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# Bursts, eclipses, dips and a refined position for the luminous low-mass X-ray binary in the globular cluster Terzan 6

## 1 Introduction

GRS 1747-312 is a transient X-ray source that was first detected in 1990 with ROSAT (Predehl et al. 1991) and Granat (Pavlinsky et al. 1994). Within the uncertainty of 1′ it was found to coincide with the globular cluster (GC) Terzan 6. Later this was confirmed by a more accurate ROSAT localization (Verbunt et al. 1995). Terzan 6 is a core-collapsed metal-rich GC which is offset from the Galactic center by 2$`\stackrel{}{.}`$6. The core and half-light radii are 3$`\stackrel{}{.}`$3 and 26″ (Trager et al. 1995), the distance 9.5$`{}_{2.5}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+3.3}`$ kpc (Barbuy et al. 1997; Kuulkers et al. 2003). It is heavily reddened with $`E(BV)=2.24`$ (Barbuy et al. 1997) which is among the highest values of GCs harboring luminous ($`>10^{36}`$ erg s-1) X-ray sources. There are thirteen luminous X-ray sources in twelve globular clusters in the Galaxy. Thus far, eleven of the thirteen bright GC X-ray sources were proven to harbor neutron stars accreting matter from a Roche-lobe filling low-mass companion star. The proof was delivered by the detection of type-I X-ray bursts. Such bursts are characterized by fast rises (less than a few seconds), slower exponential-like decays with e-folding decay times between a few seconds and a few tens of minutes, and blackbody spectra that exhibit cooling temperatures during the decay (e.g., Lewin et al. 1993; Strohmayer & Bildsten 2003). Type-I X-ray bursts are explained as thermonuclear flashes on the surfaces of neutron stars (Maraschi & Cavaliere 1977; Woosley & Taam 1976). GRS 1747-312 and AC211 in M15 (White & Angelini 2001) are the remaining cases for which the nature of the compact objects needs to be resolved. Knowledge about the nature is of interest for studies about the evolution of GCs (i.e., the probabilities of tidal capture and escape probabilities of the black holes versus the lighter neutron stars), particularly now that there is evidence that GCs in other galaxies do contain black hole X-ray binaries (e.g., Angelini et al. 2001 and Sarazin et al. 2001).

A previous study of mostly moderately sensitive X-ray data showed that the outbursts of GRS 1747-312 follow each other relatively quickly: In ’t Zand et al. (2000) detected five outbursts between 1996 and 1999 with recurrence times of about half a year. It was also established that GRS 1747-312 is one of now six known low-mass X-ray binaries that exhibit complete X-ray eclipses; the others are EXO 0748-676 (Parmar et al. 1986, Wolff et al. 2002), MXB 1658-298 (Cominsky & Wood 1984, Oosterbroek et al. 2001), Her X-1 (Tananbaum et al. 1972), XTE J1710-281 (Markwardt et al. 1999) and AX J1745.6-2901 (Maeda et al. 1996; Kennea & Skinner 1996). The measured orbital period for GRS 1747-312 is $`12.360\pm 0.009`$ hr, the eclipse duration 43 min.

We initiated a program of dedicated and sensitive target-of-opportunity (ToO) X-ray observations with RXTE to search for signatures regarding the nature of the accretor in GRS 1747-312, in particular type-I X-ray bursts which can unambiguously be identified as thermonuclear flashes in a neutron star atmosphere (like for the other eleven previously mentioned GC cases), and to measure more eclipses to improve the knowledge about the orbital period. The present paper concerns the full analysis of all X-ray bursts, the timing study of the eclipses, and a discussion of the recurrence behavior of the transient outbursts. Furthermore, we analyzed archival Chandra data to determine the most accurate X-ray position thus far. In connection to this we re-determined the cluster’s center of gravity from optical data and find that the X-ray source is within one core radius from the center.

## 2 ASM and PCA long-term light curves

The All-Sky Monitor (ASM) on RXTE monitors GRS 1747-312 for about ten months every year, for up to a few tens of times per day during 90 sec dwells. The sensitivity is typically a few tens of mCrabs1111 Crab unit is equivalent to $`2\times 10^8`$ erg cm-2s-1 (2–10 keV), for a power-law spectrum with photon index 2.1 per day of observations (Levine et al. 1996). Although limited, the sensitivity is sufficient to pick up outbursts by GRS 1747-312 which typically peak at 30 mCrab. The resulting light curve is presented in Fig. 1. Sixteen outbursts are readily recognized by eye, a few (maybe two) were probably missed at times when the sun passed by GRS 1747-312 and observations were impossible.

Since February 1999 the Proportional Counter Array (PCA, see next section) is employed in slow semi-weekly scans of a $`16\mathrm{°}\times 16\mathrm{°}`$ field centered on the Galactic center (Swank & Markwardt 2001). Fluxes of all point sources in this field are monitored, including that of GRS 1747-312. The observation frequency is one to two orders of magnitude less than that of the ASM observations, but this is compensated by a considerable gain in sensitivity. Fig. 2 shows the resulting light curve.

If we assume that two outbursts were missed in the ASM data (between outbursts VIII and IX and between XII and XIII), the average recurrence time is 136 days. However, the recurrence time varies between 76 days (between outbursts VII and VIII, see Fig. 1) and 171 days (between outbursts XI and XII). There is a clustering of recurrence times in the 130-142 day range: 7 out of 13 securely determined cases are in this range.

Nearly all outbursts have similar shapes and peak intensities of about 380 c s-1 per 5 PCUs or 2 ASM c s-1, corresponding to 0.03 Crab units; only two outburst are significantly different: the peak intensity of outburst VII is half the usual value and outburst XII is 25% larger. These deviations are accompanied with extremes in the recurrence time. Figure 3 shows the PCA scan light curve folded with respect to the times of maximum of the seven outbursts. All PCA-detected outbursts last 4 weeks except for the last outburst which had low-level activity preceeding the maximum for one week.

The average intensity from outburst to outburst may accurately be determined from those outbursts that were well sampled by the PCA bulge scans and were accompanied by unambiguous measurements of the recurrence time since the previous outburst. Five outbursts meet these criteria: X, XI, XII, XV and XVI (including the deviating outburst XII). We determined the photon fluence per outburst in a model-independent manner by 1) subtracting a background level as determined from 3 points preceeding the peak by at least 7 days; 2) multiplying each data point with the interval time to the next data point; and 3) summing all values. The resulting fluences divided by the recurrence time provides average intensities between outbursts ranging from $`50\pm 2`$ to $`58\pm 1`$ c s-1 per 5 PCUs. The fractional rms value over the 5 measurements is 5%.

## 3 RXTE-PCA pointed observations

The Proportional Counter Array (PCA; for a detailed description, see Jahoda et al. 1996) on RXTE consists of an array of 5 co-aligned Proportional Counter Units (PCUs) that are sensitive to photons of energy 2 to 60 keV with a total collecting area of 6500 cm2. The spectral resolution is 18% full-width at half maximum (FWHM) at 6 keV and the field of view is 1o FWHM. During any observation the number of active PCUs may vary between 1 and 5.

The data on GRS 1747-312 were obtained in 80 ToO observations that cover eight outbursts in 1998-2002, see Table 1. The total exposure time is 301 ks. Thirteen observations (OBSIds 50034-01-05 through 50034-01-06) were scheduled to search for an anticipated outburst, because the usual trigger observations by the ASM and PCA bulge scans were absent due to small angular distances to the Sun. Unfortunately, that outburst did not materialize. On four outbursts wide coverage was obtained (Feb 2000, Jul 2000, June 2001 and October 2001). Coverage of the other four outbursts was limited to one or two observations of eclipses. Many of the individual exposures were scheduled to cover either an eclipse ingress or egress and not the full eclipse. An eclipse is rather long and spending much of the exposure budget on that would have diminished the chances to detect an X-ray burst.

## 4 X-ray bursts

### 4.1 Detections

In outbursts XIII and XIV we were succesful in catching bursts. They were detected on June 17 (burst no. 1), October 29 (no. 2), November 2 (no. 3) and 6, 2001 (no. 4); all occurred during the decay phase of an outburst (see Fig. 3). While the bursts all have durations of 10 to 15 sec, they rather vary in profile and peak flux (see top panels of Fig. 4) and there is a slight concern that other sources in the field of view are responsible. Therefore, we applied a localization procedure to those bursts that employs the slight offsets that exist between PCUs (Strohmayer et al. 1997). The result is consistent, at the 90% confidence level, with all bursts coming from within 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5 of the position of GRS 1747-312. No other bursters are known within this region, although SAX J1752.3-3138 (Cocchi et al. 2001) is at the edge. Furthermore, no otherwise (transiently) bright X-ray sources are known in this region. Given that the bursts all occurred when GRS 1747-312 was in an active state, we conclude that they are from the same source.

Between mid 1996 and mid 2002 the Wide Field Cameras (WFCs; Jager et al. 1997) on BeppoSAX (Boella et al. 1997) were used to monitor a $`40\mathrm{°}\times 40\mathrm{°}`$ field at 5′ resolution around the galactic center during Feb-Apr and Aug-Oct of each year, with exposure times of 100 ksec to 1 Msec and observation frequencies of 4 to 67 per visibility window (e.g., In ’t Zand 2001). The total net exposure time is 7 Msec. The bandpass of the WFC is 2 to 28 keV, and the typical sensitivity is 10 mCrab in one observation. Part of these data were the basis of the detection of the 12.4 hr orbital period of GRS 1747-312 (In ’t Zand et al. 2000). The WFC observations revealed the detection of three burst-like features, with durations of less than 10 s and peak fluxes comparable to those of the brightest PCA-detected bursts. The bursts occurred during the decays of outbursts XI and XII (see Figs. 2 and 3); two were within half a day from each other. Although the data are of insufficient statistical quality to allow a detailed spectral analysis, they do confirm with high localization precision the bursting nature of GRS 1747-312.

