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# Unbroken versus broken mirror world: a tale of two vacua

## 1 Introduction

Parity is a natural candidate for a symmetry in particle physics. The fact that experiments have established the $`VA`$ nature of the weak interactions does not mean that parity cannot be a symmetry of the vacuum. This is due to there being no unique definition of the parity transformation in quantum field theory. Parity, by definition, takes $`\stackrel{}{r}`$ to $`\stackrel{}{r}`$ and it also transforms left-handed fermion fields to right-handed fermions fields. However, since there are many left- and right-handed fermion fields, there is no unique definition. It is certainly true, though, that the standard model has no definition of parity which can be a symmetry of its Lagrangian. Thus, if parity is a symmetry of the Lagrangian of nature, new physics must exist.

It was realised some time ago that the simplest phenomenologically consistent gauge model with both a parity symmetric Lagrangian and vacuum could be constructed by postulating the existence of a mirror sector  (see also Ref.). The idea was discussed earlier, before the advent of gauge theories, in Ref. and some cosmological implications were considered in Refs..

Suppose that for each known particle there exists a corresponding mirror particle. The mirror particles interact with other mirror particles in the same way that the ordinary particles interact with the other ordinary particles, except that mirror weak interactions are right-handed ($`V+A`$) instead of left-handed ($`VA`$). The doubling of the particle spectrum which parity invariance suggests is not particularly radical in the historical context of particle physics. In particular the repetitive generation structure, the existence of antiparticles and the colour tripling of quarks are all familiar examples. Of these examples, Dirac’s prediction of antiparticles from the requirement of Lorentz invariance is perhaps most analogous to the prediction of mirror particles from parity invariance (parity being an improper Lorentz transformation). Although the number of particles is doubled, it turns out that the number of parameters increases by only two (in the minimal version), making it the simplest (non-trivial) known extension to the standard model.

It turns out that in the minimal model, which has one Higgs doublet and one mirror Higgs doublet, the Higgs potential allows two non-trivial minima . One minimum leaves parity unbroken by the vacuum, and the other has it spontaneously broken. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the physics resulting from the two different vacuum solutions (which effectively can be considered two different theories). Both theories are phenomenologically consistent and are therefore possible extensions to the standard model. The mirror atoms/baryons in both cases provide plausible candidates for the dark matter in the universe. However, neutrino physics should be able to distinguish the two theories as we will show.

## 2 The Lagrangian and the two vacua

Let us begin by briefly reviewing the model (for full details see Ref.). Consider the minimal standard model Lagrangian $`_1`$. This Lagrangian is not invariant under the usual parity transformation so it seems parity is violated. However, this Lagrangian may not be complete. If we add to $`_1`$ a new Lagrangian $`_2`$ which is just like $`_1`$ except that all left-handed (right-handed) fermions are replaced by new right-handed (left-handed) fermions which feel new interactions of the same form and strength, then the theory described by $`=_1+_2`$ is invariant under a parity symmetry which induces $`_1_2`$. In addition to these Lagrangian terms, there may also be parity invariant terms which couple or mix ordinary matter with mirror matter. We label this part of the Lagrangian as $`_{int}`$. The terms in $`_{int}`$ are very important since they lead to non-gravitational interactions between ordinary and mirror matter and hence allow the idea to be experimentally tested in the laboratory. These terms also contain the only new parameters of the model. In the minimal case, only two terms exist in $`_{int}`$ because of the constraints of gauge invariance, parity invariance and renormalisablility. For this reason the minimal model has only two new parameters beyond those of the minimal standard model.

The gauge symmetry of the theory is111Of course, grand unified alternatives such as $`SU(5)SU(5)`$, $`SO(10)SO(10)`$ and so on are also possible. Such alternatives predict similar low energy physics (see for example Refs.). The idea may also be compatible with string theory ($`E_8E_8`$) and with large extra dimensions .

$$SU(3)SU(2)U(1)SU(3)^{}SU(2)^{}U(1)^{}.$$
(1)
There are two sets of fermions, the ordinary particles (denoted without primes in the following) and their mirror images – the mirror particles (denoted with primes). The fields transform under the gauge group of Eq.(1) as

$$\begin{array}{cc}f_L(1,2,1)(1,1,0),\hfill & f_R^{}(1,1,0)(1,2,1),\hfill \\ e_R(1,1,2)(1,1,0),\hfill & e_L^{}(1,1,0)(1,1,2),\hfill \\ q_L(3,2,1/3)(1,1,0),\hfill & q_R^{}(1,1,0)(3,2,1/3),\hfill \\ u_R(3,1,4/3)(1,1,0),\hfill & u_L^{}(1,1,0)(3,1,4/3),\hfill \\ d_R(3,1,2/3)(1,1,0),\hfill & d_L^{}(1,1,0)(3,1,2/3),\hfill \end{array}$$
(2)
with generation indices suppressed. The Lagrangian is invariant under the discrete $`Z_2`$ parity symmetry defined by222By virtue of standard $`CPT`$ invariance the theory also possesses time reversal invariance (which can be defined to be the product of the above parity transformation with the usual $`CPT`$ transformation) . The theory is therefore invariant under the full Poincaré group, including all improper Lorentz transformations.

$$\begin{array}{c}\stackrel{}{r}\stackrel{}{r},tt,\\ G^\mu G_\mu ^{},W^\mu W_\mu ^{},B^\mu B_\mu ^{},\\ f_L\gamma _0f_R^{},e_R\gamma _0e_L^{},q_L\gamma _0q_R^{},u_R\gamma _0u_L^{},d_R\gamma _0d_L^{},\end{array}$$
(3)
where $`G^\mu `$ $`(G^\mu )`$, $`W^\mu `$ $`(W^\mu )`$ and $`B^\mu `$ $`(B^\mu )`$ are the gauge bosons of the $`SU(3)`$ $`[SU(3)^{}]`$, $`SU(2)`$ $`[SU(2)^{}]`$ and $`U(1)`$ $`[U(1)^{}]`$ gauge forces respectively. The minimal model contains two Higgs doublets,

$$\varphi (1,2,1)(1,1,0),\varphi ^{}(1,1,0)(1,2,1),$$
(4)
which are also parity partners.

The most general renormalisable Higgs potential can be written in the form

$$V(\varphi ,\varphi ^{})=\lambda _+(\varphi ^{}\varphi +\varphi ^{}\varphi ^{}2u^2)^2+\lambda _{}(\varphi ^{}\varphi \varphi ^{}\varphi ^{})^2,$$
(5)
where $`\lambda _\pm `$ and $`u^2`$ are real parameters. This Higgs potential furnishes only two vacua when $`u^2>0`$. For the region of parameter space defined by $`\lambda _\pm >0`$ the vacuum expectation values (VEVs) of $`\varphi `$ and $`\varphi ^{}`$ are equal and so parity is unbroken. (With the Higgs potential written in the above form this is manifest because the potential is non-negative, and equal to zero for this vacuum solution). Gauge invariance allows us to write the vacuum in the form

$$\varphi =\varphi ^{}=\left(\begin{array}{c}0\\ u\end{array}\right).$$
(6)
Interestingly, a simple analysis shows that there is a qualitatively different minimum which occurs in the region of parameter space defined by

$$\lambda _++\lambda _{}>0\mathrm{and}\lambda _{}<0.$$
(7)
The vacuum solution now has one VEV nonzero and the other zero . In this region of parameter space, parity is broken spontaneously. This can be made manifest by rewriting the Higgs potential in terms of the parameters $`\lambda _1\lambda _++\lambda _{}`$ and $`\lambda _24\lambda _{}`$,

$$V(\varphi ,\varphi ^{})=\lambda _1(\varphi ^{}\varphi +\varphi ^{}\varphi ^{}u_B^2)^2+\lambda _2(\varphi ^{}\varphi \varphi ^{}\varphi ^{})$$
(8)
where

$$u_B^2\frac{2\lambda _+u^2}{\lambda _++\lambda _{}}.$$
(9)
Written in this way, for $`\lambda _{1,2}>0,`$ the vacuum solution

$$\varphi =u_B,\varphi ^{}=0,$$
(10)
or

$$\varphi =0,\varphi ^{}=u_B,$$
(11)
is manifest since the Higgs potential is non-negative, and equal to zero for these two degenerate vacua. In the spontaneously broken parity model we adopt the solution of Eq.(10) for definiteness. Notice that the parameters must be adjusted to make $`u`$ and $`u_B`$ both numerically equal to the observed electroweak symmetry breaking VEV (but not simultaneously, of course).

Let us examine the mirror particle spectrum of these two theories. In the unbroken mirror model \[the one with the vacuum of Eq.(6)\] all of the mirror fermions and mirror gauge bosons have the same mass as the corresponding ordinary fermions and gauge bosons.

