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# Position-sensitive detector for the 6-meter optical telescope

## 1 Introduction.

The light fluxes from the celestial objects under study are so weak that even in observations with large telescopes a photon falls on one element of the image far from every second. For such fluxes a maximum quantum efficiency is an obvious requirement to the detector. And in our investigations of relativistic objects for the purpose of search for variability of quantum fluxes up to microseconds it is necessary to analyse the time series of quantum registration moments. In this case the variability manifests itself in the short-wave region of the optical spectrum. These requirements defined use of position-sensi- tive detectors (PSD) in observations with our 6-m op- tical telescope. The PSDs represent vacuum photoelectron tubes with microchannel amplification and position-sensitive collectors. The advantage of this type of detectors is that the sensitivity of their photocathodes is sufficiently high, and the most important is the fact that there is a possibility of detection of quantum arrival times with an accuracy up to dozens of picoseconds in prospect. This fact makes the PSD suitable for investigations of relativistic objects and we are working in this field now.

## 2 Design of the PSD and duties of its main components.

A schematic view of the detector is given in Fig.1.

The numbers designate the following: 1 - input optical disk with a photocathode on its internal surface; 2 - anode (by changing its voltage one can change the electro-optical magnification within 0.5-1.5); 3 - antidistortion ring; 4 - stack of microchannel amplification formed by three or two microchannel plates (MCP); 5 - metal rings which create an electrostatic field of such a configuration which provides a maximum possible working field at minimum geometrical distortions and charge losses at the periphery; 6 - position-sensitive collector of quadrant type. This collector has an advantage over a wedge and strip ones \[T. Arkhipova et al.\] in considerably smaller interelectrode capacitances. This permits one to diminish the amplification of the MCP-stack and extend the range of operation of the detector towards greater load. A lower capacitance will lead to decrease of noises of the amplifiers, which gives an improvement of spatial resolution. The disadvantage of the quadrant collector is the deterioration of the resolution at the periphery; however it is of minor importance when observing star-like objects because the object observed can be placed in the centre.

## 3 The electronic schemes and design of the photosensitive device.

The important components of the device are signal amplifiers of the PSD collector. We use integrated curcuit amplifiers of The National Centre of High Energy Physics (NCHEP) \[O. Dvornikov et al\]. A computer modeling with allowance made for the PSD parameters having a quadrant collector made it possible to choose an optimum value of the time of shaping of 0.25$`\mu `$s, an equivalent noise of no more than 600 electrons was provided. With an amplification of the MCP stack by several units 106, the statistical noise for the central area of the collector is equal approximately to the same value and this allows an image format no smaller than 300x300 to be obtained. Such a resolution complies with the astrophysical requirements. The amplifier is made like charge-sensitive ones (CSA) and consists of two sections \[V. Debur, A. Solin\]. The first section is intended for the transformation of the input charge to the output voltage with a decay time of 2.5$`\mu `$s. When passing to the second section the pulse is shortened to a value of 0.25$`\mu `$s with quasi-Gaussian shaping. The amplifier provides a transformation coefficient of 30 mV/fC necessary for operation with the analog to digital converters (ADCs) having an input signal range of 2 V, with the nominal gain of the MCP stack. The amplifiers are not overloaded and make it possible to register adjacent pulses separated by the time a few times as short as the pulse duration. For digitization of signal we use 10-digit ADCs of type AD871. The equivalent noise charge of the CSA equal to 600 electrons corresponds to a value of about 3 mV at 30mV/fC, that is the ADCs provide the measurements of signals with sufficient accuracy. The check of the registration channels by way of supplying test signals to the CSA inputs yielded a FWHM value of about 2-3 channels for the each of four amplifiers. The timing channel of the detector is needed for the formation of the start pulses of the ADCs and production of strobe pulses for recording the time moments of the registered quants. The amplifier and discriminator connected to the output plate of the MCP stack are also designed by using of ICs of the NCHEP. The whole description of electronics questions is given in \[V. Debur, A. Solin \]. The external view of the device is displayed in Fig. 2.

The entrance window covers the space around the PSD, which is cooled by a single-stage thermoelectrical refrigerator. The heat from the hot surface is withdrawn with the help of the processor cooler. The housing of the PSD contains the PSD and amplifiers. The side compartments hold the high voltage supply resistors of the PSD, the ADCs and auxiliary plates. At the back are located plug-and- sockets for connection of power supply and output signals to the CAMAC-crate in which the modules of the system Quantochron and necessary service modules are placed. The overall dimensions of the device are 140x180x290 (mm).

In development of the photosensitive device it was required that it should be operated with the available registration system Quantochron \[A. Zhuravkov et al\]. The output information must represent 16-digits words with TTL-levels and strobe-pulse for measuring the time moments.

## 4 Data registration

The PSD operates as part of the acquisition complex incorpora ting also a device for receiving photocount flux codes, a computer for control and data acquisition, which is located in the local net with the computer of the astronomer- operator. The functional diagram of the photometrical complex is shown in Fig. 3.

The flux of photocounts from the PSD must be transferred to the computer data storage in the form it is received by the detector, as counts of registrat ion time of all the quanta and their coordinates, the rate of count arriving must be up to 100 000 quants/s. For this purpose, we use the time-code converter Quantochron . Primarily it was designed for registration of the data flows which have a 16-bit coordinate field (265x256 elements). The application of the PSD with a quadrant collector and the use of 10-bits ADC demanded extension of capacity up to 40 bits, this is why as a temporal measure we use a multiplexor which disconnects each arriving 40-bits photocount into three sequential messages: 8, 16 and 16 bits. The 8 bits in the first message are used for auxiliary information.

## 5 Characteristics of the PSD.

The single electron pulses distribution of the detector has been derived by summation of all 4 channels and is presented in Fig. 4. Despite the fact that all individual channels have a nearly exponential distribution, the common distribution has a well defined peak, which allows a conclusion to be made that the acquisition system registers practically all the pulses. Nevertheless the branch from the side of small amplitudes impairs the spatial resolution at the periphery. The shape of the amplitude distribution is preserved at count rates up to 100 cps and above, the photocathode being uniformly illuminated. With point-like illumination, like the star image, at count rates higher than 10 cps the images of stars begin to differ from gaussian by a flatter peak and then begin to acquire a dip at the centre.

The characteristics of the spectral response of the photocathodes of two different types are presented in Fig. 5.

The photocathode of the ”red” PSD is on a fiber disc of ordinary glass, while the photocathode of the ”blue” PSD is on a disc of the UV glass. The latter was made to achieve maximum sensitivity in the ultraviolet region. The presented types of the photocathodes largely differ in thermoelectron emission current. One can work with the ”blue” photocathode at a room temperature without cooling. It has about 50 electrons/s from the whole area, whereas the ”red” photocathode has about 15000 electrons/s at a room temperature and it is necessary cooling down to $`0^0`$C.

Figure 6 shows 512x512 elements detector field with image of emitting points got as a result of photons coordinates binning.

Reduction of collected data is performed for each received photon separately and is based on knowledge of counts distortion mechanisms related to electronic clound formation geometry.

Some of this process features are:

* Different scales of image for different integral charge levels of each photo count - for lower charges image scale is bigger than for higher ones. Functional shape of inverse charge value and point coordinates for one physical source is nearly linear. Such scale dependency correction makes it possible to increase image sharpness over the whole detector field.
* Spherical image distortion may be successfully compensated by tangential correction.
* Cross-like central condensation on flat-field image is due to superposition of electronic density gap in electronic clouds centres and dielectric gap between detector quadrants and may be corrected using arctangent coordinates transformation. This transformation must also take into account non-perpendicularity of collector quadrants edges.

Fig. 7 shows the result of applying these transformations to image.

Residual non-singular central condensation may be compensated by polynomial corrction.

The FWHM of the point spread function at the centre is less than 100 $`\mu `$m. Such quality is quite satisfactory since the size of the stars in our optical system is generally 400-500 $`\mu `$m, and only on rare nights it may diminish to 150 $`\mu `$m. The field that we observe usually contains one investigated star. At the present time we are working over the increase of information capacity of images being acquired. For this purpose, we use polarization and light-dividing elements which allow observation of the object and comparison star simultaneously in one field, in different polarization and spectral intervals. In so doing, the number of object images increases to eight \[V. Plokhotnichenko et al\].

## 6 Prospects of development of the PSD at SAO.

The improvement of the spatial resolution can be attained through increasing the gain of the MCP stack and may come quite closely to the value defined by the size of the MCP channels, about 15 $`\mu `$m and less. The requirements to the noise of the charge sensitive amplifiers become more stringent. The improvement of the temporal resolution can be brought to less than nanosecond if required. However, in our investigations it makes no sense to make it an order of magnitude better than the dead time of the system. And we evaluate the reserve of improvement of the dead time as nearly an order, since by the present time integral circuits of multichannel amplifiers capable of operating at shaping times of about 100 ns have been developed. The increase in the sensitive area diameter to 40 mm seems to be relatively simple, but the increase up to 80 mm is possible only with the use of electro-optical diminishing in the input camera. The quantum efficiency depends on the quality of the photocathode, and its possible to have almost 40% at maximum. The dark current must be much lower than the night sky background, but the cooling of the photocathode is a relatively simple task. The increase in the upper count rate for a point image presents a problem, however, it is possible by nearly an order of magnitude for spread images provided that the dead time is decreased. It appears worth-while for the authors to pass to a multielement collector, for instance, 8-elements hexagonal or up to 19-elements. The progress achieved in integral circuits and computers makes possible registration and reduction of signals from such collectors.

