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# First detections of extragalactic SO2, NS and NO

## 1 Introduction

Molecular lines from the central regions of galaxies are among the most promising tools to explore and understand the history of our universe (e.g. Combes et al. Combes (1999) and references therein). In many galaxies most of the molecular emission stems from highly excited gas within the central few 100 pc. However, the processes driving the excitation and the complex chemistry of the gas are not entirely clear.

Molecular studies of nearby active galaxies such as NGC 253, M 82 or Arp 220 suggest that C shocks, photodissociating radiation, and irradiation by X rays or cosmic rays (e.g. Rigopoulou et al. Rigopoulou (2002), Güsten et al. Gusten (1981), Farquhar et al. Farquhar (1994)) play an important role in the heating and the chemistry of nuclear gas. The dominant mechanisms and their relative importance are still unclear.

Sulfur-bearing molecules such as SO2 and NS are present in a wide variety of interstellar conditions, displaying enhanced abundances in the hot cores of high mass star forming regions. In hot cores, the chemistry of these molecules is determined by grain-mantle evaporation into warm gas (Charnley, Charnley (1997)). Abundance ratios such as NS/CS have been suggested to be one of the signatures of shocks in hot cores (Viti et al. Viti (2001)). The NO molecule is a fairly abundant molecule in the diffuse ISM of the Milky Way. This species is the main precursor of the N/O chemical network (Halfen et al. Halfen (2001)).

In this Letter we report the first detections of SO2, NS and NO in an extragalactic source, the nucleus of NGC 253. This region is one of the most prolific sources of molecular emission outside the Milky Way (Mauersberger & Henkel Mauers93 (1993)). The large amount of hot gas (Mauersberger et al. Mauers03 (2003)) and the high abundance of molecules with special chemistry, such as SiO (García-Burillo et al. Burillo (2000)) indicates that the presence of large scale shocks should dominate the heating and the chemistry of the molecular gas. Also the very high abundance of the three molecules reported in this Letter and their excitation can be explained if the chemistry of the nucleus of NGC 253 is dominated by large scale shocks.

## 2 Observations and results

Observations of the spectral lines (Table 1) were carried out with the IRAM 30m telescope. Continuum measurements on nearby sources made every $`2`$ hours were used to keep a pointing accuracy better than $`3\mathrm{}`$. A wobbling secondary mirror was used, with a symmetrical beam throw of $`4\mathrm{}`$ in azimuth and a switching frequency of 0.5 Hz.

As spectrometers we used two 256$`\times `$4MHz filterbanks for the 2 mm transitions and two 512$`\times `$1MHz filterbanks for the lines at 1.5 and 3 mm. The SIS receivers were tuned to SSB with an image band rejection $`>10`$ dB. Beam sizes were 21$`\mathrm{}`$ (at 3 mm), 17$`\mathrm{}`$ (at 2 mm) and 10$`\mathrm{}`$ or 12$`\mathrm{}`$ (at 1.5 mm). Spectra were calibrated with the standard dual load system. Intensities are given on a main-beam brightness temperature scale ($`T_{\mathrm{MB}}`$). Linear baselines were removed from the spectra and the resulting profiles are shown in Fig. 1.

We detected five transitions of SO2 in the 2 mm band, three groups of hyperfine components of NO and five of NS in the 2, 3 and 1.5 mm atmospheric windows. Profiles are consistent with the frequencies in the spectral line catalogues of Lovas (Lovas (1992)) and Pickett et al. (Pickett (1998)). We checked that no other known molecular transitions, both in the signal and the image band, significantly contaminate the observed features. The only line partially blended is SO2 at 135 GHz that overlaps with 34SO (see Fig. 1).

## 3 Analysis

### 3.1 Derived line parameters for SO2, NS and NO

To derive the SO2 line parameters, we have fitted a single Gaussian to the observed profiles. Fig. 1 shows the Gaussian fits superposed on the observed spectra, and Table 1 presents the line parameters derived from the fit.

Fitting the NS and NO profiles is more complex as their ground state presents $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-doubling. Thus each rotational level $`J`$ is split into two single rotational levels with opposite parity. We use the usual notation to label, in Table 1, the lower and upper series of single rotational levels as $`e`$ and $`f`$ for NS, and $`\mathrm{\Pi }^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }^{}`$ for NO. Rotational levels are further split into hyperfine (HF) components (Gerin et al. Gerin92 (1992)). Fig. 1 indicates the location of the HF components, which are unresolved due to the broad intrinsic linewidth of the emission from the nucleus of NGC 253. Single Gaussian fits cannot be used in this case. We fitted the HF components simultaneously with a comb of Gaussian profiles with identical width and the relative frequency and line intensities fixed to the spectroscopic parameters of NS and NO. Table 1 shows the derived line parameters.

### 3.2 Column Densities and Rotational Temperatures

In order to derive reliable physical conditions when comparing line intensities measured with different beam sizes ($`\theta _b`$), we have to make assumptions on the overall extent ($`\theta _s`$) of the nuclear emission of SO2, NO and NS. According to measurements of CO and CN transitions with the different beam sizes of the 30m telescope and SEST, we derive an extent of the emitting region of $`20\mathrm{}`$ (240 pc at a distance of 2.5 Mpc; Mauersberger et al. Mauers03 (2003)) This is in agreement with the size obtained by Mauersberger et al. (Mauers03 (2003)) from the high angular resolution interferometric maps of CS $`J=21`$ of Peng et al. (Peng (1996)). Thus, we can obtain the source averaged brightness temperatures ($`T_\mathrm{B}=T_{\mathrm{MB}}\frac{\theta _s^2+\theta _b^2}{\theta _s^2}`$) over 20$`\mathrm{}`$ and derive source averaged column densities in the upper levels of the observed transitions assuming optically thin emission. In the case of NS and NO, this was done independently for each series. Fig. 2 shows the population diagrams for each molecule where the level population can be described by a single rotational temperature represented as a solid straight line.

The derived $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$ as well as total column densities and estimated fractional abundances are summarized in Table 2. To determine the abundance, we have assumed the H2 column density of $`\mathrm{1.7\hspace{0.17em}10}^{22}\mathrm{cm}^2`$ derived by Mauersberger et al. (Mauers03 (2003)) from their 13CO measurements. The uncertainty of a factor of 2 in the H2 column density (Mauersberger et al. Mauers03 (2003)) does not critically affect the conclusions of this work. In general, the fractional abundances are high with the most outstanding case of NO with an abundance larger than $`10^7`$. For the NS molecule, parameters derived for each series are: $`N_{\mathrm{NS}}(e)=\mathrm{4.4\hspace{0.17em}10}^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}(e)=8`$ K and $`N_{\mathrm{NS}}(f)=\mathrm{6.4\hspace{0.17em}10}^{13}\mathrm{cm}^2`$, $`T_{\mathrm{rot}}(f)=7.6`$ K. No substantial difference is found between series, in agreement with the result of Gerin et al. (Gerin92 (1992)) derived from NO in different Galactic molecular clouds.

## 4 Discussion

To establish the mechanism driving the chemistry in NGC 253, we compare in Table 3 the measured fractional abundances of SO2, NS and NO with those in prototypical molecular Galactic clouds dominated by different types of chemistry. We have selected two dark clouds to illustrate the ion-molecule chemistry associated with quiescent gas, three hot cores to illustrate grain surface and shock chemistry associated to massive protostars and one photodissociation region (PDR) to illustrate the UV dominated chemistry produced by OB stars in the main sequence.

