text:
# Exploring quantum dynamics in an open many-body system: Transition to superradiance

## 1 Introduction

The interplay of complex intrinsic dynamics with radiation, coupling to the continuum or to any other external influence, such as measurement, is an important subject for quantum optics, nanoscale devices, theory of decoherence and quantum complexity, future quantum computing, and physics of nuclei far from stability, to name just few branches of modern physics, seemingly far remote from each other. After all, the complete isolation of a “system” and the “external world” is never possible. The chaotic and regular aspects of many-body physics, as well as openness and decay properties, are deeply rooted in valuable parts of Wigner’s legacy. In this paper, commemorating Wigner’s contributions, we would like to stop at the crossroad of ideas related to the complexity of many-body physics and the Weisskopf-Wigner damping theory. We consider a mesoscopic many-body system with internal dynamics governed by the mean field and residual two-body interactions. We assume that the system is perturbed by non-Hermitian terms in the Hamiltonian. These terms, in general, model an effective coupling to the external degrees of freedom such as the continuum of scattering states, radiation fields or measurements.

The subject of this work is cross-disciplinary and the approach implemented here is widely used in atomic, molecular and nuclear physics, see our recent work  and references therein. For a broader audience we structure the paper and conduct our discussion in a pedagogical manner. We start our work by presenting in Sec. 2 a well known description of the internal dynamics in an open many-body quantum system with the aid of the non-Hermitian and energy-dependent Hamiltonian. A simple example of two interacting spins in the presence of decay is discussed in Sec. 3. Although this example has no complexity associated with the many-body dynamics, the important physical features related to decay, as well as mathematical aspects, are already there. This case serves as an introduction to our main discussion presented in Sec. 4 and based on the consideration of a system of interacting fermions coupled to a decay channel. Concluding remarks are given in Sec. 5.

## 2 Effective Hamiltonian of an open system

The technique using a non-Hermitian and energy-dependent effective Hamiltonian is rather common and dates back to the Weisskopf-Wigner damping theory , works of Rice  and Fano , and Feshbach projection formalism . It is assumed that the many-body states in the system can be separated into two classes, the internal (intrinsic) states and external ones. The set of internal states $`|\alpha `$ is generally understood to be composed of the states where all particles occupy bound mean-field orbitals. The fact that the system is open requires one to include into consideration a set of external many-body states. These states $`|c;E`$ are viewed as decay or reaction states and contain particles in the continuum or radiation quanta; we label them with a continuous variable of energy and a set of other quantum numbers characteristic for a channel $`c`$. Discussion of the reactions is not our primary goal in this work, nevertheless we should emphasize Wigner’s significant contribution to this subject .

Although there exist many different formulations of this technique, here we start from the Schrödinger equation

$$H|\mathrm{\Psi }=E|\mathrm{\Psi },$$
(1)
where the full wave function is a superposition of internal and external states,

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }=\underset{\alpha }{}C_\alpha |\alpha +\underset{c}{}𝑑E\chi _E^c|c;E.$$
(2)
Eliminating the external states we come to the equation for the coefficients $`C_\beta `$ that describe the internal part of the wave function,

$$\underset{\beta }{}\left[\alpha |H|\beta +\underset{c}{}𝑑E^{}\frac{\alpha |H|c;E^{}c;E^{}|H|\beta }{EE^{}}\delta _{\alpha \beta }E\right]C_\beta =0.$$
(3)
This equation looks like a traditional eigenvalue problem with the effective Hamiltonian matrix in the intrinsic space defined as

$$\alpha |(E)|\beta =\alpha |H|\beta +\underset{c}{}𝑑E^{}\frac{A_\alpha ^c(E^{})A_\beta ^c(E^{})^{}}{EE^{}},$$
(4)
where we introduced $`A_\alpha ^c(E)=\alpha |H|c;E,`$ the coupling amplitudes between internal and external states.

The first term in Eq. (4) is the standard Hamiltonian matrix that would describe our system if it were decoupled from the external world. For definiteness, we assume that this part of the Hamiltonian is

$$H=\underset{1}{}ϵ_1a_1^{}a_1+\frac{1}{4}\underset{1234}{}V_{12;34}a_1^{}a_2^{}a_3a_4,$$
(5)
with single-particle energies $`ϵ_1`$ and residual two-body interactions with antisymmetrized matrix elements $`V_{12;34}.`$ The indexes $`\mathit{1},\mathrm{},`$ contain a complete set of single-particle quantum numbers, and the total many-body basis state $`\alpha `$ can be constructed, in the case of Fermi-statistics, as a Slater determinant of these single-particle states.

The integral in Eq. (4) can be further decomposed into its Hermitian part (principal value) and the remaining non-Hermitian part,

$$\underset{c}{}𝑑E^{}\frac{A_\alpha ^c(E^{})A_\beta ^c(E^{})^{}}{EE^{}}=$$

$$\underset{c}{}P𝑑E^{}\frac{A_\alpha ^c(E^{})A_\beta ^c(E^{})^{}}{EE^{}}i\pi \underset{c(\mathrm{open})}{}A_\alpha ^c(E)A_\beta ^c(E)^{}.$$
(6)
Thus, the effective Hamiltonian (7) can be written as

$$(E)=H+\mathrm{\Delta }(E)\frac{i}{2}W(E),$$
(7)
which contains an energy-dependent self-energy term due to the “off-shell” processes of virtual excitation into all, open and closed at given energy, continuum channels,

$$\alpha |\mathrm{\Delta }(E)|\beta =\underset{c}{}P𝑑E^{}\frac{A_\alpha ^c(E^{})A_\beta ^c(E^{})^{}}{EE^{}},$$
(8)
and explicitly non-Hermitian and energy dependent term

$$\alpha |W(E)|\beta =2\pi \underset{c(\mathrm{open})}{}A_\alpha ^c(E)A_\beta ^c(E)^{}.$$
(9)
The imaginary part $`W`$ has a factorized form, and originates from the real “on-shell” processes through the continuum channels that are open at given energy. The schematic diagrams representing various terms in (7) are shown in Fig. 1.

For our current discussion we will ignore the energy dependence of the Hamiltonian (7). In general, the energy dependence of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is smooth and frequently this Hermitian term can be incorporated into the intrinsic Hamiltonian $`H`$ as a renormalization. The energy dependence of the non-Hermitian part $`W`$ can be crucial, in particular near channel thresholds, see for example Wigner’s work . In loosely bound systems this term determines the exact binding energy . Here, however, we are going to discuss the new effects and especially the phase transition generated by the presence of non-Hermitian terms in the Hamiltonian, and for this purpose the amplitudes $`A_\alpha ^c`$ can be taken as energy-independent parameters, as it would take place in a physical situation with remote thresholds. We simply assume that the Hamiltonian $`=HiW/2`$ is known, the anti-Hermitian part has a factorized structure (9), and this will allow us to study the resulting dynamics.

## 3 Two spin-system

We start with a very simple example similar to the system discussed by Dicke  in relation to superradiance. Consider two interacting distinguishable spin-$`1/2`$ molecules, $`s_1=s_2=s=1/2,`$ with the spin-spin interaction

$$H^{}=\alpha \stackrel{}{s}_1\stackrel{}{s}_2.$$
(10)
This Hamiltonian is diagonal in the basis of the total spin $`\stackrel{}{S}=\stackrel{}{s}_1+\stackrel{}{s}_2`$ and its $`z`$-projection, and the energies of the states,

$$E_S=\frac{\alpha }{2}\left[S(S+1)2s(s+1)\right],$$
(11)
are $`E_0=3\alpha /4`$ for the singlet, $`S=0`$, state and $`E_1=\alpha /4`$ for the triplet, $`S=1`$, state.

Now let us place the system in the magnetic field that produces two effects. First, it leads to the Zeeman splitting that can be described by the additional term in the Hamiltonian

$$H^\mathrm{B}=ϵs_1^z+ϵs_2^z=ϵS^z.$$
(12)
For simplicity we assume that the field acts in the same way on both molecules, therefore the additional term (12) still commutes with the operator $`\stackrel{}{S}^2.`$ Secondly, we assume that this two-spin system in the magnetic field becomes open; in the presence of the field the first molecule in its excited polarized state can dissociate, the phenomenon similar to the Feshbach resonance . This means that the molecule in $`s_1^z=1/2`$ state decays exponentially with half-life $`T_{1/2}`$ which can be described by the width $`\gamma =\mathrm{ln}2/T_{1/2}`$. In terms of the general formalism of Sec. 2 here we have one open decay channel with coupling strength $`A`$ and $`\gamma =A^2`$. In principle the decay rate of a molecule should depend on the magnitude of the Zeeman splitting and thus on the field strength. For the interacting system the decay clearly should depend on total energy. As we stated earlier, we ignore this dependence in our examples. The situation can be modelled by an extra non-Hermitian term in the Hamiltonian

$$W=i\frac{\gamma }{4}(s_1^z+s),$$
(13)
so that the first molecule in the state with $`s_1^z=1/2`$ would have decay width $`\gamma `$ and this width would be zero in the state $`s_1^z=1/2.`$ As a result, in the magnetic field the effective Hamiltonian for the two-spin system becomes

$$=\alpha \stackrel{}{s}_1\stackrel{}{s}_2+ϵs_1^z+ϵs_2^zi\frac{\gamma }{4}(s_1^z+s).$$
(14)
The breakup of the first molecule distorts the symmetry of the system, $`\stackrel{}{S}^2`$ no longer commutes with $``$, and the singlet and triplet states become mixed. The situation here is interesting in the sense that the open decay channel introduces an incompatible symmetry: the interaction Hamiltonian (11) and the magnetic field part (12) are both diagonal in the basis of the total spin ($`S,S^z,s_1,s_2`$), whereas the decay part, as that of an intrinsic elementary process of the molecule 1, is diagonal in the decoupled spin states of molecules ($`s_1,s_1^z;s_2,s_2^z`$), the so-called $`m`$-scheme basis. The axial symmetry with respect to the magnetic field holds for the full Hamiltonian (14) requiring the conservation of $`S^z.`$

The full effective Hamiltonian matrix of the $`S^z=0`$ block in the $`m`$-scheme basis takes the form

$$=\frac{\alpha }{4}+\frac{1}{2}\left(\begin{array}{cc}i\gamma & \alpha \\ \alpha & 0\end{array}\right),$$
(15)
and the diagonalization of this matrix determines the quasistationary eigenstates of the system and their complex energies,

$$_\pm =\frac{\alpha }{4}\pm \frac{1}{2}\sqrt{\alpha ^2\left(\frac{\gamma }{2}\right)^2}i\frac{\gamma }{4}.$$
(16)
The trajectories of the complex energies $`_\pm `$ as functions of the increasing decay parameter $`\gamma `$ are shown in Fig. 2.

