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# Evidence for Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein effects in solar neutrino flavor transitions

## I Introduction

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) experiment has recently released new data Hott  with enhanced sensitivity to neutral-current (NC) interactions of solar neutrinos in deuterium. Charged current (CC) and elastic scattering (ES) events have also been statistically separated from NC events in a model-independent way, i.e., without using priors on the 8B neutrino energy spectrum shape Hott . These data corroborate the explanation of the solar neutrino deficit Book  in terms of (dominant) two-family $`\nu _e\nu _a`$ flavor transitions ($`\nu _a=\nu _{\mu ,\tau }`$), which have convincingly emerged from the combined data of previous solar neutrino experiments (Chlorine Cl98 , Gallium Ab02 ; Ha99 ; Ki02 , Super-Kamiokande (SK) Fu01 ; Fu02 , and SNO AhCC ; AhNC ; AhDN ) and of long-baseline reactor oscillation searches at KamLAND KamL . Moreover, the new SNO data appear to forbid relatively high values of the neutrino mixing angle $`\theta _{12}`$ (close to maximal mixing) and of the squared mass difference $`\delta m^2`$ (close to the CHOOZ CHOO  upper bound), which were marginally allowed prior to Hott  (see, e.g., Our1 ; Pena ). In the current global fit Hott , the mass-mixing parameters appear to be tightly confined in the so-called large mixing angle (LMA) region, and especially in a subregion previously denoted as LMA-I Our1 .

In the LMA parameter range, flavor transitions between $`\nu _e`$ and $`\nu _a`$ should be significantly affected by the neutrino interaction energy difference $`V=V_eV_a`$ arising in solar (and possibly Earth) background matter Matt ; Barg ,

$$V(x)=\sqrt{2}G_FN_e(x),$$
(1)
where $`N_e`$ is the electron number density at the point $`x`$. The associated flavor change, known as Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein (MSW) effect Matt , should occur adiabatically Adia  in the solar matter, for LMA parameters. In the context of Hamiltonian ($``$) evolution of $`2\nu `$ active flavors, the MSW effect enters through a dynamical term $`_{\mathrm{dyn}}`$ in matter, in addition to the kinetic term $`_{\mathrm{kin}}`$ in vacuum:

$$i\frac{d}{dx}\left(\begin{array}{c}\nu _e\\ \nu _a\end{array}\right)=(_{\mathrm{dyn}}+_{\mathrm{kin}})\left(\begin{array}{c}\nu _e\\ \nu _a\end{array}\right),$$
(2)
where

$$_{\mathrm{dyn}}=\frac{V(x)}{2}\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right)$$
(3)
and

$$_{\mathrm{kin}}=\frac{\delta m^2}{4E}\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}2\theta _{12}& \mathrm{sin}2\theta _{12}\\ \mathrm{sin}2\theta _{12}& \mathrm{cos}2\theta _{12}\end{array}\right),$$
(4)
$`E`$ being the neutrino energy.

In a previous work MSW1  we pointed out that, while the evidence for $`_{\mathrm{kin}}0`$ was overwhelming, the phenomenological indications in favor of $`_{\mathrm{dyn}}0`$ (and thus of MSW effects) were not as compelling. In particular, we introduced in MSW1  a free parameter $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$ modulating the overall amplitude of the dynamical term $`_{\mathrm{dyn}}`$ through the substitution

$$Va_{\mathrm{MSW}}V,$$
(5)
both in the Sun and in the Earth. We showed that $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$ was poorly constrained, despite an intriguing preference for the standard MSW expectation $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}1`$ MSW1 . The null hypothesis $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$ was not clearly disproved by any single experiment, and could be rejected at a relevant confidence level ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^213`$, formally equivalent to $`\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2}3.5\sigma `$) only in the global fit. We concluded that the available phenomenological data clearly favored MSW effects in solar neutrinos, but did not prove unequivocally their occurrence. We deemed it necessary to wait for new KamLAND or SNO data, in order to clarify the situation and to probe MSW effects with higher statistical significance MSW1 .

In this work, we point out that the recent SNO data Hott  contribute significantly to disprove the null hypothesis of no MSW oscillations. In the global combination of solar and reactor data, we find that, with respect to the (preferred) standard case $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}1`$, the null hypothesis $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$ can be safely rejected at the level of $`5.6\sigma `$, despite the fact the allowed range of $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$ is still rather large. In other words, the evidence in favor of MSW effects is now very strong, although precision tests of the MSW physics cannot be performed until new, high statistics KamLAND data become available (as we show later).

In the following sections, we analyze the current solar and reactor neutrino phenomenology with an increasing degree of dependence on assumptions about the MSW effect.111In any case, we assume active flavor oscillations only, and do not consider hypothetical sterile neutrinos.  In Sec. II we do not make any hypothesis about MSW effects, and show that SNO data alone, as well as a model-independent SNO+SK combination, constrain the energy-averaged $`\nu _e`$ survival probability $`P_{ee}`$ to be significantly smaller than $`1/2`$. This fact, by itself, excludes the vacuum case $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$ (which would predict $`P_{ee}1/2`$ in the LMA region selected by KamLAND), and proves that dynamical effects must occur in solar neutrino propagation with unspecified amplitude $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}>0`$. In Sec. III we fit all the available solar and reactor data with ($`\delta m^2,\theta _{12},a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$) taken as free parameters. We find that MSW effects with standard amplitude ($`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=1`$) are favored, while the null hypothesis $`(a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0)`$ can be safely rejected at the $`5.6\sigma `$ level. However, we show that the allowed range of $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$ is still very large, and can be significantly narrowed only by future KamLAND data. Assuming standard MSW effects $`(a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=1)`$, we perform in Sec. IV an updated analysis of the $`2\nu `$ kinematical parameters $`(\delta m^2,\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12})`$. We briefly discuss the impact of $`3\nu `$ mixing in Sec. V, and conclude our work in Sec. VI.

## II Model-independent constraints

It has been shown in Vill  (see also Gett ) that the SK and SNO experiments probe the same energy-averaged $`\nu _e`$ survival probability $`P_{ee}`$ to a good accuracy, provided that the detector thresholds are appropriately chosen. For the kinetic energy threshold ($`T_{\mathrm{SNO}}=5.5`$ MeV) and energy resolution characterizing the latest SNO data Hott , we find that the equivalent SK threshold is $`E_{\mathrm{SK}}7.8`$ MeV in total energy.222In practice, adopting this threshold amounts to discard the first three bins of the SK energy spectrum in the range $`E[5,8]`$ MeV.  For equalized thresholds, the SK ES flux and the SNO NC and CC fluxes are linked by the exact relations Vill

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{ES}}^{\mathrm{SK}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B[P_{ee}+r(1P_{ee})],`$ (6)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{CC}}^{\mathrm{SNO}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }_BP_{ee},`$ (7)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{NC}}^{\mathrm{SNO}}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B,`$ (8)
where $`r=0.154`$ is the ratio of (properly averaged) $`\nu _{\mu ,\tau }`$ and $`\nu _e`$ CC cross sections, and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B`$ is the true 8B flux from the Sun. From the above equations, one can (over)constrain both $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B`$ and $`P_{ee}`$ in a truly model-independent way, namely, without any prior assumption about the energy profile of $`P_{ee}`$ or about $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B`$ predictions in standard solar models (SSM).

Figure 1 shows the current constraints on $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B`$ and on $`P_{ee}`$ as derived from the final SK ES data Fu02  and from the latest SNO CC and NC fluxes Hott  (correlations included Howt ). The constraints are shown both by individual bands and by their combination at the $`3\sigma `$ level $`(\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2=9)`$. The projections of the SNO+SK combination (solid ellipse in Fig. 1) provide the ranges

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_B=(5.5\pm 1.2)\times 10^6\mathrm{cm}^2\mathrm{s}^1(3\sigma ),$$
(9)
in good agreement with SSM predictions BP00 , and

$$P_{ee}=0.31_{0.08}^{+0.12}(3\sigma ).$$
(10)
The above $`3\sigma `$ limits on $`P_{ee}`$ are in very good agreement with the “$`3\sigma `$ range” obtained by naively triplicating the errors of the SNO CC/NC flux ratio, which is a direct measurement of $`P_{ee}`$: $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{CC}}^{\mathrm{SNO}}/\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{NC}}^{\mathrm{SNO}}=0.306\pm 0.105(3\sigma )`$ Hott . However, as emphasized in Howt , the errors of the CC/NC ratio are not normally distributed, and should not be used in fits. Conversely, our bounds in Eq. (10) are statistically safe and well-defined, and will be used in the following discussion.

The above SK+SNO constraints appear to be currently dominated by the SNO data, as shown by the dotted ellipse in Fig. 1. In particular, the upper bound on the $`\nu _e`$ survival probability,

$$P_{ee}<0.43(3\sigma ),$$
(11)
can be basically derived from the SNO (CC+NC) data Hott  alone. The upper limit in Eq. (11) is significantly stronger than the one derived in Gett  prior to the latest SNO data Hott . In particular, we have now robust, model-independent evidence that $`P_{ee}`$ is definitely smaller than 1/2 at $`>3\sigma `$ level. This inequality has important consequences for both the dynamical and the kinematical term in Eq. (2). First, in the $`\delta m^2`$ range accessible to KamLAND and below the CHOOZ bound ($`\delta m^2O(10^{4\pm 1})`$ eV2), the absence of the dynamical MSW term $`_{\mathrm{dyn}}`$ (i.e., the case $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$ would imply $`P_{ee}1/2`$ (see, e.g, MSW1 ), contrary to Eq. (11) . Second, assuming standard MSW dynamics ($`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=1`$), the inequality in Eq. (11) allows to place upper limits on the kinematical parameters $`\delta m^2`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12}`$ (see, e.g., the discussions in MSW1 ; PeMa ; Pedr ).

Figure 2 illustrates the previous statements through isolines of $`P_{ee}`$ in the $`(\delta m^2,\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12})`$ parameter range relevant to KamLAND, for both $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$ (left panel) and $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=1`$ (right panel). The superposed grey region is allowed by the $`3\sigma `$ model-independent bounds in Eq. (10). No such region exists in the case $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$, which is therefore rejected at the $`3\sigma `$ level (at least). In the standard MSW case (left panel), the allowed region appears to confine $`\delta m^2`$ below $`2\times 10^4`$ eV2 and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12}`$ below $`0.4`$. In particular, the latest SNO data significantly contribute to reject maximal mixing $`(\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12}=1/2)`$ and to reduce the likelihood of the so-called Our1  LMA-II parameter region, as emphasized in Hott .

Summarizing, the latest SNO CC and NC data Hott , either by themselves or in combination with the SK ES data Fu02 , provide the strong, model-independent upper bound $`P_{ee}<0.43`$ at $`3\sigma `$. In the context of $`2\nu `$ mixing, and within the mass-mixing region probed by KamLAND, this bound allows to reject the null hypothesis ($`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$), and provides upper limits on the mass-mixing parameters in the standard MSW case ($`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=1`$). In the next Section, we examine the more general case of variable $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$, in order to test whether current and future data can significantly constrain, by themselves, the size of matter effects.

## III Constraints on the MSW dynamical term

In this section we present the results of a global analysis of solar and reactor (KamLAND+CHOOZ) data with $`(\delta m^2,\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12},a_{\mathrm{MSW}})`$ unconstrained. The latest SNO data Hott  are incorporated according to the recommendations in Howt . The reader is referred to MSW1  for other details of the analysis.