Chemistry dominated by PDRs can be ruled out for NGC 253 since the abundances of SO2 and NO are much larger than those in Galactic PDRs. It is remarkable that only one source in Table 3, the hot core in Sgr B2(N), shows larger or similar abundances than those observed in NGC 253. This is surprising given the expected beam dilution in NGC 253 for molecules with a high dipole moment like NS and SO2. However, it is very unlikely that hot cores dominate the emission of the three molecules since the low rotational temperatures derived are inconsistent with the high excitation temperature ($`>`$70 K) expected from the dense hot cores. This suggests that the origin of the large abundance of these molecules must be related to a hot core like chemistry, but in regions with moderate densities in which molecules are subthermally excited. Molecular clouds in the center of the Galaxy show hot core like chemistry produced by the ejection of molecules from the grains by large scale shocks (see e.g. Martín-Pintado et al. MartinP01 (2001)). Chemistry driven by large scale C shocks has been proposed to explain the high temperatures and large abundances of NH3 and SiO (García-Burillo et al. Burillo (2000), Mauersberger et al. Mauers03 (2003)). We will now discuss in detail how the abundance of the molecules reported in this paper fits into this picture.

### 4.1 SO2

Towards NGC 253, we find a SO2 abundance between that found in dark clouds and hot cores. The relatively high rotational temperature of SO2 rules out that the bulk of its emission arises from dark clouds with their typical kinetic temperature of 10 K. Within the context of hot core chemistry, SO2 is rapidly formed from the H2S evaporated from grain-mantles when $`T`$$`<`$200 K. The same type of chemistry is expected if H2S is injected into the gas phase by shocks. The observations of SO2 towards Sgr B2 by Cummins et al. (Cummins (1986)) support this idea. They found that SO2 emission arises from two components with very different rotational temperatures, the first one associated with the Sgr B2 hot core ($`T_{\mathrm{rot}}`$=310 K) and a second, subthermally excited one, with a much lower temperature of 26 K associated with the envelope. The excitation temperature is somewhat larger in the envelope of Sgr B2 than in NGC 253. However, the latter is averaged over a much larger region. We therefore conclude that SO2 arises from the high temperature component observed in NH3 by Mauersberger et al. (Mauers03 (2003)).

### 4.2 NO

The large NO fractional abundance averaged over an almost 200 pc region suggests that NO emission is fairly widespread through the whole nucleus of NGC 253. If this emission would arise from dark clouds, all the clouds in the nucleus of NGC 253 must be of the L134N type, contrasting with what we find in the solar vicinity where most of the clouds are like TMC1. However, the lack of SiO emission in dark clouds (Ziurys et al. Ziurys (1989)) suggests that large scale shocks are the origin of the NO abundances observed in NGC 253. Like in the center of our Galaxy, NO emission from NGC 253 could arise from warm moderately dense gas, such as that of the envelope of Sgr B2 which shows a particular chemistry due to strong shocks and/or irradiation by hard X rays (Martín-Pintado MartinP (1997), MartinP00 (2000)). It is worth noting that models of X ray chemistry (Lepp & Dalgarno Lepp (1996)) predict an enhancement of the NO abundance ($`10^610^7`$) as observed in Sgr B2 and NGC 253. Both NGC 253 and the envelope of Sgr B2 have enhanced SiO and NO abundances suggesting a similar origin.

### 4.3 NS

The NS abundance in NGC 253 is higher than in most Galactic dark cloud cores and hot cores. McGonagle & Irvine (McGonagle97 (1997)) studied the excitation of NS in several molecular clouds and found low excitation temperatures and moderate abundances in the hot and very dense regions as expected from the large destruction rate of this radical under hot core conditions ($`n_{(\mathrm{H}_2)}>10^6\mathrm{cm}^3,T_\mathrm{k}>100`$K). Chemical models of hot cores indicate an enhancement of the NS abundance relative to CS in the presence of C shocks (Viti et al. Viti (2001)). The high NS/CS ratio of 0.4 (with $`X`$(CS)=4 10-9; Mauersberger et al. Mauers03 (2003)) agrees with the prediction of these models in which a shock passed $`10\mathrm{20\hspace{0.17em}10}^3`$ years after the onset of radiative heating in the hot core. This favors large scale shocks as the most likely explanation for the NS abundance in NGC 253. It is interesting to note that this NS/CS ratio is an order of magnitude above the ratio measured by Hatchell et al. (Hatchell (2002)) towards six hot cores.
The origin of the large scale shocks is not yet clear. High angular resolution images of nuclear SiO emission in NGC 253 suggest different origins (García-Burillo et al. Burillo (2000)). In the inner circumnuclear disk, shocks from a dense molecular outflow driven by massive protostar dominates. In view of the low excitation temperatures derived for the new molecules, the bulk of the emission is probably not related to this origin. The other proposed causes, shocks in the outer Lindblad resonance as a consequence of a barred potential or generated by mass ejection from the disk, could explain the abundances and excitation temperatures.

Interferometric observations of SO2, NO and NS are needed to measure their spatial distribution and to establish the origin of the large abundances of these molecules in the nuclear region of NGC 253.

###### Acknowledgements.

J. M.-P. has been partially supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia Y Tecnología with grant ESP2002-01627 and AYA2002-10113E.


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# Simulating the scalar glueball on the lattice

## 1 Introduction

Along with the mesons of the quark model, QCD allows for the existence of bound-states of gluons, the glueballs. The scalar glueball is the lightest state in the spectrum of strongly interacting gluons (described by the $`SU(3)`$ Yang-Mills theory) and in this consistent, confining quantum field theory, it is stable. The world of gluons alone thus provides an attractive starting point for investigations of glueballs. Confinement is not described at all within QCD perturbation theory and so computing properties of the glueballs requires a non-perturbative technique for studying strong interactions. As a result, no unambiguous identification of the scalar glueball has been made, although there is broad agreement that an extra state in the family of scalar resonances, unaccounted for by the quark model, exists between 1.5 and 1.8 GeV. In QCD, the glueball states will mix with the isoscalar resonances of the quark model, and will also decay strongly so to claim a complete understanding of the scalar mesons below 2 GeV therefore requires reliable knowledge of the masses and other properties of glueballs.

In order to disentangle the complex picture presented by experiments much more detailed and precise theoretical prediction from QCD must be made. At present, the only practical ab initio method for computing the non-perturbative properties of strongly interacting field theories such as QCD is through Monte Carlo simulation of the lattice regularisation of the theory. The glueballs of $`SU(3)`$ Yang-Mills theory have been studied extensively in lattice simulations Michael and Teper (1989); Bali et al. (1993); Morningstar and Peardon (1999), and this spectrum is becoming increasingly accurately determined. This is the first step in understanding the appearance of glueballs among the light scalar resonances of QCD. In spite of the limitation of these calculations, their output is proving to be very valuable in the construction and validation of phenomenological models.

In this article, we describe the state-of-the-art calculation of the glueball spectrum of the Yang-Mills theory. Investigations of further properties of these fascinating states, including their behaviour in QCD (with the dynamics of quark fields included) are then outlined.

## 2 Lattice QCD

Lattice QCD solves two key problems arising from strongly interacting gauge theories at a stroke; it provides both a non-perturbative regularisation of QCD and a means by which observables in the theory can be predicted by computer. This inherently gauge invariant regularisation is manifest through a direct cut-off of momenta at the Brillouin zone boundaries of the lattice.

To begin, the path-integral formulation of the theory in Euclidean space is taken. The four dimensions of space and time are discretised with a regular lattice of points separated by a spacing, $`a`$. In the gauge-invariant formulation defined by Wilson nearly 30 years ago Wilson (1974), the quark fields of QCD are defined at sites of the lattice, while the gluonic degrees of freedom are represented by parallel transporters (usually in the fundamental representation of the gauge group) connecting nearest-neighbouring sites. A definition of the Yang-Mills action is constructed from the trace of path-ordered products of the link variables around small loops on the lattice. The smallest non-trivial loop on the lattice circumnavigates a square of side-length $`a`$, usually called a plaquette. Similarly, a number of different definitions of the quark bilinear action, coupled to the gluons, can be made.