### 4.2 Time-resolved spectroscopy

We carried out a time-resolved spectral analysis of the four PCA-detected bursts. Preliminary results were presented in Kuulkers et al. (2003). Event mode data with a resolution of 2-11 sec and 64 energy channels were binned to 0.25 through 4 sec, the background was subtracted as well as the pre-burst persistent emission from GRS 1747-312, a correction for deadtime was applied, and the spectral data were, between 2 and 20 keV, fitted with a single-temperature blackbody model and constant absorption ($`N_\mathrm{H}=1.4\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2, see In ’t Zand et al. 2000). Furthermore, spectral channels were combined so that each spectral bin contained at least 15 photons, to ensure Gaussian statistics and the applicability of the $`\chi ^2`$ statistic. The smallest number of spectral bins was 3. The results are summarized in Fig. 4, together with the raw photon count rate profiles. The spectral fits are generally acceptable. All bursts show a temperature profile that decreases during the decaying phase. The blackbody spectrum and the cooling during decay uniquely identify the bursts as type-I X-ray bursts which are explained as due to thermonuclear flashes in the upper layers of neutron stars (see §1).

Two of the bursts show a time profile for the emission area which is not constant and anti-correlated with temperature variations. This is indicative of photospheric radius expansion (by a factor of 3 for burst 2 and 6 for burst 3) due to near-Eddington fluxes during these events. Remarkably, the unabsorbed bolometric peak flux during these two bursts differs by a factor of 1.8.

### 4.3 Search for burst oscillations

We searched the four X-ray bursts for oscillations. Light curves were produced at the full time resolution of the data, $`2^{11}`$ s, starting $`5`$ s before the onset of the bursts and extending up to times when the intensity had decayed back to within $`10`$ % of the preburst value. We used data for the whole energy band, nominally $`260`$ keV, and from all the detectors that were on during each burst (three detectors during burst 1, 3, and 4; and four detectors during burst 2). We calculated one Fourier power spectrum of the whole burst for each burst, and power spectra of 1, 2, and 4-s intervals covering the whole duration of the bursts. In the case of the 1, 2, and 4-s power spectra, to increase the sensitivity to transient oscillations lasting less than the time length of the power spectra, we set the beginning of the interval for which we calculated the power spectrum 0.125, 0.250, and 0.5 s, respectively, after the beginning of the previous interval (the power spectra were therefore not independent). For the brightest burst (no. 3), we also calculated power spectra of 1) 0.25 and 0.5 s intervals, shifting by 1/32 and 1/16 s at a time; and 2) for $`>6`$ keV photons only.

We did not find any significant oscillation in the $`0.0251024`$ Hz frequency range in any of the bursts. Because of the rapid change in intensity during the bursts, we calculated upper limits separately for intervals during which the source intensity was larger than 90 % of the peak intensity, and the rest of the data. For the faintest burst (no. 1) the observed count rate was a factor of $`7`$ lower than for the brightest burst (no. 3), and therefore the upper limits vary considerably from burst to burst. The 95 % confidence upper limits for oscillations (for the method, see Vaughan et al. 1994) in bursts 1 and 4 during the bright and weak parts are 29.8 % rms and 63.8 % rms, respectively. For bursts 2 and 3, the 95 % confidence upper limits in the bright and weak parts are 11.5 % rms and 47.3 % rms, respectively.

In the 11 sources that currently are known to exhibit burst oscillations, the oscillations may reach high amplitudes ($`>`$50% rms) during short intervals (typically 0.1 s) if they occur during the rising phase and low amplitudes ($`<`$15%) during the decaying phase (for a recent review, see Strohmayer & Bildsten 2003). Therefore, our upper limits are not very constraining.

## 5 Eclipses and dips

Twelve eclipse ingresses and twelve egresses were observed, in twenty-one eclipses distributed over seven outbursts. Two eclipses were observed completely; for another one the ingress and egress was covered with a data gap during the eclipse; for the rest only the ingress or egress was covered. Timing of the transitions provides the means to improve the accuracy of the orbital ephemeris significantly. The orbital period thus far had only a 31 sec accuracy (In ’t Zand et al. 2000). More accuracy enables studies of changes in the orbital period. To increase the time baseline, we include the timing of the egress observed with the BeppoSAX Narrow Field Instruments on 1998 September 6 (In ’t Zand et al. 2000). Thus, the time baseline is 3.9 yr.

Ingress and egress last between 30 and 40 sec. We took the mid points between minimum and maximum flux as a reference for the timing of the eclipse transitions. The transition profiles appear too variable to trust methods that involve profile fitting. Therefore, we resorted to the following procedure. As a baseline, we used standard 1 data which provides 0.125 s resolution. The times were corrected to the solar system barycenter222using the faxbary routine in ftools version 5.2. We identified the eclipses in a light curve of the whole data set at a resolution of 1 s and selected data stretches of 200 s centered on the initial midpoint determinations (by eye) of ingress or egress. The light curves of the center 120 s parts of these data stretches are displayed in Fig. 5. One ingress had to be excluded from the analysis (at MJD 52060) because the data stream stopped before total eclipse was reached; one egress was excluded because the source was too faint (at MJD 51601). We determined the weighted average of the initial and final 50 s of each data stretch, except for the very last egress in which a small flare-like feature needed to be avoided (see Fig. 5). This excludes the eclipse transitions. The time when the flux reaches the halfway point between these two averages is determined by identifying the data point closest to this halfway flux, selecting the 17 data points nearest to this point, making a least-squares linear fit to these 17 data points, and finally calculating the interpolated time of the halfway point. This procedure was developed more or less empirically. It avoids complications due to changing transition profiles, particularly near the start and end of each transition. There may be a bias introduced by the variability of the source outside the eclipse but we estimate this to be negligible compared to the statistical accuracy. The statistical errors are of order 1 s (1$`\sigma `$) in this analysis. The results of the timing are given in Table 2. In addition to the timing of the mid-transition points, we determined a measure for the transition duration by calculating the time it takes the linear fit to bridge the weight averages of the initial and final 50 s stretches.

From these data we determine the ephemeris for the ingresses and egresses. The deviations from these solutions (the “$`OC`$” values) are presented in Table 2 and Fig. 6. Ten out of the twenty values are larger (in a positive or negative sense) than 3$`\sigma `$, but there are no clear trends in $`OC`$ and we conclude that there is no evidence for systematic changes in the orbital period. Rather we suspect that the larger-than-statistical errors are due to imperfections of the method. Assuming this is the case, we multiply the errors of the linear solutions of the ingresses and egresses by the square-root of the $`\chi _{\mathrm{red}}^2`$ values ($`\sqrt{6.6}`$ for the ingresses and $`\sqrt{15.7}`$ for the egresses), thereby effectively forcing $`\chi _{\mathrm{red}}^2`$ to 1. The ephemeris for the ingresses is $`T_\mathrm{i}(n)=\mathrm{MJD}(\mathrm{TDB})52066.259473(5)+0.514980311(8)n`$ and for the egresses $`T_\mathrm{e}(n)=\mathrm{MJD}(\mathrm{TDB})52066.289497(10)+0.514980275(15)n`$. The difference in the two derived orbital periods is 3.1 ms with an error of 1.7 ms. We take for the orbital period the weighted mean of 0.514980303(7) d. This is only 0.15 s shorter than the previous determination (In ’t Zand et al. 2000). We determine an upper limit to the period derivative of $`|\dot{P}/P|=1\times 10^{16}`$ s-1 or $`3\times 10^8`$ yr-1. The average eclipse duration is 2596(2) s (or 43.27 min, or 0.05834 orbital periods).

It may be that the larger-than-statistical errors in the mid-transition times are due to intrinsic properties rather than imperfections of the method. A similar phenomenon has been observed in EXO 0748–676. In addition to a long term period evolution trend, a significant amount of jitter is detected in that source (Wolff et al. 2002). Wolff et al. demonstrate that the eclipse phasing of EXO 0748–676 is compatible with a random walk process. They speculate that the companion star may become significantly tidally distorted, enough so that the times of eclipse ingress and egress can be shifted from their nominal value. The long term period evolution may be driven by spin-orbit coupling via the quadrupole moment of the companion star. In the present analysis we are only interested in the long-term orbital period evolution of GRS 1747-312 and we regard the jittering as noise.

The average transition profiles are given in Fig. 7. Surprisingly, there is a difference between the average ingress and egress. In particular, the average egress appears to progress about 1.3 times slower than the ingress. This is confirmed by the averages of the durations as given per transition in Table 2: they are $`27.3\pm 0.8`$ s for ingress and $`33.8\pm 1.3`$ s for egress.

In Fig. 8 we present the average ingress and egress profiles for two separate bands: 2–5 keV and 5–20 keV. These show that the eclipse lasts approximately 25 s longer in the low-energy band, indicating absorption in the atmosphere of the obscuring companion star. This is spectrally confirmed by the BeppoSAX measurement (In ’t Zand et al. 2000).

We tested the transition profiles in the two bandpasses with a simple model involving an isothermal spherical atmosphere in hydrostatic equilibrium where the density is an exponential function of height, assuming a constant source spectrum that is equal to that measured with BeppoSAX (In ’t Zand et al. 2000). This model turns out to give a good representation of the data. Both the low and high-energy profiles are well reproduced as is the lag between them. We find neutron star traverse times over the scale height of $`6.0\pm 0.5`$ and $`8.5\pm 0.5`$ s for the average ingress and egress respectively, with goodness-of-fits of $`\chi _{\mathrm{red}}^2=0.893`$ (400 dof) and 0.989 (386 dof) respectively. With the eclipse duration this results in upper limits for the true scale height in terms of stellar radius of 0.2 to 0.3%. We also tested linearly extended sources instead of a point source, as would be expected for a nearly edge-on accretion disk, and find fits that are only marginally better by about 3% in $`\chi _{\mathrm{red}}^2`$, with source-size equivalent traverse times of 14 and 20 s and scale heights only 0.5 to 1.0 s smaller than for a point source. We regard the evidence for an extended source as weak.