The dynamics of the two-level effective Hamiltonians have been extensively studied in the past, see for example . In fact the discussion was initiated by Wigner and von Neumann , who demonstrated that mixing by an off-diagonal Hermitian interaction leads to the level repulsion. The behavior of complex eigenstates as a function of real and complex parts of the effective Hamiltonian can be summarized as follows. It is well known that the increase of the Hermitian part of the interaction leads to repulsion of real energies $`E`$ and attraction of widths $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ since the decay probability is shared by the two mixed states. It is less well known that the non-Hermitian part has an opposite effect, it increases the difference between widths and moves real parts $`E`$ closer together ; these effects are schematically demonstrated in Fig. 3 .

Our example reveals the generic features, consider Eq. (16) and Fig. 2. In the region of weak decay, i.e. slow process of molecular disintegration, $`0\gamma 2\alpha `$, the two eigenstates $`_+`$ and $`_{}`$ have equal widths, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_+=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}=\gamma /2`$, and the real energies $`E_+`$ and $`E_{}`$ are attracted to each other as $`\gamma `$ grows. At the critical point $`\gamma =2\alpha `$ the levels cross and the “phase transition” occurs as a sharp change in the behavior of the two complex energies. The real parts become degenerate, $`E_+=E_{}=\alpha /4,`$ while the widths separate, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pm =\gamma /2\pm \sqrt{(\gamma /2)^2\alpha ^2}`$ so that in the limit of strong decay, $`\gamma \alpha `$, we have a single “superradiant” state with the width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_+\gamma `$ accumulating the entire available decay probability, and one long-lived state with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}0.`$ The factorized structure of matrix $`W`$ (9), that results in zero eigenvalues in the limit when this part dominates the Hamiltonian, is a key feature responsible for this behavior. As can be seen from the derivation of Sec. 2, this structure is related to the analytical structure of the problem and unitarity requirements. The formation of fast and slow decay modes, which can be viewed as an ultimate width repulsion, is a typical effect in systems with overlapping resonances . In particular, a detailed discussion for two-level examples can be found in  and references therein.

The coupling to decay, as we see, has important observable consequences for both the intrinsic state of the system and the external scattering picture. For example, for a singlet ground state ($`\alpha >0`$), the magnetic field does not affect the system in the absence of molecular breakup, because $`H_\mathrm{B}`$ is identically zero in the singlet state. In the presence of the field, the disintegration of the first molecule reorients the eigenvector of the system admixing a triplet state. Thus, the system becomes susceptible to an excitation by the magnetic pulse.

Looking at the situation from a different angle, namely from the “exterior”, it is clear that the decay of a first molecule alone is different from the decay properties when the second molecule is present. In the first paper on superradiation  Dicke argued that coupling to the radiation field can lead to strong modification of the intrinsic properties of the system. In context of nuclear reaction theory, a significant contribution to this subject was made by Wigner and his collaborators who discussed the nature of resonances in the nucleon-nucleus interactions, sum rules related to the widths, distribution of the widths among the states and general features of the scattering cross section , that in context of our example can be related to the properties of the matrix (15).

## 4 A model of an open many-body system

The transition to superradiance in a many-body model with decay and random internal dynamics is our second example. We consider an equidistant set of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ fermionic single-particle levels (“orbitals”) and assume that the upper level, that we label as $`\nu `$, belongs to the continuum, i.e., in the approximation of non-interacting particles, the single-particle wave function of this orbital decreases exponentially with time, while the remaining orbitals are particle-stable, see Fig. 4. This situation again corresponds to a single decay channel where any many-body state with an occupied single-particle orbital $`\nu `$ is coupled to the continuum with the corresponding amplitude $`A.`$ Equivalently the full non-Hermitian effective Hamiltonian $``$ can be constructed from (5) under assumption that one of the single-particle energies is complex,

$$e_\nu =ϵ_\nu \frac{i}{2}\gamma ,\gamma =A^2;$$
(17)
it contains single-particle energies with the scale determined by their spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ,`$ the non-Hermitian part $`W`$, the scale of which is determined by $`\gamma ,`$ and the Hermitian mixing $`V,`$ Eq. (5). We do not impose any symmetry here; the effects of Kramers degeneracy and rotational invariance have been discussed in . For our example we select the parameters of the Hermitian residual two-body interaction $`V`$, eq. (5) at random from the Gaussian distribution centered at zero. The average absolute magnitude of these matrix elements $`\sqrt{\overline{V^2}}`$ sets the energy scale for the model. In what follows we assume $`\sqrt{\overline{V^2}}=1`$ and allow $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ`$ and $`\gamma `$ to vary.

### 4.1 Evolution of many-body states

A system of $`N`$ fermions in $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ single-particle states has

$$𝒩=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }!}{N!(\mathrm{\Omega }N)!}$$
(18)
many-body states. To be specific, we consider $`N=4`$ particles in $`\mathrm{\Omega }=8`$ single-particle orbitals. The $`𝒩=70`$ eigenvalues $`_j=E_j(i/2)\mathrm{\Gamma }_j`$ of the Hamiltonian are in the lower part of the complex plane, and their motion as a function of the increasing parameter $`\gamma `$ is shown in Fig. 5; here $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ=1`$. This figure is a generalization of the situation in Fig. 2 discussed in the previous section 3. As stated earlier, it is assumed that $``$ is independent of energy $`E`$. Therefore the trace conservation leads to a helpful sum rule for the imaginary part of the Hamiltonian,

$$\underset{j}{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_j(\gamma )=2\mathrm{Im}(\mathrm{Tr}).$$
(19)
This sum rule is a direct analog to the sum rules discussed by Wigner and collaborators in the context of neutron resonances .

Several dynamical limits can be identified. In the “shell-model” limit of $`\gamma =0`$ and $`=H`$, standard diagonalization results in orthonormal eigenstates $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}.}`$ with real eigenvalues $`E_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}.}`$. In Fig. 5 the values $`E_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}.}`$ define the starting points on the real axis. As soon as the single-particle width $`\gamma 0`$, the decay channels open. The random residual interaction $`V`$ leads to a chaotic mixing of configurations, and all many-body states acquire widths. This excludes special cases when configurations with the occupied decaying state are blocked, for example by selection rules.

For small $`\gamma `$, the term $`W`$ in the Hamiltonian can be treated perturbatively. In the lowest order this results in

$$=E_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}.}\frac{i}{2}\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}}|W|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}}.$$
(20)
Then the decay width of a many-body state is determined by the occupancy $`n_\nu (\mathrm{\Psi })=\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}}|a_\nu ^{}a_\nu |\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}}`$ of a decaying orbital $`\nu `$ calculated for a particular shell model state $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}.}`$,

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\mathrm{\Psi })=\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}}|W|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}}=\gamma n_\nu (\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}.}).$$
(21)
Only in this limit it is possible to establish the “natural” result (21) that is widely used in extracting spectroscopic factors of intrinsic states from various reaction cross sections.

The opposite limit of strong $`\gamma `$ is less trivial. It is clear from Fig. 1 that all many-body states are divided into two groups. In the first group the complex energies have a rapidly increasing width, whereas the states in the second group become long-lived with their widths approaching zero. The dominance of the external coupling $`W`$ is the origin of this dynamical separation. The single-particle energies and mixing $`V`$ are of minor importance in this limit, and the states can be classified by their relation to the decay. The matrix $`W`$ is highly degenerate; because of its factorized structure, Eq. (9), it has only

$$𝒩_\mathrm{\Gamma }=\frac{(\mathrm{\Omega }1)!}{(N1)!(\mathrm{\Omega }N)!}$$
(22)
nonzero eigenvalues. The corresponding eigenstates of $`W`$ are the configurations that have the decaying upper orbital occupied and thus acquire in the strong decay limit the maximum width equal to $`\gamma `$ so that the trace (19) of the imaginary part of the Hamiltonian is exhausted by $`\gamma 𝒩_\mathrm{\Gamma }.`$ In our case, the total dimension of the many-body space is $`𝒩=70`$, and $`𝒩_\mathrm{\Gamma }=35`$. The remaining 35 states correspond to the empty upper orbital, and correspondingly to the zero eigenvalues of $`W,`$ so that decay of these states is strongly hindered.

Thus, in the limit of strong coupling to the continuum, a dynamical segregation of short-lived and long-lived (compound) intrinsic states occurs. This is a generalization of the effect observed in a simple two-level system of Sec. 3. This phenomenon was discovered in numerical simulations , see also , was studied in molecular and atomic physics  and observed in experiments with microwave cavities . The fact that the underlying physics is analogous to the Dicke coherent state  was explained in Refs. . The coupling of states via a common decay channel (width collectivization) plays a role similar to that of the common radiation field of spontaneously radiating atoms for the Dicke superradiant coherent mode experimentally observed in quantum optics .

A related effect considered in the quantum theory of measurements has possible ramifications for quantum computers. An external influence on the system brought by a procedure of measurement, the Zeno effect , can be modelled similarly, with the aid of non-Hermitian terms in the Hamiltonian. Recently this topic attracted a lot of attention due to the appearance of remarkable experimental data . In this context it was demonstrated by Facchi and Pascazio  that an analogous effective subspace separation plays a vital role. We need to emphasize that the dominating term in the Hamiltonian, $`W,`$ because of its degeneracy, only effectively decouples the subspaces but it does not fully determine the dynamics. The single-particle energies and residual Hermitian interactions determine the motion within the intrinsic subspace that still can be chaotic.

The situation at intermediate values of the decay strength, as seen from Fig. 5, is complicated. In this region all three terms of the effective Hamiltonian are important, and their interplay is responsible for chaotic transitional dynamics. As $`\gamma `$ increases, the perturbative approach breaks down. However, at this point the limit of the full subspace decoupling is not yet reached. In this regime we are faced with a peculiar phase crossover, where all components of the dynamics are strongly mixed and thus both energy centroids $`E_j`$ and widths $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_j`$ become affected in a non-trivial way by the presence of the non-Hermitian component. A similar interplay between single-particle energies and the residual pairing interaction is known to result in chaotic dynamics of the normal-to-superconducting phase transition in mesoscopic systems  which, due to the finite nature of the system, occurs as an extended crossover.