Path integral expectation values can then be estimated by numerical methods. If the theory is considered for space and time inside a finite-sized box, the path integral at non-zero lattice spacing is reduced to a very-high-dimensional ordinary integral. This type of problem can normally only be addressed by Monte Carlo methods, where a stochastic sampling of points inside the phase space to be integrated over is made.

### 2.1 Stochastic estimation methods for quantum field theory

After Wick rotation, the path integral for field theories such as QCD (at least at zero chemical potential) can be regarded as a statistical mechanical partition function. The Boltzmann weight for a particular field configuration is real and positive definite, and so can be interpreted as a statistical probability of the configuration appearing. In these circumstances, the natural Monte Carlo method to employ is importance sampling. An update algorithm is defined which generates configurations of the gluon fields, $`U`$ with probability density given by the Boltzmann weight, $`\mathrm{exp}\{S(U)\}`$. The method is employed on the computer to generate an ensemble of gluon field configurations. Expectation values are then estimated from ensemble averages.

To compute the physical properties of the theory appropriate observation functions on the underlying fields are defined with the required quantum numbers, and these observables are measured on all members of the stochastic ensemble. Careful analysis allows a reliable determination of statistical uncertainties.

### 2.2 Controlling simulation artefacts

In order to make contact with the continuum field theory, a number of artefacts of the method must be controlled. The most obvious of these is the need to use a finite-sized box for numerical work. In practical simulations, boxes with side lengths of the order of 2 fm are feasible.

In many cases, the qualitative behaviour of states in increasingly large-but-finite volumes can be predicted. Simulations are run for a range of box sizes, and the data matched to this predicted form to allow safe extrapolation to the infinite volume limit. In most studies of glueballs these effects are now extremely small and do not constitute the dominant systematic error.

More difficult is the need to extrapolate data to the limit of zero lattice spacing (usually called the continuum limit). Again, the most natural procedure is to compute the physics of interest on a set of lattices with different grid spacings, and extrapolate. In many cases, the expected leading-order behaviour of these finite lattice spacing effects can be predicted, and this can be used to control data fitting. The problem with this direct approach is that the cost of computer simulations rises rapidly as the lattice spacing is diminished, at least in proportion to $`a^4`$ and generally worse than this. Since the continuum limit exists at a critical point corresponding to a second order phase transition, where the correlation length of the system diverges in units of the lattice spacing, critical slowing down makes this cost higher. It is clear that the cheapest computer simulations are those run on the coarsest grids, which are furthest from the continuum.

### 2.3 Symanzik improvement

The effects of a finite grid spacing can be understood in the language of quantum field theory as arising from irrelevant operators appearing in the lattice action. These operators are of higher dimension than the relevant operator of the continuum theory, Tr $`F_{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }`$ and are multiplied in the action by dimensionful couplings proportional to (positive) powers of the lattice spacing. For the simplest description of the gauge action, proposed by Wilson and consisting of the trace of the plaquette, the leading irrelevant operator appears at $`𝒪(a^2)`$. Odd powers are prohibited by exact parity symmetry, which is preserved by the discretisation.

Universality suggests that there is a broad class of lattice representations of the continuum action, whose members all have the identical continuum limit: QCD. This implies that different lattice actions can be engineered which have smaller contributions from higher-dimensional operators. For asymptotically free theories, like QCD and the $`SU(3)`$ Yang-Mills theory of gluons, these discretisations of the action can be designed within the framework of perturbation theory. This concept is termed Symanzik improvement Symanzik (1983).

The idea has been widely exploited in lattice calculations, both in discretisations of gluon fields as well as the quark fields. For the gluon action, taking appropriate linear combinations of traces of larger closed loops, such as the $`2\times 1`$ rectangle means terms at $`𝒪(a^2)`$ can be eliminated Luscher and Weisz (1985); Lepage (1996). This allows lattice investigations to be carried out with grid spacings as coarse as 0.25 fm, while remaining sufficiently close to the continuum limit to explore the physics reliably.

### 2.4 The anisotropic lattice

At the point in the calculation where measurements are made, these coarse lattices present new disadvantages. The mass of a state is extracted from the decay of a two-point correlation function in Euclidean space

$$C(t)=\mathrm{\Phi }(t)\mathrm{\Phi }(0)e^{Mt}$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }(t)`$ is a lattice operator that creates or annihiliates the state of mass $`M`$ at time $`t`$. This correlator falls exponentially as the two operators are moved further apart, and for a heavy state (such as the glueballs) the fall-off is rapid. Also, since the correlation function is being estimated in a Monte Carlo simulation, the statistical variance of the operators determines the accuracy to which these correlations can be measured. For the glueballs, these operators are the traces of closed Wilson loops on the underlying gauge fields and have rather large vacuum fluctuations, so a critical signal-to-noise problem arises. Since the operators can only be measured on points of the grid, little information can be extracted from coarse lattice measurements before the signal is lost in the noisy vacuum.

A solution that combines the economy of the coarse lattice with the good resolution of a fine grid is to use an anisotropic lattice, where the temporal lattice spacing is made small, while the three spatial dimensions are discretised more coarsely. Note that time-like correlation functions are used in extracting the masses of states. This method is particularly efficient for glueball simulations Morningstar and Peardon (1997). The two natural length scales in the problem, the mass and size of the glueball set the optimal temporal and spatial lattice spacings for numerical investigation.

Fig. 1 describes the output from just such an investigation. The figure shows the effective mass,

$$a_tM_{\mathrm{eff}}=\frac{\mathrm{ln}C(t)}{\mathrm{ln}C(t+1)}$$
(2)
for the scalar glueball measured on a highly anisotropic lattice, where the ratio of scales is $`a_s/a_t=6`$. The operator, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is constructed from a large basis set of the trace of closed Wilson loops built from smoothed link variables. A single operator for each state is made by taking linear combinations from the basis set of operators, with this combination chosen to optimise the overlap with the state of interest. The graph shows data for the ground-state scalar and the first excited state with the same quantum numbers. It illustrates the method is capable of precise determinations of the energies of both these levels. In the simulation presented in Fig. 1 these energies are measured to $`1\%`$ statistical precision.

In Fig. 2, the dependence on the lattice cut-off of the scalar glueball mass in units of a physical scale $`r_0`$, derived from the static potential Sommer (1994), is presented. The data points represented with crosses are from a range of simulations performed using the Wilson plaquette action Michael and Teper (1989); Bali et al. (1993). The circles are from simulations with an anisotropic lattice action, improved according to the Symanzik programme with parameters determined from tree-level perturbation theory after the tadpole graphs in the lattice weak-coupling expansion have been resummed Morningstar and Peardon (1997, 1999). The quality of a lattice action should be judged by how strongly the mass (in physical units) depends on the cut-off; “better” actions should show a weaker dependence on the lattice spacing. By this assessment, the Symanzik improved action is superior to the simplest action, however a strong dependence on the cut-off still remains. The scalar glueball mass (in units of $`r_0^1`$) falls as the lattice spacing is increased to reach a minimum from which it begins to rise again. We term this effect the “scalar dip.”

### 2.5 Curing the “scalar dip”

The lattice theory is not necessarily QCD; the physics of this theory is only recovered once the discretised version is “close” to the critical point on which QCD exists. If the space of lattice theories contains other critical points, simulations performed near to these points will be probing the properties of other continuum quantum field theories. Remarkably, this apparently abstract problem in non-perturbative renormalisation seems to arise in the simulation of $`SU(3)`$ Yang-Mills.