## Acknowledgements

This investigation was supported by the Russian Ministry of Science, Russian Foundation of Basic Researches (grant 01-02-17857), Federal Program ”Astronomy” and INTAS (grant 96-542).


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# Adiabatic evolution of a coupled-qubit Hamiltonian

## I Introduction

The basic elements for processing quantum information (e.g. to perform quantum computation qcomp ) are quantum bits (qubits), namely two level systems exhibiting quantum coherence between the states, quantum register (arrays of qubits) and quantum gates bar95 . Computations are performed by the creation of quantum superpositions of the qubits and by controlled entanglement of the information on the qubits mqc2 . The main goal of any physical implementation of a quantum information-processing device is therefore to control systems of coupled qubit with a phase coherence time long enough to permit the necessary manipulations. Various physical systems have been proposed for the physical implementation of qubits, including photons photon , trapped ions ion , spins in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) nmr , electrodynamics cavities qed  and semiconductor quantum dots qdot , to mention some of the most popular. Other experiments and proposals focus on superconducting Josephson devices, where almost macroscopic (mesoscopic) devices like Josephson junctions jj , SQUIDs squid  or Cooper pair boxes cpb , that is devices fabricated in condensed matter physics, are brought to behave quantum mechanically. These devices promise certain advantages like large-scale integration and fabrication as well as ease of integration with conventional electronics. To manipulate qubits quantum gates are necessary, that is logic devices capable of operating on linear combinations of input states.

Among the possible mechanisms for manipulating coupled qubits, adiabatic procedures messiah  are of special interest. Quantum adiabatic evolution provides a natural framework for solving combinatorial search problems on quantum computers adiabqc . Any problem which can be recast as the minimization of an energy function (which can then be converted into a quantum Hamiltonian) can potentially be solved by adiabatic quantum computation. General problems have been treated numerically, and studies of a set of Exact Cover instances designed to be hard have shown polynomial behaviour out to instances containing as many as twenty bits farhiscie . Whereas a conventional quantum algorithm is implemented as a sequence of discrete unitary transformations that form a quantum circuit involving many energy levels of the computer, the adiabatic algorithm works by keeping the state of the quantum computer close to the instantaneous ground state of a Hamiltonian that varies continuously in time. Therefore, an imperfect quantum computer implementing a conventional quantum algorithm might experience different sorts of errors than an imperfect adiabatic quantum computer. In fact, an adiabatic quantum computer has an inherent robustness against errors that might enhance the usefulness of the adiabatic approach childs . Local operations on single qubits (such as NOT) deco  or two coupled qubits ( such as the adiabatically controlled CNOT gate we shall discuss) averin pla  are also possible, where adiabatic operations take place as a sequence of discrete transformations acting on a few qubits at a time. In this line it is important to study a possible trade-off between the advantages of error reduction due to adiabatic evolution and the longer times required for gate operations.

In this paper we will explain some general principles for studying adiabatic SQUID qubit operations focusing particluarly on a CNOT gate, and present numerical calculations relevant to the behavior and design of such systems.

## II Coupled-qubit Hamiltonian

In discussing coherence properties of the SQUID under adiabatic inversion, we have suggested its interest for the elements of the “quantum computer” deco . The single-bit NOT operation can be realized by adiabatic inversion. The next most complicated operation is the two-bit operation CNOT, with which a computer may, in principle, be constructed. CNOT is a two-qubit operation and we will try to represent it by two interacting double-potential well systems. Qualitatively, we will use the procedure of performing an adiabatic NOT on the first qubit while trying to influence its behavior by the state of the second. We’ll find a region of parameter space where this works.

In the one dimensional or one SQUID problem one has a Schroedinger equation in the variable $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ with a kinetic term and the potential term

$$U=\frac{(\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Phi }^{ext})^2}{2L}\frac{I^c\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi }\mathrm{cos}(2\pi \mathrm{\Phi }/\mathrm{\Phi }_0).$$
(1)
which for small $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ yields a double well potential. $`I^c`$ and $`L`$ are the Josephson critical current and the inductance of the superconducting ring respectively, while $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{ext}`$ is an applied external flux. When $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{ext}`$ is swept slowly as a function of time, as explained in ref deco , an adiabatic inversion or level crossing can be induced, amounting to a realization of the NOT operation. If the state is originally in the left potential well it is transferred to the right well and vice-versa, implying a reversal of the current direction in the superconducting ring.

We now wish to investigate this idea of quantum gates generated by adiabatic transformations to systems of more than one variable, in particular for the two variable CNOT operation. Although we are only concerned here with two SQUIDS, we briefly indicate a method valid for many qubits. The equation for an array of underdamped flux-linked rf SQUIDs is

$$\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Phi }^{ext}=Li$$
(2)
In this equation $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`i`$ are meant as column vectors representing all the fluxes $`\mathrm{\Phi }_j`$ and currents $`i_j`$ in the j-th rf SQUID loop, $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{ext}`$ is the column vector corresponding to the external fluxes, while $`L`$ is a matrix representing the self- and mutual- inductances. The current $`i_j`$ in j-th ring is expressed in terms of the capacitance $`C_j`$ and the superconducting Josephson current $`I_j`$ :

$$i_j=C_j\ddot{\mathrm{\Phi }}_j\frac{1}{R}\dot{\mathrm{\Phi }}_jI_j^csin\mathrm{\Phi }_j\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}$$
(3)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=\frac{hc}{2e}=210^7Gcm^2`$ is the superconducting flux quantum and R is the effective resistance of the junction.

An important property of $`L`$, by the reciprocity of mutual inductances, is that $`L`$ is a symmetric matrix. As we need $`i`$ for the linear homogeneous system (LHS) of Eq, we invert $`L`$:

$$i=L^1(\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Phi }^{ext})$$
(4)
Since $`L`$ is symmetric, $`L^1`$ is also symmetric. Neglecting the dissipative term, we now have Eq  as

$$\underset{k}{}L_{jk}^1(\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Phi }^{ext})_kI_j^csin\mathrm{\Phi }_j\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}=C_j\ddot{\mathrm{\Phi }}_j$$
(5)
that can be written as

$$\frac{U}{\mathrm{\Phi }_j}=C_j\ddot{\mathrm{\Phi }}_j$$
(6)
by introducing the potential

$$U=\frac{1}{2}\underset{j,k}{}L_{jk}^1(\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Phi }^{ext})_k(\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Phi }^{ext})_j(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })\mathrm{\Sigma }_jI_j^ccos\mathrm{\Phi }_j\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}$$
(7)
Finally switching to the reduced dimensionless flux variable $`\varphi =\mathrm{\Phi }\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}`$ the last two equations become

$$\frac{U}{\varphi _j}=(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })^2C_j\ddot{\varphi }_j$$
(8)
$$U=(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })^2\frac{1}{2}\underset{j,k}{}L_{jk}^1(\varphi \varphi ^{ext})_k(\varphi \varphi ^{ext})_j(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })\mathrm{\Sigma }_jI_j^ccos\varphi _j$$
(9)
To make this situation look more symmetric, we follow recent practice and introduce the shifts $`\varphi \varphi +\pi `$, $`\varphi ^{ext}\varphi ^{ext}+\pi `$, which move the maximum of the $`cos\varphi `$ term to $`\varphi =0`$ luk95 . This does not affect the quadratic term, but it must be kept in mind that $`\varphi ^{ext}=0`$ now corresponds to a non-zero applied field. We thus have finally

$$UU=(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })^2\frac{1}{2}\underset{j,k}{}L_{jk}^1(\varphi \varphi ^{ext})_k(\varphi \varphi ^{ext})_j+(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })\mathrm{\Sigma }_jI_j^ccos\varphi _j,$$
(10)
where henceforth we use the shifted variables.

### II.1 Two variables

We now specialize to two SQUIDS, called 1 and 2, with variables $`\varphi _1,\varphi _2`$. In the absence of mutual inductance, each one can be thought of as a qubit, whose dynamics is described by a double-well potential. For CNOT we shall think of $`\varphi _1`$ as the target bit and $`\varphi _2`$ as the control bit. We shall apply a sweeping flux $`\varphi _1^{ext}`$ and would like that this sweeping flux induce an adiabatic inversion if the control bit is $`|1`$ (e.g.current flowing clockwise in SQUID 2), and not induce this inversion if the control bit is $`|0`$(current flowing in the opposite direction in SQUID 2).

For the two variable system the matrix $`L=\left(\begin{array}{cc}L_1& L_{12}\\ L_{12}& L_2\end{array}\right)`$ can be inverted, giving

$$L^1=\frac{1}{L_1L_2L_{12}^2}\left(\begin{array}{cc}L_2& L_{12}\\ L_{12}& L_1\end{array}\right)$$
(11)
$`L_{12}`$, the mutual inductance between the two rings, could be controlled experimentally by a further device with Josephson junctions carmine  and switched off for convenience in performing other operations.

