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# Connected Components of The Space of Surface Group Representations

## 1. introduction

Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ be a closed compact orientable surface of genus $`l>1`$. In \[Go\], W.M. Goldman conjectured that for any connected complex semisimple Lie group $`G`$, there is a bijection

$$\pi _0(\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G))H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };\pi _1(G))\pi _1(G).$$

In \[Li\], J. Li proved the above conjecture by Goldman as well as the following:

###### Theorem 1 (\[Li, Theorem 0.5\]).

Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ be a closed orientable Riemann surface of genus $`l>1`$. Let $`G`$ be a connected, compact, semisimple Lie group. Then there is a bijection

$$\pi _0(\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };\pi _1(G))\pi _1(G),$$

where $`G`$ acts on $`\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)`$ by conjugation.

Geometrically, $`\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G`$ can be identified with the moduli space of gauge equivalence classes of flat $`G`$-bundles over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, where a flat $`G`$-bundle is a principal $`G`$-bundle together with a flat connection. It is known that there is a one-to-one correspondence between topological principal $`G`$-bundles over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and elements in $`H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };\pi _1(G))\pi _1(G)`$. In \[Li\], J. Li combined the argument in \[Ra\] and \[AB\] to prove that the moduli space of gauge equivalence classes of flat connections on a fixed underlying topological principal $`G`$-bundle over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is nonempty and connected, where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`G`$ are as in Theorem 1.

The main result in this paper is the following analogue of Theorem 1.

###### Theorem 2.

Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ be a closed compact nonorientable surface which is homeomorphic to the connected sum of $`k`$ copies of the real projective plane, where $`k1,2,4`$. Let $`G`$ be a connected, compact, semisimple Lie group. Then there is a bijection

$$\pi _0(\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };\pi _1(G))\pi _1(G)/2\pi _1(G),$$

where $`2\pi _1(G)`$ denote the subgroup $`\{k^2k\pi _1(G)\}`$ of the finite abelian group $`\pi _1(G)`$.

One can see the isomorphism $`H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };\pi _1(G))\pi _1(G)/2\pi _1(G)`$ as follows. By the universal coefficient theorem of cohomology, we have a short exact sequence

$$0\mathrm{Ext}(H_1(\mathrm{\Sigma };),\pi _1(G))H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };\pi _1(G))\mathrm{Hom}(H_2(\mathrm{\Sigma };),\pi _1(G))0,$$

where $`H_1(\mathrm{\Sigma },)^{k1}/2`$, and $`H_2(\mathrm{\Sigma },)=0`$. So we have

$$H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma },\pi _1(G))\mathrm{Ext}(/2,\pi _1(G))\pi _1(G)/2\pi _1(G).$$

Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ be a closed compact nonorientable surface. It is known that there is a one-to-one correspondence between topological principal $`G`$-bundles over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and elements in $`H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };\pi _1(G))\pi _1(G)/2\pi _1(G)`$. The geometric interpretation of Theorem 2 is that the moduli space of gauge equivalence classes of flat connections on a fixed underlying topological principal $`G`$-bundle over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is nonempty and connected, where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and $`G`$ are as in Theorem 2. More details of this geometric interpretation will be given in Appendix A.

We will show that both Theorem 1 and Theorem 2 can be easily derived from the following Fact 3, without identifying $`\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G`$ with the moduli space of gauge equivalence classes of flat $`G`$-bundles over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

###### Fact 3.

Let $`G`$ be a compact, semisimple, connected and simply connected Lie group. Let $`l`$ be a positive integer. Then the commutator map $`\mu _G^l:G^{2l}G`$ defined by

(1)
$$\mu _G^l(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l)=a_1b_1a_1^1b_1^1\mathrm{}a_lb_la_l^1b_l^1$$

is surjective, and $`(\mu _G^l)^1(g)`$ is connected for all $`gG`$.

The surjectivity follows from Goto’s commutator theorem \[HM, Theorem 6.55\]. The commutator map $`\mu _G^l`$ in Fact 3 is a group valued moment map of the q-Hamiltonian $`G`$-space $`G^{2l}`$ in the sense of A. Alekseev, A. Malkin, and E. Meinrenken \[AMM\]. By \[AMM, Theorem 7.2\], all the fibers of the moment map of a connected q-Hamiltonian $`G`$-space are connected if $`G`$ is a compact, connected and simply connected Lie group.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we explain how Fact 3 implies Theorem 1 as well as the genus one case. In Section 3 and Section 4, we derive Theorem 2 from Fact 3 for odd $`k`$ and even $`k`$, respectively. In Section 5, we discuss the cases $`k=1,2,4`$ which are not covered by our main result. In Appendix A, we give algebraic and geometric interpretations of the obstruction map used in our proof.