It has been recognised for some time that there is a line of “bulk” first-order phase transitions in the two-dimensional plane of lattice theories in which both a coupling to the fundamental and adjoint representations of the link variables is made Heller (1995). This line ends in a critical point at which some unknown continuum theory resides. If the physics of the lattice theory close to this critical point is investigated, it will be predominantly governed by the properties of this other theory. One suggestion is that the continuum theory at this critical point is a free scalar one, and if this was the case, the mass of the scalar particle in the lattice theory would be artificially light in comparison to the higher spin states. Precisely this artefact is observed.

The data represented by squares in Fig. 2 are from a new discretisation of the gluon action on an anisotropic lattice. In this prescription, the lattice action includes terms that trace over the link variables in the adjoint representation, as well as the fundamental. The links stored on the computer are in the fundamental representation, but the trace in the adjoint can be computed using the identity

$$\text{Tr }A(g)=\text{Tr }U(g)\text{Tr }U^{}(g)1,$$
(3)
with $`A(g)`$ the adjoint representation of an element, $`gSU(3)`$ and $`U(g)`$ its corresponding fundamental representation.

These simulation results are extremely encouraging and clearly show very weak lattice spacing dependence out to coarse spatial lattices ($`a0.25`$ fm). A very reliable extrabolation to the continuum limit can be made.

### 2.6 Spin on the lattice

In a scattering experiment, the spin of resonances is determined from a partial wave analysis. Revealing the spin of states in a lattice calculation requires similar care. Putting quarks and gluons onto a lattice breaks the continuum rotation group $`SO(3)`$ to the discrete cubic point group, $`O_h`$. As a result, states are no longer classified according to a spin quantum number which describes the irreducible representation (irrep) of $`SO(3)`$ they transform under. They have instead one of five labels corresponding to the five irreps of $`O_h`$: $`A_1,A_2,E,T_1`$ and $`T_2`$. Table 1 describes how the representation of $`O_h`$ subduced from spin irreps of $`SO(3)`$ subsequently decompose into irreps of $`O_h`$.

To identify the spin of the state in the continuum, degeneracies across lattice states must be found and compared to the table. For example, tagging a spin 2 state on the lattice requires finding degenerate states in the $`E`$ and $`T_2`$ channels (and no others) in the continuum limit. For the scalar state, this procedure is quite straightforward; a state in the trivial representation, $`A_1`$, which is not degenerate with any other state in the spectrum can be uniquely identified with a continuum $`J=0`$ scalar. This spin analysis was carried out in Ref. Morningstar and Peardon (1999) for the glueball spectrum, and the spins of many continuum states were identified.

## 3 The $`SU(3)`$ Yang-Mills spectrum

Following the procedures outlined in the previous sections, the simulations of the Yang-Mills theory of strongly interacting gluons (without quarks) have reached high levels of precision. Fig. 3 shows the lightest six states in this spectrum of gluon bound-states. Note that both the ground-state and first-excited state in the scalar channel has been determined more reliably after removing the artefacts of the scalar dip and performing a continuum extrapolation. The masses of the scalar glueballs are consistent within errors with earlier determinations.

## 4 Current and future directions

While the simulation of the Yang-Mills theory is now well understood, the inclusion of quantum fluctuations of quark fields is significantly more difficult. Since the Grassmann algebra of fermions in a path integral can not be handled directly by computers, the quark bilinear in the QCD action must be integrated out analytically, leaving a non-local effective action in the gluons alone. The non-local nature of these interactions means the simpler Monte Carlo algorithms used to generate ensembles of gauge field configurations for the Yang-Mills theories become inefficient. More sophisticated techniques are used, but they add a large numerical overhead; QCD simulations including quark dynamics are a factor of 100-1000 times more expensive than those of the Yang-Mills theory.

This issue of including the quark field dynamics remains a topic of a good deal of research in the lattice community and optimal simulation strategies are still actively under investigation. It seems likely that within the near future, the physics of glueballs that can decay into and mix with quark mesons will be investigated. Progress in this direction has begun by other lattice groups Hart et al. (2002) although lattice calculations involving unstable particles are in their infancy and remaind a challenging topic of research. Also, extending the anisotropic lattice technology, which proved so useful for scanning the pure gauge theory, to QCD simulations with dynamical quarks is under investigation.

## 5 Conclusions

Scalar mesons seem to constantly challenge theorists and phenomenologists by turn. At this meeting we heard of the difficulties in finding a convincing picture of the broad range experimental data and in this article, some of the quite distinct problems presented by the scalar glueball to lattice theorists have been outlined. Significant progress in this field is still being made and the Yang-Mills theory has now been mapped out. Full QCD dynamics, with the quark fields playing their role, is a major challenge under investigation by many members of the lattice community Lat03 . At the same time, more detailed properties of the gluonic theory are now being examined, including calculations of the chromoelectric and magnetic matrix elements Dong:Lat03  and the structure form factors.


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# Rule (4) and Continuous Observation

## Introduction

A conscious observer cannot be continuously included in a quantum mechanical system without rule (4). This is demonstrated below in both series and parallel interactions. If the Hamiltonian carries that system through a sequence of discrete series or parallel states, then rule (4) will guarantee that a conscious observer who interacts with the system will experience each step along the way. No state is skipped over, so the observer is ‘continuously’ present. This non-skip property of rule (4) is recognized in some previous papers -. A summary of all four of the governing rules and an explanation of their origin is found in ref. 3.

## A Series Sequence

Imagine a system given by

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(tt_0)=A_0\underset{¯}{B}_0+A_1B_1+A_2B_2+A_3B_3+\text{etc.}$$
(1)
where the first component is initially normalized, and the others become non-zero after the interaction is initiated at time $`t_0`$. The Hamiltonian provides an interaction between the $`0^{th}`$ and $`1^{st}`$ components, the $`1^{st}`$ and $`2^{nd}`$ components, the $`2^{nd}`$ and $`3^{rd}`$ components, etc.; however, there is no interaction term in the Hamiltonian that skips over components. That is, probability current will not flow into the $`2^{nd}`$ component until the $`1^{st}`$ component has acquired some amplitude, and current will not flow into the $`3^{rd}`$ component until the $`2^{nd}`$ has acquired some amplitude, etc.

The letters $`A`$ in eq. 1 represent different states of a macroscopic apparatus, and the letters $`B`$ are understood to represent brain states of the observer. The initial brain state $`\underset{¯}{B}_0`$ is conscious as indicated by the underline. This means that the observer is directly conscious of the apparatus state $`A_0`$. The remaining non-underlined brain states in eq. 1 are not conscious. They are called *ready brain states* defined in refs. 1-3, and are required by rule (2) to appear in eq. 1. One of these ready states will become conscious the moment it is stochastically chosen according to rules (1) and (3); and at that same time, all the other components in eq. 1 will go to zero according to rule (3). The first two rules provide for the existence of a stochastic trigger and ready brain states, and the third provides for the collapse of the wave and the transfer of consciousness from $`\underset{¯}{B}_0`$ to the stochastically chosen brain component. I will first discuss the interaction *without* using rule (4).

As the interaction proceeds, probability current $`J`$ will flow from the $`0^{th}`$ component in eq. 1 to the $`1^{st}`$ component, and from there to the $`2^{nd}`$ component, etc. Figure 1 shows a possible distribution of the square moduli of these component at some time $`t>t_0`$.

