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# Covariant Effective Field Theory for Bulk Properties of Nuclei

## I Introduction

A central goal of nuclear theory is to describe atomic nuclei in terms of their constituents. This goal is especially relevant now, in view of the new accelerators that will probe nuclei with high energies and high precision using electrons, hadrons, and heavy ions. These accelerators are expected to reveal new physics involving the properties of hadrons inside nuclei, the nuclear matter phase diagram, the role of relativity, and the dynamics of the quantum vacuum. Moreover, we hope to learn not only about hadron dynamics but also about the role of explicit quark and gluon degrees of freedom.

Although the Schrödinger equation has been basically successful in describing nuclei at low energies, this framework must be extended if we are to compare calculations with the data of the future. A more complete treatment of hadronic systems should include relativistic nucleon–nucleon interactions, dynamical mesons and baryon resonances, modifications of the hadron structure in the nucleus, and the dynamics of the quantum vacuum, while respecting the general principles of quantum mechanics, Lorentz covariance, gauge invariance, cluster decomposition, and microscopic causality. These physical effects will be relevant regardless of the degrees of freedom used to describe the system, and they must be studied simultaneously and consistently to draw definite conclusions about nuclear dynamics at high temperatures, high densities, and short distances.

In principle, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) should provide such a description, since QCD is the fundamental theory of the strong interaction. Nevertheless, QCD predictions at nuclear length scales with the precision of existing (and anticipated) data are not now available, and this state of affairs will probably persist for some time. Even if it becomes possible to use QCD to describe nuclei directly, this description is likely to be awkward, since quarks cluster into hadrons at low energies, and hadrons (not quarks or gluons) are the degrees of freedom actually observed in experiments.

Given the present inadequacy of both the Schrödinger equation and QCD for formulating an improved description of nuclear dynamics, we must consider alternatives. Since hadrons are the relevant experimental degrees of freedom, it is important to see if practical, reliable, and accurate hadronic descriptions can be developed for the energy, density, and temperature regimes obtainable with the new experimental facilities. In any lagrangian approach, one must first decide on the generalized coordinates, and hadronic degrees of freedom—baryons and mesons—are the most appropriate for the vast majority of nuclear phenomena.

Lorentz-covariant, meson–baryon effective field theories (“quantum hadrodynamics” or QHD) have proven to be useful for quantitative descriptions of the nuclear many-body problem . When applied within the framework of modern effective field theory (EFT) and density functional theory (DFT), they provide a realistic description of bulk nuclear properties and the spin-orbit force throughout the Periodic Table . This success arises from the presence of large scalar and vector mean fields, which imply that there are large relativistic interaction effects in nuclei under normal conditions . There is evidence from QCD sum rules that these large fields are dynamical consequences of the underlying chromodynamics . Moreover, similar relativistic effects are responsible for the efficient description of spin observables in medium-energy proton–nucleus scattering using the Relativistic Impulse Approximation, and they are consistent with the major role played by scalar and vector meson exchange in modern boson-exchange models of the nucleon–nucleon (NN) interaction. All of these features motivate further investigations into the application of QHD to the nuclear many-body problem.

Since QHD contains strong couplings, one needs a consistent underlying framework and a systematic expansion procedure to perform reliable calculations. One possible framework involves renormalizable QHD models, which are characterized by a finite number of coupling constants and masses. Since the number of parameters is finite, these models provide a self-contained, Lorentz covariant, causal framework for extrapolating known nuclear information to nuclear matter under extreme conditions of density, temperature, and flow velocity. Nevertheless, renormalizable models make specific assumptions about the form of the interactions and the role of hadronic degrees of freedom in the dynamics of the quantum vacuum. These assumptions must be tested by comparing detailed calculations with experiment. Several such calculations have been performed in recent years, which have indicated that the constraint of renormalizability is too restrictive . This has prevented the development of a systematic expansion procedure at finite density and has also stimulated the search for alternatives to renormalizable models.

One guiding principle in the search for alternatives is that hadronic theories should respect the underlying symmetries of QCD, such as chiral symmetry. Much work in recent years has focused on reconciling the successful picture of nuclear structure mentioned earlier with chiral symmetry. What has been learned is that the large scalar field present in nuclei, which has its origin in the strong mid-range NN attraction, is primarily a consequence of correlated two-pion exchange between the nucleons . This dynamics is implemented most efficiently by using a nonlinear realization of the chiral symmetry to describe the pion–nucleon interactions and by adding an additional, effective, scalar-isoscalar, chiral scalar field to simulate the correlated two-pion exchange . One conclusion from this work is that even within the context of hadronic field theories, one is led to the introduction of effective fields to describe the relevant dynamics at large distances. This observation, together with the difficulties encountered in the consistent application of renormalizable models, suggests that one should formulate hadronic many-body theories as effective field theories from the outset.

The scalar and vector meson fields will therefore be considered as effective fields, and their dynamics can be implemented in two different ways: first, by including these fields in an effective lagrangian, one has both an obvious mean-field (factorized) limit, leading to a Dirac–Hartree description similar to that discussed above, as well as the possibility of developing systematic improvements to this approximation; alternatively, by including these fields in an energy functional, one can apply many of the well-known techniques of (nonrelativistic) density functional theory to a covariant energy functional.

The application of effective relativistic field theory to the nuclear many-body problem is in its adolescence, with new developments occurring rapidly. Progress in this area will require the synthesis of ideas from both many-body theory and relativistic quantum field theory. The following sections describe in detail some of the recent progress and likely future directions, such as the application of these effective theories at the one-loop level to electroweak interactions with nuclei; the development of systematic techniques for going beyond one-loop to include exchange, correlation, and vacuum effects; and studies of how to extend the formalism to higher densities (and temperatures). The role of chiral symmetry and the resulting pion dynamics is also important, but we emphasize that the nuclear many-body problem involves aspects that go beyond chiral symmetry, such as vector-meson dominance and the broken scale invariance of QCD, which manifests itself in the dynamics of the scalar-isoscalar sector.

## II An Effective Chiral Lagrangian for Nuclei and Nuclear Matter

As discussed in Ref. \[REFERENCES\], we have recently constructed an effective hadronic lagrangian consistent with the symmetries of quantum chromodynamics and intended for applications to finite-density nuclear systems . The degrees of freedom are (valence) nucleons, pions, and the low-lying non-Goldstone bosons, which account for the intermediate-range nucleon–nucleon interactions and conveniently describe the nonvanishing expectation values of bilinear products of nucleon fields. Chiral symmetry is realized nonlinearly , with a light scalar meson included as a chiral singlet to describe the mid-range nucleon–nucleon attraction. The low-energy electromagnetic structure of the nucleon is described using vector-meson dominance, so that *ad hoc* form factors are not needed.

The effective lagrangian is expanded in powers of the fields and their derivatives, with the terms organized using Georgi’s “naive dimensional analysis” . Results for finite nuclei and nuclear matter have been calculated at one-baryon-loop order, using the single-nucleon structure determined within the theory. This leads essentially to a factorized parametrization of the ground-state energy functional. Although the form of the scalar effective potential is motivated from broken scale invariance , we find that only the first few terms in an expansion of powers of the scalar field are important at normal nuclear densities, and thus the primary source of constraints on the scalar dynamics is the nuclear structure physics, which determines the free parameters in the scalar potential. These parameters implicitly contain the effects of many-body forces, hadron substructure, and vacuum dynamics. The parameters are obtained from fits to nuclear properties and show that naive dimensional analysis is a useful principle, and that a truncation of the effective lagrangian at the first few powers of the fields and their derivatives is justified . This is because the relevant expansion parameters are the ratios of the meson mean fields in nuclei to the nucleon mass, and these ratios are roughly 1/4 to 1/3 at the nuclear densities of interest. Recently, we have verified that bulk and single-particle nuclear data can determine roughly five, isoscalar, non-gradient parameters, one gradient parameter, and one isovector parameter .

## III Electroweak Interactions with Nuclei

One of the advantages of the effective field theory is that the structure of the hadrons can be included with increasing detail by adding more and more nonrenormalizable interactions in a derivative expansion. For example, the long-range parts of the single-nucleon electromagnetic form factors (that is, magnetic moments and mean-square radii) can be described using an effective lagrangian that includes vector-meson dominance and direct couplings of photons to nucleons . The parameters describing the nucleon structure are adjusted to reproduce free nucleon data (so that external form factors need not be introduced), and the lagrangian dynamics then determines how this structure is modified inside the nucleus. Moreover, with the DFT approach, accurate nuclear ground-state densities and single-particle wave functions (for states near the Fermi surface) can be obtained, and the electromagnetic current is automatically conserved by virtue of the U(1) gauge invariance of the effective lagrangian (and the resulting field equations).

Thus it is possible within this framework to study (e,eN) reactions with the same single-particle potentials in the initial and final state (thereby ensuring current conservation), with realistic nuclear wave functions, and with the medium-modified nucleon structure specified unambiguously. While this approach may be too simple, it has the virtue of including all of these effects simultaneously within the framework of a single lagrangian. Moreover, meson-exchange currents consistent with gauge invariance can be derived systematically, and one can extend the analysis to include coupled channels as a way of introducing absorptive effects. One of the challenges in this program is to extend the description of the nucleon structure so that it is useful at the higher momentum transfers that are relevant to experiments at Jefferson Laboratory.

