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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

It has been recently suggested  that questions about the dynamical nature of topological charge fluctuations in the QCD vacuum are worth revisiting. The notion that gauge field topology is relevant for understanding QCD started with the discovery of instantons , and their subsequent use as a basis for, among other things, the qualitative resolution of the $`U_A(1)`$ problem , and the discovery of $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$-dependence of QCD physics . These successes were associated with the use of semiclassical methods and a concrete local picture of the vacuum, the instanton gas picture , characterized by formation of well-separated (anti)self-dual lumps of quantized topological charge. However, it was soon realized that such a vacuum does not lead to confinement, thus putting the relevance of instantons immediately into question. Reflecting upon this situation, Witten has argued  that large quantum fluctuations associated with the confining vacuum naturally generate large fluctuations of topological charge, and lead to similar qualitative effects as those usually ascribed to instantons. In fact, he has conjectured that instantons are not important dynamically, arguing that the semiclassical picture is invalidated by large quantum corrections, and suggesting that topological charge fluctuates in a more or less continuous manner.

Nevertheless, QCD instantons remained rather popular as a frequently preferred (and analytically accessible) way of thinking about vacuum topology. The instanton solution was used as a basis for developing a rather successful semiclassically-motivated phenomenology, the Instanton Liquid Model (ILM) , where correlations among instantons were introduced to suppress the infrared divergences present in the instanton gas. Even though termed a “liquid”, the corresponding vacuum is quite dilute with (anti)instantons of radius $`\rho {\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{3}}\text{fm}`$ and density $`n1\text{fm}^4`$ occupying a small fraction of space-time volume and retaining their identity. This setup allows for an interesting mechanism of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking , in which the t’Hooft “would-be” zeromodes associated with individual (anti)instantons mix, and supply the finite density of near-zeromodes required by the Banks-Casher relation . While the ILM is a phenomenological model, this elegant mixing picture invokes the impression that instantons play an important microscopic dynamical role in the QCD vacuum. A primary aim of our investigation is to examine whether the microscopic relevance of ILM picture can be justified.

The support for the foundations of the ILM has frequently been drawn from lattice QCD simulations, using equilibrated gauge configurations as typical representatives in the path integral (see e.g. Ref. ). Indeed, it is quite reasonable to expect that lattice QCD will eventually provide us with detailed answers about the nature of topological charge fluctuations. However, finding a clean and satisfactory way to infer this information from lattice QCD has proven to be a nontrivial issue due to the fact that lattice gauge fields are found to be very rough at the scale of the lattice spacing. The apparent necessity to eliminate the short-distance fluctuations in some way resulted in manipulating the gauge fields in various cooling or smoothing procedures. While useful for estimating the global topological charge, these techniques are significantly biased as to the local structure of the vacuum they reveal, and there is always an inherent subjective element present.

The idea of using fermions to study global topology is relatively old , but was not very much exploited due to both computational demands and problems with chiral symmetry. However, the suggestion to use low-lying fermionic modes to extract the information about local fluctuations of topological charge is recent  (see also Ref. ). In the light of the above remarks, the preference for using fermions in this respect is quite reasonable, but there is also a good physical motivation for doing so. In particular, local fluctuations of topological charge are of interest because they are believed to cause light quarks to generate the $`\eta ^{}`$ mass  and the chiral condensate , for example. It is thus physically very natural to look for the imprint of these fluctuations in the low-lying Dirac eigenmodes which dominate the propagation of light quarks.

The concrete proposal of Ref.  is to investigate the behavior of local chirality in the low-lying modes. This approach uses the fact that the instanton-like gauge fluctuations would leave a specific imprint in the individual modes, thus offering an opportunity to examine the consistency of the instanton picture. More precisely, it was argued that if there are extended regions of (anti)self-duality in the gauge background, then the probability distribution of the chiral orientation parameter $`X`$ ($`X`$-distribution) over the regions of strong field should exhibit double-peaked behavior in the vicinity of extremal chiralities. The initial study of the $`X`$-distribution in Ref.  indicated a flat behavior and thus a qualitative discrepancy with the instanton picture. However, later studies on finer lattices and/or with chirally symmetric fermionic actions  revealed a visible degree of double-peaking. This situation precludes any definite conclusions on purely qualitative grounds since the double-peaked structure is necessary but not sufficient for instanton dominance. It is a main purpose of this work to offer a more quantitative point of view.

In the first part of the paper (Sec. 2) we explain in detail why we choose to rely on the information encoded in low-lying Dirac modes, rather than using the conventional approaches for probing the gauge field topology on the lattice. We then concentrate on clarifying the possible implications of the $`X`$-distribution and argue that a double-peaked structure is not uniquely associated with self-duality. For example, if the gauge fields form approximately quantized 111When we refer to local quantization of topological charge we always imply quantization in units of $`\pm 1`$. isolated lumps of topological charge, then strong double-peaking is expected as well, even when such lumps are not self-dual. Also, some chiral peaking in the low eigenmodes may occur even for non-quantized topological charge excitations through some as-yet-unknown mechanism. The observed behavior of the $`X`$-distribution is thus not necessarily associated with an instanton-dominated vacuum. We suggest that the tentative conclusions of such nature be supplemented by quantitative comparison of QCD $`X`$-distributions to those for the existing ILM ensembles. The material in Sec. 2 extends and complements the general discussion of Ref. .

In the second part of this paper (Sec. 3), we present new results for $`X`$-distributions from eigenmodes of the overlap operator in Wilson gauge backgrounds at lattice spacings ranging from $`a0.04\text{fm}`$ to $`a0.12\text{fm}`$. In an attempt to verify whether the observed behavior can be ascribed to gauge structures with the parameters of the ILM, we determine the size and density of fermionic structures that contribute to the peaks of the $`X`$-distribution. This is motivated by the fact that for instanton-like excitations there is a direct correspondence between gauge and fermionic structure. Our consistency check leads to significant disagreement with the ILM. In fact, the lattice spacing dependence of the average radius (defined without reference to the t’Hooft zero mode profile which does not fit reasonably) indicates a finite continuum limit with value $`R0.15\text{fm}`$, while the density of structures at $`a0.04\text{fm}`$ is $`n50\text{fm}^4`$, and we cannot exclude the possibility that it diverges in the continuum limit. We then point out that this not only disagrees with the ILM, but also suggests that the bulk of topological charge in QCD is not locally quantized in approximately integer units. We give several arguments supporting this interpretation. Needless to say, if confirmed, this would have profound implications for the possible microscopic explanation of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. Finally, we give several arguments that our data is not contaminated by lattice artifacts usually referred to as “dislocations”, and support this conclusion by presenting the data for the Iwasaki gauge action. A preliminary version of this work is presented in compact form in Ref. .

## 2 Cooling or Smoothing vs Fermions

The structure of equilibrium lattice Monte Carlo configurations provides a unique window for examining the nature of gauge fluctuations in the QCD vacuum. It also represents a distinctive way of thinking about how low-energy phenomena in QCD arise in terms of fundamental degrees of freedom. For example, as we will examine in some detail below, in the ILM mechanism of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking the condensate arises due to mixing of t’Hooft’s “would be” zeromodes associated with (anti)self-dual lumps, carrying approximately quantized topological charge. This line of reasoning inherently assumes that this happens at the “configuration level” with the vacuum dynamically generating the gauge potentials with these properties. If this is the case then the picture has a fundamental microscopic meaning. Otherwise, it represents only a phenomenological modeling.

Unfortunately, examining lattice gauge fields directly leads to ambiguous results, mainly due to the fact that fields are typically rough even at the scale of a single lattice spacing. While the situation will improve with the approach to the continuum limit, this is probably not so when comparing the behavior at fixed physical distance. It is thus perhaps inevitable that some sort of filtering procedure be used to interpret the local structure of lattice gauge fields. In this section, we examine various ways of approaching this issue.

Before proceeding to discuss this in more detail, it is useful to fix the language that will be used in what follows. In particular, we will use the term “isolated lump” or simply “lump” to denote a local structure in the gauge field that can be enclosed by a hypersurface on which the field is approximately pure gauge. Consequently, the lump contains approximately integer-valued topological charge. A tendency towards local “lumpy structure” is one of the inherent properties of the ILM picture which distinguishes it from the situation when the gauge field fluctuates very inhomogeneously, forming peaks of topological charge density, but without any tendency for such quantization.

### 2.1 Cooling

One popular way of addressing the problem of short-distance fluctuations is the cooling method . We will be rather generic when using this term, assuming just that it is a local minimization procedure for the gauge action with initial state being the Monte-Carlo generated QCD configuration. We will not be concerned with various implementations or variations on the original idea.

With the elementary step being local, it is naturally expected that if the original configuration can be assigned a global topology in some way, then it will be preserved to a large extent during such a procedure. One can thus turn the argument around and to define the global topological charge of the original configuration through field-theoretic definition, let’s say, on the corresponding cooled counterpart. Such a definition may not be entirely satisfactory (the number of cooling sweeps is rather subjective and non-unique) but it can be made into a fairly well-motivated working scheme especially for the improved versions .

However, the situation is different if one is interested in the local structure of topological charge fluctuations. In the continuum, there are true local minima of the action for strictly self-dual or strictly anti-self-dual fields. The superpositions of not overwhelmingly overlapping instantons and antiinstantons, while not exact minima, correspond to plateaus (or shallow valleys) in the action profile. After a few cooling sweeps when the gauge field undergoes large changes, the local minimization can bring the configuration to the vicinity of such a plateau. Here the fields become naturally smooth, the field-theoretic definition of topological charge leads to values that cluster around integers, and the evolution in the configuration space slows down. Further cooling possibly leads the configuration into another plateau, and eventually into the global minimum with nonperturbative fields completely removed 222For improved cooling it is in principle possible that the configuration remains indefinitely in the vicinity of local self-dual minimum (with instanton-antiinstanton pairs annihilated).. By the nature of the argument, in the vicinity of the plateau the configuration will necessarily resemble a (multi)instanton-antiinstanton state regardless of the local properties of the original configuration. In other words, a possible observation of lumpy structure and local (anti)self-duality in the cooled configuration is to be expected, and cannot be used as an independent, logically satisfactory input for making conclusions about local fluctuations of topological charge or about the dynamical importance of instanton-like gauge fluctuations in the QCD vacuum.

To illustrate this point, it is perhaps instructive to imagine that we are interested in studying the local structure of a sufficiently strongly-coupled lattice QCD vacuum, where instanton-like fluctuations are not expected to play any role. Consequently, an unbiased approach should find no traces of them. However, cooling the corresponding equilibrium configurations will still lead to plateaus and locally lumpy, self-dual behavior. Can we use this as a basis to conclude that instantons play a significant role in the strongly-coupled lattice QCD vacuum? Certainly not.

