho \nu }\gamma ^\nu .$$
(3)
The coefficients $`a`$, $`b`$, $`c`$, and $`d`$ are Lorentz scalars that depend on the parameters of the theory and the approximation used. We are interested in one-loop corrections, thus for a neutral medium (i. e. in the absence of chemical potentials) the leading contribution is given by the bubble diagram with internal lines of virtual electrons and W-bosons. Since both virtual particles are electrically charged, the magnetic field interacts with both of them producing the Landau quantization of the corresponding transverse momenta. Thus, we end up with two set of Landau quantum numbers , one for the electron, and other for the W-boson.

We assume a strong-field approximation, $`M_W^2Bm_e^2`$. Since in this case the gap between the electron Landau levels is larger than the electron mass square, it is consistent to use the LLL approximation for the electron, while for the W-boson it is obvious that we must sum in all W-boson Landau levels.

To justify such an approximation for cosmological applications we should recall that due to the equipartition principle, the magnetic energy can only be a small fraction of the universe energy density. This argument leads to the relation between field and temperature $`B/T^22`$. For such fields, the effective gap between the Landau levels (LL) is $`eB/T^2𝒪(1)`$. In this case the weak-field approximation (where the sum in all LL is important), cannot be used because field and temperature are comparable. On the other hand, because the thermal energy is of the same order of the energy gap between LL’s, it is barely enough to induce the occupation of just a few of the lower electron LL’s, since, as we are considering, the electron mass is much smaller than the magnetic field. Therefore, it is natural to expect that the LLL approximation in the electron spectrum will provide a good qualitative description of the neutrino propagation in the presence of strong magnetic fields, although clearly a more quantitative treatment of the problem in a field $`B2T^2`$ would require numerical calculations due to the lack of a leading parameter.

In the leading order in the expansion in powers of the Fermi coupling constant the scalar coefficients of Eq. (2) are obtained in our approximation as ,

$$a=c\frac{g^2eB}{8\pi M_W^2}[\frac{1}{4\pi }\frac{T^2}{3M_W^2}]\mathrm{exp}(p_{}^2/eB),b=d0$$
(4)
Notice that by comparison the thermal contribution is smaller in a factor of $`1/M_W^2`$ with respect to the field-dependent vacuum contribution. Then, in the strong-field limit the thermal contribution has the same second order in the Fermi coupling constant as it is in the zero- , and weak-field  cases. On the other hand, the self-energy field-dependent vacuum contribution in (4) is of the same order in the Fermi coupling constant as the one found in a charged medium at zero  and weak  fields.

Using the zero-temperature weak-field results of Ref.  to identify the scalar coefficients of the general structure (2) in that approximation, we have that in the weak-field limit they are given by

$$a=b0,c=\frac{6}{4}d\frac{6g^2eB}{(4\pi )^2M_W^2}$$
(5)
We see that at weak field, the neutrino self-energy has also linear contributions in the Fermi coupling constant, but they are associated with different structures in (2) as compared with the result in the strong-field limit (4). The role of the different self-energy structural members into the neutrino energy spectrum will be clear in the next section. There, we will show that the results in the strong-field limit (4) produce a magnetic field dependence in the neutrino energy which is linear in the Fermi coupling constant, while the weak-field results (5) produce a smaller second-order contribution.

## 3 Neutrino Energy Spectrum and Index of Refraction

The neutrino field equation of motion is

$$[p\text{/}(p)]\mathrm{\Psi }_L=0$$
(6)
The dispersion relation is obtained by solving Eq. (6), or equivalently, by finding the nontrivial solution of Eq. (6) through the equation

$$det[p\text{/}(p)]=0$$
(7)
where $`(p)`$ is given in its general covariant form by Eq. (2).

In the strong-field limit (4), the solution of Eq. (7) is

$$E_p=\pm \left|\stackrel{}{p}+\sqrt{2a}(\stackrel{}{p}\times \widehat{\stackrel{}{B}})\right|=\pm \left|\stackrel{}{p}\right|[1+2a\mathrm{sin}^2\alpha ]$$
(8)
where $`\alpha `$ is the angle between the direction of the neutrino momentum and that of the applied magnetic field.