As in other eclipsing low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs; EXO 0748-676, MXB 1658-298, XTE J1710-281), GRS 1747-312 shows dipping activity (for an example, see Fig. 9). Dips are thought to be caused by coverage of the emission region by irregular thickening of the accretion disk (White & Swank 1982). Thanks to the large inclination angle, inferable from the occurrence of eclipses, the presence of dips is not unexpected. Dipping activity was observed during outbursts XI (during two different binary orbits), XII (one orbit) and XIV (one orbit). The orbital phase with respect to mid-eclipse was between 0.58 and 0.74. The dip depth never exceeds 70%, indicating that the emission region is never completely obscured by the disk irregularities. The dips last typically a fraction of a minute.

## 6 Accurate positions of X-ray source and cluster center

Chandra observed GRS 1747-312 on March 9, 2000, from 5:44:44 to 8:41:16 UT (PI J. Grindlay). This observation was triggered by our RXTE observations showing the source to be active. The High Resolution Camera HRC-I was used for a total net exposure time of 9964 s. No grating was used. The HRC-I is a microchannel plate detector with a field of view of 30′$`\times 30`$′ and an angular resolution of 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$4 (FWHM), a bandpass of 0.1 to 10.0 keV with 227 cm2 effective area at 1 keV, and minimal spectral resolution (Murray et al. 2000). We extracted the data from the public archive for an analysis of the position. Such an analysis was performed previously by Revnitsev et al. (2002). However, we anticipated to improve on that by attempting an astrometric solution of the image through X-ray detections of cataloged stars.

GRS 1747-312 was significantly detected. A total of 15$`\times 10^3`$ photons were detected and the intensity was $`1.50\pm 0.01`$ s-1. Slow variability was observed with a $`20`$% modulation around the average on a time scale of 103 s. Applying the ’celldetect’ tool from CIAO (version 2.2) to the image, we find four more point sources with a net number of photons in excess of 10, and three sources between 6 and 10. We determine the pixel positions of all eight sources. Using the satellite aspect solution and requiring a match within 1″ (the absolute astrometric accuracy is quoted by the Chandra team as 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$6 to 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$8 at 90% confidence), we tentatively identify three X-ray detections of stars in the USNO-B1.0 catalog (Monet et al. 2003). They are USNO0587-0575246 ($`b_{\mathrm{USNO}}=12.46,r_{\mathrm{USNO}}=11.45`$), USNO0587-0575103 (14.79 and 13.32) and USNO0586-0575381 (16.10 and 14.19). From the same optical image we determined that the probability for chance coincidence of a star brighter than $`r_{\mathrm{USNO}}=14.19`$ with one 1″-radius circle is $`7\times 10^4`$ and we conclude that the identifications are correct. We determined (X-ray minus optical) offset corrections of $`0\stackrel{}{.}68\pm 0\stackrel{}{.}12`$ and $`0\stackrel{}{.}53\pm 0\stackrel{}{.}12`$ in $`\alpha _{2000.0}`$ and $`\delta _{2000.0}`$ respectively. Applying these corrections, we arrive at a position for GRS 1747-312 of $`\alpha _{2000.0}=17^\mathrm{h}50^\mathrm{m}46\stackrel{}{.}862`$, $`\delta _{2000.0}=31^\mathrm{o}16\mathrm{}28\stackrel{}{.}86`$ with an error radius of 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$4 (95% confidence). This position is consistent with the position determined by Revnitsev et al. (2002), but has an 1.8 times better accuracy (when compared at the same confidence level).

On 17 May 1994, optical images of Terzan 6 were acquired with the 3.55 m New Technology Telescope (NTT) of the European Southern Observatory, using the SUSI-1 camera which employed a 1024$`\times `$1024 CCD at the Nasmyth focus B, giving a plate scale of 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$13 per pixel (Barbuy et al. 1997). These images were taken under excellent seeing conditions (0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$6) in $`I`$ (300 s), $`V`$ (480 s) and Gunn $`z`$ (120 s) filters. We carried out astrometry of the $`V`$ and $`z`$ plates relative to the USNO-B1.0 catalog. Centroids of observed star profiles were determined by Gaussian fitting. The astrometric solution consisted of a zero point position, plate scale, and position angle on the sky. 14 catalog stars were identified in the $`V`$ image with deviations less than 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$4, and 19 stars in the $`z`$ image with deviations less than 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$6. The rms values of the measured star positions with respect to the cataloged positions is 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$20 in right ascension and 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$14 in declination (0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$25 and 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$24 respectively for $`z`$). Both solutions are less than 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$15 apart.

The position of the center of Terzan 6 that is used throughout the literature ($`\alpha _{2000.0}=17^\mathrm{h}50^\mathrm{m}46\stackrel{}{.}44`$, $`\delta _{2000.0}=31^\mathrm{o}16\mathrm{}31\stackrel{}{.}4`$) is due to the original discovery plate (Terzan 1968, see also Terzan 1971). From comparison with Fig. 10 it is clear that this position is substantially off the densest concentration. Therefore, we re-determined the center through the iterative centroiding method introduced by Auriere (1982; see also Picard & Johnston 1994). In this method the (unweighted) average position is taken over all resolved stars within a certain radius from a trial position. This average becomes the trial position in the next iteration. The procedure is repeated until the average converges. For Terzan 6, a radius of 15″ was chosen on the basis of the cluster’s appearance in our image. The resulting center is $`\alpha _{2000.0}=17^\mathrm{h}50^\mathrm{m}46\stackrel{}{.}854`$, $`\delta _{2000.0}=31^\mathrm{o}16\mathrm{}29.38\stackrel{}{.}4`$ with an uncertainty of 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$6 as evaluated by testing different values for the radius. The ultimate determination of the center is based on the average position of 219 stars. This newly determined center is 5$`\stackrel{}{.}`$7 away from the old position. We note that this correction does not affect the structural parameters of the cluster because those were determined completely from relative positions (Trager et al. 1995).

The Chandra position of GRS 1747-312 is 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5 from our determination of the center which is equivalent to 0.2 core radii. This confirms the suggestion from the sub-day orbital period and the moderately high collision number (Verbunt 2001) that this binary was formed due to tidal capture or exchange encounter.

No sources belonging to Terzan 6 other than GRS 1747-312 were unambiguously detected in the Chandra image. Outside the point spread function of GRS 1747-312, the upper limit for the intrinsic luminosity for a 0.3 keV black body spectrum with $`N_\mathrm{H}=1.4\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 is approximately $`1.3\times 10^{33}`$ erg s-1. The point-spread function is roughly given by a Gaussian profile with a standard deviation of 0$`\stackrel{}{.}`$4. It degrades the sensitivity to faint sources by a factor of more than two for distances closer to GRS 1747-312 than 1$`\stackrel{}{.}`$8.

## 7 Discussion

### 7.1 Outburst behavior

The 2–10 keV peak flux is mostly about 7$`\times 10^{10}`$ erg cm-2s-1. Broad-band measurements during outburst VIII allowed an extrapolation to 0.1–200 keV of 1.0$`\times 10^9`$ erg cm-2s-1 (In ’t Zand et al. 2000). The outburst duration is always 4 weeks. The fractional rms in the average intensity from outburst to outburst is 5%. If we assume that the spectrum does not change drastically from outburst to outburst, the luminosity averaged over all times (outburst as well as quiescence) is 1.5$`\times 10^{36}`$ erg s-1 and the equivalent mass accretion rate, assuming 100% efficiency of transforming the liberated gravitational energy to radiation, is about 1.2$`\times 10^{10}`$ Myr-1 (i.e., 1% of Eddington). One accurately measured outburst (XII) was delayed by 25% of the average wait time. The peak of that outburst was also 25% larger while the duration was the same, so that the average luminosity remained constant. It must be a rather constant mass transfer rate from the companion star to the accretion disk which is responsible for the regular outburst behavior. A similar behavior is observed in the Rapid Burster in the GC Liller 1: it shows a quasi-periodic outbursts whose period of about 210 days suddenly switched to 100 days in Nov. 1999 in combination with a factor-of-two decrease in the peak flux (Masetti 2002). Another well-documented case is Aql X-1, with at least 31 outbursts detected thus far (e.g., S̆imon 2002), but its recurrence time is not so well defined and there does not seem to be as strong a correspondence between recurrence time and fluence per outburst.

The transient nature that many LMXBs exhibit is generally thought to be related to thermal-viscous instabilities in the accretion disk where the thermal conditions are predominantly determined by heating through X-rays from the central object (e.g., Smak 1983; Osaki 1996; van Paradijs 1996; Lasota 2001, S̆imon 2002). These instabilities become important and the source becomes transient if the average X-ray luminosity is below a critical value (van Paradijs 1996, see also White et al. 1984). The onset of an outburst occurs if the surface column density at any location in the accretion disk exceeds a critical value. As a consequence the temperature rises, the viscosity increases, and heating fronts travel in and outward through the disk. Depending on the radius of the ignition, differently sized outbursts may result (outward fronts are expected to be less efficient, possibly resulting in smaller outbursts if the igition occurs in the inner parts of the disk). Furthermore, the ignited parts of the disk may irradiate other cool parts of the disk and ignite those. The increased viscosity results in a depletion of the accretion disk which may be complete or partial. The latter is more likely to happen if the ignition radius is small. The recurrence time, peak flux and outburst duration depend on quite a number of parameters and effects, but it seems obvious that the quasi-periodicity at least testifies to a rather stable mass transfer rate from the secondary. The similar recurrence times of GRS 1747-312, Aql X-1 and the Rapid Burster probably reflect similar orbital periods (19 hrs for Aql X-1, unknown for the Rapid Burster), similar mass transfer rates and the fact that they are all neutron star systems without considerable truncation of the disks that may result in decades-long recurrence times such as in black hole systems (e.g., Dubus et al. 2001).