### 2.2 Smoothing

The inherent reason why cooling is a biased way of studying local properties of gauge fluctuations is that it uses the gauge action as a basis for the procedure. This is not easily curable by improvements. However, one can also attempt to eliminate the unphysical short-distance fluctuations by some sort of smoothing without reference to the action. Cooling itself is a smoothing procedure in the sense that it replaces the original configuration with a smoother one. For the discussion in this section, however, we will be more specific in that respect, and call smoothing any procedure that can be interpreted as an action-independent space-time averaging of the fields. The prototype for this would be for example an APE-smearing  that was actually used in this context .

While smoothing is a less invasive approach than cooling, the subjective element in determining just how much smoothing is enough remains. This is troublesome because smoothing, by its nature, is also biased towards lumpy structure and can qualitatively change the local behavior. To see that, consider a very rough, inhomogeneous gauge field with various structures in it. Upon smoothing, the field varying over short distances will be quickly removed or reduced to a smooth four-dimensional “bump” if there is an underlying long distance structure present. Also, the lower-dimensional structures, such as ridges, sheets etc, will be eliminated soon by four-dimensional averaging. Thus, as the smoothing progresses, one naturally expects the stage when the configuration will be considerably lumpy with physical fields concentrated in the lumps. Further smoothing will cause the lumps to grow in size, to overlap, and eventually to reach a homogeneous situation with all physical fields removed. An unsettling question is where in this process one should stop and claim that the fields at the given stage represent the filtered local structure of the original configuration.

### 2.3 Fermions

Fortunately, there is a clean and meaningful strategy for approaching the above issues, namely to rely on the fermionic response to the corresponding gauge background. To explain that, it is easiest to first think in terms of a theory in the continuum where a typical configuration is also expected to have a lot of ultraviolet fluctuations. Using fermions is quite plausible since we know that, for sufficiently smooth gauge fields, fermions reflect global topology exactly  and for non-differentiable gauge fields the index of the Dirac operator can actually serve as an extended definition of topological charge. It is thus natural to expect that the local structure can be inferred from fermionic response as well, e.g. by studying the divergence of the flavor-singlet axial-vector current.

The new idea which makes the fermionic approach attractive is to look for the imprints of topological charge fluctuations in the low-lying eigenmodes of the Dirac operator . This is physically well-motivated, practical and, at the same time, has the potential to naturally solve the problem of ultraviolet fluctuations without the subjective element involved. Indeed, the space-time structure of the low-lying modes is naturally smoother than that of the gauge fields themselves. This fact has two origins. First, the analogous Schrödinger-like eigenvalue problems typically yield smooth stationary states even when the underlying potential has discontinuous jumps. Secondly, among the eigenstates, the infrared modes are expected to be least sensitive to the short-distance features on top of the long-distance structure in the potential333Low-lying modes remain sensitive to the isolated small structures as they should.. At the same time, it is necessary to realize that the underlying physics we want to understand is the mechanism of how gauge fluctuations cause the light quarks to propagate in such a way as to form a quark condensate and to give the $`\eta ^{}`$ its mass. In other words, the goal is to understand the dynamics underlying the propagation of light quarks. This physics is encoded in the low-lying Dirac modes , and this is why we say that concentrating on these modes (“fermion filtering”) is physically well motivated.

One possible approach is to infer the information about topological charge fluctuations from the individual low-lying modes . This method is indirect and is motivated by the instanton picture of the vacuum. In other words, the properties of instanton-like gauge fluctuations imply a specific qualitative behavior of the individual modes, thus giving an opportunity to check whether the observed structure is consistent with that scenario. The specific proposal of Ref.  is to study the probability distribution of the local chiral orientation parameter $`X(n)`$ defined by

$$\mathrm{tan}\left(\frac{\pi }{4}(1+X)\right)=\frac{|\psi _L|}{|\psi _R|},$$
(1)
over the points $`n`$ where the eigenmode ($`\psi _n^+\psi _n`$) is large. Here $`2\psi _L=(1\gamma _5)\psi `$, $`2\psi _R=(1+\gamma _5)\psi `$ are the left and right components of the eigenmode $`\psi `$. $`X(n)`$ is a local angle in the $`|\psi _L|`$-$`|\psi _R|`$ plane rescaled so that $`X(n)=1`$ for purely right-handed and $`X(n)=+1`$ for purely left-handed spinor $`\psi _n`$. For $`\psi _L`$,$`\psi _R`$ generated in a random independent fashion, the local orientation parameter would be uniformly distributed between $`1`$ and $`+1`$.

### 2.4 The Implications of the $`X`$-distribution

The usefulness of the $`X`$-distribution was discussed in detail in Ref. , where it was argued that if the gauge background contains extended regions of strong (anti)self-dual fields, then the $`X`$-distribution should exhibit peaks near the extremal values. This is a consequence of the fact that in the eigenvalue problem for the Dirac operator, the (anti)self-dual part of the gauge field enters as a potential term for the (right)left component of the eigenmode.

Here we would like to emphasize that this is not a unique way for the double-peaked behavior to arise. To illustrate that, consider subjecting the fermion to a background configuration that is lumpy in the sense that we have defined it here, i.e. consisting of relatively isolated lumps surrounded by approximately field-free regions. (Such configurations can be artificially prepared irrespective of whether they resemble typical equilibrium configurations of QCD.) The fields comprising the lumps have no definite duality properties but yet, carry approximately quantized topological charge. A particular lump can thus be thought of as an individual object and, in the absence of all the other lumps, it would induce zero modes of the Dirac operator with chirality dictated by the index theorem. For simplicity, consider a situation with just two lumps with topological charges $`Q=\pm 1`$. The residual interaction will cause these “would-be” zero modes to mix and, to a first approximation, the true eigenmodes would be the two linear combinations of the strictly chiral “would-be” zeromodes localized on the lumps. In the resulting topological near-zero modes, the $`X`$-distribution will be strongly peaked at $`\pm 1`$.

What we have described above is the same scenario that is a basis for the ILM mechanism of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking . The point is that self-duality is not essential for this argument since we didn’t need to invoke instantons at all. It is only the local quantization of topological charge that matters and yet, the peaked $`X`$-distribution is expected, as well as spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking if such configurations turned out to be dynamically important.

We emphasize this point to show that the qualitative double-peaked behavior of the $`X`$-distribution alone does not in itself provide a basis for the verification of the instanton picture. It is a necessary but certainly not a sufficient condition for such a conclusion. Apart from the above argument, there can possibly be other mechanisms for producing the peaked distribution (as well as spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking). In fact, we will argue later that there are reasons to believe that topological charge is actually not locally quantized in QCD. Nevertheless, the study of quantitative characteristics of the $`X`$-distribution can still be very useful for distinguishing various scenarios as well as for other purposes .

### 2.5 Lattice Fermions

When considering the lattice-regularized theory we have the usual extra freedom in choosing the lattice action. According to the standard universality assumption, all local actions with appropriate symmetries and correct classical behavior should give consistent results sufficiently close to the continuum limit. However, comparing results from different discretizations at finite lattice spacing usually requires some care. When asking questions about the nature of fluctuations in the pure gauge vacuum, it is natural to fix a particular lattice gauge action and study the theory at different lattice spacings to be able to extrapolate to the continuum limit. Moreover, if we choose to examine the nature of these fluctuations using a lattice fermion, then it is essential that the fermionic action be kept fixed as well, even though it only plays the role of a probe.

To illustrate this point, consider some lattice Dirac operator $`D(U)`$ and the set of related operators $`D_n(U)D(U_n)`$, where $`U_n`$ is the gauge configuration obtained from $`U`$ by performing $`n`$ smearing steps (e.g. APE steps) with other parameters of the smearing procedure fixed 444See Ref.  for example.. If $`D(U)`$ is an acceptable lattice Dirac operator, then $`D_n(U)`$ is acceptable as well, assuming that $`U_n`$ exists. However, if we investigate the local properties in the equilibrium ensemble $`\{U\}_{eq}`$ using $`D_n`$, then the answers we get will clearly depend on $`n`$. In particular, $`D_{1000}`$ will probably indicate much larger structures in the gauge field than $`D_1`$. Nevertheless, one is in principle allowed to use $`D_{1000}`$ as long as it is used consistently in meaningful extrapolations to the continuum limit, which might be difficult. However, one can hardly conclude anything meaningful about the behavior in the continuum limit by comparing the results from $`D_1`$ at one lattice spacing and from $`D_{1000}`$ at a different lattice spacing.

Regarding the choice of the fermionic action, we would like to point out one particular aspect illustrated by comparing the two extremes represented by the Wilson-Dirac operator and the overlap operator based on it. The overlap operator has exact lattice chiral symmetry at finite lattice spacing, allowing for continuum-like theoretical analysis with respect to chiral symmetry and topology. On the other hand, it is non-ultralocal and, due to extended gauge connections, effectively samples the gauge field potential over nonzero physical distance 555Due to this “chiral smoothing” the features smaller than some physical threshold will not be resolved at finite lattice spacing. The results of Ref.  are a manifestation of this fact.. This should not matter for the continuum limit, based on the expectation that the operator is local over equilibrium ensembles of Wilson pure gauge theory at sufficiently weak coupling. The Wilson-Dirac operator, on the other hand, has mutilated chiral properties and when using it in this context, one relies heavily on the assumption that this problem will go away in the continuum limit. At the same time, the Wilson-Dirac operator has a perfect resolution in the sense that there is no additional smoothness beyond the fact that we end up inspecting the infrared eigenmodes. It would be very interesting to know whether the two actions provide for consistent continuum extrapolations for quantities related to topology. In this work, we use an overlap operator which, even though expensive to implement, is very convenient for its theoretical advantages.

The above considerations also suggest that there may be a more general complementarity between the degree of chiral symmetry and the resolution for lattice fermionic actions. Indeed, if we start with a maximally ultralocal operator, we can try to improve its chiral properties by including couplings at larger distances and adding more complicated gauge connections, but by doing so we worsen the resolution. On the other hand, if one starts with the operator with exact lattice chiral symmetry, then this operator must be non-ultralocal , and an attempt to improve its resolution by dropping couplings at large distances will result in deteriorated chiral properties.