In the broken mirror model \[the one with the vacuum of Eq.(10)\] it seems that the mirror fermions and the mirror gauge bosons are all massless because they all couple to $`\varphi ^{}`$ which has a vanishing VEV. However, dynamical effects from mirror QCD induced condensation will induce a small mass for the mirror weak bosons, $`W^{}`$ and $`Z^{}`$, as well as a tiny VEV for $`\varphi ^{}`$, and hence tiny masses for the mirror fermions. The latter effect is induced by the Yukawa coupling terms $`h_q\overline{q}_R^{}q_L^{}\varphi ^{}+H.c.`$, where $`h_q`$ is the Yukawa coupling constant for quark flavour $`q`$. Mirror QCD interactions cause the mirror quark bilinears to have nonzero vacuum expectation values: $`\overline{q}^{}q^{}=\mathrm{\Lambda }^3`$ where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}100`$ MeV is the mirror QCD dynamical chiral symmetry breaking scale . The resulting linear term in $`\varphi ^{}`$ effectively contributes to the Higgs potential so as to induce a small VEV, given by $`\varphi ^{}h_t\mathrm{\Lambda }^3/m_\varphi ^{}^2`$. Note that the largest contribution to the linear term comes from mirror top quark condensation due to the relatively large Yukawa coupling constant $`h_t`$. Further details have been given in Ref..

The result is the following particle spectrum:

* The $`W^{}`$ and $`Z^{}`$ bosons will have masses of order $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}100`$ MeV.
* The four physical mirror scalars (two complex scalars $`\varphi ^+`$ and $`\varphi ^0`$) will be approximately degenerate with mass $`\sqrt{\lambda _2}u_B`$.
* The mirror fermions $`\psi ^{}`$ will have masses given by

$$m_\psi ^{}=km_\psi \text{where}k\frac{\varphi ^{}}{\varphi }\frac{g^2}{2}\frac{m_t\mathrm{\Lambda }^3}{m_W^2m_\varphi ^{}^2}$$

where $`g`$ is the $`SU(2)`$ gauge coupling constant, $`m_W`$ is the ordinary $`W`$ boson mass, and $`m_\psi `$ is the mass of the corresponding ordinary fermion $`\psi `$. Using the rough estimates $`g^210^1`$, $`m_tm_W10^2`$ GeV and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}0.1`$ GeV, we see that $`k10^6(\text{GeV}/m_\varphi ^{})^2`$. For example, if $`m_\varphi ^{}10^2`$ GeV, then $`k10^{10}`$. This means that the masses of the mirror fermions can range from about $`10`$ eV for the mirror top-quark to $`10^4`$ eV for the mirror electron. As this example illustrates, we expect $`k`$ to be quite small ($`\stackrel{<}{}10^{10}`$). Its precise value, however, cannot be specified because $`m_\varphi ^{}`$ depends on the free parameter $`\lambda _2`$.

## 3 Phenomenology

If the solar system is dominated by the ordinary particles (and this is expected theoretically as we will discuss shortly), then both of these theories agree with present experiments. (An extension to incorporate nonzero neutrino masses and mixings must be performed to get agreement with the neutrino deficit experiments.) These ideas can be tested in the laboratory because of the terms in $`_{int}`$. In the simplest case that we are considering at the moment (where $`_1`$ is the minimal standard model Lagrangian), there are just two gauge and parity invariant and renormalisable terms in $`_{int}`$. They are: the Higgs potential term

$$2(\lambda _+\lambda _{})\varphi ^{}\varphi \varphi ^{}\varphi ^{}$$
(12)
contained within Eq.(5), and the gauge boson kinetic mixing term

$$\omega F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }$$
(13)
where $`F_{\mu \nu }=_\mu B_\nu _\nu B_\mu `$ is the field strength tensor for the $`U(1)`$ gauge boson, and $`F_{\mu \nu }^{}`$ is its mirror analogue.

The main phenomenological effect of the term in Eq.(12) is to modify the interactions of the Higgs boson. This effect will be tested if or when a Higgs boson is discovered. For the unbroken case, the implications of the Higgs mixing term have been discussed in Refs.. In the spontaneously broken case, the ordinary physical neutral Higgs boson $`H`$ couples via cubic and quartic terms to the mirror Higgs doublet $`\varphi ^{}`$:

$$_{H\varphi ^{}}=2\sqrt{2}(\lambda _1+\frac{1}{2}\lambda _2)u_BH\varphi ^{}\varphi ^{}+(\lambda _1+\frac{1}{2}\lambda _2)H^2\varphi ^{}\varphi ^{}.$$
(14)
An experimental lower bound can be derived for $`\lambda _1`$ by observing that

$$\lambda _1=\frac{m_H}{2u_B}\stackrel{>}{}0.2$$
(15)
where the experimental lower bound on the standard model Higgs boson mass of roughly $`90`$ GeV has been used. This bound is valid even if $`H`$ decays invisibly  into mirror matter (via $`H\varphi ^{}\varphi ^{}`$). Thus the cubic and quartic ordinary – mirror Higgs interactions are necessarily quite large in the spontaneously broken model since $`\lambda _2`$, being a positive quantity, cannot be fine-tuned to make $`\lambda _1+(1/2)\lambda _20`$. It is also interesting to observe that there is no ordinary – mirror Higgs mass mixing in the spontaneously broken model. These remarks will be important when we discuss cosmological implications below.

The main phenomenological effect of the kinetic mixing term in Eq.(13) is to give small electric charges to the mirror partners of the ordinary charged fermions . In the case where the parity symmetry is unbroken, photon – mirror photon kinetic mixing leads to orthopositronium – mirror orthopositronium oscillations . There is interesting evidence that these oscillations have actually been observed experimentally . However, this tantalising result needs experimental confirmation.

If neutrinos are massive, then this will allow an important window on the mirror world which was first realised in 1991 . This is because $`_{int}`$ can contain neutrino mass terms which mix the ordinary and mirror matter.333Note that if electric and mirror electric charges are conserved, then it is not possible for $`_{int}`$ to contain mass terms mixing the charged fermions of ordinary matter with those of mirror matter. A remarkable, but very simple, result is that if ordinary and mirror neutrinos mix at all then the resulting neutrino oscillations must be maximal if the parity symmetry is unbroken . To see this consider the electron neutrino. If there is no mirror matter, and if intergenerational mixing is small as in the quark sector, then the weak eigenstate electron neutrino is approximately a single mass eigenstate. However if mirror matter exists, then there will be a mirror electron neutrino $`\nu _e^{}`$. The most general mass matrix consistent with parity conservation \[Eq.(5)\] is

$$_{mass}=[\overline{\nu }_e,\overline{\nu }_e^{}]\left(\begin{array}{cc}m& m^{}\\ m^{}& m\end{array}\right)\left[\begin{array}{c}\nu _e\\ \nu _e^{}\end{array}\right]+H.c.$$
(16)
where the masses can be taken as real without loss of generality. This mass matrix has the above form whether the neutrinos are Majorana or Dirac states. Diagonalising, we easily obtain that the weak eigenstates $`\nu _e`$ and $`\nu _e^{}`$ are each maximally mixed combinations of mass eigenstates:

$$\nu _e=\frac{(\nu _1^++\nu _1^{})}{\sqrt{2}},\nu _e^{}=\frac{(\nu _1^+\nu _1^{})}{\sqrt{2}},$$
(17)
where $`\nu _1^+`$ and $`\nu _1^{}`$ are the mass eigenstates. Thus, the effect of ordinary matter mixing with mirror matter is very dramatic. No matter how small (or large) the mass interaction term is, the mixing is maximal. This result immediately leads to a beautiful and natural explanation of the neutrino physics anomalies : The solar anomaly is due to maximal $`\nu _e\nu _e^{}`$ oscillations, the atmospheric anomaly is due to maximal $`\nu _\mu \nu _\mu ^{}`$ oscillations, while the LSND anomaly can be accomodated through small intergenerational mixing between the first and second families. Maximal mixing can be considered a “smoking gun” for unbroken parity invariance in nature!

For the broken parity case, the maximal mixing feature between the ordinary and mirror neutrinos is completely lost. In fact, the mixing angles between any ordinary neutrino and its mirror partner will be suppressed by the tiny parameter $`k\varphi ^{}/\varphi `$. To see this, it is simplest to think in terms of effective operators. At the dimension-5 level the relevant terms are

$$_{eff}=\frac{a}{M}\left[\overline{f}_L\varphi ^c\varphi ^{}(f_L)^c+\overline{f^{}}_R\varphi ^c\varphi ^{}(f_R^{})^c\right]+\frac{b}{M}\overline{f}_L\varphi ^c(\varphi ^c)^{}f_R^{}+H.c.,$$
(18)
where $`M`$ is a high scale, perhaps the seesaw scale. The resulting effective low energy Majorana mass matrix yields a mixing angle of order $`k`$.444One of the authors (RRV) thanks K S Babu for emphasising this point in conversation.

So, although the minimal broken mirror model provides a nice rationale for light effectively sterile neutrinos, then can play no observable role in neutrino phenomenology! In particular, the solar, atmospheric and LSND anomalies cannot be simultaneously resolved. Furthermore, the possible scenarios for explaining the solar and atmospheric results involve the ordinary neutrinos only, and thus have no novel features. The predictivity of the unbroken mirror model for neutrino physics is totally absent in the broken version.

## 4 Astrophysics and cosmology

In both theories, the lightest mirror baryon is stable and provides a natural candidate for the inferred dark matter of the universe. Mirror matter will behave like cold dark matter on large scales, but the self interactions will modify the physics on small scales. In the unbroken case, the interactions and masses of the mirror particles are completely analogous to the ordinary particles. The lightest mirror baryon in this case is, of course, the mirror proton. This case has been studied in Refs. where it was argued that the mirror particles provide a plausible candidate for the dark matter of the universe. It was also shown that the mirror matter may be segregated from ordinary matter on distance scales much larger than the solar system but may be well mixed on the scale of galaxies. Interestingly, there is observational evidence that some of the dark matter in our galaxy is in the form of invisible stars. This evidence comes from the MACHO candidates obtained from the microlensing observations of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud . These observations support the existence of mirror matter since mirror matter naturally forms star mass sized objects . There are also a number of other interesting cosmological implications of the unbroken mirror world which are discussed in Ref..