Writing out $`U`$ we obtain

$$U=(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })^2\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{L_1L_2L_{12}^2}[L_2(\varphi _1\varphi _1^{ext})^2+L_1(\varphi _2\varphi _2^{ext})^22L_{12}(\varphi _1\varphi _1^{ext})(\varphi _2\varphi _2^{ext})]+(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })I_1^ccos\varphi _1+(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })I_2^ccos\varphi _2$$
(12)
Let us first look at this potential with the $`\varphi ^{ext}`$ zero, and imagine varying $`\varphi _1`$ at fixed $`\varphi _2`$. For $`L_{12}=0`$, we would simply have the usual symmetric double potential well for $`\varphi _1`$. Now as $`L_{12}`$ is turned on, a tilt is introduced into this $`\varphi _1`$ potential. A coupling term $`L_{12}\varphi _1\varphi _2`$ is added providing a bias in the potential for $`\varphi _1`$, so that the double well is asymmetric even though $`\varphi _1^{ext}=0`$. The direction of this bias depends on whether $`\varphi _2`$ is positive or negative.

If we think of $`\varphi _2`$ as essentially fixed, and now suppose sweeping $`\varphi _1^{ext}`$, we see that this sweep will either increase the asymmetry present in the double well, or decrease it. If the wells are caused to be further separated, we have no inversion, if the wells are brought together and cross, we will have an inversion and a “NOT”. Which case occurs will depend on the sign of $`\varphi _2`$. The condition for CNOT is accomplished: according to the state of $`\varphi _2`$ , an inversion takes place or does not take place in the $`\varphi _1`$ variable.

The discussion is more convenient if we introduce dimensionless parameters

$$\frac{1}{L}=\frac{\sqrt{L_1L_2}}{L_1L_2L_{12}^2}\beta _1=\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}LI_1^c\beta _2=\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}LI_2^c$$
(13)
as well as the dimensionless inductances

$$l_1=\frac{L_1}{\sqrt{L_1L_2}}l_2=\frac{L_2}{\sqrt{L_1L_2}}l_{12}=\frac{L_{12}}{\sqrt{L_1L_2}}$$
(14)
We may then write Eq as

$$U=(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })^2\frac{1}{L}\{\frac{1}{2}[l_1(\varphi _1\varphi _1^{ext})^2+l_2(\varphi _2\varphi _2^{ext})^22l_{12}(\varphi _2\varphi _2^{ext})(\varphi _1\varphi _1^{ext})]+\beta _1cos\varphi _1+\beta _2cos\varphi _2\}$$
(15)
With this potential the Schroedinger equation for the wavefunction $`\psi (\varphi _1,\varphi _2,t)`$ is

$$i\dot{\psi }=\psi $$
(16)
with the following Hamiltonian

$$=\frac{1}{2C_1(\frac{\varphi _0}{2\pi })^2}\frac{^2}{\varphi _1^2}+\frac{1}{2C_2(\frac{\varphi _0}{2\pi })^2}\frac{^2}{\varphi _2^2}+U$$
(17)
Introducing

$$C=\sqrt{C_1C_2}$$
(18)
as the typical capacitance, and defining the energy scale

$$E_0=1/\sqrt{LC}$$
(19)
$``$ can be cast in the form of an energy times a dimensionless Hamiltonian

$$=E_0H.$$
(20)
$$H=\frac{1}{2\mu _1}\frac{^2}{\varphi _1^2}+\frac{1}{2\mu _2}\frac{^2}{\varphi _2^2}+V$$
(21)
with $`V`$

$$V=V_0\{\frac{1}{2}[l_1(\varphi _1\varphi _1^{ext})^2+l_2(\varphi _2\varphi _2^{ext})^22l_{12}(\varphi _2\varphi _2^{ext})(\varphi _1\varphi _1^{ext})]+\beta _1cos\varphi _1+\beta _2cos\varphi _2\},$$
(22)
and the dimensionless parameters

$$\mu _1=C_1E_0(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })^2\mu _2=C_2E_0(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })^2V_0=\sqrt{C/L}(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })^2.$$
(23)
Fig.  shows the equipotential contours of $`V(\varphi _1,\varphi _2)`$, with its four potential wells.

We use natural units: $`\mathrm{}=1,c=1,e^2/\mathrm{}c=1/137`$, thus $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=hc/2e=\pi \sqrt{137}`$, and $`(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi })^2=137/4=34.3`$; also $`\sqrt{farad/henry}=30`$. Using these values

$$\mu _11030\sqrt{\left(\frac{C_1}{C_2}\right)^{1/2}\frac{C_1/pF}{L/pH}}\mu _21030\sqrt{\left(\frac{C_2}{C_1}\right)^{1/2}\frac{C_2/pF}{L/pH}}V_01030\sqrt{\frac{C/pF}{L/pH}}.$$
(24)
Note that these parameters are not all independent, as the following relation exists

$$\sqrt{\mu _1\mu _2}=V_0.$$
(25)
That is, the three basic dimensional quantities $`C_1`$,$`C_2`$ and $`L`$ have been exchanged for two dimensionless parameters and the overall energy scale $`E_0`$.

## III CNOT by adiabatic inversion

With SQUID qubits, the logical states are the flux states of the superconducting rings ( with one qubit $`|0`$ or $`|1`$ with two qubits $`|0|1`$, $`|1|1`$ and so forth), whereas the Hamiltonian eigenstates are in general a linear combination of them. In case of two coupled qubits to form CNOT, each logical state of the gate will be represented by a wave function localized in one of the four distinct minima of the potential of Eq. The four states can be labelled as 1,2,3,4 and placed in a tableau of the kind $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}4& 3\\ 1& 2\end{array}\right),`$ where the locations refer to Fig. . That is, in the tableau the positions of the numbers indicate in which well of Fig 1 the state is localized while the numbers themselves indicate which energy eigenstate is meant. The lowest energy eigenstate is “1”, and the highest of the four first states “4”.

A CNOT operation is defined by the conditions: A) the control bit does not change its state, and B) the target bit is reversed or not reversed, according to whether the control bit is $`|1`$ or $`|0`$. In the tableau representation, a physical embodiment of CNOT would be

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}4& 3\\ 1& 2\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cc}4& 3\\ 2& 1\end{array}\right)$$
(26)
Condition A) on the stability of the control bit is exhibited in that no states move between the top and bottom row. Condition B) is realized in that the top row remains unchanged while the bottom row is “flipped”.

Realization of operations such as Eq can be accomplished by using adiabatic processes, thanks to the “no level crossing” behavior of adiabatic evolution. The no-crossing property assures that a state initially in the first, or second, or third,…. energy level will end up in the first, or second, or third,… energy level after the adiabatic evolution, while at the same time the logical state associated with the level may be changing.

One can proceed as follows: we first search for an initial Hamiltonian whose variable external parameters $`(\varphi _1^{ext},\varphi _2^{ext})`$ are adjusted to give the first four energy eigenstates localized in the four different minima of fig. 1. Then, we search for a final Hamiltonian where another set of $`(\varphi _1^{ext},\varphi _2^{ext})`$, gives the tableau on the right of Eq. In this procedure we need only to study the stationary Schroedinger equation at first. After having determined some suitable parameter sets, we shall also study the full time-dependent Schroedinger equation to determine what sweep speed is “slow” in order to guarantee adiabatic behavior.

For the present paper we defer a detailed discussion of the phases the states acquire during the time evolution. These phases contain dynamic and geometric contributions berry  and they themselves can be used for quantum information processes phases . For a given set of parameters and sweep conditions the phases can of course be calculated explicitly and in no way affect the general applicability of the results and procedures presented here. Calculations of phases will be reported upon in future work.

We obtainjacek  the switching behavior according to Eq by fixing the control bias $`\varphi _2^{ext}`$ at a relatively high value, while an adiabatic sweep of the target bias $`\varphi _1^{ext}`$ occurs. This is a generalization of a NOT deco  on $`\varphi _1`$. The presence of the $`l_{12}`$ coupling produces an extra bias on the target bit which ”helps or hinders” the NOT operation. The relatively large bias on $`\varphi _2`$ comes from condition A): we attempt to “immobilize” the control bit despite the perturbations communicated by the sweep of $`\varphi _1^{ext}`$ via $`l_{12}`$. We therefore investigate the region $`|\varphi _1^{ext}|<<|\varphi _2^{ext}|`$. If $`\varphi _2`$ is indeed successfully “immobilized”, it will be fixed in one of its two potential wells and can have only the values $`\varphi _2\pm 1`$. As seen by $`\varphi _1`$, these two states amount to an extra bias which is added or subtracted to $`\varphi _1^{ext}`$. To linear order (since we take all $`\varphi _1^{ext},\varphi _2^{ext}`$ small compared to $`1`$ and $`\varphi _1,\varphi _2`$ are in the neighborhood of $`1`$) and introducing the notation $`\varphi _{1eff}^{ext}=\varphi _1^{ext}\pm \frac{l_{12}}{l_1}`$ the potential terms involving $`\varphi _1`$ in Eq  become

$`2l_1\varphi _1\varphi _1^{ext}2l_{12}\varphi _1(\pm 1)`$ (27)
$`=2l_1\varphi _1(\varphi _1^{ext}\pm {\displaystyle \frac{l_{12}}{l_1}})=2l_1\varphi _1\varphi _{1eff}^{ext},`$ (28)
so that there is an effective shift in the external bias on $`\varphi _1`$ by $`(\pm \frac{l_{12}}{l_1})`$. According to Eq  the bias condition for switching from one tableau to another is given by $`|\varphi _1^{ext}|=l_{12}/l_1`$.