To obtain the neutrino index of refraction $`n`$, we substitute (8) into the formula

$$n\frac{\left|\stackrel{}{p}\right|}{E_p}$$
(9)
to find

$$n1a\mathrm{sin}^2\alpha $$
(10)
From Eqs. (8) and (10) we can see that neutrinos moving with different directions in the magnetized space will have different dispersion relations and consequently, different indexes of refraction. It is interesting to notice that, although neutrinos are electrically neutral particles, the magnetic field, through quantum corrections, can produce anisotropic neutrino propagation, having a maximum effect for neutrinos propagating perpendicularly to the magnetic field (see Eq. (10)). The order of the energy correction is $`g^2\frac{\left|eB\right|}{M_W^2}`$, and so is the order of the asymmetry.

If we consider the weak-field results (5) in the dispersion relation (7) we obtain

$$E_p^{}=\pm \left|\stackrel{}{p}\right|[1+\frac{5}{18}c^2\mathrm{sin}^2\alpha ]$$
(11)
Here, as the energy depends on $`c^2`$, we can see that the weak field produces a negligible second order in the Fermi coupling constant expansion. It can be corroborated that the inclusion of temperature in this approximation also produces a second order correction .

An asymmetric neutrino propagation of linear order in the Fermi coupling constant expansion was previously found  for weak magnetic fields but in a charged medium ($`\mu 0`$). There, the energy correction was given by

$$E_p^{\prime \prime }=a^{}\pm \left|\stackrel{}{p}b^{}\widehat{\stackrel{}{B}}\right|,$$
(12)
where the coefficients $`a^{}`$ and $`b^{}`$ are proportional to the electron/positron number densities $`n_\pm `$, and electron/positron distribution functions $`f_\pm `$ respectively

$$a^{}=\frac{g^2}{4M_W^2}(n_{}n_+),b^{}=\frac{eg^2}{2M_W^2}\frac{d^3p}{(2\pi )^32E}\frac{d}{dE}(f_{}f_+)$$
(13)
If we compare our results for strong magnetic fields in a neutral medium (8) with those for weak field in a charged medium (12), we see that while in the first case the maximum field effects occur for neutrinos propagating perpendicularly to the field direction, in the second case this propagation modes are not affected by the field, but on the contrary, the maximum effect takes place for neutrinos propagating along the field lines. Moreover, the asymmetric term in the dispersion relation found in Ref.  changes its sign when the neutrino reverses its motion. This property is crucial for a possible explanation of the peculiar high pulsar velocities . Nevertheless, in (8) we find that in our approximation the neutrino energy-momentum relation is invariant under the change of $`\alpha `$ by $`\alpha `$. Finally, the dispersion relations (12) have different values for neutrinos and antineutrinos respectively, since in a charged medium the CP-symmetry is violated. In our result (8), particle and antiparticle have the same energy, as it should be in a neutral medium.

## 4 Neutrino Oscillations and Resonance in a Strongly Magnetized Neutral Medium

Assuming that the magnetic field strength is confined within the range $`m_e^2Bm_\mu ^2`$, the strong-field approximation becomes valid for electron-neutrinos, but not for muon-neutrinos and tau-neutrinos. For the last two, the magnetic field will have the weak effect in the energy corrections discussed below Eq. (11) and therefore can be neglected.