In the spontaneously broken mirror model, we expect the lightest mirror baryon to be (mirror) electrically neutral. We will call it the mirror neutron. It is the lightest mirror baryon because the mirror up quark – down quark mass difference is negligible ($``$ eV), so the mirror proton – mirror neutron mass difference is dominated by the electromagnetic corrections. This means that the mirror proton would be expected to be a few MeV heavier than the mirror neutron. Thus, mirror neutrons would be stable and form the mirror dark matter. In the broken model, the mirror pions will have very small mass $`\sqrt{k}m_\pi \stackrel{<}{}1`$ keV. This will significantly increase the range of the mirror strong interactions. In view of this it seems quite plausible that the interactions of the mirror neutrons of the spontaneously broken mirror model will be strong enough and dissapative enough to cause the collapse of a mirror neutron gas into into mirror stars/planets and the like. The spontaneously broken model may therefore also explain the mysterious MACHO population inferred from the microlensing observations (although perhaps not quite as naturally as the unbroken model).

Of course, observations suggest that the amount of cold dark matter needed may be significantly greater than the amount of ordinary baryons in the universe. This feature is not inconsistent with an exact mirror symmetry when one realises that microscopic symmetries do not always lead to macroscopic symmetries. Thus, the number of mirror baryons in the universe need not be exactly the same as the number of ordinary baryons even if the microscopic parity symmetry is unbroken. It is, however, most plausible for the number of mirror baryons in the universe to be of the same order of magnitude as the number of ordinary baryons. On the other hand, the moderately successful Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) predictions suggest that the temperature of the mirror plasma was somewhat lower (a factor of two would suffice) than the temperature of the ordinary plasma during the BBN epoch. The temperature difference between the ordinary and mirror matter can be ascribed to unknown physics at early times or divine intervention. Specific mechanisms based on inflation have been studied in Refs..

Of course for consistency it is important that the non-gravitational interactions between the ordinary and mirror particles be small enough so that they do not populate the mirror sector and wipe out the temperature difference. We will consider in turn the three generic effects of $`_{int}`$: photon – mirror photon kinetic mixing, neutrino – mirror neutrino mass mixing, and Higgs boson – mirror Higgs boson interactions and mixing.

A stringent constraint from BBN was derived some years ago on the photon - mirror photon kinetic mixing parameter $`\omega `$ . Little more needs to be said about this here, except to note that the bound is only as robust as the BBN scenario itself.

The BBN bounds on neutrino to mirror neutrino oscillations in the symmetric mirror model have been discussed at length in the literature . The important point is that large relic neutrino asymmetries will be generated by ordinary to mirror oscillations (just as for ordinary to sterile oscillations)  provided that the oscillation parameters are in the appropriate range. The large asymmetries can then suppress mirror neutrino production because the matter effect depresses the effective mixing angle . In the broken mirror model, mirror neutrino production is automatically very suppressed by the tiny mixing angles whose origin was explained above.

We now need to derive consequences for BBN due to Higgs boson – mirror Higgs boson coupling and mixing. The consequences actually depend on cosmology at temperature scales much higher than those of BBN. It is simplest to discuss this issue within the context of inflationary cosmology, even though the existence of an inflationary epoch has yet to be observationally established. Suppose first of all that the reheating temperature $`T_{RH}`$ of the ordinary plasma was at least several hundred GeV. Recall that inflationary scenarios can be constructed to provide asymmetric reheating for the ordinary and mirror plasmas: $`T_{RH}^{}<T_{RH}`$ . Will subsequent ordinary – mirror Higgs interactions force the mirror plasma temperature $`T^{}`$ to equal the ordinary plasma temperature $`T`$? In this case, electroweak symmetry is presumably restored and the ordinary Higgs doublet $`\varphi `$ is a component of the ordinary plasma. The relevant process to consider is therefore $`\varphi ^{}\varphi \varphi ^{}\varphi ^{}`$ scattering. If we want the rate for this scattering process to be less than the expansion rate of the universe for all temperatures above the phase transition temperature, the stringent constraint ,

$$\lambda _+\lambda _{}\lambda _1+\frac{1}{2}\lambda _2\stackrel{<}{}3\times 10^6\sqrt{\frac{m_\varphi }{TeV}},$$
(19)
must be satisfied. For the symmetric mirror model, this constraint can be met by requiring the two positive parameters $`\lambda _+`$ and $`\lambda _{}`$ to almost cancel.555 This is actually technically natural because the combination $`\lambda _+\lambda _{}`$ is just the coupling between the ordinary and mirror scalars which if zero would increase the symmetry of the theory (separate global Lorentz groups for the ordinary and mirror sectors). Once this has been done, the bound of Eq.(19) also suffices to prevent ordinary – mirror plasma thermal equilibration by Higgs boson processes occurring after electroweak symmetry breakdown. For the broken mirror model, this constraint can never be satisfied, because $`\lambda _2`$ is positive and $`\lambda _1`$ is bounded from below as per Eq.(15). Thus, if $`T_{RH}`$ is higher than the Higgs boson mass scale, then the ordinary and mirror plasmas must come to thermal equilibrium, making the model incompatible with standard BBN.

The relevance of the bound in Eq.(19) was recently re-examined in Ref. for the symmetric mirror model case. It was pointed out that the $`T_{RH}`$ could be much lower than the electroweak phase transition temperature. If so, then the bound in Eq.(19) is irrelevant. Instead, a weaker bound pertains which arises from Higgs boson – mirror Higgs boson mass mixing after symmetry breaking. See Ref. for full details, and in particular for a discussion of the dramatic Higgs boson phenomenology that could be discovered by the Large Hadron Collider if this scenario is correct.

Using similar reasoning, the broken mirror case can be made compatible with BBN if the reheating temperature is less than the Higgs boson mass scale. However, after the electroweak phase transition666Note that this phase transition can be eliminated by having a sufficiently low $`T_{RH}`$. the cubic term in Eq.(14) will induce the process

$$b\overline{b}t^{}\overline{t}^{}t^{}\overline{t}^{}.$$
(20)
Using dimensional analysis, the rate for this process is

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }=a(\lambda _1+\frac{1}{2}\lambda _2)^2h_t^4\frac{m_b^2}{m_H^4m_\varphi ^{}^8}T^{11}$$
(21)
where $`a`$ is a numerical factor expected to be in the range $`0.110`$. Requiring this rate to be less than the expansion rate $`T^2/M_P`$, where $`M_P`$ is the Planck mass, we obtain the rough bound

$$\lambda _1+\frac{1}{2}\lambda _2\stackrel{<}{}\frac{m_H^2m_\varphi ^{}^4}{h_t^2m_b\sqrt{M_P}}T_{RH}^{\frac{9}{2}}100\left(\frac{m_\varphi }{100\text{GeV}}\right)^6\left(\frac{T_{RH}}{\text{GeV}}\right)^{\frac{9}{2}},$$
(22)
where $`m_\varphi `$ is now a generic Higgs or mirror Higgs boson mass scale. We see that the bound is quite weak for reasonable $`m_\varphi `$ with the reheating temperature in the $`10`$’s of GeV range.

As our final comment on the cosmology of the broken mirror model, we address the issue of a possible domain wall problem. Superficially, it appears that this model, like other models with spontaneously broken discrete symmetries, would present a serious domain wall problem if the electroweak phase transition actually took place. While this potential problem can be solved by postulating a sufficiently low reheating temperature as considered above, we will argue that for this particular model the domain walls are necessarily unstable even if the electroweak phase transition occurred, provided that the radiation-dominated phase of the universe was never hotter than $`m_\varphi `$. This is because of our expectation that the ordinary and mirror plasmas will have different temperatures in order to achieve successful BBN. The asymmetric temperatures will cause asymmetric finite temperature corrections to the Higgs potential. Although the two parity breaking vacua are degenerate at zero temperature, they will not be degenerate for any finite $`T`$ and $`T^{}`$ if $`TT^{}`$. The different energy densities in the domains on either side of a wall should cause the wall to collapse due to the ensuing pressure differential. Of course, because of the bound in Eq.(19), the reheating temperature must still be constrained to be less than $`m_\varphi `$, otherwise $`T^{}<T`$ cannot hold at lower temperatures.

## 5 Next-to-minimal broken mirror model

Several years after the unbroken and spontaneously broken mirror models were introduced, another type of mirror model was discussed in Ref. (and some cosmological implications discussed in Ref.). These authors modified the minimal models  discussed here by postulating an additional scalar particle. This allows $`k\varphi ^{}/\varphi `$ to be a free parameter , in contrast to both the unbroken and broken incarnations of the minimal model. While this model is distinct from the minimal mirror models, it is not quite as predictive because it is has more free parameters (especially the mirror symmetry breaking scale). It has also been used to address the neutrino problems, (with the $`\nu _e\nu _s`$ small angle MSW solution to the solar neutrino problem and $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ solution to the atmospheric neutrino anomaly), as well as the dark matter and MACHO problems .