### 7.2 Eclipse timing and evolutionary constraints

As illustrated by Horne et al. (1985), the eclipse duration expressed as a fraction of the orbital period constrains the mass ratio and inclination. For the low-mass X-ray binary in Terzan 6 we find that the inclination must be higher than $`74\stackrel{}{.}5`$, and the mass of the mass donor must be higher than 0.07 times the mass of the neutron star. Thus, for a canonical 1.4 M neutron star, the lower limit on the mass of the secondary is 0.1 M; a likely upper limit is 0.8 M. Kepler’s third law yields a semi-major axis of 3.0 to 3.6 R for these masses. This implies an average orbital velocity of the secondary with respect to the primary between 296 and 356 km s-1.

The eclipse timing resolves an orbital period that has remained constant within $`|\dot{P}/P|<3\times 10^8`$ yr-1 for almost 4 years. This corresponds to a lower limit to the time scale of any orbital period change of $`3\times 10^7`$ yr which is mildly constraining. Only one LMXB has evidence of a shorter time scale: $`P/\dot{P}=2\times 10^7`$ yr in EXO 0748-676 (Wolff et al. 2002).

We may compare these observational constraints with theory as follows. In a globular cluster, the most massive star still on the main sequence has a mass of about 0.8 M. A main-sequence star of this mass, or lower, cannot fill its Roche lobe in an orbit of 0.515 d. Thus, the donor of GRS 1747-312 must be larger than a main-sequence star of the same mass. If it is larger due to stellar evolution into a (sub)giant, then its initial mass was the turnoff mass of 0.8 M. For a neutron-star mass of 1.4 M and a companion of 0.8 M, the orbital period gives a distance between the two stars of 3.6 R, and a Roche lobe for the donor of 1.2 R. At such a radius, a subgiant expands on a time scale longer than $`R/\dot{R}10^{10}`$ yr. If the donor has already reduced its mass by mass transfer to the neutron star, it Roche lobe will be somewhat smaller (e.g. 0.9 R at a mass of 0.4 M), and the expansion time scale longer. For conservative mass transfer, in which no mass or angular momentum is lost from the binary, the time scales for the mass transfer and for changes in the orbital period are set by the expansion time scale of the donor, i.e. $`M/\dot{M}P/\dot{P}R/\dot{R}`$. The time averaged mass transfer rate of $`\dot{M}1.4\times 10^{10}M_{}`$ yr-1 derived above, and the limit of the period change $`\dot{P}/P<3\times 10^8`$ yr-1 are both compatible with the expansion rate of a subgiant donor star. The low mass transfer rate furthermore indicates that the time scale for angular momentum loss from the binary through magnetic braking is longer than $`10^{10}`$ yr.

An alternative explanation for an expanded donor star would be that the donor still contains a fair amount of thermal energy left over from its capture by the neutron star (e.g., Verbunt 1994). Since the life time of such a source would be set by its thermal time scale, this possibility is less probable a priori; and the arguments above show that it is not necessary as all the properties of the low-mass X-ray binary may be explained with an ordinary subgiant donor.

### 7.3 Eclipse profile

The transition profiles in GRS 1747-312 are remarkably stable, when compared to other LMXBs. Ingress and egress durations range from -30 to +30% with respect to the average. In EXO 0748-676, for instance, the variation is 100% (Wolff et al. 2002). The stability may be due to either a relative stability of magnetic activity on the secondary, or a relative smoothness of the accretion process (and associated X-ray irradiation of the secondary).

We observed a difference in the eclipse duration at 2–5 keV and 5–20 keV energies and modeled this by assuming an isothermal spherical atmosphere in hydrostatic equilibrium where the density is an exponential function of height. This simple model reproduces the eclipse duration difference for a scale height, as projected on the path of the neutron star line of sight through the atmosphere, of $`2.0\times 10^3`$ km for the ingress and $`2.8\times 10^3`$ km for the egress. The model reproduces the curvature on both ends of the transition profiles and the spectral change over the transition. The true scale height depends on the precise inclination angle. If the primary and secondary are 1.4 and 0.8 M respectively, the inclination angle would be 74$`\stackrel{}{.}`$5, the secondary radius 1.2 R and the true scale height $`1.2\times 10^3`$ km. This is about 2 times larger than expected, but this could be explained by X-ray irradiation of the secondary.

The $`25`$% difference between the average ingress and egress duration has not been reported before in any other LMXB eclipser. Perhaps the relative stability of the transitions is what makes this measurement possible in this particular source. The difference is indicative of a similar difference in the atmosphere’s scale height between the leading and trailing hemisphere of the secondary. Day et al. (1988) predicted such a scale height difference, in the same sense, from a Coriolis force acting on supersonic flows on the secondary’s surface as invoked by X-ray irradiation. This will increase the scale height on the trailing hemisphere while decreasing it on the leading hemisphere. Whether this model is viable to GRS 1747-312 is hard to verify without the detection of the secondary star (note that the secondaries have been detected in the well-documented eclipsers Her X-1, MXB 1658-298 and EXO 0748-676).

### 7.4 Bursts

The first-time detection of type-I X-ray bursts unambiguously proves that the compact object in GRS 1747-312 is a neutron star. This leaves AC211 in M15 as the sole bright LMXB in a Galactic globular cluster for which no nature has been determined of the compact object. Finding bursts in this object is going to be at least as difficult as for GRS 1747-312, because it also is a high-inclination system. In fact, the central source is obscured by the accretion disk rim all the time (e.g., Ilovaisky et al. 1993) and bursts can only be detected indirectly through scattered X-rays. Another complication for AC211 is that it is accompanied by another bright and bursting LMXB at a distance of only 2$`\stackrel{}{.}`$7 (White & Angelini 2001) so that only Chandra and XMM-Newton will be able to localize bursts accurately enough.

All seven bursts from GRS 1747-312 are relatively short suggesting that the flashes occur in a hydrogen-poor/helium-rich layer which, according to burst theory (Fujimoto et al. 1981), must have been formed by stable hydrogen fusion. For that to happen, the accretion rate must be higher than about 1% of Eddington. This value is consistent with the observations. The highest observed peak flux translates to a luminosity of $`(2.3_{1.1}^{+1.9})\times 10^{38}`$ erg s-1 for a distance of 9.5$`{}_{2.5}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{+3.3}`$ kpc (Kuulkers et al. 2003). This value is consistent with the Eddington limit as expected for a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. The four bursts that were well measured with the PCA have the following interesting characteristics:

1. there is a large range of peak fluxes from 0.2 to $`2.1\times 10^8`$ erg cm-2s-1;
2. the two radius expansion bursts have fast rise times below 1 s, while the others have slower rise times of at least 2 s. In fact, burst no. 1 has a rise and decay of similar duration which is atypical for a type-I burst;
3. one radius-expansion burst (no. 3) has a 1.8 times higher unabsorbed bolometric peak flux than the other;
4. the minimum apparent radius of a spherical blackbody is as low at 4 km.

We suspect that at least three of these atypical observations are associated with the high inclination angle of the binary. This suspicion is motivated by a recent observation of MXB 1658-298 by Wijnands et al. (2002). They observed two bursts during a period of dipping activity which had peak intensities that were four and ten times smaller than of most ordinary bursts and which showed slow rises that were similar to the decay times. We should point out that there is one characteristic which makes the two MXB 1658-298 bursts different from the GRS 1747-312 ones: they were separated by merely (a record) 50 s which suggests that incomplete burning (e.g., Fujimoto et al. 1987) may have been important in determining some of the burst characteristics. Short recurrence times can be excluded for GRS 1747-312: the data coverage around the two small bursts without additional bursts is at least 1200 s. However, it is our impression that the short recurrence time does not explain the slow rise times. No dipping was observed around the bursts of GRS 1747-312, but we note that the two small bursts were observed at orbital phases of 0.87 (burst 1) and 0.49 (burst 4) that are more favorable for obscuration effects than for the bright bursts (the phase is 0.28 for burst 2 and 0.21 for burst 3).

Regarding the factor-of-1.8 peak flux difference between the two radius expansion bursts, this is similar as in another well-measured system. Galloway et al. (2003) were able to gather observations of 61 photospheric radius expansion bursts from 4U 1728-34 (=GX 354-0). They found a variation in the peak flux by a factor of 1.5 which is correlated with spectral variations of the persistent emission. They suggest that a variation in the geometry of the accretion disk may be at work, for instance precession of a warped disk.

###### Acknowledgements.

We are indebted to Evan Smith for his tireless efforts to schedule the many time-constrained TOO observations that led to this paper. JZ and EK acknowledge financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).


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# Public channel cryptography by synchronization of neural networks and chaotic maps

## Abstract

Two different kinds of synchronization have been applied to cryptography: Synchronization of chaotic maps by one common external signal and synchronization of neural networks by mutual learning. By combining these two mechanisms, where the external signal to the chaotic maps is synchronized by the nets, we construct a hybrid network which allows a secure generation of secret encryption keys over a public channel. The security with respect to attacks, recently proposed by Shamir et al, is increased by chaotic synchronization.

Two identical dynamical systems, starting from different initial conditions, can be synchronized by a common external signal which is coupled to the two systems Sync . It has been shown that even chaotic systems can be synchronized although the correlation between external signal and the common dynamics still remains chaotic Chaos . This phenomenon has been applied to private-key cryptography: If two partners A and B want to exchange a secret message, A adds her message to a synchronized signal while B subtracts it. Of course, A and B need a common secret (private key), namely, the algorithm and the parameters of their identical chaotic system.

Synchronization has recently been observed in artificial neural networks as well. Two networks which are trained on their mutual output can synchronize to a time-dependent state of identical synaptic weights MeKiKa . This phenomenon has been applied to cryptography as well KaKiKa . In this case, the two partners A and B do not have to share a common secret but use their identical weights as a secret key needed for encryption. The secret key is generated over a public channel. An attacker E who knows all the details of the algorithm and records any communication transmitted through this channel finds it difficult to synchronize with the parties, and hence to calculate the common secret key. Synchronization by mutual learning (A and B) is much faster than learning by listening (E).