Initial studies of the weak currents within this framework focused on axial-vector currents, including meson-exchange currents . Although the leading exchange currents (in inverse powers of the nucleon mass) can be deduced from $`\mathrm{SU}(2)_L\times \mathrm{SU}(2)_R`$ current algebra, it is necessary to have a lagrangian with a consistent power counting to extend these results to higher orders. It is also known that in models based on a linear representation of the chiral symmetry (such as the $`\sigma `$ model), it is impossible to satisfy the three constraints of PCAC, the Goldberger–Treiman relation, and the correct charge algebra simultaneously (at least at any tractable level of approximation) . For the nonlinear chiral lagrangian discussed above, however, PCAC is built into the lagrangian, and the axial coupling between pions and nucleons contains a free parameter, which allows all three constraints to be satisfied. Moreover, as previously mentioned, the other parameters in the lagrangian can be chosen to yield accurate nuclear wave functions that can be used to compute matrix elements of these exchange currents within a single framework. Finally, the pion–pion and pion–nucleon part of the lagrangian is exactly the same as that used in chiral perturbation theory .

The weak vector and axial-vector currents have already been determined through all orders of the pion field and up to two derivatives of pion fields, together with contributions involving both rho mesons and pions. (For computation of axial exchange currents, one requires only purely mesonic terms and terms that are bilinear in the baryon fields.) The corresponding weak charges reproduce the standard charge algebra, and the Goldberger–Treiman relation is satisfied at the tree level. The two-body, axial-vector, meson-exchange amplitudes satisfy PCAC . The remaining task is to deduce the exchange currents in forms that will be useful in calculations using either relativistic (four-component) or nonrelativistic (two-component) nuclear wave functions. One can then analyze the exchange-current contributions in some selected weak reactions and compare the results to earlier calculations.

## IV Calculations Beyond One-Loop Order

One can also improve the description of the many-body dynamics within the effective lagrangian approach. At the one-loop level, the nucleons move in classical meson fields, and the vacuum contributions are easy to handle because they can be separated from the contributions of valence nucleons and then parametrized by polynomials in the meson fields in the lagrangian (or energy functional). Although the one-loop calculations provide a realistic description of bulk and single-particle nuclear properties, which can be understood within the framework of density functional theory (see below), it is still imperative to study exchange and correlation corrections in a systematic way in order to make reliable predictions for other nuclear observables. Moreover, it is important to verify that the “natural” values of the parameters obtained from fits at the one-loop level do not become unnatural when higher-order, many-body effects are included. Whereas the valence-nucleon contributions to these corrections are analogous in structure to those in nonrelativistic many-body theory, the vacuum dynamics is more complicated. This is because one must now consider counterterms involving the nucleon mass and wave function, as well as the nucleon–meson vertices, and one must deal with “mixed” vacuum and valence terms, such as the strong nuclear Lamb shift .

Recent work has focused on applying the loop expansion to the chiral lagrangian discussed above. While we do not expect the loop expansion to be practical for many-body calculations, it nevertheless provides a systematic framework for studying the interplay of short-range (vacuum) and long-range (many-body) effects. Moreover, the insight gained from the loop expansion has allowed us to extend the analysis to more relevant approximations, such as those involving the summation of rings and ladders. What one finds (perhaps not surprisingly) is that in a large class of approximations, it is possible to separate the short-range contributions from the long-range contributions, and to show that the former can be written in terms of products of fields that are already present in the lagrangian. In short, this implies that once one decides on a “canonical” form for the lagrangian (which means that one chooses a set of field variables that eliminates redundant terms in a well-defined—but nonunique—fashion), the resulting parameters implicitly include short-range effects to all orders in the interaction, and these effects need not be calculated explicitly. The long-range, many-body effects from valence nucleons, which must be calculated explicitly, resemble well-known contributions from nonrelativistic many-body theory, like summations of ladders and rings. The only differences are that the baryons now have Dirac wave functions, the meson propagation is retarded, and there are modifications to the meson propagation coming from nonlinear meson interactions that incorporate short-range physics. Thus the nuclear dynamics can be organized in a fashion very similar to the nonrelativistic nuclear many-body problem, with the only differences being the relativistic modifications mentioned above and a small number of unknown parameters that describe the short-range dynamics (which is manifested through many-body forces). This new approach to the separation of “valence” and “vacuum” effects solves a problem that has existed in QHD for more than 20 years.

Obviously, there is still a tremendous amount of work that must be done within this program. Our preliminary calculations at the two-loop level and in a simplified Dirac–Brueckner–Hartree–Fock calculation show that it remains possible to reproduce the empirical properties of nuclear matter with parameters that are natural; this is further evidence of the dominance of the Hartree contributions to these parameters. Nevertheless, these Brueckner calculations must be improved, as there are still several ambiguities that must be removed: a consistent cutoff procedure, which truncates integrals systematically at the scale of the “heavy” non-Goldstone-boson masses must be implemented (and checked for sensitivity), and the retardation and short-range modifications to the meson propagators must be included. A systematic method for constructing a canonical form of the lagrangian (with no redundant terms) must also be found. One must also develop the formulation of “conserving approximations” that go beyond the simple one-loop level and that allow for the inclusion of retarded interactions.

## V Energy Functional Analysis of Mean-Field Theories of Nuclei

As an alternative approach to the relativistic nuclear many-body problem, we consider an energy functional that depends on valence-nucleon wave functions and classical scalar and vector fields. Extremization of this functional leads to coupled equations for finite nuclei and nuclear matter, and the success of relativistic mean-field models discussed earlier shows that these variables allow an efficient description of bulk and single-particle nuclear properties.

Although the energy functional contains classical meson fields, this framework can accommodate physics beyond the simple Hartree (or one-baryon-loop) approximation. This is achieved by combining aspects of both density functional theory (DFT) and effective field theory (EFT). In a DFT formulation of the relativistic nuclear many-body problem, the central object is an energy functional of scalar and vector densities (or more generally, vector four-currents). Extremization of the functional gives rise to Dirac equations for occupied orbitals with local scalar and vector potentials, not only in the Hartree approximation, but in the general case as well. (Note that the Dirac eigenvalues do not correspond precisely to physical energies in the general case ). Rather than work solely with the densities, we can introduce auxiliary variables corresponding to the local potentials, so that the energy functional depends also on meson fields. The resulting DFT formulation takes the form of a Hartree calculation, but correlation effects can be included, if the proper density functional can be found. Our procedure is analogous to the well-known Kohn–Sham approach in DFT, with the local meson fields playing the role of Kohn–Sham potentials; by introducing nonlinear couplings between these fields, we can implicitly include density dependence in the single-particle potentials.

Moreover, by introducing the meson fields, we can incorporate the ideas of EFT. The exact energy functional has kinetic energy and Hartree parts (which are combined in the relativistic formulation) plus an “exchange-correlation” functional, which is a nonlocal, nonanalytic functional of the densities that contains all the other many-body and relativistic effects. At the present stage of our investigations, we do not try to construct the latter functional explicitly from a lagrangian (which would be equivalent to solving the full many-body problem), but instead approximate the functional using an expansion in classical meson fields and their derivatives. The parameters introduced in the expansion can be fit to experiment, and if we have a systematic way to truncate the expansion, the framework is predictive. Thus a conventional mean-field energy functional fit directly to nuclear properties, if allowed to be sufficiently general, will automatically incorporate effects beyond the Hartree approximation, such as those due to short-range correlations. These observations serve to justify existing relativistic mean-field models containing nonlinear meson self-interactions, which are successful, but which involve lagrangians or energy functionals that have customarily been truncated at some low order without any justification.

We rely on the special characteristics of nuclear ground states in a relativistic formulation, namely, that the mean scalar and vector potentials $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`W`$ are large on nuclear energy scales but are small compared to the nucleon mass $`M`$ . This implies that the ratios $`\mathrm{\Phi }/M`$ and $`W/M`$ provide useful expansion parameters. Moreover, as is illustrated in Dirac–Brueckner–Hartree–Fock (DBHF) calculations , the scalar and vector potentials (or self-energies) are nearly state independent and are dominated by the Hartree contributions. Thus the Hartree contributions to the energy functional should dominate, and an expansion of the exchange-correlation functional in terms of mean fields should be a reasonable approximation. This “Hartree dominance” also implies that it should be a good approximation to associate the single-particle Dirac eigenvalues with the observed nuclear energy levels, at least for states near the Fermi surface . Of course, the mean-field expansion cannot accommodate all of the nonlocal and nonanalytic aspects of the exchange-correlation functional, and important future work must be done to see how these additional effects can be best incorporated.

Given a suitable truncation scheme, the first step is to analyze a general energy functional (through some level of truncation) to determine the characteristics that generate successful nuclear phenomenology. One wants to accurately reproduce nuclear charge densities, binding-energy systematics, and single-particle energy levels. If one recalls that the Kohn–Sham approach is formulated to reproduce precisely the ground-state density, and that the relativistic Hartree contributions are expected to dominate the Dirac single-particle potentials, these observables are precisely the ones for which meaningful comparisons with experiment should be possible. Moreover, experience has shown that these observables can be replaced by a set of nuclear matter properties plus constraints on the meson masses. Finally, it is possible to analytically invert the field equations to solve directly for the model parameters in terms of the nuclear matter input properties . This allows for a systematic and complete study of the parameter space, so that parameter sets that accurately reproduce nuclear observables can be found, and models that fail to reproduce nuclear properties can be excluded. For example, one learns that favored parameter sets typically involve small but significant nonlinear meson self-interactions. What remains to be done is to identify optimal linear combinations of parameters that are the most tightly constrained by the data and use these to produce some “favored” parameter sets.

One of the primary directions for future study will involve the assumption of “naturalness,” namely, that once the appropriate mass scales have been identified, the coefficients of various terms in the energy functional, when expressed in dimensionless form, should all be of order unity. Naturalness allows us to estimate the size of the terms omitted from the energy functional and also implies that one should include all possible terms allowed by the symmetries through a given level of truncation; thus nonlinear vector–vector and vector–scalar interactions should be as important as scalar–scalar interactions in producing accurate nuclear observables, and we indeed find that this is the case. Nevertheless, because the general energy functional contains all powers in the fields and densities, one has great freedom to make field redefinitions, and the relevant question is which representation of the interactions leads to the most natural and efficient truncation scheme. We have found that simple nucleon–meson Yukawa couplings supplemented by meson self-interactions is one way to provide a description with natural parameters, but it may also be possible to use more complicated meson–nucleon couplings (like $`\overline{\psi }\psi \varphi ^n`$) or higher powers of the nuclear scalar and vector densities (“contact terms”) .

