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# Indications for Criticality at Zero Curvature in a 4d Regge Model of Euclidean Quantum GravityThis work was in part supported by the US Department of Energy under contract DE-FG02-97ER41022.

## 1 Introduction

Euclidean quantum gravity in four dimensions is formally defined by the path integral

$$Z=Dge^{S_{EH}[g]}.$$
(1)
The Einstein-Hilbert action $`S_{EH}[g]`$ is a function of the 4-geometry $`g`$, $`S_{EH}[g]=L_P^2R[g]+\mathrm{\Lambda }V[g]`$. The Planck length $`L_P`$ determines the gravitational coupling constant for the total curvature $`R[g]`$ and the total 4-volume $`V[g]`$ enters the action if the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is non-zero.

In order to define the integral (1), we consider a lattice approximation, so that the path-integral becomes the limit of a series of well-defined and finite integrals. A direct route for such an approximation is provided by the Regge calculus , which is suitable for simulations . One considers a simplicial lattice of fixed connectivity, which subdivides a 4-manifold of given topology in $`N_4`$ 4-simplices, $`N_3`$ tetraeder, $`N_2`$ triangles, $`N_1`$ links and $`N_0`$ vertices. As we assign a length to each link, a 4-geometry is defined in the Euclidean sector, if the triangle inequalities are fulfilled for every (sub-)simplex. In the following we will use the squared lengths $`q_l`$ associated with each link $`l`$ as the basic variables and a given set of such variables defines a 4-geometry $`[q]`$ for a given simplicial lattice. Variation of the variables $`q_l`$ allows us to approximate the path integral (1). One can calculate the Regge action $`R[q]=_tA_t\delta _t`$ as a sum over all triangles $`t`$ with area $`A_t`$ multiplied by their associated deficit angles $`\delta _t`$. The 4-volume is calculated as a sum over the volume of all 4-simplices $`s`$, $`V[q]=_sV_s`$. We then approximate the gravitational action by $`S_{EH}S[q]=L_P^2R[q]+\mathrm{\Lambda }V[q]`$. It has been demonstrated how the geometrical variables of the Regge calculus converge towards the corresponding variables of General Relativity in the classical continuum limit . It requires an upper bound on the link lengths, $`q_l<Q`$, and a limit $`F`$ on the ’fatness’ $`\varphi _s=V_s/\mathrm{max}(q_l^2)`$ of each 4-simplex, $`\varphi _s>F`$. The continuum limit is then reached for $`N_0\mathrm{}`$, $`Q0`$ with $`F>0`$ (Cheeger et al. ).

In order to replace the path integral (1) by a finite integral on the simplicial lattice,

$$Z=Dqe^{S[q]}.$$
(2)
we need to define the integration measure. A simple choice is the uniform measure

$$Dq=_0^Q\underset{l}{}dq_l\mathrm{\Theta }_F[q]$$
(3)
where the function $`\mathrm{\Theta }_F`$ equals $`1`$ when all triangle inequalities are fulfilled and $`\varphi _s>F`$ for all 4-simplices; it is $`0`$ otherwise. The integration limit $`Q`$ is necessary for a well-defined integral, but it has no physical meaning in itself. Indeed, simple re-scaling $`q_lQq_l`$ formally removes it and leads to the integral

$$Z(\beta ,\lambda )=_0^1\underset{l}{}dq_l\mathrm{\Theta }_F[q]e^{\beta R[q]\lambda V[q]}$$
(4)
where $`\beta =QL_P^2`$ and $`\lambda =Q^2\mathrm{\Lambda }`$.

In previous numerical investigations  the upper limit $`Q`$ was infinite which corresponds to the limit $`\beta \mathrm{}`$ and $`\lambda \mathrm{}`$ in the integral (4).

In the following we will numerically evaluate the integral (4) in order to determine the phase structure by varying the coupling parameters $`\beta `$ and $`\lambda `$. Our results suggest a physically interesting continuum limit for finite values of the coupling parameters.

## 2 Results

The numerical computations have been performed for the integral

$$Z(\beta ,\lambda )=_0^c\underset{l}{}dq_l\mathrm{\Theta }_F[q]e^{\beta R[q]\lambda V[q]}$$
(5)
with $`c=10`$ instead of (4) with $`c=1`$. This means that the coupling constants and expectation values need to be adjusted accordingly, e.g. $`\beta c\beta `$, $`\lambda c^2\lambda `$ etc. We set $`F=10^6`$ but our results seem to be independent of the specifc value for a relatively wide range $`F=10^8`$ to $`10^5`$. We used a hypercubic regular triangulation of the 4-torus , with $`N_0=4^4,4^3\times 10,6^4`$ and $`8^4`$ vertices.

From simulations with $`\lambda =1,2,3,4`$ and varying $`\beta `$ we find expectation values $`<R>`$, which are (almost) zero for $`\beta _0(\lambda )`$ values; $`\beta _0`$ initially decreases for increasing $`\lambda `$. Then, as depicted in figure 1, we find that $`\beta _0`$ increases for $`\lambda =4,5,6,7`$. Furthermore, the transition from $`<R><0`$ to $`<R>>0`$ is no longer defined clearly, because we have to deal with a significant hysteresis for large $`\lambda `$. The line $`\beta _0(\lambda )`$ is depicted in figure 2 for different lattice size. The curve $`\beta _0(\lambda )`$ is interesting, since a vanishing curvature is a desired ingredient for a physical continuum limit.

As we approach the turning point $`\lambda _c4.0`$ from smaller $`\lambda `$, the suszeptibility $`\chi _q=N_1^1(<\overline{q}^2><\overline{q}>^2)`$, with $`\overline{q}=N_1^1_lq_l`$, increases significantly; this increase is more pronounced for larger lattice size as depicted in figure 3.

Next, we performed calculations varying $`\lambda `$ at $`\beta =0.175`$ and $`0.172`$ for the lattice size $`4^3\times 10`$. As expected, we find that the curvature $`<R>`$ increases initially, exhibiting a transition from negative to positive values, but when $`\lambda `$ increases further a second transition back to negative values is seen. We depict $`\chi _R=N_2^1(<\overline{R}^2><\overline{R}>^2)`$, measuring curvature fluctuations, in figure 4; for $`\beta =0.175`$ one can distinguish two peaks corresponding to the two transitions. These peaks merge into one at $`\beta =0.172`$.

We also measured the 2-point correlation function $`K(d)=<q_0q_d><q_0>^2`$ along the elongated direction on the $`4^3\times 10`$ lattice for $`\beta _0(\lambda )`$ and found that the function $`K(d)`$ is significantly different from zero for $`d>1`$. Negative values alternate with positive values, which indicates a non-trivial interaction. The correlations increase for $`\lambda \lambda _c`$.

Although we are not able to provide a complete finite size scaling analysis, our data suggest the following: In the region $`\lambda >\lambda _c`$, with $`\lambda 4.0`$, one deals with a strong phase transition, which is likely of first order. In the region $`\lambda <\lambda _c`$ we are currently unable to distinguish between a cross-over transition or a higher-order phase transition. However the end-point $`\lambda _c`$ itself is a natural candidate for a second-order phase transition. The increase of susceptiblity $`\chi _q`$ and the link correlations $`K(d)`$ approaching $`\lambda _c`$ from smaller values confirm this picture.

## 3 Summary and Conclusions

Our simulations differ from those of the previous literature by introducing the limit $`Q`$ in the functional integral (3). While a simple re-scaling removes $`Q`$ formally from the partition function (4), our model remains more general than those simulated in the literature, which are recovered in our limit of large $`\lambda `$. Remarkably, the new model appears to have a second order fixed point in the $`\lambda \beta `$ plane, which deserves further study.


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# IBIS preliminary results on Cygnus X-1 spectral and temporal characteristicsBased on observations with INTEGRAL, an ESA project with instruments and science data centre funded by ESA member states (especially the PI countries: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain), Czech Republic and Poland, and with the participation of Russia and the USA.

## 1 Introduction

Cyg X-1 was the first established black-hole binary (BHB; Webster & Murdin 1972; Bolton 1972), and it is so far one of 18 known BHBs and one of three persistent ones. In the X-ray band, BHBs usually exhibit five distinct spectral /temporal states: low/hard (LH), high/soft (HS), very high, intermediate and quiescent (see a recent review by McClintock & Remillard 2003). Cyg X-1 itself exhibits strong variability on all time scales ranging from millisecond to years, and it is mostly in the LH state. During transitions between the LH and HS states, both gradual and rapid variations in the hardness ratio have been observed.

The LH state is characterized by a low flux in soft X-rays and strong hard X-ray and soft $`\gamma `$-ray flux. Its spectral variability on the time scale of days is then weak, while the $``$50 keV flux changes by a factor of a few (e.g., Gierliński et al. 1997). The X-ray spectrum in the LH state is well described by the sum of an intrinsic power law with the photon spectral index, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1.5`$–2, which is then cut off at energies $`100`$ keV, and a Compton reflection (Magdziarz & Zdziarski 1995) component. The intrinsic spectrum is due to thermal Comptonization in a plasma with an electron temperature of $`kT100`$ keV and a Thompson optical depth of $`\tau 1`$ (Gierliński et al. 1997), similarly to the case of other BHBs in the LH state (e.g., Zdziarski et al. 1998).

Recently, Zdziarski et al. (2002, hereafter Z02) presented an analysis of CGRO/BATSE and RXTE/ASM observations of Cyg X-1. One of their most interesting results in the X/$`\gamma `$ range is that most of the LH variability on time scales of hundred of days and longer can be explained by varying the slope of the overall spectrum with a pivot energy between 20 and 100 keV. The pivoting can be due to either variable plasma temperature or variable optical depth (Z02). Broad-band X/$`\gamma `$ observations are crucial in providing constraints on the nature of the variability, and, in particular, on the role of the soft photons in cooling the X-ray emitting plasma and the role of Compton reflection. Here, we present results from the IBIS instrument (Ubertini et al. 2003) on board of INTEGRAL (Winkler et al. 2003).