Figure 3 shows the results of the global $`\chi ^2`$ fit, in terms of the function $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2(a_{\mathrm{MSW}})`$ after $`(\delta m^2,\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12})`$ marginalization. Such marginalization is appropriate to test the size of $`_{\mathrm{dyn}}`$ independently of $`_{\mathrm{kin}}`$. It can be seen that the best fit is intriguingly close to the standard case $`(a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=1)`$, although there are other acceptable local minima over about three decades in $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$. As discussed in MSW1  for the case of variable $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$, the $`\delta m^2`$ range allowed by solar neutrino data sweeps through the tower of LMA-$`n`$ solutions allowed by KamLAND, leading to a series of “bumps” in the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2`$ function (solid line). Such features are unavoidable, as far as KamLAND allows multiple solutions in the mass-mixing parameter space. However, the situation should improve with higher KamLAND statistics. Assuming that KamLAND will confirm the current best-fit solution in the $`(\delta m^2,\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12},a_{\mathrm{MSW}})`$ space, and simulating the corresponding KamLAND data, we obtain the prospective dotted and dahed curves in Fig. 1, which refer, respectively, to a fivefold and tenfold increase of the present statistics (54 events KamL ). It appears that, with the help of a few hundreds KamLAND events, the global fit of solar and reactor data can pinpoint the predicted size of MSW effects within a factor of $`2`$, allowing future “precision tests” of this effects (e.g., to probe additional nonstandard interactions).

Although the current bounds on $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$ appear to be rather weak, the rejection of the null hypothesis $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$ is quite strong, and corresponds to a significance level of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^232`$, i.e., $`5.6\sigma `$. Summarizing the results of this and the previous section, we can state that current solar and reactor data reject the hypothesis of no MSW effect at $`>5\sigma `$ level, with a $`>3\sigma `$ contribution from the recent SNO data Hott . Therefore, in our opinion, the phenomenological indications in favor of MSW effects can now be promoted to the level of evidence.

## IV Constraints on kinematical mass-mixing term

In this section, assuming standard MSW dynamics, we update our previous bounds Our1  on the mass-mixing parameters $`(\delta m^2,\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12})`$ which govern the kinematical term $`_{\mathrm{kin}}`$. The reader is referred to Our1 ; Gett  for technical details. Here we just add that the statistical correlations of recent SNO data Hott  are incorporated through a straightforward generalization of the pull approach Gett , as explicitly described in Bala . We have checked that our analysis “SNO data only” reproduces the results of Hott  with very good accuracy. Finally, we have updated the total rate and winter-summer asymmetry from Gallium experiments Lown . In total, we have 84 solar neutrino observables, plus 13 KamLAND bins.

Figure 4 shows the results of our fit to all solar neutrino data.333We used to add CHOOZ data CHOO  in order to strengthen the upper bound on $`\delta m^2`$ Our1 ; Gett . However, current solar neutrino data make this addition no longer necessary in the context of $`2\nu `$ mixing with standard MSW effects. The best fit $`(\chi _{\mathrm{min}}^2=72.9)`$ is reached at $`\delta m^2=5.7\times 10^5`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12}=0.29`$. The upper and lower bounds on the mass-mixing parameters are in good agreement with the results in Hott , and confirm that the solar neutrino parameter space is steadily narrowing.

Figure 5 incorporates the analysis of KamLAND data KamL  as in Our1 . The best fit $`(\chi _{\mathrm{min}}^2=79.7)`$ is reached at $`\delta m^2=7.2\times 10^5`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12}=0.29`$ (LMA-I solution), while the second best fit (LMA-II solution) is only marginally allowed at the $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2=9.4`$ level ($`99\%`$ C.L. for $`N_{\mathrm{DF}}=2`$). Also in this case, we find good agreement with the results in Hott , modulo the obvious transformation from our linear abscissa $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{12}`$ to their logarithmic abscissa $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{12}`$.

In conclusion, the kinematical $`2\nu `$ mass-mixing parameters appear to be strongly constrained in a basically unique region (LMA-I), with only a marginal possibility left for the LMA-II region. The decrease of the previous LMA-II likelihood Our1  is an important contribution of the latest SNO data Hott .

## V Comments on three-family mixing

So far, we have assumed flavor oscillations in the active $`2\nu `$ channel $`\nu _e\nu _a`$ ($`\nu _a`$ being a linear combination of $`\nu _\mu `$ and $`\nu _\tau `$) driven by the ($`\delta m^2,\theta _{12}`$) parameters. The $`(\nu _\mu ,\nu _\tau )`$ combination orthogonal to $`\nu _a`$ is probed by atmospheric $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ oscillations, with different parameters $`(\mathrm{\Delta }m^2,\theta _{23})`$ Revi . As far as the third mixing angle $`\theta _{13}`$ is zero (and $`\delta m^2/\mathrm{\Delta }m^21`$), the two oscillation channels are practically decoupled, and all our previous considerations hold without changes. However, for small but nonzero $`\theta _{13}`$, the $`3\nu `$ survival probability deviates from the $`2\nu `$ case for both solar and KamLAND $`\nu _e`$ oscillations:

$$P_{ee}^{3\nu }(12\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{13})P_{ee}^{2\nu }.$$
(12)
In particular, for $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$, the minimum value of $`P_{ee}`$ in the right panel of Fig. 2 can slightly decrease from 1/2 to $`1/2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{13}`$. Until very recently, the upper bound on $`\theta _{13}`$ (dominated by CHOOZ and atmospheric data) could be quoted as $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{13}<0.05(3\sigma )`$ Our1 ; Conc , leading to $`P_{ee}^{3\nu }(a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0)>0.45`$. A new SK atmospheric data analysis EPSC , however, appears to imply the weaker bound $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{13}<0.067(3\sigma )`$ Addi , leading to $`P_{ee}^{3\nu }(a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0)>0.43`$. In both cases, there is no overlap with the experimental upper bound in Eq. (11). Therefore, the null hypothesis $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}=0`$ can be rejected at the $`3\sigma `$ level also in the $`3\nu `$ mixing case, using only SNO(+SK) data.

In the more general case of variable $`a_{\mathrm{MSW}}`$, we have not performed the $`3\nu `$ generalization of the analysis in Sec. III. Our educated guess is that an allowance for small values of $`\theta _{13}`$ should only slightly weaken—but should not spoil—the main results discussed therein.

## VI Conclusions

In recent years, solar and reactor neutrino data have been shown to be consistent with (and to favor) Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein effects in the flavor evolution of solar neutrinos. However, in our opinion, the null hypothesis of “no MSW effect” could not be safely rejected MSW1 . The current situation appears, however, more favorable. In this work we have pointed out that recent SNO data Hott  strongly favor the occurrence of MSW effects in the solar matter and, together with world solar and reactor data, provide a many-sigma rejection of the null hypothesis. We have also performed an analysis where the MSW interaction energy is freely rescaled, and found waek constraints on the scaling parameter. These constraints can be potentially improved by higher-statistics KamLAND data, which will then allow more precise tests of the MSW dynamics. In the standard MSW case, we have also performed an updated analysis of two-family active oscillations of solar and reactor neutrinos.

We conclude by observing that, although MSW effects are an unavoidable consequence of the standard theory of electroweak interactions, their basic confirmation in the current neutrino phenomenology represents an important and reassuring experimental accomplishment, which strengthen our confidence in the emerging picture of neutrino masses and mixings.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work is supported in part by the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and by the Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR) through the “Astroparticle Physics” project. We thank D. Montanino for useful discussions and suggestions.


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# HU-EP-03/61DESY 03-137SFB/CPP-03-38September 2003 Simulating the Schrödinger functional with two pseudo-fermions: algorithmic study and the running mass Talk presented by F. Knechtli.

## 1 HMC with two pseudo-fermion fields

We study  a variant of the Hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm that uses two pseudo-fermion fields per degenerate flavor doublet, as proposed by M. Hasenbusch  and recently tested in . The Wilson-Dirac operator with Schrödinger functional (SF) boundary conditions $`D_\mathrm{w}+m_0`$ is considered together with O($`a`$) improvement $`\delta D`$ respectively $`T`$ (clover term) and even-odd preconditioning

$`a(D_\mathrm{w}+\delta D+m_0)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\kappa }}M,`$ (1)
$`M=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1+T_{ee}& M_{eo}\\ M_{oe}& 1+T_{oo}\end{array}\right).`$ (4)
For one mass-degenerate flavor doublet of quarks the partition function reads

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _U}\mathrm{exp}(S_\mathrm{g}(U))det(1+T_{ee})^2det\widehat{Q}^2,`$ (5)
$`\widehat{Q}`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{c}_0\gamma _5\{1+T_{oo}M_{oe}(1+T_{ee})^1M_{eo}\},`$ (6)
with $`\stackrel{~}{c}_0=(1+64\kappa ^2)^1`$ and $`S_\mathrm{g}(U)`$ is the Wilson plaquette action. To simulate eq. (5) we use the Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm. The determinant $`det\widehat{Q}^2`$ is represented in terms of pseudo-fermion fields $`\varphi `$. If $`\widehat{Q}`$ is factorized in $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}`$ factors then one pseudo-fermion field for each factor is introduced. The aim of the factorization is to make the fermionic contribution to the forces associated with each factor as small as possible. We take $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=2`$ and the factorization

$`\widehat{Q}=(\stackrel{~}{Q})(\stackrel{~}{Q}^1\widehat{Q}),\stackrel{~}{Q}=\widehat{Q}i\rho ,`$ (7)
which leads to the pseudo-fermion actions $`i=1,2`$

$`S_{\mathrm{F}_i}=\varphi _i^{}\left[\sigma _i^2+(\widehat{Q}^2+\rho _i^2)^1\right]\varphi _i,`$ (8)
$`\sigma _1=0,\rho _1=\rho ,\sigma _2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\rho }},\rho _2=0.`$ (9)
The real parameter $`\rho `$ is chosen to minimize the sum of the condition numbers of the two operators appearing in eq. (8),

$`\rho `$ $`=`$ $`\left[\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}(\widehat{Q}^2)\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}(\widehat{Q}^2)\right]^{1/4},`$ (10)
in terms of the smallest and largest eigenvalue of $`\widehat{Q}^2`$. The operators in eq. (8) have then both condition number equal to the square root of the condition number of $`\widehat{Q}^2`$.

This algorithmic study is part of the ALPHA large scale simulations for the computation of the running of the renormalized quark mass . For the temporal and spatial lattice size, the background gauge field and the parameter controlling the spatial boundary conditions of the fermion fields we take respectively

$`T=L,C=C^{}=0,\theta =0.5.`$ (11)
The theory is simulated along the critical line where the PCAC mass vanishes. These simulations are possible in the SF due to the infrared cut-off proportional to $`1/T^2`$ in the spectrum of the Dirac operator squared. In our simulations the renormalized coupling $`u=\overline{g}^2(L)`$  takes values in the range $`u=1.0\mathrm{}5.7`$. In the SF $`u`$ is presumably a monotonically growing function of $`L`$ and our simulations correspond approximately to the range $`L=10^2\mathrm{}1\mathrm{fm}`$.

## 2 PERFORMANCE

In the integration of the molecular dynamics equations of motion we adjust the step-size $`\delta \tau `$ to yield an acceptance of 80% for trajectories of length one. Fig. 1 shows the inverse step-size, i.e. the number of steps, as a function of the average condition number of $`\widehat{Q}^2`$

$`k={\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _{\mathrm{max}}(\widehat{Q}^2)}{\lambda _{\mathrm{min}}(\widehat{Q}^2)}}.`$ (12)
Data are shown for different lattice sizes $`L/a`$ and renormalized couplings $`u=1.0,1.1`$ (triangles), $`u=2.5`$ (squares), $`u=3.3`$ (pentagons), $`u=5.7`$ (circles) together with simulations at $`\beta =5.2,\kappa =0.1355`$ (crosses). The filled symbols and crosses are obtained with $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=2`$ and the open symbols with $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=1`$ (standard HMC). With $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=2`$ we can choose step-sizes which are a factor two larger than with $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=1`$.