We also plan to investigate the relationship between the energy functional and underlying effective lagrangians (such as the one discussed in Section II) by performing microscopic calculations beyond the Hartree level. Although there are some outstanding formal issues in the derivation of relativistic density functional theory (such as the existence of a relativistic Hohenberg–Kohn theorem, or variational principle), the primary technical issue is how best to approximate the exchange, correlation, and vacuum corrections in terms of the Kohn–Sham potentials. For example, exchange terms introduce momentum dependence into the baryon self-energies in infinite matter, but the Kohn–Sham potentials used to approximate these self-energies should be state independent. Is there an optimal momentum to use to approximate the state dependence? Is it better to introduce small nonlocalities? Preliminary studies on these questions have been done, but these issues are still a long way from being resolved.

## VI The Nuclear Symmetry Energy in Covariant Density Functionals

A power-counting analysis shows that only one isovector parameter in covariant mean-field density functionals is determined by conventional fits to nuclear properties . This implies that the density dependence of the symmetry energy is not constrained by a good fit, but only some average value is. The usual parametrization of isovector interactions in terms of simple rho-meson exchange leads to a much larger density dependence than is obtained in most nonrelativistic Skyrme models. An observable consequence is a significantly larger prediction for the neutron skin in heavy nuclei. Relativistic and nonrelativistic Brueckner calculations of asymmetric nuclear matter using realistic interactions all predict a density dependence consistent with the lower values, which suggests that the covariant parametrization may be deficient. It is important to examine the effect on the symmetry energy of more general isovector terms and of explicit pion-exchange contributions to the energy functional. These results could have impact on the structure of neutron stars.

## Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the US Department of Energy under contract No. DE-FG02-87ER40365.


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# Classical states and decoherence by unitary evolution in the thermodynamic limit

( )

## Abstract

It is shown how classical states, meant as states representing a classical object, can be produced in the thermodynamic limit, retaining the unitary evolution of quantum mechanics. Besides, using a simple model of a single spin interacting with a spin-bath, it is seen how decoherence, with the off-diagonal terms in the density matrix going to zero, can be obtained when the number of the spins in the bath is taken to go formally to infinity. In this case, indeed, the system appears to flop at a frequency being formally infinity that, from a physical standpoint, can be proved equivalent to a time average.

KEYWORDS: Classical states; Thermodynamic limit; Unitary evolution; Decoherence.

The question of how a classical world could emerge from quantum mechanics is a longstanding problem still deeply debated today. A sound solution has been offered by decoherence (see e.g. ) that gives also a possible direction to the solution of the problem of measurement.

Decoherence is based on the fact that whatever quantum system we are going to consider, this is unavoidably in contact with an environment and this can be enough to make the system lose the coherence of its quantum evolution. By construction, it appears that decoherence, defined in this way, is a dissipative effect.

Quite recently, non-dissipative approaches have also been proposed by Bonifacio et al.  and Sun et al. . Indeed, dissipative decoherence has to cope with the question of a kind of regression to solve the measurement problem as also the measurement apparatus should decohere to be considered a classical system, that is, one has at least three levels to have a quantum system that decoheres and give a pointer on an instrument to indicate a definite value.

Our aim here is to discuss a recent proposal to obtain classical states from quantum unitary evolution . This is based on the formal analogy between quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics (a Wick rotation) that can make the classical world emerge in the “thermodynamic limit” as happens to thermodynamics.

This approach, when applied to a simple model devised by Zurek  of a spin in a spin-bath, proves to give rise to ordinary decoherence, that is, erasing of the off-diagonal terms in the density matrix of the spin. In this case one has a spin flopping with a frequency proportional to the number of spins in the bath and this means, in the thermodynamic limit, an infinite frequency. Physically, this is proved to be equivalent to an average in time. Mathematically, this is a typical example of a divergent series . Anyhow, it is essential to emphasize that unitary evolution is retained at each step of our analysis.

An example of a classical system obtained by unitary evolution in the thermodynamic limit is given by ($`\mathrm{}=1`$)

$$H=\lambda \underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sigma _{zi}$$
(1)
that is, a set of $`N`$ two-level systems. It can be proved that, when the system is prepared with the initial wave-function

$$|\psi (0)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}(\alpha _i|_i+\beta _i|_i)$$
(2)
being $`\sigma _{zi}|_i=|_i`$ and $`\sigma _{zi}|_i=|_i`$, then the quantum fluctuations of the Hamiltonian can be neglected as

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }H}{H}\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}}$$
(3)
in the thermodynamic limit $`N\mathrm{}`$. Then, the spins $`_{i=1}^N\sigma _{xi}`$ and $`_{i=1}^N\sigma _{yi}`$ follows the classical equations of motion without any deviation due to quantum fluctuations. These are the equations for the mean values as given by the Ehrenfest theorem.

So, this system, with a properly prepared initial state, behaves classically. Then, it is also able to induce decoherence : The initial state (2) appears as a generally realistic state for a set of properly disordered two-level systems. An important conclusion from the above example is that such a classical object obtained by unitary evolution depends on the way the system is initially prepared.

Having proved that a set of two-level systems can behaves as a classical system in its quantum evolution, we want to show how it can induce decoherence on a single mode of radiation field.

The interaction of N two-level systems with a single radiation mode is given by

$$H=\mathrm{\Delta }\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sigma _{zi}+\omega a^{}a+g(a+a^{})\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sigma _{xi}$$
(4)
with no rotating wave approximation. Indeed, we aim to study this model in the strong coupling regime. That is, we want to apply a dual Dyson series

$$U_D(t)=U_F(t)T\mathrm{exp}\left[i_0^t𝑑t^{}U_F^{}(t^{})H_0U_F(t)\right]$$
(5)
being $`T`$ the time-ordering operator with

$$H_0=\mathrm{\Delta }\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sigma _{zi}$$
(6)
and

$$\left[\omega a^{}a+g(a+a^{})\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sigma _{xi}\right]U_F(t)=i\frac{}{t}U_F(t).$$
(7)
The solution at the leading order, a non trivial one, is then written as

$$|\psi (t)U_F(t)|\psi (0).$$
(8)
The unitary evolution to evaluate the perturbation series is easily written down as

$$U_F(t)=e^{i\widehat{\xi }(t)}e^{i\omega a^{}at}\mathrm{exp}[\widehat{\alpha }(t)a^{}\widehat{\alpha }^{}(t)a]$$
(9)
being

$$\widehat{\xi }(t)=\frac{\left(_{i=1}^N\sigma _{xi}\right)^2g^2}{\omega ^2}(\omega t\mathrm{sin}(\omega t))$$
(10)
and

$$\widehat{\alpha }(t)=\frac{\left(_{i=1}^N\sigma _{xi}\right)g}{\omega }(1e^{i\omega t}).$$
(11)
Assuming the initial state being $`|\psi (0)=|0_{i=1}^N|1_i`$ where the environment is taken to be in eigenstates of $`\sigma _{xi}`$ and the field in the ground state, we obtain the leading order solution

$$|\psi (t)e^{i\frac{N^2g^2}{\omega ^2}(\omega t\mathrm{sin}(\omega t))}|\alpha (t)\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}|1_i$$
(12)
having set

$$\alpha (t)=\frac{Ng}{\omega }(1e^{i\omega t})$$
(13)
that means that at the leading order the field evolves as a coherent state. This in turns means that, in the thermodynamic limit $`N\mathrm{}`$, the radiation mode is described by a classical field.

It is interesting to note that the environment is left untouched at this order.

The first order correction is easily written down as

$$|\psi ^{(1)}(t)=iU_F(t)_0^t𝑑t^{}U_F^{}(t^{})\mathrm{\Delta }\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sigma _{zi}U_F(t^{})|\psi (0).$$
(14)
But,

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sigma _{zi}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}|1_i=|\chi _0^{}$$
(15)
where

$$|\chi _0^{}=|1_1|1_2\mathrm{}|1_N+|1_1|1_2\mathrm{}|1_N+\mathrm{}+|1_1|1_2\mathrm{}|1_N$$
(16)
giving a modified state of the environment. This gives

$$|\psi ^{(1)}(t)=i\mathrm{\Delta }U_F(t)_0^t𝑑t^{}e^{i(2N1)\frac{g^2}{\omega ^2}(\omega t^{}\mathrm{sin}(\omega t^{}))}\mathrm{exp}[\beta (t^{})a^{}\beta ^{}(t^{})a]|0|\chi _0^{}$$
(17)
being

$$\beta (t)=\frac{g}{\omega }(e^{i\omega t}1).$$
(18)
The point here is that, when the environment is traced away, it does not give any contribution as the modified environment state is orthogonal (but not normalized) to the initial state.

Finally, we easily recognize that, in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$, using the Riemann’s lemma, the first order correction goes to zero.

In this way, we have found a method to generate classical radiation fields of arbitrary amplitude by unitary evolution in the thermodynamic limit.