## 2 Observation and data analysis

Given the INTEGRAL launch date, Sun aspect constraints led to Cyg X-1 being chosen as the first strong $`\gamma `$-ray target for the initial calibration of the instruments during the Performance Verification (PV) Phase. The observations of the Cygnus region in general allowed for verification of the imaging performance and the Point Spread Function of IBIS as well as its cross-calibration with SPI and JEM-X. The PV phase consisted of a staring, on-axis, observation lasting $`850`$ ks, and $`1130`$ ks of dithering observations to test the SPI performance. Also, 68 ks were devoted to calibration of the JEM-X with pointings of $`1\mathrm{°}`$$`6\mathrm{°}`$ off axis. In addition, contemporaneous observations of Cyg X-1 with RXTE were performed (Pottschmidt et al. 2003).

The IBIS instrument (Ubertini et al. 2003) is a coded-mask imaging telescope with a large field of view ($`29\mathrm{°}\times 29\mathrm{°}`$) based on two detector layers, ISGRI (Lebrun et al. 2003) and PICsIT (Labanti et al. 2003) operating in the ranges 15 keV–1 MeV and 175 keV–10 MeV, respectively. It provides fine imaging ($`12\mathrm{}`$ FWHM) for source identification and good spectral sensitivity in both continuum and broad lines over its operative range. During the observations, IBIS was still undergoing fine-tuning. Therefore, we studied only the staring, on-axis, observations performed by IBIS in a stable configuration, which correspond to revolutions 15 to 18, and use the consolidated data reprocessed by the INTEGRAL Science Data Center (Courvoisier et al. 2003). We use the offline scientific analysis (OSA) software v. 1.1. Details and procedures on the IBIS software developed by the IBIS Consortium are described in Goldwurm et al. (2003). We have analyzed ISGRI single interaction events for which arrival time, energy deposition and interaction pixels are known. Most of the time, PICsIT was in its standard configuration that provide images at time interval of the order of several minutes (1750–3600 s).

We produced the countrate, $`C`$, lightcurves during 2002 Nov. 27–Dec. 8 binned by the pointings (science windows, hereafter scws) in the ranges of 20–40, 40–60, 60–120, 120–220 and 220–350 keV. The typical duration of a scw is $`2000`$ s, which allows us to study variability on the time scales ranging from that time to days. The highest of the above energy channels has not been used due to low statistical significance of its single scw.

The lightcurves in the four energy bands are shown in Fig. 1. We see that they are rather similar to each other. This is confirmed by calculating the fractional rms variability (after subtracting the variability due to the measurement errors), which is found to be $`17\pm 1\%`$, $`18\pm 1\%`$, $`16\pm 1\%`$, $`14\pm 1\%`$ for channels with the increasing energy, respectively.

Fig. 2 shows the corresponding evolution of the hardness ratio in adjacent channels. As expected by the similarity of the lightcurves, variability of the hardness ratios is much weaker, with the values of the fractional rms of $`3.4\pm 0.2\%`$, $`2.9\pm 0.2\%`$, and $`9.3\pm 0.5\%`$ (with increasing energy). Interestingly, the spectral variability is strongest at the highest observed energies, $`60`$ keV. There is small, but statistically significant, increase and decrease of the first and second hardness with time. Formally, the best exponential fits give the e-folding times of $`300\pm 20`$ days and $`220\pm 10`$ days, respectively. On the other hand, there is a strong drop in the emission $`120`$ keV from rev. 15 to 16 followed by a slow decrease during rev. 16, and a slow increase during rev. 18. A time scale for significant changes of that emission is $`3`$ days.

## 3 Hardness-flux correlations

Most of the information on the long-term characteristics of Cyg X-1 in hard X-rays/soft $`\gamma `$-rays to date comes from the BATSE detector. In the LH state, the 20–300 keV data show a positive correlation between the ratio of the 100–300 keV and 20–100 keV fluxes and the 100–300 keV flux. On the other hand, the correlations of the opposite sign are seen in the range of the ASM detector, 1.5–12 keV. Together, the data show the presence of a pivot in the $`20`$–100 keV range (Z02). This is also supported by the fractional variability as a function of the energy which has a minimum in the 20–100 keV range. As pointed out in Z02, the pivoting variability appears only on very long time scales, of the order of $`100`$ days. In addition, there is a second variability pattern, in which the broad-band spectra move up and down with a little change of the spectral shape. The presence of both patterns is also confirmed by analysis of individual pointed observations (Z02, Gierliński et al. 1997).

The pivoting variability pattern is explained by Z02 as caused by a variable luminosity in the soft seed photons irradiating the plasma. If the plasma is not dominated by e± pairs, the variable irradiation results in the plasma temperature adjusting itself to satisfy the energy balance. As a consequence, softer spectra are expected to correspond to a lower electron temperature. This appears to be confirmed by a BeppoSAX observation in 1996 September (Frontera et al. 2001), as pointed out by Z02. On the other hand, variations of the local accretion rate in an a flow of a constant geometry may be responsible for the variable amplitude with the constant spectral shape. In summary, Z02 found strong changes in the hardness on long time scale, whereas variability was dominated by changing the total luminosity on shorter time scales.

Following the above suggestions, we consider here correlations between the spectral hardness and count rates. Our results are shown in Fig. 3, showing the three ratios (Fig. 2) each vs. their defining count rates. All the hardnesses and count rates are correlated at a very high statistical significance (see below). We find a new and unexpected result that while the 40–120 keV hardness ratio decreases with their defining count rates (top panels in Fig. 3), consistent with the pivoting variability of Z02, the 20–60 keV hardness increases with the corresponding count rates. (Note that such a behaviour could not be found by Z02, who used only two rather broad BATSE channels, 20–100 keV and 100–300 keV.) The change of the sign of the hardness-flux correlation in the 40–60 keV channel cannot be due to pivoting variability, as hardness decreases with flux below a pivot and increases above it, just opposite to our result.

The observed behaviour has to be due to a variable spectral curvature, with a hump around $`50`$ keV appearing in the spectrum at high fluxes. Such a hump is very likely to be due to Compton reflection, well known to be present in the spectra of Cyg X-1 (e.g., Gierliński et al. 1997; Gilfanov, Churazov & Revnivtsev 1999). A spectrum from reflection of an intrinsic BHB LH-state continuum is very hard below its peak at several tens of keV and very soft above it (e.g., Magdziarz & Zdziarski 1995). Thus, its addition hardens the total spectrum below the peak and softens it at higher energies, entirely consistent with our results. A quantitative study of this effect would require data at energies $`<20`$ keV, not available to us at this time, as well as spectral fits by each scw, which is beyond the scope of this Letter. However, we point out that Compton reflection is known to be variable in Cyg X-1, and in particular it correlates with the X-ray spectral index (Zdziarski, Lubiński & Smith 1999; Gilfanov et al. 1999).

Going to higher energies, we also see that the hardness-flux correlation continues to be negative up to $`120`$ keV, but it becomes again positive at $`120`$ keV. This, on the other hand, is consistent with the findings of Z02 (see their fig. 6) and may indeed be due to spectral pivoting.

Fig. 3 also shows the best fit power-law dependencies, corresponding to the count rate ratio $`C^\beta `$. The values of the exponent are $`\beta =0.030\pm 0.004`$, $`0.073\pm 0.004`$, $`0.11\pm 0.01`$, $`0.10\pm 0.01`$, $`0.30\pm 0.02`$, and $`0.22\pm 0.03`$, for the six consecutive correlations. The small relative uncertainties demonstrate the high significance of the correlations. This is also confirmed by the Spearman rank correlation test, which gives relatitvely high correlation coefficients of 0.29, 0.43, $`0.57`$, $`0.43`$, $`0.42`$, and 0.24. The corresponding probabilities of the absence of a correlation are very low, with the highest value of $`10^3`$ for the last correlation and $``$ than that for all others.

## 4 Spectral evolution

We clearly see in Fig. 1 a number of short flares and dips (note that those are not absorption dips). To study in detail evolution of the spectra, we have selected the scws corresponding to the two of the flares and one of the dips. For reference, we used stable periods containing 9 and 21 scws during the rev. 16 and 18, respectively. The log of the selected periods is given in Table 1.

At this stage of the IBIS programme a detailed and accurate deconvolution matrix is still under finalisation and a spectral analysis has to be carried out with caution. In this work we have analysed the spectral data using a Crab-calibrated matrix with 64 energy channels. This matrix represents the Crab data well for integration times not exceeding 100 ks and energies $`500`$ keV. We have added a 5% systematic error to each PHA channel of the spectra analyzed below. Spectral fitting was performed with the standard XSPEC v. 11.2 tools.

To study the short term spectral evolution of Cyg X-1, we have selected three spectra at the highest observed peak and just before it. This corresponds to the day $``$1071.5 during rev. 18 and scw 25, 26 and 27 (the last one at the maximum of the flare), see Fig. 1 and Table 1. The three data sets have been fitted to look for spectral evolution on the time scale of $`3000`$ s over a wide energy range. A good fit ($`\chi _\nu ^20.9`$–1.1) has been obtained with a thermal Comptonization model (comptt of Hua & Titarchuk 1995) at the electron temperature of $`kT50`$ keV, the optical depth of $`\tau 0.9`$, and the seed photon temperature constrained only to $`1`$ keV. Nevertheless, the model parameters are not well constrained due to the relatively short exposure, which causes the photon statistics to be poor at high energies, $`150`$ keV. To overcome this problem, we have tried a simpler model, namely, a power law. This yielded the spectral indices of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.04\pm 0.02`$, $`2.09\pm 0.02`$, $`2.14\pm 0.02`$ for scw 25, 26, 27, respectively. Although $`\chi _\nu ^2`$ are always worse than those of the comptt fits, the above numbers clearly show a softening of the spectrum with the increasing flux. Fig. 4 confirms this results by showing the ratios of the count rate spectra at scw 26 and 27 to that at the scw 25. We see that the softening takes place mostly at the highest energies, $`90`$ keV.