## 6 Concluding remarks

The hypothesis of mirror matter allows one to write down a phenomenologically tenable gauge model with parity (and in fact the full Poincaré group) as an exact symmetry of both the Lagrangian and the vacuum state of nature . Interestingly, the same Lagrangian supplies also a parity asymmetric vacuum state for a certain range of parameters . The phenomenology, astrophysics and cosmology of both incarnations of the minimal mirror model have been examined in this paper.

One of the most urgent tests of these ideas lies with neutrino physics. The unbroken or symmetric mirror model features maximally mixed pairs of ordinary and mirror neutrinos . For terrestrial experiments, mirror neutrinos are effectively sterile states. The most natural solution to the atmospheric neutrino anomaly uses maximal $`\nu _\mu \nu _\mu ^{}`$ oscillations, while the solar neutrino anomaly is most attractively solved through maximal $`\nu _e\nu _e^{}`$ oscillations . From an experimental perspective, this is a combined maximal $`\nu _\mu \nu _s`$ and $`\nu _e\nu _s^{}`$ scenario. While neither of these solutions currently provide a perfect fit to the experimental data, they are broadly consistent with the atmospheric  and solar experiments . Observe that if it turns out that the atmospheric neutrino anomaly is due to $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ oscillations then this, by itself, cannot rule out the unbroken mirror matter model. It just means that the $`\nu _\mu \nu _\mu ^{}`$ oscillation length – which is controlled by a free $`\mathrm{\Delta }m^2`$ parameter– is much greater than $`10,000`$ km for atmospheric neutrino energies relevant to the experiments.

The forthcoming neutral current measurement from SNO will be a crucial test of the $`\nu _e\nu _e^{}`$ solution to the solar neutrino problem. Efforts to discriminate between the $`\nu _\mu \nu _s`$ and $`\nu _\mu \nu _\tau `$ solutions to the atmospheric neutrino anomaly, both from the MINOS and CERN – Gran Sasso long baseline experiments and possibly from SuperKamiokande itself, will also be important. While SuperKamiokande claims to disfavour the $`\nu _\mu \nu _s`$ or $`\nu _\mu ^{}`$ solution on the basis of a preliminary analysis , we have to wait for a detailed account of their analysis procedure in order to judge the robustness of this preliminary conclusion. The Miniboone experiment will also be important, because its ability to check the LSND result  will also confirm or disconfirm the latter’s indirect evidence for a light sterile neutrino. If the participation of a light sterile state in the neutrino anomalies is confirmed by future data, then the minimal broken mirror model will certainly be ruled out.

###### Acknowledgments.

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council. RRV acknowledges useful discussions with K. S. Babu that took place during the 2nd Tropical Workshop on Particle Physics and Cosmology in San Juan, Puerto Rico.


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# References

## Abstract

We study solutions of the one-loop $`\beta `$-functions of the critical bosonic string theory in the framework of the Renormalization Group (RG) approach to string theory, considering explicitly the effects of the 21 extra dimensions. In the RG approach the 26-dimensional manifold is given in terms of $`M^4\times R^1\times _{21}`$. In calculating the Wilson loops, as it is well known for this kind of confining geometry, two phenomena appear: confinement and over-confinement. There is a critical minimal surface below of which it leads to confinement only. The role of the extra dimensions is understood in terms of a dimensionless scale $`l`$ provided by them. Therefore, the effective string tension in the area law, the length of the Wilson loops, as well as, the size of the critical minimal surface depend on this scale. When this confining geometry is used to study a field-theory $`\beta `$-function with an infrared attractive point (as the Novikov-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov $`\beta `$-function) the range of the couplings where the field theory is confining depends on that scale. We have explicitly calculated the $`l`$-dependence of that range.

OUTP-00-24-P

Confining strings, Wilson loops and

extra dimensions

Martin Schvellinger111martin@thphys.ox.ac.uk

Theoretical Physics

Department of Physics

University of Oxford

1 Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3NP, UK

PACS: 11.25.Pm, 11.25.-w

Keywords: Strings, Renormalization group flow

In a previous paper  we studied the holographic renormalization group flow associated to the Yang-Mills theory where the coupling constant diverges in the infrared limit222This has been early studied in references . and, $`\beta `$-functions with an infrared attractive point, as the Novikov-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov (NVSZ) one . It has been considered in the framework of the Renormalization Group approach to the string theory developed by Álvarez and Gómez . In  it has been calculated the Wilson loops and analyzed the features of the metric which is a solution of the vanishing string theory sigma model $`\beta `$-function equations, at leading order in $`\alpha ^{}`$. The metric studied shows confinement and also over-confinement, which depend on the size of the minimal surfaces used to calculate the Wilson loops. In fact, there is a critical minimal surface between those regimes. In the case of the NSVZ $`\beta `$-function, as it was shown in , there exist two branches: one behaves asymptotically free in the UV limit and the other one shows a strongly coupled regime in that limit. There is also an attractive infrared point which means that the RG flow of the theory goes from the UV limit to the IR limit. In the branch of the strong coupling an interesting result emerges , around the attractive infrared point, there is a range of couplings where the theory only shows confinement. From those calculations an open question arises. That is about the meaning of the extra $`21`$-dimensional manifold which is included in order to solve the vanishing one-loop $`\beta `$-function equations of the string theory sigma model in the critical dimension333In the case of superstrings similar analysis can be done by means an extra 5-dimensional manifold.. Notice that this solution also satisfies the equations of motion of $`5`$-dimensional gravity coupled to the dilaton field. In this sense, there is a connection between the RG approach  and the confining strings 444See also  where a Liouville-string approach to confinement in four dimensional gauge theories is presented., which has been pointed out by Álvarez and Gómez .

In this paper we study the above mentioned question. In order to understand the role played by those extra coordinates we will calculate the Wilson loops using a metric which is a solution of the closed bosonic string theory sigma model $`\beta `$-function equations, by considering that the $`21`$-extra dimensions correspond to a hyper-plane $``$. We consider two situations, one is when the Wilson loop is drawn in such a way that the quark and the anti-quark are separated both in the Minkowski spacetime by $`L`$, and also in the hyper-plane $``$ by a distance $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|`$. This point will be clarified latter. The other situation, when the quark-antiquark pair lies at the same point of the 21-dimensional hyper-plane $``$ has already discussed in references  (and in our context also in ). We will use it as a check of consistency in the limit when $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|0`$, in the previous case. The expected result is that the critical size of the minimal surfaces depends on a scale $`l`$ which is a function of the separation $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|`$ on the $`21`$-dimensional hyper-plane 555For the effect of extra dimensions in Wilson loops in the large $`N`$ limit of field theories on Calabi-Yau conical singularity see  and references therein.. This has an interesting consequence when it is applied to study the NSVZ $`\beta `$-function in the infrared limit (on the branch of strong coupling). The range of couplings in which the theory is only confining reduces as $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|`$ increases, but as we shall see this reduction is bounded. It implies that the effect due to those extra coordinates leads to a reduction of the range of pure confinement of the theory.

The first concrete realization of a connection between gravity and field theories has been made by Maldacena , showing the duality between type IIB supergravity in $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ and the $`𝒩=4`$ super Yang-Mills theory at the boundary. This AdS/CFT duality was developed in . In order to extend the duality to non-conformal field theories it has been proposed several possibilities . On the other hand, Polyakov proposed a string representation of Yang-Mills theories based on the zig-zag invariance of pure Yang-Mills Wilson loops . Here we are going to deal with the RG approach to the strings where the idea is to model the renormalization group equations of gauge theories from the string theory $`\beta `$-functions. It implies to associate to the couplings of the gauge field theories some background fields of a closed string theory, so that the geometry dictates the properties of the gauge theory.

Following reference  we solve the vanishing one-loop $`\beta `$-function equations of the closed bosonic string theory in the critical dimension. Using the Liouville ansatz  those equations are trivially satisfied by any dilaton field. In the metric we identify 4 of the 26 coordinates as the Euclidean ($`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$) (or Minkowski ($`M^4`$)) spacetime, where the gauge theory lives. In this prescription it is assumed the following relation between the string coupling $`g_s`$, the Yang-Mills coupling $`g_{YM}`$ and the dilaton: $`g_s=e^\mathrm{\Phi }=g_{YM}^2`$. The second part of this is related with the soft dilaton theorem .