In Fig. 2 we plot the integrated autocorrelation time $`\tau _{\mathrm{int}}(Z_\mathrm{P})`$  of the pseudoscalar density $`Z_\mathrm{P}`$ as a function of $`u`$. $`Z_\mathrm{P}`$ is the quantity we need in order to compute the running of the renormalized mass. The units are CPU seconds per lattice point for the simulation of one lattice on one APEmille crate, which consists of 128 nodes and has a peak performance of 68 GFlops. Data are for lattices $`L/a=12`$ (triangles), $`L/a=16`$ (squares) and $`L/a=24`$ (circles), open symbols for $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=1`$ and filled symbols for $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=2`$. A systematic difference between $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=1`$ and $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=2`$ is seen for the $`L/a=16`$ lattices, the smallest couplings show a reduction in CPU cost by about a factor two for $`n_{\mathrm{pf}}=2`$. This CPU gain is due to the larger possible step-size. A comparison at $`L/a=24`$ would demand too much CPU time, precisely because of this it was essential to our project to speed up the standard HMC.

## 3 THE RUNNING MASS

The running of the renormalized quark mass $`\overline{m}(\mu )`$ with the renormalization scale $`\mu =1/L`$ is extracted from the step scaling function $`\sigma (u)`$ of the coupling and the step scaling function $`\sigma _\mathrm{P}(u)`$ of the pseudoscalar density,

$`\sigma (u)`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{g}^2(2L),u=\overline{g}^2(L),`$ (13)
$`\sigma _\mathrm{P}(u)`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{a/L0}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{Z_\mathrm{P}(g_0,2L/a)}{Z_\mathrm{P}(g_0,L/a)}}|_{u=\overline{g}^2(L)}`$ (14)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{m}(1/L)}{\overline{m}(1/2L)}}.`$ (15)
We solve the joint recursion: $`k=0,1,2,\mathrm{}`$

$`\{\begin{array}{c}u_0=\overline{g}^2(L_{\mathrm{max}})=4.6800\hfill \\ \sigma (u_{k+1})=u_k\hfill \end{array},`$ (18)
$`u_k=\overline{g}^2(L_k),L_k=2^kL_{\mathrm{max}},`$ (19)
$`w_0=1,w_k=\left[{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}}\sigma _\mathrm{P}(u_i)\right]^1,`$ (20)
$`w_k={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{m}(1/L_{\mathrm{max}})}{\overline{m}(1/L_k)}},`$ (21)
which gives the running of $`\overline{m}(\mu )`$ starting at the scale $`1/L_{\mathrm{max}}`$ defined by $`\overline{g}^2(L_{\mathrm{max}})=4.6800`$.

For the step scaling function $`\sigma _\mathrm{P}(u)`$ we take the average $`\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_\mathrm{P}^{(8,12)}(u)`$ of its values $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\mathrm{P}(u,a/L)`$, which we computed on $`L/a=8,12`$ (and $`2L/a`$) lattices for 6 couplings in the range $`u=0.98\mathrm{}3.3`$. Then we interpolate by the Ansatz

$`\overline{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_\mathrm{P}^{(8,12)}(u)`$ $`=`$ $`1\mathrm{ln}(2)d_0u+p_2u^2+p_3u^3`$ (22)
with $`d_0`$ perturbative, fitted parameters $`p_2`$ and $`p_3`$ and use this fit formula in the recursion eq. (20). At high energies contact with the perturbative regime is made from which the RGI parameters $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`M`$ can be extracted

$`\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{\Lambda }L_{\mathrm{max}})=1.34(7)`$ (23)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{M}{\overline{m}(1/L_{\mathrm{max}})}}=1.30(3).`$ (24)
Fig. 3 is then obtained from the coefficients eq. (19) and eq. (21). The errors of the points come from the statistical errors in the coefficients $`w_k`$, the scale ambiguities in the quantities $`\mathrm{\Lambda }L_{\mathrm{max}}`$ and $`M/\overline{m}(1/L_{\mathrm{max}})`$ are not shown.

The outlook of this work is the determination of $`L_{\mathrm{max}}`$ using available data from JLQCD  and UKQCD . A hadronic scheme has to be set up to determine combinations of $`M_u`$, $`M_d`$ and $`M_s`$.

Acknowledgement. We thank NIC/DESY Zeuthen for allocating computer time on the APEmille machine and the APE group for their support. This work was supported by the European Community’s Human Potential Programme under contract HPRN-CT-2000-00145 and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in the SFB/TR 09.


text:
# Effective string picture for confinement at finite temperature: theoretical predictions and high precision numerical results

## 1 EFFECTIVE STRING PICTURE

The effective string picture is expected to provide a good physical description of confining gauge theories in the low energy regime. Assuming that two confined color charges are joined by a thin flux tube that fluctuates like a vibrating string, and describing the string world sheet dynamics by an effective action $`S_{\text{eff}}`$, one can derive quantitative predictions about the potential between a confined quark–antiquark pair. In particular, for *massless* string fluctuations, the simplest choice is the Nambu–Goto string action: $`S_{\text{eff}}=\sigma 𝒜`$, which is proportional to the area $`𝒜`$ of the world–sheet surface and $`\sigma `$ is the *string tension*, appearing as a parameter of the effective theory.

We consider a 3D system with the extension $`L_s^2\times L`$ with $`L_s>>L`$. With periodic boundary conditions employed (at least) in the short direction, the temperature $`T`$ is proportional to $`1/L`$.

Taking into account leading quantum fluctuations, the result for the expectation value of the Polyakov loop correlator is given by

$$P^{}(R)P(0)=\frac{e^{\sigma RL+k}}{\eta \left(i\frac{L}{2R}\right)},$$
(1)
where $`\eta `$ is Dedekind’s function. The term associated with the minimal world sheet surface induces the exponential area-law fall off, and the consequent linear rise in the interquark potential $`V(R)`$. The first non-trivial contribution in $`S_{\text{eff}}`$ results in the determinant of the Laplace operator, and the corresponding contribution to the interquark potential $`V(R)`$ — in a regime of distances shorter than $`\frac{L}{2}`$ — is the Lüscher term :

$$V(R)=\frac{1}{L}\mathrm{ln}P^{}(R)P(0)\sigma R\frac{\pi }{24R}.$$
(2)
Further terms in the expansion of the Nambu–Goto action give rise to a contribution involving a combination of Eisenstein functions :

$$\frac{\pi ^2}{1152\sigma R^3}\left[2E_4\left(i\frac{L}{2R}\right)E_2^2\left(i\frac{L}{2R}\right)\right].$$
(3)
However, it is worth mentioning that, while Eq. (1) and Eq. (2) are generally accepted, on the other hand the further contribution to $`V(R)`$ expressed by Eq. (3) is still under debate.

A possible “boundary term” in the effective action, as proposed in ref. , can be treated by means of a perturbative expansion in $`b`$ (a parameter proportional to the coefficient of such a term), which induces a leading order correction like :

$$R\frac{R}{\sqrt{1+\frac{2b}{R}}},$$
(4)
with a short distance contribution to $`V(R)`$: $`\frac{b\pi }{24R^2}`$.

## 2 $`𝐙_2`$ LATTICE GAUGE THEORY

We run numerical simulations of $`𝐙_2`$ lattice gauge theory in three space-time dimensions . We chose this model because the effective string picture is believed to be independent of the underlying gauge group, and $`𝐙_2`$ gauge group is interesting from the point of view of the *center relevance* in confinement. Moreover, the duality with the Ising spin model and a novel algorithm allow us to reach high precision results.

The pure 3D lattice gauge model is described in terms of $`\sigma _{x,\mu }𝐙_2`$ variables defined on the lattice bonds. The dynamics is governed by the standard Wilson action, which enjoys $`𝐙_2`$ gauge invariance. The partition function is expressed in terms of plaquette variables $`\sigma _p`$ and reads:

$$Z(\beta )=\underset{\text{c.}}{}e^{\beta S}=\underset{\text{c.}}{}\mathrm{exp}\left[+\beta \underset{p}{}\sigma _p\right].$$
(5)
There are different phases: a confined, strong coupling phase, with massive string fluctuations for $`\beta <0.47542(1)`$ , a confined, *rough* phase, with massless string fluctuations (this is the regime we studied in our simulations) and a deconfined phase for $`\beta >0.7614134(2)`$ .

This model is *dual* with respect to the $`𝐙_2`$ Ising spin model in 3D. The ratio of Polyakov-loop correlators $`G(R)`$ in the gauge model can be expressed as a ratio of partition functions $`Z_{L\times R}`$ in the spin model:

$$\frac{G(R)}{G(R+1)}=\frac{Z_{L\times R}}{Z_{L\times (R+1)}}.$$
(6)
The index $`L\times R`$ means that links perpendicular to an $`L\times R`$ plane have an antiferromagnetic coupling constant. The ratio of partition functions can be expressed as an expectation value in one of the two ensembles. However the corresponding observable shows extremely large fluctuations. This problem can be overcome by a factorization

$$\frac{Z_{L\times R}}{Z_{L\times (R+1)}}=\underset{i=0}{\overset{L1}{}}\frac{Z_{[L\times R]+i}}{Z_{[L\times R]+i+1}},$$
(7)
where $`Z_{[L\times R]+i+1}`$ has just one more antiferromagnetic link than $`Z_{[L\times R]+i}`$. The expectation values corresponding to these ratios can be easily obtained. A similar method (*snake algorithm*) has been employed in refs.  to compute the ’t Hooft loop in the $`SU(2)`$ gauge model.

Important features of our implementation are multi-level updating and a hierarchical organization of sublattices. The CPU time is roughly proportional to the inverse temperature $`L`$, and *independent of the distance $`R`$ between the quark sources*, thus the algorithm is particularly useful for large interquark distances.

## 3 NUMERICAL RESULTS

Let $`F(R,L)`$ be the free energy of a heavy quark-antiquark pair at finite temperature: $`G(R)=e^{F(R,L)}`$. We studied “quantum terms” in free energy differences, by measuring the quantity defined as:

$$Q(R,L)=F(R+1,L)F(R,L)\sigma L.$$
(8)
Fig. 1 shows that for large interquark distances (namely: $`L<2R`$) our numerical results are in good agreement with the NLO prediction eq. (3) from Nambu–Goto string. It is important to note that the agreement between numerical results and the NLO prediction is not the result of a fitting procedure. A “purely classical” area law is definitely ruled out, and the LO term alone is not sufficient to describe the data. We also found that the coefficient for a possible “boundary term” in the effective action for this model is very small, suggesting that it is exactly zero, i.e. $`b=0`$.

Fig. 2 — see  for details — shows the deviation of a quantity related to the free energy second derivative from the free string behaviour in the $`L>2R`$ regime. The normalization is chosen so as to allow a meaningful comparison among different LGT’s. Our $`𝐙_2`$ results and $`SU(2)`$ data are in good agreement: this may be a possible signature of the center relevance to confinement.