Given the above problems with photon statistics, we have obtained a spectrum from an uninterrupted period of 105 ks during rev. 18 (scws 1–33, IJD 1070.4019–1071.7310) during which the source did not show significant spectral variation. A power law model does not provide any good fit, and we used the comptt model, as above. The obtained parameters are $`kT=64\pm 9`$ keV, $`\tau =0.7\pm 0.4`$ and the seed photon temperature constrained to $`1`$ keV, which yields $`\chi _\nu ^21.5`$ with 51 d.o.f.. For comparison, the Crab fit with a power law yields $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.17\pm 0.01`$ at the 1 keV normalization of $`11.5\pm 0.5`$ cm-2 s-1 at $`\chi _\nu ^21.3`$ for 56 d.o.f. The average physical spectrum is shown in Fig. 5.

To further study correlations between the flux and the spectral hardness, we have measured the count-rate ratios between the five spectra listed in Table 1. This method allows us to eliminate possible uncertainties due to spectral deconvolution. In Fig. 6, we plot the ratio between two stable periods, two peaks, and between a peak and a dip. The first two ratios show no obvious trends, with the pairs of spectra just slightly differening in the slope. On the other hand, we clearly see a significant softening with the increasing flux in the peak-to-dip ratio (the bottom panel of Fig. 6). However, none of the chosen spectra has allowed us to measure any dependence of the high-energy cutoff (that would measure the plasma temperature) on the flux.

## 5 Conclusions

We have shown that the long, almost uninterrupted, observation of Cyg X-1 performed during the PV phase with the IBIS broad-band imager represents an invaluable database to deeply understand the nature of Cyg X-1 at high energies. The presented IBIS data cover the energy range from 20 keV to a fraction of 1 MeV and a period of 12 days with interruptions of 7 hours every 3 days due to the Earth radiation belt passage.

During that period, the flux varied by a factor of $``$3, including periods of stable emission, flares and dips. We have first studied correlations between the spectral hardness and the flux. Over the studied photon energy range, the correlation was found to change the sign twice over the 20–220 keV; first from positive to negative at $``$50 keV, and then back to positive at $``$120 keV. The former change appears to be due to the spectral curvature introduced by variable Compton reflection. The latter may be due spectral pivoting.

The characteristic time scale for changing spectral hardness is the shortest, $``$3 days, at the highest energies, $`100`$ keV. Most of the spectral variability is, in fact, taking place at those energies. The dependence of the high-energy emission on the overall spectral properties is relatively complex. In addition to the hardness-flux correlations mentioned above, we have found a spectral softening with the increasing flux during flares.

###### Acknowledgements.

We wish to thanks all the IBIS team whose effort made the instrument working. A particular thanks to G. La Rosa (IASF/Pa) and R. Much (ISOC), without them the Performance Verification phase could not be successful and to M. Federici for the long and valuable job to make the scientific analysis possible at IASF/Roma. We also like to thank the ESOC Team for the continuous support and kind hospitality. AAZ has been supported by KBN grants 5P03D00821, 2P03C00619p1,2, PBZ-054/P03/2001, and the Foundation for Polish Science. The IBIS programme has been funded in part by the Italian Space Agency.


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# Probing Supersymmetry with Neutral Current Scattering Experiments

## 1 Introduction

In the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics, the predicted running of $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W`$ from $`Z`$-pole to low energy: $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W(0)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W(M_Z)=0.007`$, has never been established experimentally to a high precision. $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W(M_Z)`$ can be obtained through the $`Z`$-pole precision measurements with very small error. However, no determination of $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W`$ at low energy with similar precision is available. More recently, the results of cesium atomic parity-violation (APV) Ben99  and $`\nu `$\- ($`\overline{\nu }`$-) nucleus deep inelastic scattering (DIS)NuTeV  have been interpreted as determinations of the scale-dependence of $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W`$. The cesium APV result appears to be consistent with the SM prediction for $`q^20`$, whereas the neutrino DIS measurement implies a $`+3\sigma `$ deviation at $`|q^2|100`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$. If conventional hadron structure effects are ultimately unable to account for the NuTeV “anomaly”, the results of this precision measurement would point to new physics.

In light of this situation, two new measurements involving polarized electron scattering have taken on added interest: parity-violating (PV) Möller ($`ee`$) scattering at SLACslac  and elastic, PV $`ep`$ scattering at the Jefferson Lab (JLab)qweak . In the absence of new physics, both measurements could be used to determine $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W`$ at the same scale: $`|q^2|0.03`$ $`\mathrm{GeV}^2`$, with comparable precision in each case: $`\delta \mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W=0.0007`$. Furthermore, the precision needed to probe new physics effects, e.g. supersymmetry (SUSY), is roughly an order of magnitude less stringent, owing to a fortuitous suppression of the SM electron and proton weak charge: $`Q_W^p=Q_W^e=14\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W0.1`$ at tree-level. Consequently, experimental precision of order a few percent, rather than a few tenths of a percent, is needed to probe new physics corrections.

The goal of our study is to develop consistency check for theories of new physics using the low energy neutral current scattering measurements. In particular, we will consider the Minimal Supersymmetric Extension of SM (MSSM)haber-kane , which is the most promising candidate for new physics beyond SM. For $`R`$-parity conserved MSSM, low-energy precision observables experience SUSY only via loop effects involving virtual supersymmetric particles. Tree level corrections appear once $`R`$-parity is broken explicitly. We studies both the PV electron scattering (PVES) and $`\nu `$ ($`\overline{\nu }`$)-nucleus DIS processes. Details of the calculations presented here can be found in Ref. apv  and kur-rm-su-nutev .

## 2 Radiative Contribution to Weak Charge

The weak charge of a particle $`f`$ is defined as the strength of the effective $`A(e)\times V(f)`$ interaction: $`_{EFF}^{ef}=\frac{G_\mu }{2\sqrt{2}}Q_W^f\overline{e}\gamma _\mu \gamma _5e\overline{f}\gamma _\mu f`$. With higher-order corrections included, the weak charge can be written as $`Q_W^f=\rho _{PV}\left[2T_3^f4Q_f\kappa _{PV}\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W\right]+\lambda _f`$. The quantities $`\rho _{PV}`$ and $`\kappa _{PV}`$ are universal, while the correction $`\lambda _f`$, on the other hand, does depend on the fermion species. At tree-level, one has $`\rho _{PV}=1=\kappa _{PV}`$ and $`\lambda _f=0`$, while at one-loop order $`\rho _{PV}=1+\delta \rho _{PV}^{\mathrm{SM}}+\delta \rho _{PV}^{\mathrm{SUSY}}`$, and similar formulae apply to $`\kappa _{PV}`$ and $`\lambda _f`$.

The counterterm $`\delta \widehat{G}_\mu `$ determined by muon life time and the $`Z^0`$ boson self-energy are combined into $`\rho _{PV}`$ (expressed in terms of the oblique parameters $`S`$, $`T`$ stu-degrassi ):

$$\rho _{PV}=1+\frac{\delta \widehat{G}_\mu }{G_\mu }+\frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Pi }}_{ZZ}(0)}{M_Z^2}=1\frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Pi }}_{WW}(0)}{M_W^2}+\frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Pi }}_{ZZ}(0)}{M_Z^2}\widehat{\delta }_{VB}^\mu =1+\widehat{\alpha }T\widehat{\delta }_{VB}^\mu .$$
(1)
The quantity $`\widehat{\delta }_{VB}^\mu `$ denotes the the electroweak vertex, external leg, and box graph corrections to the muon decay amplitude.

$`Z\gamma `$ mixing and parity-violating electron-photon coupling $`F_A^e(0)`$ contribute to $`\kappa _{PV}`$:

$`\kappa _{PV}`$ $`=`$ $`1+{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{c}}{\widehat{s}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Pi }}_{\gamma Z}(q^2)}{q^2}}+4\widehat{c}^2F_A^e(0)+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta \widehat{s}_{\mathrm{new}}^2}{\widehat{s}^2}}=1+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{c}^2}{\widehat{c}^2\widehat{s}^2}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{\alpha }}{4\widehat{s}^2\widehat{c}^2}}S\widehat{\alpha }T+\widehat{\delta }_{VB}^\mu \right)`$ (2)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{c}}{\widehat{s}}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Pi }}_{Z\gamma }(q^2)}{q^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Pi }}_{Z\gamma }(M_Z^2)}{M_Z^2}}\right]+\left({\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{c}^2}{\widehat{c}^2\widehat{s}^2}}\right)\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{\mathrm{\Pi }}_{\gamma \gamma }(M_Z^2)}{M_Z^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\widehat{\alpha }}{\alpha }}\right]+4\widehat{c}^2F_A^e(q^2)`$
The shift $`\delta \widehat{s}_{\mathrm{new}}^2`$ in $`\widehat{s}^2`$ follows from the definition of $`\widehat{s}^2`$ in terms of $`\alpha `$, $`G_\mu `$, and $`M_Z`$apv .

The non-universal contribution $`\lambda _f`$ to the weak charge is determined by the sum of the the renormalized vertex corrections and the box graphs.

## 3 SUSY Correction to Weak Charges

In order to evaluate the potential size of SUSY loop corrections, a set of about 3000 different combinations of SUSY-breaking parameters was generated. Fig. 1(a) shows the shift in the weak charge of the proton, $`\delta Q_W^p=2\delta Q_W^u+\delta Q_W^d`$, versus the corresponding shift in the electron’s weak charge, $`\delta Q_W^e`$, normalized to the respective SM values. The corrections in the MSSM (with $`R`$-parity conserved) can be as large as $`4\%`$ ($`Q_W^p`$) and $`8\%`$ ($`Q_W^e`$) – roughly the size of the proposed experimental errors for the two PVES measurements. The shifts $`\delta Q_W^{e,p}`$ are dominated by $`\delta \kappa _{PV}^{\mathrm{SUSY}}`$, which is nearly always negative, corresponding to a reduction in the value of $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W^{eff}(q^2)=\kappa _{PV}(q^2)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _W`$ for the PVES experiments. Since this effect is identical for both $`Q_W^e`$ and $`Q_W^p`$, the dominant effect of $`\delta \kappa _{PV}`$ produces a linear correlation between the two weak charges.