In his work related to nucleon-nucleus interaction , Wigner emphasized the importance of interplay between the state of intrinsic configuration (determined by Hermitian interaction $`V`$) and doorway states (the eigenstates of $`W`$). He pointed out that three types of behavior can be distinguished by the distribution of the widths among many-body states. In the limit of $`V0`$, the “independent particle model,” the entire width is absorbed by the set of states where the decaying single-particle orbital is fully occupied. This is an analog to the superradiant regime. In the intermediate regime, due to the interaction $`V`$, the width becomes fragmented and spreads to many states. Finally, in the limit of large $`V`$ the chaotic intrinsic motion leads to the approximately uniform distribution of the widths, the “uniform model,” which is analogous here to the shell-model limit $`\gamma 0.`$

### 4.2 Effective occupation numbers

We can extend the definition of the single-particle occupancy $`n_\nu `$ of the decaying orbital to any value of $`\gamma `$, instead of the $`\gamma 0`$ limit discussed previously, eq. (21). The effective occupation number for the quasistationary state $`j`$ can be defined as

$$n_\nu (j;\gamma )=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_j(\gamma )}{\gamma }.$$
(23)
As follows from Eq. (19), the sum $`_jn_\nu (j;\gamma )`$ is independent of $`\gamma .`$ The numbers (23), properly normalized according to Eq. (19), show how additional decay amplitudes induced by an infinitesimal increase of $`\gamma `$ are distributed among the widths of the eigenstates. Despite the resemblance to occupation numbers, these $`n_\nu `$ can be negative and do not have to be confined to the interval between 0 and 1. There exists also another possibility, namely, to introduce spectroscopic factors directly as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_j(\gamma )/\gamma .`$ They are indeed between 0 and 1, but being simply proportional to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ they do not reveal any new information related to the dynamics.

In Fig. 6 the evolution of the effective occupation numbers $`n_\nu `$ for the lowest 13 states $`\mathrm{\Psi }_j`$ is shown. The evolution starts with occupancies found for the shell model with residual interaction but no decay and follows a complicated path to the final segregated values of 0 and 1, corresponding to quasistable and superradiant states, respectively. The resulting crossover transition of the entire spectrum is gradual. It starts at the point where $`\gamma `$ exceeds the level spacing on the real axis. Here the resonances start to overlap. Although there are states that converge to the limiting value relatively fast, the majority of states undergo a complicated and peculiar evolution driven by the competition between the intrinsic and external interactions. Before reaching the regime of developed segregation, the evolution may involve peaks of occupation numbers for specific eigenstates. The segregation occurs at the values of width covering the macroscopic portion of the many-body spectrum, so that a balance between the external coupling represented by the imaginary part and the internal motion given by Hermitian part is reached. An analogous balance between two-level atoms (radiators) and radiation field is required for the Dicke superradiance. The nature of the phase transition to superradiance in the Dicke model was studied in Refs. .

The definition of the effective occupation numbers in the form (23) provides a special insight into the dynamics of a phase transition. This definition is similar in spirit to that of correlational entropy  that shows how fast the states of the system readjust as a result of changes in the environment. Here $`\gamma `$ plays the role of the external parameter. For regular dynamics the behavior of this entropy is smooth. However, any phase transition, which may be hindered in a mesoscopic system, leads to a rapid restructuring of the state and thus results in a peak in the correlational entropy . Similarly, in our example, in the transitional region of $`\gamma `$, the peaks of $`n_\nu `$ as a function of $`\gamma `$ are clearly seen for most of the states $`\mathrm{\Psi }_j.`$ For some states in Fig. 2 the peaks can be sharp, an indication that a particular many-body state undergoes a sudden restructuring. It is worth noting that a practically identical discussion is appropriate for the two-spin example considered in Sec. 3. There the quantity $`n_\nu `$ becomes the effective probability of finding the molecule 1 in the radiating state with $`s^z=1/2.`$ For the two mixed states with $`S^z=0`$ it can be easily calculated using the definition (23) and the expression for the complex energy (16). Even in the limited example of two spins the “phase transition” (the point of level crossing) appears as a special bifurcation point.

### 4.3 Global transition to superradiance

In Fig. 7 we demonstrate the global properties of the transitional regime from another perspective by plotting the segregation fraction $`\xi (\gamma )`$ defined as a fraction of many-body states for which the generalized occupancy $`n_\nu `$ appears close to the limiting values of 0 or 1,

$$\xi (\gamma )=\frac{1}{𝒩}\underset{j}{}\left[e^{n_\nu ^2(j;\gamma )/(2\sigma ^2)}+e^{[1n_\nu ^2(j;\gamma )]^2/(2\sigma ^2)}\right].$$
(24)
Here we choose $`\sigma =0.1.`$ The role of the relative magnitudes of the single-particle spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ`$ and two-body matrix elements for the phase transition can be inferred from this figure. Here a randomly chosen set of two-body matrix elements $`V`$ with an average magnitude setting the unit of energy is kept constant, while the single-particle level spacing $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ`$ is varied. In the limit of infinitely large spacing, the mixing part of the Hamiltonian, $`V`$, becomes negligible, formally resulting in the disappearance of the intermediate transitional region. Nevertheless, even for $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ`$ fifty times larger than the average $`V`$, the transitional region is still well defined.

The transition to superradiance, being gradual for the entire system, can be very drastic for a particular many-body state. An interesting analogy can be found between the transition to superradiance and percolation theory. The set of original intrinsic states can be considered as a lattice with cites determined by energies $`E_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}.}`$. Without decay the system is stationary and rests at a given initial eigenstate. The coupling to the continuum opens the possibility for the system to hop from state to state until it gets into a doorway state and emits a particle. The probability of such hopping $`jj^{}`$ according to the perturbation theory is determined by the matrix element $`j|W|j^{}`$ (this term in our examples is proportional to $`\gamma `$) and inversely proportional to the distance $`|E_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}.}^{}{}_{j}{}^{}E_{\mathrm{s}.\mathrm{m}.}^{}{}_{j^{}}{}^{}|`$. The lattice is irregular because the cites of the lattice correspond to the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian $`H`$ and the distribution of distances between the cites is given by Wigner random matrix theory . As a result, some areas can experience phase transitions and coherently orient toward a doorway state (which is not an eigenstate) earlier than the rest of the system. This is the reason for the sharp changes observed in individual states, see Fig. 6 and related discussion. As follows from Fig. 7, a significant strength of the continuum coupling is required for the full system to reorient and to create a coherent superradiant flow into doorway configurations.

## 5 Conclusions

We presented an introduction to interesting phenomena that appear in complex systems as a result of their coupling to the environment. We discussed simple examples showing that the strong coupling significantly reorganizes the motion, dynamically separating the states by their relation to the external world. We investigated the properties of a many-body phase transition from the normal shell model (or Fermi-liquid) behavior of a closed many-body system to the superradiant regime with the segregation of rapidly decaying states from long-lived resonances. The chaotic character of the intrinsic interaction does not prevent the system from this generic transition. The presence of very long-lived states, that are almost decoupled from the external world, maybe important for the problem of quantum computing.

We deliberately related our examples to different branches of physics and provided many references trying to demonstrate that these phenomena can be relevant to almost any case when the coupling of a system to the outside world cannot be neglected. This topic links together many of the ideas inherited from Wigner. They include the complexity of many-body states with the characteristic level repulsion ; the theory of quantum damping and decay ; the role of symmetry and incompatibility between symmetries represented here by the competition between internal symmetry and symmetry imposed by the decay processes; theory of resonances, resonance sum rules, fragmentation of the widths in reactions  and the near-threshold width behavior ; random matrix theory .

This work was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Nuclear Physics Division, under contract No. W-31-109-ENG-38, and by the National Science Foundation, grant PHY-0070911.


format: text

text:
# A Joint model for radio and gamma-ray emission from pulsars

## 1. Introduction

Pulsar is able to radiate multi-band emission. A wealth of observational data on radio pulsars has been collected since the discovery of pulsar. In high energy, 7 gamma-ray pulsars have been discovered by far. Gamma-ray photons from young pulsars allow the deepest insight into the properties of high-energy particles and their interaction with the magnetic fields and photons in pulsar magnetosphere. To understand the observational facts, polar cap models are proposed to account for the radio emission and both the polar cap and outer gap models are developed to explain the gamma-ray emission. In the past decades these two domains have been investigated separately. However, both radio and gamma-ray emissions can be radiated from the same pulsar, such as the Crab and the Vela pulsars, therefore it is highly necessary to establish a united model for radio and gamma-ray emissions.

## 2. Radio emission from pulsars

There are two kinds of polar cap models for pulsar radio emission. One is the inner gap model, which suggests that a gap-type accelerator could be formed on the polar cap surface (Ruderman & Sutherland 1975), the other is space-charge-limited flow, which suggests that either the negative or the positive ions could flow freely from the stellar surface (Arons 1983). Although the binding energy of positive ions is not so high to form an inner gap on very hot neutron star surface, recent investigations found that inner gap may still exist in the situation of bare strange star (Xu et al. 2001) or in some cases of neutron star (Gil et al. 2002).

Any radio model is required to be able to explain the main observational facts, e.g., the pulse profile, the polarization, the spectrum and so on. We have proposed an inverse Compton scattering (ICS) model for radio emission based on the inner gap scenario (see Qiao & Lin 1998, hereafter paper I, Xu et al. 2000, Qiao et al. 2001). Under this model, some important observational properties can be reproduced: (1) the central (or ”core”) emission beam and the conal beams; (2) the location for each emission component; (3) the linear and circular polarization of individual and integrated pulses; (4) the pulse profiles changing with the frequency. The ICS model is involved in our joint model to account for the radio emission.

## 3. Gamma-ray emission from pulsars

Even if the local charge density $`\rho `$ of secondary particles just out of the inner gap is the same as that of local Goldreich-Julian density $`\rho _{gj}`$ ($`\rho _{gj}=𝛀𝐁/(2\pi c)`$), when the particles stream out, the charge density should be different from the local $`\rho _{gj}`$, then the acceleration caused by space-charge-limited flow will take place. The potential can be written as (Arons 1983)

$$^2\varphi =4\pi (\rho \rho _{gj})$$
(1)
In the one-dimensional case, the electric field parallel to the magnetic field reads (Michel 1974)

$$dE_{}/dz=4\pi (\rho \rho _{gj})$$
(2)
In this way the particles will be accelerated effectively near the null charge surface where $`\rho _{gj}=0`$ and then radiate gamma-rays. The geometry of this acceleration location is shown in Fig.1 schematically. Such an acceleration process is effective within the bundle of open field lines that intersect the null charge surface.

