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# A Perturbative Analysis of Tachyon Condensation

## 1 Background

Much effort has been expended over the last few years to confirm Sen’s conjectures  on tachyon condensation in the open bosonic string (for reviews see ). Sen suggested that the unstable open string vacuum in 26 dimensions should be understood as containing a space-filling D25-brane. Sen’s first conjecture states that the open bosonic string has a nontrivial locally stable vacuum with energy $`T_{25}V`$ relative to the unstable perturbative open string vacuum, where $`T_{25}`$ is the tension of the D25-brane, and $`V`$ is the volume of spacetime; this new stable vacuum should correspond to the true closed string vacuum with no D-branes. This conjecture has been tested by several authors using the approach of truncating Witten’s open string field theory  to include only fields below a certain total oscillator level. In  Kostelecky and Samuel used level truncation up to level 4, including 10 fields. These authors found that at low levels of truncation Witten’s theory has a stable vacuum solution, and that the energy of this stable vacuum seems to converge as the level of truncation of the theory is increased. At that time, however, D-branes had not yet been understood, and there was no natural way to interpret the energy of this new vacuum. In  Sen and Zwiebach reconsidered this calculation in the light of Sen’s conjectures. They found that at level 4, the vacuum energy of the nontrivial solution of the level-truncated theory is 0.986 times the energy $`E_0=T_{25}V`$ predicted by Sen. In , Moeller and Taylor extended this calculation to higher levels. We found that as the level of truncation is increased, the vacuum energy continues to decrease, until at level 10 the vacuum energy reaches $`0.9991E_0`$. These calculations seemed to indicate that level truncation gives a systematic approximation to the full string field theory, and that the vacuum energy computed in level truncation would converge monotonically to $`E_0`$. The accuracy of this picture was thrown into doubt when Gaiotto and Rastelli recently announced  that when the level of truncation is increased further, the vacuum energy overshoots $`E_0`$. They found that at level 14 the vacuum energy becomes $`1.0002E_0`$, and that the energy continues to decrease monotonically until at level 18 the vacuum energy is $`1.0005E_0`$.

In this paper we use an alternative approach based on perturbation theory to estimate the energy of the nontrivial vacuum of open string field theory. We use level truncation to determine the values of the coefficients in a perturbative expansion of the effective zero-momentum tachyon potential around the usual open string vacuum. We then extrapolate these values to higher levels, and use the actual and predicted values of the coefficients at various levels to compute Padé approximants for the effective potential. The resulting Padé approximants seem to give highly reliable estimates for the vacuum energy. Furthermore, the Padé approximants based on the extrapolated perturbative coefficients give rise to energies which closely match those found by Gaiotto and Rastelli. After overshooting the desired value of $`E_0`$ for the energy, however, the predicted energies turn around again near level 26, eventually returning close to the desired value. These calculations show that the results of Gaiotto and Rastelli are fully compatible both with earlier computations of the coefficients of the effective tachyon potential and with the conjecture that the energy of the nontrivial vacuum in level-truncated SFT asymptotically approaches the value predicted by Sen as the level is taken arbitrarily large.

In this paper we work exclusively in Feynman-Siegel gauge. Other choices of gauge were explored in ; for some other gauge choices, the level-truncated approximations to the energy were found to go below $`E_0`$ (sometimes at levels as low as $`L=4`$), and to be non-monotonic. The results of this paper suggest that this is in fact the generic behavior of level-truncated approximations in any gauge; we expect that applying the methods of this paper to the calculation in other gauges will give similar results.

In Section 2 we discuss the calculation of coefficients in the effective tachyon potential. In Section 3 we describe the method of Padé approximants and their use in studying the vacuum energy of SFT. In Section 4 we use Padé approximants on the coefficients computed in Section 2 and summarize our results.

## 2 Perturbative tachyon potential

The effective potential for the $`p=0`$ tachyon field $`\varphi `$ is given by

$`V(\varphi )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=2}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}c_n(\kappa g)^{n2}\varphi ^n`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\varphi ^2+(\kappa g)\varphi ^3+c_4(\kappa g)^2\varphi ^4+c_5(\kappa g)^3\varphi ^5+\mathrm{}`$
where $`\kappa =3^{7/2}/2^70.365`$ and where $`c_4,c_5,\mathrm{}`$ are numerical constants. Closed form expressions for these coefficients were given in . These expressions cannot be evaluated exactly, however, and must be approximated numerically. Level truncation of Witten’s string field theory gives an efficient means of approximating these coefficients . In , we computed the coefficients up to $`c_{60}`$ at truncation levels up to (10, 20), meaning that all fields up to level 10 and interactions up to total level 20 were included.

For example, for $`c_4`$ successive level-truncation approximations give

$`c_4^{[2]}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{34}{27}}1.259259`$ (2)
$`c_4^{[4]}`$ $``$ $`1.472489`$
$`c_4^{[6]}`$ $``$ $`1.556198`$
$`c_4^{[8]}`$ $``$ $`1.600425`$
$`c_4^{[10]}`$ $``$ $`1.627694`$
where by $`c_4^{[L]}`$ we denote the approximation to $`c_4`$ in level approximation $`(L,2L)`$. Note that throughout this paper we systematically use level truncations $`(L,2L)`$; empirical observations indicate that level $`(L,2L)`$ approximations are generally very close to level $`(L,3L)`$ approximations, although the former are easier to compute . An analytic expression for $`c_4`$ given in  was numerically evaluated in  and found to give

$$c_41.742\pm 0.001.$$
(3)
In , approximations to $`c_4`$ were computed using oscillator level truncation of an exact expression written in terms of an infinite matrix of Neumann coefficients. These approximations $`c_4^{(L)}`$ were computed up to oscillator level $`L=100`$, and were found to behave at large $`L`$ as

$$c_4^{(L)}1.742+0.80L^1+𝒪(L^2).$$
(4)
To use the Padé approximant method described in the next section, we need an accurate approximation to the coefficients $`c_n`$ for $`n`$ up to $`26`$ or so. While the method of  is much more efficient for computing $`c_n`$ for small $`n`$ at high levels, at large values of $`n`$ this approach becomes more difficult as the number of diagrams which must be summed increases quickly with $`n`$. Thus, in this paper we will use the approximate coefficients $`c_n^{[L]}`$ computed in  up to level $`L=10`$. From the analysis of , however, we expect that these approximate coefficients will have corrections which can be expressed as a power series in $`1/L`$. This allows us to use the data for $`L10`$ to predict the values of the approximate coefficients for $`L>10`$. For example, using the values of $`c_4^{[6]},c_4^{[8]},c_4^{[10]}`$ from (3) we can fit to a function of the form $`a+b/L+c/L^2`$ to get

$$c_4^{\{2,L\}}1.74226+0.59482L^10.10987L^2.$$
(5)
Using the value of $`c_4^{[4]}`$ in addition, and allowing a term of order $`L^3`$ gives

$$c_4^{\{3,L\}}1.74204+0.59213L^10.09933L^20.01346L^3.$$
(6)
Including $`c_4^{[2]}`$ and a term of order $`L^4`$ gives

$$c_4^{\{4,L\}}1.74190+0.59013L^10.08916L^20.03550L^3+0.01718L^4.$$
(7)
The low order terms in these extrapolations seem to be converging well, so we expect that (5-7) give increasingly good estimates of the level-truncated approximations to the coefficient $`c_4`$. We have performed similar extrapolations for the higher coefficients $`c_n`$ with similar results. We will use these extrapolations in Section 4 to estimate the value of the vacuum energy in various level-truncated approximations.