Now, we prove that a single spin interacting with a spin-bath of two-level systems as the one of our first example can, actually, produced decoherence. This model was considered initially by Zurek in . We want to prove in a different way that the limit of increasing number of spins in the bath can make the single spin decohere directly from unitary evolution. The Hamiltonian can be written as

$$H=\lambda \tau _x\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\sigma _{xi}$$
(19)
being $`\lambda `$ an energy scale, $`\tau _x`$ the Pauli matrix for the single spin interacting with the bath and $`\sigma _{xi}`$ the Pauli matrix for the $`i`$-th spin in the bath. Now, as we are aware that the way the system is prepared is critical, we take as an initial state as

$$|\psi (0)=|\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}|1_i$$
(20)
being $`|`$ the initial state of the interacting spin eigenstate of $`\tau _z`$ and $`|1_i`$ eigenstate of $`\sigma _{xi}`$ in the bath. The unitary evolution gives the exact solution

$$|\psi (t)=\mathrm{exp}\left(iN\lambda t\tau _x\right)|\psi (0)$$
(21)
and this yields, for the interacting spin, a coherent spin state with a parameter N. We rewrite it, omitting the bath, as

$$|\psi (t)_I=\mathrm{cos}(iN\lambda t)|+i\mathrm{sin}(iN\lambda t)|$$
(22)
and we have Rabi flopping with a frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }=2N\lambda `$ that goes to infinity in the thermodynamic limit. A meaning should be attached to the limits

$`\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\mathrm{cos}(Nx)`$ (23)
$`\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\mathrm{sin}(Nx)`$ (24)
and this can be done if we rewrite the above as

$`\mathrm{cos}(Nx)`$ $`=`$ $`1{\displaystyle _0^{Nx}}\mathrm{sin}(y)𝑑y`$ (25)
$`\mathrm{sin}(Nx)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{Nx}}\mathrm{cos}(y)𝑑y`$ (26)
that we can reinterpret e.g. through the Abel summation to divergent integrals

$`\underset{ϵ0^+}{lim}\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle _0^{Nx}}e^{ϵy}\mathrm{cos}(y)𝑑y`$ (27)
$`\underset{ϵ0^+}{lim}\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle _0^{Nx}}e^{ϵy}\mathrm{sin}(y)𝑑y,`$ (28)
where the order with which the limits are taken is important. These give $`0`$ and $`1`$ respectively that means average in time. This is, indeed, the only meaning that can be attached to functions having time scales of variation going to $`0`$.

This conclusion is fundamental for the density matrix as, in this way, turns out to have the off-diagonal terms averaged to zero. This is decoherence but obtained in the thermodynamic limit through unitary evolution. In fact, one has

$$\rho (t)=\mathrm{exp}\left(itN\lambda \tau _x\right)\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0\hfill & & \\ 0& 1\hfill & & \end{array}\right)\mathrm{exp}\left(it\lambda \tau _x\right)$$
(29)
that yields

$`\rho _{}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1\mathrm{cos}(2N\lambda t)}{2}}`$ (30)
$`\rho _{}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{sin}2N\lambda t`$ (31)
$`\rho _{}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{sin}2N\lambda t`$ (32)
$`\rho _{}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1+\mathrm{cos}(2N\lambda t)}{2}}.`$ (33)
and applying the above argument in the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ gives the required result $`\rho _{}(t)=\rho _{}(t)=0`$ and $`\rho _{}(t)=\rho _{}(t)=\frac{1}{2}`$.

The main conclusion is that quantum mechanics can generate by itself classical objects without interaction with an external environment. Although this cannot be seen as decoherence, the latter can be recovered in some cases as oscillations that are washed out in the thermodynamic limit.

The foundation of this approach is the formal analogy between the time evolution operator in quantum mechanics and the density matrix for a thermodynamical system. This can be obtained by a Wick rotation $`ti\beta `$.

This, in turn, means that the thermodynamic limit can have a meaning also for quantal evolution. The laws of motion obtained in this limit are so given, through the Ehrenfest theorem, by the classical equations of motion without any deviation due to quantum fluctuations. This is analogous to the laws of thermodynamics obtained from the partition function.

This means that quantum mechanics can prove to be just the bootstrap program of the classical world.


text:
# Entanglement between external degrees of freedom of atoms via Bragg deflection

## I Introduction

In 1935, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen questioned the legitimacy of quantum mechanics by using entangled states . Their work started enormous philosophical discussions which led to improve the understanding of the subject. The quantum entangled states have proved to be a foundation stone in devising techniques to perform quantum computation , quantum teleportation  and quantum cryptography . It has made it vital to understand the roots of entanglement in quantum systems in its details.

The generation of entanglement has been performed successfully between two electromagnetic cavities , multimodes of a single electromagnetic cavity , internal states of atoms , ions  and Bose-Einstein condensates . Moreover entanglement between angular momenta of a single atom  and between atoms in dark states  has been suggested. In this paper we present technique to develop entanglement between external degrees of freedom of atoms which are defined by means of their momentum states. Our suggested scheme relies on Bragg deflection of atoms from a cavity field. As a manifestation of quantum duality, a matter wave passing through an optical crystal at a certain angle displays Bragg deflection. We discuss that two noninteracting matter waves incident on a cavity field in superposition, generate entangled states comprising EPR-Bell basis by controlling atom-field interaction times. We extend our suggested scheme to generate GHZ  entangled states. Later, we discuss that presently available experiments on atomic Bragg scattering from electromagnetic fields  may be considered to realize our theoretical work in experiments.

We consider two supercooled atoms propagating with centre of mass momentum $`P_1`$ and $`P_2,`$ and interacting simultaneously with a quantized standing wave cavity field. The field inside the cavity is in a superposition state $`1/\sqrt{2}(|0+|n_0),`$ where $`|0`$ is vacuum state and $`|n_0`$ is any other Fock state. We take the frequency of the electromagnetic field far detuned from the transition frequency of the two level atoms. Atom-field large detuning ensures that atoms do not exit the cavity field in excited state and there is no spontaneous emission which contributes photon in arbitrary direction. Thus interaction of atoms does not alter the field state and both the atoms experience the field in the same state during the time of interaction, that is either $`|0`$ or $`|n_0`$.

The effective Rabi frequency of each atom interacting with the field in state $`|n,`$ where $`n`$ is either $`0`$ or $`n_0,`$ becomes $`|g|^2n/2\mathrm{}.`$ Here, $`g`$ expresses coupling constant, and $`\mathrm{}=\nu w`$ indicates detuning between the field frequency, $`\nu ,`$ and the atomic transition frequency, $`w.`$ In order to study atomic deflection from the cavity field we consider that the incident atoms propagate making an angle $`\theta `$ with the normal to the cavity field. We apply Fresnel approximation to the atomic motion, and, therefore we consider atomic momentum component along the cavity field very small compared to the component along the normal to the cavity field. Hence, we treat the atomic motion along the normal to the cavity field classically.

We may express the evolution of the atoms interacting with the cavity field by the effective Hamiltonian,

$$\widehat{H}_{eff}=\frac{\widehat{P}_{x_1}^2}{2M}+\frac{\widehat{P}_{x_2}^2}{2M}\frac{\mathrm{}|g|^2}{2\mathrm{}}\underset{j=1,2}{}\stackrel{}{\widehat{n}}\widehat{\sigma }_{}^{(j)}\widehat{\sigma }_+^{(j)}\left(\mathrm{cos}2k\widehat{x}+1\right),$$
(1)
which is obtained in presence of dipole approximation, rotating wave approximation and secular approximation. Here, $`\widehat{P}_{x_j},`$ is the momentum operator describing momentum component along the cavity field of each $`j`$th atom for $`j=1,2,`$ and $`M`$ indicates their respective mass. Moreover, $`\widehat{\sigma }_+^{(j)}`$ and $`\widehat{\sigma }_{}^{(j)}`$ are the corresponding atomic raising and lowering operators and $`\widehat{n}`$ describes field number operator. Above Hamiltonian is separable for atoms 1 and 2. This suggests that we may write the wave function of the system of two atoms, $`A_1`$ and $`A_2`$ and field, $`F`$ as

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }(A_1,A_2,F)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\underset{l=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{l^{^{}}=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left[C_{0,P_l}^{(1)}(t)C_{0,P_l^{^{}}}^{(2)}(t)|P_l^{(1)},P_l^{^{}}^{(2)},0+C_{n_0,P_l}^{(1)}(t)C_{n_0,P_l^{^{}}}^{(2)}(t)|P_l^{(1)},P_l^{^{}}^{(2)},n_0\right],$$
(2)
where, $`C_{n,P_l}^{(1)}(t)`$ $`\left(C_{n,P_l^{^{}}}^{(2)}(t)\right)`$ is the probability amplitude of atom 1 $`\left(2\right)`$ exiting with momentum $`P_l`$ $`\left(P_l^{^{}}\right)`$ in presence of field with $`n`$ photons. By comparing atomic scattering with optical Bragg scattering , we  can develop a condition on initial momentum of the incident atom, viz. $`P_{l_0}=\frac{l_0}{2}\mathrm{}k,`$ for which atomic Bragg scattering may occur. Here, $`l_0=\pm 2,\pm 4`$, $`\pm 6`$ etc., which correspond to first, second, third order of Bragg scattering, respectively. By changing the atomic momentum component, $`P_{l_0},`$ parallel to the cavity field, we can change the order of Bragg scattering. During interaction with the field for each complete Rabi cycle, momentum transferred to the atom by the field is either $`zero`$ or $`2\mathrm{}k`$ . Thus momentum of the exiting atom is given as $`P_l=P_{l_0}+l\mathrm{}k`$, where, $`l`$ is an even integer.