## 4 CONCLUSIONS

We tested the effective string predictions with precise numerical data for the finite temperature $`𝐙_2`$ lattice gauge theory, using an algorithm that exploits the duality properties of the model. We explored a wide range of distances and detected next-to-leading order effects. Our numerical results seem to rule out a possible “boundary term” in the effective string action describing the present model. For large distances $`R`$ and high temperatures (i.e. small $`L`$) we see an excellent agreement of the numerical data with the NLO prediction Eq. (3). In the regime of short distance and low temperature, we compared our results with different gauge theories, which have been studied by other authors. We focused onto the deviation of a well-suited combination of free energy differences with respect to the free string prediction. In particular, the agreement between our $`𝐙_2`$ results and $`SU(2)`$ data might be interpreted as a possible signature of the fact that the center degrees of freedom play an important role in the confinement mechanism.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

One of the most satisfying results of quantum information theory is Schumacher’s source coding theorem , which says that a message of length $`K`$ from a source of pure quantum states with density matrix $`\rho `$ can be compresssed to $`KS(\rho )`$ qubits (asymptotically for large $`K`$), where $`S(\rho )`$ is the von Neumann entropy

$$S(\rho )=Tr(\rho \mathrm{log}\rho ).$$

Conceptually we can associate the possibility of compression with the presence of a degree of redundancy in the source. Suppose $`\rho _1`$, $`\rho _2`$ are the density matrices of two sources and

$$S(\rho _1)S(\rho _2).$$
(1)
Then the first source can be compressed further than the second, so it has greater redundancy. If the two sources both have $`k`$ states, $`|\psi _i`$ and $`|\varphi _i`$, say, with the same probabilities $`p_i`$, then this increased redundancy does not lie in the classical probabilities $`p_i`$ of emitting the states but in the properties of the states themselves: it is true “quantum redundancy”. Intuitively, one expects that, if the states $`|\psi _i`$ are more similar than the states $`|\varphi _i`$, then the quantum redundancy will be greater. So if the pairwise overlaps of the $`|\psi _i`$ are larger than those of the $`|\varphi _i`$, i.e.

$$|\psi _i|\psi _j||\varphi _i|\varphi _j|\text{ for all }i,j,$$
(2)
then $`\rho _1`$ should have more quantum redundancy than $`\rho _2`$, and consequently (1) should hold. Jozsa and Schlienz  showed this is indeed true for a source with two states. However, they produced a counter-example consisting of a set of three states, $`|\varphi _i`$, in three dimensions and a slight perturbation of them, $`|\psi _i`$, that has greater overlaps but larger entropy. This phenomenon raises the question of whether compression and quantum redundancy can be understood in geometrical terms, i.e. in terms of the geometry of the source’s states in Hilbert space. This question has also been recently raised in . In this paper we will establish a connection between quantum redundancy and the volumes in Hilbert space defined by the source states.

One reason the above example appears paradoxical is that, in real three-dimensional geometry, the pairwise inner products of three unit vectors determine the figure the vectors make, up to an orthogonal transformation, and they also determine the entropy in this real-valued setting. An analogous result holds in complex geometry if the complex inner product is specified, but not if only its absolute value, the overlap, is given. In fact, taking into account the freedom in specifying phase for a quantum mechanical state, it turns out that there are four real-valued degrees of freedom in specifying three states in three dimensions up to a unitary transformation (as will be shown shortly). Specifying the three pairwise overlaps $`|\psi _1|\psi _2|`$, $`|\psi _1|\psi _3|`$ and $`|\psi _2|\psi _3|`$ therefore leaves a further degree of freedom that can be used to adjust the entropy.

What is this extra degree of freedom for three states in three (complex) dimensions? Here it is useful to introduce the Gram matrix $`G`$, with entries $`G_{ij}=\sqrt{p_ip_j}\psi _i|\psi _j`$ and the matrix $`A`$ with entries $`a_{ij}=\psi _i|\psi _j`$. $`G`$ has the same eigenvalues as the density matrix $`\rho =p_i|\psi _i\psi _i|`$ (see ) so the von Neumann entropy

$$S(\rho )=x_i\mathrm{log}x_i$$
(3)
can be computed from the eigenvalues $`x_i`$ of the Gram matrix

$$G=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}p_1a_{11}& \sqrt{p_1p_2}a_{12}& \sqrt{p_1p_3}a_{13}\\ \sqrt{p_2p_1}a_{21}& p_2a_{22}& \sqrt{p_2p_3}a_{23}\\ \sqrt{p_3p_1}a_{31}& \sqrt{p_3p_2}a_{32}& p_3a_{33}& \end{array}\right).$$

$`G`$ has the characteristic equation

$$x^3s_1x^2+s_2xs_3=0,$$
(4)
where the $`s_i`$ are the symmetric polynomial functions of the eigenvalues, with $`s_1=x_i=1`$, $`s_2=_{i<j}x_ix_j`$ and $`s_3=x_1x_2x_3`$. Expanding $`det(GIx)`$ one finds that

$$s_2=\underset{i<j}{}p_ip_j(1|a_{ij}|^2)\text{and}s_3=p_1p_2p_3detA.$$
(5)
Since $`A`$ can be written as $`A=BB^{}`$, where $`B`$ is the matrix

$$\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\psi _{11}& \psi _{12}& \psi _{13}\\ \psi _{21}& \psi _{22}& \psi _{23}\\ \psi _{31}& \psi _{32}& \psi _{33}\end{array}\right)$$

of coordinates $`\psi _{ij}`$ of the states $`|\psi _i`$ in any orthonormal basis, it follows that $`detA=|detB|^2`$, and we can regard $`detA`$ as the squared modulus of the complex volume spanned by the $`|\psi _i`$. Note also that $`(1|a_{ij}|^2)=detA_{i,j}`$, where $`A_{i,j}`$ is the submatrix of $`A`$ obtained by striking out rows and columns having labels not in the set $`\{i,j\}`$. Thus we can likewise regard $`1|a_{ij}|^2`$ as the squared modulus of the complex volume spanned by $`|\psi _i`$ and $`|\psi _j`$. We can write the terms of eq (5) that depend on the states as

$$\alpha _{12}=detA_{1,2},\alpha _{13}=detA_{1,3},\alpha _{23}=detA_{2,3}\text{ and }\alpha _{123}=detA$$
(6)
and $`s_2`$ and $`s_3`$ then appear as positive linear combinations of these volume variables. Thus $`S(\rho )`$ is determined by the probabilities $`p_i`$ and the four squared volumes in (6). If the states are perturbed in such a way that three of these four parameters are fixed but one of them varies, then the entropy changes as intuition would dictate: increasing $`A_{12}`$ (i.e. decreasing the overlap between states 1 and 2) increases the entropy (decreases the redundancy), and increasing the volume (i.e. spreading the states apart) also increases the entropy. In this sense we can regard the four parameters $`\alpha _{12},\alpha _{13},\alpha _{23},\alpha _{123}`$, as measures of quantum redundancy for the set of states. This behaviour of the entropy follows from a theorem proved later, which tells us that $`S/s_i>0`$ for $`i2`$. Consequently when none of the $`p_i`$ is zero (which we shall assume throughout), $`S/\alpha _{ij}=p_ip_jS/s_2>0`$ and $`S/\alpha _{123}=p_1p_2p_3S/s_3>0`$.

## 2 k states in n dimensions

We now investigate the situation for any number $`k`$ of states which span a space of $`n`$ dimensions (so $`kn`$). We can try to imitate in $`n`$ dimensions the procedure that gave the variables in (6). Let the states be $`|\psi _i`$ with probabilities $`p_i`$ for $`i=1,\mathrm{},k`$. As above we introduce the Gram matrix with entries $`G_{ij}=\sqrt{p_ip_j}\psi _i|\psi _j`$ and the $`A`$-matrix with entries $`a_{ij}=\psi _i|\psi _j`$, both being $`k\times k`$ matrices. The eigenvalues of the Gram matrix are those of the $`n\times n`$ density matrix $`\rho `$ padded out with $`kn`$ zeros . Thus the characteristic equation $`det(GxI)=0`$ for the Gram matrix for $`k`$ states in $`n`$ dimensions has the form

$$(1)^{kn}x^{kn}\underset{i=0}{\overset{n}{}}(1)^is_{ni}x^i=0,$$
(7)
where $`s_i`$ is the $`i`$-th elementary symmetric polynomial of the eigenvalues $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_n`$ of the density matrix, defined by

$$s_0=1,s_i=\underset{u_1<\mathrm{}<u_i}{}x_{u_1}\mathrm{}x_{u_i}\text{for }i=1,\mathrm{},n.$$
(8)
The $`i`$th symmetric polynomial may be expressed as

$$s_i=\underset{u_1<\mathrm{}<u_i}{}p_{u_1}\mathrm{}p_{u_i}\alpha _{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i},$$
(9)
where $`\alpha _{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}=detA_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$, and $`A_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ is the sub-matrix of the matrix $`A`$ obtained by striking out all rows and columns with labels not in the set $`\{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i\}`$; i.e. $`A_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ is the $`i\times i`$ $`A`$-matrix constructed from the subset $`\{|\psi _{u_1},\mathrm{},|\psi _{u_i}\}`$ of the states. This follows because $`s_i`$ is the coefficient of $`(x)^{ki}`$ in $`det(GxI)`$, which is obtained by picking $`ki`$ elements on the diagonal, corresponding to rows $`v_1,\mathrm{},v_{ki}`$ say, and for each such choice of $`v`$’s, constructing the determinant of the sub-matrix $`G_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ of $`G`$ where $`u_1,\mathrm{},u_i`$ is the complementary set to the $`v`$’s. Since the Gram matrix $`G`$ is related to the corresponding $`A`$-matrix by $`G=QAQ`$, where $`Q=\mathrm{diag}(\sqrt{p_1},\mathrm{},\sqrt{p_k})`$, we get $`detG_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}=p_{u_1}\mathrm{}p_{u_i}detA_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$. Eq (9) is then obtained by summing over all sets of $`u`$’s.

Note that, though the individual entries in $`A_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ are dependent on a choice of phase for the states $`|\psi _i`$, $`\alpha _{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ is invariant under phase choices. Furthermore, $`\alpha _{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ is real, since $`A_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ is Hermitian. Thus $`\alpha _{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ is a real-valued unitary invariant, and the complete set of all $`\alpha _{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ for all sets $`u_1,\mathrm{},u_i`$ can be regarded as the analogues of the invariants (6) in the case $`k=n=3`$. Also, as in the case of $`k=n=3`$, $`A_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}=B_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}B_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}^{}`$, where $`B_{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ is the $`i\times i`$ matrix whose rows are the components of the $`i`$ states $`|\psi _{u_1},\mathrm{},|\psi _{u_i}`$ (expanded in any choice of orthonormal basis in the span of these $`i`$ states). Thus $`\alpha _{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$ may be identified as the squared modulus of the complex volume determined by $`|\psi _{u_1},\mathrm{},|\psi _{u_i}`$.

Let $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_n`$ be any probability distribution and let $`s_i=s_i(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n)`$ for $`i=1,\mathrm{},n`$ be the corresponding symmetric polynomials. For any function $`f(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n)`$ (e.g. the entropy $`S`$) we consider a change of variables from the $`x_i`$’s to the $`s_j`$’s. Note that the probability condition $`x_i=1`$ corresponds to $`s_1=1`$, and lifting this condition we get $`n`$ variables in each case. Then the Jacobian is readily seen to be $`_{i<j}(x_ix_j)`$, so the change of variables is valid if the $`x_i`$’s are all different. For simplicity we will work within this restriction but expect that our results will have suitable (finite) limiting behaviour for coincident values $`x_ix_j`$. Furthermore we will be interested primarily in partial derivatives $`f/s_i`$ for $`i2`$ (which have $`s_1`$ held constant), so our results will also remain valid if we impose the probability constraint $`s_1=1=\mathrm{constant}`$ at the start.