## 3 Padé approximants

The power series expansion (2) of the tachyon effective potential $`V(\varphi )`$ has a finite radius of convergence of approximately $`\varphi _r0.25/g`$ . This finite radius of convergence arises due to the breakdown of Feynman-Siegel gauge when $`\varphi `$ approaches the critical value $`\varphi _c0.25/g`$ . At this point the function $`V(\varphi )`$ has a square root branch cut singularity. The nontrivial vacuum occurs near $`\varphi 1/g`$, so that the series expansion of $`V(\varphi )`$ is badly divergent near the true vacuum. Thus, we cannot directly study the local minimum of the tachyon effective potential by summing the perturbation series (2).

A powerful method for dealing with series expansions outside their radius of convergence is given by the method of Padé approximants. Given a power series

$$f(x)=a_0+a_1x+a_2x^2+a_3x^3+\mathrm{},$$
(8)
the Padé approximant $`P_N^M(x)`$ is the unique rational function with numerator of degree $`M`$ and denominator of degree $`N`$ which agrees with the power series expansion (8) out to order $`M+N`$

$$P_N^M(x)=\frac{_{i=0}^Mb_ix^i}{_{j=0}^Nd_jx^j}=\underset{k=0}{\overset{N+M}{}}a_kx^k+𝒪(x^{N+M+1}).$$
(9)
While the partial sums computed by truncating (2) at finite order do not converge near the stable tachyon vacuum, these partial sums may be used to compute Padé approximants with much better convergence behavior. For example, consider the approximate perturbative potential given by truncating (2) at $`\varphi ^K`$ and using the level $`2`$ approximations $`c_n^{[2]}`$ to the coefficients. For $`K=4`$, the resulting quartic

$$\frac{1}{2}\varphi ^2+\kappa g\varphi ^3\frac{34}{27}(\kappa g)\varphi ^4$$
(10)
has no local minima, while the Padé approximant

$$P_1^3(\varphi )=\frac{\frac{1}{2}\varphi ^2+\frac{10}{27}\kappa g\varphi ^3}{1+\frac{34}{27}\kappa g\varphi }$$
(11)
does.

We have investigated the behavior of various families of Padé approximants using the coefficients of the tachyon effective potential computed at low truncation levels. We find that the family of approximants $`P_n^{n+2}`$ does very well at reproducing the effective potential out to the nontrivial vacuum. For example, at level 4 the effective potential has a minimum with energy $`0.986403E_0`$ . Using Padé approximants on the level 4 coefficients we find that the Padé approximants $`P_n^{n+2}`$ give increasingly accurate estimates of vacuum energy, giving for example (in units of $`E_0`$)

$`E_{10}^{12}`$ $`=`$ $`0.9864053`$
$`E_{11}^{13}`$ $`=`$ $`0.9864036`$ (12)
$`E_{12}^{14}`$ $`=`$ $`0.9864033`$
The Padé approximants converge up to the limit of numerical precision possible from the coefficients we have used. The energies arising from using Padé approximants $`P_n^{n+2}`$ to estimate the vacuum energy at level 4 are graphed in Figure 1. Performing a similar analysis on the approximate coefficients at other levels of truncation, we find that up to level 10, the Padé approximant $`P_{12}^{14}`$ comes within $`10^6`$ of the exact value of the energy at the minimum of the approximate effective potential. We expect similar behavior at higher levels. We use this approximant in our further analysis.

## 4 Estimating the vacuum energy

In Section 2 we described a method for estimating the coefficients $`c_n^{[L]}`$ which would be computed using level truncation at levels $`L>10`$. In section 3 we described a method for using coefficients in the effective tachyon potential to estimate the vacuum energy. We can now combine these approaches to estimate the vacuum energy which would be computed in a level $`L`$ truncation with $`L>10`$.

We have used the Padé approximant $`P_{12}^{14}`$ to estimate the vacuum energy which would arise from the tachyon potential given by each of the three families of extrapolated coefficients $`c_n^{\{m,L\}}`$ given in (5-7) for $`m=2,3,4`$. The resulting vacuum energies are graphed in Figure 2 and compared to the exact results of Gaiotto and Rastelli at levels 12-16 . As can be seen from the graph, while the order $`1/L^2`$ extrapolation of the perturbative coefficients gives an energy which overshoots the correct values, the order $`1/L^4`$ extrapolation is very close to the exact values. For example, at level 16 Gaiotto and Rastelli found

$$E^{[16]}=1.0003678.$$
(13)
The order $`1/L^4`$ extrapolation gives

$$E^{\{4,16\}}1.0003773$$
(14)
while the order $`1/L^3`$ and $`1/L^2`$ extrapolations give $`E^{\{3,16\}}1.0004030`$ and $`E^{\{2,16\}}1.0005007`$ respectively.

Seeing that we can fairly accurately reproduce the values found by Gaiotto and Rastelli for the energy in the level-truncated theory at levels $`L>10`$, it is of great interest to extrapolate to still higher values of $`L`$. We have done this for each of the three extrapolations we are using. In each case, we find that at a particular level the extrapolated energy reaches a minimum value and then starts to climb back towards -1. Table 1 summarizes for each of the extrapolations we are using the level at which the extrapolated energy reaches a minimum, the energy at the corresponding minimum, and the energy as $`L\mathrm{}`$

The extrapolated energy is graphed as a function of $`\mathrm{ln}L`$ in Figure 3.

It is clear that these results are compatible both with the observation of Gaiotto and Rastelli that the energy shoots below -1 at level 14 and with the conjecture that as $`L\mathrm{}`$ the energy approaches $`1`$ in a controlled fashion. It would be nice to have a clearer theoretical understanding of why the individual coefficients in the perturbative expansion of the tachyon effective potential have corrections described by a power series in $`1/L`$ in level truncation, as this feature was crucial in getting the computations in this paper to work out.

## Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Leonardo Rastelli, Ashoke Sen, and Ilya Sigalov for helpful discussions. I would also like to thank the Aspen Center for Physics, where this work was done. The numerical computations described in this work were done using Mathematica. This work was supported by the DOE through contract #DE-FC02-94ER40818.


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# Ferromagnetic insulating state in manganites: 55Mn NMR study

## I Introduction

Hole-doped manganites La1-xAxMnO3 (A=Ca, Sr, Ba, Pb) have attracted much attention in recent years. The reason is not only the ’colossal’ magnetoresistance that occurs in these systems, but also a rich variety of the physical phenomena including intrinsically inhomogeneous ground states, phase separation, charge/orbital ordering etc. . The basic mechanism that couples the spin and charge in these materials and produces the ferromagnetic metallic-like (FMM) state is generally assumed to be described by the double exchange (DE) model. In this model, an electron hole tends to hop more easily between the two successive Mn sites if both Mn site moments are aligned. Rather intriguing is the existence of ferromagnetic but insulating (FMI) state, which is beyond the DE concept. FMI state may be realized in several ways, in particular it occurs when the doping is low, in the systems with strong disorder or distortions in the lattice or for certain substitutions on the Mn sites. The microscopic nature of these FMI states is far from being clear - several models, including charge and/or orbital ordering, superexchange ferromagnetic interactions, cluster-glass state, phase segregation between ferromagnetic metallic and insulating charge-ordered clusters, have been examined in this context .

NMR is a suitable tool to provide further insight in the nature of the FMI state as it probes locally the magnetic states and their dynamics. Ultraslow diffusion of the small Jahn-Teller (JT) polarons in several insulating LaMnO3+δ and La1-yCayMnO3+δ manganites, gives rise to an inhomogeneous loss and final disappearance of the 139La NMR signal when the temperature increases, as reported recently by Allodi et al. . This ’wipeout’ of the 139La NMR signal intensity in the FMI La1-xCaxMnO3 was observed also by Papavassiliou et al.  and it was associated with a low frequency dynamics of the Mn octant cells. The 55Mn NMR in the corresponding systems was studied in several papers , the dynamics of the 55Mn nuclear spins, which is definitely an important item, was not addressed until now, however.