Acknowledgment: It is a pleasure to thank J.-K. Yu, who motivated and guided this work. We also wish to thank L. Jeffrey and E. Meinrenken for helpful conversations and valuable suggestions.

## 2. Compact orientable surfaces

In this section, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is a closed Riemann surface with genus $`l>0`$. Note that $`\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(S^2),G)/G`$ consists of a single point, so Theorem 1 is not true for the genus zero case.

Let $`G`$ be a connected, compact, semisimple Lie group, and let $`\rho :\stackrel{~}{G}G`$ be the universal covering map which is also a group homomorphism. Then $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ is a compact, semisimple, connected and simply connected Lie group, and $`\mathrm{Ker}\rho `$ is a subgroup of the center $`Z(\stackrel{~}{G})`$ of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ which is abelian.

Let $`\mu _G^l:G^{2l}G`$ be the commutator map defined as in (1), and let $`e`$ be the identity element of $`G`$. Then $`\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)`$ can be identified with

$$(\mu _G^l)^1(e)=\{(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l)G^{2l}a_1b_1a_1^1b_1^1\mathrm{}a_lb_la_l^1b_l^1=e\}.$$

There is an obstruction map (see e.g.\[Go\])

$$o_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)(\mu _G^l)^1(e)\mathrm{Ker}\rho $$

defined by

$$(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l)(\mu _G^l)^1(e)\stackrel{~}{a}_1\stackrel{~}{b}_1\stackrel{~}{a}_1^1\stackrel{~}{b}_1^1\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{a}_l\stackrel{~}{b}_l\stackrel{~}{a}_l^1\stackrel{~}{b}_l^1\mathrm{Ker}\rho ,$$

where $`(\stackrel{~}{a}_1,\stackrel{~}{b}_1\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{a}_l,\stackrel{~}{b}_l)`$ is a preimage of $`(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l)`$ under $`\rho ^{2l}:\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l}G^{2l}`$. It is easily checked that the definition does not depend on the choice of $`(\stackrel{~}{a}_1,\stackrel{~}{b}_1,\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{a}_l,\stackrel{~}{b}_l)`$ and $`o_2`$ descends to a continuous map

$$\overline{o}_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G\mathrm{Ker}\rho .$$

For each $`k\mathrm{Ker}\rho `$, there is a surjective continuous map

$$(\mu _{\stackrel{~}{G}}^l)^1(k)\overline{o}_2^1(k)$$

which is the restriction of $`\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l}\stackrel{\rho ^{2l}}{}G^{2l}G^{2l}/G`$, where $`G`$ acts on $`G^{2l}`$ by diagonal conjugation. By Fact 3, $`(\mu _{\stackrel{~}{G}}^l)^1(k)`$ is nonempty and connected for each $`k\mathrm{Ker}\rho `$, so $`\overline{o}_2`$ is surjective, and $`\overline{o}_2^1(k)`$ is connected for each $`k\mathrm{Ker}\rho \pi _1(G)`$. This gives Theorem 1 as well as the genus one case.

## 3. connected sum of a odd number of copies of the real projective plane

In this section, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is a closed compact nonorientable surface which is homeomorphic to the connected sum of $`2l+1`$ copies of $`RP^2`$, or equivalently, the connected sum of a Riemann surface of genus $`l`$ and $`RP^2`$, where $`l>0`$.

Let $`G`$ be a connected, compact, semisimple Lie group, and let $`\rho :\stackrel{~}{G}G`$ be the universal covering map. The space $`\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)`$ can be identified with

$$X=\{(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c)G^{2l+1}a_1b_1a_1^1b_1^1\mathrm{}a_lb_la_l^1b_l^1c^2=e\},$$

where $`e`$ is the identity element of $`G`$.