As evident from Fig. 1 (a), the relative sign of the loop corrections to both $`Q_W^p`$ and $`Q_W^e`$ is nearly always the same and positive. This correlation is significant, since the effects of other new physics scenarios can display different signatures. For example, for the general class of theories based on $`E_6`$ gauge group, with neutral gauge bosons $`Z^{}`$ having mass $`<1000`$ GeV, the effects on $`Q_W^p`$ and $`Q_W^e`$ also correlate, but $`\delta Q_W^{e,p}/Q_W^{e,p}`$ can have either sign in this caseMRM99 ; Erl-MJRM-Kur02 . In contrast, leptoquark interactions would not lead to discernible effects in $`Q_W^e`$ but could induce sizable shifts in $`Q_W^p`$ MRM99 ; Erl-MJRM-Kur02 .

As a corollary, we also find that SUSY loop corrections to the weak charge of cesium is suppressed: $`\delta Q_W^{\mathrm{Cs}}/Q_W^{\mathrm{Cs}}<0.2\%`$ and is equally likely to have either sign, which is smaller than the presently quoted uncertainty for the cesium nuclear weak charge of about 0.6% sushov02 . Therefore, the present agreement of $`Q_W^{\mathrm{Cs}}`$ with the SM prediction does not preclude significant shifts in $`Q_W^{e,p}`$ arising from SUSY. The situation is rather different, for example, in the $`E_6Z^{}`$ scenario, where sizable shifts in $`Q_W^{e,p}`$ would also imply observable deviations of $`Q_W^{\mathrm{Cs}}`$ from the SM prediction.

New tree-level SUSY contributions to the weak charges can be generated when the R parity in MSSM is not conserved. The effects of $`R`$-parity violating (RPV) contribution can be parametrized by positive, semi-definite, dimensionless quantities $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ijk}(\stackrel{~}{f})`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ijk}^{}(\stackrel{~}{f})`$MRM00 , which are constrained from the existing precision data MRM00 . The 95% CL region allowed in the $`\delta Q_W^p/Q_W^p`$ vs. $`\delta Q_W^e/Q_W^e`$ plane is shown by the closed curve in Fig. 1 (a). We observe that the prospective effects of RPV are quite distinct from SUSY loops. The value of $`\delta Q_W^e/Q_W^e`$ is never positive in contrast to the situation for SUSY loop effects, whereas $`\delta Q_W^p/Q_W^p`$ can have either sign.

Thus, a comparison of the two PVES measurements could help determine which extension of the MSSM is to be favored over other new physics scenarios Erl-MJRM-Kur02 .

## 4 NuTeV Measurement

Recently, the NuTeV collaboration has performed a precise determination of the ratio $`R_\nu `$ ($`R_{\overline{\nu }}`$) of neutral and charged current deep-inelastic $`\nu _\mu `$ ($`\overline{\nu }_\mu `$)-nucleus cross sectionsNuTeV , which can be expressed in terms of the effective $`\nu q`$ hadronic couplings $`(g_{L,R}^{\mathrm{eff}})^2`$:

$$R_{\nu (\overline{\nu })}=\frac{\sigma (\nu (\overline{\nu })N\nu (\overline{\nu })X)}{\sigma (\nu (\overline{\nu })Nl^{(+)}X)}=(g_L^{\mathrm{eff}})^2+r^{(1)}(g_R^{\mathrm{eff}})^2,$$
(3)
where $`r=\sigma _{\overline{\nu }N}^{CC}/\sigma _{\nu N}^{CC}`$. Comparing the SM predictionspdg  for $`(g_{L,R}^{\mathrm{eff}})^2`$ with the values obtained by the NuTeV Collaboration yields deviations $`\delta R_{\nu (\overline{\nu })}=R_{\nu (\overline{\nu })}^{\mathrm{exp}}R_{\nu (\overline{\nu })}^{\mathrm{SM}}`$, $`\delta R_\nu =0.0029\pm 0.0015`$, $`\delta R_{\overline{\nu }}=0.0015\pm 0.0026`$.

The numerical results for SUSY contributions to $`R_\nu `$ and $`R_{\overline{\nu }}`$ via the correction to the effective hadronic couplings $`(g_{L,R}^{\mathrm{eff}})^2`$ are shown in Fig. 1 (b). For detailed analysis, see Ref. kur-rm-su-nutev . SUSY loop contributions to $`R_\nu `$ and $`R_{\overline{\nu }}`$ are smaller than the observed deviations. More significantly, the sign of the SUSY loop corrections is nearly always positive, in contrast to the sign of the NuTeV anomaly. Tree-level RPV contributions to $`R_\nu `$ and $`R_{\overline{\nu }}`$ are by and large positive. While small negative corrections are also possible, they are numerically too small to be interesting.

## 5 Conclusion

In summary, we have studied the SUSY corrections to the weak charge of the electron and proton, which could be measured at PV $`ee`$ and $`ep`$ scattering experiments. The correlation between these two quantities could be used to distinguish various new physics. We also examined the SUSY contributions to the NuTeV measurements and found that it is hard to explain the NuTeV anomaly in the framework of MSSM.


text:
# Bound on the time variation of the fine structure constant driven by quintessence

## Abstract

The bound on the time variation of the fine structure constant ($`\alpha `$) driven by the dynamics of quintessence scalar field which is coupled to electromagnetism is discussed using phenomenological quintessential models constrained by SNIa and CMB observations. We find that those models allowing early quintessence give the largest variation $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha `$ at the decoupling epoch. Furthermore, the fifth force experiments imply that $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\alpha `$ is less than about $`0.1\%`$.

The idea of time-varying fundamental physical constants such as gauge coupling constants was proposed long time ago dirac . Recently it has been claimed that the results of a search for time variability of the fine structure constant ($`\alpha `$), using absorption systems in the spectra of distant quasars, yield 5-$`\sigma `$ evidence for a smaller $`\alpha `$ in the past: $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\alpha =0.543\pm 0.116\times 10^5`$ over the redshift range $`0.2<z<3.7`$ webb . In addition, there exist terrestrial and cosmological constraints. An analysis of the isotropic abundances in the Oklo natural uranium fission reactor, active about $`1.8\times 10^9`$ years ago (corresponding to $`z0.14`$), suggests $`0.9\times 10^7<\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\alpha <1.2\times 10^7`$ oklo . A bound $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\alpha <3\times 10^7`$ has been obtained from the analysis of the Re/Os ratio in meteorites ($`z0.45`$olive . While the data of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies are consistent with $`\alpha `$ being smaller by a few percent at the decoupling epoch ($`z1100`$) in a flat cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM) bat , the recent observations made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) have provided a bound $`0.06<\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\alpha <0.02`$ at 95% CL mar03 . At much higher redshifts, big bang nucleosynthesis considerations place bounds $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\alpha |<10^2`$ at $`z10^9`$ bbn .

The recent astrophysical and cosmological observations such as type Ia supernovae (SNe) and CMB anisotropies concordantly prevail the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model ctrig . The current data, however, are consistent with a somewhat broader diversity of such “dark energy” as long as its equation of state (EOS) approaches that of the cosmological constant at a recent epoch. A dynamically evolving scalar field $`\varphi `$ called “quintessence” (Q) is probably the most popular scenario so far to accommodate the dark energy component. Many Q models have been proposed with various physically motivated effective potentials $`V(\varphi )`$ for the scalar field qmods . Several attempts have been made to test different Q models many . Nevertheless, it proves to be premature at this stage to perform a meaningful data fitting to a particular Q model, or to differentiate between the variations. The reconstruction of $`V(\varphi )`$ would likely require next-generation observations. As such, model independent approaches which simply involve parametrizing the dark energy EOS have been proposed to comply with the SNe and CMB observational data lin ; cor ; lee03 .

It is of particular interest to study the observational effects of direct interaction of $`\varphi `$ to ordinary matter if there is any. For example, imposing an approximate global symmetry would allow a coupling of $`\varphi `$ to electromagnetism, which would lead to rotation of polarized light from distant radio sources, temporal evolution of $`\alpha `$ carr , and generation of primordial magnetic fields lee02 . Recently, there have been many studies on the time-varying $`\alpha `$ in the context of quintessential cosmology by invoking non-renormalizable $`\varphi `$-photon couplings qalpha ; anchor ; park . However, most of the studies are based on certain Q models anchor . In this paper, we will discuss the observational constraints to the evolution of $`\varphi `$ through its EOS $`p_\varphi =w_\varphi \rho _\varphi `$ in the parametrized Q models lin ; cor ; lee03  that in turn give rise to a model independent bound on the Q-driven time variation of $`\alpha `$ at the decoupling epoch.

The $`\varphi `$-photon coupling that we consider here is

$$L_{\varphi \gamma }=\frac{\kappa }{4}\frac{\varphi }{M_p}g^{\alpha \mu }g^{\beta \nu }F_{\alpha \beta }F_{\mu \nu },$$
(1)
where $`F_{\mu \nu }=_\mu A_\nu _\nu A_\mu `$, $`M_p`$ is the reduced Planck mass $`(8\pi G)^{1/2}`$, and $`\kappa `$ is a coupling constant. The fifth-force experiments limit pos

$$\kappa <10^3.$$
(2)
Therefore, by defining $`\theta \varphi /M_p`$, the change of $`\alpha `$ from the present time to a time $`t`$ is simply given by

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha }{\kappa \alpha }=\theta _0\theta (t).$$
(3)
Consider a flat universe in which the total density parameter of the Universe today is represented by $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0=\mathrm{\Omega }_m^0+\mathrm{\Omega }_r^0+\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi ^0=1`$ with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m^0h^2=0.135`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_r^0h^2=4.152\times 10^5`$, where the present Hubble constant is parametrized as $`H_0=100h\mathrm{kms}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$. Assuming a spatially homogeneous $`\varphi `$ field, the evolution of the cosmic background is governed by

$`d\varrho _\varphi /d\eta `$ $`=`$ $`3a\left(1+w_\varphi \right)\varrho _\varphi ,`$ (4)
$`d/d\eta `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}a^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}a(w_r\varrho _r+w_\varphi \varrho _\varphi ),`$ (5)
where $`a`$ is the scale factor and the conformal time is defined as $`\eta =H_0𝑑ta^1(t)`$. Here we have used $`(d\varphi /dt)^2=(1+w_\varphi )\rho _\varphi `$ and $`V(\varphi )=(1w_\varphi )\rho _\varphi /2`$, and rescaled the energy density of the $`i`$th component as $`\varrho _i\rho _i/(M_pH_0)^2`$. Accordingly, the dimensionless Hubble parameter is given by

$$^2(H/H_0)^2=\mathrm{\Omega }_m^0a^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_r^0a^4+\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi ^2.$$
(6)
Therefore, given the prescribed EOS $`w_\varphi (\eta )`$ which is a function of conformal time, the problem is reduced to solving a set of first-order coupled ordinary differential equations (4) and (5) with the initial conditions set at the present time and the time variable running backward. Let us introduce a useful quantity that is the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi `$-weighted average huey99

$$w_\varphi _{\eta _{\mathrm{dec}}}^{\eta _0}\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi (\eta )w_\varphi (\eta )𝑑\eta \times \left(_{\eta _{\mathrm{dec}}}^{\eta _0}\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi (\eta )𝑑\eta \right)^1,$$
(7)
where $`\eta _0`$ and $`\eta _{\mathrm{dec}}`$ are the conformal time today and at decoupling respectively. It is known that $`w_\varphi 0`$ after decoupling would result in a time-varying Newtonian potential which produces large-scale CMB anisotropy through the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect. It was shown huey99 ; bean  that as far as the CMB anisotropy power spectrum is concerned, the time-averaged $`w_\varphi `$ can be well approximated by an effective constant value for $`w_\varphi `$ as long as the Q component is negligible at decoupling.