We have the following fundamental property of the entropy:

###### Theorem 1

If $`S=x_i\mathrm{log}x_i`$ is viewed as a function of the symmetric polynomials $`s_1,\mathrm{},s_n`$ then $`S/s_q>0`$ for $`q=2,\mathrm{},n`$.

Two proofs of this theorem are given in the appendix.

## 3 Geometrical interpretation of quantum redundancy

Eq (9) gives an expression for the symmetric polynomials $`s_i`$ that is canonically determined by the state set $`\{|\psi _1,\mathrm{},|\psi _k\}`$ and probabilities $`p_1,\mathrm{},p_k`$. Thus from $`S=S(s_1,\mathrm{},s_n)`$ (with $`s_1=1`$) we can view the von Neumann entropy of the source in a natural way as being a function of the probabilities and all the squared volumes $`\alpha _{i_1i_2},\mathrm{},\alpha _{i_1i_2\mathrm{}i_k}`$. By theorem 1, $`S/s_q>0`$ for $`q2`$ and by eq (9), each $`s_q`$ is a positive linear combination of the $`\alpha `$-variables, so we conclude that $`S/\alpha >0`$ for each squared volume variable $`\alpha `$.

This suggests a geometrical interpretation of the quantum redundancy in the ensemble of quantum states. If the probabilities are held fixed and the states are deformed then the change in entropy can be seen as an accumulation of monotonic effects arising from the changes induced in each of the squared volumes $`\alpha `$. Since $`S/\alpha >0`$ the set of these squared volumes can be regarded as a geometric measure of the quantum redundancy associated to a set of states alone.

Note however that, for $`k>3`$, there are more $`\alpha `$’s than degrees of freedom needed to fix $`k`$ states up to overall unitary equivalence. Indeed, let $`\nu (k,n)`$ denote the number of degrees of freedom in specifying $`k`$ states in $`n`$ dimensions up to unitary transformation. To specify $`k`$ states requires $`k(2n2)`$ real parameters (as each state is defined only up to overall phase). The unitary group $`U(n)`$ has $`n^2`$ parameters, but because of the overall phase freedom in each state, $`U`$ and $`e^{ix}U`$ have the same action for any $`x`$. Thus, unitary action on the states eliminates $`n^21`$ parameters from the $`k(2n2)`$, giving $`\nu (k,n)=k(2n2)(n^21)`$.

The following table shows $`\nu (k,n)`$ for small values of $`k`$ and $`n`$ and $`kn`$. The bracketed numbers are the total number $`\tau (k,n)`$ of terms $`\alpha _{u_1,\mathrm{},u_i}`$, ignoring those with $`i>n`$, which are zero since more than $`n`$ states must be linearly dependent and therefore have zero determinant. The numbers in brackets are therefore $`\tau (k,n)=_{i=2}^n\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k}{i}\right)`$.

$$\begin{array}{ccccc}\multicolumn{5}{c}{\mathrm{Table}}\\ k& n=2& n=3& n=4& n=5\\ 2& 1(1)& & & \\ 3& 3(3)& 4(4)& & \\ 4& 5(6)& 8(10)& 9(11)& \\ 5& 7(10)& 12(20)& 15(25)& 16(26)\end{array}$$

For $`k3`$ the two sets of numbers agree, so the $`\alpha `$’s can be used to parametrize the sets of states. For $`k>3`$ there are always too many $`\alpha `$’s. Thus viewing the entropy $`S`$ as a function of the $`\tau (k,n)`$ $`\alpha `$’s (for fixed probabilities) amounts to a non-trivial extension of $`S`$ to a larger space of variables: not every $`\tau (k,n)`$-tuple of $`\alpha `$-values is geometrically realisable by an ensemble of $`k`$ states in $`n`$ dimensions, and when an actual ensemble is deformed, the $`\alpha `$-variables are constrained to lie on a surface of dimension $`\nu (k,n)`$ in the ambient space of dimension $`\tau (k,n)`$. But the virtue of this non-physical extension of the number of parameters is that we are able to attribute compressibility of the source to geometrical constructs, viz. the $`\alpha `$’s. In any deformation of actual states, each $`\alpha `$ varies positively or negatively and the compressibility varies by a corresponding accumulation of monotonic positive and negative effects.

## 4 Minimal sets of monotonic parameters?

Since $`\tau (k,n)>\nu (k,n)`$ for $`k>3`$, it is interesting to ask whether we can find some alternative set of parameters, $`\beta _1,\mathrm{},\beta _{\nu (k,n)}`$ which is in 1-1 correspondence with the set of $`k`$ states and has some of the desirable properties possessed by the $`\alpha `$’s in the case $`k3`$. In particular, to make a connection with the phenomenon of compression, we would like the monotonicity property $`S/\beta _i>0`$ to hold for any choice of probabilities $`p_i`$. Intuitively, this means that we can regard the $`\beta `$’s as measures of quantum entropy.

Consider the case $`k=n=4`$. Here the set of states is 9 dimensional, whereas there are 11 $`\alpha `$’s. Can we perhaps keep some of the $`\alpha `$’s, taking, say, the overlap-related terms $`\alpha _{ij}`$ as $`\beta _1,\mathrm{}\beta _6`$, and adding a further 3 $`\beta `$’s? (For instance, one might consider adding the 3 distances between subspaces generated by disjoint pairs of the four states, i.e. $`d(12,34)`$, $`d(13,24)`$ and $`d(14,23)`$, where $`d(ij,kl)`$ is some measure of the distance between the subspace spanned by $`|\psi _i`$, $`|\psi _j`$ and that spanned by $`|\psi _k`$, $`|\psi _l`$). However, it turns out that any set of parameters that includes the 6 terms $`\alpha _{ij}`$ cannot have the desired monotonicity property. To see this, write $`r_{ij}=|a_{ij}|`$ and define $`u=\mathrm{arg}(a_{12}a_{23}a_{31})`$, $`v=\mathrm{arg}(a_{14}a_{21}a_{42})`$, and $`w=\mathrm{arg}(a_{13}a_{34}a_{41})`$. Then we can write all the $`\alpha `$’s in terms of the 6 $`r_{ij}`$’s and $`u`$, $`v`$ and $`w`$, giving 9 parameters in all. For instance, $`\alpha _{123}=1r_{12}^2r_{23}^2r_{31}^2+2r_{12}r_{23}r_{31}\mathrm{cos}u`$.

Now pick one of the $`\beta _i`$ for $`i>6`$, and call it $`x`$. Taking the partial derivative with respect to $`x`$, the fact that $`\beta _1,\mathrm{}\beta _6`$ are constant implies $`s_2/x=0`$ (since by eq (9) $`s_2`$ is a function only of $`\beta _1,\mathrm{},\beta _6`$). Furthermore, if we choose a set of states with $`r_{ij}>0`$ for all $`i,j`$ and $`u=v=w=\pi /2`$ we find

$`s_3/x`$ $`=`$ $`2(p_1p_2p_3)(r_{12}r_{23}r_{31})u_x2(p_1p_2p_4)(r_{14}r_{21}r_{42})v_x`$
$`2(p_1p_3p_4)(r_{13}r_{34}r_{41})w_x+2(p_2p_3p_4)(r_{23}r_{34}r_{42})(u_x+v_x+w_x).`$
Suppose the first three terms in the above expression for $`s_3/x`$ are positive. Since $`\beta _1,\mathrm{},\beta _6`$ are real and positive, this means $`u_x<0`$, $`v_x<0`$, $`w_x<0`$. So the fourth term is negative. By taking $`p_1`$ small enough, we can ensure that $`s_3/x<0`$ and also that $`s_4/x`$ is sufficiently small to ensure that the term with $`q=3`$ dominates the sum $`S/x=(S/s_q)(s_q/x)`$. So $`S/x<0`$ and monotonicity fails. Suppose on the other hand that at least one of the first three terms is negative, the term with $`u_x`$ say, so $`u_x>0`$. Then taking $`p_4`$ small enough leads to the same conclusion.

This result suggests that it may be difficult to construct a minimal set of $`\nu (k,n)`$ monotonic parameters which also has a simple geometrical interpretation, thus further underlining the benefits of considering the non-minimal parameter set in section 3.

## 5 A remark on subentropy

It is curious that our proof of the theorem that the entropy is an increasing function of the symmetric functions $`s_q`$ (Appendix) depends upon an algebraic expression closely related to a quantity called the subentropy. Given any density matrix $`\rho `$, the subentropy $`Q(\rho )`$  is the greatest lower bound on the accessible information of any ensemble of pure states $`|\varphi _1,\mathrm{},|\varphi _m`$ with probabilities $`p_1,\mathrm{},p_m`$, for which $`\rho =p_i|\varphi _i\varphi _i|`$. In terms of the eigenvalues $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_n`$ of $`\rho `$ (or indeed for any classical probability distribution) the subentropy can be written

$$Q(\rho )=\underset{k}{}\frac{x_k^n\mathrm{log}x_k}{_{ik}(x_kx_i)}$$

which is closely related to our eq (16); i.e. we would wish to put $`q=0`$ in that formula!

Looking at the derivation of eq (16) (c.f. especially eq (12)) we see that the value $`q=0`$ would correspond to a coefficient, $`c_0`$ say, of $`x^n`$ in the characteristic equation and then $`S/c_0`$ would be essentially the subentropy. Thus let us divide through eq (11) by $`s_1`$, introducing new variables

$$t_1=\frac{1}{s_1},t_2=\frac{s_2}{s_1},\mathrm{},t_n=\frac{s_n}{s_1}$$

and look at

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \stackrel{~}{p}(x)=\frac{1}{s_1}p(x)& =& t_1x^nx^{n1}+\mathrm{}+(1)^qt_qx^{nq}+\mathrm{}+(1)^nt_n\hfill \\ & =& \frac{1}{s_1}(xx_1)\mathrm{}(xx_n).\hfill \end{array}$$
(10)
Viewing this equation as defining $`x_i=x_i(t_1,\mathrm{},t_n)`$ and carrying out an implicit differentiation with respect to $`t_1`$ we get

$$\frac{x_k}{t_1}=\frac{x_k^ns_1}{_{ki}(x_kx_i)}$$

and

$$\frac{S}{t_1}=s_1\underset{k}{}\frac{(1+\mathrm{log}x_k)x_k^n}{_{ki}(x_kx_i)}.$$

Finally using the identity (valid for any $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_n`$)

$$\underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{x_k^n}{_{ki}(x_kx_i)}=x_1+\mathrm{}+x_n=s_1$$

we get

$$\frac{S}{t_1}=s_1(s_1Q).$$

If $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_n`$ is a probability distribution, so $`s_1=1`$, then we get $`S/t_1=1Q`$. Thus we have proved:

###### Theorem 2

Let $`S=x_i\mathrm{log}x_i`$ be the Shannon entropy function defined on $`\{(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n):x_i>0\text{ all }i\}`$ (i.e. we lift the probability condition $`x_i=1`$). If $`S`$ is viewed as a function of $`t_1=1/s_1`$, $`t_2=s_2/s_1`$, $`\mathrm{}`$ , $`t_n=s_n/s_1`$ then at points with $`s_1=x_i=1`$ the subentropy is given by $`Q(x_1,\mathrm{},x_n)=1S/t_1`$.