To give this a concrete interpretation, imagine that $`A`$ is a $`\beta `$-ray counter, where $`A_0`$ is the initial state with $`0`$ showing on the dial, $`A_1`$ is the counter with 1 on the dial, $`A_2`$ is the counter with 2 on the dial, etc. Figure 1 shows the probability of each of these readings at time $`t`$, where the observer remains conscious of a zero reading up to that time. The observer will not become aware of counts 1, 2, or 3 until there is a stochastic hit on one of these states as a result of the current flow into that state. If the stochastic choice is the $`2^{nd}`$ component as a result of current $`J_{12}`$, then according to rule (3), there will be a state reduction and the system will immediately become

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(tt_{sc})=A_2\underset{¯}{B}_2$$
(2)
where $`t_{sc}`$ is the time of the stochastic choice. If this happens, the observer will be unaware of the apparatus state $`A_1`$ that has been skipped over. His consciousness will go directly from $`\underset{¯}{B}_0`$ in eq. 1 to $`\underset{¯}{B}_2`$ in eq. 2. It is also possible that his consciousness will go directly to $`\underset{¯}{B}_3`$ as a result of the current $`J_{23}`$ into that state.

So far we have followed the first three rules, and it is obvious that they cannot guarantee that the observer is continuously conscious of the apparatus. Otherwise the observer would not skip over states. This deficiency is remedied by the addition of rule (4).

Rule (4): *A transition between two components is forbidden if each is an entanglement containing a ready brain state of the same observer.*

This is a selection rule that forbids transitions that go between ready brain states of the same observer. The rule was initially adopted to avoid an anomaly that appears when a second observer makes a terminal observation of an interaction that was witnessed from the beginning by a first observer (refs. 1 and 3). Without this rule, the second observation might initiate a capture long after the first observer has established that the particle was not captured during the interaction. On this basis, the rule is necessary but seemingly ad hoc. However, it has other important consequences.

## Continuous Consequences of Rule (4)

When an observer is included in a $`\beta `$-counter system with rule (4) in effect, eq. 1 becomes

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(t_{sc}>tt_0)=A_0\underset{¯}{B}_0+A_1B_1(+)A_2B_2(+)A_3B_3(+)\text{etc.}$$
(3)
where the $`0^{th}`$ and $`1^{st}`$ components are the only ones that are actively involved before there is a stochastic hit at time $`t_{sc}`$. The parenthesis around the + sign means that current cannot flow between the indicated components because each one contains a ready brain state, and rule (4) forbids a transition between ready brain states. Therefore, current cannot flow between the $`1^{st}`$ and $`2^{nd}`$ components in eq. 3, or between the $`2^{nd}`$ and $`3^{rd}`$ components, or between any two of the higher order components. So prior to a stochastic hit, current will only flow from the $`0^{th}`$ to the $`1^{st}`$ component as shown in fig. 2.

Therefore, with rule (4) in effect, the $`1^{st}`$ component *will* be chosen and the correlated brain state *will* become conscious. It will be chosen because all of the current from the normalized $`0^{th}`$ component will pore into the $`1^{st}`$ component making $`J_{01}𝑑t=1.0`$, after which there will be a collapse to the $`1^{st}`$ component because of rule (3) and the associated brain state will become conscious. Apparently, the $`1^{st}`$ component will not be skipped over by the conscious observer.

With the choice of the $`1^{st}`$ component, the process will begin all over again as shown in the middle diagram of fig. 3. This also leads with certainty to a stochastic choice and conscious awareness of the $`2^{nd}`$ component. That certainty is accomplished by the wording of rule (1). This rule requires that the probability per unit time is given by the current flow $`J_{12}`$ divided by the total square modulus at that moment. The total integral $`J_{12}𝑑t`$ is less than 1.0 in the middle diagram of fig. 3, but it is restored to 1.0 when divided by the square modulus. It is therefore certain that the $`2^{nd}`$ component will be chosen and that the correlated brain state will become conscious. That is, the $`2^{nd}`$ component will not be skipped over by a conscious observer.

And finally, with the choice of the $`2^{nd}`$ component, the process will resume again as shown in the last diagram of fig. 3. This leads with certainty to a stochastic choice and conscious awareness of the $`3^{rd}`$ component.

It follows that all of the counter states are experienced sequentially by a conscious observer. Rule (4) has the effect of placing the observer in continuous contact with the counter at every stage along the way. This is in contrast to the standard quantum mechanical observer who can only have momentary contact with a quantum mechanical system. Even with a high but finite frequency of momentary contacts as in the Zeno effect, there will always be a finite probability that an intermittent observer will miss one of the counts on the counter .

It may seem that the effect of rule (4) on the dynamics of the system will alter the statistics. This issue is dealt with in another paper in which it is shown that rule (4) has *no effect* on the over-all statistics .

## A Parallel Sequence

Now imagine a parallel sequence of states in which the process may go either clockwise or counterclockwise as shown in fig. 4. Each state includes a macroscopic piece of laboratory apparatus plus an observer who interacts with the apparatus. The Hamiltonian is assumed to provide clockwise interactions going from the $`0^{th}`$ to the $`r^{th}`$ state and from the $`r^{th}`$ to the final state $`f`$, as well as a counterclockwise pathway from the $`0^{th}`$ to the $`l^{th}`$ state and from the $`l^{th}`$ to the final state $`f`$. The Hamiltonian does not provide a direct route from the $`0^{th}`$ to the final state. The observer is initially conscious of the $`0^{th}`$ state as indicated by the underlined $`\underset{¯}{B}_0`$.

Without rule (4), current will initially flow from $`A_0\underset{¯}{B}_0`$ to the two intermediate states $`A_rB_r`$ and $`A_lB_l`$, and as these states gain amplitude, current will flow from them to the final state. Maybe the first stochastic hit will result from the current flow from the $`0^{th}`$ state to one of the intermediate states. In that case, either $`B_r`$ or $`B_l`$ will become conscious and all other states would be reduced to zero. The process would then start over as current flows from the surviving intermediate state to the final state. This would surely lead to a stochastic hit on the final state, causing $`B_f`$ to become conscious with all other components going to zero. The observer would then see either a complete clockwise or counterclockwise progression in which the intermediate state appears in proper sequence.

It is also possible that the first stochastic hit will result from the current flow into the final state from the intermediate states. In that case, $`B_f`$ will become conscious and the other states will go immediately to zero, causing the observer to skip over the intermediate states entirely. The observer will see the initial and the final state, but he will not observe that the process went clockwise or counterclockwise. The case is similar to that described by Heisenberg of an elementary particle that is observed at an initial position and a final position, but nowhere in between. Quantum mechanics gives us no reason to believe that such a particle follows any particular path from the beginning to the end. Feynman showed that the particle exists in a superposition of all possible paths joining the initial to the final state. The same might be said of the intermediate states in fig. 4 when they are skipped over by the conscious observer. In this case, the state of the system between the initial and final observations would be a quantum mechanical superposition of the two intermediate states 222In this comparison, the difference between a macroscopic particle and a macroscopic apparatus is: That environmental decoherence makes the components of the macroscopic superposition incoherent.. The observer would have to conclude that it is intrinsically uncertain whether the apparatus followed a clockwise or a counterclockwise path.

## Rule (4) in Parallel Case

With rule (4) in place, probability current cannot initially flow from either of the intermediate states to the final state, for that would carry a ready brain state into another ready brain state of the same observer. The dotted lines in fig. 5 indicate these forbidden transitions. A direct transition from the initial to the final state is also forbidden because it is not provided for in the Hamiltonian.

This means that the first stochastic hit *will be* on the current flow from either the $`0^{th}`$ to the $`r^{th}`$ state, or the $`0^{th}`$ to the $`l^{th}`$ state, thereby determining that the process will be clockwise or counterclockwise. The chosen intermediate state will then become conscious and all the other states will go to zero. The process will then resume with current flowing from the chosen intermediate state to the final state. A second stochastic hit will make the final state conscious with the intermediate state going to zero.