Physically, $`1w_\varphi 1`$, where the former equality holds for a pure vacuum state. Lately some progress has been made in constraining the behavior of $`\varphi `$ from observational data. A combined large scale structure, SNe, and CMB analysis has set an upper limit on Q models with a constant $`w_\varphi <0.7`$ bond ; bean , and the recent WMAP CMB data gives a stronger limit $`w_\varphi <0.78`$ wmap . Furthermore, the SNe data and measurements of the position of the acoustic peaks in the CMB anisotropy spectrum have been used to put a constraint on the present $`w_\varphi ^00.96`$ cope . The apparent brightness of the farthest SN observed to date, SN 1997ff at redshift $`z1.7`$, is consistent with that expected in the decelerating phase of the flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }0.7`$ riess , implying $`w_\varphi =1`$ for $`z<1.7`$.

Let us first work on the simplest case with a constant $`w_\varphi =0.8`$ to obtain an order-of-magnitude estimate on $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\kappa \alpha `$. By solving

$$d\theta /d\eta =a\sqrt{(1+w_\varphi )\varrho _\varphi },$$
(8)
we find that $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\kappa \alpha `$ decreases quickly with redshift to a constant value of $`0.82`$ at $`z20`$. Next we study the varying $`\alpha `$ in two phenomenological Q models which are based on the maximum likelihood analysis of the current SNe and CMB observational data. The first model has a monotonic EOS $`w_\varphi (a)=w_0+(w_mw_0)(1a)`$ (where $`w_\varphi w_m`$ as $`a0`$) that has been shown to be able to describe the late-time $`\varphi `$ evolution for a wide class of Q models lin . Using $`w_0=0.99`$ and $`w_m=0.31`$, which are within $`2\sigma `$ from the best-fit parameters to the SNe and CMB data cald , we find that $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\kappa \alpha `$ decreases to $`1.63`$ at decoupling. The second model has an EOS with four parameters $`W=(w_0,w_m,a_c,\mathrm{\Delta })`$ cor :

$$w_\varphi (a)=w_0+(w_mw_0)\frac{\left(1+e^{a_c/\mathrm{\Delta }}\right)\left(1e^{(1a)/\mathrm{\Delta }}\right)}{\left(1+e^{(a_ca)/\mathrm{\Delta }}\right)\left(1e^{1/\mathrm{\Delta }}\right)},$$
(9)
where $`a_c`$ signifies the transition epoch and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ represents the transition rate from $`w_0`$ to $`w_m`$. We have worked out two cases: a slow EOS with $`W=(1,0.3,0.1,0.8)`$ and a rapid EOS with $`W=(1,0,0.4,0.1)`$, both of which are taken from the $`1\sigma `$ values of the best-fit models to the WMAP and SNe data kunz . We find that $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\kappa \alpha `$ decrease to $`1.56`$ and $`3.82`$ at decoupling for the slow and rapid EOS respectively. In fact, the slow EOS and the first model are very similar, in which $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi /\mathrm{\Omega }_m`$ decreases to $`0.01`$ at $`z30`$ and becomes negligible in the dark ages. On the contrary, the rapid EOS which has a larger change in $`\alpha `$ allows early quintessence with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi /\mathrm{\Omega }_m0.1`$ for $`1100>z>10`$. This can be understood by considering a constant $`w_\varphi `$ for which the problem has a simple solution. Equation (4) gives $`\varrho _\varphi a^{3(1+w_\varphi )}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi /\mathrm{\Omega }_ma^{3w_\varphi }`$. Thus, from Eq. (8) we have $`d\theta /d\eta a^{(1+3w_\varphi )/2}`$ and therefore the change of $`\alpha `$ will grow if $`w_\varphi 1/3`$. Also, the condition for early quintessence is simply $`w_\varphi 0`$. From the results of the above slow and rapid EOS’s where $`w_m=0.3`$ and $`w_m=0`$ respectively, we see that the change of $`\alpha `$ in models with $`0>w_\varphi >1/3`$ is smaller than that in models with early quintessence. Therefore, early quintessence is a crucial condition for a large temporal change of $`\alpha `$. We thus see that within viable models the varying $`\alpha `$ strongly depends on the Q component in the dark ages.

To further study the Q dependence and to find out the maximum change of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\kappa \alpha |`$, we turn to the generic quintessence (GQ) model lee03 , in which a piecewise constant EOS subject to observational constraints is introduced. The GQ model starts with determining the form for $`w_\varphi `$ at low redshifts. We choose $`w_\varphi 1`$ for $`z2`$ to satisfy the above-mentioned SNe constraints. Then $`w_\varphi `$ should be increased to $`1`$ after $`z=2`$ to have a maximum change of $`\alpha `$ based on Eq. (8). However, to avoid an unacceptably large ISW effect, $`w_\varphi `$ must drop to $`1`$ at a certain redshift. This results in the square-wave EOS in the GQ model.

A GQ model is shown in Fig. 1, where the width of the square wave is determined by $`w_\varphi =0.8`$ to saturate the WMAP upper limit on a constant $`w_\varphi `$ wmap . In this case, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\kappa \alpha `$ reaches a minimum value of $`0.4`$. In fact, a square-wave or pulse-shaped EOS is anticipated and quite general in the class of Q models using pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson fields incorporated with quantum corrections to the cosine potential corm . However, one can still shift the whole square wave to higher redshifts while fixing $`w_\varphi =0.8`$ as to generate the required ISW effect. We find that the shift increases the Q component at the decoupling epoch and affects the location of the CMB acoustic peaks. This can be understood as follows.

The tightly coupled baryon-photon plasma experienced a serial acoustic oscillation just before the recombination epoch. The acoustic scale (the angular momentum scale of the acoustic oscillation) sets the location of the peaks in the CMB anisotropy power spectrum hu95 , and is characterized by

$$l_A=\pi d_{}/h_s=\pi (\eta _0\eta _{\mathrm{dec}})/_0^{\eta _{\mathrm{dec}}}c_s𝑑\eta ,$$
(10)
where $`d_{}`$ represents the comoving distance to the decoupling epoch and $`h_s`$ denotes the sound horizon at decoupling, both of which are affected in the presence of quintessence. The sound speed $`c_s`$ in the pre-recombination plasma is given by hu95

$`c_s`$ $`=`$ $`1/\sqrt{3(1+R)}\mathrm{with}`$
$`R`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3\rho _b}{4\rho _\gamma }}30366\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_\gamma ^0}{2.725K}}\right)^4{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_b^0h^2}{1+z}},`$ (11)
where the baryon-photon momentum density ratio $`R`$ sets the baryon loading to the acoustic oscillation of CMB. Hence, $`h_s`$ at decoupling can be determined by the differential equation

$$dh_s/d\eta =c_s,$$
(12)
coupled with the background evolution equations (4) and (5). Using $`\mathrm{\Omega }_b^0h^2=0.0224`$, $`h=0.71`$, $`T_\gamma ^0=2.725K`$, and $`z_{\mathrm{dec}}=1089`$, we can calculate various acoustic scales by shifting the square wave of $`w_\varphi `$ toward the decoupling epoch while keeping $`w_\varphi `$ fixed.

Figure 2 plots the results against the Q field energy density at decoupling $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi ^{\mathrm{dec}}`$ with contours $`w_\varphi =0.7`$, $`0.8`$, $`0.9`$, and $`1`$. The last one is simply the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model. All GQ models lying in the region above the curve of $`w_\varphi =0.8`$ and within the WMAP bounds are consistent with the current CMB data. Thus, the constant $`w_\varphi =0.8`$ model and that in Fig. 1 are in fact disfavored as far as the acoustic peak location is concerned. In Fig. 3, we have worked out an extreme model with parameters taken at the upper right corner of the allowed region in Fig. 2. The model shows that the Q component dominates over the matter density at high redshifts. This early quintessence drives $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\kappa \alpha `$ to a minimum value of $`2.77`$. Note that a non-zero $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi `$ after decoupling would lead to a suppression of the growth of matter perturbations on scales smaller than the smoothing scale of the quintessence. Following Ref. lee03 , we have found that the growth function for matter perturbations in the extreme GQ model is still at an acceptable level with the COBE data. Furthermore, perturbations in the dark energy component will mildly affect our results because dark energy with $`w_\varphi =0.8`$ is already close to a vacuum state dave . At last, the extreme GQ model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi ^{\mathrm{dec}}=0.26`$ is consistent with the upper bound $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\varphi <0.39`$ during the radiation dominated epoch obtained by performing a maximum likelihood analysis on the CMB data hansen .