The gamma-ray beam and light curve are figured out according to geometrical relations (Fig.2). Since the relative location of the secondary acceleration region to the polar cap surface depends on the inclination angle, the calculated gamma beam can be narrow or very wide, and the gamma and radio pulses may show various kinds of phase configuration, from alignment to a wide separation. For the comparison of calculated results with the observational profiles readers are referred to Qiao et al. (2002). The details of physical process are to be presented elsewhere.

## 4. Conclusions and discussions

From the geometrical consideration above one can see that both the inner and the outer gaps may play significant roles in pulsar radiation. The key point is that the inner gap acceleration and the space-charge-limited flow acceleration near the null charge surface should be taken into account. Low frequency waves supplied by the inner gap sparking are inverse Compton scattered by the outgoing relativistic particles to produce the radio emission (Paper I). The particles then encounter a secondary acceleration near the null charge surface and emit gamma-rays. Various kinds of observational properties can be reproduced. Besides some pulsars can only be observed in gamma-ray, we predict that some pulsars can not be observed in gamma-ray owing to our line of sight missing the emission beam. The joint model presented here is different from the cur-rent polar cap gamma-ray models because the null charge surface plays the vital role in secondary acceleration. Our model is also different from the present outer gap models: the secondary particles are accelerated by the effect of space-charge-limited flow and the radiation location is extended inside into the null surface.

### Acknowledgments.

We are very grateful to Professor R.N. Manchester for his valuable discussion. This work is partly supported by NSF of China, and the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program Higher Education.


text:
# Untitled Document

Fractional charge in electron clusters: Interpretation of Mani and von Klitzing quantum Hall effect data Keshav N. Shrivastava School of Physics, University of Hyderabad,
Hyderabad 500046, India

The charge of an electron in a cluster of $`n`$ electrons is not $`ne`$ but it is a fraction. We make many different clusters and calculate their charge per electron. We make 84 clusters and calculate the charge of an electron in these clusters. All of the 84 calculated values are exactly the same as found in the experimental measurements. The formulation is so good that all fractional charges if and when measured can be reduced to $`l`$ and $`s`$ values where the denominator in the fractional charge is simply $`2l+1`$.

Corresponding author: keshav@mailaps.org
Fax: +91-40-2301 0145.Phone: 2301 0811.

1. Introduction

Recently, we have understood the problem of a fractional charge observation in the resistivity in quantum Hall effect.This problem for single electrons, s=1/2, is given in a recent book. Pan et al have shown that some of the observed fractions did not fit in their model so we tried to look at these values. We found that the fractions left unsolved by Pan et al easily come out from our calculation. When our paper appeared, our attention was drawn to one of the papers of Mani and von Klitzing which gives detailed experimental measurements of the quantum Hall effect.

In the present paper, we describe the interpretation of the data of Mani and von Klitzing. Several interesting results emerge. It is found that there are clusters of electrons with spins placed at different sites. From the spin, we determine the number of electrons in a cluster. The arrangement of electrons in these clusters gives the effective charge per electron. We have calculated the various properties of 84 clusters and in all cases, the calculated values agree with the experimental data exactly.

2. Theory

The theory which gives the fractional charge per electron in different spin and orbital state is given in a recent book. The effective charge is given by,

$$e_{eff}/e=\frac{l+\frac{1}{2}\pm s}{2l+1}.$$
(1)
This formula generates the effective charge when we feed the orbital value l and the spin $`s`$. We examine the data of Mani and Klitzing. The figure 1 of this paper shows the plateaus in the $`\rho _{xy}`$ and associated minima in $`\rho _{xx}`$ in a sample of GaAs/AlGaAs as a function of magnetic field. The same data is shown in figure 2 of this paper with normalized magnetic field. The values of the fractional charge shown in the data are,

$$1/3,2/5,3/7,4/9,4/7,3/5,2/3,1,2,3,4.(11values).$$
(2)
These values are the same as those, we calculated in 1986 and these are also given in the book. When $`s`$=1/2, the above formula gives two values, one for positive sign and the other for negative sign. For positive sign, the value is called $`\nu _+`$ given by,

$$\nu _+=\frac{l+1}{2l+1}$$
(3)
and for the negative sign, we call it $`\nu _{}`$ given by

$$\nu _{}=\frac{l}{2l+1}$$
(4)
for l=0-4, these values are given in Table 1, below:

Table 1:
S.No. $`l`$ $`\nu _+`$ $`\nu _{}`$  1 0 1 0    2 1 2/3 1/3  3 2 3/5 2/5  4 3 4/7 3/7  5 4 5/9 4/9

These values are the same as those given in figure 2 of Mani and von Klitzing. These are the eight values where the calculated values are the same as the measured values. Next, we go to the figure 3 of Mani and von Klitzing. This figure has the values,

$$6/5,11/9,9/7,4/3,7/5,10/7,8/5,11/7,5/3,7/3,$$
(5)
$$8/3,16/7,12/5,13/5,8/3,10/3,11/3,2,3,4,5.$$
(6)
The inset on the right hand side has the values,

$$16/5,29/9,23/7,10/3,17/5,24/7,25/7,18/5,11/3$$
(7)
and that on the left hand side has,

$$11/5,20/9,16/7,7/3,12/5,17/7,18/7,13/5,8/3.$$
(8)
The eq.(2) has 11 values, eqs.(5) and (6) have 17 (excluding integers), eq.(7) has 9 values and eq.(8) has another 9 values. Therefore, we have 11+17+9+9=46 experimental values which we predict by using a single formula and we also claim that all those values which are not included in these 46 values can also be explained by our formula(1). We tabulate our formula for $`l`$=1 in Table 2, below:

Table 2:
S.No. $`l`$ $`s`$ $`\nu _+`$  1 1 5/2 4/3  2 1 7/2 5/3  3 1 9/2 2  4 1 11/2 7/3  5 1 13/2 8/3  6 1 15/2 3  7 1 17/2 10/3  8 1 19/2 11/3

These 8 values are the same as those found in (5),(6)and (7). Thus we are able to derive exactly 8 of the values found in the data. The lesson we learn is that there are clusters of 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17 and 19 electrons. The spins of these clusters are obviously 5/2 for five electrons, 7/2 for 7 electrons, etc. All of the 5 electrons have spin positive only and in this table only $`\nu _+`$ has been tabulated and there are no electrons with spin negative. The cluster of spin-polarized 5 electrons has 4/3 as the charge of one electron. This charge is deduced from the flux quantization given in the book. All these values are also subject to a multiplier of $`n_L`$ due to Landau level quantum number. In the Table 1, we obtain $`\nu _+`$=1 for$`l`$=0. When this number is multiplied by $`n_L`$=1,2,3,4, etc. various integer values emerge. The $`\nu _+`$ has spin +1/2 and $`\nu _{}`$ has -1/2. Therefore, there are singlets, which can even superconduct. Let us calculate the effective charge from eq.(1) for $`l`$=2. The values found from the formula are given in Table 3:

Table 3:
S.No. $`l`$ $`s`$ $`\nu _+`$  1 2 7/2 6/5  2 2 9/2 7/5  3 2 11/2 8/5  4 2 13/2 9/5\*  5 2 15/2 2  6 2 17/2 11/5  7 2 19/2 12/5  8 2 21/2 13/5  9 2 23/2 14/5\*  10 2 25/2 3  11 2 27/2 16/5  12 2 29/2 17/5  13 2 31/2 18/5

All these values correspond to positive spin due to polarization of electron clusters in a high magnetic field. All of these calculated values are exactly the same as in the experimental data of eqs.(5),(6), (7) and (8) except 9/5 and 14/5 which we predict but not yet identified in the figure 3 of Mani and von Klitzing. We now substitute $`l`$=3 in eq.(1) to find the effective charge. The values calculated are given in Table 4.

Table 4:
S.No. $`l`$ $`s`$ $`\nu _+`$    1 3 11/2 9/7  2 3 13/2 10/7  3 3 15/2 11/7  4 3 25/2 16/7  5 3 27/2 17/7  6 3 29/2 18/7  7 3 39/2 23/7  8 3 41/2 24/7  9 3 43/2 25/7

All of these calculated values completely match with the experimental values of eqs.(5)-(8). All values of spin positive and none with negative. From the spin value, we can obtain the number of electrons, for example, spin=11/2 means that there are 11 electrons in the cluster which give the charge of an electron as 9/7, etc. We also tabulate a few values for $`l`$=4 in Table 5.

Table 5:
S.No. $`l`$ $`s`$ $`\nu _+`$    1 4 13/2 11/9  2 4 31/2 20/9  3 4 49/2 29/9

These values of $`\nu _+`$ calculated here from eq.(1) are exactly the same as in the experimental figure. All of the values are polarized according to positive sign for the spin. Thus 9 values in Table 1, 8 in Table 2, 13 in Table 3, 9 in Table 4 and 3 in Table 5, i.e., a total of 42 values and $`n_L`$ times integer which has 4 values, 1, 2, 3, and 4 are correctly predicted. Thus 46 values are correctly predicted, their spin alignment is found, the spin is assigned and the number of electrons in the cluster is correctly determined.

We go to figure 4 of Mani and von Klitzing. The following experimental values are immediately picked up.

$$5/9,4/7,3/5,8/13,7/11,5/7,8/11,7/9,4/5,9/11,$$
(9)
$$11/13,11/19,10/17,13/21,12/19,16/25,2/3,11/15,10/13,6/7.$$
(10)
All of these values are easily found from our formula (1) also. The calculated values are given in Table 6 below:

Table 6:
S.No. $`l`$ $`s`$ $`\nu _+`$    1 2 1/2 3/5  2 2 3/2 4/5  3 3 1/2 4/7  4 3 3/2 5/7  5 3 5/2 6/7  6 4 1/2 5/9  7 4 5/2 7/9  8 5 3/2 7/11  9 5 5/2 8/11  10 5 7/2 9/11  11 6 3/2 8/13  12 6 7/2 10/13  13 6 9/2 11/13  14 7 7/2 11/15  15 8 3/2 10/17  16 9 3/2 11/19  17 9 5/2 12/19  18 10 5/2 13/21  19 12 7/2 16/25

All of these calculated values are the same as those experimentally found from the figure 4 of Mani and von Klitzing. The polarization is positive for all of these values and the spin is determined. The number of electrons in a cluster can be determined from the spin. Thus there are clusters of 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9 electrons which orbit according to $`l`$ values. For some small values of $`l`$ it is clear that more than one site is needed to accomodate all of the electrons.