Let us consider the evolution equation in the presence of a strong magnetic field for a two-level system

$$\frac{d}{dt}\left(\begin{array}{c}\nu _e\hfill \\ \nu _\mu \hfill \end{array}\right)=H_B\left(\begin{array}{c}\nu _e\hfill \\ \nu _\mu \hfill \end{array}\right)$$
(14)
where the Hamiltonian $`H_B`$ is given by

$$H_B=p+\frac{m_1^2+m_2^2}{4p}+\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }m^2}{4p}\mathrm{cos}2\theta +E_B\hfill & \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }m^2}{4p}\mathrm{sin}2\theta \hfill \\ \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }m^2}{4p}\mathrm{sin}2\theta \hfill & \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }m^2}{4p}\mathrm{cos}2\theta \hfill \end{array}\right)$$
(15)
Here, $`\theta `$ is the vacuum mixing angle, $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2=m_2^2m_1^2`$ is the mass square difference of the two mass eigenstates, and the magnetic energy density contribution to the electron-neutrino is

$$E_B=\frac{g^2eB}{2(4\pi )^2M_W^2}\left|\stackrel{}{p}\right|\mathrm{sin}^2\alpha $$
(16)
In Eq. (15) the magnetic field contribution to the muon-neutrino in the second diagonal term has been neglected, taking into account that it will be of second order in the Fermi coupling constant as corresponds to the weak-field approximation.

To find the evolution Hamiltonian corresponding to the mass eigenstates in the magnetized space we need to transform $`H_B`$ according to

$$\stackrel{~}{H}=U_B^tH_BU_B$$
(17)
with transformation matrix

$$U_B=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}2\theta _B\hfill & \mathrm{sin}2\theta _B\hfill \\ \mathrm{sin}2\theta _B\hfill & \mathrm{cos}2\theta _B\hfill \end{array}\right)$$
(18)
depending on the new mixing angle $`\theta _B`$ given through the relation

$$\mathrm{tan}2\theta _B=\frac{\mathrm{tan}2\theta }{\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }m^2}{2p}\mathrm{cos}2\theta E_B}$$
(19)
If we consider that the only flavor present at the initial time was the electron-neutrino, using the evolution equation (15) we find that the appearance probability for the muon neutrino is given by

$$P_B\left(\nu _e\nu _\mu \right)=\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _B\mathrm{sin}^2\frac{\pi x}{\lambda }$$
(20)
where $`\lambda `$ is the oscillation length in the magnetized space

$$\lambda =\frac{\lambda _0}{[\mathrm{sin}^22\theta +(\mathrm{cos}2\theta \frac{\lambda _0}{\lambda _e})]^{1/2}}$$
(21)
written in terms of the vacuum ($`\lambda _0`$) and magnetic ($`\lambda _e`$) oscillation lengths

$$\lambda _0=\frac{4\pi p}{\mathrm{\Delta }m^2},\lambda _e=\frac{2\pi }{E_B}$$
(22)
and

$$\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _B=\frac{\mathrm{sin}^22\theta }{(\mathrm{cos}2\theta \frac{\lambda _0}{\lambda _e})^2+\mathrm{sin}^22\theta }$$
(23)
is the probability amplitude defined through the mixing angle $`\theta _B`$ (19).

If the resonant condition

$$\frac{\lambda _0}{\lambda _e}=\mathrm{cos}2\theta $$
(24)
is satisfied, then the probability amplitude (23) will get is maximum value independently of the value of the mixing angle in vacuum $`\theta `$. The condition (24) is a resonant level-crossing condition, and as usual, it can be also obtained by equating the two diagonal Hamiltonian elements in (15). At a magnetic field for which the condition (24) is satisfied, a maximum transmutation between the two flavors will occur (the same effect will be obtained between electron-neutrinos and tau or sterile neutrinos). We should notice that the resonant effect in the magnetized neutral medium will be anisotropic, depending on the direction of propagation of the electron-neutrino with respect to the magnetic field (see that $`\lambda _e`$ depends on $`\alpha `$).

The resonant phenomenon here is similar to that in the well known MSW effect in a charged medium. Nevertheless, we should stress that in the magnetized neutral medium the oscillation process will not differentiate between neutrinos and antineutrinos, while in the charged medium, we have that if there is resonance for the neutrino there will be no resonance for the antineutrino and viceversa.