In conclusion we have investigated the quintessence-induced evolution of $`\alpha `$ allowed by the observational constraints from CMB and SNe using the parametrized quintessence models. Although the true equation of state, if there is any, may be a complicated function of time, they should capture the generic features of quintessence evolution for a model-independent study of the time-varying $`\alpha `$. We have found an extreme GQ model and a rapid equation of state that allow early quintessence driving a maximum change of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\kappa \alpha |34`$ at the decoupling epoch. Hence, the fifth-force limit in Eq. (2) implies that $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\alpha |`$ is less than about $`0.1\%`$ at decoupling as long as the quintessence is coupled to photon. Future CMB data will be able to constrain $`\alpha `$ up to $`0.1\%`$ level or tighter than this when combined with other cosmological measurements mar03 .

So far, we have not considered using the phenomenological quintessence models to fit the observational data of varying $`\alpha `$ at low redshifts ($`z<3.7`$). Although it is ad hoc and fine-tuned, we find that it is not so difficult to modify the equation of state at low redshifts to make the change of $`\alpha `$ consistent with the measurements of quasar absorption spectra and the Oklo and Re/Os limits. Indeed, using a model-independent approach it was shown that these low-redshift measurements can constrain the dark energy equation of state today to satisfy $`1<w_\varphi <0.96`$ and disfavor late-time changes in $`w_\varphi `$ park . This result is consistent with what we have assumed for the low-redshift value of $`w_\varphi `$ in our GQ models and the constraint $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha /\alpha =0.06\pm 0.06\times 10^5`$ recently obtained based on a new sample of high-redshift ($`0.4z2.3`$) quasar absorption line systems sri .

This work was supported in part by the National Science Council, Taiwan, ROC under the Grant NSC91-2112-M-001-026 and NSC91-2112-M-259-008.


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# Rényi statistics in high energy particle production

## Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge P.Harremoes, A.Paramonov, R.A.Treu- mann and C.Tsallis for suggestive discussions. The work was partially supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research grants RFBR-01-02-16431 and RFBR-03-02-17291.


text:
# Dynamical localization, measurements and quantum computing

(September 26, 2003)

## Abstract

We study numerically the effects of measurements on dynamical localization in the kicked rotator model simulated on a quantum computer. Contrary to the previous studies, which showed that measurements induce a diffusive probability spreading, our results demonstrate that localization can be preserved for repeated single-qubit measurements. We detect a transition from a localized to a delocalized phase, depending on the system parameters and on the choice of the measured qubit.

In 1979 the dynamical localization of quantum chaos was discovered in numerical simulations of the kicked rotator model casati . It was found that the unbounded classical diffusion typical of chaotic dynamics is suppressed by quantum interference effects casati ; chirikov . This interesting phenomenon found its explanation on the basis of an analogy with the Anderson localization in disordered lattices fishman  (see also reviews ). Manifestations of dynamical localization appear in various physical systems. Its first experimental observation was obtained with hydrogen and Rydberg atoms in a microwave field koch . Recently, a significant technological progress in manipulating cold atoms by laser fields allowed to build up experimentally the kicked rotator model and to study dynamical localization in real systems in great detail raizen ; newzealand ; oxford .

Since localization appears due to quantum interference it is natural to expect that it is rather fragile and sensitive to noise and interactions with the environment. Indeed, in theoretical and experimental studies it was shown that even a small amount of noise destroys coherence and localization ott ; newzealand ; oxford . Measurements represent another type of coupling to the environment zurek , and it is of fundamental importance to understand their effects on dynamical localization. Theoretical and numerical studies show that measurements destroy localization and induce a diffusive energy growth like in the case of a noisy environment graham ; kaulakys ; facchi . For weak continuous measurements, discussed in graham , the rate of this growth can be much smaller than the diffusion rate induced by classical chaos. However in the limit of strong coupling to the measurement device the quantum diffusion rate becomes close to its classical value. A similar situation takes place in the case of projective measurements, considered in kaulakys ; facchi .

The interest in measurement procedures enormously grew up in the last years due to progress in quantum information processing chuang . Indeed, the extraction of information from a quantum computation is always reduced to a final measurement of the quantum register. Various experimental implementations were discussed for the realization of the readout procedure in quantum optics systems cirac ; wiseman  and solid state devices gurvitz ; korotkov ; averin ; devoret . Moreover it has been shown that a quantum computation can be performed completely by a sequence of measurements applied to an initially entangled state briegel . At the same time, measurements represent an important part of various quantum algorithms, including the famous Shor algorithm for the factorization of integers shor . Therefore it is important to investigate the effects of measurements on quantum computers operating nontrivial algorithms.

An interesting example is the quantum algorithm proposed in georgeot  which allows to simulate the evolution of the kicked rotator on a quantum computer. This algorithm essentially uses the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) and controlled phase gates. It realizes one map iteration in a polynomial number of quantum gates ($`O(n_q^3)`$) for a wave vector of size $`N=2^{n_q}`$. Here $`n_q`$ is the number of qubits (two-level quantum systems) onto which a kicked rotator wave function is encoded. For moderate kick amplitudes, this algorithm can be replaced by an approximate one which uses all the qubits in an optimal way and performs one map iteration in $`O(n_q^2)`$ elementary gates andrei . In this form the algorithm can simulate complex dynamics, e.g. the Anderson transition, with only a few ($`7`$) qubits. This makes it accessible for possible future realization on NMR based quantum computers. Indeed, all the elements of the algorithm have already been implemented on NMR quantum computers chuang1 ; cory . Therefore it represents an interesting testing ground for the investigation of the measurement effects on dynamical localization in a quantum computation.

The quantum evolution of the kicked rotator is described by the unitary operator $`\widehat{U}`$ acting on the wave function $`\psi `$ reviews :

$$\overline{\psi }=\widehat{U}\psi =\widehat{U}_k\widehat{U}_T\psi =e^{ik\mathrm{cos}\widehat{\theta }}e^{iT\widehat{n}^2/2}\psi .$$
(1)
Here $`\overline{\psi }`$ is the wave function after one map iteration, $`\widehat{U}_k`$ represents the effects of the kick in the phase representation and $`\widehat{U}_T`$ describes the free rotation in the momentum basis $`n`$ with $`\widehat{n}=i/\theta `$ (we use units with $`\mathrm{}=1`$). The dimensionless parameters $`k`$, $`T`$ determine the kick strength and the rotation phases, so that the classical limit corresponds to $`k\mathrm{}`$, $`T0`$ with the chaos parameter $`K=kT`$ constant. Here we study the regime of dynamical localization corresponding to $`lN`$, where $`lk^2/2`$ is the localization length reviews .

The quantum algorithm simulating the evolution (1) operates as described in georgeot ; andrei . The wave function $`\psi `$ in the momentum representation with $`N=2^{n_q}`$ levels is encoded on a quantum computer with $`n_q`$ qubits. In this way $`n=N/2+j`$ where the index $`j=0,\mathrm{},N1`$ is written in the binary representation as $`j=(a_1,a_2,\mathrm{},a_m,\mathrm{},a_{n_q})`$, with $`a_m=0`$ or $`1`$. As the initial state we choose the momentum eigenstate at $`n=n_0=0`$, which can be efficiently prepared from the ground state. Then, as described in georgeot  the rotation $`\widehat{U}_T`$ is performed in $`O(n_q^2)`$ controlled-phase gates. After that the QFT transforms the wave function to $`\theta `$-representation in $`O(n_q^2)`$ quantum elementary gates (see chuang ). The kick operator $`\widehat{U}_k`$ is realized in $`O(n_q^3)`$ gates with the help of an additional register georgeot , or, for moderate $`k`$ values, it can be approximately implemented in $`O(n_q)`$ gates without any ancilla, following andrei . Finally, $`\psi `$ is transformed back to the momentum basis by the inverse QFT. Here we assume that the gates are implemented without errors, keeping the analysis of imperfection effects for further studies.

To study the effects of measurements on the dynamics given by the above algorithm we assume that after each map iteration (1) a projective measurement of a chosen qubit $`m`$ is performed. The measurement can be represented as the action of two projection operators $`P_0(m)`$ and $`P_1(m)`$ giving for $`a_m`$ an outcome 0 or 1 with the probability $`P_0(m)\psi ^2`$ or $`P_1(m)\psi ^2`$, respectively. The measurement projects the wave function onto one of two subspaces of the total Hilbert space, corresponding to momentum states labeled by the indexes $`j=(a_1,a_2,\mathrm{},a_m,\mathrm{},a_{n_q})`$ with fixed $`a_m=0`$ or $`a_m=1`$. Each subspace is composed of $`N/2`$ states, given by the direct sum of $`2^{m1}`$ cells of $`L=2^{n_qm}`$ consecutive momentum states. For example, for $`m=1`$ the most significant qubit is measured and $`\psi `$ is projected onto momentum states with $`N/2n<0`$ ($`a_1=0`$) or $`0nN/21`$ ($`a_1=1`$); for $`m=n_q`$ the least significant qubit is measured and $`\psi `$ is projected onto even and odd momentum states. Such a measurement is the most natural one for the quantum computation process.

Thus, the evolution with measurements is given by the following equation for the density matrix $`\widehat{\rho }`$

$`\widehat{\overline{\rho }}=P_0(m)\widehat{U}_k\widehat{U}_T\widehat{\rho }\widehat{U}_T^{}\widehat{U}_k^{}P_0(m)+`$
$`P_1(m)\widehat{U}_k\widehat{U}_T\widehat{\rho }\widehat{U}_T^{}\widehat{U}_k^{}P_1(m)`$ (2)
Here, $`\widehat{\overline{\rho }}`$ is the density matrix after one map iteration with measurement. The direct simulation of this equation is quite costly, since $`N^2`$ components should be iterated. To avoid this difficulty we used the method of quantum trajectories qtraj . In this method for one quantum trajectory the wave function $`\psi `$ evolves according to (1); after each map iteration $`\psi `$ in the momentum representation is projected on the subspaces with $`a_m=0`$ or $`1`$ according to the probability $`P_0(m)\psi ^2`$ or $`P_1(m)\psi ^2`$, respectively. After the renormalization, this gives the wave function $`\psi _n`$ in the momentum basis. The density matrix and the expectation values of observables are then obtained by averaging over $`M`$ quantum trajectories.