Note that the above mathematical characterisation of subentropy applies equally well within classical information theory (as it is a derivative property of the Shannon entropy function), in contrast to all previous work on subentropy  where it relates only to quantum mechanical considerations (especially the theory of information gain from quantum measurements).

Finally we also note that there are other possible ways of getting a nontrivial coefficient of $`x^n`$ in eq (11). For example instead of dividing through by $`s_1`$ we could divide through by $`s_n`$ and introduce the variables

$$r_q=\frac{s_{nq}}{s_n}=q^{\mathrm{th}}\text{ symmetric polynomial of }1/x_1,\mathrm{},1/x_n.$$

We then get the equation

$$\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \frac{1}{s_n}p(x)& =& r_nx^n+\mathrm{}+(1)^qr_{nq}x^{nq}+\mathrm{}+(1)^n\hfill \\ & =& (x/x_11)\mathrm{}(x/x_n1)=0\hfill \end{array}$$

leading to an alternative characterisation of subentropy $`Q`$ as

$$\frac{S}{r_n}=s_n(s_1Q)$$

and the condition for $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_n`$ to be a probability distribution is now $`s_1=r_{n1}/r_n=1`$, i.e. $`r_n=r_{n1}`$.

## 6 Discussion

The problem we have addressed in this paper is whether there are real-valued functions $`\alpha _q`$ of $`k`$ states in $`n`$ dimensions that together characterize those states up to a unitary transformation and are also “measures of quantum redundancy” in the sense that $`S/\alpha _q>0`$ for each $`\alpha _q`$. In other words, increasing one $`\alpha `$ while holding the others fixed increases the entropy $`S`$ and hence reduces the redundancy of the set of states. We would also like the $`\alpha _q`$ to have an interpretation in terms of the Hilbert space geometry of the states.

We use the term “quantum redundancy” here because we require that $`S/\alpha _q>0`$ holds for any choice of probabilities $`p_i`$ of the states $`|\psi _i`$, and the $`p_i`$ can be thought of as embodying the classical aspect of redundancy. Of course, one might ask whether there are joint functions of the states and their probabilities that characterize the entropy, and one example of this is the “perimeter” considered recently by Hartley and Vedral . The question then is why one such function should be preferred to another; after all, the symmetric functions $`s_q`$ trivially determine the entropy via the characteristic equation (7). The functions in  are motivated by the possibility of experimental measurement whereas our considerations are motivated by a desire to geometrically characterise a notion of quantum redundancy in quantum information compression.

Our main conclusion is that there is a natural set of measures (in our sense) for sets of two or three states, but for four or more states the corresponding parameters – the determinants of square submatrices of the matrix $`(\psi _i|\psi _j)`$ – outnumber the degrees of freedom in the sets of states, and the more obvious ways of carrying over the results from two or three states fail. Nevertheless the simple geometrical interpretation of these parameters, in terms of Hilbert space volumes defined by the states, makes it appealing to consider an extension of the entropy function to the full space of these variables, and the entropy of any physical ensemble of states then appears as a special case satisfying some extra algebraic constraint equations.
Acknowledgements
RJ is supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

## 7 Appendix: proof of theorem 1

We give here two proof of the theorem that $`S/s_q>0`$ for $`2qn`$.
First proof
We will prove a slightly stronger result, giving a positive lower bound for $`S/s_q`$ (see eq (19)).

Recall that

$$S=\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}x_i\mathrm{log}x_i,$$

where the $`x_i`$ are roots of the characteristic equation (7)

$$p(x)=\underset{i=0}{\overset{n}{}}(1)^{ni}s_{ni}x^i=0.$$
(11)
Viewing this equation as implicitly defining $`x_i=x_i(s_1,\mathrm{},s_n)`$ and differentiating it with respect to $`s_q`$, we get

$$\frac{x_k}{s_q}\left[\underset{i=o}{\overset{n}{}}(1)^{ni}s_{ni}ix_k^{i1}\right]+(1)^qx_k^{nq}=0.$$
(12)
Since the expression in square brackets is the derivative of $`(xx_i)`$ with $`x`$ set to $`x_k`$, we have

$$\frac{x_k}{s_q}=\frac{(1)^{q+1}x_k^{nq}}{_{ik}(x_kx_i)}.$$

¿From the chain rule, for any function $`f`$ of the $`s_q`$,

$$\frac{f}{s_q}=\underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{f}{x_k}\frac{x_k}{s_q}.$$
(13)
Taking $`f=s_1`$ we get

$$\underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{x_k^{nq}}{_{ik}(x_kx_i)}=0\text{ if }2qn.$$
(14)
Then, taking $`f=S=x_k\mathrm{log}x_k`$ gives

$$\frac{S}{s_q}=(1)^q\underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{x_k^{nq}(1+\mathrm{log}x_k)}{_{ik}(x_kx_i)},$$
(15)
which in view of eq (14) implies

$$\frac{S}{s_q}=(1)^q\underset{k}{}\frac{x_k^{nq}\mathrm{log}x_k}{_{ik}(x_kx_i)},\text{ for }2qn.$$
(16)
Define

$$W_q(a)=(1)^q\underset{k}{}\frac{(x_k+a)^{nq}\mathrm{log}(x_k+a)}{_{ik}(x_kx_i)}$$

so $`W_q(0)=S/s_q`$. Rewriting $`W_q(a)`$ as

$$W_q(a)=(1)^qa^{nq}\underset{k}{}\frac{(1+x_k/a)^{nq}\mathrm{log}(1+x_k/a)}{_{ik}(x_kx_i)},$$

eq (14) allows us to approximate $`W_q(a)`$ for large $`a`$ by the term in $`x_k^{n1}`$ in the expansion of $`(1+x_k/a)^{nq}\mathrm{log}(1+x_k/a)`$, giving

$`W_q(a)`$ $``$ $`(1)^qa^{1q}\times \left[\text{ coefficient of }x^{n1}\text{ in }(1+x)^{nq}\mathrm{log}(1+x)\right]`$
$`=`$ $`a^{1q}{\displaystyle _0^1}y^{q2}(1y)^{nq}𝑑y`$
$`0`$ $`\text{as }a\mathrm{}\text{ for }2qn.`$
Using eq (14) again we find

$$\frac{W_q(a)}{a}=(nq)W_{q+1}(a),$$
(17)
for $`2q<n`$, and applying eq (14) to the set $`a,x_1,\mathrm{},x_n`$

$$\frac{W_n(a)}{a}=1/(a+x_k).$$
(18)
Using $`_{k=1}^n(a+x_k)(a+1/n)^n`$ in the preceding equation,

$$W_n(x)_x^{\mathrm{}}\frac{da}{(a+1/n)^n}=\frac{1}{(x+1/n)^{n1}(n1)}$$

so $`S/s_n=W_n(0)n^{n1}/(n1)`$.

Eq (17) for $`q=n1`$ then implies

$`W_{n1}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _x^{\mathrm{}}}W_n(a)𝑑a{\displaystyle _x^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{da}{(n1)(a+1/n)^{n1}}}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(x+1/n)^{n2}(n1)(n2)}}.`$
so $`S/s_{n1}=W_n(0)n^{n2}/(n1)(n2)`$. And continuing this way we find

$$S/s_{nq+1}\frac{n^{nq}}{q\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n1}{q}\right)}.$$
(19)
So all the partial derivatives are bounded away from zero, which proves the theorem.
Second proof
A second proof involves using a theorem from numerical analysis – the so-called Hermite-Gennochi theorem  – to replace the explicit derivation above from eq (16) onwards. (This theorem was also used in , end of appendix A). Thus we begin as above, deriving the expression in eq (16) for $`S/s_q`$.

Now if $`f(x)`$ is any function whose values are known only at $`n`$ points $`x_1,\mathrm{},x_n`$ then there is a unique polynomial of degree $`n1`$, the Lagrange interpolating polynomial, that agrees with the function at these points. The coefficient of $`x^{n1}`$ is called the Newton divided difference of $`f`$ and has standard explicit formula $`_if(x_i)/_{ki}(x_kx_i)`$. Thus eq (16) states that $`S/s_q`$ is the Newton divided difference for the function $`f(x)=(1)^qx^{nq}\mathrm{log}x`$. Now the Hermite-Gennochi theorem asserts that the Newton divided difference is also given by the integral over the probability simplex $`\{(p_1,\mathrm{},p_n):p_i0,_ip_i=1\}`$ of $`f^{(n1)}(p_1x_1+\mathrm{}p_nx_n)`$ where $`f^{(n1)}`$ is the $`(n1)^{\mathrm{th}}`$ derivative of $`f`$. Taking $`f`$ to be $`(1)^qx^{nq}\mathrm{log}x`$ it is straightforward to check that $`f^{(n1)}(x)>0`$ for all $`0<x<1`$. Hence the integral over the probability simplex is positive and we get $`S/s_q>0`$.


text:
# de Sitter String Vacua from Supersymmetric D-terms

## 1 Introduction

Recently Kachru, Kallosh, Linde and Trivedi (KKLT)  found the first explicit realization of 4D de Sitter space as a solution to the low-energy equations of string theory. This is a significant achievement given the importance that de Sitter space has acquired from the recent data on the acceleration of the universe and also for its close relation with the inflationary scenario.

The proposal of KKLT combines several mechanisms that lift the vacuum degeneracy of supersymmetric string models. First they introduce background fluxes for NS and RR forms to fix all of the complex-structure moduli of a Calabi-Yau compactification . Second, they focus on models having only one Kähler modulus, and fix this remaining modulus using nonperturbative effects combined with the remnant superpotential produced by the fluxes, typically leading to a supersymmetric 4D anti-de Sitter vacuum. Finally, the addition of an anti-D3-brane provides an extra source of positive potential energy which depends on the Kähler modulus, and lifts the minimum to a 4D de Sitter vacuum.

All steps except the last one can be understood within the context of an effective 4D supergravity, but since the addition of the anti-D3-brane breaks supersymmetry, the effective 4D theory cannot be put into the standard 4D supergravity form.111It may be possible to write the 4D action in a manifestly supersymmetric way if certain massive fields are ‘integrated in’ to act as the superpartners of fields appearing in the non-supersymmetric 4D effective action. This kind of explicit breaking of supersymmetry considerably complicates the analysis of the low-energy theory, because the loss of supersymmetry removes much of the theoretical control over the types of interactions which can be induced. This motivates searching for ways to obtain de Sitter space in string theory, but within a framework described by a fully supersymmetric action.

In this note we do so by modifying the last step of the KKLT stabilization process. Instead of adding an anti-brane, we turn on fluxes for yet another field: the gauge fields living inside the D7 branes. This extra degree of freedom is already contained within the original scenario and does not require adding sources such as anti-branes which are difficult to interpret as an F- or a D-term of a potential of a supersymmetric theory. Nevertheless, the addition of these fluxes has the similar effect of adding a positive term to the scalar potential, which can be interpreted as a D-term of the effective 4D supersymmetric action. It is the competition of this D-term potential with the superpotential contribution which breaks supersymmetry spontaneously and leads to a 4D de Sitter geometry.

Another method for replacing the antibrane in the KKLT construction is to obtain models whose potential at the no scale level admits a minimum with $`DW0`$ so that the potential has an additional term similar to the antibrane contribution to the potential .

## 2 Modulus Stabilization

Type IIB strings have RR and NS-NS antisymmetric 3-form field strengths, $`H_3`$ and $`F_3`$ respectively, which can wrap on 3-cycles of the compactification manifold, leading to quantized background fluxes

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi ^2\alpha ^{}}}{\displaystyle _A}F_3=M,{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi ^2\alpha ^{}}}{\displaystyle _B}H_3=K,`$ (2.1)
where $`K`$ and $`M`$ are arbitrary integers and $`A`$ and $`B`$ label the different 3-cycles of the Calabi-Yau manifold.