In this paper we present the results of detailed studies of the NMR spectra and relaxation on the 55Mn nuclei, completed in some cases by 139La NMR, for several FMI manganites, including two different self-doped La1-xMn1-yO3, low-doped La0.84Sr0.16MnO3, and Ti-substituted La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3 compounds. Two types of regions associated with the FMM and FMI clusters, possessing quite different nuclear spin dynamics and 55Mn NMR spectra, are detected for all compounds studied. The NMR spectra arising from the FMM clusters consist of a single motionally narrowed line, which is detected in a relatively broad temperature interval. The exception is La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 where more motionally narrowed lines are observed below the metal-insulator transition. The spin fluctuations on 55Mn nuclei in FMI clusters are in a slow fluctuation limit, i.e. $`f_{hop}<f_{res}`$. Corresponding spectra consist of two lines ascribed to Mn4+ and Mn3+ ions, and they can be detected for all compounds studied only for $`T<`$ 60 K. This behavior is in line with the recovery of the signal amplitude on the 139La nuclei in the same temperature interval. Two scenarios of the FMM to FMI transition depending on the different ratio of FMM and FMI clusters as well as possible nature of these clusters are discussed.

## II Experimental

The single crystal of La0.94Mn0.98O3 and polycrystalline compound La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3 used in the present study were described in Refs. . The single crystal La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 was grown by the floating zone method. The self-doped polycrystalline La1-δMnO3 ($`\delta `$0.05) was prepared by standard solid state reaction at 1000-1100C for 50 hours with intermediate grinding and pressing. The temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity, measured with the standard four-probe method, and magnetization curves are shown in Figs. 1a,b. The resistivity of La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 exhibits a metallic-like behavior below $`T_C`$= 250 K. As temperature decreases further, the curve shows an upturn in the ferromagnetic phase below the metal-insulator transition temperature $`T_{MI}=`$157 K. The FMI state ($`d\rho /dT<0`$) is realized below $`T_{MI}`$. A similar behavior is observed for La0.94Mn0.98O3 with $`T_C`$= 210 K  and $`T_{MI}=`$115 K, though the value of the resistivity is by one to three orders of magnitude higher then that of La0.84Sr0.16MnO3. The self-doped La1-δMnO3 is an insulator, the onset of the magnetic ordering is at about 190 K. The resistivity of La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3 ($`T_C`$=180 K) was not measured, but it is known that such level of Ti doping on the Mn site leads to an insulating behavior for La0.7Ca0.3Mn1-xTixO3 .

The NMR spectra were recorded by a two-pulse spin-echo method at temperatures between 22 and 250 K using a noncoherent home-build spectrometer with frequency sweep and boxcar detector signal averaging. The NMR spectra were obtained by measuring the integrated intensity of the spin-echo versus frequency using $`\tau `$=3-4 $`\mu `$s, where $`\tau `$ is the time separation between the two pulses. The spin-spin relaxation was studied by measuring the form of the spin-echo decay as a function of $`\tau `$. All the signals detected come from the regions with strong ferromagnetic correlations as follows from the characteristic high values of the enhancement factor $`\eta `$500-2500. The spin-echo amplitudes were corrected for the $`f^2`$-type frequency response and the $`1/T`$ reduction, that results from the Curie law for the nuclear magnetic moment.

## III Results and discussion

The evolution of the 55Mn NMR spectra in La1-δMnO3 with the temperature is displayed in Fig. 2. For $`T`$ 63 K the NMR spectra consist of a single line similarly as found in conventional FMM manganites . This line is attributed to a motional narrowing - the electron holes hop over the manganese sites with a rate faster then the frequency splitting $`\mathrm{\Delta }f`$ of the Mn3+ and Mn4+ resonances, and as a result all 55Mn nuclei feel the same averaged hyperfine field. The reduction of the spin-echo amplitude of this line with increasing $`T`$ is mainly connected with the shortening of the spin-spin relaxation time $`T_2`$, which becomes comparable to the time separation $`\tau `$. Below 63 K the NMR spectrum qualitatively changes, as new contributions gradually develop. The line at around 320 MHz corresponds to the Mn4+ resonance . The satellite line at around 300 MHz, which may be attributed to a Mn4+ resonance for specific Mn sites, is observed only in this sample and it will be discussed later. More important, the amplitude of the signal at about 390 MHz increases substantially below 63 K, indicating additional contribution in this frequency region too.

The spin-echo decays taken at the maximum of the motionally narrowed FMM line for different temperatures reveal this contribution (Fig. 3a). For $`T`$ 63 K the decays are exponential, $`A=A_0\mathrm{exp}(2\tau /T_2)`$. The slope of the decays changes monotonically in the whole temperature range (taking the tail ends of the spin-echo decay curves for low $`T`$), reflecting the temperature dependence of $`T_2`$ for the FMM line. Moreover, the amplitude $`A_0`$ of the FMM line, extrapolated to $`\tau `$=0 (dashed lines in Fig. 3) is nearly constant in the limits of the experimental error $`\pm `$20%. The contribution of FMM line to the spectra at low temperatures is schematically shown in Fig. 2 by dotted curves. From the data in Fig. 3a it is clearly seen that the increase of the signal intensity below 63 K is due to an additional, fast relaxing contribution to the spin-echo decays. The possibility that this contribution originates from the domain walls can be safely ruled out as it follows from the form of the spin-echo decays taken at different values of radiofrequency (rf) power (Fig. 4a). It is seen that the optimal value of the rf field for the fast relaxing component is four times larger compared to the one for FMM line. Thus, faster relaxing regions possess smaller NMR enhancement contrary to expected behavior of the NMR signal from the domain walls. The spin-spin relaxation of Mn4+ line is strongly temperature dependent, corresponding spin-echo decay curves are not of a single-exponential type (Fig. 3b). The form of the spin-echo decay is rather insensitive to the change of the rf field around its optimal value in this case (Fig. 4b), indicating certain distribution of relaxation times in the regions with the similar magnetocrystalline anisotropy.

The 55Mn NMR suggests that in La1-δMnO3 two different types of ferromagnetic regions exist. In what follows these regions are called FMM and FMI clusters. The signal arising from the FMM clusters consists of a single motionally narrowed line, which is detected in relatively broad temperature interval thanks to the fact that corresponding spin-spin relaxation is only moderately fast. The FMI clusters give rise to two lines at about 320 and 390 MHz which can be detected only for $`T`$ 60 K because of the inhomogeneous and very strongly temperature dependent spin-spin relaxation. As we show below this picture is typical for all compounds studied. It is clear from Fig. 3 that the spin-spin relaxation strongly influences the amplitude of the NMR spectra even if the shortest $`\tau `$ is used. To make the NMR spectra of remaining three compounds more representative, we tried to correct the line’s amplitude for the measured spin-spin relaxation. The fits of corresponding spin-echo decays by two or single exponential were employed. We checked that a stretched exponential form of the fitting function, often used in the literature, would not affect our estimate of the temperature dependence of $`A_0`$.

Corrected NMR spectra of La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3, La0.94Mn0.98O3, and La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 are presented in Figs. 5, 7, 8, respectively. The correction is qualitative only as for low and high frequency peaks we used the decay of the spin-echo signal at the corresponding amplitude maxima and neglected the fact that it changes continuously with the frequency. As a result a discontinuity appears in the corrected spectra. For La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3, the situation is analogous to that discussed above for La1-δMnO3 except that the NMR enhancement was found to be only slightly larger for FMM compared to FMI clusters. This fact leads to a more pronounced contribution of the fast relaxing component to the spin-echo decay curves (Fig. 6), though the relative volume of the FMM clusters in the Ti-substituted sample, estimated from the 55Mn NMR, is about 10% of the total volume, while for La1-δMnO3 it is only 1.5-3%. For both compounds the FMM volume practically do not change with the temperature. The relaxation for the FMI signal is very strongly temperature dependent and evidently there exists a distribution of the relaxation rates. As a consequence when relaxation rate increases, increasing part of the nuclear spins relaxes before it could be detected. This is the reason for gradual decrease and final disappearance of the FMI NMR signal, though they were corrected (Fig. 5). The number of Mn spins in the FMI clusters is in fact preserved as the magnetic moment in the corresponding temperature interval changes only slightly (Fig. 1b).