By a numerical study where we find essentially exact solutions of the Schroedinger equation for our potential, we find that there is indeed a region of $`\varphi _1^{ext},\varphi _2^{ext}`$ plane where the eigenstates of Eq  are well defined and behave as in this description. These regions are shown in the grey areas of Figs  and .

By well defined we mean that the expectation values of $`\varphi _1,\varphi _2`$ are at the location of one of the wells $`(\pm 1,\pm 1)`$, that only one of the first four levels is so localized, and finally that the dispersion of each coordinate $`\sqrt{<\varphi ^2><\varphi >^2}`$ is small compared to this expectation value of $`\varphi `$, that is small compared to 1. For the cases we present here the ratio of the dispersion to the expectation value was in the vicinity of $`0.3`$.

We find that the three different gray areas of Fig  and  have well defined tableaux as follows:

$$\left(\begin{array}{cc}3& 4\\ 1& 2\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cc}4& 3\\ 1& 2\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cc}4& 3\\ 2& 1\end{array}\right)$$
(29)
for the intermediate gray region (left), the darkest region (center) and the light gray region (right), respectively. On the order of 10-20 points were used to determine the boundaries in the figures. These tableaux fit with the description arrived at in the “immobilization” model, where either the top or bottom row inverts as we go from the central region to large $`|\varphi _1^{ext}|`$. Hence a sweep from the central region to the right region will produce the desired mapping of Eq . Similarly sweeping from the right region to the center and from the left region to the central region and vice-versa can also serve as realizations, differing simply in the assignment of (0,1) for the bits or the names (1,2) for the SQUIDs. Note that the switch between tableaux occurs quite close to $`|\varphi _1^{ext}|=|l_{12}/l_1|`$, as predicted by Eq .

Concerning the time dependent problem, the important time scale in the present context is $`\tau _{adiab}`$, the shortest time in which an operation can be performed adiabatically. This time is relevant with respect to decoherence and relaxation effects, since the operation must take place in a time short compared to decoherence and relaxation times. An estimate for $`\tau _{adiab}`$ for the NOT operation deco  gives

$$\tau _{adiab}=ϵ\omega _{tunnel}^2=ϵ\tau _{osc}^2,$$
(30)
where $`ϵ`$ is the asymmetry of the potential and $`\omega _{tunnel}^1=\tau _{osc}`$ the inverse tunneling energy or oscillation time between the two states. Since here we also perform a kind of NOT, we expect a similar relation to hold, where $`\omega _{tunnel}`$ or $`\tau _{osc}^1`$ is the smallest level splitting during the adiabatic passage and $`ϵ`$ may be read off as the energy shift of the wells at the beginning and end of our sweep. A set of reasonable SQUID parameters for CNOT are $`L_1=300pH`$, $`L_2=280pH`$, $`L_{12}=1.8pH`$, $`C_1=C_2=0.1pF`$ and $`I_1^c=I_2^c=1.45\mu A`$. Since in frequency units $`E_0\frac{1}{\sqrt{L/pHC/pF}}1000GHZ`$ these values give $`E_0185GHZ`$ and $`\tau _{adiab}2.710^9s`$. Preliminary results are in agreement with this estimate pla , and the question will be studied in more detail in further numerical work.

## IV Implementation

### IV.1 Dissipation

As with all discussions of quantum computation, the important open questions concern dissipative effects. These include the decoherence time $`\tau _{dec}`$, or its inverse the decoherence rate $`D`$, as well as relaxation processes , represented by a time $`\tau _{relax}`$.

These will affect adiabatic processes as we can see by examining the inversion or NOT process for a single qubit. With an increasing loss of phase coherence as caused by $`D`$, we expect the situation to become more and more “classical” and finally, when $`D`$ is very large, the inversion is inhibited deco . Furthermore, after the inversion is completed there will be some tendency of the upper energy state to relax to the lower energy state.

We illustrate these effects in Fig.  where we show the probablity for an inversion as a function of sweep time $`\tau _{sweeep}`$. Note that the times involved are much longer than the above estimate for the adiabatic time of $`2.710^9s`$, so the adiabatic condition should be satisfied. Starting at the left, we see that the probability of inversion is one until $`\tau _{sweep}`$, approaches $`\tau _{dec}`$. For $`\tau _{sweep}`$ much longer than $`\tau _{dec}`$ it falls to 0.5, the “decohered” limit. For longer times, as $`\tau _{sweep}`$ approaches and passes $`\tau _{relax}`$, the final result depends on which state we started with. Evidently in this limit we will always end up in the ground state, so the inversion probability is one if we started with the ground state (solid line) and zero if we started in the excited state (dotted line).

The times used were $`\tau _{dec}=0.2\mu s`$ and $`\tau _{relax}=0.2ms`$. The early part of the curve was found using the plots in Fig 5 of the second of refdeco  with this value of $`\tau _{dec}`$, while the relaxation effects were found from the calculations shown in Fig 7 of this reference. The value $`\tau _{dec}`$ used was based on the estimate $`D=T/Re^2`$ deco , with R=1M$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at T=40mK.

It is evident, as exemplified by the latter formula, that a necessary and–less evident– perhaps also a sufficient condition for quantum behavior of the system is a low classical dissipation. In the present context this implies a large value of $`R`$. Therefore we present some experimental data on this point, collected in the thermal regime for superconducting devices based on SQUIDs prb .

In order to evaluate the dissipation of our system, we measured the transitions between adjacent flux states of the rf SQUID as a function of the external flux $`\varphi ^{ext}`$. In the absence of noise, the escape from the metastable well would occur at a critical value of the external flux $`\varphi ^c`$. Thermal noise induces transitions at random values of $`\varphi ^{ext}`$ smaller than $`\varphi ^c`$, whose probability distribution, namely P($`\varphi ^{ext}`$), was measured by standard “time fly technique”, as explained in the third reference listed in jj .

By fitting the data for P vs $`\varphi ^{ext}`$ with Kramers theory kramers  in the extremely-low-damping limit, with L,$`I_c`$ and C independently measured, we can obtain the effective resistance R. We introduce a dimensionless parameter Q $``$ R, defined as Q=$`\omega _0`$RC, where $`\omega _0`$ is the small oscillation frequency. With decreasing temperature Q is large, showing a small dissipation at low temperatures. The plot of Fig.  indicates an exponential increase of R, and using the measured parameters we obtain R=22k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at T=2.9K. This is encouraging if the $`D=T/Re^2`$ estimate is correct, where we needed 1M$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ at T=40mK. The exponential fit shows that the effective resistance R is determined by tunneling of thermally activated quasiparticles, as expected when the external noise has been filtered out and only the intrinsic dissipation acts.

### IV.2 System Design

On-chip integrated dc-SQUIDs can be used to read out the flux states squid , while the manipulation of the superconducting qubits can be controlled by on-chip superconducting electronics. The coupling between the probe and the read-out system could be through a superconducting transformer. While the intrinsic dissipation can be considerably reduced at low temperatures as explained above jj , squid  a major cause of difficulty can be the spurious interaction of the qubit with readout and control devices.

In a good design, the readout device could be turned off during the manipulation. The technology to control this coupling may need to be developed, but could be reasonably provided by stacked junctions carmine , or small double-junctions loop luk95 , interrupting the coupling transformers. The coupling is then controlled by external current signals. A further possibility is the development of a fast switch using simple single flux quantum circuitry for switching the interaction on and off rsfq .

In conclusion we have presented a general method for studying the adiabatic evolution of a Hamiltonian describing a multi-qubit system, controlled by varying external parameters. Detailed calculations were provided for a two-qubit Hamiltonian, whose eigenstates can be used as logical states for a quantum CNOT gate. From the numerical analysis of the stationary Schroedinger equation we obtained sets of parameters suitable to perform a CNOT operation, and indicated how a time-dependent study determines the limits for adiabatic evolution. Specializing to a definite physical system involving SQUIDs, we identified resaonable values of the parameters, estimated effects due to dissipation and considered some points of system design.

## V Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to C.Granata and B.Ruggiero for useful discussions and comments on experimental perspectives. This work has been partially supported by MIUR-FIRB under project ”Nanocircuiti Superconduttivi”.


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# 𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇(𝐶𝐶) — a fast local-search ASP solver

## 1 Introduction

$`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ is a local-search solver for computing models of theories in the logic $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$, the propositional logic extended by cardinality atoms . It can serve as a processing back-end for the logic $`\mathrm{𝑃𝑆}^+`$ , an answer-set programming (ASP) formalism based on the language of predicate calculus and, hence, different from typical ASP systems that have origins in logic programming.

A clause in the logic $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ is a formula $`\alpha _1\mathrm{}\alpha _r\alpha _{r+1}\mathrm{}\alpha _s`$, where each $`\alpha _i`$, $`1is`$, is a propositional atom, or a cardinality atom (c-atom, for short) — an expression $`k\{a_1,\mathrm{},a_n\}m`$, where $`a_i`$ are propositional atoms and $`k,m`$ and $`n`$ are integers such that $`0kmn`$. A set of atoms $`M`$ is a model of a c-atom $`k\{a_1,\mathrm{},a_n\}m`$ if $`k|M\{a_1,\mathrm{},a_n\}|m`$. With this definition, the semantics of clauses and theories in the logic $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ is a straightforward extension of the semantics of propositional logic. $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ theories arise by grounding theories in the ASP logic $`\mathrm{𝑃𝑆}^+`$ by means of the grounder program asppsgrnd .