## 5 Consequences for Cosmology

The early Universe, unlike the dense stellar medium, is almost charge symmetric ($`\mu =0`$), since, as already mentioned, the particle-antiparticle asymmetry in the Universe is believed to be at the level of $`10^{10}10^9`$, while in stellar material it is of order one. It is known that the contribution to the neutrino energy density of pure thermal effects , or of quantum corrections obtained in a weakly magnetized neutral medium ,, are both of second order in the Fermi coupling constant, therefore negligible small. Nevertheless, as we have shown in (8), if sufficiently strong magnetic fields were present in the early Universe, they would give rise to corrections to the energy density that are linear in the Fermi coupling constant. These corrections can produce effects as significant as those associated to the MSW mechanism.

The existence of strong magnetic fields in the early Universe seems to be a very plausible idea ,, as they may be required to explain the observed galactic magnetic fields, $`B2\times 10^6`$ $`G`$ on scales of the order of $`100`$ $`kpc`$ ,.

The strength of the primordial magnetic field in the neutrino decoupling era can be estimated from the constraints derived from the successful nucleosynthesis prediction of primordial $`{}_{}{}^{4}He`$ abundance , as well as on the neutrino mass and oscillation limits . These constraints, together with the energy equipartition principle, lead to the relations

$$m_e^2eBm_\mu ^2,B/T^22$$
(25)
Then, it is reasonable to assume that between the QCD phase transition epoch and the end of nucleosynthesis a primordial magnetic field in the range given by relations (25) could have been present .

If such a field existed, it could significantly modify the $`\nu _e\nu _\mu ,\nu _\tau `$ and $`\nu _e\nu _s`$ resonant oscillations in the way we have shown in this paper, and consequently affect primordial nucleosynthesis .

Another interesting question regarding the effect of strong primordial fields is how these fields would affect neutrino propagation prior to the EW phase transition in case they were originated at earlier times in the Universe evolution. Since in this phase only a hypermagnetic fields matters, as the non-Abelian component decays due to the acquired infrared mass, it is enough to investigate the propagation of neutrinos in the presence of a background hypermagnetic field.

Notice that there are essential differences between the interactions of neutrinos with hypermagnetic and magnetic fields. We recall that the neutrino, being a neutral particle with respect to the electromagnetic group, has instead non-zero hypercharge and thus can interact with a hypermagnetic field already at the bare level.

In the symmetric phase of the EW model, fermions are in the chirally invariant phase with separated left-handed and right-handed representations of the gauge group. In that phase, a fermion mass term in the Lagrangian density is forbidden by the symmetry of the theory. However, as it was found in Ref. , finite temperature corrections induce a pole in the fermion Green’s function that plays the role of an effective mass. The induced effective ”mass” modifies the fermion dispersion relation in the primeval plasma opening the door for possible cosmological consequences ,.

As it was shown in  a strong hypermagnetic field can modify the neutrino self-energy at finite temperature, so at the one-loop level it is given by

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _L}(\overline{p})=\left[Ap\text{/}_{}+Bp^\mu \widehat{\stackrel{~}{H}}_{\mu \nu }\gamma ^\nu \right]L$$
(26)
with

$$A=B=\frac{G_{\nu _L}^2}{2\pi }\left[\frac{a}{4\pi }+\frac{T^2}{\left|g^{}H\right|}\right]$$
(27)
In (27), $`G_{\nu _L}^2=[\frac{(g^{})^2}{4}+\frac{3(g)^2}{4}]`$, $`a`$ is a positive constant of order one ($`a0.855`$), and $`\widehat{\stackrel{~}{H}}_{\mu \nu }`$ is the dual of the dimensionless hypermagnetic field tensor ($`\widehat{H}_{\mu \nu }=H_{\mu \nu }/H`$).

The neutrino dispersion relation in the presence of a constant hypermagnetic field including radiative corrections is given by

$$det\left[\overline{p}\gamma +\mathrm{\Sigma }\right]=0,$$
(28)
where the neutrino generalized momentum in the presence of the hypermagnetic field is $`\overline{p}_\mu =(p_0,0,sgn(g^{}H)\sqrt{\left|g^{}H\right|n},p_3)`$, with the integer $`n=0,1,2,\mathrm{}`$ labelling the neutrino Landau levels.