## 3 Low-Lying Modes of the Overlap Operator

We have calculated and examined the low-lying modes of the overlap operator in Wilson gauge backgrounds over a wide range of lattice spacings. The massless overlap operator

$$D=\rho \left[\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}1}+(D_W\rho )\frac{1}{\sqrt{(D_W\rho )^+(D_W\rho )}}\right]$$
(2)
with $`D_W`$ the Wilson-Dirac operator and $`\rho =1.368`$ ($`\kappa =0.19`$) is used throughout this paper. The rational approximation for the matrix sign function  was utilized to implement $`D`$ and a small number of eigenmodes of $`\gamma _5D_W`$ were projected out to both increase the accuracy of the approximation and to speed up the convergence.

We used the Ritz variational method  to obtain the low-lying eigenmodes of $`H^2D^+D`$. As a consequence of normality ( $`[D,D^+]=0`$ ) and $`\gamma _5`$-hermiticity ( $`D^+=\gamma _5D\gamma _5`$ ), the nonzero low-lying modes of $`H^2`$ are doubly degenerate and the eigenmodes of $`D`$ can be constructed in the corresponding subspaces since $`[H^2,D]=0`$. Also, $`H^2`$ is proportional to the chirally non-symmetric part of $`D`$, implying that $`[\gamma _5,H^2]=0`$. This allows for diagonalization in separate chiral sectors in different runs, thus speeding up the process and easing the memory requirements for large lattices. The typical accuracy of calculated eigenvalues (as measured by differences of complex-conjugate pairs) is about one part in $`10^5`$ or better.

To avoid confusion, it is useful to fix the language that will be used when discussing the local properties of a given eigenmode $`\psi `$ of $`D`$. We will refer to

$$d(n)\psi _n^+\psi _nc(n)\psi _n^+\gamma _5\psi _n$$
(3)
as density and chirality respectively, and to $`X(n)`$ of Eq. (1) as chiral angle. Since $`d(n)`$, $`c(n)`$ and $`X(n)`$ are identical for eigenmodes corresponding to complex conjugate nonzero eigenvalues $`(\psi _\lambda ^{}=\gamma _5\psi _\lambda )`$, we will treat $`\psi _\lambda `$, $`\psi _\lambda ^{}`$ as a pair.

The parameters of the Wilson gauge ensembles used are listed in Table 1. Configurations for the three finest lattices are separated by twenty thousand sweeps. The quoted values of lattice spacings were obtained from the Sommer parameter using the interpolation formula given in Ref. . Our finest lattice spacing is outside the interpolation range and we linearly extrapolate from $`\beta =6.5`$. Note that the physical volumes involved are such as to contain on average 3-4 (anti)instantons if the ILM scenario is relevant, ensuring that the mixing of ’t Hooft zero modes would take place. For all the configurations we have calculated the eigenfunctions for the zeromodes and at least two pairs of near-zeromodes.

### 3.1 Results for the $`X`$-distribution

To make meaningful comparisons for the behavior of the $`X`$-distribution at different lattice spacings and different lattice sizes, it is necessary to fix the fraction $`f`$ of the points that are examined on each lattice. In fact, it would be more appropriate to always speak of $`X_f`$-distributions. For a given low-lying mode we order the lattice sites by the magnitude of density and consider the top $`fV`$ points, where $`V`$ is the lattice volume. It is assumed that the underlying gauge field is strongest in the regions so selected . For most of the results discussed here we fixed $`f=0.1`$. This is mostly motivated by the fact that we intend to relate our findings to the ILM. Diakonov and Petrov  use the packing fraction $`{\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{8}}`$ in their theoretical arguments. On the other hand, if one naively calculates the packing fraction as $`f=nV_\rho `$, where $`n`$ is the density in fm4 and $`V_\rho `$ the volume of a four-dimensional sphere of radius $`\rho `$, then one obtains approximately $`\frac{1}{20}`$ if ILM values are used. We thus view $`f=\frac{1}{10}`$ as a reasonable compromise. The qualitative and even quantitative conclusions that we will make do not depend on the precise value from the range quoted above as long as it is fixed.

Our results for the $`X`$-distribution from the lowest two nonzero pairs of modes included for each configuration are shown in Fig. 1. The histograms are normalized so that the sum of the values in all bins adds up to unity. There are visible peaked maxima at $`X\pm 0.65`$, but there appears to be very little change across the wide range of lattice spacings studied. To quantify this observation, we have calculated the average value of $`|X|`$ with the histograms serving as a probability profile, i.e.

$$<|X|>\underset{i}{}p_{X_i}|X_i|$$
(4)
where $`p_{X_i}`$ is the value at the bin with center $`X_i`$. For truly peaked distribution, this should reflect the approximate position of the peak. The results are shown in Fig. 2 indicating a very flat behavior as a function of the lattice spacing. The underlying dynamics thus does not appear to generate more chiral peaking closer to the continuum limit, nor do the positions of the peaks move appreciably closer to $`\pm 1`$.

As we have emphasized in Sec. 2, the qualitative observation that the $`X`$-distribution exhibits peaked maxima at nonzero $`X`$ is not sufficient for concluding that the instanton picture of topological charge fluctuations in the QCD vacuum is correct. However, the study of quantitative characteristics of the distribution might still be very illuminating. We illustrate this by comparing in Fig. 3 the $`X`$-distributions for the near-zero modes and for the exact zeromodes. The latter is the same distribution that would be expected in the limit of a very dilute instanton gas (or a dilute gas of arbitrary topologically nontrivial lumps). It is clear that, even at our smallest lattice spacing, the $`X`$-distribution of the near-zero modes is far less chirally peaked than that of the exact zero modes666This is equally well reflected in the fact that we found typical values $`<|X|>0.52`$ (see Fig. 2), while at the same time $`<|X|>=1`$ for distribution strictly peaked at $`X=\pm 1`$., confirming the prevalent view that the dilute instanton gas picture is not realistic . This also suggests that one reliable way to verify whether lattice QCD $`X`$-distributions are consistent with the ILM prediction is a direct comparison to distributions from existing ILM ensembles.

### 3.2 Structures in the Gauge Field

Our next goal is to verify whether the observed $`X`$-distribution can be attributed to the underlying local structures with properties similar to those assumed in the ILM. If the low-lying mode arises from mixing of t’Hooft “would be” zero modes associated with ILM instantons, then this mode inherits the lumpy structure of the underlying gauge field, with lumps being of a prescribed size, shape and abundance.

We identify such possible structures by finding the local maxima of density, $`d(n)`$, in the mode, and requiring that the profile of density around them resembles a four-dimensional peak at least in some average sense. To be more precise, we start by locating the maxima over the distance $`\sqrt{3}`$, i.e. finding the set

$$\{n:d(n)>d(m),|nm|\sqrt{3}\}$$
(5)
For these candidates, specified by their position $`n`$, we then compute the functions

$$d_{n,\mu }(r)<d(m)>_{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{|nm|=r}{(nm).\widehat{\mu }>0}}\mu =\pm 1,\mathrm{},\pm 4,r>0$$
(6)
representing the average of $`d(m)`$ over the spherical shell of radius $`r`$ centered at $`n`$, restricted to the points for which $`(nm)`$ has a component in the $`\mu `$-direction. Local maximum is retained only if $`d_{n,\mu }(r)`$ decays monotonically from origin over the distance $`\sqrt{3}`$ for all directions $`\mu `$.

Note that the motivation for choosing $`\sqrt{3}`$ as a reference lattice distance in the above procedure is that it is a minimal distance for which the accidental occurrence of a structure can be statistically excluded for the largest lattice volumes we are working with. In other words, if we were to generate the density on sites of a $`32^4`$ lattice using random numbers, no structures would typically be found using the above prescription. Conversely, if a structure is identified in a low-lying mode, we take it as a signal that a nontrivial fluctuation of the gauge field is causing its occurrence.

Finally, from the structures identified in this way, only those were selected that have a chance of contributing to the peaks of the $`X`$-distribution. To make this final cut, we only retain structures for which the corresponding center $`n`$ is among the 10% of points with highest density ($`f=0.1`$ was used to generate $`X`$-distributions), and for which the chiral angle satisfies $`|X(n)|0.5`$ as suggested by the position of the maxima in Fig. 1. The resulting density of structures as a function of lattice spacing is shown in Fig. 4, indicating a large disagreement with the ILM assumption at smaller lattice spacings. We will return to the interpretation of this behavior later.

### 3.3 Sizes from Coherent Regions of Local Chirality

To study the typical sizes of the structures, we first use the definition that is motivated only by the assumed lumpy behavior of the gauge field rather than the specific profile of an instanton. The mixing of “would be” zero modes in the lumpy background would produce regions of coherent local chirality in the near-zero modes, concentrated around the maximum of the lump. We thus define the radius of the structure at point $`n`$ as the radius of the largest hypersphere centered at $`n`$, containing points with the same sign of local chirality, namely

$$R_n\mathrm{max}\{r:c(n)c(m)>0,|nm|r\}$$
(7)
To assess the feasibility of this definition, we compute functions

$$d_n(r)<d(m)>_{|nm|=r}c_n(r)<c(m)>_{|nm|=r}$$
(8)
representing the average density and chirality over the spherical shell of radius $`r`$ centered at $`n`$. In Fig. 5 we show the sample behavior of functions $`d_n(r)/d_n(0)`$ and $`c_n(r)/c_n(0)`$ for typical structures, and how this relates to the radius assigned by our definition (vertical line in Fig. 5). The examples of structures with high, medium and low intensity (density) are put in the top, middle and bottom row respectively. Note that the level of “background” increases for lower intensities. Also, the structures with cleaner peaked behavior (typically more isolated ones) are put on the left and quality is decreasing to the right. The examples on the right represent the “worst” cases we have identified. From these examples it can be seen that the peaks of density and chirality are well contained within the determined radius.

Using the definition (7), we have studied the average sizes of structures as a function of the lattice spacing with results shown in Fig. 6. The straight line is a fit using the three smallest lattice spacings considered. The average radius at $`a0.12\text{fm}`$ is close to the ILM value and consistent with a recent estimate at a similar lattice spacing . However, it would be erroneous to conclude agreement with the ILM based on the data at single lattice spacing; the average value decreases significantly for finer lattices and the continuum-extrapolated estimate is in striking disagreement with the ILM. There appears to be a positive curvature in our data and a well-defined finite value (with rough estimate of about $`0.15\text{fm}`$) in the continuum limit. The fact that our procedure leads to a finite size in physical units is significant because it characterizes the physical size of regions of coherent local chirality that are necessary to develop the large $`\eta ^{}`$ hairpin correlator required to solve the $`U(1)`$ problem . We also emphasize that while our definition of size was motivated by assuming the lumpy structure of topological charge fluctuations, it makes very good sense even if the structures do not carry the quantized values of topological charge, and are not related to instantons. The distribution of sizes at $`\beta =6.55`$ is shown in Fig. 7.