It is therefore clear that with rule (4) in place, the observer will *always* experience one or the other intermediate state, so he will always know if the process is clockwise or counterclockwise. He will never skip a step. Again,rule (4) assures that the observer’s inclusion in the state of the system is a continuous one.

## A Continuous Variable

The above examples involve the “continuous” observation of a “discontinuous” quantum mechanical variable in which the stochastic chooser is required to go from one value of the variable to the next. Rule (4) guarantees that none of these finitely separated steps is passed over by an observer. On the other hand, if the variable itself is classical and continuous, then continuous observation is possible without the necessity of stochastic jumps. In that case we do not need rule (4) or any of the rules (1-4), for they do not prevent or in any way qualify classical motion.

However, a classical variable may require a quantum mechanical jump-start. For instance, the classical mechanical device that is used to seal the fate of Schr dinger’s cat begins its motion with a stochastic hit. That is, the decision to begin the motion (or not) is left to a $`\beta `$-decay. The details of this are worked out in ref. 2 (eqs. 4 and 6 and subsequent discussion). It is shown there that rule (4) forces the motion to begin at the beginning, insuring that no value of the classical variable is passed over in the presence of a conscious cat. If the mechanical device is a hammer that falls from a vertical position to release an anesthesia of some kind, rule (4) guarantees that the hammer will begin its motion from the vertical position if the conscious cat is watching at the time. Without rule (4), the cat might see the hammer begin its fall at some other angle; because without it, probability current will flow into angles other than zero. However, with rule (4) in place, no angle will be passed over in the eyes of the on looking cat.

The more general relationship between quantum mechanical and classical change is described in another paper .


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# ADP-03-130/T566 DESY-03-209 Hybrid and Exotic Mesons from FLIC Fermions

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Major experimental efforts are currently aimed at determining the possible existence of exotic mesons; mesons having quantum numbers that cannot be carried by the minimal Fock space component of a quark-antiquark pair. Of particular mention is the proposed program of the GlueX collaboration associated with the forthcoming upgrade of the Jefferson Laboratory facility. The observation of exotic states and the determination of their properties would elucidate aspects of QCD which are relatively unexplored.

The quantum numbers $`J^{PC}=0^+,0^{},1^+,`$ etc. cannot be carried by a quark-antiquark pair in a ground-state $`S`$-wave. Lattice QCD calculations exploring the non-trivial role of explicit gluon degrees of freedom in carrying the quantum numbers of the meson suggest that exotic meson states do indeed exist and have a mass the order of 2 GeV . These findings are further supported here.

## 2 SIMULATION METHODOLOGY

Exotic quantum numbers can be constructed by merging standard local interpolating fields $`\overline{q}^a(x)\mathrm{\Gamma }q^a(x)`$ with chromo-electric, $`E_i^{ab}(x)`$, or chromo-magnetic fields, $`B_i^{ab}(x)`$. The $`J^{PC}`$ quantum numbers of the interpolator are derived from the direct product of those associated with the quark bilinear and $`E_i^{ab}(1^{})`$ or $`B_i^{ab}(1^+)`$. For example, combining the vector current of the $`\rho `$ meson with a chromo-magnetic field, $`1^{}1^+`$ provides $`0^+1^+2^+`$ with the $`0^+`$: $`\overline{q}^a\gamma _iq^bB_i^{ab}`$ ($`\pi `$ meson) and the $`1^+`$: $`ϵ_{ijk}\overline{q}^a\gamma _iq^bB_j^{ab}`$ (exotic). We restrict ourselves to the lowest energy-dimension operators, as these provide better signal with smaller statistical errors. Table 1 summarizes the standard and hybrid interpolating fields explored herein.

The formulation of effective interpolating fields for the creation and annihilation of exotic meson states continues to be an active area of research. Here we consider local interpolating fields. Gauge-invariant Gaussian smearing  is applied at the fermion source ($`t=3`$), and local sinks are used to maintain strong signal in the two-point correlation functions. Our experience is that smeared-smeared correlation functions suffer an increase in error bar size relative to smeared-local correlation functions. Chromo-electric and -magnetic fields are created from APE-smeared links  at both the source and sink using the highly-improved $`𝒪(a^4)`$-improved lattice field strength tensor . The smearing fraction $`\alpha =0.7`$ (keeping 0.3 of the original link)..

Propagators are generated using the fat-link irrelevant clover (FLIC) fermion action  where the irrelevant Wilson and clover operators of the fermion action are constructed using fat links while the relevant operators use the untouched (thin) gauge links. FLIC fermions provide a new form of nonperturbative $`𝒪(a)`$ improvement  where near-continuum results are obtained at finite lattice spacing. Access to the light quark mass regime is enabled by the improved chiral properties of the lattice fermion action .

The following results are based on 222 mean-field $`𝒪(a^2)`$-improved Luscher-Weisz  gauge fields on a $`16^3\times 32`$ lattice at $`\beta =4.60`$ providing a lattice spacing of $`a=0.122(2)`$ fm set by the string tension $`\sqrt{\sigma }=440`$ MeV.

## 3 RESULTS

Of the hybrid interpolators listed in Table 1, only the interpolating fields merging the large spinor components of the quark and antiquark fields provide a clear mass plateau. Figure 1 illustrates the effective masses $`M(t)=\mathrm{log}(G(t+1)/G(t))`$, obtained from the second and fourth pion ($`0^+`$) interpolators of Table 1 for our intermediate quark mass ($`m_\pi ^20.6\mathrm{GeV}^2`$). Here $`G(t)`$ is the standard two-point function projected to zero three-momentum. Excellent agreement is seen between the standard and hybrid interpolator-based correlation functions. Similar results are seen in Fig. 2 comparing effective masses obtained from the first and third $`\rho `$-meson ($`1^{}`$) interpolators of Table 1. The effective mass plot for the exotic $`1^+`$ meson is illustrated in Fig. 3, where a plateau at early times is observed confirming the existence of the exotic $`1^+`$.

Table 2 summarizes these preliminary results. Further work on this topic will focus on extrapolating results to physical quark masses and using variational techniques to extract the masses of excited mesonic states. This research is supported by the Australian National Computing Facility for Lattice Gauge Theory and the Australian Research Council.


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# Comment on ”Exceptional points and double poles of the 𝑆 matrix”

## Abstract

In a recent paper \[Phys. Rev. E 67, 026204 (2003)\], Rotter calculates the geometric phases that are picked up by the eigenvectors of a two-state quantum system when an exceptional point is encircled. In addition to the geometric phases observed by Dembowski *et al.* in a microwave cavity experiment \[Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 787 (2001)\], she finds a phase factor of $`i`$. We show that Rotters results are inconsistent.

In Dembo:01  an exceptional point (EP), i.e. a branch point singularity of fourth order Heiss:99 , of a parametric dissipative microwave cavity has been observed experimentally by tracking the development of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the resonator while the EP is encircled. It has been found that along the closed loop around the EP the eigenvectors pick up geometrical phases in accordance with Heiss:99 .

In a recent paper Rotter:03 , Rotter criticizes this experiment and suggests the existence of an unobserved additional geometrical phase factor of $`i`$. This suggestion is inconsistent.

In Rotter:03 , Rotter states in Eq. (24) her transformation scheme for the two eigenvectors, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2`$, when an EP is encircled (denoted in Rotter:03  by the symbol ’$``$’):

$$\{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1,\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2\}\{i\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2,+i\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1\}$$
(1)
A second full surrounding with the same orientation gives according to Eq. (25) of Rotter:03 :

$$\{i\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2,+i\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1\}\{+\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1,+\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2\}$$
(2)
By reversing this second loop, i.e. reading Eq. (2) from right to left, the transformation scheme for encircling an EP *with the opposite orientation* directly follows to be:

$$\{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1,\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2\}\{i\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2,+i\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1\}$$
(3)
In Eq. (27) of Rotter:03 , Rotter states however, that encircling the EP with the orientation opposite to that of Eq. (2) yields:

$$\{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1,\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2\}\{+i\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_2,i\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}_1\}$$
(4)
This contradicts her earlier result: Equations (3) and (4) are incompatible with each other.