Hence, by substituting the effective Hamiltonian, defined in Eq. $`\left(\text{1}\right),`$ and the wave function given in Eq. $`\left(\text{2}\right)`$ of our system in time dependent Schrödinger equation, we get separate sets of infinite coupled rate equations for probability amplitudes $`C_{n,P_l}^{\left(j\right)}`$, for each $`j`$th atom. We may express the set of coupled rate equations as

$$i\frac{C_{n,P_l}^{\left(j\right)}(t)}{t}=w_{rec}l(l+l_0)C_{n,P_l}^{\left(j\right)}(t)\frac{\chi n}{2}\left(C_{n,P_l+2\mathrm{}k}^{\left(j\right)}(t)+C_{n,P_l2\mathrm{}k}^{\left(j\right)}(t)\right).$$
(3)
Here, $`w_{rec}=\frac{\mathrm{}k^2}{2M}`$ is recoil frequency of the atom and $`\chi n=\frac{|g|^2n}{2\mathrm{}}`$ is effective Rabi frequency. In Bragg deflection, recoil frequency of the deflected atom, is much larger than effective Rabi frequency , that is $`w_{rec}\chi n.`$ Also, conservation of energy provides us $`l=0`$and $`l=l_0,`$ which leads to two possible directions of propagation for the deflected atom, one with momentum $`P_{+l_0}^{\left(j\right)}`$ and the other with momentum $`P_{l_0}^{\left(j\right)},`$ respectively. We solve the set of $`l_0/2`$ coupled equations, from $`l=0`$ to $`l=l_0,`$ adiabatically and obtain  two coupled equations as

$`i{\displaystyle \frac{C_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`A_nC_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}\left(t\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B_nC_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}\left(t\right),`$ (4)
$`i{\displaystyle \frac{C_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`A_nC_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}\left(t\right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B_nC_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}\left(t\right),`$ (5)
where,

$$A_n=\{\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \frac{\chi n/2}{w_{rec}(l_02)(2)}& \text{for }l_02,\hfill \\ \hfill 0& \text{for }l_0=2,\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
and

$$|B_n|=\{\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \frac{\left(\chi n\right)^{^{\frac{l_0}{2}}}}{\left(2w_{rec}\right)^{\frac{l_0}{2}1}\left[(l_02)(l_04)\mathrm{}\mathrm{}4.2\right]^2}& \text{for }l_02,\hfill \\ \hfill \chi n& \text{for }l_0=2.\hfill \end{array}$$
(7)
From Eqs. $`\left(\text{4}\right)`$ and $`\left(\text{5}\right)`$, we obtain the probability amplitudes of atoms exiting with momentum $`P_{+l_0}`$ and that of exiting with momentum $`P_{l_0}`$ as

$`C_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`e^{iA_nt/2}\left[C_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}(0)\mathrm{cos}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B_nt\right)+C_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}(0)\mathrm{sin}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B_nt\right)\right],`$ (8)
$`C_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`e^{iA_nt/2}\left[C_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}(0)\mathrm{cos}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B_nt\right)+C_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}(0)\mathrm{sin}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B_nt\right)\right].`$ (9)
Hence, as a result of Bragg deflection the probability of finding the exiting atom in either of the two propagation directions flips, as a function of interaction time $`t,`$ with frequency $`|B_n|/2`$ .

As defined in Eq. $`\left(\text{2}\right),`$ we may express the combined state of the two deflected atoms and field, at any interaction time, $`t,`$ as

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }(A_1,A_2,F)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\underset{l=+l_0,l_0}{}\underset{l^{^{}}=+l_0,l_0}{}\left[C_{0,P_l}^{(1)}(t)C_{0,P_l^{^{}}}^{(2)}(t)|P_l^{(1)},P_l^{^{}}^{(2)},0+C_{n_0,P_l}^{(1)}(t)C_{n_0,P_l^{^{}}}^{(2)}(t)|P_l^{(1)},P_l^{^{}}^{(2)},n_0\right],$$
(10)
where, $`C_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}`$ and $`C_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(j\right)}`$ are defined in Eqs. $`\left(\text{8}\right)`$ and $`\left(\text{9}\right)`$ for $`j=1,2.`$

In order to generate entanglement between the atomic external degrees of freedom, we prepare one atom in the momentum state $`|P_{+l_0}^{(1)}`$ and the other atom in the initial momentum state $`|P_{l_0}^{\left(2\right)},`$ at $`t=0.`$ Thus, for the atom 1 and atom 2 the probability amplitudes, given in Eqs. $`\left(\text{8}\right)`$ and $`\left(\text{9}\right),`$ reduce to

$`C_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(1\right)}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`C_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(2\right)}(t)=e^{iA_nt/2}\mathrm{cos}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B_nt\right),`$ (11)
$`C_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(1\right)}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`C_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(2\right)}(t)=e^{iA_nt/2}\mathrm{sin}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}B_nt\right).`$ (12)
We infer that atoms, initially in state $`|P_{+l_0}^{(1)}`$ and $`|P_{l_0}^{\left(2\right)},`$ after a time of interaction $`t=s\pi /B_n,`$ with the cavity field in state $`|n`$ $`=|n_0,`$ are deflected along $`|P_{l_0}^{\left(1\right)}`$ and $`|P_{+l_0}^{(2)},`$ respectively. Here $`s`$ is an odd integer. Since, both $`A_n`$ and $`|B_n|,`$ disappear for $`n=0,`$ this implies that when these atoms pass through the cavity field in vacuum state, they stay undeflected. This yields $`C_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(1\right)}(t)=C_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(2\right)}(t)=0,`$ and, $`C_{n,P_{l_0}}^{\left(1\right)}(t)C_{n,P_{+l_0}}^{\left(2\right)}(t)=e^{i\phi }.`$ The phase $`\phi `$ depends on the order of Bragg scattering $`l_0`$ and the cavity field photon number $`n_0`$ and is given as $`\phi =s\pi A_{n_0}/B_{n_0}.`$ Hence, we get our system in state

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }\left(A_1\text{,}A_2\text{,}F\right)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left[|P_{+l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{l_0}^{\left(2\right)},0+e^{i\phi }|P_{l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{+l_0}^{\left(2\right)},n_0\right],$$
(13)
which is a three party entangled state, that is, between two atomic external degrees of freedom and cavity field. We may get the same entangled state if one atom interacts for a time $`t=s\pi /B_{n_0}`$ with the cavity field, whereas the other atom with a time difference of $`2r\pi /B_{n_0},`$ where $`r`$ is an even integer. This makes $`\phi =\left(s+r\right)\pi A_{n_0}/B_{n_0}.`$ We may extract the entanglement of the external degrees of freedom of the atoms by making measurement over the cavity field state, which yields,

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }\left(A_1\text{,}A_2\right)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left[|P_{+l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{l_0}^{\left(2\right)}+e^{i\phi }|P_{l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{+l_0}^{\left(2\right)}\right].$$
(14)
In case, we keep the interaction time of one atom as $`s\pi /B_{n_0},`$ while let the other atom interact for an interaction time different by $`2r^{^{}}\pi /B_{n_0}`$, where $`r^{^{}}`$ is an odd integer, we get the entangled state, as

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }\left(A_1\text{,}A_2\right)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left[|P_{+l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{l_0}^{\left(2\right)}e^{i\phi ^{^{}}}|P_{l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{+l_0}^{\left(2\right)}\right],$$
(15)
where, $`\phi ^{^{}}=\left(s+r^{^{}}\right)\pi A_{n_0}/B_{n_0}.`$

We may generate the other two entangled states of the Bell basis by preparing the two atoms in the same initial momentum states $`|P_{+l_0}`$ or $`|P_{l_0}`$, and let them interact with the cavity field. In case the field is in vacuum state, $`|0,`$ the incident atoms pass undeflected, whereas, in presence of field state, $`|n_0,`$ the probability amplitudes of the incident atoms oscillate as a function of interaction time. Now following our above discussion, the interaction of one atom for a time $`s\pi /B_n`$ and the other for a time difference of $`2r\pi /B_n,`$ and, later, a measurement over the cavity field state, leads us to the entanglement of the external degrees of freedom of atoms as

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }\left(A_1\text{,}A_2\right)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left[|P_{+l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{+l_0}^{\left(2\right)}+e^{i\phi }|P_{l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{l_0}^{\left(2\right)}\right].$$
(16)
For the same initial conditions of the system but interaction times different by an amount $`2r^{^{}}\pi /B_{n_0}`$ of the two atoms with the cavity field, we get the entangled state as

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }\left(A_1\text{,}A_2\right)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left[|P_{+l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{+l_0}^{\left(2\right)}e^{i\phi ^{^{}}}|P_{l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{l_0}^{\left(2\right)}\right].$$
(17)
Hence, our scheme leads us to generate complete set of Bell basis.

Equations $`\left(\text{16}\right)`$ and $`\left(\text{17}\right)`$ provide a direct extension of our work to develop GHZ entangled state between external degrees of freedom of atoms. We consider that initially we prepare more than two atoms in the same momentum state $`|P_{+l_0}`$ or $`|P_{l_0},`$ and, let them interact simultaneously with the cavity field. Bragg deflection of the incident atoms ensures the generation of GHZ state, $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|P_{+l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{+l_0}^{\left(2\right)},\mathrm{},P_{+l_0}^{\left(k\right)}\pm e^{i\phi }|P_{l_0}^{\left(1\right)},P_{l_0}^{\left(2\right)},\mathrm{},P_{l_0}^{\left(k\right)}\right).`$ Here an interaction time of $`s\pi /B_{n_0},`$ leads to positive sign and $`\phi =ks\pi A_{n_0}/2B_{n_0}`$, however, any atom interacting for an interaction time difference of $`2r^{^{}}\pi /B_{n_0}`$ will lead to negative sign and $`\phi =\left[\left(k1\right)s+2r^{^{}}\right]\pi A_{n_0}/2B_{n_0}`$, where $`k`$ indicates the number of interacting atoms.