A metal-insulator transition occurs in La0.94Mn0.98O3 compound ($`T_{MI}`$=115 K) and in La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 ($`T_{MI}`$=157 K) and this is reflected in the corresponding NMR spectra. For La0.94Mn0.98O3 (Fig. 7) the amplitude of the FMM signal decreases considerably below $``$150 K pointing to the reduction of the summary volume of the FMM clusters around the MI transition (see also Fig. 10b). Below $``$60 K the FMI clusters are detected by NMR, their behavior being similar to the one described above. A quite different situation is found in the La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 compound. Here the FMM regions give the dominating contribution to the NMR spectrum in the whole temperature interval studied. However, below the MI transition the FMM NMR spectrum no longer consists of a single gaussian line as an obvious tail starts to develop on the low frequency side of the line. As discussed in detail elsewhere  this corresponds to a charge and/or orbital ordering in the FMM regions. Analogously to other three compounds a FMI signal can only be detected below $``$60 K, but because of the dominance of FMM signal, only the Mn4+ resonance can be distinguished unambiguously.

The results of the analysis of the La1-δMnO3 and La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3 NMR spectra are displayed in Fig. 9. To obtain more complete information the 139La NMR was also studied for these compounds. The spin-spin relaxation on the La nuclei is strongly temperature dependent and it also becomes strongly inhomogeneous when the temperature increases, similarly as reported in . Shown in Fig. 9a are the values of $`T_2(T)`$ for 55Mn in FMI and FMM clusters as well as for the 139La where, as shown below, the contribution from the FMI clusters dominates at low temperatures, while at higher temperatures only the contribution from the FMM clusters remains. For Mn4+ and La, where the relaxation is nonexponential, the values of $`T_2`$ determined from the tail ends of the spin-echo decay are presented. As seen from Fig. 3b this provides an appropriate characteristic of the evolution of the spin-echo decay with the temperature.

The form of temperature dependence of $`T_2`$ in the FMM clusters is similar to the one found in the metallic-like manganites , though the the relaxation is considerably faster. The 55Mn relaxation in the FMI clusters increases rapidly with the temperature, its behavior below 60 K being remarkably similar to that of 139La. This fact strongly suggests that in the FMI clusters the origin of the relaxation is the same for both nuclei. In the metallic-like manganites the 55Mn relaxation is due to the fluctation of the hyperfine field induced by the hopping of the electron holes. This mechanism is, however, ineffective for the La nuclei and, as a consequence, the temperature dependence of $`T_2`$ for La is flat and quite different from that of the Mn nuclei in this case . The interconnection of the 55Mn and 139La relaxation in the FMI regions may be then understood as follows - the hopping of the holes is much slower comparing to the metallic manganites and the charge carriers may be represented as the JT small polarons, their movement being accompanied by a lattice excitation leading to a fluctuation of the electric field gradient (EFG) on the La sites. Thus both the fluctuation of the EFG on the La sites and the fluctuation of the EFG and the hyperfine field on the Mn sites have the same characteristic time $`\tau _{JT}`$ connected with the movement of the JT polaron which leads to similar temperature dependence of corresponding relaxations. Note that for the 139La relaxation this mechanism was recently proposed by Allodi et al. . These authors showed that at temperatures below 60 K the 139La NMR in FMI manganites corresponds to the ’slow fluctuation’ limit i.e. $`\tau _{JT}\gamma _nB_{hf}>1`$. Therefore, the two lines we observe in the 55Mn NMR spectra of the FMI clusters correspond to 3+ and 4+ valence states of the Mn ion, which is the same conclusion as reached in . Note that this situation corresponds to a slow hopping, rather then to a localization of the charge carriers as for the localized Mn3+ ions the NMR spectrum is strongly anisotropic and the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation time $`T_1`$ is very short. In this situation the spin-spin relaxation is governed by the spin-lattice channel with a limiting relation $`T_2`$=2$`T_1`$. In contrast, down to 22 K the spin-lattice relaxation for both Mn4+ and Mn3+ lines was checked to be relatively slow with a ratio $`T_1`$/$`T_2`$ $``$30-60 in all compounds in question. Rather surprising proximity of $`f_{res}`$ Mn3+ in the FMI clusters and $`f_{res}`$ of the motionally narrowed line in the FMM clusters could be connected with different local distortions in these two types of clusters.

The temperature dependence of the normalized amplitudes of the 55Mn signal from FMI (summing the Mn3+ and Mn4+ contributions) and FMM clusters are compared with the normalized amplitude of the 139La signal which was corrected for observed $`T_2`$ in Fig. 9b. It is clearly seen that above 60 K the La signal comes from the FMM clusters, while at lower temperatures its increase is connected with the contribution from the FMI regions. Note that the recovery of the signal from the FMI regions has a similar character for both Mn and La nuclei.

The results of the analysis of 55Mn NMR spectra in La0.94Mn0.98O3 and La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 are displayed in Fig. 10. The NMR relaxation in the FMI clusters is analogous to that described above, while its behavior in the FMM clusters is more complex and intriguing. Above the metal-insulator transition the temperature dependence of the relaxation is exponential-like as in metallic manganites though for La0.94Mn0.98O3 the magnitude of $`T_2`$ is considerably smaller, below $`T_{MI}`$ it becomes more flat for both compounds exhibiting a minimum at $``$50 K (Fig. 10a). This can be naturally connected to the slow fluctuations which in the same temperature region lead to the disappearance of the NMR signal in the FMI clusters. Such attribution of the minima in $`T_2`$ implies that there is a hyperfine coupling between the JT small polarons existing in the FMI clusters and 55Mn nuclear spins in the FMM clusters, i.e. the FMI and FMM systems are closely intertwined. It is interesting to note in this context that for La0.94Mn0.98O3 the decrease of the volume of FMM clusters (Fig. 10b) is accompanied by a reduction of the NMR enhancement factor approx. 1.7 times between 120 and 77 K, and at lower temperatures it becomes close to the NMR enhancement for FMI clusters. On the other hand, for La1-δMnO3 and La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3 samples no visible minima in $`T_2`$ for FMM signal is observed (Fig. 9a). This may imply that for these systems the minority FMM regions and the FMI matrix are less intimately intertwinned.

As mentioned above, a satellite of the Mn4+ line in the 55Mn spectrum at $``$300 MHz is observed in La1-δMnO3 (Fig. 2). The splitting $``$25 MHz is too large to be explained by the change of the dipolar or/and supertransferred fields it could be, however, caused by a redistribution of the spin density around specific Mn sites. Such redistribution, decreasing local spin density on the Mn site would lead to an increase of the transferred hyperfine interaction on the nearest La sites due to the enhanced Mn-O covalency. Indeed an unresolved satellite line on the high frequency side of the 139La spectrum is detected in this compound as seen in Fig. 11. Interestingly a similar high frequency tail of the La NMR was observed in the (LaCa) manganites , while a satellite in the 55Mn spectra could be found in the results reported for these compounds and for a self-doped LaMnO3 .