### 3.4 Sizes from Instanton-Assumed Profiles of Density

If the near-zero mode of the Dirac operator is a mixture of “would be” zero modes associated with instantons, then peaks of the wave function should resemble the profile of a ’t Hooft zeromode. In particular, in the ideal case we should have

$$\frac{d_n(r)}{d_n(0)}=\left(\frac{\rho _n^2}{\rho _n^2+r^2}\right)^3\left(y_n(r)\right)^3$$
(9)
where $`\rho _n`$ is the radius of the instanton located at $`n`$. Thus the function, $`r^2y_n/(1y_n)`$ is a constant ($`\rho _n^2`$) independent of $`r`$ for an instanton profile, and should be approximately constant for our structures if they represent the response to an instanton-like fluctuation. However, we find that this is not the case and the shapes of the peaks in our low eigenmodes do not resemble the instanton ansatz. To illustrate this, we display the situation for a typical structure in Fig. 8. Shown are also fits to the instanton profile over the the distances $`0.000.06\text{fm}`$, $`0.060.12\text{fm}`$ and $`0.120.18\text{fm}`$. These fits are inconsistent with both the profile of the peak and with each other. Note that the shapes of the peaks are already averaged over all the directions, and should exhibit a robust behavior.

To see the inconsistency with the instanton profile on average, we choose a reference point $`r_{ref}`$ (in lattice units) and assign a radius to each structure through

$$\rho _n(r_{ref})r_{ref}\sqrt{\frac{y_n(r_{ref})}{1y_n(r_{ref})}}$$
(10)
All of our structures are guaranteed to have a peaked behavior over the distance $`r_{ref}^2=3`$ in lattice units, but the vast majority of them decays over much larger lattice distances. To treat all the structures on the same footing we compute average radii from the above prescription for $`r_{ref}^2=1,2,\mathrm{},5`$ and plot the resulting dependence on lattice spacing in Fig. 9. Wide vertical bands at every lattice spacing reflect the fact that our structures can not be fit reasonably by the t’Hooft profile. Nevertheless, the tendency towards sizes substantially smaller than the ILM value in the continuum limit is still obvious, thus showing that the overall conclusion from Fig. 6 remains valid even for this definition of the radius.

We emphasize that contrary to results in Fig. 6, we do not assign much physical significance to the precise behavior of data in Fig. 9. The main purpose of showing these results is to reveal the marked inconsistencies with the instanton picture of the vacuum.

### 3.5 Correlation Functions of Local Chirality

We have also computed the chirality-chirality correlation function in the lowest Dirac nonzero mode $`\psi `$, namely

$$C_{cc}(r)c(n)c(m)_{|nm|=r}V^2$$
(11)
This correlator has been studied in Ref. . While the average information encoded in the correlator may be useful, it will not provide us with a detailed view of the space-time distribution of $`c(n)`$. The point is that if this $`C_{cc}(r)`$ has characteristic size $`\rho `$, one still cannot infer whether the typical space-time distribution of $`c(n)`$ in a configuration predominantly appears localized on spherical structures of radius $`\rho `$, or if it comes in one of the infinitely many other forms leading to the same average correlation.

The average $`C_{cc}(r)/C_{cc}(0)`$ from the lowest nonzero modes for our four ensembles are shown in Fig. 10. While larger statistics would be desirable, we have estimated the “size” of the correlators by evaluating $`<r>`$ and $`<r^2>^{1/2}`$ with $`C_{cc}(r)`$ used as a probability distribution. In every case we have cut off the integration at the distance where the correlator first turns negative. The resulting values are collected in Table 2. Note that values for $`<r^2>^{1/2}`$ are systematically higher than sizes obtained from coherent local chirality (c.f. Fig. 6) which is to be expected for an inhomogeneous space-time distribution of fluctuations with various shapes. Nevertheless, the sizes of correlators we have obtained are still systematically lower than the ILM value for instanton radius.

### 3.6 The Interpretation of the Results

The data in Figures 4 and 6 represent rather interesting new results and we would now like to elaborate on their interpretation. We have started from the assumption that the vacuum has local properties identifiable with ILM scenario, i.e. that it typically fluctuates in such a way as to form (anti)self-dual lumps of approximately quantized topological charge. However, the identification of such presumed lumps resulted in quantitative characteristics that are in marked disagreement with the ILM on fine lattices. We observe many more structures of much smaller physical size (although this size remains finite even in the continuum limit). Given that the parameters of the ILM are rather tightly fixed , the true microscopic picture as seen by the lattice fermion appears to be very different from that envisioned by the ILM.

Particularly puzzling from the instanton perspective is a large number of peaks that we observe in the lowest near-zero modes, implying that a propagating light quark feels many more “kicks” from the regions of strong gauge field than one would expect based on the ILM. Indeed, assuming that the underlying gauge structures represent elementary instanton tunneling events between classical vacua leads to clear contradictions. For example from our results at $`\beta =6.55`$ one would estimate that the gluon condensate should be of the order $`<0|G^2|0>32\pi ^2n32\pi ^2\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}50}\text{fm}^425`$ GeV4, where $`32\pi ^2`$ is a contribution of a single instanton 777The estimates of this type are usually used to justify the ILM parameters .. This is to be compared with the accepted value $`<0|G^2|0>0.51.0`$ GeV4. Similar inconsistency arises from considering topological susceptibility under even weaker assumptions: Assuming that gauge structures are general lumps of quantized and approximately uncorrelated topological charge leads to the estimate of topological susceptibility $`<Q^2>/Vn50\text{fm}^450(200\text{MeV})^4`$, i.e. about fifty times the accepted value. At the same time, the topological charges of our lattices (determined as a byproduct of the overlap calculation) are in very good agreement with the expected value of topological susceptibility in the pure gauge vacuum 888For example, from our small ensemble at $`\beta =6.55`$ we estimate the topological susceptibility $`\chi =0.92\pm 0.50`$ fm-4..

The above considerations strongly suggest that the topological charge contained within the structure is probably not quantized. One is led to the same conclusion from consideration of radii of regions of coherent local chirality. Our data indicate the value $`<R_n>0.15\text{fm}`$ in the continuum limit. However, the ’t Hooft instanton formula for density of quantized charges valid at short distances, i.e. $`n(\rho )\rho ^6`$, is frequently invoked as a basis for concluding that the occurrence of instantons of this size should be essentially negligible (certainly relative to $`\rho 0.3\text{fm}`$ instantons for which the formula is still expected to be valid) . We interpret this marked mismatch as a manifestation of the fact that the underlying assumption for the ’t Hooft formula, namely the local quantization of topological charge, is probably not valid. Indeed, the suppression of small instantons is a consequence of their quantized topological charge: it is difficult to squeeze an entire unit of topological charge inside a small radius. However, without quantization, there is no reason to expect a suppression of smaller-scale fluctuations, which would simply contain proportionally less topological charge.

Finally, we would like to return to Fig. 4 and discuss the rapidly increasing density of the structures with decreasing lattice spacing. While the density at $`\beta =6.55`$ is very large, the fraction of sites contained in the structures is still relatively small as shown by the packing fractions plotted in Fig. 11. The peaks thus retain their identity as can be seen from Fig. 5. However, let us elaborate for the moment on the hypothetical possibility that the density increases indefinitely, because this might suggest something unphysical even if topological charge is not locally quantized as we argued above. Indeed, how should one interpret a diverging density of structures in the continuum limit, especially if their average size (c.f. Fig. 6) remains finite? The point is that contrary to quantized topological charges, where the finite topological susceptibility forces the density to assume a finite physical value in the continuum limit, the peaks of non-quantized topological charge might well lose their identity closer to the continuum limit and their density be indeed unphysical. (However, the regions of coherent local chirality identified with the help of these peaks, and their sizes are still physical.) The picture that we have in mind is that of relatively isolated mountain peaks belonging to a larger mountain range and coalescing as the continuum limit is approached. Our algorithm to measure the size of regions of coherent local chirality would then sample the size of the mountain range rather than individual peaks. A more dynamical analogy is to imagine disturbing a calm surface of water. The regions where the water is above the original level (positive topological charge density) have various shapes and volumes, but on average have some typical size. Yet, within such regions there could be many local maxima at all length scales. While the sizes of individual maxima do not define the scale and may not be physically meaningful, the average radius measured relative to these maxima probes the typical finite size of these coherent regions. It is easy to imagine that in the continuum, the fluctuations of topological charge resemble violently disturbed surface of water. In such a hypothetical scenario, the diverging density of structures would actually be very natural.

We emphasize that in this paper we do not attempt to put forward any specific low-energy scenario for the behavior of topological charge fluctuations in the continuum limit. The purpose of the discussion in the previous paragraph is to argue that as soon as one abandons the local quantization of topological charge, then the data in Fig. 4 do not represent anything unexpected.

### 3.7 The Question of Dislocations

In the lattice discussions of gauge field topology one has to face the possible problem of “dislocations”. While this notion is frequently used as an unspecified synonym for “lattice artifact”, in the original discussion of Ref.  it has a rather well defined meaning which we will adopt. In particular, for a given lattice gauge action and given topological charge operator, it is the local structure in the gauge field with action smaller than the continuum action of an instanton, and with unit topological charge 999We thank Tamás Kovács for clarifying this.. In the loose sense, this is frequently pictured as a small instanton that is almost falling through the lattice and lives on 1-2 lattice spacings. Invoking entropy arguments, it was suggested in Ref.  that for the action–topological charge combination where this happens, it is possible that dislocations dominate the topological charge fluctuations, and can lead to unphysically large (possibly diverging) susceptibility. This raises the question of whether the large density of structures that we see is caused by unphysical dislocations 101010We thank Thomas Schäfer for pointing this out..

This question can be addressed at several levels. First of all, the arguments of Ref.  assume that the topological charge of the dislocation is concentrated on its core. Indeed, the idea that dislocations are important relies rather heavily on the picture of locally quantized topological charge. If the topological charge does not come in unit lumps, as we suggest here, then the issue simply does not arise.

Secondly, it is important to realize that dislocation is a concept assigned to the pair gauge action–topological charge operator. While we work with Wilson gauge action which is supposedly susceptible to the possibility of dislocations, we use chiral fermions to measure topological charge. It has frequently been noted (see e.g. Ref. ), that fermions should not be sensitive to dislocations. This is indeed very plausible. As we have argued in Sec. 2.3, one naturally expects that infrared fermionic modes will be quite smooth and will not inherit the singular behavior of the underlying gauge fields.