We may realize the suggested scheme in laboratory by using the experimental set up of Ref. . We propagate rubidium atoms of mass $`M=1.42\times 10^{25}`$ Kg, through an optical quantum field of wavelength $`\lambda =0.8\mu m`$. Therefore, the atoms experience a recoil frequency, $`w_{rec}=2\pi \times 3.8`$ kHz, while passing through the field, in presence of a detuning by an amount $`\mathrm{}=2\pi \times 80`$ MHz. We find that $`g=2\pi \times 112`$ kHz, such that, $`\chi 0.02w_{rec},`$ which ensures Bragg deflection of incident atoms. We make the times of interaction of the two atoms with the cavity field different by controlling their initial momentum components along the normal to the cavity field, as required to generate entangled states expressed in Eqs. $`\left(\text{15}\right)`$ and $`\left(\text{17}\right).`$ We may apply our suggested scheme in order to engineer external degrees of freedom entanglement between different isotopes of same material, between atoms of different materials and between an atom and an ion.


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# A Gamma-Ray Burst Bibliography, 1973-2001

## I Introduction

I have been tracking the gamma-ray burst literature for about the past twenty-one years, keeping the authors, titles, references, and key subject words in a machine-readable file. The present version updates previous ones reported in 1993 hurley1 , 1995 hurley2 ,1997 hurley3 and 1999 hurley4 . In its current form, this information is in a Microsoft Word 97 ”doc” format. My purpose in doing this was first, to be able to retrieve rapidly any articles on a given topic, and second, to be able to cut and paste references into manuscripts in preparation. The following journals have been scanned on a more or less regular basis starting with the 1973 issues:
Advances in Physics
Annals of Physics
Astronomical Journal
Astronomische Nachrichten
Astronomy and Astrophysics (including Supplement Series)
Astronomy and Astrophysics Review
Astronomy Letters (formerly Soviet Astronomy Letters)
Astronomy Reports (formerly Soviet Astronomy)
Astrophysical Journal (letters, main journal, and supplements)
Astrophysical Letters and Communications
Astrophysics and Space Science
ESA Bulletin
ESA Journal
IAU Circulars
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science
Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Nature
Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A
Observatory
Physical Review (main journal A and letters)
Proceedings of the Astronomical Society of Australia
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Reports on Progress in Physics
Science
Scientific American
Sky & Telescope

In addition, the following journals either have been scanned, but less regularly in the past, or in some cases, are no longer being scanned:
Annals of Geophysics
Astrofizika
Astroparticle Physics
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society
Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of India
Chinese Astronomy and Astrophysics
Chinese Physics Letters
Cosmic Research
Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
New Astronomy
Progress in Theoretical Physics
Solar Physics
Soviet Physics

The above lists are not exhaustive. For example, where theses or internal reports have come to my attention, I have included them, too. To be included, an article had to have something to do with GRB or SGR theory, observation, or instrumentation, or be closely related to one of these topics (e.g., merging neutron stars, AXPs, high-z supernovae, etc.), and must have been published. With only a few exceptions, preprints or internal reports which were never published have not been included.

## II Organization of the Bibliography

The overall organization is chronological by year. Within a given year, articles published in journals are listed first, in alphabetical order by first author. Then come theses and conference proceedings articles. The latter are listed in the order in which they appear in the proceedings. The entries are numbered consecutively, so that paper copies which are kept on file can be retrieved quickly. However, to avoid having to renumber this entire file when a new article is added, numbers are skipped at the end of each year and reserved for later inclusion. The complete author list follows, as it appears in the journal, along with the title, journal, volume number, page number, and year. A line containing key words follows this. These are generally not the same key words as the ones listed in the journal, nor are they taken from the title or any particular list. Rather, they are meant to reflect the true content of the article, and provide a list of machine-searchable topics. In general, however, key words have not been included for conference proceedings articles. An example of an entry is the following:
5163. Guetta, D., Spada, M., and Waxman, E., On the Neutrino Flux from Gamma-Ray Bursts, Ap. J. 559, 101, 2001
Key Words: p-gamma interactions, photomeson production, 101̂4 eV neutrinos

## III A Few Interesting Statistics

The number of articles published each year since 1973 is shown in figure 1. Starting with one article per month in 1973, it began to exceed one per day in 1994, and reached over 1.5 per day in 2000, enough, in principle, to base an entire journal on. Several milestones are indicated as the probable causes of sudden increases in the number of publications per year. Note that there are still about as many papers published as there are gamma-ray bursts observed. The cumulative total is shown in Figure 2. The cutoff date is mid-2001. At any given time, there may be about 100 articles waiting to be entered into the file, so the completeness, including an estimate of the number of articles which were missed for any reason, is about 98%.

The volume of the literature (it would take about 600 pages simply to print out the bibliography) has necessitated the development of a program which can search for and extract particular titles. I have written such a program in Microsoft Word Basic (a variant of the BASIC programming language). It allows one to extract all titles between two dates whose entries contain a particular key phrase, key word, or author, and write them to a separate file.

## IV Availability

A web version of this bibliography may be found at ssl.berkeley.edu/ipn3/index.html. However, although the bibliography is updated on an approximately daily basis, the most up-to-date version is usually not at the website. It is available in plain ASCII, ”doc”, and ”rich text format” (rtf) format files, which can be sent to anyone interested, as can the Word Basic program. Please contact me at khurley@sunspot.ssl.berkeley.edu to request copies, and indicate your preference for the format. I would appreciate it if users would communicate errors and omissions to me.

This work was carried out under JPL Contract 958056.


text:
# Modulation of Localized States in Electroconvection

## Abstract

We report on the effects of temporal modulation of the driving force on a particular class of localized states, known as worms, that have been observed in electroconvection in nematic liquid crystals. The worms consist of the superposition of traveling waves and have been observed to have unique, small widths, but to vary in length. The transition from the pure conduction state to worms occurs via a backward bifurcation. A possible explanation of the formation of the worms has been given in terms of coupled amplitude equations. Because the worms consist of the superposition of traveling waves, temporal modulation of the control parameter is a useful probe of the dynamics of the system. We observe that temporal modulation increases the average length of the worms and stabilizes worms below the transition point in the absence of modulation.

Patterns in spatially extended dissipative systems have been of interest in a wide range of disciplines. Their formation is associated with nonlinear and nonequilibrium effects that produce qualitatively new phenomena that are not observable in linear systems . One of the more interesting classes of patterns is localized states, or pulses. These states correspond to the coexistence of small regions in which a pattern exists with larger regions of the uniform state. Interest in localized states has grown dramatically since the experimental discovery of pulses in Rayleigh-Bénard convection using binary fluids in narrow channels . These quasi-one dimensional states have been described theoretically in a number of ways . Other quasi-one dimensional structures have been observed in Taylor vortex flow , directional solidification , cellular flames , and models of parametrically driven waves . In two dimensions, localization appears to be harder to achieve. In binary fluids, only long-lived states have been observed . Recently, truly stable states have been observed in granular materials , viscous fluids , and electroconvection . In this paper, we will focus specifically on the localized states, known as worms , that have been observed in electroconvection in nematic liquid crystals.

Worms are unique for two reasons. First, worms occur in a system that is intrinsically anisotropic: electroconvection in nematic liquid crystals . A nematic liquid crystal  is composed of long rod-like molecules and has an inherent orientational order. The axis parallel to the average alignment of the molecule is called the director. For electroconvection, a nematic liquid crystal is placed between two glass plates that have been treated to produce uniform alignment of the director. This selects an axis, which we will refer to as the x-axis. An ac voltage of rms amplitude $`V`$ and frequency $`f`$ is applied across the two glass plates using transparent conductors. Below a well-defined value of the applied voltage, $`V_o`$, the system is uniform. Above $`V_o`$, a pattern develops. For a relatively wide range of parameters, the initial pattern consists of a collection of worms. Worms consist of a superposition of traveling roll states localized within an envelope. The wavevector of the rolls has a nonzero angle with respect to the x-axis. Such states are referred to as oblique rolls. Because the director only defines an axis, rolls with angle $`\theta `$ and $`\pi \theta `$ are degenerate and referred to as zig and zag rolls. Therefore, there are four possible states that combine to form worms: right- and left-traveling zig and zag rolls.

Before discussing the second feature that makes worms unique, we will briefly review their known properties . The envelope of the worms has a well-defined width in a direction approximately perpendicular to the undistorted director. However, its length is found to be irregular for values of $`V`$ close to the onset voltage $`V_o`$. As $`V`$ is increased, the average length of the worms increases until the worms extend across the system. In addition, the vertical spacing between worms decreases, until the system is filled with convection. The worms travel in a direction opposite the direction of travel of the rolls that comprise the worms. Other localized states, described as “bursting”, were also observed in a different parameter range. These states did not have a well-defined width. The onset of worms occurs well below the supercritical transition to the extended state, i.e. it is a subcritical transition . It is this fact that is the second unique feature of worms.

Most localized states occur because the system exhibits bistability between an extended wave state and the uniform state. This fact is essential to most theoretical models of localized structures (e.g. ). Even though the worms occur subcritically, because the extended state occurs via a supercritical bifurcation, one can not describe the system in terms of fronts connecting the basic and nonlinear states, ruling out the above mentioned mechanisms. A set of coupled amplitude equations have been proposed to explain the worms . These consist of amplitude equations for the zig and zag modes that are coupled to an additional weakly damped scalar mode. Simulations of the amplitude equations exhibit solutions that have the same general features as the worm state and the bursting states. However, the additional slow mode has not yet been identified for electroconvection.

In this paper, we report on an additional experimental test of the proposed amplitude equation model. Because the worms consist of a superposition of traveling waves, a temporal modulation of the driving voltage can couple the different right- and left-traveling modes and produce interesting effects, such as standing waves (e.g. ). For extended states, the strongest coupling occurs for a modulation frequency at twice the natural traveling frequency. We expect the same to be true for the worm state, so in this paper, we focus on the 2:1 resonance. We observe both a stabilization of the worms below their onset in the absence of modulation and an increase in their natural length.