We discuss here an implementation of $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$. We restrict the discussion to most essential concepts and options only. For more details and bibliography on related work on propositional logic extended by c-atoms and pseudo-boolean constraints, we refer to , which introduced $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$, and to .

## 2 $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ — a brief description and a list of options

As other WSAT-like local-search solvers , $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ searches for models in a series of tries, starting with a random assignment of truth values to atoms. Each try consists of steps, called flips, which produce ”new” truth assignments by flipping the truth values of some of the atoms. If a flip produces a satisfying assignment, this try is terminated and another one starts. $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ supports several strategies to select atoms for flipping. All of them require a parameter called the noise level. It determines the probability of applying a random walk step in order to escape from a local minimum. The maximum numbers of tries and flips, and the noise level are set from the command line by means of the options -t, -c and -N, respectively.

$`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ is different from other similar algorithms in the way in which it computes the break-count of an atom (used to decide which atom to flip) and in the way it executes a flip. The choice of the break-count computation method or of the way a flip is defined determines a particular local-search strategy in $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$. At present, $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ supports three basic methods.
Virtual break-count. We define virtual break-counts with respect to a propositional theory, in which c-atoms are replaced by their equivalent propositional representations. However, in the actual computation we use the original theory (with c-atoms) rather than its propositional-logic counterpart (with c-atoms removed), as the latter is usually exponentially larger. To invoke virtual break-count method, we use the option -VB. The virtual break-count method is applicable with all $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ theories and is a default method of $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$.
Double flip. It applies only to simple $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ theories that are specified by the following two conditions: (a) all the c-atoms appear in unit clauses, and (b) all the sets of atoms in the c-atoms are pairwise disjoint. A flip is designed so that all unit clauses built of c-atoms remain satisfied. Thus, on occasion, two atoms will change their truth values in one flip step. The break-count is defined with respect to regular propositional clauses as in $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}`$. To invoke this method, we use the option -DF.
Permutation flip. It applies to theories, in which c-atoms are used solely to specify permutations (for instance, when defining an assignment of queens in the $`n`$-queens problem). Flips realize an inverse operation on permutations and, hence, transform a permutation into another permutation. As a consequence, all unit clauses built of c-atoms are always satisfied. To accomplish that, four atoms must have their truth values changed in one flip step. The break-count is defined with respect to regular propositional clauses of the theory in the same way as in $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}`$. We invoke this method with the option -PF.

## 3 $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ — input, output and how to invoke it

$`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ accepts input files containing $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ theories described in a format patterned after that of CNF DIMACS. The first line is of the form p \<na\> \<nc\>, where na and nc are the number of propositional atoms and clauses in the theory, respectively. The following lines list clauses. A clause $`\alpha _1\mathrm{}\alpha _r\alpha _{r+1}\mathrm{}\alpha _s`$, is written as A1 ... Ar , A(r+1) ... As, where each Ai is a positive integer (representing the corresponding atom $`\alpha _i`$), or an expression of the form {k m C1 ... Cn} (representing a c-atom $`k\{a_1,\mathrm{},a_n\}m`$).

$`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ outputs models that it finds as well as several statistics to standard output device (or, depending on the options used, to a file in a user-readable format). It also creates a file wsatcc.stat that stores records summarizing every call to $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ and key statistics pertaining to the computation.

Typical call to $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ looks as follows: wsatcc -f file -t 200 -c 150000 -N 10 100. It results in $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ looking for models to the $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ theory specified in file, by running 200 tries, each consisting of 150000 flips. The noise level is set at 10/100 (=0.1).

## 4 $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ package

$`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ solver and several related utilities can be obtained from http://www.cs.uky.edu/ai/wsatcc/. $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ works on most Unix-like operating systems that provide gcc compiler. The utilities require Perl 5 or greater. For more details on installation, we refer to .

## 5 Performance

Our experiments demonstrate that $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ is an effective tool to compute models of satisfiable $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ theories and can be used as a processing back-end for the ASP logic $`\mathrm{𝑃𝑆}^+`$. In , we showed that $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ is often much faster than a local-search SAT solver $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}`$ and has, in general, a higher success rate (likelihood that it will find a model if an input theory has one). In , we used $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ to compute several new lower bounds for van der Waerden numbers. Here, we will discuss our recent comparisons of $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ with $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝑂𝐼𝑃})`$ , a solver for propositional theories extended with pseudo-boolean constraints (for which we developed utilities allowing it to accept $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ theories).

We tested these programs on $`\mathrm{𝑃𝐿}^{cc}`$ theories encoding instances of the vertex-cover and open $`n`$-queens problems111In the open $`n`$-queens problem, given an initial “attack-free” assignment of $`k`$ ($`k<n`$) queens on the $`n\times n`$ board, the goal is to assign the remaining $`nk`$ queens so that the resulting assignment is also “attack-free”.. We generated these theories by grounding appropriate $`\mathrm{𝑃𝑆}^+`$ theories extended with randomly generated problem instances.

Table 1 shows results obtained by running $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ (both -VB and -DF versions are applicable in this case) and $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝑂𝐼𝑃})`$ to find vertex covers of sizes 1035, 1040 and 1045 in graphs with 2000 vertices and 4000 edges. The first column shows the size of the desired vertex cover and the number of graphs (out of 50 that we generated), for which we were able to find a solution by means of at least one of the methods used. The remaining columns summarize the performance of the three algorithms used: $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})\text{-}\mathrm{𝑉𝐵}`$, $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})\text{-}\mathrm{𝐷𝐹}`$, and $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝑂𝐼𝑃})`$. The entries show the time, in seconds, needed to complete computation for all 50 instances and the success rate (the percentage of cases where the method finds a solution to all the instances, for which at least one method found a solution).

The results show that $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})\text{-}\mathrm{𝑉𝐵}`$ is faster than $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})\text{-}\mathrm{𝐷𝐹}`$, which in turn is faster that $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝑂𝐼𝑃})`$. However, $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})\text{-}\mathrm{𝑉𝐵}`$ has generally the lowest success rate while $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})\text{-}\mathrm{𝐷𝐹}`$, the highest.

We note that we attempted to compare $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})`$ with $`\mathrm{𝑠𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑠}`$ , a leading ASP system. We found that for the large instances that we experimented with $`\mathrm{𝑠𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑠}`$ failed to terminate within the time limit that we allocated per instance. That is not surprising, as the search space is prohibitively large for a complete method and $`\mathrm{𝑠𝑚𝑜𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑠}`$ is a complete solver.

The open $`n`$-queens problem allowed us to experiment with the method -PF (permutation flip). It proved extremely effective. We tested it for the case of 50 queens with 10 of them preassigned. We generated 100 random preassignments of 10 queens to a $`50\times 50`$ board and found that 55 of them are satisfiable. We tested the four algorithms only on those satisfiable instances. The results are shown in Table 2.

Here, we include another measurement for local search solvers. The second number shows the average number of flips each method uses in finding one solution. $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})\text{-}\mathrm{𝑉𝐵}`$ is faster than $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝑂𝐼𝑃})`$ even though they have the similar number of flips. $`\mathrm{𝑊𝑆𝐴𝑇}(\mathrm{𝐶𝐶})\text{-}\mathrm{𝑃𝐹}`$ is even more powerful because it uses the fewest number of flip and is the fastest. Smodels can only find solutions for 6 instances within the 1000-second limit and turns out to be the slowest.

We tested the version -PF with one of the encodings of the Hamiltonian-cycle problem and discovered it is much less effective there. Conditions under which the version -PF is effective remain to be studied.

## Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants No. 0097278 and 0325063.


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# Pulsar Wind Nebulae and Their Supernovae

## 1. Introduction

Recent X-ray satellites (ASCA, Chandra, and Newton XMM) have substantially increased the number of observed young PWNe (pulsar wind nebulae), as well as adding to our knowledge of the nebulae and their surrounding supernova remnants. Young PWNe are expected to be interacting with freely expanding ejecta in the interior of a supernova, providing a probe of the inner parts of the supernova. The surrounding supernova remnant is typically interacting with circumstellar mass loss from the progenitor star. The combination of this information can be related to our expections for core-collapse supernovae and their surroundings. Here, I examine the properties of 8 young PWNe in this context.

## 2. Supernovae and their surroundings

Recent observations of core-collapse supernovae at X-ray and radio wavelengths have yielded a fairly complete picture of the circumstellar surroundings of the various supernova types (Chevalier 2003a). Although the numbers are still small, Type IIP (plateau) supernovae have been found to be relatively weak X-ray and radio sources, with a mass loss density corresponding to a mass loss rate $`\dot{M}10^6M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ for a wind velocity of $`v_w=10\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$; the light curves of these supernovae indicate red supergiant progenitors. The low mass loss is consistent with the fact that the supernova properties indicate that most of the stellar H envelope is present at the time of the explosion. A consequence of this is that the inner heavy element core is decelerated by the envelope and mixes with it, giving rise to low velocity H in the supernova. There is information on the progenitor stars of 2 Type IIP supernovae, leading to upper mass limits of the progenitors of $`12M_{}`$ and $`15M_{}`$ (Smartt et al. 2003). Thus, SNe IIP appear to be near the lower mass limit for core-collapse supernovae.