To characterize the quantum evolution with measurements we compute the following quantities: the probability distribution $`\rho _{nn}|\psi _n|^2`$, obtained by averaging $`|\psi _n|^2`$ over $`M`$ quantum trajectories; the second moment of the probability distribution, given by $`\widehat{n}^2=Tr(\widehat{n}^2\widehat{\rho })_nn^2|\psi _n|^2`$; the Inverse Participation Ratio (IPR) $`\xi =1/_n\rho _{nn}^21/_n||\psi _n|^2|^2`$ which determines the number of states on which the average probability is distributed. Within statistical fluctuations these quantities remain unchanged for a variation of $`M`$ from 20 to 500 and we represent them for $`M=50`$.

The dependence of $`\widehat{n}^2`$ and $`\xi `$ on the number of map iterations $`t`$ is displayed in Fig.1 for different $`n_q`$ and $`m`$. The probability distribution $`|\psi _n|^2`$ for $`n_q=10`$ is shown in Fig.2. These data clearly show that the measurement of the least significant qubit completely destroys localization generating a diffusive behavior. Indeed, the second moment $`\widehat{n}^2`$ and the IPR $`\xi `$ grow diffusively (see Fig.1) up to spread of the probability over the whole computational basis, as shown in Fig.2. The extended distribution $`|\psi _n|^2`$ is formed by a superposition of probabilities $`|\psi _n|^2`$ generated by single quantum trajectories (see Fig. 2 inset, which shows that each $`|\psi _n|^2`$ is relatively narrow). On the contrary, the measurement of one of the most significant qubits does not destroy localization, as clearly illustrated in Figs.1, 2. This striking result is very different from the previous studies graham ; kaulakys ; facchi  where localization was always destroyed by measurements.

To understand the origin of this behavior we investigate the dependence of the averaged IPR $`\xi `$ on the kick amplitude $`k`$ for different number of qubits $`n_q`$ (see Fig.3). For $`kk_c6`$ the IPR is independent of $`n_q`$, corresponding to a localized regime. On the contrary, for $`k>k_c`$ the IPR starts to grow with the system size $`N=2^{n_q}`$, indicating a transition to a delocalized phase. We explain the appearance of this transition in the following way. The measurement process determines the cell size $`L=2^{n_qm}`$ inside which the coherence of quantum dynamics is preserved. If the unperturbed localization length $`l`$ is much smaller than the cell size, then measurements do not destroy dynamical localization. While, if $`lL`$, the wave function propagates over different cells, measurements destroys quantum coherence between nearby cells and this leads to a diffusive propagation over the computational basis.

According to our data the delocalization transition takes place when

$$\xi _02lk^2L/5$$
(3)
where $`\xi _0`$ is the IPR for the dynamics without measurements (see the inset in Fig.3). This relation shows that the transition can be obtained by tuning $`k`$ at fixed $`n_qm`$ or by an appropriate variation of $`m`$ at fixed $`k`$. Our numerical data confirm this estimate. Indeed, for $`m=n_q9`$ we obtain that $`k=10`$ is localized, while at $`k=12`$ delocalization takes place (data not shown). It is interesting to note that the oscillations of $`\xi `$ in Fig.3 are correlated with the oscillations of $`\xi _0`$, thus confirming that the delocalization border is determined by the unperturbed localization length $`l`$ (these oscillations are produced by dynamical correlations which affect the classical/quantum diffusion rate related to the localization length $`l`$ as discussed in ds ).

To study the quantum dynamics at larger time scales we use the random quantum phase method proposed in kaulakys . It is based on the fact that after a projection on a given quantum state induced by a measurement the quantum phase is not defined. Therefore one can assume that states associated to different outcomes of the measurement procedure have a random relative quantum phase. Thus, after a measurement of the $`m`$-th qubit the state $`|\varphi `$ is replaced by $`e^{i\beta _0}P_0(m)|\varphi +e^{i\beta _1}P_1(m)|\varphi `$, where the phases $`\beta _{0,1}`$ are random. This approach allows to reduce significantly the computational cost of the simulation, since it effectively integrates the dynamics over many quantum trajectories.

The comparison of the two computational methods is presented in Fig.4, for diffusive, localized and critical regimes. Both methods give consistent results for $`n^2`$ (Fig.4) and the IPR (data not shown). With the random quantum phase method we can follow the evolution for very large times (up to $`t=10^7`$) at which localization is still preserved (see Fig.4 b). This computational method allows also to understand in a better way why localization is not destroyed by measurements. Indeed, the effects of random phase fluctuations $`\beta _{0,1}`$ appear only at the cell boundaries. Hence, for $`Ll`$ they do not affect the momentum states located on a distance larger than $`l`$ from edges and localization is preserved note . We think that the same mechanism qualitatively explains the results obtained in sarkar  where it was found that measurements of a 1/2-spin detector coupled to the kicked rotator do not destroy localization. In this case the effective cell size $`L`$ is the total number of rotator momentum states and thus localization is preserved since $`lL`$.

In conclusion, we studied the effects of measurements on dynamical localization in a quantum algorithm simulating the kicked rotator. Contrary to the common lore the localization is not always destroyed by measurements, and a transition from localized to diffusive dynamics takes place when system parameters are varied.

The authors acknowledge useful discussion with S.Bettelli, B.Georgeot. We thank CalMiP in Toulouse and IDRIS in Orsay for access to their supercomputers. This work was supported in part by the EC projects RTN QTRANS and IST-FET EDIQIP and the NSA and ARDA under ARO contract No. DAAD19-01-1-0553.


text:
# Building a Test Collection for Speech-Driven Web Retrieval

## 1 Introduction

Automatic speech recognition, which decodes the human voice to generate transcriptions, has recently become a practical technology. A number of speech-based methods have been explored in the information retrieval (IR) community, which can be classified into the following two fundamental categories:

* spoken document retrieval, in which written queries are used to search speech (e.g., broadcast news audio) archives for relevant speech information,
* speech-driven retrieval, in which spoken queries are used to retrieve relevant textual information.

Initiated partially by the TREC-6 spoken document retrieval (SDR) track , various methods have been proposed for spoken document retrieval. However, a relatively small number of methods  have been explored for speech-driven text retrieval, although they are associated with numerous keyboard-less retrieval applications, such as telephone-based retrieval, car navigation systems, and user-friendly interfaces.

In the NTCIR-3 workshop111http://research.nii.ac.jp/ntcir/index-en.html, which is a TREC-style evaluation workshop, the Web retrieval main task was organized to promote text-based Web IR . Additionally, optional subtasks were also invited, in which a group of researchers voluntarily organized a subtask to promote their common research area. We made use of this opportunity and organized the “speech-driven retrieval” subtask to produce a reusable test collection for experimental of Web retrieval driven by spoken queries.

Section 2 describes the test collection produced for the speech-driven retrieval subtask. Section 3 describes our speech-driven retrieval system, and Section 4 elaborates on comparative experiments, in which we evaluated our system in terms of the speech recognition and retrieval accuracy.

## 2 Test Collection for Speech-Driven IR

### 2.1 Overview

The purpose of the speech-driven retrieval subtask was to produce reusable and publicly available test collections and tools, so that researchers in the information retrieval and speech processing communities can develop technologies and share scientific knowledge concerning speech-driven information retrieval. In principle, as with conventional IR test collections, test collections for speech-driven retrieval are required to include test queries, target documents, and relevance assessment for each query. However, unlike conventional text-based IR, queries are speech data uttered by humans. In practice, because producing the entire collection is prohibitive, we produced speech data related to the Web retrieval main (text-based) task. Thus, target documents and relevance assessment in the main task can be used for the purpose of speech-driven retrieval.

However, participants for the NTCIR workshop are mainly researchers in the information retrieval and natural language processing communities, and are not necessarily experts in developing and operating speech recognition systems. Therefore, we also produced language models that can be used with an existing speech recognition engine (decoder), which helps researchers to perform experiments similar to those described in this paper. All above data are included in the NTCIR-3 Web retrieval test collection, which is publicly available.

### 2.2 Spoken Queries

For the Web retrieval main task, 105 search topics were produced, for each of which relevance assessment was performed with respect to two different document sets: the 10GB and 100GB collections. The 10GB and 100GB collections correspond approximately to 1M and 10M documents, respectively.

Each topic is in SGML-style form and consists of the topic ID (`<NUM>`), title of the topic (`<TITLE>`), description (`<DESC>`), narrative (`<NARR>`), list of synonyms related to the topic (`<CONC>`), sample of relevant documents (`<RDOC>`), and a brief profile of the user who produced the topic (`<USER>`). Figure 1 depicts a translation of an example topic. Although Japanese topics were used in the main task, English translations are also included in the Web retrieval collection mainly for publication purposes.

Participants in the main task were allowed to submit more than one retrieval result using one or more fields. However, participants were required to submit results obtained with the title and description fields independently. Titles are lists of keywords, and descriptions are phrases and sentences.

From the viewpoint of speech recognition, titles and descriptions can be used to evaluate word and continuous recognition methods, respectively. Because state-of-the-art speech recognition is based on a continuous recognition framework, we used only the description field. For the first speech-driven retrieval subtask, we focused on dictated (read) speech, although our ultimate goal is to recognize spontaneous speech. We asked ten speakers (five adult males and five adult females) to dictate descriptions in the 105 topics. The ten speakers also dictated 50 sentences in the ATR phonetic-balanced sentence set as reference data, which can potentially be used for speaker adaptation. However, we did not use this additional data for the purpose of the experiments described in this paper. The above-mentioned spoken queries and sentences were recorded with the same close-talk microphone in a noiseless office. Speech waves were digitized at a 16KHz sampling frequency and a quantization of 16 bits. The resulting data are in the RIFF format.