We used the nematic liquid crystal 4-ethyl-2-fluoro-4-\[2\[(trans-4-pentylcyclohexyl)-ethyl\] byphenyl (I52)  for the experiments reported here. The liquid crystal was doped with 8% by weight molecular iodine. A commercial cell was used for the experiments . It was made from two glass slides that were coated with a transparent conductor, a layer of indium-tin oxide (ITO). The conductive coating was etched to form a 0.5 cm x 0.5 cm square electrode in the center of a 2.5 cm x 2.5 cm cell. The glass slides were coated with a rubbed polyimide to align the director.

The sample was held in an aluminum block that provided temperature control. The temperature was kept constant to $`\pm 0.005^{}\mathrm{C}`$. The block had glass windows in the bottom and top. The patterns were imaged by shining light from below the sample and observing it from above with the standard shadowgraph technique .

The temperature was varied over the range $`40^{}\mathrm{C}`$ to $`60^{}\mathrm{C}`$. This produced a shift in the onset voltage $`V_o`$ of the worms and the traveling frequency of the underlying rolls due to changes in the material parameters, such as the electrical conductivity. The onset voltage was measured by stepping the voltage in steps of 0.1 V at a fixed applied frequency and waiting for 5 minutes at each step. The onset voltage was defined to be the voltage at which worms were first observed to exist. Recall, this is different than the actual critical voltage, as the transition is backward with a large hysteresis. At temperatures lower than $`40^{}\mathrm{C}`$, no worms were observed.

For the modulation experiments, the applied voltage has the form $`V(t)=\sqrt{2}[V+V_mcos(\omega _mt)]cos(\omega t)`$. In this paper, $`V_o`$ is the measured onset voltage for the worms in the absence of modulation ($`V_m=0`$). In this system of electroconvection at larger values of the conductivity, the initial transition is to an extended state . For this case, a large enough value of $`V_m`$ produces standing waves that consist of only zig or zag rolls . Therefore, it was expected that the modulation would stabilize “standing worms”; however, it was unknown whether or not such objects would be stable.

For our system, the worm envelope did not travel significantly, as previously observed . This was due to the fact that our worms are a superposition of both left- and right-traveling rolls. Therefore, they were “standing worms”. The exact type of worm, traveling or standing, depends on the various material parameters in a currently unknown fashion, so it is not surprising that standing worms are observed in our system. Further work is needed on this issue, but standing worms have been reported for other samples . The worms blinked with a frequency of 0.5 Hz to 2.5 Hz, depending on the parameters. Figure 1 shows images of a standing worm at four different times. All these images were taken at the temperature $`T=55\pm 0.02^{}\mathrm{C}`$ and at the same location in the cell. The images of Fig. 1(a) through 1(c) were taken 0.2 s apart and demonstrate the standing nature of the worms. Figure 1(d) shows the worm 1 hour later and demonstrates both the stability of the worm and the fact that it does not travel any significant distance. Because of the narrow width of the worms and nonlinear effects in the shadowgraph, it is difficult to determine if these standing worms are a superposition of all four modes (right- and left-traveling zig and zag) or simply two modes (right- and left-traveling either zig or zag). The rolls in the images in Fig. 1 are at a slight angle, suggesting the superposition of two modes. (If both zig and zag rolls are present, the nonlinear shadowgraph effects give the appearance of normal rolls .) In fact, most of the images are consistent with the superposition of only two modes; however, some of the worms appear to be comprised of all four (see for instance, Fig. 2b). The exact nature of the superposition is important for comparison with the amplitude equation predictions. One must use parameters in the amplitude equations that correspond to type of standing worms present in the experiment. At this point, the various types of standing worms have not been studied in any detail theoretically, so we are not able to make any quantitative comparisons.

Figure 2 compares an example of a worm state with $`V_m=0`$ and $`V_m0`$. For both cases, the onset voltage was 22.5 V, and the temperature was set to $`56\pm 0.02^{}\mathrm{C}`$. The image on the left (a) was taken without the modulation, and the one of the right (b) was taken with modulation. Without the modulation, the worms are relatively short, consisting of only 3-4 convection rolls inside. With the modulation, the worms grow substantially in length, but retain essentially the same width.

Figure 3 and 4 provide a more detailed comparison between the modulated and unmodulated states. The images were taken at $`T=60^{}\mathrm{C}`$ with an applied frequency of 50 Hz. Without modulation, the onset of worms was found to be at 21.59 V, and the traveling frequency of rolls inside the worm envelope was found to be $`f=2.08\mathrm{Hz}`$. The images (a) - (d) in Fig. 3 show the transition from below onset to above onset. In particular, the length of the worms in image (b) is still relatively short. As the applied voltage is increased, the number of worms increases, and the intensity of worms becomes stronger. The images in Fig. 4 (a) - (d) show the similar range of applied voltages as in Fig. 3 (a) - (d), but now the applied voltage has a modulation voltage of $`2.0\mathrm{V}`$ and a modulation frequency $`f_m=4.166\mathrm{Hz}`$. Images (a), (b) and (c) show that worms can be stabilized below the onset voltage in the absence of modulation. Also, the modulation clearly generates extremely long straight worms (image c). These worms are standing worms with a frequency of $`2.08\mathrm{Hz}`$. This confirms that the system is responding at the 2:1 resonance, as discussed in the introduction. Finally, at high enough values of applied voltage, for a given modulation, the worms fill the system and produce extended convection.

We have shown that temporal modulation increases the length of the worms without affecting the width. Also, as expected from the temporal modulation of extended states , worms can be resonantly excited below onset. The transition from the worms to the extended convection appears to be qualitatively different in the modulated and unmodulated case. In the unmodulated case, the extended state appears to fill in the system from in between the worms. In the modulated case, the worms appear to fill the system with an increasing density and eventually lose their localization perpendicular to the director as they merge into an extended state. However, more work needs to be done on this transition to quantify it. Also, it is known from the theoretical work on traveling worms, that is is possible for modulation to increase the length of the worms. However, as mentioned, the standing worms have not been studied in any detail theoretically, so quantitative comparisons with theory will be the subject of future work.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank Hermann Riecke and Catherine Crawford for useful discussions. This work was supported by NSF grant DMR-9975479. M. Dennin also thanks the Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar and Sloan Fellowship for additional funding for this work.


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# Unconventional carrier-mediated ferromagnetism above room temperature in ion-implanted (Ga, Mn)P:C

## Abstract

Ion implantation of Mn ions into hole-doped GaP has been used to induce ferromagnetic behavior above room temperature for optimized Mn concentrations near 3 at.$`\%`$. The magnetism is suppressed when the Mn dose is increased or decreased away from the 3 at.$`\%`$ value, or when $`n`$-type GaP substrates are used. At low temperatures the saturated moment is on the order of one Bohr magneton, and the spin wave stiffness inferred from the Bloch-law $`T^{3/2}`$ dependence of the magnetization provides an estimate $`T_c`$ = 385K of the Curie temperature that exceeds the experimental value, $`T_c`$ = 270K. The presence of ferromagnetic clusters and hysteresis to temperatures of at least 330K is attributed to disorder and proximity to a metal-insulating transition.

The rather short interval between discovery of ferromagnetism in the Mn doped III-V semiconductor GaAs Ohno and Matsukura (2001) and the demonstration of unique phenomena such as field-effect control of ferromagnetism Ohno et al. (2000), efficient spin injection to produce circularly polarized light Fiederling et al. (1999); Ohno et al. (1999), and spin-dependent resonant tunneling Ohno (1998), opens a rich and varied landscape for technological innovation in magnetoelectronics Wolf et al. (2001). Although the Curie temperature, $`T_c=110`$K, of (Ga,Mn)As is spectacularly high, it is not high enough, and any real breakthrough with respect to applications will require diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS) which exhibit ferromagnetism above room temperature Wolf et al. (2001). Already there are reports of room temperature ferromagnetism in the DMS chalcopyrite Cd1-xMnxGeP2 Medvedkin et al. (2000), (Ga,Mn)N formed by diffusion Reed et al. (2001), and Co-doped ZnO Ueda et al. (2001) and TiO2 anatase Chambers et al. (2001); Matsumoto et al. (2001).

In this letter we report on carrier-mediated ferromagnetism in (Ga,Mn)P, doped $`p`$-type with carbon (C), that persists to above room temperature. High $`T_c`$ behavior is only observed for samples that are prepared at an optimal Mn concentration near 3 at.$`\%`$ on heavily p-doped GaP substrates. When electron-doped substrates are simultaneously implanted with the same Mn concentration, $`T_c`$ is strongly suppressed. Hysteresis in the 3 at.$`\%`$ material extends to temperatures well above the temperature where the dc susceptibility, $`\chi (T)`$, diverges and the “saturated” moment is observed to have strong temperature dependence. These observations suggest a percolation type of picture in which isolated ferromagnetic magnetic clusters, immersed in a background of paramagnetic moments, grow in size as the temperature is lowered until, at $`T=T_c`$, long-range order extends through the whole system. The characteristics, which we have observed and will describe below, thus reveal phenomenology that can be used to assess the relevance of distinct yet complementary theoretical viewpoints Dietl et al. (2000); König et al. (2000); Berciu and Bhatt (2001); Litvinov and Dugaev (2001).

The use of GaP as a host semiconductor for magnetic dopants is advantageous: it has a large bandgap (2.2eV), it is an important component of the AlGaInP materials system, which is used for visible light-emitting diodes and high speed electronics, and it is also nearly lattice-matched to Si, offering the possibility of combining DMS with conventional Si circuitry. Epitaxial films of (Ga,Mn)P have shown single-phase material up to Mn atomic concentrations of 9% and hysteretic magnetic behavior that persists up to 250K Overberg et al. (2001a).