Neural cryptography is much simpler than the commonly used algorithms which are mainly based on number theory St  or on quantum mechanics Qm . In fact, it can be expressed as synchronization of an ensemble of random walks with reflecting boundaries KiKa . But the question remains: Is it secure? Does an algorithm exist which can decipher the secret key from the transmitted information? For the set of parameters used in Ref. KaKiKa  it has been shown that such algorithms do exist Sh . In an ensemble of attackers there is a nonzero chance that some of them will synchronize to the two partners. However, it has recently been shown that the probability of a successful attack can be made exponentially small MiPeKaKi ; it decreases like $`\mathrm{exp}(yL)`$ where the parameter $`L`$ (stands for the depths of the weights of the networks) is defined below. Hence for large values of $`L`$ the computational time is so long that an attack is infeasible, meaning that neural cryptography remains secure. Of course, similar to classic key-exchange protocols, one cannot prove that there does not exist any other algorithm which cracks the system.

In this Letter we combine neural cryptography with chaotic synchronization. Both partners A and B use their neural networks as input for the logistic maps which generate the output bits to be learned. By mutually learning these bits, the two neural networks approach each other and produce an identical signal to the chaotic maps which – in turn – synchronize as well, therefore accelerating the synchronization of the neural nets.

We show that the security of key generation increases as the system approaches the critical point of chaotic synchronization, and it is possible that the exponent $`y`$ diverges as the coupling constant between the neural nets and the chaotic maps is tuned to be critical.

We start with the parity machine (PM) with $`K`$ hidden units which are arranged in a tree architecture as shown in figure 1 for $`K=3`$. Each hidden unit has $`N`$ discrete weights $`w_{k,j}`$ which can take the values $`\{L,L+1,\mathrm{}L1,L\}`$. At every training step the network receives an input vector consisting of $`KN`$ components $`x_{k,j}\{+1,1\}`$. Each hidden unit generates a local field

$$h_k=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}w_{kj}x_{kj}$$
(1)
Previously, the output bit of each hidden unit was the sign of the local fieldKaKiKa . Now we combine the PM with chaotic synchronization by feeding the local fields into logistic maps:

$$s_k(t+1)=\lambda (1\beta )s_k(t)(1s_k(t))+\frac{\beta }{2}\stackrel{~}{h}_k(t)$$
(2)
Here $`\stackrel{~}{h}`$ denotes a transformed local field which is shifted and normalized to fit into the interval $`[0,2]`$comment . For $`\beta =0`$ one has the usual quadratic iteration which produces $`K`$ chaotic series $`s_k(t)`$ when the parameter $`\lambda `$ is chosen correspondingly; in this Letter we use $`\lambda =3.95`$. For $`0<\beta <1`$ the logistic maps are coupled to the fields of the hidden units. It has been shown that such a coupling leads to chaotic synchronizationChaos : If two identical maps with different initial conditions are coupled to a common external signal they synchronize when the coupling strength is large enough, $`\beta >\beta _c`$.

Now we consider key generation between two partners A and B. Each partner uses a PM with logistic maps. Hence each partner has a time series of $`KN`$ weights $`w_{kj}^{A/B}(t)`$, $`K`$ local fields $`h_k^{A/B}(t)`$ and $`K`$ signals $`s_k^{A/B}(t)`$. In addition, a common external sequence of random inputs $`x_{kj}(t)`$ is presented to both of the partners. This sequence of inputs is public, as well as the complete architecture and the parameters $`\beta `$ and $`\lambda `$. Each partner generates random initial weights $`w_{kj}^{A/B}(t=0)`$ which are not public and not known to each other.

In the original version of neural cryptography KaKiKa  the synchronization of the weights, $`w_{kj}^A(t)=w_{kj}^B(t)`$ for $`t>t_{sync}`$ was achieved by training, for instance, in the simplest symmetric version the training step reads

$$w_{kj}^A(t+1)=w_{kj}^A(t)x_{kj}(t)\tau _k(t)$$
(3)
for partner A and the same for partner B and $`\tau _k(t)`$ is defined in eq. 4. When a weight moves outside of the allowed interval it is reset to the corresponding boundary value $`\pm L`$. Note that the equation above may be considered as a random walk with reflecting boundaries.

The security of synchronization is achieved by the parity construction. The training step is performed only if the output bits $`\tau ^A,\tau ^B`$ of the two PMs are identical and, in addition, if the output bit $`\sigma _k^A`$ of the hidden unit is identical to $`\tau ^A`$. In the parity network one defines

$$\tau ^{A/B}(t)=\underset{k=1}{\overset{K}{}}\sigma _k^{A/B}(t)$$
(4)
The output bits $`(\tau ^A,\tau ^B)`$ which are transmitted at each training step generate control signals which produce a mixture of attractive, repulsive and quiet movements of the corresponding hidden units of A and B. Only the parity construction gives a low probability of repulsive steps compared to an attacker PM close to synchronization RoKlKaKi .

In the hybrid network introduced here, we keep the parity mechanism but we define the hidden output bits $`\sigma _k^{A,B}`$ by the signals $`s_k^{A/B}`$ of the logistic maps coupled to neural networks:

$$\sigma _k^A(t)=\text{sign}(s_k^A(t)s_0(\beta ))$$
(5)
The public parameter $`s_0(\beta )`$ is chosen such that $`\sigma `$ takes the values $`\pm 1`$ with equal probability.

Now the complete algorithm for the two partners A and B is defined. The parameter $`\beta `$ controls the coupling strength between neural network and chaotic map. For $`\beta =1`$ we obtain the PM studied previously KaKiKa ; RoKlKaKi . The two networks synchronize to common time dependent weights $`w^A(t)=w^B(t)`$. The average synchronization time $`t_{sync}`$ scales with the size of the input as $`\mathrm{ln}N`$, and is therefore relatively short even for large systems. The synchronization time also increases as $`L`$ is increased, and for $`L<O(\sqrt{N})`$ one finds that $`t_{sync}`$ increases with $`L^2`$, as expected from random walk theory MiPeKaKi .

For $`\beta =0`$ the two chaotic signals $`(s_k^A(t),s_k^B(t))`$ are not coupled and just generate random outputs $`\sigma `$ and $`\tau `$. As a consequence, the two networks do not synchronize.

By construction, the synchronized state

$$s_k^A(t)=s_k^B(t);w_{kj}^A(t)=w_{kj}^B(t)$$
(6)
is a fixed point of the dynamics. The question remains: is it an attractor? In our model synchronization occurs by two mechanisms simultaneously. The weights of the two neural nets move towards a common sequence and the signals of the corresponding chaotic maps move towards a common chaotic sequence triggered by the local fields of the networks. Hence it is not at all obvious that synchronization is possible. Our numerical simulations as well as our analyticrachel  calculations show that the two networks synchronize when the parameter $`\beta `$ is larger than its critical value. The critical value, $`\beta _c`$, is defined such that the average synchronization time, $`t_{av}`$, diverges. Figure 2 presents the average synchronization time as a function of $`\beta `$ for $`K=1,2`$ and $`L=10`$. Result indicate that for $`K=1,2`$ $`\beta _c0.15,0.35`$. Note that for $`K=1`$ $`\beta _c`$ is very close to the reported result for the synchronization of two logistic maps using common white signalChaos , instead of gaussian signal, $`h`$, is eq. 2.

Figure 2 shows that the synchronization time as a function of $`L`$ does not depend much on the parameter $`\beta `$. The average synchronization time, $`t_{av}`$, is almost constant for $`0.45<\beta <1`$, for all values of $`L`$ studied.

Now we turn to the problem: Is the observed synchronization secure? Consider an attacker (eavesdropper E) who records the exchange of the bits $`(\tau ^A(t),\tau ^B(t))`$ and who knows the sequence $`x_k(t)`$ as well as the parameters of the hybrid networks. Can E calculate the common weights before the synchronization of A and B?

The most successful attack reported by the group of Shamir Sh  is the flipping attack. We generalize this attack to our hybrid network as follows. The attacker E uses a network identical to the ones of A and B and trains its weights only if the output bits of A and B agree. When $`\tau ^E`$ agrees with $`\tau ^A`$ and $`\tau ^B`$ the attacker E learns its weights as defined before, eq. (3)RoKlKaKi . However, when $`\tau ^E\tau ^A=\tau ^B`$ the hidden unit with the “weakest” local field $`\stackrel{~}{h}_k^E`$ is selected and the sign of its output bit $`\sigma _k^E`$ is changed. With this redefined hidden unit learning proceeds as usual. The weakest field is the one which has the smallest distance to the decision boundary given by equations (2) and (5).

Figure 4 shows the main result of this Letter. The inset of Figure 3 indicates that the probability of a successful attack decreases exponentially fast with the level number $`L`$,

$$P_{flip}=A\mathrm{exp}(yL)$$
(7)
But contrary to the synchronization time, this probability has a strong dependence on the coupling strength $`\beta `$. Figure 4 shows that the attacker’s success rate $`P_{flip}/y`$ decreases/increases as $`\beta `$ approaches the critical value, $`\beta _c0.35`$, from above. It is clear from 4 that $`y`$ increases as $`\beta `$ approaches $`\beta _c`$ from above, and it is possible that $`y`$ diverges close to criticality. However from the current data we cannot rule out other scenarios including the one that $`y`$ is finite at criticality and a further investigation of this question is required.

Note that the values of $`\beta `$ in our simulations are still far away from the critical point. For a fixed size of the system $`N`$ and close to $`\beta _c`$ the synchronization time increases beyond the scaling reported in Fig. 2. Hence a finite network is not useful for key generation close to $`\beta _c`$. Anyway, the main result is that the security of the network strongly increases when the hidden units are screened by chaotic synchronization. For example: The synchronization time of a single attacker scales like $`L^2N\mathrm{ln}N`$. We need about $`\mathrm{exp}(yL)`$ attackers on the average to be successful. If we can use one year of a teraflop computer for each message, we have about $`10^{20}`$ calculations available. Hence, for $`N=10^5`$, we need a level number of about $`L135`$ without chaotic synchronization, $`\beta =1`$. For $`\beta =0.45`$, however, we need a value of $`L25`$, only. It indicates that the two partners A and B need less than 5$`\%`$ of training steps to synchronize in comparison to the same system without chaotic synchronization ($`\beta =1`$).