Finally, there is no hint of behavior symptomatic of dislocations in our data. For example, even the smallest of our structures are extended objects in physical units and span at least 4 lattice spacings. Moreover, the estimates of topological susceptibility from topological charge measured by the overlap Dirac operator are in very good agreement with the accepted value of about $`1\text{fm}^4`$ (see footnote 8). If the underlying structures were dislocations (and hence carried topological charge close to unity), then this value should be substantially larger. This is one of the arguments that actually suggests that topological charge is not locally quantized, as we stressed in Sec. 3.6.

Nevertheless, to eliminate any concern that dislocations may be a problem, we have performed a comparative study with a renormalization group improved gauge action. In this case, the possibility of dislocation dominance should be substantially reduced. In particular, we have employed the Iwasaki action , and studied overlap eigenmodes at two different lattice spacings. In the standard normalization for Iwasaki action, (see Refs. ), we considered a 103x12 lattice at $`\beta =2.384`$ and a 143x16 lattice at $`\beta =2.592`$. This corresponds to lattice spacings $`a=0.14\text{fm}`$ and $`a=0.10\text{fm}`$ respectively, as determined from string tension by using the data of Ref.  and the two-loop beta function fit.

The summary of our results is shown in Fig. 12. The structure of the resulting $`X`$-distributions is very similar to the structure for Wilson gauge ensembles as can be seen by comparing to Fig. 1. We thus applied identical procedures (with identical cuts) for finding the structures and determining their size as we did for Wilson gauge ensembles. Although the behavior of density for Wilson gauge action (see Fig. 4) might have suggested the possibility of dislocations, this is not the case because a similar pattern appears to be followed in the case of Iwasaki action as well. Similarly, the sizes of structures are systematically lower than the ILM values. It would obviously be interesting to investigate a larger window of lattice spacings with Iwasaki action, to be able to study the issues of continuum extrapolation. However, the purpose of this comparative study was to demonstrate that our conclusions are not sensitive to the choice of gauge action and that there is no problem of dislocations. Our results clearly indicate that this is indeed the case.

## 4 Conclusions

Uncovering the local structure of topological charge fluctuations promises to have profound implications for our understanding of low energy QCD. This expectation is born out of the fact that possible microscopic explanations for important phenomena such as spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, the resolution of the UA(1) problem, and the $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$-dependence of QCD, are based on the picture of the vacuum wherein self-dual lumps of locally quantized topological charge (instantons) play a major role. It is consequently quite essential to determine whether such picture (e.g. ILM) is indeed fundamental, or if there is in fact a different microscopic mechanism driving these important effects.

Following upon the ideas of Ref. , we have explained here in detail why studying low-lying Dirac eigenmodes provides a natural and reliable approach for exploring the local nature of topological charge fluctuations (at least as implied by the ILM). The study of the $`X`$-distribution in low-lying modes has been designed as a tool for probing the local vacuum structure indirectly. While the available results  on qualitative behavior of $`X`$-distribution could in principle be viewed as confirming the consistency of the instanton picture, we have pointed out here that the association with instantons is not unique. In other words, the double-peaked qualitative structure of $`X`$-distribution is a necessary condition for instanton dominance, but not sufficient.

As a step towards resolving these issues, we have computed and analyzed low-lying modes of the overlap Dirac operator in Wilson gauge backgrounds over a wide range of lattice spacings ($`a0.040.12\text{fm}`$). The double-peaked structure of the $`X`$-distribution has been observed with maxima at $`X\pm 0.65`$ (using a fraction $`f=0.1`$ of lattice points). The position of maxima shows very little change with lattice spacing without visible tendency to move toward the extremal values of $`X=\pm 1`$, even though an exactly chiral lattice fermion is used. Our main initial aim in this study was to verify whether the characteristics of local structures contributing to the peaks of the $`X`$-distribution are consistent with quantitative characteristics of the gauge features in the backgrounds proposed in the ILM. In other words, we attempted to verify whether low-lying modes can (at least approximately) be viewed as mixtures of t’Hooft “would be” zeromodes generated by gauge structures resembling approximately $`\rho ={\scriptscriptstyle \frac{1}{3}}`$ fm instantons of density $`n=1`$ fm-4. To the contrary, we have found local characteristics indicating that the true nature of topological charge fluctuations is very different from that envisioned in the ILM.

We emphasize in this context that the underlying issue here is to determine whether one should view the ILM picture as a fundamental one, or as an effective description with phenomenological meaning only. For example, claims that the bulk of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is due to mixing of “would-be” zeromodes associated with instantons have only well defined microscopic meaning if the corresponding low-lying modes have the local structure predicted by this microscopic mechanism. To verify this proposition, we have no other choice but to examine these modes. This appears to be a well-defined problem with a well-defined answer. Our results indicate that the ILM scenario does not provide for accurate microscopic description of these modes and thus remains at the phenomenological level. It is this important distinction that we wish to stress in this paper.

While the detailed arguments are summarized in Sec. 3.6, our main conclusion can be verified in an independent manner. To make this point qualitatively, we have calculated twenty near-zeromodes for configuration 8 from our $`\beta =6.2`$ ensemble 111111Needless to say, this was rather demanding on computer resources.. This configuration has $`Q=0`$, and the physical volume is such that according to the ILM it should contain about 3 or 4 instantons and antiinstantons. Hence, the subspace spanned by t’Hooft would-be zeromodes should have a dimension of that order. Consequently, it is the ILM prediction that chirally peaked $`X`$-distributions should be observed for 3 or 4 near-zeromodes (and possibly a few more) but the rest of the modes should resemble approximate free-field behavior with local chirality peaked around the origin. In Fig. 13 we plot the $`X`$-distribution at $`f=0.1`$ for all 10 pairs of near-zeromodes computed (the histogram is the same for both modes in a pair). Inspecting these results reveals that there are at least 14 modes with significant double-peaked structure and none of them is peaked at the origin. As a matter of fact, at $`f=0.02`$ all 20 calculated modes exhibit the double-peaked behavior and this most likely persists even for higher modes. While this fact can hardly be explained by the ILM, it is not very surprising in view of the results presented here. On this particular configuration, we have identified 32 local structures. 121212Note that this observation makes also very unlikely the possibility that one could interpret several structures as forming a severely deformed quantized lump of topological charge which one could somehow still associate with the ILM instanton. In this case the subspace of would-be zeromodes should still be of size 3 or 4.

Even though we have concentrated on the ILM in this paper, we believe that our results suggest a more general conclusion. In particular, as we have argued in Sec.3.6, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to reconcile the topological susceptibility of the pure gauge vacuum and the assumption that local structures in fermionic near-zeromodes are caused by underlying gauge excitations with locally quantized topological charge. This leads us to believe that the bulk of topological charge in the QCD vacuum is not locally quantized in integer units as suggested some time ago by Witten . We will address this issue in detail in a forthcoming publication .

Acknowledgments: This work has been supported in part by U.S. Department of Energy under grants DE-FG05-84ER40154, DE-FG02-95ER40907, DE-FG02-97ER41027 and DE-AC05-84ER40150. We have benefited from discussions with Philippe deForcrand and Tamás Kovács.


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# The Nature of Heavy Quasiparticles in Magnetically Ordered Heavy Fermions

## Abstract

The optical conductivity of the heavy fermions UPd2Al3 and UPt3 has been measured in the frequency range from 10 GHz to 1.2 THz (0.04 meV to 5 meV) at temperatures $`1\mathrm{K}<T<300`$ K. In both compounds a well pronounced pseudogap of less than a meV develops in the optical response at low temperatures; we relate this to the antiferromagnetic ordering. From the energy dependence of the effective electronic mass and scattering rate we derive the energies essential for the heavy quasiparticle. We find that the enhancement of the mass mainly occurs below the energy which is related to magnetic correlations between the local magnetic moments and the itinerant electrons. This implies that the magnetic order in these compounds is the pre-requisite to the formation of the heavy quasiparticle and eventually of superconductivity.

In common metals itinerant electrons of the conduction band are responsible for the electrical transport. The conductivity is frequency independent until the scattering with phonons and imperfections leads to a drop in the real part of the optical conductivity $`\sigma _1(\omega )`$ around the scattering frequency $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$. This behaviour is well described by the Drude model: $`\widehat{\sigma }(\omega )=\sigma _1+i\sigma _2=(Ne^2/m)/(\mathrm{\Gamma }i\omega )`$ with the charge carrier mass $`m`$ and scatting rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ assumed to be frequency independent. Here $`N`$ is the carrier concentration, $`e`$ is the electronic charge, and $`\omega `$ is the frequency . While at room temperature also heavy-fermions metals follow this scenario, at liquid-helium temperatures large deviations are observed which are caused by many-body effects.

Heavy fermions show an unusual interplay of electronic correlations due to an interaction of itinerant electrons and local magnetic moments. At low temperatures these intermetallic compounds exhibit significant increase of the magnetic susceptibility and the electronic contribution to the specific heat compared to most metals. This is commonly explained by an enhanced effective mass $`m^{}`$ of some hundred times the free electron mass due to the highly correlated electronic behaviour and is described in the context of interacting Fermi liquids . The strong interaction of the quasi-free conduction-band electrons with nearly localized $`f`$-electrons leads to a many-body resonance, i.e., an enhanced density of states at the Fermi energy . The pile-up of this narrow resonance sets in below the so-called coherence temperature $`T^{}`$, which is experimentally determined by a drop in the dc-resistivity and a cusp in the susceptibility, and typically is between 10 and 100 K.

Also the optical properties show clear signatures of the coherent many-body ground state: As a consequence of the large effective mass $`m^{}`$ the spectral weight $`\sigma _1(\omega )d\omega =\omega _p^2/8`$ is reduced. $`\omega _p^{}=(\frac{4\pi Ne^2}{m^{}})^{1/2}`$ is called the renormalized plasma frequency. The relevant electronic excitations shift to very low energies, best characterized by an effective scattering rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}`$ . With decreasing temperature the electronic correlations become more pronounced, leading to a gradual increase of the effective mass $`m^{}`$ and the corresponding decrease of the effective scattering rate. The interaction of the conduction electron spins with the atomic moments in the heavy-fermion crystals explains the reduction of the magnetic susceptibility and also leads to a hybridization gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in the density of states. The gap scales with the coherence temperature $`(\mathrm{\Delta }/T^{})^2=m/m^{}`$ and is commonly observed in the far infrared range of frequency . Using a frequency dependent scattering rate and effective mass for the description of the optical properties of correlated electron systems one obtains the energy dependence of the renormalization effects which goes beyond the information derived from static thermodynamic measurements. In the low-energy limit the frequency dependence of both parameters $`m^{}(\omega )`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(\omega )`$ should resemble their temperature dependence .