Since Rotters statements are inconsistent we conclude that the additional phase factor of $`i`$ as suggested in Rotter:03  and other articles of her RotterVarious  is not present.


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# Realization of an Interacting Two-Valley AlAs Bilayer System

## Abstract

By using different widths for two AlAs quantum wells comprising a bilayer system, we force the X-point conduction-band electrons in the two layers to occupy valleys with different Fermi contours, electron effective masses, and g-factors. Since the occupied valleys are at different X-points of the Brillouin zone, the interlayer tunneling is negligibly small despite the close electron layer spacing. We demonstrate the realization of this system via magneto-transport measurements and the observation of a phase-coherent, bilayer $`\nu `$=1 quantum Hall state flanked by a reentrant insulating phase.

Two-dimensional (2D) electron systems subjected to large perpendicular magnetic fields exhibit a wealth of phenomena, such as the fractional quantum Hall effect, that are associated with electron-electron interactions. When two 2D electron systems are brought in close proximity, the additional, interlayer interaction can lead to new many-body states that have no analogue in the single-layer case. Examples include quantum Hall states (QHSs) at even-denominator fillings $`\nu `$=1/2 and 3/2 suen92 ; eisenstein92  and a special, bilayer $`\nu `$=1 QHS with interlayer phase coherence murphy94  ($`\nu `$ is the Landau level filling factor of the bilayer system). Such states form when the interlayer distance is on the order of or smaller than the magnetic length. It is also often desirable to have as little interlayer tunneling as possible so that, e.g., independent contacts can be made to the two layers spielman00 ; moreover, negligible tunneling makes the theoretical treatment of the phenomena in these systems easier.

We report here the fabrication of a novel bilayer system comprised of two AlAs quantum wells (QWs) with different widths, wherein the electrons in the two layers occupy different conduction-band valleys. The key to the fabrication of our sample is the following. Bulk AlAs has an indirect band-gap with the conduction band minima at the X-points of the Brillouin zone. The constant energy ellipsoids (or valleys) formed at these minima are anisotropic with two characteristic effective masses (measured in units of the free electron mass): mt=0.2 for the two transverse directions, and ml=1 for the longitudinal direction. This is somewhat similar to Si, except that in Si there are six ellipsoids centered around six equivalent points along the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$-lines of the Brillouin zone, while in AlAs we have three (six half-) ellipsoids at the X-points. When electrons are confined along the growth (z) direction in an AlAs QW, one might expect that only the out-of-plane (XZ) valley would be occupied because the larger electron mass along the confinement direction should lower the energy of this valley. This is indeed the case in Si MOSFETs and QWs. However, in AlAs QWs grown on GaAs substrates, the strain induced by the lattice mismatch between AlAs and GaAs causes the in-plane valleys to be occupied, unless the QW is narrower than a threshold value of approximately 55 $`\AA `$ vankesteren89 ; lay93 ; yamada94 ; depoortere00 . By growing a modulation-doped, double QW sample with well widths on either side of this threshold, we force the electrons in each AlAs QW to occupy differently oriented valleys. Moreover, in our sample, anisotropic strain in the plane lifts the degeneracy between the in-plane valleys so that, in the wider QW, only one of the valleys (XX) is occupied lay93 ; yamada94 ; depoortere00 .

Because the occupied valleys are at different points of the Brillouin zone, the interlayer tunneling is strongly suppressed even though the layers are very closely spaced. Another novel aspect of this system is that the Fermi contour shapes, effective masses, and g-factors in the two layers are different. We demonstrate the realization of this system via magneto-transport measurements. We also report the observation of a phase coherent QHS at filling factor $`\nu `$=1, surrounded by a reentrant insulating phase. In our sample, the $`\nu `$=1 QHS is insensitive to the application of an in-plane magnetic field, evincing that tunneling is indeed negligible despite the very small interlayer separation.

We studied a Si-modulation doped AlAs bilayer grown by molecular beam epitaxy on a GaAs (100) substrate. The structure consists of a 100 $`\AA `$ wide QW in the front and a 45 $`\AA `$ QW in the back (substrate side), surrounded by Al0.4Ga0.6As barriers and separated by a 28 $`\AA `$ GaAs barrier, giving a QW center-to-center separation of approximately 100 $`\AA `$. The sample was lithographically patterned in a Hall bar configuration, and ohmic contacts to both layers were made by depositing a AuGeNi layer and alloying in a reducing atmosphere. Metallic front and back gates were added to allow for adjustment of the total charge density in the bilayer (ntot) and the densities in the narrow and wide wells (nN and nW) individually. We determined ntot, nN, and nW from a combination of Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) and Hall measurements. Typical values of ntot in our experiment were in the range of 2 to 5 x 1011 cm-2 with a mobility of $``$ 2.2 m2/Vs. We made measurements in 3He and dilution refrigerators with base temperatures of 300 mK and 40 mK, respectively. In both refrigerators, the sample was mounted on a tilting stage so that the angle, $`\theta `$, between the normal to the sample and the magnetic field could be varied from 0o to 90o in situ. We used standard low-frequency lock-in techniques for transport measurements. Prior to measurements, the sample was illuminated with a red LED while a positive bias was applied to the gates in order to establish ohmic contact with the wells as detailed in depoortere03 .

We first demonstrate how we change and monitor the densities in each QW. In Fig. 1 we show the Fourier transform (FT) spectra (main figures) of SdH oscillations (upper insets) at different values of front and back gate biases (VFG and VBG), corresponding to different nW and nN. The X-point conduction band energies and the orientation of the occupied valleys in each layer are shown schematically in the lower insets of each panel. For each pair of VFG and VBG, we also measure ntot from the slope of the Hall resistance at low magnetic fields. To make the connection to the frequency of the SdH oscillations, we divide the measured ntot by the Landau level degeneracy, e/h, and show the resulting frequency by a vertical arrow marked as ntot. Figure 1(a) corresponds to the simplest case where all the electrons reside in the narrow QW. We observe strong SdH oscillations, with $`\rho `$xx minima at every integer $`\nu `$$``$5. Surprisingly, the minima at even-integer fillings are weaker than those at odd-integer fillings, and disappear at the lowest fields. This is consistent with our measurements of 2D electrons occupying the XZ valley in single, narrow AlAs QWs, and comes about because of the ratio ($``$ 0.7) of the Zeeman and cyclotron energies. The FT spectrum of the oscillations exhibits two peaks as commonly observed in a single-layer 2D electron system tutuc02 : a higher frequency peak stems from the spin-resolved Landau levels (at sufficiently large fields) and its position coincides with ntot, while a peak at half this frequency originates from the spin-unresolved Landau levels (at low fields). In Fig. 1(b), we have increased ntot and shifted the balance of electrons between the two layers so that now nN = nW. The SdH trace and its FT spectrum are characteristic of a balanced bilayer electron system with negligible interlayer tunneling, namely, two 2D layers in parallel: $`\rho `$xx minima are observed only at even integer fillings (for $`\nu `$ $`>`$ 1), and the FT spectrum does not show a peak at ntot but rather at a value corresponding to ntot/2. We also have SdH and Hall data for other configurations where the electrons are distributed unevenly between the two layers. From such data, we can determine ntot, nN, and nW. However, we are not able to shift all the electrons into the wide QW because of experimental limitations on the maximum gate biases we could apply to the sample.