Let us present now a general picture of FMI state in manganites which can be inferred from the above described results. Perturbations in these systems hinder the motion of the charge carriers, reducing thus the strength of the DE interaction. Slower hopping of the electron holes increases the role of their interaction with the lattice and, as a result, the clusters where charge carriers can be viewed as JT small polarons grow at the expense of the metallic-like host. The resulting state may be ferromagnetic insulating if the polaronic regions dominate (La1-δMnO3, La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3), or the transition to metallic like conductivity with relatively high resistivity may occur through the percolation of the FMM clusters as their total volume increases with increasing temperature (La0.94Mn0.98O3). A specific case represents the system La0.84Sr0.16MnO3, where the insulator to metal transition in the FM state is due to the breakdown of charge and/or orbital ordering in the FMM regions. Accordingly, the resitivity in ferromagnetic metallic state is closer to the one in conventional manganites in this case. The minority polaronic regions are also detected for La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 and we expect that their role will increase for the lower doping. This may explain the different behavior of FMI state in La1-xSrxMnO3 for slightly different $`x`$, in particular for 0.1$``$x$``$0.14 the FMI state is stabilized under pressure and field , while for $`x`$=0.15, 0.16 the FMI state is suppressed by pressure . Further NMR experiments are required to clarify the problem.

The effect of the inhomogeneity on the motion of the charge carriers, that is the distribution of the activation energies of JT polaron hopping seems to be similar for all cases, leading to disappearance of the signals on Mn nuclei at $`T`$60 K. An analogous behavior was found in La0.825Ca0.175MnO3 . Also Mn4+ resonance in La0.9Ca0.1MnO3 was detected up to 77 K only . Further, the disappearance or reduction of the amplitude of signal on the La nuclei was reported for a number of self-doped and (LaCa) manganites at the temperature range 50-100 K in Refs.  and it is the same behavior as detected for La1-δMnO3 and La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3 samples in the present study. All these facts suggest that the polaronic state is an intrinsic response of the DE system to the perturbation rather then being specific for a given type of disorder. Thus at least for the FMI system with $`T_C`$150-200 K the ferromagnetic state is still controlled by DE through thermally activated hopping of small JT polarons. On the other hand even for strongly disordered La1-δMnO3 a small fraction of the fast hopping holes survives in the polaronic host. This rises the question whether the JT polarons can alone produce the long range ferromagnetic ordering, or a small fraction of the fast hopping holes is an essential component of the FMI state.

The NMR signals arising from the FMI clusters correspond to the slow fluctuation limit which means the freezing of the polarons on a time scale comparable to the duration of a NMR spin-echo experiment. Different mechanisms including quasistatical orbital  and charge ordering  have been suggested in the literature in order to explain the corresponding ground magnetic state. The quasistatical orbital hypothesis is based on observation of a high frequency tail in 139La NMR spectra of (LaCa) manganites at low temperatures. We also found such a feature in the La1-δMnO3 but it is absent in the La0.6Pb0.4Mn0.9Ti0.1O3 spectra. Also the corresponding satellite line in 55Mn spectra is detected only for La1-δMnO3. We conclude therefore that this can hardly serve as a characteristic feature of the FMI state. Moreover even a short range orbital ordering seems to be unlikely in the case of the strongly disordered La1-δMnO3. An alternative possibility may be a cluster-glass state. Such a state has been detected by specific heat and magnetic measurements in self-doped manganites LaMnO3+δ . In particular, authors of Ref.  observed low temperature peak of the imaginary component of susceptibility, the position of which strongly depends on the measuring frequency. Shown in Fig. 12 is the ac susceptibility of La1-δMnO3 sample. The frequency dependence of the real and imaginary part of the susceptibility as well as their absolute values are indicative of the cluster glass behaviour similarly as reported by Ghivelder et al. The situation may be similar to that observed in the lanthanum cuprates, where slowing down of the spin and/or charge fluctuations results in a strong peak in the spin-lattice relaxation for the La nuclei and in a loss of signal on the Cu nuclei and it is ascribed to the glassy magnetic state . It is interesting that for both Cu and La signals stretched exponential like spin-echo decay is observed in the slow fluctuation limit similarly to the one for FMI signals in manganites, while in the motionally narrowed limit, below a transition temperature $`T_{charge}`$, corresponding to the localization of charge-ordered stripes, a Lorentzian single-exponential spin-echo decay is detected .

## IV Conclusions

The study of 55Mn NMR in four manganites, in which the ferromagnetic insulating state is caused by diverse reasons, showed that in all cases the metallic-like (FMM, $`f_{hop}>\mathrm{\Delta }f_{res}`$) and insulating (FMI, $`f_{hop}<\mathrm{\Delta }f_{res}`$) regions coexist, though the ratio of their volumes differs considerably in different compounds. The dynamics of the nuclear spins in the FMI clusters is almost independent of the compound, pointing to similarity of the charge carrier dynamics, despite the different origin of the FMI state in the manganites studied. The temperature dependence of 139La and 55Mn relaxation in the FMI clusters is analogous which can be understood as due to the EFG fluctuation on the La nuclei and combined EFG and hyperfine field fluctuation on Mn nuclei connected with the motion of the Jahn-Teller polaron. In two compounds with the metal-insulator transition the temperature dependence of the relaxation rate in FMM and FMI clusters indicates that these two types of regions should be intertwinned on a microscopic scale. In the self-doped La0.94Mn0.98O3 the insulator to metal transition occurs because of the percolation of the FMM clusters, as their total volume increases with increasing temperature, while in La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 the reason is the breakdown of the charge and/or orbital ordering. Finally we suggest that the FMI state in manganites may be viewed as a cluster-glass, which is supported by the character of the temperature and frequency dependence of the ac susceptibility.

We are grateful to Y. Tomioka and to M. Greenblatt for providing La0.84Sr0.16MnO3 and La0.94Mn0.98O3 single crystals, respectively. We also thank to T. N. Tarasenko for sintering the La1-δMnO3 polycrystal, to V. D. Doroshev for measuring the resistivity of La1-δMnO3, to J. Englich and J. Kohout for providing the possibility of 139La NMR measurements at liquid helium temperature at the coherent spectrometer at the Charles University, Prague. This work was supported by the grant 202/00/1601 of Grant Agency of the Czech Republic and grant A1010202 of the Grant Agency of AS CR.


text:
# Exact calculation of the skyrmion lifetime in a ferromagnetic Bose condensate

## I Introduction

Macroscopic quantum tunneling(MQT), the tunneling of a macroscopic variable of a macroscopic system, has recently received much attention in studies of Bose-Einstein condensation(BEC). The tunneling of a condensate through an optical lattice potential Anderson ; Cataliotti  provides an atomic physics analogue of a Josephson junction array, while in principle the analogue of a single junction can be realized by two condensates confined in a double well potentialAndrews ; Smerzi . The recent experimental success in all-optical trapping of an atomic condensate optical  opens the prospect of studies into the internal structure of spinor BECs, including the possibility of creating some topological excitations top  such as skyrmions, monopoles, merons or axis-symmetric or non axis-symmetric vortices both for antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic condensates. Among various topological structures, the Mermin-Ho (MH)MH  and Anderson-Toulouse (AT)AT  coreless non-singular vortices are demonstrated to be thermodynamically stable in ferromagnetic spinor Bose-Einstein condensates with the hyperfine state $`F=1`$Mizushima . Skyrmions, which do not have an ordinary vortex core due to the spin degree of freedom, are also proposed in the spinor BEC RA ; BCS ; MZS and are shown not to be thermodynamically stable objects without rotationUsama1 ; Usama2 . Once created, the radius of such a skyrmion shrinks to zero so that one must detect and manipulate it in the duration of its lifetime.