### 2.3 Language Models

Unlike general-purpose speech recognition, in speech-driven text retrieval, users usually speak contents associated with a target collection, from which documents relevant to user needs are retrieved. In a stochastic speech recognition framework, the accuracy depends primarily on acoustic and language models. Whereas acoustic models are related to phonetic properties, language models, which represent linguistic contents to be spoken, are related to target collections. Therefore, it is feasible that language models have to be produced based on target collections. In summary, our belief is that by adapting a language model to a target IR collection, we can improve the speech recognition accuracy and, consequently, the retrieval accuracy. Motivated by this background, we used target documents for the main task to produce the language models. For this purpose, we used only the 100GB collection, because the 10GB collection is a subset of the 100GB collection.

We produced two language models of different vocabulary sizes so that the relation between the vocabulary size and system performance can be investigated. In practice, 20K and 60K high frequency words were used independently to produce word-based trigram models. We shall call these models “Web20K” and “Web60K”, respectively. We used the ChaSen morphological analyzer222http://chasen.aist-nara.ac.jp/ to extract words from the 100GB collection. To resolve the data sparseness problem, we used a back-off smoothing method, in which the Witten-Bell discounting method was used to compute back-off coefficients. In addition, through preliminary experiments, cut-off thresholds were empirically set at 20 and 10 for the Web20K and Web60K models, respectively. Trigrams whose frequency was above the threshold were used for language modeling. Language models and dictionaries are in the ARPA and HTK formats, respectively.

Table 1 shows the statistics related to word tokens/types in the 100GB collection and ten years of “Mainichi Shimbun” newspaper articles from 1991 to 2000. We shall use the term “word token” to refer to occurrences of words, and the term “word type” to refer to vocabulary items. The size of the 100G collection (“Web”) is approximately 10 times that of 10 years of newspaper articles (“News”), which was one of the largest Japanese corpora available for the purpose of research and development in language modeling. This means that the Web is a vital, as yet untapped, corpus for language modeling.

## 3 System Description

### 3.1 Overview

Figure 2 depicts the overall design of our speech-driven text retrieval system, which consists of speech recognition and text retrieval modules. In the off-line process, a target IR collection is used to produce a language model, so that user speech related to the collection can be recognized with high accuracy. However, an acoustic model was produced independently of the target collection. In the on-line process, given an information request spoken by a user (i.e., a spoken query), the speech recognition module uses acoustic and language models to generate a transcription of the user speech. Then, the text retrieval module searches the target IR collection for documents relevant to the transcription, and outputs a specific number of top-ranked documents according to the degree of relevance in descending order. In the following two sections, we describe the speech recognition and text retrieval modules.

### 3.2 Speech Recognition

We used the Japanese dictation toolkit333http://winnie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dictation/ including the Julius decoder and acoustic/language models. Julius performs a two-pass (forward-backward) search using word-based forward bigrams and backward trigrams. The acoustic model was produced from the ASJ speech database, which contains 20,000 sentences uttered by 132 speakers including both genders. A 16-mixture Gaussian distribution triphone Hidden Markov Model, in which the states are clustered into 2,000 groups by a state-tying method, is used. The language model is a word-based trigram model produced from 60,000 high frequency words in 10 years of Mainichi Shimbun newspaper articles. This toolkit also includes development software so that acoustic and language models can be produced depending on the application. While we used the acoustic model provided in the toolkit, we used new language models produced from the 100GB collections, that is, the Web20K and Web60K models.

### 3.3 Text Retrieval

The retrieval module is based on an existing retrieval method , which computes the relevance score between the transcribed query and each document in the collection. The relevance score for document $`d`$ is computed by Equation (1).

$$\underset{t}{}f_{t,q}\frac{\left(K+1\right)f_{t,d}}{K\left\{\left(1b\right)+\frac{dl_d}{bavgdl}\right\}+f_{t,d}}\mathrm{log}\frac{Nn_t+0.5}{n_t+0.5}$$
(1)
where $`f_{t,q}`$ and $`f_{t,d}`$ denote the frequency that term $`t`$ appears in query $`q`$ and document $`d`$, respectively; $`N`$ and $`n_t`$ denote the total number of documents in the collection and the number of documents containing term $`t`$, respectively; $`dl_d`$ denotes the length of document $`d`$, and $`avgdl`$ denotes the average length of documents in the collection. We empirically set $`K=2.0`$ and $`b=0.8`$, respectively.

Given transcriptions (i.e., speech recognition results for spoken queries), the retrieval module searches a target IR collection for relevant documents and sorts them in descending order according to the score. We used content words, such as nouns, extracted from documents as index terms, and performed word-based indexing. We used the ChaSen morphological analyzer to extract content words. We also extracted terms from transcribed queries using the same method. We used words and bi-words (i.e., word-based bigrams) as index terms.

## 4 Experimentation

In the Web retrieval main task, different types of text retrieval were performed. The first type was “Topic Retrieval” resembling the TREC ad hoc retrieval. The second type was “Similarity Retrieval”, in which documents were used as queries instead of keywords and phrases. The third type was “Target Retrieval”, in which systems with a high precision were highly valued. This feature provided a salient contrast to the first two retrieval types, in which both recall and precision were used equally as evaluation measures.

Although the spoken queries produced can be used for the first and third task types, we focused solely on Topic Retrieval for the sake of simplicity. We used the 47 topics for the Topic Retrieval task to retrieve the 1,000 top documents, and we used the TREC evaluation software to calculate the mean average precision (MAP) values (i.e., non-interpolated average precision values, averaged over the 47 topics).

Relevance assessment was performed based on four ranks of relevance: highly relevant, relevant, partially relevant and irrelevant. In addition, unlike conventional retrieval tasks, documents hyperlinked from retrieved documents were optionally used for relevance assessment. In summary, the following four assessment types were available to calculate the MAP values:

* (highly) relevant documents were regarded as correct answers, and hyperlink information was not used (RC),
* (highly) relevant documents were regarded as correct answers, and hyperlink information was used (RL),
* partially relevant documents were also regarded as correct answers, and hyperlink information was not used (PC),
* partially relevant documents were also regarded as correct answers, and hyperlink information was used (PL).

In the formal run for the main task, we submitted results obtained with different methods for the 10GB and 100GB collections. The best performance was obtained when we used description (`<DESC>`) fields as queries and we used a combination of words and bi-words as index terms.

The purpose of the experiments for speech-driven retrieval was two-fold. First, we investigated the extent to which a language model based on a target document collection contributes to an improvement in performance. Second, we investigated the impact of the vocabulary size for speech recognition on speech-driven retrieval. Therefore, we compared the performance of the following four retrieval methods:

* text-to-text retrieval, which used written queries, and can be seen as the perfect speech-driven text retrieval method (“Text”),
* speech-driven text retrieval, in which the Web60K model was used (“Web60K”),
* speech-driven text retrieval, in which a language model produced from 60,000 high frequency words in ten years of Mainichi Shimbun newspaper articles was used (“News60K”),
* speech-driven text retrieval, in which the Web20K model was used (“Web20K”).

For text-to-text retrieval, we used descriptions (`<DESC>`) as queries, because the spoken queries used for speech-driven retrieval methods were descriptions dictated by speakers.

For speech-driven text retrieval methods, queries dictated by the ten speakers were used independently, and the final result was obtained by averaging the results for all speakers. Although the Julius decoder used in the speech recognition module generated more than one transcription candidate (hypothesis) for a single speech, we used only that with the greatest probability score. All language models were produced by means of the same softwares, but they were different in terms of the vocabulary size and the source documents. Table 2 shows the MAP values with respect to the four relevance assessment types and the word error rate in speech recognition, for different retrieval methods targeting the 10GB and 100GB collections.

As with existing experiments for speech recognition, the word error rate (WER) is the ratio between the number of word errors (i.e., deletion, insertion, and substitution) and the total number of words. In addition, we investigated the error rate with respect to query terms (i.e., keywords used for retrieval), which we shall call the term error rate (TER). Note that unlike MAP, smaller values of WER and TER are obtained with better methods. Table 2 also shows the test-set out-of-vocabulary rate (OOV), which is the ratio of the number of words not included in the speech recognition dictionary to the total number of words in the spoken queries. Suggestions that can be derived from the results in Table 2 are as follows.

Looking at the WER and TER columns, News60K and Web20K were comparable in speech recognition performance, but Web60K outperformed in both cases. However, the difference between News60K and Web20K in OOV did not affect WER and TER. In addition, TER was greater than WER, because in computing TER, functional words, which are generally recognized with a high accuracy, were excluded.

Whereas the MAP values of News60K and Web20K were comparable, the MAP values of Web60K, which were approximately 60–70% of those obtained with Text, were greater than those for News60K and Web20K, irrespective of the relevance assessment type. These results were observed for both the 10GB and 100GB collections.

The only difference between News60K and Web60K was the source corpus for language modeling in speech recognition, and therefore we conclude that the use of target collections to produce a language model was effective for speech-driven retrieval. In addition, by comparing the MAP values of Web20K and Web60K, we conclude that the vocabulary size for speech recognition was also influential for the performance of speech-driven retrieval.

We analyzed speech recognition errors, focusing mainly on those attributed to the out-of-vocabulary problem. Table 3 shows the ratio of the number of out-of-vocabulary words to the total number of misrecognized words (or terms) in transcriptions. However, it should be noted that the actual ratio of errors due to the OOV problem can potentially be higher than those figures, because non-OOV words collocating with OOV words are often misrecognized. The remaining reasons for speech recognition errors are associated with insufficient N-gram statistics and the acoustic model. As predicted, the ratio of OOV words (terms) in Web20K was much higher than the ratios in Web60K and News60K. However, by comparing News60K and Web20K, WER and TER of News60K in Table 2 were higher than those of Web20K. This suggests that insufficient N-gram statistics were more problematic in News60K, compared to Web20K.

## 5 Conclusion

In the NTCIR-3 Web retrieval task, we organized the speech-driven retrieval subtask and produced 105 spoken queries dictated by ten speakers. We also produced word-based trigram language models using approximately 10M documents in the 100GB collection used for the main task. We used those queries and language models to evaluate the performance of our speech-driven retrieval system. Experimental results showed that (a) the use of target documents for language modeling and (b) enhancement of the vocabulary size in speech recognition were effective in improving the system performance. Future work will include experiments using spontaneous spoken queries.

## 6 Acknowledgments

The authors thank the organizers of the NTCIR-3 Web retrieval task for their support to the speech-driven retrieval subtask.