Let $`K=\mathrm{Ker}\rho \pi _1(G)`$, and let $`2K`$ be the subgroup $`\{k^2kK\}`$ of the finite abelian group $`K`$. There is an obstruction map

$$o_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)XK/2K$$

defined by

$$(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c)X\stackrel{~}{a}_1\stackrel{~}{b}_1\stackrel{~}{a}_1^1\stackrel{~}{b}_1^1\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{a}_l\stackrel{~}{b}_l\stackrel{~}{a}_l^1\stackrel{~}{b}_l^1\stackrel{~}{c}^2K/2K,$$

where $`(\stackrel{~}{a}_1,\stackrel{~}{b}_1\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{a}_l,\stackrel{~}{b}_l,\stackrel{~}{c})`$ is a preimage of $`(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c)`$ under $`\rho ^{2l+1}:\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+1}G^{2l+1}`$. It is easily checked that the definition does not depend on the choice of $`(\stackrel{~}{a}_1,\stackrel{~}{b}_1,\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{a}_l,\stackrel{~}{b}_l,\stackrel{~}{c})`$ and $`o_2`$ descends to a continuous map

$$\overline{o}_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/GK/2K.$$

For each $`kK`$, define

$$\stackrel{~}{X}_k=\{(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c)\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+1}a_1b_1a_1^1b_1^1\mathrm{}a_lb_la_l^1b_l^1c^2=k\}.$$

Let $`\overline{k}`$ denote the image of $`k`$ under $`KK/2K`$. Then there is a surjective continuous map

$$\stackrel{~}{X}_k\overline{o}_2^1(\overline{k})$$

which is the restriction of $`\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+1}\stackrel{\rho ^{2l+1}}{}G^{2l+1}G^{2l+1}/G`$, where $`G`$ acts on $`G^{2l+1}`$ by diagonal conjugation. Let $`\stackrel{~}{e}`$ denote the identity element of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$. For each $`kK`$, $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ contains $`(\mu _{\stackrel{~}{G}}^l)^1(k)\times \{\stackrel{~}{e}\}`$ which is nonempty by Fact 3. Therefore, $`\overline{o}_2`$ is surjective. It remains to show that $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ is connected for all $`kK`$, which will imply $`\overline{o}_2^1(\overline{k})`$ is connected for all $`\overline{k}K/2K`$.

Let $`Q^{}:\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+1}\stackrel{~}{G}`$ be the projection to the last factor. The restriction of $`Q^{}`$ to $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ gives a map $`Q:\stackrel{~}{X}_k\stackrel{~}{G}`$, $`(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c)c`$. Fact 3 implies that $`Q`$ is surjective and $`Q^1(c)`$ is connected for all $`c\stackrel{~}{G}`$. Let $`qT`$ be a square root of $`kZ(\stackrel{~}{G})T`$, where we fix a maximal torus $`T`$ of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$. To prove that $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ is connected, it suffices to show that for any $`c\stackrel{~}{G}`$, there is a path $`\gamma :[0,1]\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ such that $`\gamma (0)Q^1(q)`$ and $`\gamma (1)Q^1(c)`$.

For any $`c\stackrel{~}{G}`$, there exists $`g\stackrel{~}{G}`$ such that $`g^1cgT`$. Let $`\stackrel{~}{𝔤}`$ and $`𝔱`$ be the Lie algebras of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ and $`T`$, respectively. Let $`\mathrm{exp}:\stackrel{~}{𝔤}\stackrel{~}{G}`$ be the exponential map. Then $`g^1cgq^1=\mathrm{exp}\xi `$ for some $`\xi 𝔱`$. Let $`W`$ be the Weyl group of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$, and let $`wW`$ be a Coxeter element. The linear map $`w:𝔱𝔱`$ has no eigenvalue equal to $`1`$ \[Hu, Section 3.16\], so there exists $`\xi ^{}𝔱`$ such that $`w\xi ^{}\xi ^{}=\xi `$. Recall that $`W=N(T)/T`$, where $`N(T)`$ is the normalizer of $`T`$ in $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$, so $`w=aTN(T)/T`$ for some $`a\stackrel{~}{G}`$. We have

$$a\mathrm{exp}(t\xi ^{})a^1\mathrm{exp}(t\xi ^{})=\mathrm{exp}(t\xi )$$

for any $`t`$.

The group $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ is connected, so there exists a path $`\stackrel{~}{g}:[0,1]\stackrel{~}{G}`$ such that $`\stackrel{~}{g}(0)=\stackrel{~}{e}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{g}(1)=g`$. Define $`\gamma :[0,1]\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+1}`$ by

$$\gamma (t)=(a(t),b(t),\stackrel{~}{e},\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{e},c(t)),$$

where

$$a(t)=\stackrel{~}{g}(t)a\stackrel{~}{g}(t)^1,b(t)=\stackrel{~}{g}(t)\mathrm{exp}(2t\xi ^{})\stackrel{~}{g}(t)^1,c(t)=\stackrel{~}{g}(t)q\mathrm{exp}(t\xi )\stackrel{~}{g}(t)^1.$$