Let us consider the following metric

$$ds^2=e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}(\pm dt^2+dx_idx_i)+4l_c^2e^{4\mathrm{\Phi }}(d\mathrm{\Phi })^2+d\stackrel{}{y}_{21}^{}{}_{}{}^{2},$$
(1)
where $`x_i`$, $`i=1,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}`$, and $`l_c`$ is an arbitrary scale of dimension of length related to the running-energy scale of the field theory considered666Please notice that in that follows we will use three different scales: the dimensionless $`l`$ related to the extra dimensions on $``$, the above mentioned $`l_c`$ (which in  is related to the inverse of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$), and also $`l_s`$ related to the string constant $`\alpha ^{}=l_s^2`$., let us call it $`\mu `$. Here $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }(\mu )`$ is the dilaton field. As we said before we consider a $`21`$-dimensional hyper-plane $``$. The metric of Eq.(1) is a solution of the vanishing one-loop $`\beta `$-functions of the bosonic strings  at the leading order in $`\alpha ^{}`$, which for the critical dimension become

$$R_{\mu \nu }+2_\mu _\nu \mathrm{\Phi }=0,$$
(2)
and

$$^2\mathrm{\Phi }2(\mathrm{\Phi })^2=0,$$
(3)
where $`_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }=_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`_\mu _\nu \mathrm{\Phi }=_\mu _\nu \mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu }^\alpha _\alpha \mathrm{\Phi }`$. We set the antisymmetric three-form and the tachyon to zero. Using the ansatz $`\rho =e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ the metric of Eq.(1) becomes

$$ds^2=\rho (\pm dt^2+dx_idx_i)+l_c^2(d\rho )^2+d\stackrel{}{y}_{21}^{}{}_{}{}^{2},$$
(4)
where $`\rho =\mathrm{}`$ corresponds to the horizon and $`\rho `$=0 is the singularity. For the region near the singularity the present description breaks down. Essentially we are dealing with equations of motion for the background fields at first order in $`\alpha ^{}`$, i.e. the background field approximation. However, as one approaches the singularity the spacetime becomes strongly curved. In that sense we would need to include additional terms in the $`\alpha ^{}`$ expansion for the equations of motion. It means that we would be considering a limit which is not the decoupling limit in the sense that $`\alpha ^{}0`$ and the scaled fifth coordinate $`\frac{r}{\alpha ^{}}`$ is kept fixed. Usually, from the point of view of the dual gauge theory, what happens is that one can solve the weakly coupled limit of the gravity or supergravity equations of motions and then, through the duality prescription , it is possible to know properties of the dual gauge theory. However, there is an important ingredient in this procedure: the mentioned duality implies that there is a correspondence between the weakly coupled limit of the gravity or supergravity theory and the strongly coupled limit of the gauge field theory. The other way does not work, i.e., one can not solve the strongly coupled limit of gravity by solving first the weakly coupled limit of the gauge theory. Naively one could think that the singularity would correspond to a free field theory, however, since one can not solve either the theory in the strongly curved space limit, it is not possible to give its precise meaning from the point of view of the gauge theory. We will return to this point at the end of the paper.

Figure 1: Schematic representation of the prescription of calculating

the Wilson loops in terms of $`e^\mathrm{\Phi }`$-coordinates.

By computing the expectation value of the Wilson loops it is possible to obtain the energy of the separation of the quark-antiquark pair. Let us consider a Wilson loop $`𝒞`$, drawn in a $`4`$-dimensional Euclidean (Minkowski) space-time $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, placed at $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$, (see figure 1). As it is usual we consider the limit when the time $`T`$ is large and use the relation between the energy of the static configuration $`E`$ and the action $`S`$, ($`E=S/T`$). We follow the Maldacena’s proposal  for the expectation value of the Wilson loop $`<W(𝒞)>`$. This expectation value behaves like the exponential of the world-sheet area of a fundamental string describing the closed curve $`𝒞`$ on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ (the curve $`𝒞`$ also lies on $``$ when $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|0`$).

In figure 2 we show a schematic representation of the quark-antiquark separation in the hyper-plane $``$. The figure on the left shows the case when there is a separation in $`x`$-coordinates ($`L`$) which lies on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, but not on the hyper-plane $``$ (here indicated by the vertical $`y`$-axis). When the quark and the antiquark have different positions at the hyper-plane, let us say the points $`\stackrel{}{y}_a`$ and $`\stackrel{}{y}_b`$, the distance $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|`$ naturally arises. It is indicated in the figure on the right.

We start from the Nambu-Goto action

$$S_{NG}=\frac{1}{2\pi l_s^2}𝑑\sigma 𝑑\tau \sqrt{detG_{MN}_\alpha X^M_\beta X^N},$$
(5)
where $`G_{MN}`$ is the metric given by Eq.(1), and $`X^M`$ is a generic coordinate on the $`26`$-dimensional space-time. Since we are interested in a static configuration we can take $`\tau =t`$ and $`\sigma =x`$. Therefore the metric becomes

$$ds^2=\pm e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}d\tau ^2+(e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}+4l_c^2e^{4\mathrm{\Phi }}\mathrm{\Phi }_\sigma ^2+(_\sigma \stackrel{}{y})^2)d\sigma ^2,$$
(6)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\sigma =\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }}{\sigma }`$, while $`_\sigma \stackrel{}{y}=\frac{\stackrel{}{y}}{\sigma }`$. In addition, let us remember that $`[\tau ]=[\sigma ]=[l_c]=[l_s]=[y]`$ have dimension of length. In the static configuration the action is

$$S_{NG}=\frac{T}{2\pi l_s^2}_0^L𝑑\sigma e^\mathrm{\Phi }\sqrt{e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}+4e^{4\mathrm{\Phi }}l_c^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\sigma ^2+(_\sigma \stackrel{}{y})^2}.$$
(7)
Figure 2.

We consider configurations as it is shown in figure 1, where $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_I}`$ is the limit when $`\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{}`$ (represented by a dot at the origin). Since the scalar curvature $`R`$ goes like $`e^{4\mathrm{\Phi }}`$, it implies that at this point the metric has a naked singularity. As we said before in that limit the present description breaks down. Since $`e^\mathrm{\Phi }=g_s=g_{YM}^2`$, it is possible to choice the position of the $`4`$-dimensional hyper-plane $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ at any point of the $`\mu `$ coordinate, which corresponds to choosing a particular value of the coupling constant, here denoted by $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$. The string world-sheet can fluctuate orthogonally to the hyper-plane $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, but the minimal surfaces are those corresponding to fluctuations in the direction of $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_I}`$. As we pointed out in , in terms of the gauge theory language this means that semi-classically the RG flow goes from the strongly coupled regime to the weakly coupled one. However, if there is an attractive infrared point, it flows from the ultraviolet limit to the infrared one. We will consider the vertical axis as the $`\stackrel{}{x}`$-direction and study a Wilson-loop of size $`L`$, as it is shown in figure 1. In the symmetric configuration $`\stackrel{}{x}=0`$ corresponds to the minimum $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}`$, that is when one takes $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0=\mathrm{\Phi }(\mu _0)`$. For such a minimum $`_\sigma \stackrel{}{y}`$ takes the value $`_\sigma \stackrel{}{y}_0`$. Classically the following conditions are straightforwardly obtained by solving the Euler-Lagrange equations for the action of Eq.(7)

$$\frac{e^{3\mathrm{\Phi }}}{\sqrt{e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}+4e^{4\mathrm{\Phi }}l_c^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\sigma ^2+(_\sigma \stackrel{}{y})^2}}=e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\sqrt{1l^2},$$
(8)
and

$$\frac{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Phi }_0}|_\sigma \stackrel{}{y}|}{\sqrt{e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }}+4e^{4\mathrm{\Phi }}l_c^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\sigma ^2+(_\sigma \stackrel{}{y})^2}}=\frac{|_\sigma \stackrel{}{y}_0|}{\sqrt{e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_0}+(_\sigma \stackrel{}{y}_0)^2}}=l.$$
(9)
Those are obtained since the Lagrangian in the above action is independent of $`\stackrel{}{x}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{y}`$. In this way Eq.(8) comes from the energy conservation while Eq.(9) is derived from momentum conservation in the hyper-plane $``$. From these expressions one gets the following relation

$$|_\sigma \stackrel{}{y}_0|^2=\frac{l^2e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{1l^2},$$
(10)
where $`l`$ is related to the distance between the quark-antiquark pair in the hyper-plane $``$. In fact $`l`$ is the $`\mathrm{sin}\alpha `$, where $`\alpha `$ is the angle between the quark and the antiquark as it is indicated in figure 2. Notice that from Eq.(9), for $`|_\sigma \stackrel{}{y}_0|\mathrm{}`$ we have $`l1`$, while $`|_\sigma \stackrel{}{y}_0|<<e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}`$ corresponds to $`l0`$, which means that the distance on the hyper-plane $``$ has been taken to be very small. Taking into account the previous conditions of Eqs.(8) and (9), we can invert those expressions in order to obtain

$$d\sigma =2e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}l_c\sqrt{1l^2}\frac{dv}{\sqrt{(v^21)(v^2l^2+1)}},$$
(11)
where we use the new variable $`v=\frac{e^\mathrm{\Phi }}{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}`$, while

$$dy=2e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_0}ll_c\frac{v^2}{\sqrt{(v^21)(v^2l^2+1)}}dv.$$
(12)
Notice that for $`l=0`$ the distance $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|`$ trivially vanishes and Eq.(11) reduces to the case considered in . Integrating Eq.(11) one obtains the length of the Wilson loop

$`{\displaystyle \frac{L}{2}}`$ $`=`$ $`2l_ce^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\sqrt{1l^2}{\displaystyle _1^{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{(v^21)(v^2l^2+1)}}}𝑑v`$ (13)
$`=`$ $`2l_ce^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\sqrt{1l^2}{\displaystyle \frac{F(\mathrm{arccos}\left(\frac{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}}\right),\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}})}{\sqrt{2l^2}}},`$
which in the limit of $`l0`$ reduces to the case studied in . On the other hand, the distance on $``$ results

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }y}{2}}`$ $`=`$ $`2e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_0}l_cl{\displaystyle _1^{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}}{\displaystyle \frac{v^2}{\sqrt{(v^21)(v^2l^2+1)}}}𝑑v`$ (14)
$`=`$ $`2e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_0}l_cl{\displaystyle \frac{F(\mathrm{arccos}\left(\frac{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}}\right),\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}})}{\sqrt{2l^2}}}`$
$``$ $`2e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_0}l_cl\sqrt{2l^2}E(\mathrm{arccos}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}}}\right),\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}})`$
$`+`$ $`2l_cle^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_0\mathrm{\Phi }_c}\sqrt{(e^{2(\mathrm{\Phi }_c\mathrm{\Phi }_0)}+1l^2)(e^{2(\mathrm{\Phi }_c\mathrm{\Phi }_0)}1)},`$
which trivially reduces to $`0`$ as $`l0`$, as it is expected from . Here $`F`$ and $`E`$ are elliptic integrals of the first and second kind , respectively.