Thus 46 values of figure 3 and 19 values of figure 4, i.e., a total of 65 values of the charge are correctly predicted. In fact, we can fix the denominator to $`2l+1`$ so that the numerator becomes $`l+\frac{1}{2}\pm s`$. In that case all values which are not tabulated by us are also predicted. That gives infinite capacity to predict the fractional charges. Thus those values which are not tabulated, can be easily written down.

Now we look at the right-hand-side inset of figure 4 of Mani and von Klitzing. The experimental values given here are,

$$4/7,11/19,18/31,25/43,24/41,17/29,10/17,23/39,16/27$$
(11)
and in the left inset,

$$3/5,8/13,13/21,18/29,17/27,12/19,7/11,16/25,20/31,11/17.$$
(12)
The first of these values are the same as those predicted in Table 7.

Table 7:
S.No. $`l`$ $`s`$ $`\nu _+`$    1 3 1/2 4/7  2 9 3/2 11/19  3 10 15/2 18/31  4 21 7/2 25/43  5 20 7/2 24/41  6 14 5/2 17/29  7 8 3/2 10/17  8 19 7/2 23/39  9 13 5/2 16/27

The interpretation of these values is straight forward. The positive sign used to obtain $`\nu _+`$ shows that all values are spin polarized in one direction only and none of these values are using negative sign for the spin. The value of the spin also gives the number of electrons. Therefore, there are clusters of several electrons such as 15 electrons for 18/31 or 5 electrons for 17/29. The formation of clusters of electrons is thus clearly born. For $`l`$=20, as an example, there are 20$`\times `$2+1=41 orbits which can easily accomodate 7 electrons with all of them positive spin. Similarly, the values of eq.(10) are interpreted and given in Table 8.

Table 8:
S.No. $`l`$ $`s`$ $`\nu _+`$    1 2 1/2 3/5  2 6 3/2 8/13  3 10 5/2 13/21  4 14 7/2 18/29  5 13 7/2 17/27  6 9 5/2 12/19  7 5 3/2 7/11  8 12 7/2 16/25  9 15 9/2 20/31  10 8 5/2 11/17

In this table all spins are positively polarized and no value belongs to negative spin. There is the spin which gives the value of the number of electrons. There are clusters of electrons upto 9 electrons in a cluster. There are very large orbits.

3. Quantum Shubnikov-de Haas effect,quantum Hall effect or new effect.

When quantized steps were found in the Hall effect it was called the quantum Hall effect. Similarly, when quantum effects are found in the Shubnikov-de Hass effect it should be called the quantum Shubnikov-de Haas effect. We find that there is a new spin dependent effect on the Shubnikov-de Haas effect. This new effect is described below:

Mani et al use effective mass in the cyclotron frequency,

$$\frac{eB_f}{m^{}c}=\omega $$
(13)
with $`m^{}`$=0.067 m. In this case, the resistance minima occur at fields,

$$B=\frac{4}{4j+1}B_f$$
(14)
with j=1, 2, 3, …. In our theory, $`l+\frac{1}{2}\pm s`$ occurs in the numerator and 2$`l`$+1 in the denominator so that,

$$2l+1=4j+1$$
(15)
so that the $`j`$ of the above expression can be written as,

$$l=2j.$$
(16)
Therefore,

$$\frac{4}{4j+1}=\frac{4}{2l+1}$$
(17)
which means

$$l+\frac{1}{2}\pm s=4$$
(18)
$$l\pm s=3+\frac{1}{2}.$$
(19)
For positive sign, $`l`$=3, s=1/2 satisfies the required equation. For negative sign $`l`$=4, s=-1/2 also satisfies the equation. Therefore, 4/4j+1 is easily satisfied by our theory. Naturally, the factor of 4/4j+1 must seek a theoretical derivation which we have found. Due to $`\pm s`$ in our formula, for very large value of $`l`$ we get $`e_{eff}/e`$ =1/2 for both the signs. For $`l`$=0, there are two values of the charge $`\frac{1}{2}\pm s`$, i.e., 0 and 1. This is a singlet and hence diamagnetic. This singlet is superconducting and has zero resistance. When $`l`$ is changed, there are neighbouring states which overlap. When we shine the system with a red light by using light emiting diodes and light is switched off before recording resistivity, the plot of $`\rho _{xx}`$ changes due to change in overlaps because of the change in populations caused by light. Some times, there is a long lived level which causes negative resistivity due to maser action or Gunn effect so that along with positive resistivity terms a near zero is possible, but that is besides the point. There are clusters with varying number of electrons so that there is no long range ferromagnetism but some of the clusters are superconducting even though they are not singlets. When, $`l+\frac{1}{2}\pm s`$=0, the effective charge of a quasiparticle becomes zero and for zero charge, $`\rho _{xx}=h/ie^2`$, becomes infinity so that there is “superresistivity” as discussed in ref.. For $`l`$=0, zero charge is associated with spin, $`s`$=$`\pm `$1/2. For $`l`$=1 zero charge gives, s=-3/2. Mani et al find resistivity minima at 4/5, 4/9, 4/13, 4/21, 4/17, 4/25, etc. According to our formula, the analysis of these fractions is given in Table 9.

Table 9:
S.No. $`l`$ $`s`$ $`\nu _+`$ $`\nu _{}`$    1 2 3/2 4/5 1/5  2 4 1/2 5/9 4/9  3 6 5/2 9/13 4/13  4 8 9/2 13/17 4/17  5 10 13/2 17/21 4/21  6 12 17/2 21/25 4/25

It is seen that 4/9, 4/13, 4/17, 4/21, 4/25 have negative spin while 4/5 has positive spin. This gives the polarization in the magnetic field. Accordingly, 4/5 should be weaker than the other states mentioned, but 1/5 is predicted, though not given by Mani et al. From the spin value, we can determine the number of electrons in a cluster. Therefore the above values belong to clusters with, 1, 3, 5, 9, 13 and 17, electrons. Naturally a long range superconductivity is not found. However, when we sustitute $`l`$=0, S=1, two charged states are found, one has charge -1/2 for + sign, and the other has charge 3/2 for positive spin. Therefore, this state is similar to 3He. If we substitute $`s`$=0, $`l`$=0, the charge per particle becomes 1/2 but the state is singlet and superconducting.

4. Interpretation

We learn the fractional charge, and the $`l`$ and $`s`$ values from the tables. All predicted values exactly agree with the experimental data. From the spin value, we determine the number of electrons. From the comparison of spin polarization and $`l`$ value, we can see that not all of the electrons are in one place. So that there must be a pattern formation. For example, $`l`$=1 and s=19/2 means that there are 19 electrons. Since all of them have spin positive only, there can not be more than 3 at one site so that at least 7 sites are needed. We can put 3 electrons per site so that 6 sites have 18 electrons and the 19th electron is at the 7th site. These sites can be linear so that 19 electrons are on 7 sites along a line. However, there is no specific condition on the dimensionality. We can put 7 sites in two dimensions in a plane which is more likely in GaAs/AlGaAs. Since, the phase transition is excluded in one dimension, it is preferable to put the sites in two dimensions. The clustering phenomenon is a precursor to a phase transition.

5. Comparison.

Our fractional charge agrees with the experimental data. As far as fundamentals are concerned, there is an effective charge which depends on spin. Laughlin wrote the wave function for a fractional charge of 1/3 but this 1/3 is not the same as the 1/3 in Table 1 here. Laughlin requires “incompressibility but there is no such requirement in our theory. It is not possible for Laughlin’s theory to explain 84 different fractional charges given here. It is also not possible for Laughlin’s theory to go into various experimental properties. There is a model called “composite fermion”(CF). This model is internally inconsistent and can not explain the 84 different values seen here.

Due to large magnetic field, the electron spins polarize, so we expect a long range ferromagnetic order. However, there are clusters so long range ferromagnetic order is not predicted. Only a short range force is possible. The Heisenberg exchange interaction predicts ferromagnetic alignment but this order in clusters is also limited to short range only.

6. Conclusions.

All values of the fractional charge found in the experimental data on quantum Hall effect are exactly the same as those found from our formulation. There are clusters of electrons in which we determine the spin and hence the number of quasiparticles in a cluster. Some singlets are predicted. It is found that there is a spin-dependent charge.

7. References

1. K. N. Shrivastava, cond-mat/0212552.
2. K.N. Shrivastava, Introduction to quantum Hall effect,
Nova Science Pub. Inc., N. Y. (2002).
3. W. Pan, H. L. Stormer, D. C. Tsui, L. N. Pfeiffer, K. W. Baldwin and K. W. West, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 016801 (2003).
4. R. G. Mani and K. von Klitzing, Z. Phys. B 100, 635(1996).
5. R. G. Mani, J. H. Smet, K. von Klitzing, V. Narayanamurti, W. B. Johnson and V. Umansky, cond-mat/0303034.
6. A. F. Volkov, cond-mat/0302615.

Note: Ref.2 is available from:
Nova Science Publishers, Inc.,
400 Oser Avenue, Suite 1600,
Hauppauge, N. Y.. 11788-3619,
Tel.(631)-231-7269, Fax: (631)-231-8175,
ISBN 1-59033-419-1 US$`\$69`$.
E-mail: novascience@Earthlink.net


text:
# Magnetic horizons of UHECR sources and the GZK feature

## 1 Introduction

The cosmic microwave background is expected to limit the travel distance of nucleons and nuclei above 30 EeV, due to photo-disintegration or photo-production of pions. These interactions impose a cut-off in the spectrum of high-energy cosmic rays known as the GZK cutoff , strongly limiting their visible flux.

The usual interpretation of the expected reduction of the flux above 100 EeV lies in the sudden reduction of the visible Universe from a few Gpc below 10 EeV to less than 20 Mpc above a few 100 EeV. This simple view may however be strongly modified in the presence of extra-galactic magnetic fields of the order of 100 nG. Such strong fields are compatible with current observations and upper limits from Faraday rotation measurements which indicate field strengths at the $`\mu `$G level within the central Mpc region of galaxy clusters . Relatively strong magnetic fields may exist in intergalactic space with coherence lengths of the order of a Mpc.

In realistic models of the Universe, however, such strong fields cannot fill the entire intergalactic volume, and should rather be concentrated along the high density sheets where matter also concentrates, as suggested by large-scale structure formation models . The transport of UHECRs in this kind of environments, and their resulting spectrum observed on Earth, depend on the particular geometry of the fields, combined with that of the sources, and on the intensity of the magnetic fields. This has been investigated by a number of authors using various assumptions for the distance of one or a few local sources, and working out UHECR propagation in a model of the local supercluster . It has been found that under some circumstances, the UHECR spectrum could show an attenuated GZK suppression.