Then the image of $`\gamma `$ lies in $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$, $`\gamma (0)=(a,\stackrel{~}{e},\stackrel{~}{e},\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{e},q)Q^1(q)`$, and

$$\gamma (1)=(gag^1,g\mathrm{exp}(2\xi ^{})g^1,\stackrel{~}{e},\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{e},c)Q^1(c).$$

###### Remark 4.

Let $`M`$ be a manifold, and let $`G`$ be a compact Lie group. By \[AMM, Definition 2.2 (B1)\], a necessary condition for a map $`\mu :MG`$ to be a group valued moment map is $`\mu ^{}\chi `$ being exact, where $`\chi `$ is the canonical closed bi-invariant $`3`$-form on $`G`$.

Let $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ be as above, and define $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }:\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+1}\stackrel{~}{G}`$ by

$$(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c)a_1b_1a_1^1b_1^1\mathrm{}a_lb_la_l^1b_l^1c^2.$$

Let $`Q_{2l+1}:\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+1}\stackrel{~}{G}`$ be the projection to the last factor. We have $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }^{}\chi =2Q_{2l+1}^{}\chi `$, which represents a nontrivial cohomology class. So $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ cannot be a group valued moment map, and we cannot apply \[AMM, Theorem 7.2\] directly to $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ to conclude that $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k=\stackrel{~}{\mu }^1(k)`$ is connected.

## 4. connected sum of an even number of copies of the real projective plane

In this section, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is a compact nonorientable surface which is homeomorphic to the connected sum of $`2l+2`$ copies of $`RP^2`$, or equivalently, the connected sum of a Riemann surface of genus $`l`$ and a Klein bottle, where $`l>1`$.

Let $`G`$ be a connected, compact, semisimple Lie group, and let $`\rho :\stackrel{~}{G}G`$ be the universal covering map. The space $`\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)`$ can be identified with

$$X=\{(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c_1,c_2)G^{2l+2}a_1b_1a_1^1b_1^1\mathrm{}a_lb_la_l^1b_l^1c_1^2c_2^2=e\},$$

where $`e`$ is the identity element of $`G`$.

Let $`K=\mathrm{Ker}\rho \pi _1(G)`$. There is an obstruction map

$$o_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)XK/2K$$

defined by

$$(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c_1,c_2)X\stackrel{~}{a}_1\stackrel{~}{b}_1\stackrel{~}{a}_1^1\stackrel{~}{b}_1^1\mathrm{}\stackrel{~}{a}_l\stackrel{~}{b}_l\stackrel{~}{a}_l^1\stackrel{~}{b}_l^1\stackrel{~}{c}_1^2\stackrel{~}{c}_2^2K/2K,$$

where $`(\stackrel{~}{a}_1,\stackrel{~}{b}_1\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{a}_l,\stackrel{~}{b}_l,\stackrel{~}{c}_1,\stackrel{~}{c}_2)`$ is a preimage of $`(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c_1,c_2)`$ under $`\rho ^{2l+2}:\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+2}G^{2l+2}`$. It is easily checked that the definition does not depend on the choice of $`(\stackrel{~}{a}_1,\stackrel{~}{b}_1,\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{a}_l,\stackrel{~}{b}_l,\stackrel{~}{c}_1,\stackrel{~}{c}_2)`$ and $`o_2`$ decends to a continuous map

$$\overline{o}_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/GK/2K.$$

For each $`kK`$, define

$$\stackrel{~}{X}_k=\{(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c_1,c_2)\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+2}a_1b_1a_1^1b_1^1\mathrm{}a_lb_la_l^1b_l^1c_1^2c_2^2=k\}.$$

Let $`\overline{k}`$ be the image of $`k`$ under $`KK/2K`$. Then there is a surjective continuous map

$$\stackrel{~}{X}_k\overline{o}_2^1(\overline{k})$$

which is the restriction of $`\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+2}\stackrel{\rho ^{2l+2}}{}G^{2l+2}G^{2l+2}/G`$, where $`G`$ acts on $`\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+2}`$ by diagonal conjugation. For each $`kK`$, $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ contains $`(\mu _{\stackrel{~}{G}}^l)^1(k)\times \{e\}\times \{e\}`$ which is nonempty by Fact 3. Therefore, $`\overline{o}_2`$ is surjective. It remains to show that $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ is connected for all $`kK`$, which will imply that $`\overline{o}_2^1(\overline{k})`$ is connected for all $`\overline{k}K/2K`$.