Figure 3: Derivative of the scaled Wilson-loop size $`L/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ (in units of $`l_c`$) in terms of the

dimensionless variable $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$. The zero of that derivative (maximum of $`L/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$) moves to

the right as $`l1`$. The zeros of the solid lines correspond to the extreme values of

$`l=0`$ (left, lower solid straight line) and 1 (right, upper solid straight line), respectively.

From Eqs.(13) and (14) we see that as $`l`$ approaches to one, the separation of the pair on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ decreases, while the separation in $``$ increases. We will come back on this point latter. Since $`L`$ is function of $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ and $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}`$, we can plot $`L/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ as a function of $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$. There is a maximum between the two regions (I and II) . The region I, i.e. below the maximum, corresponds to large world-sheets.

In figure 3 we plot the derivative of $`L/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ as a function of $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$. We show three curves, the lower one (solid line) corresponds to $`l=0`$. The maximum of $`L/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ occurs at $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0^M}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}0.62`$ and it is $`L/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}|_{Maximum}=0.42l_c`$. It is precisely what happens when one reduces the problem to consider the quark and the antiquark at the same point in $``$ . On the other hand, we also plot the cases when $`l=0.7`$ (showed by the dashed line) and $`l=110^{15}`$ (this is the upper solid line). The size of both the critical minimal surface and the Wilson loop $`L`$ decreases as $`l1`$. For instance, when we take $`l=110^{15}`$, we are considering the limit of large separation on the $`21`$-dimensional hyper-plane (see for instance figure 4). In this situation $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0^M}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ is approximately $`0.652`$. Therefore, the effect of the extra dimensional manifold $``$ is reflected on the size of the minimal surfaces and the corresponding Wilson loop sizes.

Figure 4: Plot of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|/e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ (in units of $`l_c`$) as a function of the dimensionless

variable $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ (horizontal axis) and $`l`$ (transverse horizontal axis).

By using the RG approach to the strings , if one considers a $`\beta `$-function with a pole in the infrared , there is a range of couplings $`(g_{YM}^\mathrm{\Lambda },\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}0.62}^{1/2}g_{YM}^\mathrm{\Lambda }(1.27g_{YM}^\mathrm{\Lambda }))`$ for $`l=0`$, and $`(g_{YM}^\mathrm{\Lambda },\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}0.65}^{1/2}g_{YM}^\mathrm{\Lambda }(1.24g_{YM}^\mathrm{\Lambda }))`$ for $`l=1`$, where only confinement takes place. Here $`\mu =\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the infrared attractive point.

In figure 4 we plot $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|/e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ (in units of $`l_c`$) as a function of $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ and $`l`$. For $`l=0`$, $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|/e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_c}=0`$. For finite values of $`l`$ the maximum moves up to $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}=0.652`$, which corresponds to the limit for $`l=1`$. Let us calculate the energy for the static configuration.

$`E`$ $`=`$ $`2e^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{\displaystyle \frac{l_c}{\pi l_s^2}}(1+l^2){\displaystyle \frac{F(\mathrm{arccos}\left(\frac{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}}\right),\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}})}{3\sqrt{2l^2}}}`$ (15)
$``$ $`4e^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{\displaystyle \frac{l_c}{\pi l_s^2}}l^2(2l^2){\displaystyle \frac{E(\mathrm{arccos}\left(\frac{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}}\right),\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}})}{3\sqrt{2l^2}}}`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2l_c}{3\pi l_s^2}}e^{4\mathrm{\Phi }_0\mathrm{\Phi }_c}(2l^2+e^{2(\mathrm{\Phi }_c\mathrm{\Phi }_0)})\sqrt{(e^{2(\mathrm{\Phi }_c\mathrm{\Phi }_0)}l^2+1)(e^{2(\mathrm{\Phi }_c\mathrm{\Phi }_0)}1)}.`$
Expanding Eqs.(13) and (15) in series of powers of $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ we get

$$\frac{L}{l_c}=4e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\sqrt{1l^2}\frac{K\left(\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}\right)}{\sqrt{2l^2}}4\sqrt{1l^2}e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_0\mathrm{\Phi }_c}+𝒪(e^{4\mathrm{\Phi }_03\mathrm{\Phi }_c}),$$
(16)
and

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\pi l_s^2E}{2l_c}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{e^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_c}}{3}}+{\displaystyle \frac{l^2}{2}}e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c+2\mathrm{\Phi }_0}`$ (17)
$`+`$ $`\left(2l^2\sqrt{2l^2}E\left(\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}}\right)+(1+l^2){\displaystyle \frac{K\left(\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}\right)}{\sqrt{2l^2}}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{e^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{3}}`$
$`+`$ $`𝒪(e^{4\mathrm{\Phi }_0\mathrm{\Phi }_c}).`$
Here $`K(t)=F(\frac{\pi }{2},t)`$ and $`E(t)=E(\frac{\pi }{2},t)`$ are the complete elliptic integrals of the first and second kind, respectively. Replacing $`L`$ in terms of $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}`$ in Eq.(17) we get

$$E=\frac{1}{96\pi l_s^2l_c^2}\left(\sqrt{\frac{2l^2}{1l^2}}\right)^3\frac{\left(2l^2(2l^2)E\left(\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}\right)+(1+l^2)K\left(\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}\right)\right)}{\sqrt{2l^2}K^3\left(\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}\right)}L^3+𝒪(e^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_c}),$$
(18)
which leads to over-confinement. In the strongly coupled limit ($`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}\mathrm{}`$) the above expression becomes divergent. However, the divergent part is independent of the size of the Wilson loop. In the context of AdS/CFT duality this kind of divergence was regularized by a mass renormalization  or by considering the Legendre transform of the minimal area . In our case, observing that zero-size Wilson loops diverge we will drop the $`L`$ independent divergent term and measure the energy with respect to the zero-size Wilson loops. In this limit $`L`$ becomes

$$L_{\mathrm{}}=4l_ce^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}K\left(\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}\right),$$
(19)
which is exactly the same as in  when one takes $`l=0`$, that is

$$L_{\mathrm{}}^0=\sqrt{\pi }l_ce^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{1}{4})}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{3}{4})}.$$
(20)
The energy for that configuration is

$$E_{\mathrm{}}=2e^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\frac{l_c}{\pi l_s^2}(1+l^2)\frac{K\left(\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}\right)}{3\sqrt{2l^2}}4e^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\frac{l_c}{\pi l_s^2}l^2(2l^2)\frac{E\left(\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}\right)}{3\sqrt{2l^2}}.$$
(21)
In the limit $`l=0`$ it reduces to

$$E_{\mathrm{}}=\frac{2l_ce^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{3\sqrt{2}\pi l_s^2}K\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\right)=\frac{l_ce^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{6\sqrt{\pi }l_s^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{1}{4})}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{3}{4})},$$
(22)
which is, as it is expected, proportional to $`L^3`$.

A quite different situation arises when the region II is analyzed. In this region $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}`$ is close to $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$. In such a case we have to do the integration between $`1`$ and $`1+ϵ`$, so that we have

$$\frac{L_ϵ}{2}=2l_ce^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\sqrt{\frac{1l^2}{2l^2}}\left(\sqrt{2}ϵ^{1/2}\frac{5}{6\sqrt{2}}ϵ^{3/2}+𝒪(ϵ^{\frac{5}{2}})\right),$$
(23)
and

$$E_ϵ=\frac{2\sqrt{2}l_c}{\pi l_s^2}e^{3\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2l^2}}\sqrt{ϵ}+𝒪(ϵ^{\frac{3}{2}}).$$
(24)
At order $`\sqrt{ϵ}`$ it gives

$$E_ϵ=\frac{e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_0}}{2\pi l_s^2}\frac{1}{\sqrt{1l^2}}L_ϵ,$$
(25)
indicating confinement at region II (area law). The above expression reduces to the case of  when $`l=0`$. In the present context the extra dimensions increase the value of the effective tension by a factor $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{1l^2}}`$, which is expected since it takes into account the separation of the quark-antiquark pair on $``$. The separation $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|/e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ in the hyper-plane $``$ also behaves linearly as a function of $`L`$ and it is an increasing function of $`l`$ as it is shown in figure 4. For every value of $`l`$ the maxima of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }\stackrel{}{y}|/e^{2\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ and $`L/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$ take place at the same point, i.e. $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0^M}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$, as it should be expected.