Fluxes have proven to be very efficient at fixing many of the string moduli, including the axion-dilaton field of type IIB theory, $`S=e^\varphi +ia`$ . A very general analysis of orientifold models of type IIB, or its equivalent realization in terms of $`F`$-theory, has been done in . In the $`F`$ theory approach, the geometrical picture corresponds to an elliptically fibered four-fold Calabi-Yau space $`Z`$ with base space $``$ and the elliptic fiber corresponding to the axion-dilaton field $`S`$.

An important consistency condition coming from tadpole cancellation implies a relationship between the charges of D-branes, O-planes, and fluxes, which can be written as follows:

$$N_{D3}N_{\overline{D}3}+N_{flux}=\frac{\chi (Z)}{24}.$$
(2.2)
Here the left-hand side counts the number of D3-branes and anti-branes, as well as the flux contribution to the RR charge:

$$N_{flux}=\frac{1}{2\kappa _{10}^2T_3}_MH_3F_3.$$
(2.3)
The right-hand side of (2.2) refers to the Euler number of the four-fold manifold, $`Z`$, or in terms of orientifolds of type IIB, to the contribution of the D3-brane charge due to orientifold planes and D7-branes. Here $`\kappa _{10}`$ is the string scale in 10D and $`T_3`$ is the tension of the D3 branes.

From the point of view of the effective 4D theory, the fluxes generate a superpotential of the Gukov-Vafa-Witten form :

$$W=_MG_3\mathrm{\Omega },$$
(2.4)
where $`G_3=F_3iSH_3`$ with $`S`$ the dilaton field and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the unique $`(3,0)`$ form of the corresponding Calabi-Yau space. An important feature of this superpotential is that it is independent of all of the compact space’s Kähler moduli, so none of these moduli are fixed by these kinds of fluxes.

The simplest models have the fewest possible number of Kähler moduli: one. It defines the overall breathing mode of the underlying Calabi-Yau space. Denoting the 10D metric by $`ds_{10}^2=L^6ds_4^2+L^2ds_6^2`$, this Kähler mode can be written $`T=X+iY`$, where $`X=L^4/g_s`$ and $`Y`$ is an axion field coming from the RR 4-form. ($`T=i\rho `$ in the conventions of .) Since this modulus does not appear in $`W`$, it is not fixed by the fluxes, and the corresponding flat direction can be understood within the effective 4D theory because it takes the no-scale form . That is, the low-energy Kähler potential is:

$$K=\stackrel{~}{K}(\phi _i,\phi _i^{})3\mathrm{log}\left(T+T^{}\right),$$
(2.5)
with $`\stackrel{~}{K}`$ the Kähler potential for all of the other fields, $`\phi _i`$, except for $`T`$. The corresponding F-term potential then takes the form

$`V_F`$ $`=`$ $`e^K\left(K^{I\overline{J}}D_IW\overline{D_JW}3|W|^2\right)`$ (2.6)
$`=`$ $`e^K\left(K^{i\overline{j}}D_iW\overline{D_jW}\right),`$
where $`i,j`$ label the fields $`\phi ^i`$, while the labels $`I,J`$ include both the $`\phi ^i`$ and $`T`$. Here $`K^{i\overline{j}}`$ is the inverse of the Kähler metric, $`K_{i\overline{j}}=_i_{\overline{j}}K`$, and $`D_iW=_iW+W_iK`$ is the superpotential’s Kähler covariant derivative. The second equality follows because the $`T`$-dependence of the Kähler potential is such that the contribution $`K^{T\overline{T}}|D_TW|^2`$ precisely cancels the term $`3|W|^2`$. This is a special property of no-scale models . Being positive definite, the global minimum of this potential lies at zero, with all fields except for $`T`$ fixed by the conditions $`D_iW=0`$. This minimum is supersymmetric if $`D_TW=W=0`$, and not supersymmetric otherwise.

In order to fix $`T`$ KKLT proceed as follows. First, they choose fluxes to obtain a vacuum in which supersymmetry is broken by the $`T`$ field, because $`W=W_00`$. Then they consider a nonperturbative superpotential, either generated by Euclidean D3-branes or by gaugino condensation within a non-abelian gauge sector of $`N`$ wrapped D7-branes. Since the gauge coupling for such a gauge group is $`8\pi ^2/g_{YM}^2=2\pi L^4/g_s=2\pi X`$, well-established arguments imply a non-perturbative superpotential of the form $`W_{np}=Ae^{aT}`$ , for appropriate constants $`A`$ and $`a`$.

Combining the two sources of superpotentials

$$W=W_0+Ae^{aT},$$
(2.7)
gives an effective scalar potential for the field $`T=X+iY`$ of the form:

$$V_F=\frac{1}{8X^3}\left\{\frac{1}{3}|2XW^{}3W|^23|W|^2\right\},$$
(2.8)
having a non-trivial minimum at finite $`T`$ as well as the standard runaway behaviour towards infinity. The non-trivial minimum corresponds to negative cosmological constant, and so gives rise to a supersymmetric AdS vacuum.

This is reminiscent of the standard situation in heterotic string theory regarding the potential for the dilaton field $`S`$ coming from the racetrack scenario, after having fixed the field $`T`$. More general superpotentials have been considered in , in which the superpotential takes the form:

$$W=\underset{i}{}A_ie^{a_iT},$$
(2.9)
where the sum can be finite or infinite. The finite case is the standard racetrack scenario . The structure of the scalar potential is such that it has one or many anti-de Sitter minima, all of which are supersymmetric.

## 3 de Sitter Vacua

In order to obtain de Sitter vacua, KKLT add anti-D3 branes to the above construction, while still satisfying the tadpole condition (2.2). Semiclassically, this has the effect of adding an extra non-supersymmetric term (neither F- nor D-term) to the scalar potential of the form:

$$V=V_F+\frac{k}{X^2},$$
(3.1)
with the constant $`k=2a_0^4T_3/g_s^4`$ parameterizing the lack of supersymmetry of the potential. Here $`a_0`$ is the warp factor at the location of the anti-D3 branes and $`T_3`$ is the anti-brane tension. The net effect of this addition to the potential is that, for suitable values of $`k`$, the original AdS minimum gets lifted to a dS one with broken supersymmetry. Fig. (1) gives a sample plot of the potential obtained in this way.

We will depart from the KKLT proposal and choose not to introduce anti-D3-branes, and instead consider the possibility of turning on non-trivial fluxes for the gauge fields living on the D7 branes. From the linear D7 action, these fluxes will naturally induce a term in the 4D effective action of the form:

$$T_7_\mathrm{\Gamma }d^4y\sqrt{g_8}F^{mn}F_{mn}=\frac{2\pi E^2}{X^3},$$
(3.2)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the 4-cycle about which the D7 branes wrap, $`T_7`$ their tension, $`E`$ is a measure of the strength of the flux and the conventional factor of $`2\pi `$ is for later convenience. The $`X`$ dependence can be inferred by a simple scaling analysis, using $`\sqrt{g_8}g^{mn}g^{pq}L^{12}`$.

The contribution of this term by itself is similar to the contribution induced by the introduction of anti-D3 branes. The only difference is the power of $`X`$ in the FI term.222The power of $`X`$ in the D3-brane term was $`3`$ in ref. , and this was corrected in ref.  to be $`2`$ due to the appearance of an extra power of $`X`$ in the warp factor.

The supersymmetry of this type of term from the 4D point of view has been studied in the past elsewhere, and was identified as arising as a field-dependent Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) D-term in the $`𝒩=1`$ supersymmetric effective action . In general, type A branes — corresponding to D-branes wrapping 3-cycles — couple to complex-structure moduli as FI terms, while branes of type B — corresponding to D-branes wrapping around cycles of even dimensionality and with magnetic fluxes inside — couple to the Kähler-structure moduli as FI terms . It is the second of these which is of interest for the present purposes.333 We thank A. Uranga for a conversation on this point.

The full 4D-supersymmetric contribution to the scalar potential corresponding to eq. (3.2) therefore takes the form:

$$V_D=\frac{g_{YM}^2}{2}D^2=\frac{2\pi }{X}\left(\frac{E}{X}+q_I|Q_I|^2\right)^2,$$
(3.3)
where we again use $`4\pi /g_{YM}^2=X`$. The $`Q_I`$ represent any matter fields which are charged — with charges $`q_I`$ — under the $`U(1)`$ gauge group for which the fluxes provide a FI factor, such as can arise from D3-D7 strings. Eq. (3.3) assumes for simplicity a minimal Kähler potential for $`Q_I`$ of the form $`|Q_I|^2`$, although this is not crucial for the later discussion.

If the additional fields are minimized at $`Q_I=0`$, then the total potential

$$V=V_F+V_D$$
(3.4)
behaves very similarly to the KKLT potential, with $`V_D=2\pi E^2/X^3`$ playing the role played by their anti-brane term. The net result for $`X`$ is therefore qualitatively the same as for KKLT, but with the difference that we use only a fully supersymmetric 4D effective action. Whether the potential has de Sitter or anti-de Sitter minima depends on the values of the flux parameter $`E`$. If $`E`$ is too small, the minimum remains anti de Sitter, but if it belongs to a range of slightly larger values, then there is a de Sitter minimum. Beyond a particular critical value, the runaway behaviour of the pure FI potential dominates and the local minimum disappears, leaving only the runaway minimum at $`X\mathrm{}`$.

It is important for this argument that any fields $`Q_I`$ indeed get minimized at $`Q_I=0`$, since the stabilization of the de Sitter vacuum cannot occur along the lines described here if the $`Q_I`$ instead adjust to ensure $`V_D=0`$. Whether this happens for a particular string vacuum is model dependent, but we pause here to describe what can be said on reasonably general grounds.

If we would consider a system of D7 brane with fluxes and a D3 brane at some distance as in , we would have to take into account D3-D7 strings corresponding to positive and negative charged fields. They are stretched between separated D7 and D3 branes and their mass depends on the distance between branes. When D3 brane dissolves onto D7 brane with fluxes, the D-flatness condition $`V_D=0`$ is realized. Here, however, it is more appropriate to consider a single D7 brane with fluxes. If the D3-D7 separation is very large, then the D3-D7 open strings can be very massive, perhaps leading to no charged fields $`Q_I`$ in the effective 4D theory. A similar situation may occur if there are only fluxes but no D3 branes.

Note also that due to the presence of a flux on a D7 brane, a D5 brane charge may be generated, in general, via a Chern-Simons term $`F_2C_6`$. For our purpose we may consider either the situations where $`F_2`$ over a 2-cycle inside of a 4-cycle, which D7 brane wraps, vanishes, or a situation when somewhere far there is an anti-D5-brane so that the total D5 charge vanishes. In orientifold models the orientifold action tends to change the sign of the gauge fields inside the D7 branes and then odd powers of $`F_2`$ do not contribute to tadpoles, in particular, D5 brane tadpoles are absent 444We thank R. Blumenhagen, S. Kachru and R. Rabadán for the useful conversations on these issues.. A D3 brane tadpole, generated by $`C_4F_2^2`$ only contributes to an extra term to equation (2.2) that can always be taken care of by the choice of the original flux contribution.