Let $`Q^{}:\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+2}\stackrel{~}{G}^2`$ be the projection to the last two factors. The restriction of $`Q^{}`$ to $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ gives a map $`Q:\stackrel{~}{X}_k\stackrel{~}{G}^2`$, $`(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c_1,c_2)(c_1,c_2)`$. Fact 3 implies that $`Q`$ is surjective and $`Q^1(c_1,c_2)`$ is connected for all $`(c_1,c_2)\stackrel{~}{G}^2`$. Let $`qT`$ be a square root of $`kZ(\stackrel{~}{G})`$, where we fix a maximal torus $`T`$ of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$. To prove that $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ is connected, it suffices to show that for any $`(c_1,c_2)\stackrel{~}{G}^2`$, there is a path $`\gamma :[0,1]\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$ such that $`\gamma (0)Q^1(\stackrel{~}{e},q)`$ and $`\gamma (1)Q^1(c_1,c_2)`$, where $`\stackrel{~}{e}`$ is the identity element of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$.

For any $`(c_1,c_2)\stackrel{~}{G}^2`$, there exists $`g_1,g_2\stackrel{~}{G}`$ such that $`g_j^1c_jg_jT`$ for $`j=1,2`$. Let $`\stackrel{~}{𝔤}`$ and $`𝔱`$ be the Lie algebras of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ and $`T`$, repsectively. Let $`\mathrm{exp}:\stackrel{~}{𝔤}\stackrel{~}{G}`$ be the exponential map. Then $`g_1^1c_1g_1=\mathrm{exp}\xi _1`$ for some $`\xi _1𝔱`$, and $`g_2^1c_2g_2q^1=\mathrm{exp}\xi _2`$ for some $`\xi _2𝔱`$. Let $`W`$ be the Weyl group of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$, and let $`wW`$ be a Coxeter element. The linear map $`w:𝔱𝔱`$ has no eigenvalue equal to $`1`$, so there exists $`\xi _j^{}𝔱`$ such that $`w\xi _j^{}\xi _j^{}=\xi _j`$ for $`j=1,2`$, where $`w=aTN(T)/T=W`$ for some $`a\stackrel{~}{G}`$. We have

$$a\mathrm{exp}(t\xi _j^{})a^1\mathrm{exp}(t\xi _j^{})=\mathrm{exp}(t\xi _j)$$

for any $`t`$, where $`j=1,2`$.

The group $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ is connected, so there exist paths $`\stackrel{~}{g}_j:[0,1]\stackrel{~}{G}`$ such that $`\stackrel{~}{g}_j(0)=\stackrel{~}{e}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{g}_j(1)=g_j`$ for $`j=1,2`$. Define $`\gamma :[0,1]\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+2}`$ by

$$\gamma (t)=(a_2(t),b_2(t),a_1(t),b_1(t),\stackrel{~}{e},\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{e},c_1(t),c_2(t))$$

where

$$a_j(t)=\stackrel{~}{g}_j(t)a\stackrel{~}{g}_j(t)^1,b_j(t)=\stackrel{~}{g}_j(t)\mathrm{exp}(2t\xi _j^{})\stackrel{~}{g}_j(t)^1$$

for $`j=1,2`$, and

$$c_1(t)=\stackrel{~}{g}_1(t)\mathrm{exp}(t\xi _1)\stackrel{~}{g}_1(t)^1,c_2(t)=\stackrel{~}{g}_2(t)q\mathrm{exp}(t\xi _2)\stackrel{~}{g}_2(t)^1.$$

Then the image of $`\gamma `$ lies in $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k`$, $`\gamma (0)=(a,\stackrel{~}{e},a,\stackrel{~}{e},\stackrel{~}{e},\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{e},q)Q^1(\stackrel{~}{e},q)`$, and

$$\gamma (1)=(g_2ag_2^1,g_2\mathrm{exp}(2\xi _2^{})g_2^1,g_1ag_1^1,g_1\mathrm{exp}(2\xi _1^{})g_1^1,\stackrel{~}{e},\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{e},c_1,c_2)Q^1(c_1,c_2).$$

###### Remark 5.

Let $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ be as above, and define $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }:\stackrel{~}{G}^{2l+2}\stackrel{~}{G}`$ by

$$(a_1,b_1,\mathrm{},a_l,b_l,c_1,c_2)a_1b_1a_1^1b_1^1\mathrm{}a_lb_la_l^1b_l^1c_1^2c_2^2.$$

Let $`Q_{2l+1}`$ and $`Q_{2l+2}`$ denote the projections from $`G^{2l+2}`$ to the $`(2l+1)`$-th and $`(2l+2)`$-th factors, respectively. We have $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }^{}\chi =2Q_{2l+1}^{}\chi +2Q_{2l+2}^{}\chi `$, which represents a nontrivial cohomology class. So $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ cannot be a group valued moment map, and we cannot apply \[AMM, Theorem 7.2\] directly to $`\stackrel{~}{\mu }`$ to conclude that $`\stackrel{~}{X}_k=\stackrel{~}{\mu }^1(k)`$ is connected.