In figure 5 we show the shape of critical minimal surfaces for different values of $`l`$. The hyper-plane $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is placed at $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$. The solid line represents the critical minimal surface corresponding to $`l=0`$. The dotted lines represent critical minimal surfaces for $`0<l<1`$. Given some value of $`l`$ there is a critical minimal surface below of which the theory shows confinement only. Above of that there is over-confinement. In the particular case of the NSVZ $`\beta `$-function, it has a pole in the infrared, it means that given a value of the coupling, i.e. $`g_{YM}^2=e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$, the size of the critical minimal surface is upper bounded. It implies that the range of couplings where the theory has only confinement decreases as $`l`$ increases from $`g_{YM}=1.27g_{YM}^\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ to $`g_{YM}=1.24g_{YM}^\mathrm{\Lambda }`$.

Figure 5: Schematic shape of the critical minimal

surfaces used in calculating the Wilson-loops.

Therefore, there are effects due to the flat extra dimensions on the separation $`L`$ and also on the string tension. The length of the Wilson loop $`L`$ (measured on the Minkowski spacetime) decreases as the parameter $`l`$ increases. On the other hand, the separation of the quark-antiquark pair increases in the hyper-plane $``$. The string tension also increases by a factor $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{1l^2}}=(\mathrm{cos}\alpha )^1`$, as it is expected.

Concerning the singularity and its consequences on the dual field theory, in an analogous situation as the one described in , the existence of a maximum for $`L`$ in terms of $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$, as we mentioned before, implies the existence of two regions. This phenomenon resembles the case studied in reference  related to a Schwarzschild-anti de Sitter solution. In such a situation a horizon appears and covers the singularity. Taking into account , in our case it has been suggested  that the point $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0^M}/e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_c}`$, where $`L`$ has a maximum, could be interpreted as an effective horizon. This is equivalent to say that there is a cut-off preventing to reach the singularity. If one trust this effective horizon, then only in region II it is possible to draw Wilson loops. This means that from the side of the gauge theory we should have only confinement, and not over-confinement. Nevertheless, even when we do not consider that Schwarzschild-anti de Sitter case of reference , the singularity which is present in our construction is not contained in the usual classification scheme  since we have not a scalar potential in the equations of motion, as that criterion requires, in order to decide whether the singularity is good or bad. On the other hand, one can try to analyze the situation presented here under the light of the criterion of reference . In that reference the related issue is that the time-like component of the metric $`g_{00}`$ has to be either a non-increasing function or it should be bounded from above as one approaches the singularity. These are the strong and weak versions of the same criterion, respectively. In fact, in our case $`g_{00}`$ is zero at the singularity, in this sense we could think that the solution is acceptable although we can not trust the dual gauge theory if we analyze a region near the singularity because the spacetime becomes strongly curved as we can see from the scalar curvature. Taking into account these arguments we can consider that the way to deal with our singularity should be the case suggested in  by understanding that a cut-off has to be introduced around the singularity. On the other hand, in relation to the criterion of  we should also be careful in the case when $`\rho \mathrm{}`$, because from Eq.(4) $`g_{00}\mathrm{}`$ as $`\mathrm{\Phi }+\mathrm{}`$. This, of course, corresponds to the strongly coupled limit of the gauge theory. Nevertheless, this is not a problem because, in principle, we can exclude the limit $`\mathrm{\Phi }+\mathrm{}`$ in the present analysis so that the results presented here remain valid.

We would like to thank Juán Pedro Garrahan, Ian Kogan, Bayram Tekin, Michael Teper for useful discussions. We thank Carlos Núñez for a critical reading of the manuscript and his useful comments, as well as Rafael Hernández for correspondence. This work has been partially supported by the CONICET of Argentina, the Fundación Antorchas of Argentina and The British Council.


text:
# Social organization in the Minority Game model

## I Introduction

The last decade witnessed the increasing effort of physicists to formulate various aspects of social sciences in the language of natural sciences, namely bring them close to physics. Among numerous applications we can mention for example traffic flow , city growth , human trail system , geometry of social networks  economic returns of research  and so on.

Perhaps the most prominent example of this effort is the field of econophysics . Among various attempts to grasp the nature of economic behavior the modeling of systems of heterogeneous adaptive agents reached high popularity. One of the basic models is the Minority Game  introduced by Challet and Zhang.

In the Minority Game (MG) we have $`N`$ players who choose repeatedly between two options and compete to be in the minority group. This is the idealization of various situations, where the competition for limited resources leads to intrinsic frustration. One can think for example of cars choosing between two alternative routes or a speculator who tries to earn money by buying and selling shares in such a manner that the majority takes the opposite action than herself.

The players share a public information, saying what were the outcomes of the game in past $`M`$ rounds. The players interact only through this information. Therefore, the system has a “mean-field” character, in the sense that no short-range interactions exist.

The self-organization is achieved by allowing players to have several strategies and choose among them the strategy which seems to be the best one. This feature leads to decrease of the fluctuations of attendance below its random coin-tossing value, thus increasing the global effectivity of the system. It was found that the relevant parameter is $`\alpha =2^M/N`$ and the maximum effectivity is reached for $`\alpha =\alpha _c0.34`$ .

It was established that a phase transition occurs at this value of the parameter $`\alpha `$ and its properties were thoroughly studied both numerically  and analytically . The Minority Game and its variants were intensively studied by several groups. We are able to give only an incomplete list of references . Among the various ramifications, we would like to mention especially the attempts to go back to the economic motivations of MG and model the market mechanisms .

The purpose of the present work is to investigate the properties of social structures, which can emerge if we go beyond the mean-field character of the usual MG and allow a local information exchange. Related works were already done, either assuming that the global information is fully replaced by a local one  or using the MG scheme for evolving the Kauffmans’s boolean networks  to the critical state .

Here we want to study the effect of imitations. Indeed, it is quite common that people do not invest individually, but rely on an advice from specialized agencies, or simply follow the trend they perceive in their information neighborhood. In so doing, the individuals coalesce into groups, which act as single players. In the framework of Minority Game, we will study the social structure induced by the occurence of these groups.

## II Minority Game with imitation

We introduce the possibility of local information exchange in our variant of the Minority Game. To this end, we should assume some properties of the information network underlaying the “information metabolism”, in analogy to the metabolic pathways in living organisms. The study of the geometry of information networks is now a scientific field on its own . Within the framework of MG a linear chain  and random network with fixed connectivity $`K`$  was already investigeted in different contexts. Here we assume the simplest geometry, namely we will place the players on a linear chain with nearest-neighbor connections. We will simplify the network even more by suposing, that the information flow is not symmetric and each player can obtain information only from her left-hand neighbor. In the rest of the article, by “neighbor” we always mean the left-hand neighbor. Each player can read the information about her neighbors’ wealth.

There wil be two conditions needed for a player to imitate her neighbor. First, the player should have internal disposition for being an imitator. We simplify the variety of risk-aversion levels by postulating only two types of players. The imitator type (denoted 1) will always adopt the strategy of her neighbor, if she finds it better. The rest consists of the leader type (denoted 0) who always uses her own strategies. In the whole population of $`N`$ players, there is the fraction $`p[0,1]`$ of the type 1 and the rest is of the type 0. The case $`p=0`$ corresponds to the usual MG.

The second condition for the player of the type 1 to actually imitate in the current step is that her neighbor has larger accumulated wealth than the player itself. We suppose that the played does not know what are the strategie of her neighbor, but if she observes that the neighbor’s behavior is more profitable than her own strategy, she relegates the decision to the neighbor and takes the same action. The player of the type 0 will never imitate. Therefore, she will always look only at her $`S`$ strategies and choose the best estimate from them.

The above rules are formalized as follows. We follow mostly the notation of . There are totally $`N`$ players. We will take always $`N`$ as an odd number. Each player has $`S=2`$ strategies, denoted $`s_j\{1,2\}`$.

We denote the two possible actions a player can take $`+1`$ and $`1`$. The winning action is $`+1`$ if most players took $`1`$ and vice versa. The players know the last $`M`$ outcomes of the game. This information is arranged into the $`M`$-bit string $`\mu \{1,+1\}^M`$. The strategies are tables attributing to each of $`2^M`$ possible strings $`\mu `$ the action $`a_{j,s_j}^\mu `$ the player $`j`$ takes, if she chooses the strategy $`s_j`$. The scores $`U_{j,s}`$ of the strategies are updated according to the minority rule

$$U_{j,s}(t+1)=U_{j,s}(t)a_{s,j}^{\mu (t)}\mathrm{sign}\underset{i}{}a_i(t)$$
(1)
where $`a_j(t)`$ is the action the player $`j`$ takes at time $`t`$.

Up to this moment the algoritm was identical to the usual MG. We introduce a new feature, the imitation, into the rule determining what are the actions taken by the players, depending on their wealths and on the scores of their strategies.

Each player has a label $`\stackrel{~}{l}\{1,0\}`$ indicating, whether the player is potentially an imitator ($`\stackrel{~}{l}=1`$) or always a leader ($`\stackrel{~}{l}=0`$). The labels are random but quenched. At the beginning we take each of the players and attribute her the label 1 with probability $`p`$ and label 0 with probability $`1p`$.