The fact that the two structures in (26) have the same coefficient (i.e. $`A=B`$), together with the dependence of $`\overline{p}_\mu `$ in the strong-field approximation on its longitudinal components $`p_0`$ and $`p_3`$ only (i.e. in the LLL approximation ($`n=0`$)), has significant consequences for the propagation of chiral leptons in the hypermagnetized medium, as one can immediately corroborate by explicitly solving the lepton dispersion relation (28) to obtain

$$(1+2A)p_0^2+(1+2A)p_3^2=0$$
(29)
This result indicates that in a strong hypermagnetic field neutrinos behave as massless particles, so the hypermagnetic field counteracts the temperature effects on the neutrino dispersion relation. As mentioned above, according to Ref.  the dispersion relations of the chiral leptons are modified due to high-temperature effects in such a way that a temperature-dependent pole appears in their one-loop Green’s functions (i.e. an effective mass). As we have shown here, if a primordial hypermagnetic field could exist in the EW plasma prior to the symmetry-breaking phase transition, with such a strength that the leptons would be mainly confined to the LLL for the existing temperatures, then the thermal effective mass found for the leptons in that phase at zero field  will be swept away. This effect can be of interest for cosmology, since it will alter the behavior of the lepton masses with temperature during the EW phase transition.

Another important outcome of the dispersion relation (29) is the large anisotropy of the neutrino propagation in strong hypermagnetic field domains. This is the consequence of the degeneracy in the energy, which does not depend on the tranverse momentum components. No degeneracy appears in the case of neutrinos propagating in magnetic fields (see Eq. (8)). This different behavior can be understood from the fact that the neutrino is minimally coupled to the hypermagnetic field because of its nonzero hypercharge, but due to its electrical neutrality, it can couple to the magnetic field only through radiative corrections.

It is worth to notice that the leading contribution to the one-loop correction of the neutrino self-energy at small momentum gives rise to a dispersion relation that is formally the same as the bare dispersion relation in the strong hypermagnetic field (it is the typical dispersion relation of a massles charged particle in a magnetic field strong enough to confine the particle to its LLL).

From the above results, one can envision that if large primordial fields were present in the early universe, the neutrino propagation would be highly anisotropic, an effect that could leave a footprint in a yet to be detected relic neutrino cosmic background. If such a footprint were observed, it would provide a direct experimental proof for the existence of strong primordial fields.

## 6 Concluding Remarks

In this talk we have studied, within the framework of the standard model, the quantum effects on neutrinos propagating in a strong magnetic field. For fields in the range $`m_\mu ^2Bm_e^2`$, we found a field-dependent contribution to the electron-neutrino energy density that is linear in the Fermi coupling constant. For the other neutrino flavors, the strong-field approximation is not valid and consequently the magnetic corrections to the energy density are negligible small.

This separation between the magnetic contribution to the energy density of different flavors directly affects neutrino oscillations leading to a level-crossing resonance that depends on the value of the applied magnetic field. This resonant effect is similar to the well known MSW effect, but with the difference that it can take place in a neutral medium, and that it has an anisotropic character, depending on the direction of the neutrino propagation with respect to the magnetic field.

The fact that a resonant oscillation can take place in a neutral medium at the leading order in the Fermi coupling constant has significant interest for cosmology in case that a sufficiently strong primordial field were present during the neutrino decoupling era, since it would affect primordial nucleosynthesis.

On the other hand, in the symmetric phase of the EW theory the effect of a primordial field can only be carried out by the hypermagnetic field. In the presence of this field, neutrinos behave as charged particles, and in the strong field approximation, when leptons are confined to their LLL, the leading contribution to the energy density of the neutrino thermal bath is similar to that of a massless charged particle with only one degree of freedom (the energy only depends on the longitudinal momentum). That is, the strong hypermagnetic field swept away the thermal mass found at zero field and high temperature . This result can be important for the study of the EW phase transition at finite temperature and in the presence of strong primordial fields.

## 7 Acknowledgment

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY-0070986.