## 5. The cases $`k=1,2,4`$

Let $`G`$ be a compact, semisimple, connected and simply connected Lie group. By Theorem 2, $`\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G`$ is connected if $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the connected sum of $`k`$ copies of $`RP^2`$, where $`k1,2,4`$. For $`k=1`$, we have

$$\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(RP^2),G)/G=\{gGg^2=e\}/G,$$

where $`G`$ acts by conjugation. In particular, for $`n>1`$,

$$\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(RP^2),SU(n))/SU(n)\left\{\left(\begin{array}{cc}I_{2j}& 0\\ 0& I_{n2j}\end{array}\right)\right|j=0,1,\mathrm{},\left[\frac{n}{2}\right]\},$$

where $`I_m`$ denotes the $`m\times m`$ identity matrix. For $`n>2`$,

$$\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(RP^2),Spin(n))/Spin(n)\{(1)^je_1e_2\mathrm{}e_{2j}j=0,1,\mathrm{},\left[\frac{n}{2}\right]\},$$

where we view $`Spin(n)`$ as a subset of the real Clifford algebra $`C_n`$, and $`\{e_1,\mathrm{},e_n\}`$ is an orthonormal basis for $`^n`$. For $`n>0`$,

$$\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(RP^2),Sp(n))/Sp(n)\left\{\left(\begin{array}{cc}\begin{array}{cc}I_k& 0\\ 0& I_{nk}\end{array}& 0\\ 0& \begin{array}{cc}I_k& 0\\ 0& I_{nk}\end{array}\end{array}\right)\right|k=0,1,\mathrm{},n\}.$$

So Theorem 2 is not true for $`k=1`$.

It is not clear to us if Theorem 2 is true for $`k=2`$. We expect Theorem 2 to hold for $`k=4`$, but we do not know how to prove it using the approach in this paper.

## Appendix A Obstruction class

Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ be a connected closed compact surface. Let $`G`$ be a connected, compact, semisimple Lie group. Let $`\rho :\stackrel{~}{G}G`$ be the universal covering map which is also a group homomorphism. Then $`\mathrm{Ker}\rho `$ is contained in the center $`Z(\stackrel{~}{G})`$ of $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$. Let $`K=\mathrm{Ker}\rho \pi _1(G)`$ which is a finite abelian group.

In this appendix, we will give several interpretations of the obstruction map

$$o_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K).$$

Note that the definition in Section 3 can be extended to the case $`l=0`$, and the definition in Secton 4 can be extended to the cases $`l=0,1`$. If $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is homeomorphic to a 2-sphere, then $`\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)`$ consists of a single point $`e`$. We extend the definition in Section 2 to the genus zero case by defining $`o_2(e)`$ to be the identity element of $`H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)`$. So the obstruction map $`o_2`$ is defined for any closed compact surfaces $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

### A.1. Non-abelian cohomology of groups

For an account of non-abelian cohomology of groups, see \[Se, Chapter VII, Appendix\].

We have a short exact sequence of groups

(2)
$$1K\stackrel{~}{G}G1.$$

Let $`\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ act trivially on (2) on the left so that (2) can be viewed as a short exact sequence of (non-abelian) $`\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$-modules. The short exact sequence (2) gives rise to the following long exact sequence of pointed sets \[Se, Chapter VII, Appendix, Proposition 2\]:

(3)
$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}1& & H^0(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)& & H^0(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),\stackrel{~}{G})& & H^0(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)& & \\ & \stackrel{\delta }{}& H^1(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)& & H^1(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),\stackrel{~}{G})& & H^1(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)& \stackrel{\mathrm{\Delta }}{}& H^2(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)\end{array}$$

which can be rewritten as

(4)
$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}1& & K& & \stackrel{~}{G}& & G& & \\ & \stackrel{\delta }{}& \mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)& & \mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),\stackrel{~}{G})/\stackrel{~}{G}& & \mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G& \stackrel{\mathrm{\Delta }}{}& H^2(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)\end{array}$$

by checking the definitions.