The skyrmion texture in a ferromagnetic spinor condensate can be described conveniently by a position-dependent spinorUsama2

$$\zeta (𝐫)=\mathrm{exp}\left\{\frac{i}{S}\frac{\omega (r)}{r}𝐫𝐒\right\}\zeta ^Z.$$
(1)
The constant spinor $`\zeta ^Z`$ is the usual basis that diagonalizes the $`S_z`$ component of the spin matrices $`𝐒`$ and $`\omega (r)`$ is a real function of radius $`r`$ satisfying the boundary conditions $`\omega (0)=2\pi `$ and $`lim_r\mathrm{}\omega (r)=0`$. For the skyrmion with size of the order of the correlation length $`\xi =1/\sqrt{8\pi an_{\mathrm{}}}`$ or less, where $`n_{\mathrm{}}`$ is the average atomic density and $`a`$ the $`s`$-wave interatomic scattering length, the problem can be reduced to a nonlinear Schrödinger equation by an ansatz for $`\omega (r)`$ with the gradient term $`\left|\zeta (𝐫)\right|^2`$ in the Gross-Pitaevskii energy functional regarded as some external potential $`V(r)=\mathrm{}^2\left|\zeta (𝐫)\right|^2/2m`$. In the spin-1/2 case, for example, the latter takes the formUsama1

$$V(r)=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\frac{32}{\lambda ^2}\frac{\left(r/\lambda \right)^2\left[3+2\left(r/\lambda \right)^4+3\left(r/\lambda \right)^8\right]}{\left[1+\left(r/\lambda \right)^4\right]^4}$$
(2)
for an ansatz $`\omega (r)=4\mathrm{cot}^1[\left(r/\lambda \right)^2]`$, where the variational parameter $`\lambda `$ corresponds physically to the size of the skyrmion. The lifetime of the skyrmion is estimated by employing a WKB expression for the tunneling rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\frac{\omega _0}{2\pi }e^{S_c/\mathrm{}}`$, with $`S_c`$ the action through the barrier and $`\omega _0`$ the characteristic frequency of the harmonic potential which was used to approximate the potential $`V(r)`$. Due to the inaccuracy of the prefactor in the tunneling rate, which makes it difficult to give a reliable result for the decay rate, more efficient methods are needed for the investigation of this problem.

The instanton method as a powerful tool for dealing with quantum tunneling phenomena has generally been used in the evaluation of the splitting of degenerate ground states or the escape rate from metastable ground states Coleman . A method of evaluating quantum mechanical tunneling at excited energy states has been developed recently by means of periodic instantons and bounces Liang1 , which are characterized by nonzero energy and satisfy manifestly nonvacuum boundary conditions. Solvable models include, level splittings for the double well and sinh-Gordon potentials, decay rates for the inverted double well and cubic potentials, and energy band structures of the sine-Gordon and Lamé potentials Liang1 ; models . The off-centered potential barriers serve as another class of physical systems which permit analytical evaluation.

In this paper, we investigate the tunneling behavior of the skyrmion from the core to the outer region through an off-centered barrier. We first solve the equation of motion in the Euclidean version to find the classical configuration, which in our case is a bounce. In Section III we present the formalism of the periodic instanton theory for tunneling and calculate the decay rate exactly. The results obtained are applied to estimate the rate of shrinking of the skyrmion in the two-component ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate. Finally we summarize the main results.

## II Instantons for off-centered potential barrier

In this section we consider the instanton solution for the tunneling in an off-centered potential barrier as depicted in Figure 1 in which the potential

$$V(r)=\frac{Ar^2}{\left(1+Br^2\right)^2}$$
(3)
takes into account all the main features of the real barriers in the skyrmion excitation in the condensate, both in spin-1/2 and spin-1 condensates, for any reasonable ansatz $`\omega (r)`$. We observe here some essential conditions for this simplified model: First, as a function the ansatz for $`\omega `$ should decrease monotonically from $`2\pi `$ to $`0`$, since this will correspond to the smallest gradient energy for the spin deformations; correspondingly, this excludes any oscillation in the decrease of the potential $`V(r)`$ when $`r`$ tends to $`+\mathrm{}`$. Furthermore, $`V(r)`$ should be an off-centered potential barrier with a maximum height $`V(r_m)`$ at $`r=r_m,`$ and $`V(0)=V(+\mathrm{})=0`$. Finally, the potential should be an even function of $`r`$, and to avoid the point $`r=0`$ becoming a singularity, we have $`V^{\prime \prime }(0)>0`$ so that the harmonic oscillation frequency $`\omega _0`$ can be well defined as $`\sqrt{V^{\prime \prime }(0)/m}`$. The barrier (3) is just the simplest form fulfilling the above requirements, with parameter $`A`$ determining the barrier height, parameter $`B`$ the position of the barrier:

$$r_m=\sqrt{1/B},V_m=\frac{A}{4B},\omega _0=\sqrt{2A/m}.$$
(4)
To estimate the lifetime of the skyrmion, we calculate the tunneling rate from the core to the outer region through a barrier, the core atoms having a chemical potential $`\mu _{core}`$(hereafter abbreviated as $`\mu `$). The first step of the instanton method is the so-called Wick rotation of a phase space corresponding to a transformation to imaginary time $`\tau =it`$. After the transformation the Lagrangian is replaced by its Euclidean counterpart

$$=\frac{1}{2}m\left(\frac{dr}{d\tau }\right)^2+V(r).$$
(5)
The classical solution $`r_c`$ which minimizes the corresponding Euclidean action satisfies the equation

$$\frac{1}{2}m\left(\frac{dr_c}{d\tau }\right)^2V(r)=E_{cl},$$
(6)
which can be viewed as the equation of motion for a particle of mass $`m`$ with energy $`E_{cl}`$ in a potential $`V`$. For the tunneling process in the condensate, we assume that the skyrmion has decreased to a size for which the barrier is so high that the overlap between the core atoms and the external atoms is exponentially small. The classical turning points on both sides of the barrier can be determined by the relation $`V(r_{1,2})=\mu `$ as suggested in ref. Usama1

$$r_{1,2}=\frac{\sqrt{A/\mu }}{2B}\left(1\sqrt{14\mu B/A}\right),0<\mu <V_m.$$
(7)
The reason why we can handle a nonlinear problem by means of a linear equation of motion is that we discuss the tunneling behavior in the barrier region where the nonlinear interaction is negligibly small. Furthermore the condensate at the ground state can be well described by a macroscopic wavefunction with unique phase just as in the single particle case. However, there are obvious differences between the BEC tunneling system and the usual one-body problem, i.e. the nonlinear interaction contributes a finite chemical potential $`\mu `$, which replaces the integration constant $`E_{cl}`$ on the right hand side of eq.(6).

The classical configuration is a bounce which is the solution of eq.(6) and can be expressed in an implicit form

$$f(r_c)=\omega _c\tau .$$
(8)
Here we have assigned a characteristic frequency

$$\omega _c=\sqrt{\frac{2\mu B^2}{m}},$$
(9)
and the function $`f`$ takes the form

$$f(r_c)=\frac{1}{r_2}u_1+Br_2\left[E(u_1)k^2snu_1cdu_1\right]$$
(10)
where $`sn`$, $`cd`$ are two Jacobian elliptic functions, $`u_1=F(\phi ,k)`$ and $`E(u_1)`$ are the first and second kind of incomplete elliptic integrals with modulus $`k=\sqrt{1r_1^2/r_2^2}`$ respectivelyByrd , and

$$\phi =\mathrm{sin}^1\sqrt{\frac{r_2^2(r_c^2r_1^2)}{r_c^2(r_2^2r_1^2)}}.$$
(11)
The solution is subject to the following boundary conditions

$`\tau `$ $`=`$ $`0,r=r_1,`$
$`\tau `$ $`=`$ $`\pm T,r=r_1,`$ (12)
$`\tau `$ $`=`$ $`\pm T/2,r=r_2,`$
and exhibits periodic oscillation with imaginary time period

$$T=\frac{2}{\omega _c}\left(\frac{1}{r_2}K(k)+Br_2E(k)\right),$$
(13)
where $`K(k)`$ and $`E(k)`$ are the first and second kind of complete elliptic integrals with modulus $`k`$, respectively. In Figure 1 we depict the periodic oscillation of this pseudoparticle in two periods. A remarkable feature of this bounce configuration is that there is no vacuum analogue as in the case of the simple cubic metastable potential, the latter describing the tunneling behavior of a particle located at the ground state. As the energy $`E_{cl}`$ (or the chemical potential $`\mu `$) approaches zero, the barrier will become infinitely thick and the particle confined in the core region will be stable, with no possibility to tunnel to the outer region.