Denote $`W_j`$ the wealth of the $`j`$-th player. Then, if the label $`\stackrel{~}{l}_j=1`$ and $`W_{j1}>W_j`$, then $`j`$ will take the same action as $`j1`$, so $`a_j=a_{j1}`$. Therefore, wee need to establish $`a_{j1}`$ first and we proceed recurrently by iterating this rule. On the other hand, if $`\stackrel{~}{l}_j=0`$ or $`W_{j1}W_j`$, the action will be $`a_j=a_{j,s_\mathrm{M}}`$, where $`s_\mathrm{M}`$ denotes the most successfull strategy at the moment, $`U_{j,s_\mathrm{M}}=\mathrm{max}_sU_{j,s}`$, as in the usual MG.

This can be written formally by introducing the variables $`l_j`$ describing the actual state of imitation, in analogy with the labels $`\stackrel{~}{l}_j`$ describing potential state of imitation. We can write $`l_j=\stackrel{~}{l}_j\theta (W_{j1}W_j)`$, with $`\theta (x)=1`$ for $`x>0`$ and 0 othervise. The actions are

$$a_j=l_ja_{j1}+(1l_j)a_{j,s_\mathrm{M}}.$$
(2)
We also suppose that the imitation is not for free. The player who imitates passes a small fraction $`\epsilon `$ of its wealth increase to the imitated player. This rule accounts for the price of information. We used the value $`\epsilon =0.05`$. Then, we update the wealth of players iteratively,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }W_j(t)=(1\epsilon l_j)(\epsilon l_{j+1}\mathrm{\Delta }W_{j+1}(t)a_j\mathrm{sign}\underset{i}{}a_i(t))$$
(3)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }W_j(t)=W_j(t+1)W_j(t)`$.

In numerical simulations we observe that the number of actually imitating players, $`N_i=_jl_j`$, grows until it saturates at a value slightly below the upper bound $`pN`$. It means that it is always beneficiary for some potential imitators not to imitate but rely on their own strategies. The time dependence of the fraction of imitators $`N_i/N`$ for three values of $`p`$ is shown in Fig. 1.

The initially random distribution of wealth among players changes qualitatively during the evolution of the system. Coherent groups of poor and wealthy players are formed. An example of the time evolution of the spatial wealth distribution is given in Fig. 2.

\[

\]

## III Global effectivity and local social tensions

The Minority Game is a negative-sum game. The average gain of the players reaches its maximum, if the attendance $`A=_j\frac{1}{2}(a_j+1)`$ is closest possible to $`N/2`$. So, the time averaged attendance fluctuations $`\sigma ^2=(AN/2)^2`$ measure the distance from the global optimum. The global effectivity is higher for smaller $`\sigma ^2`$.

We investigated the influence of the imitation on the global effectivity. In the usual MG (which corresponds to $`p=0`$) the fluctuations depend on the memory and number of players through the scaling variable $`\alpha =2^M/N`$. This fact can be observed through the data collapse of the results for various $`N`$’s. We tried to find the same data collapse for a non-zero $`p`$. Figure 3 shows such a plot for $`p=0.8`$. We can see that the dependence of $`\sigma ^2/N`$ on $`\alpha `$ has a minimum as in the usual MG, but the critical value $`\alpha _c`$ of the scaling parameter is lower while the value of the flucuations at the minimum is higher. In the symetry-broken phase ($`\alpha >\alpha _c`$) the data collapse is good. On the other hand, significant deviations are observed in the crowded (symmetric) phase, which are more pronounced for smaller $`\alpha `$. On the other hand, for larger value of imitation probability, the data still scale with $`\alpha =2^M/N`$, but the collapse is poorer in the whole range of $`\alpha `$. The situation for $`p=0.99`$ is shown in Fig. 4. We can see that if we decrease $`\alpha `$ in the symmetric phase, the fluctuations increase first, but contrary to the usual MG a local maximum is reached and when decreasing $`\alpha `$ further, the fluctuations are suppressed.

We tried also another data collapse, namely the dependence of $`\sigma ^2/Ns_\sigma `$ on $`2^Ms_M/N`$ for various $`p`$, where $`s_M`$ and $`s_\sigma `$ are scaling parameters depending on $`p`$, chosen so that the best possible data collapse is achieved. For convenience we require $`s_M=s_\sigma =1`$ for $`p=0`$. With this choice, the scaling parameters have the following interpretation. The location minimum of attendance fluctuations is shifted from its usual value $`\alpha _c(0)=0.34`$ valid for $`p=0`$ to $`\alpha _c(p)=\alpha _c(0)/s_M`$, while the value of $`\sigma ^2/N`$ in the minimum is increased by the factor $`s_\sigma `$. We can see the results in Fig. 5. We again observe good collapse in the symmery-broken regime, while in the symmetric phase there is no collapse, but systematic decrease, stronger for higher $`p`$, is observed.

Nevertheless, the parameters $`s_M`$ and $`s_\sigma `$ still bear the information about the shift of the minimum. We can see their dependence on $`p`$ in the inset of Fig. 5. The data suggest that both of the parameters diverge as a power law when $`p1`$.

We investigated also the dependence of the attendance fluctuations (and therefore the global effectivity) on the imitation probability for fixed number of players and memory. We found that in the crowded phase the system becomes more effective if imitation is allowed ($`p>0`$), but there is a local minimum in the dependence of $`\sigma ^2/N`$ on $`p`$, indicating that there is an optimal level of imitation, beyond which the system starts to perform worse. The results for $`N=1001`$ are shown in Fig. 6. We can see that the minimum occurs at smaller values for larger $`M`$. We can also observe that for longer memories ($`M=7`$ in our case) the value of the fluctuations for $`p=1`$ is significantly above the value vithout imitation ($`p=0`$), while the value at the minimum still lies below the $`p=0`$ value. This implies that moderate imitation can be beneficiary, while exaggerated one can be harmful.

The increase of spatial coherence in poor and wealthy groups seen qualitatively in Fig. 2 can result in decrease of social tension. Indeed, the individuals can exchange information about their wealth only among neighbors. If most of the individuals perceive small local wealth gradient, the social tensions will be also small. To quantify the social tension, we should introduce a sort of “utility function”  $`U(\mathrm{\Delta }W)`$, which indicates, how much the wealth difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }W`$ is subjectively perceived. As usual, any realistic utility function should have negative second derivative. This feature, called risk aversion in standard economics literature, expresses in our case the intuitively obvious fact that smaller differences in living standards are relatively more significant than larger differences: I could be more happy if I succeeded in shrinking the wage distance to my rival employee from 500 $ to 400 $ than from 55,500 $ to 55,400 $.

We will use the utility function in the form $`U(x)=x^b`$. Realistic values of the exponent are $`b<1`$. However, we will use also the values $`b=1`$ and $`b=2`$ for comparison. Then, the global measure of the local social tension is

$$d_b=\frac{1}{W}\left(\underset{j=1}{\overset{N1}{}}|W_jW_{j+1}|^b\right)^{1/b}$$
(4)
where we denoted the average wealth $`W=\frac{1}{N}_{j=1}^NW_j`$.

The results for various values of the exponent $`b`$ are shown in Fig. 7. We can see that the behavior for all $`b`$ except $`b=2`$ is qualitatively similar. When increasing $`p`$, the social tension increases first, but then decreases again and for $`p1`$ it reaches a point below its value for $`p=0`$. Hence, large enough imitation will decrease the social tension. On the other hand, for $`b=2`$ we observe further increase when $`p`$ approaches to 1. Therefore, if the utility was measured by exponent $`b=2`$ (which would hold for risk-seeking adventurers), the tension would only increase due to imitation.

The most striking result comes from comparison of Fig 6 (for $`M=6`$) and Fig 7. We can see that both the local maxima of $`\sigma ^2/N`$ and the local minima of $`d_b`$ for $`b<1`$ lie at the endpoints of the interval . Therefore, if we want to optimize the social tensions by some process invoving small gradual changes of $`p`$, we will finish in one of the endpoints, depending on the initial value of $`p`$. Among the two stable points, the optimum is located at $`p=1`$.

However, the stable points (including the absolute optimum of the local tension) are simultaneously local minima of the global effectivity: we observe a clear conflict of interest between local and global views.

## IV Conclusions

We investigated the creation of rich and poor spatial domains due to local information exchange, within the framework of the Minority Game. The introduction of imitation among players leads to creation of groups, which act in accord. For fixed imitation probability $`p`$ we found that the attendance fluctuations still depend on the scaling variable $`\alpha =2^M/N`$ in the symmery-broken phase, while in the symmetric phase there are systematic deviations from the data collapse.

The characteristic minimum in the dependence of fluctuations on $`\alpha `$ persist in our modification of the Minority Game, but the location of the minimum decreases and the value at the minimum increases when increasing $`p`$. We found that both quantities depend as a power law on $`1p`$.

We found that in the symmetric phase the introduction of imitation can lead to absolute decrease of the attendance fluctuations and thus to increase in global system effectivity. There is an optimal value of the imitation, which increases with decreasing $`M`$.

The creation of coherent areas of poor and rich agents leads to decrease in the local social tensions, but only if $`p`$ is sufficiently close to 1. The lowest value of the social tension is reached at $`p=1`$, but for such a value the global effectivity is significantly lower than its optimum value. Therefore, we observe a conflict of local interests (minimization of social tension) with global performance (minimization of attendance fluctuations).

###### Acknowledgements.

I am indebted to Yi-Cheng Zhang for numerous useful discussions. I acknowledge the financial support from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, where part of this work was done.