SN 1987A is another supernova that exploded with a massive H envelope that was able to decelerate the heavy element ejecta. However, the progenitor in this case was a blue supergiant with a mass $`19M_{}`$. The immediate surrounding of the blue supergiant star was determined by the fast wind from that star but, further out, beyond the ring at 0.2 pc, there is evidence for a slow red supergiant wind (Crotts 2000).

Supernovae that show strong interaction with a dense red supergiant wind are of Types IIn (narrow line), IIL (linear), and IIb (evolve to Ib/c spectrum); these types are not mutually exclusive as they refer to different aspects of the supernova. In these cases, the presupernova mass loss can go up to $`\dot{M}10^410^3M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ for $`v_w=10\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. In SNe IIb and at least some IIn (e.g., Fransson et al. 2002), most of the H envelope is lost before the supernova. The result is that there is no slow H in the supernova; e.g., in the IIb SN 1993J, H was in the range $`850010,000\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Houck & Fransson 1996).

The dense wind from a red supergiant progenitor star can extend out some distance around the progenitor. The wind comes into pressure equilibrium with the surrounding medium at a radius (Chevalier & Emmering 1989)

$$r_{sh}=5.0\left(\frac{\dot{M}}{5\times 10^6M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{v_w}{15\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{p_i}{10^3\mathrm{cm}^3\mathrm{K}}\right)^{1/2}\mathrm{pc},$$
(1)
where $`p_i`$ is the external pressure. This expression assumes that the wind has been steady for at least a time $`r_{sh}/v_w`$, or $`3.3\times 10^5`$ years for the reference values. The red supergiant wind may end in a shell, which may have been observed around SN 1987A (Chevalier & Emmering 1989). Beyond the red supergiant wind, there may be a wind bubble created by the progenitor star when it was on the main sequence. Although the wind bubble in a low density uniform medium can be large, interstellar clouds could be relatively close to the progenitor.

The remaining types of core collapse supernovae are the Type Ib and Ic explosions, which are thought to have massive star progenitors that lost their H envelopes. In this case, no slow H is expected in the supernova, and the immediate surroundings of the supernova are determined by the low density, fast wind typical of a Wolf-Rayet star ($`\dot{M}10^5M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1`$ and $`v_w10^3\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$). The combination of stellar mass loss estimates with the fact that stars with an initial mass $`>25M_{}`$ collapse to black holes suggests that Type Ib and Ic are the result of binary evolution (Heger et al. 2003). In this case, a substantial part of the H envelope mass loss is due to the companion star.

Dahlén & Fransson (1999) have summarized recent work on supernova rates, finding the following intrinsic fractions of core-collapse supernova types: SN IIP (0.3), SN IIL (0.30), SN IIn (0.02), SN 1987A-like (0.15), SN Ib/c (0.23); the rate of SN 1987A-like events is especially uncertain. Unless there is a strong correlation of pulsars with supernova types, PWNe should appear in the young remnants of a variety of supernova types.

## 3. Young pulsar wind nebulae

Table 1 lists 8 young PWNe that are plausibly interacting with freely expanding ejecta from the supernova (see Chevalier 2003b for references to these objects). Tentative supernova identifications have been given in 4 cases, but only the identification of the Crab Nebula with SN 1054 can be considered secure. In two other cases (0540–69 and G292.0+1.8), there is an age estimate from the expansion of optical filaments. $`R_{snr}`$ is the radius of the surrounding supernova remnant except where no surrounding remnant is observed, in which case the radius of the PWN is given (in parentheses). $`V_{snr}`$ is the average velocity of the remnant obtained by dividing $`R_{snr}`$ by the age.

There are several arguments for associating the Crab Nebula and SN 1054 with a SN IIP. The presence of H in the ejecta suggests that the core material was decelerated by the H envelope, as expected in a SN IIP. The abundances in the Crab imply a progenitor mass of $`9M_{}`$ (Nomoto 1985), which is compatible with SN IIP. Finally, the lack of a shell around the Crab implies that the supernova is interacting with a low density surrounding medium. The low radio and X-ray luminosities of SN IIP suggest that they have a relatively low density wind, which may not extend far from the progenitor (eqn. ). The supernova may have swept through the wind and is now in a low density bubble. This scenario for SN 1054 was outlined in Chevalier (1977), but the absence of any observable interaction around the Crab has frustrated attempts at verification.

There are no ejecta observations in 3C58, but the presence of slow moving, N-rich flocculi (Fesen, Kirshner, & Becker 1987) is suggestive of a clumpy red supergiant wind surrounding the progenitor. A SN IIP explosion is thus a possibility, with the lack of a surrounding shell being due to a relatively small amount of mass loss. For G54.1+0.3, the lack of a surrounding shell suggests that it is not a SN IIb/IIn/IIL, but there is not enough information on the object to be more definite.

The pulsar and PWN in 0540–69 have many similarities to the Crab and its pulsar, but there is a shell present in this case. The presence of H in the shell swept up by the PWN has been controversial (Kirshner et al. 1989); if it is present, a SN IIP explosion is indicated. The progenitor mass would be somewhat larger that for SN 1054 because of the enhanced O emission from the ejecta ($`>13M_{}`$ initial mass). The large size of the shell and the high average velocity imply that the supernova encountered little circumstellar matter before running into denser, inhomogeneous surrounding gas; i.e. the supernova shock traversed a stellar wind bubble. The large sizes and velocities observed in MSH 15-52 and Kes 75 suggest a similar situation in these objects, implying that they did not result from Type IIb/IIn/IIL supernovae. On the basis of the high energy/mass ratio deduced for MSH 15-52, Gaensler et al. (1999) suggested a SN Ib origin; the finding of H-free ejecta would help to confirm this designation.

The remaining two objects, G11.2–0.3 and G292.0+1.8, have remnants with both a small radius and low velocity, suggesting strong circumstellar interaction and a SN IIb/IIn/IIL origin. The red supergiant wind from the progenitor star can extend to the observed radii, so this is the likely ambient medium. Strong mass loss is consistent with the absence of Balmer lines in the spectrum of G292.0+1.8 (Goss et al. 1979), implying that most of the H envelope had been lost before the supernova.

These considerations show that the supernova remnants around young PWNe are likely to be strongly influenced by the presupernova mass loss. Future observations of ejecta abundances and additional observations of the circumstellar interaction should allow clearer associations with supernova types.

### Acknowledgments.

This work was supported in part by NASA grant NAG5-13272.

## References

Chevalier, R. A. 1977, in Supernovae, ed. D. N. Schramm (Dordrecht: Reidel), 53

Chevalier, R. A. 2003a, in From Twilight to Highlight: The Physics of Supernovae, ed. W. Hillebrandt & B. Leibundgut (Berlin: Springer), 299

Chevalier, R. A. 2003b, in High Energy Studies of Supernova Remnants and Neutron Stars, (COSPAR 2002), Adv. Sp. Res., in press (astro-ph/0301370)

Chevalier, R. A., & Emmering, E. T. 1989, ApJ, 342, L75

Crotts, A. P. S. 2000, in Asymmetrical Planetary Nebulae II, ed. J. H. Kastner, N. Soker, & S. A. Rappaport (San Francisco: ASP ), 445

Dahlén, T. & Fransson, C. 1999, A&A, 350, 349

Fesen, R. A., Kirshner, R. P., & Becker, R. H. 1987, in Supernova Remnants and the Interstellar Medium, ed. R. S. Roger & T. L. Landecker (Cambridge: CUP), 55

Fransson, C., et al. 2002, ApJ, 572, 350 ApJ, 569, 878

Gaensler, B. M., Brazier, K. T. S., Manchester, R. N., Johnston, S., & Green, A. J. 1999, MNRAS, 305, 724

Goss, W. M., Shaver, P. A., Zealey, W. J., Murdin, P., & Clark, D. H. 1979, MNRAS, 188, 357

Heger, A., Fryer, C. L., Woosley, S. E., Langer, N., & Hartmann, D. H. 2003, ApJ, 591, 288

Houck, J. C., & Fransson, C. 1996, ApJ, 456, 811

Kirshner, R. P., Morse, J. A., Winkler, P. F., & Blair, W. P. 1989, ApJ, 342, 260

Nomoto, K. 1985, in The Crab Nebula and Related Supernova Remnants, ed. M. C. Kafatos & R. C. B. Henry, (Cambridge: CUP), 97

Smartt, S. J., Maund, J. R., Gilmore, G. F., Tout, C. A., Kilkenny, D., & Benetti, S. 2003, MNRAS, 343, 735


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# Lights in the Shadows, 3D-modelling knots with MOCASSIN

## 1. Introduction

High resolution images of ionized nebulae, which are readily obtainable with modern instruments (e.g. HST), have shown the material in these objects to be, in the majority of cases, very clumpy. In particular there are several small scale, high optical depth structures associated with these nebulae; the ionization structure in these regions appears to be very different from the rest of the nebular gas. For example, images of the Helix nebula (O’Dell & Handron, 1996; Burkert & O’Dell, 1998; O’Dell et al., 2003) show the presence of numerous Knots with associated radials Tails. These knots are observed in various PNs and may be a common situation. Even the recent images of novae shell show that the clumpiness is more the rule than the exeption (Bode, this conference). The emission of this high density knots could be partly responsible of the t2 paradigm (Peimbert, 1967).