Let $`p\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)`$ represent a point $`\overline{p}H^1(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G`$. From the exact sequence of (4), $`p`$ can be lifted to a homomophism $`\stackrel{~}{p}:\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma })\stackrel{~}{G}`$ if and only if $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\overline{p})`$ is the identity element of $`H^2(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)`$. From the explicit expression of the obstruction map $`o_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)`$ we see that $`o_2(p)`$ is the identity element of the group $`H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)`$ if and only if $`p`$ can be lifted to a homomorphism $`\stackrel{~}{p}:\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma })\stackrel{~}{G}`$. Actually,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }:H^1(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)H^2(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)$$

coincides with

$$\overline{o}_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/GH^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)$$

under the identifications

$$H^1(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G,H^2(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K),$$

where $`H^2(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)`$ because $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the Eilenberg-MacLane space $`K(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),1)`$.

### A.2. Non-abelian Čech cohomology

For an account of of non-abelian Čech cohomology, see \[LM, Appendix A\].

#### A.2.1. Flat bundles

Given a group $`A`$, let $`A`$ also denote the sheaf on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ for which $`A(U)`$ is the group of locally constant functions from $`U`$ to $`A`$, where $`U`$ is any open subset of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. The short exact sequence of sheaves

$$1K\stackrel{~}{G}G1$$

gives rise to the following long exact sequences of non-abelian Čech cohomology \[LM, Remark A.2\]

(5)
$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}1& & H^0(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)& & H^0(\mathrm{\Sigma };\stackrel{~}{G})& & H^0(\mathrm{\Sigma };G)& & \\ & \stackrel{\delta }{}& H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)& & H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };\stackrel{~}{G})& & H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };G)& \stackrel{\mathrm{\Delta }}{}& H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)\end{array}$$

which can be rewritten as

(6)
$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}1& & K& & \stackrel{~}{G}& & G& & \\ & \stackrel{\delta }{}& H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)& & H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };\stackrel{~}{G})& & H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };G)& \stackrel{\mathrm{\Delta }}{}& H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)\end{array}$$

by checking the definitions. The pointed sets $`H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };\stackrel{~}{G})`$ and $`H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };G)`$ can be identified with the moduli spaces of gauge equivalance classes of flat $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$-bundles and $`G`$-bundles, respectively. The map $`\delta `$ in (6) is the trivial group homomorphism, while the map $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in (6) sends a gauge equivalence class of flat $`G`$-bundles to the obstruction to lifting it to a gauge equivalence class of flat $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$-bundles. Actually,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }:H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };G)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)$$

coincides with

$$\overline{o}_2:\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/GH^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)$$

under the identification $`H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };G)\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G`$.

#### A.2.2. Topological bundles

Given a group $`A`$, let $`\underset{¯}{A}`$ denote the sheaf on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ for which $`\underset{¯}{A}(U)`$ is the group of continuous functions from $`U`$ to $`A`$, where $`U`$ is any open subset of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Note that $`\underset{¯}{K}=K`$ since $`K`$ is discrete. The short exact sequence of sheaves

$$1K\underset{¯}{\overset{~}{G}}\underset{¯}{G}1$$

gives rise to the following long exact sequence of Čech cohomology

(7)
$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}1& & H^0(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)& & H^0(\mathrm{\Sigma };\underset{¯}{\overset{~}{G}})& & H^0(\mathrm{\Sigma },\underset{¯}{G})& & \\ & \stackrel{\delta ^{}}{}& H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)& & H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };\underset{¯}{\overset{~}{G}})& & H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };\underset{¯}{G})& \stackrel{\mathrm{\Delta }^{}}{}& H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K).\end{array}$$

The pointed sets $`H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };\underset{¯}{\overset{~}{G}})`$ and $`H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };\underset{¯}{G})`$ can be identified with the set of equivalence classes of topological principal $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$-bundles and $`G`$-bundles, respectively. Note that $`H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)`$. The exact sequence (7) can be rewritten as

(8)
$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}1& & K& & \mathrm{Map}(\mathrm{\Sigma },\stackrel{~}{G})& & \mathrm{Map}(\mathrm{\Sigma },G)& & \\ & \stackrel{\delta ^{}}{}& \mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),K)& & \mathrm{Prin}_{\stackrel{~}{G}}(\mathrm{\Sigma })& & \mathrm{Prin}_G(\mathrm{\Sigma })& \stackrel{\mathrm{\Delta }^{}}{}& H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma },K).\end{array}$$

The map $`\delta ^{}`$ sends $`f:\mathrm{\Sigma }G`$ to $`f_{}:\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma })\pi _1(G)K`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{}`$ sends a principal $`G`$-bundle to the obstruction to lifting it to a principal $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$-bundle. For example, if $`G=SO(n)`$ ($`n>2`$), then $`K=/2`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{}(P)`$ is the second Stiefel-Whitney class $`w_2(P)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma },/2)`$.