In this paper, we focus on the effect of strong magnetic fields around our Galaxy, assuming that the local group lies within a supercluster with higher than average magnetic field. In order to obtain a clear physical understanding of this effect alone, we use a spherically symmetric configuration and a homogeneous field in the Universe. This is clearly not representative of the observed walls-and-voids structure of our Universe on all scales, but it allows us to emphasize a basic mechanism using a complete Monte-Carlo propagation model, and disentangling the configuration specific effects from the influence of strong fields.

As a matter of fact, in magnetic fields of a 100 nG, a charged particle of 10 EeV has a Larmor radius of 100 kpc and propagates diffusively while at higher energies (above 100 EeV, say) the trajectories are essentially ballistic. Therefore the clear picture of the GZK cutoff imposed by particle dynamics gets blurred by another effect taking place at the same energy: the transition between ballistic and diffusive transport regimes.

Another point to note is that in such a field and for attenuation times of the order of a few Gyr (attenuation of pre-GZK protons by pair production), the radius of the diffusion sphere of a continuous source is only 10 Mpc. Therefore, far away sources ($`D100`$ Mpc, say), would not be visible at any energy.

Given the above ingredients, nearby sources ($`10\mathrm{Mpc}D100`$ Mpc) appear to be responsible for the observed UHECR spectrum at all energies. These sources would be sufficiently far away so that we lie outside their low-energy (1–10 EeV) diffusion spheres, therefore reducing the corresponding flux, but close enough so that their high-energy component does not get significantly attenuated by energy losses. This can reduce the usually inferred flux difference between energies below and above the GZK energy. In addition, on a 10 Mpc scale the Universe cannot be taken as isotropic and uniform, which indicates that the local distribution of matter will play a dominant role in the actually observed energy spectra.

In the following we explore this scenario. The next section describes our magnetic field model and our particle propagation Monte-Carlo. Section 3 discusses the magnetic horizon for charged particles and section 4 presents our results.

## 2 A simplistic magnetized Universe

### 2.1 Field modelling

We simulated a magnetized Universe following the method of . Our turbulent field has a zero mean value and fluctuates following a Gaussian distribution. The spectrum of fluctuations is a power law

$$<\delta B(\stackrel{}{k})^2>=S_0k^{2\beta }$$

The normalization $`S_0`$ is obtained through the Wiener-Kintchine theorem by imposing the average fluctuation strength $`<\delta B^2>`$:

$$<\delta B^2>=S_0k^{2\beta }4\pi k^2dk$$

leading to

$$S_0=\frac{\beta 1}{k_m^{1\beta }k_M^{1\beta }}<\delta B^2>$$

The maximum ($`k_M`$) and minimum ($`k_m`$) modes are set respectively by the size of the simulation box $`L_c=`$1 Mpc (related to the coherence length of our field model) and the step size of the grid $`l=`$15 kpc. We used a Kolmogorov fluctuation spectrum corresponding to $`\beta =5/3`$. In Fourier space, the field verifies $`\stackrel{}{B_k}.\stackrel{}{k}=0`$ to satisfy div$`\stackrel{}{B}=0`$ and we pick up a random phase in the transverse plane to complete the field description. In real space the field is computed on a 15 kpc grid over a volume of 1 Mpc3. This volume is then translated periodically to fill our modelled Universe. The value of the field at any point in space is obtained through a linear interpolation of the 8 closest vertices of the grid.

### 2.2 Particle trajectories and sources spectra

For each Monte-Carlo simulation, we compute a field configuration according to the above method and we follow a number of protons as long as their energy is above 10 EeV or their propagation time is below 3 Gyr. At each step along their trajectory, we solve the equation of motion in the local field and compute the energy loss due to pion photo-production, simulating each interaction. The losses due to pair production are treated continuously. Neutrons, if produced, are also followed until they transform again into a proton via the photo-production of pions or until they decay.

To compute the spectrum of a source at a given distance $`R`$ from the observer, we generate a set of protons at the origin and record the times (and the corresponding energies) of each crossing of a sphere of radius $`R`$, centered on the origin. By construction, our spectrum does not depend on the crossing position on the sphere, therefore we record them all. Moreover the effective detection probability being very small (the surface of a detector is negligible compared to the surface of the sphere), we compute the spectrum at various radii following the same set of particles.

Fig. 1 shows the distribution of particle energies as a function of trajectory length (equivalent to time) for an observer located on a sphere 12 Mpc away from the source, and for an initial energy of 800 EeV.

For radii comparable to or smaller than $`L_c`$ the orientation of the field on the surface of the sphere may not average properly and may lead to strong distortion in the time distribution of the particle crossings (a particle trapped along a field line parallel to the sphere surface may cross it many times over a small distance). To avoid this effect we regenerate a field configuration every 100 generated protons.

From the recorded information we are able to compute the probability $`(tt_0,E;R,E_0)\mathrm{d}E\mathrm{d}t`$ for a particle produced at time $`t_0`$ with energy $`E_0`$ to be detected at a given distance $`R`$ at time $`t`$ with an energy $`E`$. From these probability tables, and assuming an isotropic distribution of sources $`\rho (R)=\rho _0`$, the spectrum observed today (time t) from sources located between $`R_{min}`$ and $`R_{max}`$ is given by:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}N}{\mathrm{d}E}}(t)=`$ $`\rho _0{\displaystyle _{R_{min}}^{R_{max}}}dV{\displaystyle _0^t}dt_0{\displaystyle _{E_0^{min}}^{E_0^{max}}}dE_0f(E_0){\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi R^2}}(tt_0,E;R,E_0),`$ (1)
where $`f(E_0)`$ is the source injection spectrum and where we have neglected all cosmological effects.

## 3 Magnetic horizon

As we mentioned in the introduction, for field strengths of the order of 100 nG with Mpc coherence length, particle trajectories below a few tens of EeV are well described by the diffusion equation. Several diffusive regime may be distinguished within a given field configuration, depending on the particle energy. For the pure random field we are considering, three regimes have been identified and can be parameterized with the following diffusion coefficients (in Mpc2/Myr) :

$`D(E)`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{2\hspace{0.17em}10}^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{E}{B}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu \text{G}}{10^{20}\text{eV}}}\right)^{7/3}\left({\displaystyle \frac{L}{\text{Mpc}}}\right)^{4/3}(E>E^{})`$
$``$ $`\mathrm{3\hspace{0.17em}10}^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{E}{B}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu \text{G}}{10^{20}\text{eV}}}\right)(0.1E^{}<E<E^{})`$
$``$ $`\mathrm{4\hspace{0.17em}10}^3\left({\displaystyle \frac{E}{B}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mu \text{G}}{10^{20}\text{eV}}}\right)^{1/3}\left({\displaystyle \frac{L}{\text{Mpc}}}\right)^{2/3}(E<0.1E^{})`$
The transition energy $`E^{}`$ can be evaluated from the Larmor radius and the field coherence length $`r_L(E^{})=L_c/2\pi `$, giving:

$$E^{}1.45\times 10^{20}\left(\frac{B}{\mu \text{G}}\right)\left(\frac{L}{\text{Mpc}}\right)\text{eV}$$

Of course, the transition actually takes place over a range of energies around $`E^{}`$.

Below the GZK cutoff energy, where losses do not play a crucial role, the Green function for the diffusion is given by:

$$n(E,\stackrel{}{r},t)=\frac{N_0}{(8\pi D(E)t)^{3/2}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{r^2}{4D(E)t}\right)$$

From this solution, one can estimate the radius of the diffusion sphere as a function of time and energy:

$$R(E,t)\sqrt{4D(E)t}$$

For a given source distance $`R`$, the energy scale separating the ballistic and diffusive regimes can be estimated by comparing the corresponding propagation times: $`R^2/4D(E_\mathrm{c})`$ and $`R/c`$. Fig. 2 shows this energy as a function of source distance for a random field of 100 nG. It is remarkable that for sources within the GZK sphere (10–100 Mpc), the transition occurs around the GZK energy (i.e. a few tens of EeV).

The existence of a diffusion sphere whose radius grows much slower than $`ct`$ gives rise to a *magnetic horizon* which limits the distance up to which a given particle can escape from its source before losing most of its energy. This horizon is given by:

$$R_H=\sqrt{4D(E)T_{loss}(E)}$$
(3)
where $`T_{loss}(E)=E/\frac{\mathrm{d}E}{\mathrm{d}t}`$ is the energy loss time.

Using the Monte Carlo described in the previous section, we computed this distance as the maximum radius reached by 68% of the particles over a propagation time $`T_{loss}(E)`$. This horizon is shown on Fig. 3. At lower energy (below 10 EeV), it is given by Eqn. 3 and the parameterization of the diffusion coefficients given in Eqn. 3. Different values of turbulent magnetic fields have been used. For relatively strong fields (300 nG), the horizon is the same before and after the GZK energy ; implying that the sudden reduction of the visible Universe at the origin of the expected suppression of the flux above 100 EeV does *not* occur in that case.

## 4 Results

All the following results have been obtained for continuous sources with power-law injection spectra of index 2.3 and maximum energy of 1000 EeV. This slope is typical of particle acceleration at relativistic shockwave .

We calculated the observed spectra for various source positions (45 values distributed uniformly in log scale from 1 Mpc to 1 Gpc) and turbulent field values ranging from 3 to 300 nG. Fig. 4 shows a comparison of these spectra for sources at 1, 10, 50 and 100 Mpc obtained with a 100 nG random field. The solid angle effect has been taken away so that the normalization and spectra at all distances would be identical in the absence of magnetic field and energy losses. As expected, the spectrum of a very close source (1 Mpc) shows a softening (index changing form $`2.3`$ to about $`3.0`$) at low energies due to the accumulation of low energy particles, while at high energy the original spectrum is restored. For such a nearby source there is of course no GZK cutoff, but this configuration would lead to an anisotropy in the sky incompatible with the already available data. At intermediate distance (10 Mpc) the flux is only slightly reduced at high energy and the contribution (corrected by E3) at 10 EeV and 1000 EeV are roughly the same, leading to a nearly flat spectrum in the 10–1000 EeV range.

Further away (above 100 Mpc) the flux is strongly attenuated at high energy because of the GZK cutoff but also at low energy because of the diffusive regime. One should also note that increasing the distance between the source and the observer leads to a stronger GZK cutoff because the mean travel length increases faster than the source distance. Moreover, for greater source distances, the diffusive regime extends to higher energy, as shown by Fig. 2.

The main conclusion is therefore that far away sources have a negligible contribution to the total flux at *all* energies (and not only above GZK energy). In other words, the presence of random magnetic fields leads to a non trivial configuration of sources contributing to the spectrum, even in the case of a uniform distribution.