Second, it can happen that even if the $`Q_I`$’s appear in the 4D effective theory, in some circumstances the scalar potential is minimized at $`Q_I=0`$. Even if $`W`$ is independent of $`Q`$, $`V_F`$ typically depends on $`Q`$ because the Kähler derivative is $`|D_IW|^2=|K_IW|^2=|Q_IW|^2`$. As is clear from these expressions, $`V_F`$ is often minimized by $`Q_I=0`$. Since the $`Q`$-dependent terms in $`V_F`$ are proportional to $`X^3`$, while those in $`V_D`$ vary like $`X^1`$, for large enough $`X`$ it is preferable for $`Q_I`$ to adjust to minimize $`V_D`$ rather than $`V_F`$. Conversely, for smaller $`X`$ the relative importance of $`V_F`$ for the minimization of $`Q_I`$ increases. An extreme case arises if only fields having a charge with the same sign as $`E`$ appear nontrivially in $`W`$, in which case there is no value for these fields for which $`V_D=0`$. 555In general we do not need to have the matter fields to vanish. As long as the D-term part of the potential is non-zero at the minimum, it may do the job of lifting the vacuum to de Sitter space. In ref. , a particular example was worked out where it was shown that the combination of gaugino condensation and FI D-terms implies supersymmetry breaking in the sense that the D-term was not zero at the minimum.

This last situation is analogous to the hybrid D-term inflation models . Some of the superfields, which are left out of the superpotential, have positive charge only and therefore, for positive FI terms they have positive mass squared and vanish at the minimum of the potential 666For the earlier work on single field inflation models with anomalous FI terms and a charged inflaton see .. The negatively charged fields which would be able to cancel the contribution from fluxes should be absent in this model since they would have a negative mass squared, unless they appear in the particular form (as in D-term inflation models) in the superpotential. However, the original D-term inflation model  as well as the brane construction  realizing the D-term inflation in string theory, do not include the 4D space-dependent volume moduli and need to be properly generalized before the complete picture can be clarified. For our specific purpose of describing a possibility of a de Sitter minimum in presence of fluxes on D7 branes, the absence of negatively charged fields seems to be a sufficient condition for the absence of tachyons as well as for vanishing $`Q_I`$-fields at the minimum.

Although our starting point was the assumption of nonvanishing electromagnetic flux, our results only depend on the existence of a FI term, regardless of its origin. The only requirement is that the FI term depends on the (real part of the) $`T`$-field as an appropriately negative power of $`X`$. Let us pause here to understand this point better.

A sufficient condition for the existence of the FI term is the existence of a Green-Schwarz type of coupling of the form $`BF`$ between a $`U(1)`$ gauge field and the antisymmetric tensor, $`B`$, dual to the imaginary part of $`T`$.777Recall that $`Y`$ is dual to the two-index field $`B_{\mu \nu }`$ defined by $`C_{\mu \nu ab}=B_{\mu \nu }J_{ab}`$ where $`C_{MNPQ}`$ is the original 4-index field of type IIB string theory and $`J_{ab}`$ is the Kähler form of the Calabi-Yau . This kind of coupling can arise, for instance, from the Chern-Simons coupling of the D7 brane, which takes the form:

$$__8C\left(Tre^{\frac{iF}{2\pi }}\right).$$
(3.5)
Expanding the exponential produces the coupling $`C_{\mu \nu mn}F_{\rho \sigma }F_{pq}ϵ^{\mu \mathrm{}q}`$, where, as usual, Greek indices denote ordinary spacetime and Latin indices run over the Calabi-Yau dimensions. This precisely gives rise to the $`BF`$ term in the presence of nonvanishing background fluxes.

The necessity for a FI term follows from supersymmetry and gauge invariance, because a $`BF`$ term becomes $`A_\mu ^\mu Y`$ when expressed in terms of the axion, $`Y`$, which is dual to $`B`$. But gauge invariance then requires that $`Y`$ and $`A_\mu `$ must always appear together in the combination $`_\mu YqA_\mu `$ for some constant $`q`$, and supersymmetry then implies that the Kähler potential can depend on $`T`$ only through the combination $`T+T^{}+cV`$ 888Notice that, since $`T`$ transforms under the $`U(1)`$ interactions, a simple exponential of $`T`$ in the non-perturbative superpotential is not invariant under the corresponding $`U(1)`$ and needs to be compensated by the dependence of the superpotential on other fields. This, being model dependent, is beyond the scope of the present note. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to fully study a particular example with the matter field dependence under control.. Here $`V`$ is the gauge superfield including $`A_\mu `$ and $`c`$ is a constant (proportional to $`E`$). Expansion of the Kähler function, $`K(T+T^{}+cV)`$, into components then induces a FI D-term proportional to $`K/V|_{V=0}`$. Notice that whenever $`K`$ has the no-scale form, $`K=3\mathrm{ln}(T+T^{}+cV)`$, the resulting auxiliary field D is proportional to $`E/X`$, as required by expression (3.3) for $`V_D`$ above, so that the potential has a standard form $`\frac{1}{2}g^2D^2`$.

Clearly our construction should generalize to any string vacuum for which such a $`BF`$ coupling appears. A broad (but not exhaustive) class of vacua for which it does consists of those for which there is an anomalous $`U(1)`$ in the low-energy theory, with $`Y`$ participating in the Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation.

## 4 Heterotic String Vacua

Most of the past work on moduli potentials was done for heterotic string vacua, and potentials very similar to the ones appearing in the type IIB case were actually computed in that approach. A fixing of all string moduli has not yet been achieved for heterotic vacua, although work in this direction is now in progress by several groups . In all cases when particular moduli were assumed fixed, the potentials for some of the remaining fields were sometimes calculable and were always found to be minimized for 4D anti-de Sitter vacua. One might wonder if there is a way to lift those vacua to the de Sitter case as well. At first sight, this seems difficult if we follow the KKLT scenario, since there is no analogue of the anti-D3-brane in the heterotic case. The same objection does not apply to the analysis as presented in the previous section, however, which is straightforward to generalize to the case of heterotic strings.

Nonperturbative superpotentials were studied in order to fix the ‘model independent’ moduli fields, $`T`$ and $`S`$, of the heterotic string using the standard tree-level Kähler potential :

$$K=\mathrm{log}\left(S+S^{}\right)3\mathrm{log}\left(T+T^{}\right).$$
(4.1)
Since $`S`$ is in this case the gauge coupling, the nonperturbative superpotential takes the ‘racetrack’ form:

$$W(S,T)=\underset{i}{}A_i\left(T\right)e^{a_iS},$$
(4.2)
where the $`S`$ dependence comes from gaugino condensation for different gauge groups, and the $`T`$ dependence can be obtained either from threshold corrections to the gauge coupling or by just requiring invariance under $`T`$-duality of the heterotic string . We do not here consider any details regarding the functional dependence on $`T`$, but just content ourselves with pointing out that once $`T`$ is fixed we are left with a potential, $`V_F`$, for $`S`$ having the same form as the ones considered in the previous section for $`T`$. The generic potential of this form fixes the field $`S`$ at a supersymmetric or non-supersymmetric minimum with a negative (anti-de Sitter) cosmological constant.

It is also true that in generic heterotic models there is usually at least one anomalous $`U(1)`$ group. The anomaly is cancelled by a four-dimensional version of the Green-Schwarz mechanism, using the NS-NS antisymmetric field $`B_{\mu \nu }`$. Writing the dual of this field as $`_\mu a=ϵ_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }^\nu B^{\rho \sigma }`$, the couplings required by anomaly cancellation are $`aF_{\mu \nu }\stackrel{~}{F}^{\mu \nu }`$ and $`BF`$. Recall that $`a`$ is the axion field that makes up the imaginary part of the field $`S`$ and $`F_{\mu \nu }`$ is the field strength of the anomalous $`U(1)`$ gauge group.

As is argued above (and is well known ), the existence of the $`BF`$ coupling implies (from gauge-invariance and supersymmetry) the existence of a FI term for the corresponding $`U(1)`$. We are again led to a D-term potential of the form:

$$V_D=\frac{1}{S+S^{}}\left(\frac{\text{Tr}q}{48\pi ^2}\frac{1}{(S+S^{})^2}+q_I|Q_I|^2\right)^2,$$
(4.3)
where the first term in the bracket is the FI term.

We see that the situation is completely analogous to our previous discussion for the type IIB string, with the roles of $`S`$ and $`T`$ interchanged. After considering the full scalar potential $`V=V_F+V_D`$999For discussions on the combination of F-terms and D-terms induced by anomalous $`U(1)`$’s see for instance . we can have a local minimum with vanishing charged fields $`Q_I`$ and with $`S`$ fixed at a de Sitter minimum.

Whether a de Sitter minimum is really achieved is a model-dependent question. The important quantity to follow is the coefficient $`\text{Tr}q`$. If there are many charged fields giving rise to a relatively large ‘anomaly’ $`\text{Tr}q`$, the D-term can dominate and lift the anti-de Sitter minimum to a de Sitter one. Otherwise the minimum remains anti-de Sitter. If $`\text{Tr}q`$ is too large, then the FI term dominates the potential and may completely remove the minimum at finite $`S`$.

## 5 Conclusions

In this paper we generalize the KKLT construction  of de Sitter string theory vacua for which all of the moduli are fixed. The main difference between our approach and the previous one is the derivation from string theory of a metastable de Sitter space via a spontaneous supersymmetry breaking. It is achieved in the framework of the effective 4D supersymmetric effective action, through the interplay of F- and D-terms in the scalar potential. The virtue of keeping the low-energy supersymmetry manifest is the extra control this gives over the form of the low-energy Lagrangian, which is more difficult for the anti-D3-branes used by KKLT.

There are several issues in our proposal which may need to be examined in more detail for particular examples. Central among these is the question of finding systems for which the matter fields $`Q_I`$ do not cancel the contribution from fluxes to $`V_D`$. A second important issue is to understand whether new moduli arise when fluxes are turned on the D7 brane. Finally, it would be worth understanding in more detail the relation of our flux proposal to the D3/D7 system of the type described in . Notice that the D3/D7 system is analogous to Seiberg-Witten non-commutative theories  and the D0/D4 system of branes where the FI terms are related to fluxes on the D4 brane.

Even though our technique is described in a supersymmetric context, our result is very similar to the one obtained by KKLT by adding an anti-D3-brane.101010 An anti-D3 brane can dissolve into an anti self-dual flux in a D7 brane, so this class of constructions may be related to the original KKLT construction as a different branch of the anti-D3 configuration space in absence of D5 brane charge. We thank S. Kachru, J. Maldacena, E. Silverstein and A. Uranga for the discussion of this possibility.

In contrast with the previous scenario, ours appears to immediately generalize to the heterotic string cases that have been studied in the past. It would be interesting to approach the possibility of obtaining D-brane inflation  from our scenario, along the lines of .

We believe that our results set the existence of de Sitter space in string theory on firmer grounds, and are likely to be among the first of many new constructions of de Sitter vacua in string theory.

## 6 Acknowledgements

We thank the organizers of the KITP workshop on string cosmology for providing the perfect environment to start this work. We would like to thank P. Binetruy, J. Blanco-Pilado, R. Blumenhagen, R. Brustein, C. Escoda, M. Gómez-Reino, S. Kachru, S. Kovacs, P. Kumar, A. Linde, J. Maldacena, V.S. Nemani, R. Rabadán, E. Silverstein, H. Tye and A. Uranga for many discussions on these and related subjects. This research was supported in part by the NSF under grant No. PHY-99-07949. C.B. is also funded by NSERC (Canada), FCAR (Québec) and McGill University. The work of R. K. is supported also by the NSF grant PHY-0244728. F.Q. is partially funded by PPARC.