## III Exact Calculation of the Decay Rate

The tunneling rate of the condensate core atoms was given by a simple expression of the form $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=Pe^{W/\mathrm{}}`$, where $`P`$ and $`W`$ are coefficients which depend on the detailed form of the metastable potential. The quantity $`W`$ appearing in the exponential is the Euclidean action of the bounce solution and gives the dominant contribution to the tunneling rate, while the prefactor $`P`$ originates from the fluctuation around the classical configuration. For a rather rough estimate, $`P`$ is often taken to be the attempt frequency $`\omega _0/2\pi `$ as was done in ref.Usama1 . However, as we will show below, this simple evaluation is not accurate. This paper provides a powerful instanton tool to obtain this prefactor.

We recall for the sake of convenience the main ideas of the periodic instanton approach. Let’s first denote the wavefunction of the core atom condensate with chemical potential $`\mu `$ by $`\zeta (𝐫)\psi _\mu >`$, where $`\psi _\mu >=\sqrt{n(𝐫)}`$ originates from the density and satisfies the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for single component

$$H\psi _\mu >=\mu \psi _\mu >,H=\frac{\mathrm{}^2^2}{2m}+V(𝐫)+g\psi _\mu ^2$$
(14)
The effective external potential $`V(𝐫)`$ Usama2  comes from the gradient term of the spinor $`\left|\zeta (𝐫)\right|^2`$, and the term with coupling constant $`g`$ represents the strength of the interatomic interactions.

The tunneling effect leads to the decay of the metastable state. In the case under discussion, the nonconservation of an exponentially small probability current through the barrier requires that the chemical potential has an imaginary part proportional to the decay rate Affleck , $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\frac{2}{\mathrm{}}Im\mu `$. Consider the transition amplitude from the state $`\psi _\mu >`$ to itself due to quantum tunneling in Euclidean time period $`T`$. The amplitude is simply

$$A=<\psi _\mu |e^{HT/\mathrm{}}\psi _\mu >=e^{\mu T/\mathrm{}}.$$
(15)
In general the transition amplitude is calculated with the help of the path integral method as

$$A=\psi _\mu ^{}(r_f)\psi _\mu (r_i)𝒦(r_f,T;r_i,0)𝑑r_i𝑑r_f,$$
(16)
where $`r_f=r_c(T),r_i=r_c(0)`$ denote the end points of the bounce motion, which tend to the turning points $`r_1`$ (see the boundary condition eq. (12)). The wave functions $`\psi _\mu (r_i),\psi _\mu (r_f)`$ in the barrier region are specified in the WKB approximation asLandau

$`\psi _\mu (r)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{C}{\sqrt{\left|p\right|}}}\mathrm{exp}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle _{r_1}^r}p𝑑r\right),`$ (17)
$`p`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{2m(\mu V(r))},`$ (18)
with $`C`$ a normalization constant to be determined below. The Feynman kernel is defined as the summation over all possible classical paths $`r(\tau )`$

$$𝒦(r_f,T;r_i,0)=_{r_i}^{r_f}𝒟\{r\}\mathrm{exp}(S/\mathrm{}).$$
(19)
We know that the classical solution (8) which minimizes the action $`S`$ gives rise to the major contribution to the above kernel integral, while the quantum fluctuation around it results in a prefactor $`P`$. In the period $`T`$ the bounce eq. (8) completes one oscillation and crosses the barrier region twice, back and forth. The Euclidean action is thus calculated in this period as

$`S_E`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle (r,\dot{r})𝑑\tau }={\displaystyle _0^T}\left(m\left({\displaystyle \frac{dr_c}{d\tau }}\right)^2+\mu \right)𝑑\tau `$
$`=`$ $`W+\mu T,`$
while the so-called abbreviated Euclidean actionWeiss

$$W=2_{r_1}^{r_2}𝑑r\sqrt{2m(V(r)\mu )}$$
(21)
can be expressed in terms of elliptic integrals

$$W=\frac{4}{\omega _c}\left[\frac{Ar_1^2\mathrm{\Pi }(\alpha ^2,k)}{r_2\left(1+Br_1^2\right)}\frac{\mu }{r_2}K(k)\mu Br_2E(k)\right]$$
(22)
with $`\mathrm{\Pi }(\alpha ^2,k)`$ the complete elliptic integral with the parameter

$$\alpha ^2=\frac{k^2}{1+Br_1^2}.$$
(23)
It is obvious from the potential that $`A,B>0,`$ so $`0<\alpha ^2<k^2`$, the third elliptic integral is complete and belongs to the case IIIByrd .

The imaginary part of the chemical potential can be derived by considering the amplitude $`A`$ as the sum of contributions from any number of bouncesLiang1 . The zero bounce contribution results in the real part of the chemical potential

$$A^{(0)}=e^{\mu T/\mathrm{}}.$$
(24)
The one bounce contribution comes from the classical configuration with period $`T`$, and can be obtained by expanding the kernel (19) around the bounce (8)

$$A^{(1)}=iT\frac{C^2}{m}e^{W/\mathrm{}}e^{\mu T/\mathrm{}}.$$
(25)
Generalizing to the case of $`n`$ bounces straightforwardly, i.e., assuming the pseudoparticle completing $`n`$ oscillations in the period $`T`$, one has

$$A^{(n)}=\left(i\right)^n\frac{T^n}{n!}\left(\frac{C^2}{m}\right)^ne^{nW/\mathrm{}}e^{\mu T/\mathrm{}}.$$
(26)
The total transition amplitude is given by the sum over all bounce contributions

$$A=\underset{n}{}A^{(n)}=e^{\mu T/\mathrm{}}\mathrm{exp}\left(iT\frac{C^2}{m}e^{W/\mathrm{}}\right).$$
(27)
The imaginary part of the chemical potential is obtained by comparing eq.(27) with eq.(15)

$$Im\mu =\frac{\mathrm{}C^2}{m}e^{W/\mathrm{}},$$
(28)
which results in the decay rate

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }=\frac{1}{2}\frac{2}{\mathrm{}}Im\mu =\frac{C^2}{m}e^{W/\mathrm{}}$$
(29)
where the factor $`1/2`$ comes from the analytical continuation. Physically, this results from the assumption in the decay problem (and not in the MQC problem) that the wave that has tunneled will never return. Mathematically, it is due to the fact that the deformed contour runs from $`0`$ to $`i\mathrm{}`$, and not from $`i\mathrm{}`$ to $`i\mathrm{}`$Coleman .

The constant $`C`$ can be determined from the normalization of the wave function in the classically accessible region, which is connected with those in the barrier region throughLandau

$$\frac{C}{\sqrt{\left|p\right|}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{\mathrm{}}_{r_1}^rp𝑑r\right)\frac{2C}{\sqrt{\left|p\right|}}\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{1}{\mathrm{}}_{r_1}^rp𝑑r\frac{\pi }{4}\right).$$
(30)
We restrict the integration in the classically accessible region, i.e., in the potential well, $`r<r_1`$, since outside of this range $`\psi `$ decreases exponentially. Because the argument of the cosine in the wave function is a rapidly varying function, we can, with sufficient accuracy, replace the squared cosine by its mean value 1/2. This gives

$$C^2=\frac{m\omega }{2\pi }.$$
(31)
Inserting this into the decay rate we have

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }=\frac{\omega }{2\pi }\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{W}{\mathrm{}}\right],$$
(32)
where $`\omega `$ is the frequency of the classical periodic motion

$$\omega (\mu )=\frac{2\pi }{2m\frac{dx}{p}}=\frac{\pi }{\sqrt{2m}_0^{r_1}\frac{dr}{\sqrt{\mu V(r)}}}$$
(33)
and can be calculated as

$$\omega (\mu )=\omega _c\frac{\pi }{2}\left[\left(\frac{1}{r_2}+Br_2\right)K(k^{})Br_2E(k^{})\right]^1$$
(34)
with the complementary modulus $`k^{}=\sqrt{1k^2}`$. It must be recalled that the frequency $`\omega `$ is in general different for different levels, being a function of the chemical potential. We find that our expression for the decay rate eq.(32) is more accurate than that of Refs.Usama1 ; Usama2 , i.e., in the prefactor a chemical potential dependent frequency replaces the constant attempt frequency $`\omega _0`$. In Figure 2 we show the dependence of this frequency on the chemical potential; it decreases from $`\omega _0`$ as the chemical potential increases from 0. This factor suppresses the tunneling rate greatly when the chemical potential approaches the barrier top as shown in the figure, which would be expected to increase the lifetime of the skyrmion.