An additional aspect becomes important for those heavy-fermion compounds which undergo a magnetic phase transition. Antiferromagnetism is often due to the ordering of localized magnetic moments; this commensurate magnetic structure does not lead to a gap at the Fermi energy. In the case of a spin density wave, a spatial density modulation of the spin direction of the conduction electrons leads to antiferromagnetism, which in general is incommensurate with the underlying lattice; a gap in the electronic density of states at the Fermi energy is observed. Optical experiments exhibit a clear gap feature in the latter case while for the first case we expect no influence on the optical properties .

Because of its two-component electronic character, UPd2Al3 exhibits both pronounced local magnetic moment and heavy-fermion itinerant behaviour . The $`5f`$-shell has an average occupation of slightly less than three, with two electrons localized in the U4+ state and the remaining $`5f`$-electrons considered to be itinerant due to their large hybridization with the conduction electrons . This coexistence is seen in the large magnetic moment (0.85 $`\mu _B`$) well below the antiferromagnetic ordering temperature $`T_N14`$ K which is almost atomic-like, while at the same time the itinerant electrons display a large Sommerfeld coefficient of the electronic specific heat $`\gamma =140`$ mJ mol-1K-2 which indicates an effective mass $`m^{}/m50`$. The magnetic ordering is of local origin and the formation of a spin density wave can be ruled out . The heavy quasiparticles condense in the superconducting state below $`T_c2`$ K. In order to reconcile magnetic ordering and superconductivity it was first suggested that different parts of the Fermi surface lead to antiferromagnetism and to the heavy-fermion ground state. Recent observations by tunneling spectroscopy and inelastic neutron scattering indicate, however, that magnetic excitons produce the effective coupling between the itinerant electrons and are responsible for superconductivity in UPd2Al3 .

If there is an interaction between magnetic and electronic excitations in the superconducting state, the question arises, whether the magnetic ordering also affects the heavy quasiparticles in the normal state. In which way, or how far, is the low-temperature ground state (still $`T>T_c`$), where the large effective mass $`m^{}`$ has been determined, affected by the magnetic ordering? Are solely the electronic correlations of the $`f`$-shell electrons with the conduction-band electrons responsible for this enhancement as was argued above within the common heavy-fermion picture?

In order to address these questions, we have investigated the optical properties of UPd2Al3 in the frequency range from 10 GHz to 1.2 THz (0.3 to 40 cm-1, corresponding to a photon energy of 0.04 to 5 meV) at temperatures $`2\mathrm{K}<T<300`$ K. Using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer equipped with tunable, coherent radiation sources we measured the absorption and the phase shift of the radiation upon passing through a 150 nm thick epitaxial grown UPd2Al3-film deposited on a LaAlO3 substrate by molecular beam epitaxy . In addition we performed microwave and millimeter wave experiments utilizing enclosed cavities . Our data were supplemented with reflectivity measurements on bulk samples  in order to obtain the absorptivity over an extremely broad frequency range as plotted in Fig. 1a. The lines in this figure represent the input we used for the Kramers-Kronig analysis in order to obtain the optical conductivity. The result of it is plotted in the lower panel of Fig. 1; in addition we display the directly measured conductivity data. In the Kramers-Kronig analysis tried to fit both the absorptivity and the conductivity data best, taking the different experimental uncertainties into account .

The main findings can be summarized as follows: At high temperatures we observe a broad conductivity spectrum as expected for a Drude metal. As the temperature decreases below $`T^{}50`$ K, a renormalized Drude peak develops due to the gradual enhancement of the effective mass $`m^{}`$. At the same time, a gap feature develops around 100 cm-1 as expected from the hybridization of the localized $`5f`$-electrons and the conduction electrons. This behaviour is typical for heavy fermions . Lowering the temperature further, magnetic ordering sets in at $`T_N`$ and leads to distinct signatures in the optical spectrum. In the magnetically ordered state we observe a well pronounced pseudogap below 2 cm-1 which we assign to the interaction of the localized magnetic moments and spins of the itinerant electrons. At even lower frequencies, an extremely narrow zero-frequency mode remains which is responsible for the dc conductivity and for superconductivity below $`T_c`$.

To describe the low-energy data satisfactorily, we introduce a complex frequency dependent scattering rate $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Gamma }}(\omega )=\mathrm{\Gamma }_1(\omega )+i\mathrm{\Gamma }_2(\omega )`$ into the standard Drude form of $`\widehat{\sigma }(\omega )`$. With the dimensionless quantity $`\lambda (\omega )=\mathrm{\Gamma }_2(\omega )/\omega `$, the complex conductivity can be written as

$$\widehat{\sigma }(\omega )=\sigma _1+i\sigma _2=\frac{(\omega _p^{})^2}{4\pi }\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_1(\omega )i\omega (m^{}(\omega )/m)}$$
(1)
where $`m^{}/m=1+\lambda (\omega )`$ is the frequency dependent enhanced mass. $`(\omega _p^{})^2`$ corresponds to the fraction of electrons which participate in the many-body state developing below $`T^{}`$. By rearranging Eq. (1) we can write expressions for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1(\omega )`$ and $`m^{}(\omega )`$ in terms of $`\sigma _1(\omega )`$ and $`\sigma _2(\omega )`$ as follows:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_1(\omega )=\frac{(\omega _p^{})^2}{4\pi }\frac{\sigma _1(\omega )}{|\widehat{\sigma }(\omega )|^2},$$
(2)
$$\frac{m^{}(\omega )}{m}=\frac{(\omega _p^{})^2}{4\pi }\frac{\sigma _2(\omega )/\omega }{|\widehat{\sigma }(\omega )|^2}.$$
(3)
Such analysis allows us to look for interactions which would lead to energy dependent renormalization as the frequency dependent scattering rate and effective mass are related to the real and imaginary parts of the energy dependent self-energy of the electrons . In Fig. 2 the frequency dependences of the scattering rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1(\omega )`$ and the effective mass $`m^{}(\omega )`$ are displayed for different temperatures. As expected for a normal metal, at $`T>T^{}`$ the spectra of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1(\omega )`$ and $`m^{}(\omega )`$ are nearly frequency independent. As the temperature is lowered we observe a peak in the energy dependent scattering rate at the hybridization gap, as can be nicely seen in the $`T=30`$ K data of Fig. 2b. The decrease of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1(\omega )`$ to lower frequencies corresponds to an increase of $`m^{}(\omega )`$. At these intermediate temperatures, $`T_N<T<T^{}`$, the effective mass $`m^{}/m`$ gradually increases when going to smaller frequencies or correspondingly to lower temperatures; eventually it reaches a value of 35. Decreasing the temperature below $`T_N`$ results in a second peak of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1(\omega )`$ and a strong increase of the effective mass below 1 cm-1. As already seen at $`T=15`$ K, this effect becomes stronger as the temperature is lowered to 2 K. The effective mass $`m^{}(\omega )`$ levels off at $`m^{}/m50`$ below 1 cm-1and nicely matches the values obtained by thermodynamic methods  which are indicated by the star in Fig. 2c. We see a moderate enhancement of $`m^{}(\omega ,T0)`$ for frequency below the hybridization gap and a larger one below the gap which develops due to magnetic correlations. Accordingly $`m^{}(\omega 0,T)`$ increases only slightly below $`T^{}`$ and shows a large enhancement below $`T_N`$. The scattering rate drops more than one order of magnitude upon passing $`T_N`$; this can be explained by the freezing-out of spin-flip scattering in the ordered state. The energy-dependent scattering rate is related to the electronic density of states. In the case of UPd2Al3 we can distinguish two gap structures with an enhanced density of states at the edges, features known for superconductors.

The estimation of the reduced spectral weight $`\omega _p^{}=c/\lambda _L(0)4000\mathrm{cm}^1`$ from the London penetration depth $`\lambda _L=450`$ nm  agrees with our results of $`4300\mathrm{cm}^1`$ if we integrate the conductivity spectrum up to $`100\mathrm{cm}^1`$; a renormalized Drude behaviour without a gap feature would yield a value more than twice as large. This implies that all carriers seen in our low-energy spectra are in the heavy-fermion ground state and eventually undergo the superconducting transition below $`T_c`$. We can definitely rule out an assignment of the gap simply to the localized carriers of the antiferromagnetic ordered states, with the delocalized carriers contributing only to the narrow feature at $`\omega =0`$, because its small spectral weight at low temperatures accounts for only 18 % of the carriers which become superconducting. This also means that the excitations above the gap stem from the delocalized states and that the gap observed in our conductivity spectra is related to exchange correlations of the second subsystem. Recently it was found that the magnetic excitations seen by neutron scattering produce effective interactions between itinerant electrons and lead to superconductivity . Our results now imply that the magnetic excitations responsible for superconductivity also cause the heavy quasiparticles.

The picture we developed in order to explain the optical properties of UPd2Al3 should also apply to other heavy fermion compounds, in particular to UPt3 which exhibits a similar behaviour in many regards . For UPt3 the effective mass of the quasiparticles is larger ($`m^{}/m200`$) and the relevant energy scales are lower. The coherence temperature is $`T^{}30`$ K, fluctuating short range magnetic order ($`0.02\mu _B`$) occurs at $`T_N=5`$ K, and superconductivity sets in at $`T_c=0.5`$ K. Recent bandstructure calculations  infer the existence of localized as well as delocalized $`5f`$-electrons in UPt3 very much similar to UPd2Al3. It was suggested that the observed enhancement of the quasiparticle mass results from the local exchange interaction of two localized $`5f`$-electrons with the remaining delocalized ones .

We have reanalyzed the optical properties of UPt3 previously obtained by various techniques  in the same way as described above and can identify similar features (Fig. 3). When the coherent ground state builds up ($`T<T^{}`$), the optical conductivity increases for frequencies below 30 cm-1. As the temperature drops below $`T_N=5`$ K, magnetic ordering occurs and an energy gap progressively develops at about $`3\mathrm{cm}^1`$ which is assigned to magnetic correlations . The frequency dependence of the effective mass displayed in Fig. 3c clearly shows at the lowest temperature accessible that only a marginal increase of $`m^{}`$ is observed around 30 cm-1, while below the energies related to the magnetic correlations the mass is drastically enhanced. Thus we also find that, as for UPd2Al3, the coupling of the localized and delocalized $`5f`$-electrons causes the heavy quasiparticles in UPt3; these magnetic excitations are very likely to be responsible for superconductivity.