In Fig. 5 we compare the observed flux for a uniform distribution of sources between 10 and 1000 Mpc with and without a 300 nG random magnetic field. In the later case the reduction of the low energy flux is clearly visible as the observer lies mostly outside the diffusion spheres. The exact form of the spectrum strongly depends on the source configuration on a scale (a few tens of Mpc) where the Universe cannot be taken as uniform. Therefore the local configuration of sources may lead to a spectrum that lies anywhere between the shapes of those obtained from individual sources at 10 or 50 Mpc as shown on Fig. 4.

This comparison also shows that for a field of 300 nG, propagation becomes purely ballistic only above 500 EeV and the transition between the diffusive and ballistic regimes spreads over half a decade above 100 EeV. This transition implies a flattening of the spectrum at energies higher than $`E_{GZK}`$. The position of this flattening strongly depends on the position of the most contributing sources, and on the value of random fields. Increasing the value of the random fields ($`3\mu `$G) leads to particle diffusion on small scales (a few tens of Mpc) even at energies higher than $`E_{GZK}`$, and therefore moves the transition to the ballistic regime to energies so high ($`>10^{21}`$ eV) that this transition becomes invisible. In such a situation a strong GZK cutoff is restored as the signature of the much shorter energy loss time of post GZK particles.

## 5 Conclusion

We have modelled a fully magnetized Universe to study the effect of random magnetic fields on the spectra of UHECR sources, in a spherically symmetric Universe, in order to get rid of any additional effect related to the geometry of magnetic fields and source distributions. We showed that for magnetic fields in the 100 nG range, sources more distant than about 100 Mpc do not contribute to the observed fluxes at *all* energies. In such a model, the argument of the GZK cutoff in its original form in terms of a sudden reduction of the horizon is modified.

We are aware that a fully magnetized Universe is not a realistic model of our environment. Voids are known to exist, where random fields would rather be around a few nG, or more less. In such regions, UHECRs propagate ballistically even at low energies where GZK losses are unimportant, and therefore the particular effect which we discussed above does not appear. However, our main argument that *”far away sources do not contribute to the visible spectrum of UHECRs at all energies”* would be maintained if all sources are surrounded by a random field of order 100 nG over distances of several Mpc, as expected for sources that lie within galaxies or clusters.

By using a locally homogeneous Universe, we implicitely restricted ourselves to one sheet of magnetic fields and neglected the contribution of other high-density sheets that may lie in our neighbourhood. While this is a direct consequence of our choice to isolate the ‘magnetic cutoff’ effect from any other effect influencing the shape of the spectrum, it may also be qualitatively justified by the fact that the highest energy particles would not be able to travel the distances between two neighbouring sheets without losing some energy, and the lowest energy particles would be largely reflected as they approach the strongly enhanced magnetic fields in our own sheet, resulting in a reduced flux contribution. Such an (imperfect) confinement of UHECRs between two magnetic walls contributes to isolate regions of high magnetic fields from one another.

To illustrate the effect of non uniform fields, with alternating voids and sheets, we also investigated models in which the fields are concentrated in gaussian concentric shells of width $`\sigma =5\mathrm{Mpc}/\sqrt{2}`$ (as in the description of planar magnetic sheets in Ref. ) or $`\sigma =2\mathrm{Mpc}/\sqrt{2}`$, and radii increasing by steps of 30 Mpc, respectively 15 Mpc. As shown in Figure 5, the reduction of the low energy part of the spectrum (between $`10^{19}`$ and $`10^{20}`$ eV) is still visible in this field configuration, and the general effect of reducing the GZK suppression remains. More realistic field configurations thus do not seem to affect the general arguments emphasized here.

We did not model any particular configuration of sources to study the anisotropy effect, but given the slowness of the transition between the two propagation regimes and the fact that the transport becomes only purely ballistic above 500 EeV, we expect that anisotropies would be visible only above 100 EeV where the data is currently too scarce for one to make any definitive statement. It has been shown recently that even with more localized magnetic fields the expected anisotropy from local sources is not ruled out by the current data . One should also note that a few sources localized in the magnetic sheet around the local supercluster would suppress the bump before $`E_{GZK}`$, visible on Fig. 5, because low-energy particles leak through the walls .

## Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ricardo Perez for invaluable discussions.


text:
# The general relativistic geometry of the Navarro-Frenk-White model

## Abstract

We derive the space time geometry associated with the Navarro Frenk White dark matter galactic halo model. We discuss several properties of such a spacetime, with particular attention to the corresponding Newtonian limit, stressing the qualitative and quantitative nature of the differences between the relativistic and the Newtonian description. We also discuss on the characteristics of the possible stress energy tensors which could produce such a geometry, via the Einstein’s equations.

The geometry generated by the galactic halo, is generally thought to be ”almost flat”. This assumption is based, first, on the fact that the galactic dark halo has very low density, at most a few order of magnitude above the critical one. Second, the velocities involved are small compared with the speed of light, and third, the dust treatment gives a description of the dynamics which is in good agrement with the observation. Thus, validates the Newtonian physics as an adequate to treat the dark halo.

These very same arguments are used for studying the Solar system, where also the geometry is taken as ”almost flat”. Nevertheless, the general relativistic treatment of the Solar system has made possible to give important corrections to the Newtonian one and, furthermore, in the general relativistic treatment is precisely this ”almost not flatness”, which explains the motion of the planets!

We consider that to count with a general relativistic version of the galactic dark matter halo allows one to make more accurate analysis on the dynamics of the objects, including the study on gravitational lenses, to mention an application.

In the present work, we describe how the observations can be related with part of the geometry, then propose and expression for the complete geometry associated with the Navarro-Frenk-White, NFW, model. Next describe the properties of such a geometry and explain why the Newtonian description works so well. Armed with the geometry, we discuss on the type of matter-energy which generates the geometry, that is, the nature of dark matter, a point where the Newtonian analysis remains mute.

In a previous series of works, Matos et al.larg , Guzmán et. al. quint , we discussed the possibility of determining the geometry of the space-time, and then constraining the type of matter-energy which generate such geometry, based on observational data. In particular, we addressed the problem of making those determinations based on the observed profile of the tangential velocities of objects orbiting galaxies.

In a nutshell: Given the fact that the dark halo in the galaxies seems to be spherical and at rest, at least in the average, we consider a general spherically symmetric static space-time, see Eq.(1) below, and were able to determine, on purely geometrical ground, an expression for the tangential velocity of objects moving in circular stable geodesics in terms of the metric coefficients, which turned out to be a very simple one, Eq.(9). We then took a sort of inverse point of view. Instead of consider such an equation as an expression for the velocity, we took it as an expression for the metric coefficient, given the fact that what is being observed is the velocity profile, thus being able to determine part of the geometry based only on observational data, Eq.(10).

In the present work we present such a program applied to the NFW model, Navarro et al. NFW\_mod , which has proved to have a remarkable predicted power and agrees very well with observations, particularly with those outside the central galactic region.

In what follows we reproduce the main steps on the reasoning leading to the conditions which the tangential velocity of circular orbits impose on the metric coefficients for the spherically symmetric static case.

We begin with the general line element for such geometry:

$$ds^2=\alpha ^2(r)c^2dt^2+\frac{dr^2}{\left(1\frac{2GM(r)}{c^2r}\right)}+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^2,$$
(1)
where $`c`$ is the speed of light and $`G`$ the gravitational constant, and $`d\mathrm{\Omega }^2=d\theta ^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\phi ^2`$ is the solid angle element. From the corresponding Lagrangian for a test particle in this space, $`2=\left(\frac{ds}{d\tau }\right)^2`$, where $`\tau `$ stands for the proper time, we obtain that the energy, $`E=\alpha ^2(r)c^2\dot{t}`$, the $`\phi `$-momentum $`L_\phi =r^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta \dot{\phi }`$, and the total angular momentum, $`L^2=L_{\theta }^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+(\frac{L_\phi }{\mathrm{sin}\theta })^2`$, with $`L_\theta =r^2\dot{\theta }`$, where dot stands for derivative with respect to the proper time, are conserved quantities along the motion. Notice that we can write the total angular momentum in terms of the solid angle as: $`L^2=r^2\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}^2`$.

With this information, the fact that the four-velocity, $`u^\mu =\frac{dx^\mu }{d\tau }`$, is normalized, $`u_\nu u^\nu =1`$, translates into a radial motion equation:

$$\dot{r}^2+V(r)=0,$$
(2)
with the potential $`V(r)`$ given by

$$V(r)=\left(1\frac{2GM(r)}{c^2r}\right)\left(\frac{E^2}{c^2\alpha ^2(r)}\frac{L^2}{r^2}1\right).$$
(3)
Restricting the radial motion to circular stable orbits, implies imposing the conditions, $`\dot{r}=0`$, for circular orbits, and $`\frac{V}{r}=0`$, so that it describes an extremum of the motion, and $`\frac{^2V}{r^2}>0`$, so that the extremum is a minimum. These three conditions guarantee that the motion will be circular and stable. They also imply the following expressions for the energy and total momentum of the particles in such orbits:

$`E^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c^2\alpha ^3(r)}{\alpha (r)r\alpha (r)_r}},`$ (4)
$`L^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r^3\alpha (r)_r}{\alpha (r)r\alpha (r)_r}},`$ (5)
where a subindex $`r`$ stands for derivative with respect to $`r`$.

On the other hand, we can rewrite the line element for this geometry, Eq.(1), in terms of the modulus of the spatial velocity, normalized with the speed of light, measured by an inertial observer far from the source, as $`ds^2=dt^2\left(1v^2\right)`$, where

$$v^2=\frac{1}{c^2\alpha ^2(r)}\left(\frac{\left(\frac{dr}{dt}\right)^2}{1\frac{2GM(r)}{c^2r}}+r^2\left(\frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{dt}\right)^2\right).$$
(6)
This last equation implies that the modulus of the angular velocity, which is the tangential velocity for the case of circular orbits, is defined as:

$$v_{\mathrm{tg}}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}=\frac{r^2}{c^2\alpha ^2(r)}\left(\frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{dt}\right)^2=\frac{1}{c^2\alpha ^2(r)}\left(\frac{d\tau }{dt}\right)^2\dot{\mathrm{\Omega }}^2,$$
(7)
thus, in terms of the conserved quantities, the angular velocity takes the form:

$$v_{\mathrm{tg}}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}=\frac{c^2\alpha ^2(r)}{r^2}\frac{L^2}{E^2}.$$
(8)
Using the expression derived for these conserved quantities, Eq.(5), we obtain that the tangential velocity can be expressed in terms of the metric coefficient $`\alpha `$ as:

$$v_{\mathrm{tg}}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}=\frac{r\alpha (r)_r}{\alpha (r)}.$$
(9)
This last equation allows us to determine the metric coefficient $`\alpha (r)`$ in terms of the observed velocity profile:

$$\alpha (r)=\mathrm{exp}\frac{v_{\mathrm{tg}}^2(r)}{r}𝑑r.$$
(10)
This is the key equation of the reasoning: To use the observations, $`v_{\mathrm{tg}}(r)`$, in order to partially determine the geometry of the surrounding spacetime.