## IV Numerical Results for Skyrmions

The skyrmions in a ferromagnetic condensate are energetically unstable as shown in ref. Usama2 . The time scale on which the skyrmion shrinks may be evaluated for two cases: For a large skyrmion, its size decreases at a rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{large}18\mathrm{sec}^1\xi /\lambda `$ for $`{}_{}{}^{87}Rb`$ spin-1/2 condensate of central density $`10^{11}cm^3`$ and realistic experimental conditions. For skyrmions with sizes of the order or less than the correlation length $`\xi `$, the shrinking rate is determined by the tunneling rate from the core of the skyrmion to the outer region. In previous studies Usama1 ; Usama2  the authors estimated roughly the lifetime of this small skyrmion due to the tunneling process employing a WKB expression for the tunneling rate. In this section we thus reconsider the lifetime using the result derived above, with the modification originating from the prefactor included.

With an ansatz for $`\omega (\rho )`$ the problem is simplified to a nonlinear Schrödinger equation with the external potential of the off-centered form. For a different functional behavior of $`\omega (\rho )`$ it turns out that the effective potential will not be very different, as long as the ansatz satisfies the boundary conditions $`\omega (0)=2\pi `$ and $`lim_\rho \mathrm{}\omega (\rho )=0`$ and falls off monotonically. Here we compute the decay rates of different skyrmion textures with the same size, by taking into account two ansatze which were proposed in Ref. Usama2  as trial functions for simplifying the pair of nonlinear and coupled equations (eq. (8) and (9) in ref.Usama2 ). Namely

$`\omega _1(\rho )`$ $`=`$ $`4\mathrm{cot}^1[(\rho /\lambda )^2],`$ (35)
$`\omega _2(\rho )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{1+(\rho /\lambda )^2}},`$ (36)
where $`\rho =r/\xi `$ and $`\lambda `$ corresponds to the size of the skyrmion and is also given in units of $`\xi `$. Considering the large distance behavior of the coupling equations for $`n(\rho )`$ and $`\omega (\rho )`$, we see that for large skyrmions, the density fluctuations scale as $`1/\rho ^2`$, and so should the ansatze for $`\omega (\rho )`$. This is the reason why we would arrive at a non-physical result for a seemingly reasonable ansatz $`\omega _3(\rho )=2\pi \mathrm{sech}(\rho /\lambda )`$. We also check that non-monotonic behavior, i.e., oscillations in the falling of $`\omega (\rho )`$, for example, $`\omega _4(\rho )=2\pi \left[\frac{\mathrm{sin}(\rho /\lambda )}{\rho /\lambda }\right]^2`$, will inevitably lead to singularities in the density profile, though the effective potential holds an off-centered form. We show in Figure 3 these ansatze for $`\omega (\rho )`$ and their corresponding effective potentials $`V(\rho )`$.

One important parameter we should determine is the chemical potential of the core atoms because we should know at which level the atom will tunnel out. In principle one should solve the two-coupled nonlinear differential equations and derive the density profile and spinor(or the function $`\omega (\rho )`$). As mentioned already above, we employ alternatively a simple approach, i.e., by introducing the ansatz for $`\omega (\rho )`$. Then from the resulting density distribution we calculate the energy for a particular value of $`\lambda ,`$ then the core chemical potential can be calculated numerically by differentiating the energy with respect to the number of core atoms. Performing the calculation within a Thomas-Fermi approximation, which means in the expression for the energy we neglect the kinetic energy term , we finally obtain the chemical potential of the core atom $`\mu `$ for different values of $`\lambda `$ and ansatz.

For the ansatze $`\omega _1`$ and $`\omega _2`$ we calculate the corresponding chemical potential for $`\lambda =\xi `$. The shrinking rates of the corresponding skyrmions are calculated according to our decay rate expression eq. (32) with the action given by eq.(21) and the prefactor given by eq.(33). Figure 4 gives the tunneling rates as a function of the number of core atoms. The calculation was performed for a $`{}_{}{}^{87}Rb`$ spin-1/2 condensate with a scattering length of $`a=5.4nm`$.

We observe that Usama3  the correction resulting from the accurate prefactor $`\omega (\mu )`$ for $`\omega _1`$ is minor but significant for $`\omega _2`$. In Figure 2 we could generally take the range of the chemical potential from $`0`$ to $`V_m`$. Unlike the situation in a harmonic trap where the chemical potential $`\mu `$ increases with the number of condensed atoms as $`N^{2/5}`$ in the Thomas-Fermi approximation, in our case $`\mu `$ decreases with $`N`$ instead. This is because of the fact that the trap frequency (for $`\omega _1`$) $`\omega _0`$ is inversely proportional to the equilibrium skyrmion width $`\lambda _0`$, which in turn increases with N(apparently faster than $`N^{1/5}`$). Here $`\lambda _0`$ is determined from minimizing the total energy taking into account the outer region of the skyrmion. This restricts us to a special domain of $`\mu `$. For numbers of core atoms ranging from $`1`$ to $`20`$, $`\mu /V_m`$ ranges roughly from $`0.16`$ to $`0.04`$. In this interval $`\omega (\mu )/\omega _0`$ starts from $`0.985`$ for $`N_{core}=1`$ and ends at $`0.998`$ for $`N_{core}=20`$, which are almost indistinguishable in Figure 4. However, for ansatz $`\omega _2`$ the chemical potential (in units of $`\mathrm{}^2/2m\xi ^2`$) starts at $`42`$ for one core atom and ends at $`9.3`$ for $`20`$ core atoms. The corresponding correction is shown in Figure 4.

Till now there is still no clear experimental evidence for the skyrmions in the condensate. From the above calculations we see that the result for the decay rate depends crucially on the detailed form of the ansatz $`\omega `$. It remains a challenging task to solve the coupled nonlinear equations numerically, and to compare the results with those above.

## V Conclusion

We present here an accurate calculation of the tunneling rate for a class of off-centered potentials with a periodic instanton method. Apart from its application to the study of the stability of the skyrmion excitation in the two-component ferromagnetic condensate, the bounce for the off-centered potential barrier is itself a novel configuration from the viewpoint of the scalar field theory. The exact prefactor of the decay rate has been calculated and we found it depends on the chemical potential at the level of the atoms tunneling to the outer region. This modifies the result for the rough estimate of the lifetime by a constant attempt frequency $`\omega _0`$. One can easily find some similar off-centered potentials in other topological excitations such as vortices, monopoles, etc. Our periodic instanton formalism can be extended to the investigation of the lifetime and tunneling behavior in these systems. Further studies should include the properties of the quantum-classical transition of the decay rate when the chemical potential increases and surpasses the barrier height.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank Usama Al Khawaja and Henk Stoof for their help in numerical simulation, especially for providing us Figure 4. It is a great pleasure to thank J.-Q. Liang and Yaping Yang for useful discussions. Y.Z. acknowledges support by an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship. This research was supported in part by NSFC of China under grant No. 10175039 and No. 10075032.