Finally, we note that the effect of the chaotic map on a hidden unit is essentially the generation of noise. We have replaced the chaotic map in equation (2) by randomly flipping the output bit $`\sigma =\text{sign}h`$ with some probability $`p`$ measured in actual simulation. This probability, $`p`$, is suppressed to zero as the two neural networks approach each other. For this approximation we can solve the dynamics of synchronization analytically, by using the methods of Ref. RoKlKaKi ; RoKaKi . We find good agreement between the noise approximation and the actual simulations using the chaotic mapsrachel .


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# Experiment towards continuous variable entanglement swapping: Highly correlated four–partite quantum state

## I Introduction

Entanglement is the basic resource for quantum information applications. We are dealing with intense, pulsed light which is described by continuous quantum variables and which allows for efficient detection schemes and reliable sources. The generation of entanglement shared by two parties is now achieved routinely in the laboratories, e. g. entanglement of the quadrature components of an electromagnetic field. These two party entangled states may enhance the capability of the two parties to communicate. There are already several experimental realisations of quantum information and quantum communication protocols over continuous variables, exploiting entanglement, for example, quantum dense coding Li et al. (2002) and quantum teleportation Furusawa et al. (1998).

Initially, quantum communication dealt almost exclusively with discrete two–valued quantum variables. The first demonstration of teleportation, i. e. the transfer of a quantum state from one party to another was reported by Bouwmeester et al. Bouwmeester et al. (1997). The scheme was close to the theoretical proposal by Bennett et al. Bennett et al. (1993). In the experiment, the polarization state of a single photon was teleported using a pair of polarization entangled photons. However, the experiment was not an unconditional teleportation, as only one of the four possible results of the Bell–state measurement can be discriminated against the others. As a next step, quantum entanglement swapping, i. e. the teleportation of entanglement, was demonstrated experimentally by Pan et al. Pan et al. (1998). More recently, unconditional teleportation of an unknown polarization state was demonstrated by Kim et al. Kim et al. (2001), employing nonlinear interactions to discriminate the entire set of Bell–states, however at low efficiency. These initial experiments relied upon the polarization of a single photon to encode the qubit. Recently, long distance teleportation was demonstrated by encoding the qubit into the superposition of a single photon in two different locations (time bins) Marcikic et al. (2003). In all these experiments, discrete quantum variables were teleported.

For continuous variables, such as the amplitude and the phase quadratures of an electromagnetic field, which are used in this paper, only the quantum teleportation of coherent states has been demonstrated so far. The first experiment was reported by Furusawa et al. Furusawa et al. (1998) and was based on a proposal by Braunstein and Kimble Braunstein and Kimble (1998). The advantage of this experiment is that unconditional teleportation was demonstrated, i. e. no postselection of successful events was necessary. However, the quality of the teleportation, i. e. the fidelity is limited by the quality of the correlations of the auxiliary entangled beam pair. In that first experiment the fidelity was 0.58. Recently, there have been reports on further improvements in teleportation experiments of coherent states, with fidelities of 0.62 Zhang et al. (quant-ph/0207076) and 0.64 Bowen et al. (quant-ph/0207179).

So far, no entanglement swapping with continuous variables has been reported. However, entanglement swapping is interesting for several reasons: First, among all quantum states of the light field coherent states are closest to classical states while entanglement swapping refers to the teleportation of a highly non–classical state. Second, the success of entanglement swapping can be checked easily by verifying the correlations generated in the entanglement swapping process. In general, for more complex applications towards quantum networking it is desireable to achieve entanglement swapping combined with entanglement purification Briegel et al. (1998), as it enables the distribution of entanglement and non–classical correlations over large distances between systems that have never interacted directly.

Multipartite entanglement, the entanglement shared by more than two parties, is also a useful resource for quantum networking. For example, the distribution of quantum information to several receivers, called telecloning van Loock and Braunstein (2001) or for quantum secret sharing Hillery et al. (1999) are based on multi–party entangled states.

In this paper, we present our work towards entanglement swapping using intense beams. We present a possible entanglement swapping scheme and describe and characterize our entanglement sources. For entanglement swapping, two independent EPR–sources are needed which are then made to interfere. By a direct analysis of the detected photocurrents we prove that strong correlations are created between the amplitude quadratures in the entanglement swapping process. This experiment is a first step towards the teleportation of a highly non–classical state. We also show that with the same basic resource, i. e. the coupling of two entanglement sources, a highly correlated four–party state is generated. A preliminary theoretical analysis, neglecting the excess thermal phase noise in the EPR–sources and hence assuming them to be pure, indicates that the generated state is indeed a genuinely four–party entangled state.

## II Entanglement swapping protocol

The scheme for entanglement swapping is outlined in Fig. 1. Two pairs of quadrature entangled beams denoted EPRI and EPRII are generated by linear interference of two amplitude squeezed beams. Initially, the beam pair labelled EPR1 and EPR2 and the one labelled EPR3 and EPR4 are two independent entangled pairs. The experiment aims at achieving entanglement between the beams 1 and 4. This requires the teleportation of beam EPR2 to the output mode EPR4 and is referred to as entanglement swapping. For that purpose, one beam from each entanglement source, i. e. EPR–beam 2 and EPR–beam 3 are combined at a 50/50 beam splitter with the phase $`\phi _3`$ adjusted such that the two output beams are equally intense (Fig. 1). The resulting beams are denoted Mode5 and Mode6.

The Bell–state measurement is completed by the joint detection of Mode5 and Mode6 (see Fig. 1). The signals obtained from that measurement are used to modulate the amplitude and the phase of EPR4 to yield OUT2, which in the ideal case should now be a copy of the mode EPR2 and show strong non–classical correlations with EPR1, now called OUT1. The signals needed for the modulation are described by $`(\delta \widehat{X}_5+\delta \widehat{X}_6)`$ and $`(\delta \widehat{Y}_5\delta \widehat{Y}_6)`$, where $`\delta \widehat{X}`$ and $`\delta \widehat{Y}`$ denote the fluctuations in the amplitude and the phase quadrature. The quadrature components Walls and Milburn (1994) of the electromagnetic field are defined by $`\widehat{X}=\widehat{a}^{}+\widehat{a}`$ and $`\widehat{Y}=i(\widehat{a}^{}\widehat{a})`$. The sum– and difference variances can be obtained in direct detection without local oscillator techniques, provided the measurement is performed on intense beams Korolkova et al. (2000a); Leuchs et al. (1999); Zhang and Peng (2000). In a next step, the fluctuating results of the photon number measurements on Mode5 and Mode6, $`\delta \widehat{n}_5`$ and $`\delta \widehat{n}_6`$ are detected. Taking simultaneously the sum and the difference of the corresponding photocurrents, that is $`\delta \widehat{n}_5+\delta \widehat{n}_6`$ and $`\delta \widehat{n}_5\delta \widehat{n}_6`$, signals are obtained which are proportional to the sum and difference quadratures mentioned above. The corresponding photocurrents which are transmitted over the classical channel to the modulators are denoted $`i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^+=i5+i6`$ and $`i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^{}=i5i6`$, respectively.

An optimum gain $`g`$ for the modulation can be chosen such that after the entanglement swapping process the highest possible correlations between the output beams OUT1 and OUT2 are generated. The gain $`g`$ describes to what degree initial fluctuations of one beam are transferred onto an output mode after detection of the initial mode and subsequent modulation of the output mode with that signal. In the case of infinite input squeezing $`g=1`$ is optimal, while for finite squeezing values of $`g<1`$ are better. The value of $`g`$ also depends on the degree of excess noise in the anti–squeezed quadrature, i. e. the optimum value for $`g`$ is different for non–minimum uncertainty squeezed states and for minimum uncertainty states. The optimum value for $`g`$ has to be chosen closer to one the more excess phase noise is present.

It was shown van Loock and Braunstein (1999) that for any finitely squeezed minimum uncertainty vacuum states, EPR–correlations between the output modes OUT1 and OUT2 can always be generated independent of the degree of input squeezing using an optimized gain. This also holds true for intense squeezed beams that we employ in our experiment. However, for states with high excess noise in the phase quadrature, say about 20dB as in our experiment, the optimum gain is close to $`g=1`$. Hence there is a 3dB penalty in the correlations created between the output states. Therefore, in this case, the generation of nonclassical EPR–correlations in the entanglement swapping process requires more than 3dB initial squeezing.

## III Experimental setup and measurement results

### III.1 Entanglement source

The intense squeezed beams are generated using an asymmetric fiber Sagnac interferometer, exploiting the Kerr nonlinearity. The setup is depicted in Fig. 2.

In the asymmetric fiber Sagnac interferometer, two counter propagating pulses, one strong pulse and one weak pulse, are coupled into a polarization maintaining fiber. Due to the Kerr nonlinearity, the strong pulse acquires an intensity dependent phase shift, while the weak pulse is largely unaffected by nonlinear effects. Thus, the initially circular shaped uncertainty area in phase space is transformed into an ellipse. By interference with the weak pulse, the uncertainty ellipse is reoriented in phase space, resulting in direct detectable amplitude squeezing Schmitt et al. (1998). Choosing an input polarization of about $`45^{}`$ with respect to the optical axes of the fiber, two independently squeezed beams in s– and in p–polarization can be generated simultaneouslyKorolkova et al. (2000b); Silberhorn et al. (2001). In the following this interferometer is referred to as a double squeezer.

Quadrature entanglement is generated by linear interference of two amplitude squeezed fields with proper phase relation Leuchs et al. (1999); Silberhorn et al. (2001). Due to the birefringence of the fiber, the relative delay of the pulses has to be compensated before they are combined on a 50/50 beam splitter to generate entanglement (see the shaded region in Fig. 2). The EPR–entanglement is maximized when the interference phase is such that the two output beams have equal optical power. An active feedback control to stabilize the interference phase is used.