Now we join these results with the Navarro-Frenk-White model. This model predicts the density profile NFW\_mod :

$$\rho _{\mathrm{NFW}}=\frac{\rho _0}{\frac{r}{r_s}(1+\frac{r}{r_s})^2},$$
(11)
where $`\rho _0=\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}\delta _c`$, $`r_s`$ is a scale radius, $`\delta _c`$ is a characteristic (dimensionless) density, and $`\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}=\frac{3H^2}{8\pi G}`$ is the critical density for closure. The mass function, $`M_{\mathrm{NFW}}(r)=4\pi r^2\rho _{\mathrm{NFW}}𝑑r`$, with the integration constant chosen so that $`M_{\mathrm{NFW}}(r=0)=0`$, takes the form:

$$M_{\mathrm{NFW}}(r)=4\pi r_s^3\rho _0\left(\mathrm{ln}\left(1+\frac{r}{r_s}\right)\frac{\frac{r}{r_s}}{1+\frac{r}{r_s}}\right).$$
(12)
This implies, equating the gravitational force with the centrifugal one, the following profile for the tangential velocity:

$$v_{\mathrm{tg}}^{2}{}_{NFW}{}^{}=v_0^2\left(\frac{\mathrm{ln}(1+\frac{r}{r_s})}{\frac{r}{r_s}}\frac{1}{1+\frac{r}{r_s}}\right),$$
(13)
where $`v_0^2=4\pi G\rho _0r_s^2`$ is three times the tangential velocity of particles at the limb of a sphere of radius $`r_s`$ and a mass defined by the critical density times the $`\delta _c`$ factor inside that volume.

These expressions are directly predicted by the NFW model and, with exception of the central parts of galaxies, it has been successfully compared with the actual observations NFW\_mod .

Using the expression derived for the tangential velocity within the NFW model, Eq. (13), in the expression we obtained above, Eq. (9), we obtain a remarkable simple expression for the $`g_{tt}`$ coefficient:

$$\alpha ^2(r)=\left(1+\frac{r}{r_s}\right)^{2\frac{v_0^2r_s}{c^2r}},$$
(14)
where we have set the integration constant such that $`\alpha `$ goes to one for large radii, and we have normalized with the speed of light the NFW velocity. There are several noticeable features in this last expression. First, it is regular everywhere. The divergency problem that the NFW-density has in the central region, is not reflected in the metric coefficient:

$$\underset{r0}{lim}\alpha ^2=e^{\frac{v_0^2}{c^2}},\underset{r\mathrm{}}{lim}\alpha ^2=1.$$
(15)
Actually, the $`\alpha `$-function goes to one for large radii, as can be seen in the figure, 1, recovering and validating the Newtonian assumption in that region.

We can go on and work with the other metric coefficient, $`g_{rr}=(1\frac{2GM(r)}{c^2r})^1`$. First of all, recall that the $`g_{tt}`$ coefficient was determined based on the analysis presented above. For the $`g_{rr}`$ coefficient, the unknown function $`M(r)`$ can not be directly identified with the mass function. Strictly speaking, the mass is defined for asymptotically flat spacetimes with several characteristics, but we do not go into that discussion in this work. We can say that this is an approximation. On the other hand, however, as will be shown below, the $`{}_{t}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{t}`$ component of the Einstein equations, implies a consistency between the fact of taking this function as the mass and the defined density, so that we have some grounds to consider it like the mass. Thus, let us be bold and take the function $`M(r)`$ as the mass function of the NFW model. The line element takes the form:

$$ds^2=\left(1+\frac{r}{r_s}\right)^{2\frac{v_0^2r_s}{c^2r}}c^2dt^2+\frac{dr^2}{12\frac{v_0^2}{c^2}\left(\frac{\mathrm{ln}\left(1+\frac{r}{r_s}\right)}{\frac{r}{r_s}}\frac{1}{1+\frac{r}{r_s}}\right)}+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }^2,$$
(16)
In this way, we obtain the geometry associated with the Navarro-Frenk-White model.

The line element has two free parameters, namely $`v_0`$, the characteristic speed, and $`r_s`$, the characteristic radius.

With respect to the $`g_{rr}`$ metric coefficient, it is also regular everywhere, for positive radius, we see its behavior in figure Fig.(2), and it has the following limits:

$$\underset{r0}{lim}g_{rr}=\underset{r\mathrm{}}{lim}g_{rr}=1.$$
(17)
Thus, the line element given by Eq.(16) is regular at all points and far from the source takes the form of the flat spacetime.

However, even though the line element does not show any divergence, we expect to have one, directly inherited from the divergence of the NFW density at the center. Actually, when one derives the scalar of curvature, $`R`$, it is seen that:

$$R_{r0}2\frac{v_0^2}{c^2r_sr}2\frac{v_0^2}{c^2r_s^2}\left(2\frac{v_0^2}{c^2}\right)+𝒪(r),$$
(18)
showing a clear divergence at the center, as expected. This implies that we do not have a solution describing a spacetime, as long as there is a naked singularity, the divergence is not covered by any horizon. What we have is a geometry which implies a dynamic similar to the one described by the NFW model, so we claim that this geometry will be related with the exterior part of a complete spacetime with the observed dynamics.

The metric coefficients differ from the unity by very tiny amounts, validating the flat space approximation, that is, the Newtonian analysis. However, within the General relativistic theory, these tiny amounts of non-flat geometry, are the ones responsible for the observed dynamics!

Finally, we can construct the Einstein tensor and obtain some conclusions about the type of matter-energy which produce the space time given by Eq.(16). The Einstein tensor gives three non-zero independent components:

$`G_t^t`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{v_0^2}{c^2r_s^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{xu^2}},`$ (19)
$`G_r^r`$ $`=`$ $`4{\displaystyle \frac{v_0^4}{c^4r_s^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{x^4u^2}}\left[u\mathrm{ln}u\left(u\mathrm{ln}u2x\right)+x^2\right],`$ (20)
$`G_\theta ^\theta `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{v_0^4}{c^4r_s^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{x^5u^3}}\left(u\mathrm{ln}ux\right)\left[2u\mathrm{ln}u\left({\displaystyle \frac{v_0^2}{c^2}}u\mathrm{ln}u2x\left(u+{\displaystyle \frac{v_0^2}{c^2}}\right)\right)+x^2\left(7x+4+2{\displaystyle \frac{v_0^2}{c^2}}\right)\right],`$ (21)
where we have defined $`x=\frac{r}{r_s}`$, and $`u=1+\frac{r}{r_s}`$.

Being aware of the caveats on promoting this geometry to a spacetime, still we can say something about the type of matter which could produce such a geometry, by means of the Einstein equations:

$$G_\nu ^\mu =\frac{8\pi G}{c^4}T_\nu ^\mu ,$$
(22)
where $`G`$ stands for the gravitational constant and $`T_\nu ^\mu `$ describes the tensor of distribution of the matter-energy in the spacetime.

It is common to identify the $`T_t^t`$ component of the matter-energy tensor with the density of matter, and energy, present in the spacetime, $`\rho `$, that is $`T_t^t=c^2\rho `$. Thus, using the corresponding expression for the Einstein tensor, Eq.(19), we obtain the same expression relating the mass and the density as that obtained in the Newtonian theory, Eq.(12). This fact gives support to the interpretation of the function $`M(r)`$ in the line element, Eq.(16), as the mass of the system. These are good news and give consistency to the treatment presented here.

About the other components of the matter-energy tensor, by means of the Einstein equations, we can conclude that such matter-energy tensor can not be dust or even perfect fluid. The reason for these conclusions are clear. Again, if we take the matter-energy tensor to be a perfect fluid one

$$T_\nu ^\mu =\left(\rho c^2+p\right)u^\mu u_\nu +p\delta _\nu ^\mu ,$$
(23)
with $`u^\mu `$ the four velocity. For the spherically symmetric case we are dealing with, the matter-energy tensor takes the form $`T_\nu ^\mu =\mathrm{diag}(\rho c^2,p,p,p)`$. But, from the Einstein tensor, we see that clearly $`G_r^r`$, and $`G_\theta ^\theta `$ are non zero and different. Thus, the matter-energy curving the spacetime to form the NFW geometry can not be dust or perfect fluid.

If we insist on a dark fluid type for the matter-energy, it has to be an anisotropic one, with two different pressures, a radial one, $`p_r`$, and a tangential one, $`p_{}`$ which, by the Einstein equations imply

$`p_r`$ $`=`$ $`\rho ^2\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}\pi G{\displaystyle \frac{r_s^2u^2}{x^2}}\left[u\mathrm{ln}u\left(u\mathrm{ln}u2x\right)+x^2\right]`$ (24)
$`p_{}`$ $`=`$ $`\rho ^2\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}8}\pi G{\displaystyle \frac{r_s^2u}{x^3}}\left(u\mathrm{ln}ux\right)\left[2u\mathrm{ln}u\left({\displaystyle \frac{v_0^2}{c^2}}u\mathrm{ln}u2x\left(u+{\displaystyle \frac{v_0^2}{c^2}}\right)\right)+x^2\left(7x+4+2{\displaystyle \frac{v_0^2}{c^2}}\right)\right].`$ (25)
It is important to notice that, as the density, $`\rho `$ is very small, these pressures are even smaller, and tend very quickly to zero. Thus, again validate the Newtonian treatment taken the fluid as dust, in an exterior region. Nevertheless, recall that these analysis is on the track of determining the actual nature of the dark matter, pointing to the physical properties it must have.

In this way, the geometry associated with the NFW model that we have derived, allows us to explain the validity of the Newtonian treatment, pointing to its limits, to discuss on the nature of the dark matter, and opens the road to perform several dynamical studies within the general relativistic theory.

We are grateful with Elloy Ayon for fruitful discussions during the elaboration of the present work. DN acknowledges the DGAPA-UNAM grant IN-122002.