For both compounds, it therefore appears that the formation of the heavy quasiparticles relies on the establishment of antiferromagnetic order rather than competition of the coherent singlet formation and the magnetic order. Since we made similar observations for two materials which may have a different ground state as evidenced by the vastly different $`\mu _B`$, it remains to be seen how far our findings have implications on non-magnetic heavy fermions with a large effective mass. Thermodynamic measurements should test our idea that the effective mass $`m^{}(T)`$ increases only slightly below $`T^{}`$ but shows a large enhancement below $`T_N`$. It also remains to be seen in which way our observation is related to the pseudogap which was established in high-temperature superconductors well above $`T_c`$ by optical and other methods .

In conclusion, the electrodynamic response of two uranium-based heavy fermion superconductors with magnetic ordering exhibits a behavior at low temperatures and low frequencies which cannot be explained within the simple picture of a renormalized Fermi liquid. The low-energy response shows the well-known renormalized behavior only above the magnetic ordering temperature; below $`T_N`$ additional features were discovered. Besides an extremely narrow zero-frequency response, we observe a pseudogap of less than a meV. The experiments yield indications that this pseudogap is connected to magnetic correlations on the delocalized charge carriers. We have argued, that this gap at extremely low energies is due to the influence of the localized magnetic moments on the conduction electrons and this interaction is mainly responsible for the enhanced mass $`m^{}`$.

We acknowledge helpful discussions with P. Fulde, A. Muramatsu, A. Schwartz, F. Steglich, and G. Zwicknagl. The work was supported by the DFG.


text:
# Nonlinear Optical Vector Amplitude Equations. Polarization and Vortex Solutions

## 1 Introduction

The scalar theory of optical vortices was based on the well-known 2D+1 paraxial Nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NSE) . A generalization of the scalar paraxial theory of optical vortices based on the investigation of co-called spatio-temporal evolution equations  has also been performed. The polarization and the vector character of the electric field play an important role in dynamics and the stabilization of the vortices. In  this problem was discussed for the first time and the existence of polarized vortices was predicted. To investigate this phenomenon more completely, it is necessary to investigated the corresponding vector amplitude equations. In this paper, we investigated two type of vector amplitude equations, VNSE for three linear othogonal polarized component, and a Dirac representation of Nonlinear Maxwell’s equations for a combination of linear and circular polarized components.

## 2  Vector NSE

The vector version of 3D+1 amplitude equation of electrical field, describing the propagation of light in dispersion media with Kerr nonlinearity in a dimensionlles coordinate system, moving with group velocity my be writen:

$$2i\alpha \frac{\stackrel{}{A}}{t}+\mathrm{\Delta }_{}\stackrel{}{A}\beta \frac{^2\stackrel{}{A}}{z^2}+\gamma \left|\stackrel{}{A}\right|^2\stackrel{}{A}=0,$$
(1)
where $`\stackrel{}{A}`$ is the normed amplitude of the electrical field, $`\alpha =kr_0^2/t_0v;`$ $`\beta =v_i^2k^\mathrm{"}k;`$ $`\gamma =k^2r_0^2n_2\left|A\right|_0^2;`$ are corresponding normed constant, $`v`$ is group velocity, $`k`$ is carrying wave number, $`r_0`$ and $`t_0`$ are the spatial and time dimensions of amplitude field, $`k\mathrm{"}`$ is the dispersion parameter, $`n_2`$ is the nonlinear refractife index. We investigate the case $`\beta =1;\gamma =1`$. The constant $`\alpha `$ has a tipical value of $`\alpha 10^210^3`$ in the optical region ($`\alpha r_0k`$).

To solve the vector equation (1), we use the method of separation of variables. The amplitudes of three linear polarized orthogonal vector fields $`\stackrel{}{A}^j(x,y,z,t)`$ are represented as:

$$\stackrel{}{A}(x,y,z,t)=\underset{\stackrel{}{j}=\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y},\stackrel{}{z}}{}\stackrel{}{j}A^j(x,y,z)\mathrm{exp}(i\alpha t).$$
(2)
In a Cartesian coordinate system, for solutions of the form of (2), the vector equation (1) is reduced to a scalar system of three nonlinear wave equations:

$$\alpha ^2A^l+\mathrm{\Delta }A^l+\underset{j=x,y,z}{}\left(\left|A^j\right|^2\right)A^l=0;l=x,y,z.$$
(3)
The system (3) can be written in spherical variables:

$$\alpha ^2A^l+\mathrm{\Delta }_rA^l+\frac{1}{r^2}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\theta ,\phi }A^l+\underset{j=x,y,z}{}\left(\left|A^j\right|^2\right)A^l=0,$$
(4)
where $`l=x,y,z`$. Next we represent the components of the field as a product of a radial and an angular part:

$$A^i(r,\theta ,\phi )=R(r)Y_i(\theta ,\phi );i=x,y,z,$$
(5)
with the additional constraint on the angular parts:

$$\left|Y_x(\theta ,\phi )\right|^2+\left|Y_y(\theta ,\phi )\right|^2+\left|Y_z(\theta ,\phi )\right|^2=const..$$
(6)
Multiplying each of the equations (4) by the $`\frac{r^2}{RY_i}`$, and bearing in mind the constraint expressed in (6), we obtain:

$$\frac{r^2\mathrm{\Delta }_rR}{R}+r^2\left(\alpha ^2+\left|R\right|^2\right)=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }_{\theta \phi }Y_j}{Y_j}=\mathrm{}(\mathrm{}+1),$$
(7)
where $`\mathrm{}`$ is one number. Thus the following equations for the radial and the angular parts of the wave functions are obtained:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_rR+\alpha ^2R+\left|R\right|^2R\frac{\mathrm{}(\mathrm{}+1)}{r^2}=0$$
(8)
$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{\theta \phi }Y_j+\mathrm{}(\mathrm{}+1)=0;j=x,y,z.$$
(9)
As equations (8),(9) shows, the nonlinear term occurs only in the radial components of the fields,while for the angular part we have the usual linear eigenvalue problem. Going back to set (4), we see that the separation of variables for the spherical functions, which satisfied condition (6), is posible only for $`\mathrm{}=1`$.

$$Y_x=Y_1^1=\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\phi ;Y_y=Y_1^1=\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}\phi ;Y_x=Y_1^0=\mathrm{cos}\theta .$$
(10)
By choosing one of these angular components for each of the field components we see that the eigenfunctions (10) are solutions to the angular part of the set of equations (4). The nonlinear radial part of equations admit exact ”de Brogile soliton” solutions

$$R=\frac{\sqrt{2}}{i}\frac{e^{i\alpha r}}{r}.$$
(11)
The real solutions of the vector amplitude equation (4) in a fixed basis is then:

$$A_x=\mathrm{}\left(R(r)Y_x\right)=\sqrt{2}\frac{\mathrm{sin}(\alpha r)}{r}\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{cos}\phi \mathrm{cos}(\alpha t)$$

$$A_y=\mathrm{}\left(R(r)Y_y\right)=\sqrt{2}\frac{\mathrm{sin}(\alpha r)}{r}\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{sin}\phi \mathrm{cos}(\alpha t)$$
(12)
$$A_z=\mathrm{}\left(R(r)Y_z\right)=\sqrt{2}\frac{\mathrm{sin}(\alpha r)}{r}\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{cos}(\alpha t).$$

## 3  Nonlinear Maxwell’s Equations

We consider the Maxwell’s equations for the case a source-free nonlinear medium with linear and nonlinear electric polarization and linear magnetic polarization (magnetization) , :

$$\times \stackrel{}{E}=\frac{1}{c}\frac{\stackrel{}{B}}{t};\times \stackrel{}{B}=\frac{1}{c}\frac{\stackrel{}{D}}{t}$$
(13)
$$\stackrel{}{D}=0;\stackrel{}{B}=\stackrel{}{H}=0$$
(14)
$$\stackrel{}{D}=\stackrel{}{P}_l+4\pi \stackrel{}{P}_{nl}$$
(15)
$$\stackrel{}{B}=\stackrel{}{H}+4\pi \stackrel{}{M}_l,$$
(16)
where $`\stackrel{}{E}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{H}`$ are the electric and magnetic intensity fields, $`\stackrel{}{D}`$ and $`\stackrel{}{B}`$ are the electric and magnetic induction fields, $`\stackrel{}{P}_l`$, $`\stackrel{}{P}_{nl}`$ are the linear and nonlinear polarization of the medium respectively and $`\stackrel{}{M}_l`$ is the linear magnetic polarization. We apply the slowly varying amplitude approximation to the Maxwell equations (13)-(16):

$$\stackrel{}{E}(x,y,z,t)=\stackrel{}{A}(x,y,z,t)e^{i\omega _0t}$$
(17)
$$\stackrel{}{H}(x,y,z,t)=\stackrel{}{C}(x,y,z,t)e^{i\omega _0t},$$
(18)
where $`\stackrel{}{A},`$ $`\stackrel{}{C}`$ and $`\omega _0`$ are the amplitudes of the electric and magnetic fields and the optical frequency respectively. After using the Fourier representation and condition of slowly-varying amplitudes we obtained the next system of Nonlinear Maxwell amplitude Equations(NME), writed in rescaled variables:

$$\times \stackrel{}{A}=i\alpha _2\stackrel{}{C}\delta \frac{\stackrel{}{C}}{t}\beta _2\frac{^2\stackrel{}{C}}{t^2}$$
(19)
$$\times \stackrel{}{C}=i\alpha _1\stackrel{}{A}+\frac{\stackrel{}{A}}{t}i\beta _1\frac{^2\stackrel{}{A}}{t^2}+i\gamma |\stackrel{}{A}|^2\stackrel{}{A}$$
(20)
$$\stackrel{}{A}=0;\stackrel{}{C}=0,$$
(21)
where the constants are $`k_1=\frac{wϵ(\omega )}{c}`$; $`k_2=\frac{w\mu (\omega )}{c}`$; $`\frac{1}{v}_i=\frac{k_i}{\omega }`$; $`\alpha _i=k_i^0r_0`$; $`\beta _i=k_i^\mathrm{"}r_0/2t_0^2`$; $`\gamma =r_0k_1n_2\left|A_0\right|^2`$; $`\delta =\frac{v_1}{v_2}`$. While the nonlinear condition $`\gamma =1`$ can be satisfied, the constants $`\alpha _i`$; $`i=1,2`$ have typical values $`\alpha _i10^2(\alpha _ir_0k_i)`$. The constants $`\beta _i`$ have typical values $`\beta _110^510^6<<1`$;$`\beta _2<\beta _1`$ and for picosecond and sub-picosecond pulses in the transparency region of nonlinear optical media they may be neglected.