Van Blerkom & Arny (1972) described theoretically the ionization of a shadowed region illuminated by diffuse radiation coming from surrounding ionized material. More recently, Canto et al. (1998) presented an extension of this theoretical work and added results of numerical gasdynamic simulations.

We present here preliminary results of 3D photoionization models of Helix-type knots. The main goals of such models are the understanding of the structure and the formation of such knots and the determination of the chemical composition of the knots and the tails.

## 2. A 3D-photoionization code is needed: MOCASSIN

The modelling of the knots using classical 1-D photoionization codes like Cloudy (Ferland, 2000) is virtually impossible, since the ionization of the tail behind the knot due to the diffusion of ionizing photons by the surrounding material cannot be accounted for by codes based on spherical symmetry. The only way to model such geometry is to use a 2- or 3-D photoionization code.

The three-dimensional photoionization code, MOCASSIN (MOnte CArlo Simulation of Ionized Nebulae, Ercolano et al., 2003 and this conference) is used to model a cubic thick clump illuminated by plane parallel radiation (a BlackBody at 120 kK is used for this model).

## 3. Modelling knots

The modeled clump has an enhanced density of 105 cm-3, while the surrounding gas has a density of 102 cm-3 and 1.6 102 cm-3 for the tail, in order to establish pressure equilibrium with the surrounding gas (see Fig. 1 for an illustration of the gas distribution). The assumption of pressure equilibrium between the unshielded and shadowed regions leads to an increase of the density in the shadowed region (the electron temperature being lower). The emissivity of recombination lines will then be higher in the shadow. The ionization state of the shadowed regions will be lower than in the surrounding material, which is directly illuminated by the primary radiation field, resulting in the enhanced emission from low charged ions from these regions.

A grid of 303 cells is used. The results of the model presented in the next section are preliminary and should only be considered as a test case with the scope to demonstrate the suitability of the MOCASSIN code to this kind of environment, rather than an attempt to reproduce all the observed characteristics of the Helix Knots.

## 4. Prelimininary results

Fig. 2 shows the results of the ionic fraction distribution and proves that the tail of the knot is effectively ionized by the diffuse radiation. Fig. 3 shows the image obtained for various emission lines, the results agree quite well with the Helix observations. Nevertheless, the contrast of emission between the tail and the surrounding material we obtain here only reproduce the observations because the geometrical depth of the surrounding material is small. If a more realistic geometry were to be used (considering the geometrical size of the tail compared to the surrounding gas), the enhanced emission of the tail would vanish; the hypothesis of pressure equilibrium seems then not to be valid.

## 5. Conclusion and future works

MOCASSIN is able to deal with shadows ionized by diffused radiation. The first results presented here are promising, and more realistic models will be performed to reproduce all the observational constraints obtained for the Helix knots. In particular, the hypothesis of pressure equilibrium between the tail and the surrounding gas has to be carefully investigated.

## References

Burkert, A. & O’dell, C. R. 1998, ApJ, 503, 792

Canto, J., Raga, A., Steffen, W., & Shapiro, P. 1998, ApJ, 502, 695

Ercolano, B., Barlow, M. J., Storey, P. J., & Liu, X.-W. 2003, MNRAS, 340, 1136

Ferland G. J., 2000, RMxAC, 9, 153

O’dell, C. R. & Handron, K. D. 1996, AJ, 111, 1630

O’Dell, C. R., Balick, B., Hajian, A. R., Henney, W. J. & Burkert, A., 2003, RMxAA, 15, 29

Peimbert, M. 1967, ApJ, 150, 825

van Blerkom, D. & Arny, T. T. 1972, MNRAS, 156, 91


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# Active Plasmonics: Controlling Signals in Au/Ga Waveguide using Nanoscale Structural Transformations

## Abstract

We develop a new concept for active plasmonics exploiting nanoscale structural transformations which is supported by rigorous numerical analysis. We show that surface plasmon-polariton signals in a metal-on-dielectric waveguide containing a gallium section a few microns long can be effectively controlled by switching the structural phase of gallium. The switching may be achieved by either changing the waveguide temperature or by external optical excitation. The signal modulation depth could exceed 80 percent and switching times are expected to be in the picosecond-microsecond time scale.

We are entering the age of integrated photonic devices for signal and information processing when planar waveguides and photonic crystal structures are being intensively investigated as primary solutions for guiding light in such devices. There may however, be another means of making highly integrated optical devices, with structural elements smaller than the wavelength, enabling strong guidance and manipulation of light using metallic and metallodielectric nanostructures. Here plasmon-polariton waves, i.e optical excitations coupled with collective electronic excitations are used as information carriers. A range of very promising nanostructures that guide plasmon-polariton waves Maier et al. (2003); Nikolajsen et al. (2003); Krenn et al. (1999) are currently being investigated. Surface plasmon polaritons in gold films can propagate for tens of microns and may be guided by structuring the metal film and creating polaritonic band gap materials Bozhevolnyi et al. (2001). Propagating plasmon-polariton excitations in nanostructured metal films are therefore clearly emerging as a new information carrier for highly-integrated photonic devices Barnes et al. (2003). However, we will only be able to speak about ’plasmonics’ in the same way that we speak about ’photonics’ when efficient techniques for active manipulation of surface polariton-polariton sygnals are identified.

Here we propose a concept of active nanoscale functional elements operating with surface plasmon-polariton signals. Our approach takes advantage of the most characteristic features of surface plasmon-polaritons, namely their localization in nanometer thick surface layers of metal, and the fact that their propagation depends strongly on the metal’s electronic properties. These features are exploited by combining them with the recently developed concept of achieving nanoscale photonic functionality using structural phase transitions in polyvalent metals, an idea which has already been shown to offer all optical switching at milliwatt power levels in thin films Zheludev (2002) and nanoparticles MacDonald et al. (2003), and promises a new type of photodetector Fedotov et al. (2002). Here we show that surface plasmon-polariton signals in metallic on dielectric waveguides containing a gallium section a few microns long can be effectively controlled by switching the crystalline gallium section of the waveguide from one structural phase to another. The switching may be achieved by both changing the waveguide temperature and by external optical excitation.

Metallic Gallium is a uniquely suitable material for this application. It is known for its polymorphism Defrain (1977). In $`\alpha `$-gallium, the stable ’ground-state’ phase Gong et al. (1991) molecular and metallic properties coexist - some inter-atomic bonds are strong covalent bonds, forming well-defined Ga2 dimers (molecules), and the rest are metallic bonds. The structure is highly anisotropic, with much better thermal and electrical conductivity in the ’metallic planes’ than along the covalent bonds. Remarkably, $`\alpha `$-gallium has a very low melting point, $`29.8^{}`$C. The covalent bonding leads to a strong optical absorption peak centered at 2.3 eV and spreading from approximately 0.68 eV ($``$310 nm) to the mid-infrared part of the spectrum. Optical properties of the $`\alpha `$-Ga and more metallic phases, metastable at normal conditions, are greatly different, in terms of the dielectric coefficients of liquid gallium and solid gallium they are huge, at a wavelength of 1.55$`\mu `$m we have $`|\epsilon _{liquid}\epsilon _\alpha |180`$. The metallic metastable phase (quasi-melt) may be achieved by simple heating, or by light absorption through a non-thermal ”optical melting” mechanism via destabilization of the optically excited covalent bonding structure Zheludev (2002). Whatever the mechanism of phase transition is it is a surface mediated effect and develops as propagation of the new metallic phase from the surface into the bulk of the semiconductor-like $`\alpha `$-phase. As the phase transition only involves a few tens of atomic layers of gallium at the interface it is highly reproducible and fully reversible and could run for millions of cycles without noticeable changes. High quality gallium interfaces with silica may be achieved using various techniques, from squeezing molten gallium to ultra-fast pulsed laser deposition Rode et al. (2001).

To evaluate the potential switching characteristics of the Surface Plasmon Polariton (SPP) waveguide we numerically modelled it using the Finite Elements Method. We investigated a gold film waveguide containing gallium section of length L on a quartz substrate. To model coupling and decoupling of optical radiation to and from the waveguide two ten element meander gratings were placed at both ends of the structure (Fig.1). Although optimization of coupling and decoupling efficiency was not the prime objective of this study, we found that efficiencies in excesses of 20$`\%`$ for coupling and 80$`\%`$ for decoupling could be achieved by the meander gratings with $`s/h=1/5`$, while coupling levels above 30$`\%`$ are possible with gratings of complex profile. In such a waveguide the SPP wave propagates at the interface between the metal film and silica substrate, through the gold and gallium sections. SPP decay length in a continuous gold/silica waveguide is $`53\mu `$ for the excitation wavelength of $`1.31\mu `$. In the waveguide containing Ga section, the transmitted SPP wave attenuates due to the mismatch of dielectric characteristics at the Au-Ga boarder and losses which are much higher in gallium than in gold. We modelled that the gallium section of the waveguide may be converted from the ground $`\alpha `$-phase to the metallic liquid-like phase. We also modelled that this change could take place as interface metallization: a thin layer of metallic gallium of thickness $`d`$ develops at the silica interface (see Fig.1). As $`\alpha `$-gallium is a highly anisotropic material (space group $`Cmca`$), we performed calculations of the waveguide transmission (disregarding coupling-decoupling losses) for all main crystalline orientations of the Ga film at the interface in the range of optical excitation wavelengthes from 0.9$`\mu `$ to 2.0$`\mu `$.