The entanglement is characterized in terms of the non–separability criterion for two mode Gaussian states Duan et al. (2000); Simon (2000). The non–separability criterion can be expressed in terms of observable quantities, the so called squeezing variances Korolkova et al. (2002):

$`V_{\mathrm{sq}}^\pm (\delta \widehat{X})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{V(\delta \widehat{X}_\mathrm{i}\pm g\delta \widehat{X}_\mathrm{j})}{V(\delta \widehat{X}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{coh}}+g\delta \widehat{X}_{\mathrm{j},\mathrm{coh}})}},`$ (1)
$`V_{\mathrm{sq}}^{}(\delta \widehat{Y})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{V(\delta \widehat{Y}_\mathrm{i}g\delta \widehat{Y}_\mathrm{j})}{V(\delta \widehat{Y}_{\mathrm{i},\mathrm{coh}}+g\delta \widehat{Y}_{\mathrm{j},\mathrm{coh}})}}`$ (2)
where $`V(\widehat{A})=\widehat{A}^2\widehat{A}^2`$ denotes the variance of an operator $`\widehat{A}`$ and $`ij`$ and $`g`$ is a variable gain. The quadrature components labelled with index “coh” are those of a coherent state. The non–separability criterion then reads Korolkova et al. (2002):

$$V_{\mathrm{sq}}^\pm (\delta \widehat{X})+V_{\mathrm{sq}}^{}(\delta \widehat{Y})<2.$$
(3)
### III.2 Towards entanglement swapping—direct analysis of the photocurrent

In this section we describe a scheme that permits us to check for correlations in the amplitude quadrature created by the entanglement swapping process by direct analysis of the photocurrents. The signal from the Bell–measurement, $`i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^+`$, that will be used for the modulation is a classical signal. If the emerging entangled pair, OUT1 and OUT2, were to be used as a quantum resource, the signal from the Bell–state measurement has to be used to modulate the optical mode EPR4 (see Fig. 1). However, if the mode OUT2 is just detected to verify the success of entanglement swapping, modulation of EPR4 can be substituted by direct summation of the photocurrents. Thus, the measured photocurrents are identical in the case of optical modulation of EPR4 and detecting OUT2 and in the case of measuring EPR4 and adding the photocurrent $`i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^+`$, giving $`i4+i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^+`$ (see Fig. 3). In this context, we performed the following experiment towards entanglement swapping as it is depicted in Fig. 3.

Two entanglement sources were set up, each consisted of a double squeezer and a subsequent interferometer to generate entanglement. In each squeezer, 8m of polarization maintaining fiber (FS–PM–7811 from 3M) was used, the splitting ratio of the asymmetric beam splitter was 90/10. The laser source used in the experiment is a commercially available OPO (OPAL from Spectra Physics) pumped by a mode locked Ti:Sapphire laser (Tsunami from Spectra Physics). It produces pulses of 100fs at a center wavelength of 1530nm and a repetition rate of 82MHz. Squeezing was produced at an output pulse energy of about 27pJ for each polarization.

Each squeezer produced more than 3dB amplitude squeezed light in each polarization. This results in squeezing variances of 3dB for both entanglement sources (see Fig. 4). The degree of correlations was measured for the amplitude quadrature, but due to the symmetry of the generation process, the squeezing variances $`V_{\mathrm{sq}}^+(\delta \widehat{X})`$ and $`V_{\mathrm{sq}}^{}(\delta \widehat{Y})`$ for the amplitude and phase quadrature should be the same. The peaks in the noise measurement of the entanglement source II are due to instabilities of the laser power. The corresponding shot noise levels were obtained by measuring the noise power when the detectors were illuminated with coherent light of the same classical field amplitude as that of the squeezed states. The shot noise was calibrated by illuminating the detectors with coherent light. This calibration was checked before the experiment by comparing the measured noise level of a coherent beam with the shot noise level determined by the difference signal of a balanced detection setup. In the following, none of the measured noise traces was corrected for the electronic noise which was at $`87.8\mathrm{dBm}`$.

The next step is the interference between the two independently generated EPR–beams 2 and 3. The interference is a critical part of the experiment, since a good spectral, temporal and spatial overlap of the interfering modes is required. Therefore it is important that the beams have propagated through the same fiber length. Moreover, both squeezers were prepared with fiber pieces from the same coil. Still, the fiber pieces are not identical, therefore the pulses from the different squeezers acquire different phase noise, which might be due to different contributions from guided acoustic wave Brillouin scattering (GAWBS) in different fiber pieces. Nevertheless it was possible to achieve a visibility of up to 85% and to stabilize the interference phase between EPR2 and EPR3, so that the two output modes are equally intense. This is worth noting, as we have achieved interference between two modes of independently generated entangled systems.

Four photodetectors were placed in the four output modes of the setup, i. e. EPR1, EPR4, Mode5, and Mode6. Each of the detectors used a high efficiency InGaAs–photodiode (Epitaxx ETX 500). To avoid saturation of the detectors, a Chebycheff lowpass filter was used with a cutoff frequency of about 35MHz to suppress the high noise peaks at the repetition frequency and the harmonics of the laser. The photocurrent fluctuations were detected at a frequency of 17.5MHz with a resolution bandwith of 300kHz. The measurements were averaged with a video bandwith of 30Hz, the measurement time for each trace was 10s.

In the experiment, we examined the correlations between the two output modes EPR1 and EPR4. The various noise levels are compared with the corresponding shot noise levels and the noise levels of the individual beams. First, the noise level of the sum signal of beams EPR1 and EPR4 was measured and compared with the noise power of the individual beams, i. e. the variances of $`i1`$ and $`i4`$ and $`i1+i4`$ were measured, not yet taking into account the result from the Bell–state measurement, $`i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^+`$. This corresponds to the case of the full entanglement swapping protocol with respect to the amplitude quadrature only without transmission of the classical information from the Bell–state measurement.

There are no correlations between the two modes EPR1 and EPR4, i. e.

$$V(\widehat{X}_{\mathrm{EPR1}}+\widehat{X}_{\mathrm{EPR4}})=V(\widehat{X}_{\mathrm{EPR1}})+V(\widehat{X}_{\mathrm{EPR4}})$$
(4)
which can be seen on the left side of Fig. 5, and which is obvious as the two entanglement sources are independent.

The noise power of the beams EPR1 and EPR2 shows that each single beam is very noisy. This indicates that the squeezer does not generate minimum uncertainty states, but states which acquire excess phase noise of about 20dB, an effect that originates from the propagation of the light through the fiber. Although we tried to set up an exact replica of the first squeezer, the noise power of the generated EPR–beams of the second squeezer is different from that of the first squeezer.

In a second step, the correlations between EPR1 and EPR4 are checked again, this time taking into account the result of the Bell–measurement. The photocurrent of EPR4 is modified to give $`i4+i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^+`$. This photocurrent is added to $`i1`$. The noise power of the resulting photocurrent drops to the shot noise level of two beams, indicating that there are strong correlations between $`i1`$ and $`i4+i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^+`$. The noise levels are plotted on the right side of Fig. 5. This situation corresponds to the case where the classical information gained from the Bell–state measurement is transmitted and mode EPR4 is modulated and the correlations between OUT1 and OUT2 are measured (compare Fig. 1). This result clearly indicates that the full entanglement swapping experiment should be possible. With the given squeezing values, a squeezing variance $`V_{\mathrm{sq}}^+(\delta X)=1`$ is expected for the output modes. The limitation in the experiment so far is the relatively low detected input squeezing of 3dB, otherwise correlations below the shot noise level would be visible. However, there is the 3dB penalty due to the fact that the squeezed states used have a high degree of excess phase noise. The relatively low resulting squeezing values are partly caused by the detection scheme, where at least three detectors were involved in the measurement of each individual noise trace, which causes some balancing problems of the electronics.

Although the squeezing variance expected in the full experiment is at the shot noise limit, there are hints that the teleportation of a highly non–classical state with continuous variables is possible. We can speak of successful quantum teleportation of beam EPR2 on beam EPR4 in the following sense: Let us compare the measurement results with those that can be obtained by classical teleportation, where the amplitude and phase fluctuations of the mode to be teleported are measured simultaneously and an independent coherent beam is modulated. Squeezing variances between OUT1 and OUT2 which are 1.77dB higher than those that were measured in our experiment are expected with the given degree of correlations of 3dB. This can be understood by a similar argumentation to that given by Furusawa et al. Furusawa et al. (1998). In classical teleportation, two extra units of vacuum are mixed into the system, one from the Bell–measurement and one from the coherent beam that is modulated.

### III.3 Interpretation of the results as multipartite correlations

Another aspect of the experiment is that the measurement results can also be interpreted in a different way. The setup is as before, two pairs of entangled beams are generated and the beams EPR2 and EPR3 are combined at a 50/50 beam splitter. We are now interested in the correlations of the complete four–mode state.

To characterize the correlations, a detector is placed in each output mode, that is in EPR1, EPR4, Mode5 and Mode6, and the photocurrents are added as depicted in Fig. 6. The situation is completely equivalent to the case where the Bell–measurement was performed and the photocurrents were added. However, the sum–photocurrent of all modes shows that the four mode state has a high degree of correlations, because the sum signal shown in Fig. 7 is 3dB below the corresponding shot noise level of four equally bright coherent states:

$$V(\widehat{X}_{\mathrm{EPR1}}+\widehat{X}_{\mathrm{Mode5}}+\widehat{X}_{\mathrm{Mode6}}+\widehat{X}_{\mathrm{EPR4}})<4V(\widehat{X}_{\mathrm{coh}}).$$
(5)
This indicates that a highly correlated four–mode state was created. The question that arises now is whether this state is genuinely four–partiy entangled.