## 4  Dirac representation of NME

We will neglecting the second derivative in time terms of the eqn.(19)-(20), as $`\beta _i<<1`$. We solve the NME (19)-(21), by the method of separation of variables. The slowly varying amplitude vectors of the electric field $`\stackrel{}{A}`$ and the magnetic field $`\stackrel{}{C}`$ are represented as:

$$\stackrel{}{A}(x,y,z,t)=\stackrel{}{F}(x,y,z,t)e^{i\mathrm{}\alpha t}$$
(22)
$$\stackrel{}{C}(x,y,z,t)=\stackrel{}{G}(x,y,z,t)e^{i\mathrm{}\alpha t}.$$
(23)
Substituting these forms into (19)-(21), we obtain the stationary version of the NME:

$$\times \stackrel{}{F}=i\vartheta _2\stackrel{}{G};\times \stackrel{}{G}=i\vartheta _1\stackrel{}{F}+i\gamma |\stackrel{}{F}|^2\stackrel{}{F}$$
(24)
$$\stackrel{}{F}=0;\stackrel{}{G}=0,$$
(25)
where $`\vartheta _1=\alpha _1+\mathrm{}\alpha `$; $`\vartheta _2=\delta \mathrm{}\alpha \alpha _2>0`$ . When the electric and magnetic fields are represented as a sum of a linear and circular polarized component it is possible to reduce eqns.(24)- (25) to a system of four nonlinear equations. Substituting :

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_1=iF_z;\mathrm{\Psi }_2=iF_xF_y;\mathrm{\Psi }_3=G_z;\mathrm{\Psi }_4=G_xiG_y$$
(26)
into the nonlinear system (24)-(25) we obtain a stationary nonlinear Dirac system (NDE):

$$\left(\frac{}{x}i\frac{}{y}\right)\mathrm{\Psi }_4+\frac{}{z}\mathrm{\Psi }_3=i(\vartheta _1+\gamma \underset{j=1}{\overset{2}{}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_j|^2)\mathrm{\Psi }_1$$
(27)
$$\left(\frac{}{x}+i\frac{}{y}\right)\mathrm{\Psi }_3\frac{}{z}\mathrm{\Psi }_4=i(\vartheta _1+\gamma \underset{j=1}{\overset{2}{}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_j|^2)\mathrm{\Psi }_2$$
(28)
$$\left(\frac{}{x}i\frac{}{y}\right)\mathrm{\Psi }_2+\frac{}{z}\mathrm{\Psi }_1=i\vartheta _2\mathrm{\Psi }_3$$
(29)
$$\left(\frac{}{x}i\frac{}{y}\right)\mathrm{\Psi }_1\frac{}{z}\mathrm{\Psi }_2=i\vartheta _2\mathrm{\Psi }_4.$$
(30)
As may be noted, the optical NDE are significantly different from the NDE in field theory. The nonlinear part appears only in the first two coupled equations of the system.

## 5 Vortex solutions with spin $`l=1`$

The NDE (27)-(30) have both spherical and spinor symmetry only in the case where the nonlinear part does not manifest an angular dependence on the radial variable $`\underset{j=1}{\overset{2}{}}|\mathrm{\Psi }_j|^2=F(r)`$. This type of solution may be found using with the following technique: using Pauli matrices, we write the NDE system (27)-(30) as:

$$(\stackrel{}{\sigma }\stackrel{}{P})\varphi =i(\vartheta _1+\gamma \underset{j=1}{\overset{2}{}}|\eta _j|^2)\eta $$
(31)
$$(\stackrel{}{\sigma }\stackrel{}{P})\eta =i\vartheta _2\varphi ,$$
(32)
where $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$ are the Pauli matrices, $`\stackrel{}{P}=(\frac{}{x};\frac{}{y};\frac{}{z})`$ are the differential operator and $`\eta `$ and $`\varphi `$ are the corresponding spinors. After substituting eqn. (32) into eqn. (31) we obtain:

$$(\stackrel{}{\sigma }\stackrel{}{P})(\stackrel{}{\sigma }\stackrel{}{P})\eta =\vartheta _2(\vartheta _1+\gamma \underset{j=1}{\overset{2}{}}|\eta _j|^2)\eta $$
(33)
When there is no external electric or magnetic field, the operator on the left-hand side of eqn. (33) is simply the Laplacian operator $`\mathrm{}`$. From (33) and we obtain:

$$\vartheta _1\vartheta _2\eta +\vartheta _2\gamma \underset{j=1}{\overset{2}{}}|\eta _j|^2\eta +\mathrm{}\eta =0$$
(34)
The scalar variant of these equations has been investigated in many papers but exact localized solutions have not been found. In the case $`l=1`$ we look for spinors of the form:

$$\eta _1=\stackrel{~}{\eta }(r)\mathrm{cos}\theta ;\eta _2=\stackrel{~}{\eta }(r)\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{exp}i\varphi .$$
(35)
After substituting eqn. (35) into equations (34) the following equation describing the radial dependence is obtained:

$$\vartheta _1\vartheta _2\stackrel{~}{\eta }+\vartheta _2\gamma \underset{j=1}{\overset{2}{}}\left|\stackrel{~}{\eta }_j\right|^2\stackrel{~}{\eta }+\frac{^2\stackrel{~}{\eta }}{r^2}+\frac{2}{r}\frac{\stackrel{~}{\eta }}{r}\frac{2}{r^2}\stackrel{~}{\eta }=0.$$
(36)
The angular parts are the standard spherical harmonics with $`l=1`$. This system has exact vortex de Broglie soliton  solutions of the form:

$$\stackrel{~}{\eta }(r)=\frac{\sqrt{2}}{i}\frac{\mathrm{exp}(i\sqrt{\vartheta _1\vartheta _2}r)}{r}$$
(37)
if $`\theta _2\gamma =1`$.

## 6  Hamiltonian representation of the NDE: Orbital momentum, first integrals and vortex solutions with spin $`j=1/2`$

It is not difficult to show that for the NDE system of eqns. (27)-(30) a Hamiltonian of the form:

$$H=\left(\stackrel{}{\sigma }\stackrel{}{P}\right)+\underset{j=1}{\overset{2}{}}\left|\mathrm{\Psi }_j\right|^2$$
(38)
may be written. Using this, NDE may be rewritten in the form:

$$H\mathrm{\Psi }=\epsilon \mathrm{\Psi },$$
(39)
where $`\epsilon =(iv_1,iv_1,iv_2,iv_2)`$ is the energy operator. Here we investigate the case where the nonlinear part, as a sum of square module of spinors, depends only on the radial component $`\underset{j=1}{\overset{2}{}}\left|\mathrm{\Psi }_j\right|^2=F(r)`$. We also introduce here the well known orbital momentum operator $`\stackrel{}{L}`$, spin momentum $`\stackrel{}{S}`$, and the full momentum $`\stackrel{}{J}`$, as well as:

$$\stackrel{}{L}=\stackrel{}{r}\times \stackrel{}{P};\stackrel{}{J}=\stackrel{}{L}+\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{}{S}.$$
(40)
It straightforward to show that the Hamiltonian of eqn. (38) commutes with the operators $`\stackrel{}{J}^2`$ and $`J_z`$ (the z- projections must be x or y). Using these symmetries and the condition that the nonlinearity be centrosymmetric, we can solve the NDE equations (39) by a separation of variables technique. To find vortex solution of the NDE ( 39) with spin $`j=1/2`$ we use the spinor representation of these equations. We look for solutions of the form:

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_1=a(r)\mathrm{\Omega }_{jlm};\mathrm{\Psi }_2=a(r)\mathrm{\Omega }_{jlm}$$
(41)
$$\mathrm{\Psi }_3=ib(r)\mathrm{\Omega }_{jl^{^{}}m};\mathrm{\Psi }_4=ib(r)\mathrm{\Omega }_{jl^{^{}}m}$$
(42)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{jlm}`$ is the spherical spinor, $`l+l^{^{}}=1`$, and $`a(r)`$ and $`b(r)`$ are arbitrary radial functions. Using the symmetries of ( 39) and the fact, that the nonlinear parts depend only on $`r`$, we separate variables and obtain the following system of equations for the radial part:

$$\frac{a(r)}{r}+\frac{1+\sigma }{r}a(r)=\vartheta _2b(r)$$
(43)
$$\frac{b(r)}{r}+\frac{1\sigma }{r}b(r)=\vartheta _1a(r)+\gamma \left|a(r)\right|^2a(r),$$
(44)
where $`\sigma =l(l+1)j(j+1)1/4`$. We find localized solutions of these equations only for the angular component corresponding to $`l=1`$ and $`j=1/2`$. In this case the system (43)-(44) becomes:

$$\frac{a(r)}{r}+\frac{2}{r}a(r)=\vartheta _2b(r)$$
(45)
$$\frac{b(r)}{r}=\vartheta _1a(r)+\gamma \left|a(r)\right|^2a(r).$$
(46)
As was shown above, this system has exact radial solutions of the form:

$$a(r)=\frac{\sqrt{2}}{i}\frac{\mathrm{exp}i\sqrt{\vartheta _1\vartheta _2}r}{r}$$
(47)
$$b(r)=\frac{\sqrt{2}}{i\vartheta _2}\left(\frac{\mathrm{exp}i\sqrt{\vartheta _1\vartheta _2}r}{r^2}+\frac{i\sqrt{\vartheta _1\vartheta _2}\mathrm{exp}i\sqrt{\vartheta _1\vartheta _2}r}{r}\right).$$
(48)
The vortex solutions of the spinor representation have four components and this type of solutions is found only for the case where the spin $`j=1/2`$.

## 7  Conclusion

In this paper we investigated two cases of vector amplitude equations of electromagnetic field in nonlinear Kerr media. In the first case, for three orthogonal linear polarized component of electrical field we obtained exact vortex solutions of VNSE with spin $`l=1`$. The numerical analysis shows, that these solutions are stable at distances comparable to those where localized waves with the same amplitudes of the scalar 3D+1 NSE self-focuced rapidly. The conditions $`\beta =1`$ is satisfied only near to Langmuir frequency in plasma or near to some of the electron resonances. In the second case we have derived a set of Nonlinear Maxwell amplitude Equations (NME) for nonlinear optical media with dispersion of the magnetic susceptibility. We show that for the case of linear and circularly polarised components of the electric and magnetic fields, the NME is reduced to the Nonlinear Dirac system of equations (NDE). Using the method of separation of variables, we have obtained exact vortex solutions for this case. We have investigated the NDE in two representations: spherical and spinor. In the spherical presentation we obtain optical vortices with spin $`l=1`$ and in the spinor representation vortices with spin $`j=1/2`$. These vortices are Lorenz invariant, and periodically pulsating with the group velocity of solutions of the NME.