Next, we measured the carrier effective mass (m\*), from the temperature dependence of the amplitude of the SdH oscillations, for the case where all the electrons reside in the narrow QW. At a density of nN = 1.8x1011 cm-2, we measured a mass of 0.44$`\pm `$0.03, much larger than m\*=0.2 expected for in-plane motion if the electrons occupy the XZ valley. This surprising result, however, is consistent with our results in single, narrow AlAs QW samples that have shown a dependence of m* on the density: in a single, 45 $`\AA `$ wide AlAs QW, we have measured an m* that changes from 0.23 at a high density of 7.2x1011 cm-2 to 0.44 at a low density of 1.8x1011 cm-2. A similar m* enhancement at low densities was also reported in Si-MOSFETs shashkin02  where the enhancement is attributed to electron-electron interaction. We could not measure m* in our wider AlAs QW since we were not able to put all the electrons in this well only. However, for an in-plane valley, electron-electron interactions can enhance the effective electron mass beyond the expected bare value of m\*=(mlmt)1/2=0.45, and our measurements of mass in single wide AlAs QWs are consistently higher than this bare value. It is therefore likely that, in our balanced bilayer system \[Fig. 1(b)\], m* in the wider QW is larger than m* in the narrow QW.

Our most convincing evidence establishing that the electrons in our sample occupy different valleys in the two layers is provided by the response of the system to a magnetic field, B||, applied parallel to the sample plane. In Fig. 2 we show magneto-resistance traces, as a function of B||, for two distributions of charge, similar to Fig. 1: one in which all the electrons are in the narrow QW, and one where the charge density is distributed evenly between the two QWs. In both cases, there are pronounced kinks in the magneto-resistance traces, indicated by the vertical arrows in Fig. 2. Previous investigations in single-layer 2D systems, both theoretical and experimental dolgopolov00 ; tutuc01 , have identified the position of this kink (BP) as the onset of complete spin polarization of the carriers, that is the field beyond which the Zeeman energy exceeds the Fermi energy of the 2D system. In a simple picture, where a linear spin polarization with B|| is assumed, the field at which the full polarization occurs is determined by the product g*m* (g* is the effective g-factor). In the inset to Fig. 2, we have plotted the measured values of BP as a function of nN and nW, determined from the Hall and SdH data for different pairs of VFG and VBG. In the same figure, we have also included BP measured in single narrow and wide AlAs QWs depoortere02 . The data fall on two distinct curves, approximately straight lines, but with very different slopes. We will discuss the quantitative details and implications of this data in a future communication. It is clear, however, that BP is nearly a factor of two larger for electrons occupying the XZ valley (narrow QW) than for those occupying the XX (wide QW) valley, implying that g*m* is twice as small in the former case finitelayer . This conclusion is corroborated by our measurements in tilted magnetic fields where we observe crossings of the Landau levels at particular tilt angles, $`\theta `$, whose values are a measure of the product g*m* of the 2D system. In the narrow AlAs QW of the present sample, or in our single, narrow AlAs QWs, we observe crossings at values of $`\theta `$ that are very different from the values at which the Landau levels in our wide AlAs QWs cross. We emphasize that, in addition to the different mass and g-factor, there is a basic difference in the shapes of the (in-plane) Fermi contours for the two layers: circular for the XZ valley in the narrow QW and elliptical for the XX valley in the wide QW.

Next, we present evidence that interlayer tunneling is small in our bilayer and that the system exhibits phenomena arising from strong interlayer interaction. In Fig. 3(a) we show $`\rho _{xx}`$ versus perpendicular magnetic field traces for a balanced state of the bilayer at three different temperatures. Up to B $``$ 6 T, QHSs are observed only at even $`\nu `$, consistent with two 2D parallel layers with little or no interlayer tunneling. At $`\nu `$=1, however, a strong $`\rho _{xx}`$ minimum is observed, which we associate with the phase-coherent, bilayer QHS. Such a QHS has been reported in GaAs bilayer electron murphy94 ; spielman00  and hole hyndman96 ; tutuc03  systems; it is stabilized by strong interlayer interaction, exists even in the limit of vanishing interlayer tunneling, and occurs when d/lB is less than about 1.6, where d is the distance between the electron layers and lB is the magnetic length. For the trace in Fig. 3(a), d/lB=1.27, consistent with these previous reports. From the temperature dependence of $`\rho _{xx}`$ at $`\nu `$=1, we obtain an energy gap of approximately 1 K for this state.

In Fig. 3(a), we also see the emergence of a reentrant insulating phase (IP) around the $`\nu `$=1 minimum, extending from approximately $`\nu `$=1.29 to 1.04 and beyond $`\nu `$=0.97. Previous results have suggested that this phase may represent a pinned, bilayer, Wigner crystal state, where interlayer interaction stabilizes the state at a filling that is higher than what would be expected based on single-layer data manoharan96 ; tutuc03 . We note that the presence of the IP near the $`\nu `$=1 minimum in the present bilayer system is consistent with previous experimental results. In particular, interacting GaAs bilayer holes, whose effective mass is comparable to the mass of AlAs electrons, show an IP that is also reentrant around $`\nu `$=1 tutuc03 .

To examine the interlayer tunneling in our system, we measured $`\rho _{xx}`$ traces in tilted magnetic fields \[Fig. 3(b)\]. The component of the field applied parallel to the layers suppresses tunneling by shifting the Fermi contours of the electrons in the two layers with respect to one another in momentum space hu92 . Consequently, one would expect that, as the parallel field component is introduced, the strength of the $`\nu `$=1 minimum will change if single-particle tunneling is playing a role in stabilizing it. Even a small amount of tunneling can lead to noticeable weakening of the $`\nu `$=1 QHS with parallel field murphy94 ; yang94 . The fact that the $`\rho _{xx}`$ minimum at $`\nu `$=1 in our bilayer does not depend on the tilt angle and the parallel field provides additional evidence that interlayer tunneling in our system is small.

We conclude by making several remarks. First, while all our data point to the small value of tunneling in our bilayer system, we do not know the strength of tunneling quantitatively. Theoretically, the tunneling should be quite small; indeed, in an ideal system, mixing between XX and XZ valleys is forbidden. Optical measurements in GaAs/AlAs superlattices, however, have indicated that interface disorder can lead to some mixing tribe95 . Direct measurements of tunneling in our system will therefore be needed to assess the amount of tunneling quantitatively. Second, we note that the difference in effective masses and well widths for the layers implies that the ground state subband energies for the two layers are different, even when the layers have equal densities. This, together with the difference in g-factors, means that the resulting Landau level fan diagram is rather complex. One can achieve a situation, for example, where all the electrons in one layer are spin-polarized while there is only partial polarization in the other layer. Also, keeping the Fermi energies of the layers equal as a function of sweeping magnetic field requires some charge transfer between the wells. There are, therefore, possibly interesting phenomena at high magnetic fields that can be explored in this system zhu00 . Third, the system has some remarkable properties even at zero or small magnetic fields. For example, as shown in Fig. 2, one can significantly tune the g*m* product in this system by applying gate biases. A system with a gate-tunable g*m* may find application in emerging fields such as quantum computing divincenzo99 . Fourth, measurements of interlayer Coulomb drag in a system where the electrons occupy different valleys can be interesting. Finally, a bilayer system with different effective masses in the two layers might host a novel superconducting state macdonald03 .

We thank A.H. MacDonald, R. Winkler, and P.C. Klipstein for helpful discussions, and the NSF and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for financial support. Part of the work was performed at the Florida National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, which is also supported by the NSF; we thank E. Palm, T. Murphy, and G. Jones for technical support.