A genuinely multipartite entangled state means that none of the parties is separable from any other party in the total density operator. For example, the two initial EPR sources in our setup correspond to an entangled four–mode state which is not genuinely four–party entangled. Though none of the modes is completely separable from the rest, the total state only consists of two two–party entangled states, mathematically desribed by the tensor product of two bright EPR states. In contrast, the output four–mode state of modes EPR1, Mode5, Mode6, and EPR4, is, in principle, a genuinely four–party entangled state, at least when assuming pure input states. This can be understood most easily by examining the corresponding four–mode Wigner function $`W(\alpha _1,\alpha _5,\alpha _6,\alpha _4)`$ of the output state. Assuming two pure initial EPR sources, the output state $`W(\alpha _1,\alpha _5,\alpha _6,\alpha _4)`$ is also pure. For pure states, the non–factorizability of the Wigner function, $`W(\alpha _1,\alpha _5,\alpha _6,\alpha _4)W(\alpha _1)W(\alpha _5,\alpha _6,\alpha _4)`$ and $`W(\alpha _1,\alpha _5,\alpha _6,\alpha _4)W(\alpha _1,\alpha _5)W(\alpha _6,\alpha _4)`$ for all permutations of $`(1,5,6,4)`$, proves the genuine four–party entanglement. The output Wigner function for the special case of two two–mode squeezed vacuum states as the input EPR–sources is given in Ref. van Loock (2002). For any degree of the squeezing, it cannot be written in any product form hence the state is genuinely four–party entangled. Moreover, partial transposition (partial sign change of the momentum quadratures Simon (2000)) applied to its four–mode correlation matrix with respect to any possible splitting of the four modes van Loock and Furusawa (quant-ph/0212052v1); Giedke et al. (2001) always leads to an unphysical state, thus ruling out any partial separability.

The four–party correlations of the four–mode squeezed vacuum, as can be seen in the Wigner function of Ref. van Loock (2002), lead to quadrature triple correlations such as $`V[\widehat{X}_1(\widehat{X}_5+\widehat{X}_6)/\sqrt{2}]0`$ and $`V[(\widehat{X}_5\widehat{X}_6)/\sqrt{2}\widehat{X}_4]0`$. In our experiment, due to the brightness of the beams and the direct detection scheme employed, the four–party correlations become manifest in a combination of the quadrature amplitudes of all four modes, as described by equation (5). Whether the mixedness of our entangled four–mode state due to the excess phase noise causes a significant deterioration of the four–party entanglement should be further investigated, also with respect to the experimental verification of the four–party entanglement (see below). Since the genuine four–party entanglement is present for any non–zero squeezing in the pure four–mode squeezed vacuum state van Loock and Furusawa (quant-ph/0212052v1), we expect that the mixed state in our experiment remains genuinely four party entangled.

To further characterize and describe the correlations of the four–mode state, we measured the noise of the combination of three beams, that is the variance of the photocurrents $`i1+i5+i6=i1+i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^+`$ and $`i5+i6+i4=i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^++i4`$, which are plotted in Fig. 8. These signals exhibit a high noise level compared with the shot noise level. To be more precise, the noise level of $`i1+i5+i6`$ equals the noise level of $`i4`$ (EPR4) and $`i5+i6+i4`$ equals $`i1`$ (EPR1). This behaviour becomes clear by the following considerations: The sum–signal from Mode5 and Mode6, i. e. $`i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^+`$, contains the full amplitude fluctuations of EPR2 and EPR3. Thus by taking the sum with EPR1, only the fluctuations originating from EPR3 remain, as EPR1 and EPR2 were initially entangled and the fluctuations cancel almost completely compared with the noise of a single beam. Thus the measured noise level of $`i1+i5+i6`$ is equal to the fluctuations of beam EPR3 which has the same noise level as beam EPR4. Similarly, the noise level of the combined measurement of $`i5+i6+i4`$ can be explained. This measurement is consistent with the fact that the excess noise of the individual EPR–beams of the different EPR–sources is slightly different. As mentioned before, there are no correlations between the beams EPR1 and EPR4, as the variance of $`i1+i4`$ is just the sum of the variances of $`i1`$ and $`i4`$.

## IV Discussion and outlook

### IV.1 Phase measurement: Full proof of entanglement swapping

The full proof of entanglement swapping will be more challenging as not only the correlations in the amplitude quadrature, but also those in the phase quadrature must be checked. For this purpose, a real modulation of beam EPR4 is needed. As intense entangled beams are used, no local oscillator can be employed to measure correlations in the phase quadrature due to the saturation of the detectors. Instead, some interferometric scheme is needed to measure the correlations in the phase quadrature. This can be achieved by letting the two output modes, OUT1 and OUT2, interfere at another 50/50 beam splitter.

Two possible interferometric detection schemes will be described to test whether a pair of beams, here called EPR1 and EPR2, coming from a black box are entangled or not. In the first case, the noise power can be measured in one of the output ports of the interferometer using balanced detection (compare Fig. 9a). When the correlations in the amplitude quadratures of EPR1 and EPR2 have already been measured, correlations in the phase quadrature can be determined from an amplitude quadrature measurement of OUT1 or OUT2. If squeezing occurs, then also the phase quadrature is correlated and the beams EPR1 and EPR2 must be entangled Silberhorn et al. (2001). It is also possible to check directly if the outgoing beams are non–separable: The variance of the sum photocurrent measured at the output of the interferometer is proportional to the sum of the squeezing variances, see Eq.(3). Thus the Duan non–separability criterion can be verified in a single measurementKorolkova et al. (2002). It was shown that, if squeezing occurs for a certain interference phase $`\theta `$, the states EPR1 and EPR2 are necessarily entangled Korolkova et al. (2002), a consequence of the non–separability criterion for continuous variables.

The other possibility is to put a detector in each output port and record the sum and the difference of the photocurrents (see Fig. 9b). The difference signal is proportional to the variance $`V(\widehat{Y}_{\mathrm{EPR1}}\widehat{Y}_{\mathrm{EPR2}})`$ which drops below the shot noise level if there are non–classical correlations in the phase quadrature. The correlations in the amplitude quadrature can be checked simultaneously by taking the sum of the photocurrents. This measurement is of the same type as the Bell–state measurement in the entanglement swapping process. This detection scheme is also used for dense coding experiments Li et al. (2002) and was proposed for a continuous variable entanglement swapping experiment Zhang et al. (2002).

Alternatively, phase detection $`\delta \widehat{Y}_{\mathrm{OUT1}}`$ and $`\delta \widehat{Y}_{\mathrm{OUT2}}`$ can be performed on beams OUT1 and OUT2 respectively. For this purpose, an extremely unbalanced interferometer can be used Trautner et al. (1997), which maps phase fluctuations onto amplitude fluctuations for certain measurement frequencies. At the repetion rate of $`82`$MHz of our laser system, an arm length difference of about $`7.2`$m is required to measure phase fluctuations at a radio frequency of $`20.5`$MHz. In that case, a phase shift is accumulated which leads to a 90 rotation of the quantum uncertainty sideband. After interference and together with the detection scheme, the phase noise of the input beam can be recorded in direct detection (see Fig. 10). Thus the phase shift for the rf–signal has to be adjusted as well as the optical interference phase such that the two output ports are equally intense. With such an interferometer, it will be possible to avoid phase modulation, as in the case of the amplitude fluctuations, and check directly the obtained photocurrents from the phase measurement together with the photocurrent from the Bell–measurement $`i_{\mathrm{Bell}}^{}`$ for nonclassical correlations.

### IV.2 Criteria for multipartite entanglement

The four–party correlated state generated by the interference of two two–party entanglement sources could be an important requisite for multipartite quantum communication and networking. However, it should be first verified experimentally that the generated state is indeed genuinely four–party entangled. For Gaussian states, the full characterization of multipartite entangled states requires the detection of all independent entries of the correlation matrix. However, in Ref. van Loock and Furusawa (quant-ph/0212052v1), inequalities are derived which impose necessary conditions onto a multi–party multi–mode state to be partially or fully separable. Hence violations of these conditions rule out any form of separability, thus being sufficient for genuine multipartite entanglement. These criteria involve measurements of linear combinations for the two conjugate quadratures of all modes. The conditions are expressed in terms of the sum of the variances of these combinations. This is similar to the Duan criterion stated in equation (3), where the sum of the squeezing variances of the $`\widehat{X}`$ and $`\widehat{Y}`$ quadratures is considered. Such criteria are only sufficient and not necessary for entanglement, but they apply to arbitrary quantum states (pure, mixed, Gaussian, or non–Gaussian). By using criteria based on quadrature linear combinations for the verification of genuine multipartite entanglement, the measurement of the entire correlation matrix of a Gaussian state is no longer needed. However, in general, these criteria cannot be readily applied to direct detection schemes. Hence simple experimental criteria and measurement techniques like those described above for the two–mode case still have to be developed for the multi–mode case.

## V Conclusions

To summarize, we have adapted a scheme to perform entanglement swapping with intense, pulsed, quadrature entangled beams using direct detection. By substituting the required optical modulation with an adapted detection setup we have shown experimentally that the amplitude correlations behave as they should for entanglement swapping. This is a strong hint for entanglement between the two output states, which have never interacted directly. To fully prove entanglement, the phase correlation still has to be measured. The joint analysis of the four individual modes shows that we have generated and partly characterized a novel four partite continuous–variable state that exhibits four–fold correlations below shot noise in the amplitude quadrature. Although so far there is no experimental proof that this state is really four–party entangled, the measured correlations support this conjecture. We have taken an experimental step towards entanglement swapping with continuous variables and produced an intense light state showing four–fold quantum correlations which is consistent with genuine four–party entanglement.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by the Schwerpunkt Programm 1078 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and by the EU grant under QIPC, project IST-1999-13071 (QUICOV). The authors thank M. Langer and T. Lang for the help with the detector electronics and J. Trautner for useful discussions about the phase measuring interferometer. Qing Pan gratefully acknowledges financial support from China Scholarship Council.