Fig. 2 shows the results of these calculations at different wavelengths of incident light for a waveguide containing gallium section of length L = $`2.5\mu `$, assuming that the gallium section is a homogenously crystal of given orientations or is a fully molten isotropic liquid phase. The graph also show the transmission levels calculated using analytical theory which accounts for absorption in an isotropic infinite homogeneous waveguide Raether (1988) for three main values of gallium’s crystalline dielectric coefficient and for the dielectric properties of the liquid state. The following notation was used: curve AB corresponds to gallium crystalline structure with its A-axis laying in the interface plane perpendicular to the direction of the SPP propagation and its B-axis perpendicular to the strip. Similar notation applies to curves BA/BC and CA/CB. The values of the complex dielectric coefficients of gallium and gold were taken from ref. Kofman et al. (1977) and Palik (1984). Although the results of numerical analysis and analytical calculations show similar spectral trends, the magnitudes of transmission coefficients are somewhat different for these two approaches. We argue that the discrepancy reflects limitations of the analytical theory which ignores the reflection of SPPs at the gold/gallium boarder. More importantly, however, the analytical theory also ignores the ”hopping” of the electromagnetic wave across the narrow gallium strip followed by re-coupling of the excitation into the SPP on the other side of the strip. These effects are very pronounced in numerical mapping of the fields and change the waveguide transmission in comparison with predictions of the analytical theory.

Therefore our calculations show that the waveguide transmission strongly depends on the structural phase of the gallium section and changing of the phase could be used for active controlling of the transmission. As the structural transformation in gallium is a surface mediated effect, two phases of gallium may co-exist at the interface, with a thin layer of metallic phase sandwiched between silica and $`\alpha `$-gallium. In fact, melting of gallium takes the form of ”surface melting” with the molten phase thickness steadily increasing with temperature in a narrow temperature corridor just below the gallium bulk melting point. Similarly, light-induced metallization also develops as a surface mediated effect and starts from the interface while the equilibrium thickness of the metallized layer $`d`$ may be controlled by the light intensity. This gives a possibility of continuous, ”analog” control of the waveguide transmission. To analyze this effect we calculated the waveguide transmission for different thicknesses of metastable gallium phase up to $`d=`$60nm for a number of incident wavelengths (see Fig.3). For illustrative purposes the gallium strip was taken to be polycrystalline $`\alpha `$-gallium: isotropic with dielectric constants averaged over crystal directions. In can be seen that the presence of the metallic liquid Ga layer in the section of only a few microns long and depth of just $`d`$=30 nm can dramatically change the transmission of plasmons through the waveguide.

One therefore can envisage an active plasmonic devise in which SPP transmission is controlled by the waveguide temperature in the range of a few degrees or external optical stimulation. In the near-infrared part of the spectrum a typical fluence of optical excitation needed for converting of $`\alpha `$-Ga phase to a metallic phase of several tens of nanometers deep is about 10 mJ/cm2 Zheludev (2002). For a section of gallium waveguide 2.5$`\mu `$m x 2.5$`\mu `$m the optical energy required for high-contrast switching would be in the order of 10pJ. The envisaged application of the control light signal to the waveguide is schematically presented on Fig.1 by a dashed arrow. When the excitation is terminated the molten/metallic layer rapidly recrystallizes into the ground $`\alpha `$-phase. The intrinsic switch-on time was measured for a gallium-quartz interface, and was found to be 2-4 ps Rode et al. (2001) and we expect that the SPP switch-on time will also be in the scale of a few ps. We anticipate the SPP switch-off time to be in the microsecond-nanosecond time scales Albanis et al. (2001). Notably, this is 4-8 orders of magnitude faster than the currently achieved response time of opto-mechanical switching microdevices.

The authors acknowledge the support of the Science and Engineering Research Council (U.K.) and fruitful discussion with A.Zayats.


text:
# Counts of Low-redshift SDSS Quasar Candidates

## 1. A Controversy About Quasar Counts

x

The quasar luminosity function, $`\mathrm{\Phi }(L)`$, provides fundamental information about their nature. Boyle et al. (1990, 2000) found that $`\mathrm{\Phi }(L)`$ for quasars at redshifts $`z<2.3`$ resembles a “broken” power law which becomes flatter at the faint end. They also demonstrated that the “break” luminosity at which the slope changes increases with redshift, and between $`z=0.8`$ and $`z=2.2`$ becomes more luminous by 1.9 mag. A peculiar aspect of this result is that the apparent magnitude corresponding to the “break” luminosity changes by only 0.8 mag. over this redshift range ($`B`$=18.6–19.4; that is, the differential distribution of quasar apparent magnitudes has a shape very similar to the shape of their luminosity function). Further, this apparent magnitude range is only $``$ 1-2 mag. above the photographic plate limit used for selection. Therefore, it is possible that the flattening of the luminosity function is due to a systematic underestimate of the increasing incompleteness at the faint end of the UV-excess selection technique employed by Boyle et al. Indeed, Hawkins & Veron (1995), using a variability-selected sample with 300 objects, argued that “The luminosity functions for redshifts of less than 2.2 show a featureless power law, with no sign of a ‘break’.”

x

## 2.  Can SDSS Resolve the Controversy?

The $`z<3`$ SDSS (York et al. 2000) spectroscopic quasar sample is limited to $`i<19.1`$, and thus not deep enough to reliably constrain the faint end of the luminosity function. The color selection by UV excess from the SDSS photometric sample (essentially based on SDSS $`ug`$ color, see Richards et al. 2002 and references therein) is limited by the photometric accuracy in the $`u`$ band to $`u21`$, which would be just barely sufficient to detect a change of the slope of counts at $`i20`$. However, the coadding of SDSS multi-epoch photometry produces $`>`$1 mag. deeper $`u`$-band measurements at a given accuracy, and allows a robust identification of UV-excess selected candidates to $`u22`$. Furthermore, multi-epoch data can also be used to select quasar candidates by variability, using techniques similar to those employed by Hawkins & Veron. This is the first time that it is possible to contrast the conflicting results of Boyle et al. and Hawkins & Veron using the same homogeneous data set.

## 3. Color Selection

x

We selected low-redshift quasar candidates by requiring $`ug<0.6`$ and $`0.15<gr<0.7`$ (based on the criteria of Richards et al. 2002). Their counts, and counts for two control samples, are shown in Fig. 1. The differential counts of selected candidates rise steeply (log($`N`$) vs. $`m`$ slope $``$0.75) at the bright end ($`u<19.5`$, or $`r<19`$), and then the slope changes to $``$0.30. This behavior is in agreement with the results of Boyle et al., who used a similar selection technique. It is worth emphasizing that SDSS photometric catalogs based on digital data are much more accurate (0.02 mag. errors, see Ivezić et al. 2003) than the catalogs used by Boyle et al. which were derived from a photographic survey. In particular, the gap between the distribution of quasars and more numerous blue thick disk and halo stars (centered on $`ug0.7`$, see the top left panel in Fig. 1) cleanly separates the two populations.

We note that some of the UV-excess selected candidates are not quasars: the results of SDSS spectroscopic follow-up ($`i<19`$) indicate that $`20\%`$ are stars (dominated by white dwarfs). This correction, however, has no effect on the conclusion that the slope of differential counts changes because there are about 10 times fewer quasar candidates at $`r21.5`$ than predicted by extrapolating the counts for $`r<19`$. Similarly, star/galaxy separation is not an issue: even if resolved sources were added to the point sources, the counts would be qualitatively unchanged (i.e. the UV-excess sources are heavily dominated by point sources).

x

## 4.  Variability Selection

x

Quasars are variable sources with amplitudes of several tenths of a magnitude for time scales longer than a few months (e.g. Hawkins & Veron 1995). The top left panel in Fig. 2 shows the correlation between variability in the $`g`$ band, $`|\mathrm{\Delta }g|`$, and $`ug`$ color for point sources observed twice two years apart. A large majority of variable sources, defined by $`|\mathrm{\Delta }g|>0.15`$, show UV excess ($`84\%`$ for $`u<21.5`$). Even without accounting for the fact that some variable sources are stars (which would further increase this fraction), this high fraction implies that UV-excess and variability selection techniques yield similar samples (see the two bottom panels in Fig. 2). Alternatively, 47% of sources selected by UV-excess have $`|\mathrm{\Delta }g|>0.15`$. It is therefore not surprising that the counts of variability-selected quasar candidates, which we define as all sources with $`\mathrm{\Delta }(g)>0.15`$, also show a change of slope at $`r19`$. Of course, this selection could be further refined; for example, RR Lyrae stars, which dominate the variable star population, can be easily removed due to their distinctive colors and much shorter variability time scale (Ivezić et al. 2000). Such improvements would only further increase the similarity of differential counts for UV-excess and variability selected quasar candidates.

x

## 5.  Discussion

x

The counts of quasar candidates selected by both UV-excess and variability techniques using multi-epoch SDSS imaging data change slope around $`r=19`$. This result provides strong support for the quasar luminosity function and its evolution advocated by Boyle et al., and demonstrates that both techniques produce similar samples when applied to high-quality data.

x

Funding for the creation and distribution of the SDSS Archive has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/.  x

## References

x

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Ivezić, Ž., et al. 2003, astro-ph/0301400

Richards, G.T., et al. 2002, AJ, 123, 2945

York, D.G., et al. 2000, AJ, 120, 1579