Two types of GaP substrates were used in these experiments. The first were bulk (100) substrates with nominally undoped $`n`$-type (1016cm-3) background carrier densities and the second were 0.4$`\mu `$m-thick epi layers grown by Gas Source Molecular Beam Epitaxy on top of GaP substrates. These layers were heavily C-doped (p $``$ 1020 cm-3, 10-2Ohm cm) using carbon tetrabromide (CBr4) as the dopant source Abernathy (1995). The samples were implanted with 250keV Mn+ ions to doses of 3-5$`\times `$1016 cm-2 at a temperature of 350C to maximize crystallinity Kucheyev et al. (2001). These conditions produce relatively flat Mn concentration profiles with peak volume concentrations of 3 or 5 at.% over a projected $``$ 0.2$`\mu `$m depth in each sample. Following a rapid thermal annael, the samples were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), selected area diffraction pattern analysis (SADP), and double crystal x-ray diffraction (DC-XRD) Overberg et al. (2001b). No evidence of secondary phase formation of GaMn or MnP was found. All magnetic measurements were made with a Quantum Design SQUID magnetometer with the applied field parallel to the film surface. Similar results were also obtained for perpendicular fields.

Shown in Fig. 1 is a plot of the temperature-dependent magnetization for the 3at.% (Ga0.94Mn0.06P) sample cooled in a field of 500Oe. A temperature independent diamagnetic contribution was subtracted from the background. In contrast to (Ga,Mn)As Tanaka et al. (1993) the temperature-dependent magnetization has the classic convex outwards shape but with a substantial tail extending to higher temperatures. The Curie temperature $`T_c=270K`$, indicated by the vertical dashed line, is defined as the inflection point and does not shift in position for similar data sets taken in different fields and sample orientations.

At low temperatures the saturated moment, $`M_0=g\mu _BS`$, is calculated to be about one Bohr magneton ($`\mu _B`$) per Mn ion, thus implying that for a $`g`$-factor of 2 the spin $`S=1/2`$. This value is a factor of five less than $`S=5/2`$ expected for the half-filled $`d`$-band of divalent Mn, a discrepancy most likely arising because of strong antiferromagnetic coupling among the more closely spaced randomly positioned Mn ions Dietl et al. (2000). The solid line is a three parameter fit to an expression of the form, $`M(T)=M_0(1\alpha T^\eta )`$, over the temperature range $`T160`$K. The observation of a Bloch law dependence with exponent $`\eta `$ = 3/2 is expected for ferromagnets and reflects the presence of long-wavelength thermally excited spin waves. The dashed lines delineate the 95% confidence band for the best-fit parameters $`\eta `$ = 1.51(6) and $`\alpha `$ = 1.09(35)$`\times `$10-4.

The inset of Fig. 1 shows the temperature-dependent difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }M=M_{FC}M_{ZFC}`$ between field-cooled (FC) and zero-field-cooled (ZFC) magnetization curves taken at 500Oe. This subtraction advantageously eliminates para- and diamagnetic contributions and simultaneously indicates the presence of hysteresis if the difference is non-zero. It should be noted that the knee of this curve occurs at a lower temperature than the knee of the FC curve (main panel) and moves to even lower temperature at higher measuring fields. This trend can be understood by realizing that at a given temperature, $`\mathrm{\Delta }M=0`$ if the measuring field is higher than the maximum field at which hysteresis is observed in $`M(H)`$ loops acquired at the same temperature. Examples of such loops are shown in Fig. 2. Hysteresis with a coercive field $`H_c=100`$Oe is quite pronounced at 250K (lower panel) to fields as high as 600Oe. At lower fields, hysteresis similar to that shown at 300K in the upper panel of Fig. 2 extends to 330K.

The FC-ZFC subtraction is particularly effective when there are small amounts of ferromagnetic material in the presence of a large diamagnetic and/or paramagnetic background. This situation ensues when $`n`$-type rather than $`p`$-type GaP is implanted with 3at.% Mn (Fig. 3, upper panel) or $`p`$-type GaP is implanted with 5at.% Mn (Fig. 3, lower panel). These data show that the maximum FC-ZFC difference, $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$, is reduced by a factor of 15-20 and the $`T_c`$ by a factor of $``$6, over the temperature range 300K to near 50K. Accordingly, an optimized $`T_c`$ is extremely sensitive to both the carrier and Mn concentrations. Furthermore, ferromagnetic impurity phases such as MnGa ($`T_c>300K`$) Tanaka et al. (1993) and MnP ($`T_c=291K`$) Shapira et al. (1984) are not responsible, since an increase of Mn leads to less, not more, magnetism, and the formation and amount of such impurity phases should also be independent of hole-doping level.

Although our observations confirm conventional ferromagnetism at low temperatures, the magnetic behavior is considerably more complicated at higher temperatures as shown by the Fig. 4 plots of the temperature-dependent inverse dc susceptibility $`\chi ^1(T)`$ (main panel) and saturation moment $`M_s(T)`$ (inset). The data for these plots were obtained at selected temperatures by recording $`M_{ZFC}(H)`$ to the maximum available field of 5T. A temperature-dependent diamagnetic contribution that varied less than 1% over the temperature range studied was subtracted from the data. We used a Langevin functional dependence to determine $`\chi =dM_{ZFC}/dH`$ and $`M_s(T)`$ at each temperature. We identify the ferromagnetic Curie temperature $`\mathrm{\Theta }_f=236`$K (vertical arrow) by a linear extrapolation of $`\chi ^1(T)`$ to zero. The hysteresis and accompanying saturated moment extend with diminishing magnitude to substantially higher temperatures: 330K for the measured hysteresis and 390K for a presumptuous linear extrapolation of $`M_s(T)`$ to zero. Using the expression for the Curie constant, $`C=g^2\mu _B^2N_0S(S+1)/3k_B`$, where $`N_0`$ is the number of Mn atoms per gram Mn and $`k_B`$ is the Boltzmann constant, we calculate from the slope of $`\chi ^1(T)`$, the result, $`g^2S(S+1)=410`$. For $`g=2`$ this implies that $`S=10`$, a spin larger by a factor of four than the $`S=5/2`$ of isolated Mn++ ions. Such a large $`S`$ justifies the use of a Langevin (classical) rather than a Brillouin (quantum) functional dependence.

The data presented here not only show that room-temperature ferromagnetism is obtainable in (Ga,Mn)P:C and but also provide a meaningful confrontation with present theories Dietl et al. (2000); König et al. (2000); Berciu and Bhatt (2001); Litvinov and Dugaev (2001) describing ferromagnetism in DMS. The ferromagnetism is clearly carrier mediated Dietl et al. (2000); König et al. (2000); Berciu and Bhatt (2001); Litvinov and Dugaev (2001) and is optimized for hole-doped substrates with Mn concentrations near 3at.%. Higher concentrations of Mn are deleterious because of increased antiferromagnetic coupling Dietl et al. (2000) and a possible disorder-induced self-compensation Litvinov and Dugaev (2001). At low Mn concentrations, RKKY interactions randomize the sign of the exchange coupling between Mn spins, and spin-glass rather than ferromagnetic behavior is expected König et al. (2001).

Our experimental determination of the prefactor $`\alpha `$ discussed above allows a direct calculation of the spin wave stiffness $`D`$, a parameter which describes the energy dispersion, $`E=Dk^2`$, of the spin wave excitations (magnons). We find from the thermodynamic result Dyson (1956), corrected by a spin-dependent prefactor König et al. (2000), the value $`D=167meV\AA ^2`$. For comparison, $`D=281meV\AA ^2`$ for Fe. Substituting $`D=167meV\AA ^2`$, $`S=5/2`$, and $`N_{Mn}=1.5\times 10^{21}`$ cm-3 for the volume density of Mn ions into the expression Schliemann et al. (2001), $`k_BT_c^{coll}=(2S+1)D(6\pi ^2N_{Mn})^{2/3}`$ gives an estimate $`T_c^{coll}=385K`$ for the upper bound on $`T_c`$ due to long wavelength collective fluctuations. This value is higher than the measured $`T_c=270K`$ and consistent with the fact that mean field theory usually overestimates the ordering temperature.

At temperatures near and above $`T_c`$, clusters in a disordered medium seem to be playing an important role Berciu and Bhatt (2001); Litvinov and Dugaev (2001). The presence of spin clusters is often associated Cullity (1972) with a $`\chi ^1(T)`$ dependence, which approaches zero with positive curvature but which, at sufficiently high temperatures, has a linear dependence extrapolating to the paramagnetic Curie temperature, $`\mathrm{\Theta }_p`$. It is therefore reasonable to argue that at higher temperatures $`\chi ^1(T)`$ must eventually curve upwards and approach a slope four times larger than shown in Fig. 4, corresponding to $`S=5/2`$ moments of the Mn ions. If so, then a linear extrapolation to $`\chi ^1(T=\mathrm{\Theta }_p)=0`$ would give a $`\mathrm{\Theta }_P`$ considerably larger than $`\mathrm{\Theta }_f`$. As $`T`$ increases beyond $`T_c`$ and the ferromagnetic clusters decrease in size and number, there is a decreasing saturated moment (Fig. 4, inset) since the remaining paramagnetic regions cannot be driven into saturation without the assistance of internal Weiss fields. Disorder and proximity to a metal-insulator transition, which may be responsible for the enhanced $`T_c`$’s of the clusters Berciu and Bhatt (2001), may also give rise to a reduced spin stiffness and the anomalously high Curie constant. Based on this evidence of ferromagnetic behavior above room temperature, it is not unreasonable to expect that even higher $`T_c`$ can be obtained by further optimization of the Mn and hole dopant concentrations.

The authors gratefully appreciate discussions with S. Arnason on experiment and R. Bhatt, P. Kumar, and D. Maslov on theory. The work at UF is partially supported by NSF DMR-0101438 (SJP) and DMR-0101856 (AFH), while that of RGW is partially supported by ARO.