We have a commutative diagram of sheaves

$$\begin{array}{ccccccccc}1& & K& & \stackrel{~}{G}& & G& & 1\\ & & & & & & & & \\ 1& & K& & \underset{¯}{\overset{~}{G}}& & \underset{¯}{G}& & 1\end{array}$$

which induces a morphism from (5) to (7). In particular, we have the following commutative diagram

$$\begin{array}{cccc}H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };G)=& \mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)/G& \stackrel{\mathrm{\Delta }}{}& H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)\\ i& & & id& & \\ H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };\underset{¯}{G})=& \mathrm{Prin}_G(\mathrm{\Sigma })& \stackrel{\mathrm{\Delta }^{}}{}& H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)\end{array}$$

where $`i`$ sends a flat $`G`$-bundle to the underlying topological principal $`G`$-bundle. Therefore, if $`P`$ is the underlying topological principal $`G`$-bundle of a flat $`G`$-bundle associated to $`p\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)`$, then $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{}(P)=o_2(p)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)`$.

### A.3. Obstruction theory

For an account of obstruction theory of fiber bundles, see \[St\].

The first obstruction to the triviality of a principal $`G`$-bundle $`P`$ over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, or equivalently, the first obstruction of existence of a cross-section, lies in $`H^1(\mathrm{\Sigma };\pi _0(G))`$, which vanishes because $`G`$ is connected. So $`P`$ is trival over the 1-skeleton. The second obstruction lies in $`H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };\pi _1(G))=H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)`$ and coincides with $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{}(P)`$, the obstruction to lifting $`P`$ to a principal $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$-bundle. For a surface $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{}(P)`$ is the only obstruction to the triviality of $`P`$. So the topological principal $`G`$-bundles over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ are classified by $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{}(P)H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)`$. The set $`\mathrm{Prin}_{\stackrel{~}{G}}(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ consists of a single point corresponding to the trivial $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$-bundle, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{}`$ in (7) is a bijection.

Note that if $`G`$ is not simply connected, then there exists nontrivial topological $`G`$-bundles over $`S^2`$, but the underlying topological principal $`G`$-bundle of a flat $`G`$-bundle over $`S^2`$ must be trivial. So $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ sends the only point in $`H^1(S^2;G)=H^1(\pi _1(S^2),G)`$) to the identity element of $`H^2(S^2;K)=H^2(\pi _1(S^2),K)`$.

### A.4. Elementary approach

There is an elementary approach to the classification of topological principal $`G`$-bundles over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ which we learned from E. Meinrenken. Let $`D`$ be a disc around a point $`x\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Any principal $`G`$-bundle $`P`$ is trival over $`D`$ and over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\{x\}`$, and the topological type of $`P`$ is determined by the homotopy class of the transition function $`\psi :D\{x\}G`$, or equivalently, an element in $`K=\pi _1(G)`$. This gives a surjective map $`K\mathrm{Prin}_G(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ which is injective if $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is orientable and induces a bijection $`K/2K\mathrm{Prin}_G(\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ if $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is nonorientable. Therefore, we have a bijection

$$\varphi :H^2(\mathrm{\Sigma };K)\mathrm{Prin}_G(\mathrm{\Sigma }).$$

The argument in \[Li, Section 6\] shows that if $`P`$ is the underlying topological principal $`G`$-bundle of a flat $`G`$-bundle associated to $`p\mathrm{Hom}(\pi _1(\mathrm{\Sigma }),G)`$, then $`\varphi (o_2(p))=P`$.

Based on above discussions, Theorem 1 and Theorem 2 can be reformulated as follows.

###### Theorem 6.

Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ be a closed compact orientable surface of genus $`l>0`$, or a closed compact nonorientable surface which is homeomorphic to $`k`$ copies of the real projective plane, where $`k1,2,4`$. Let $`G`$ be a connected, compact, semisimple Lie group, and let $`P`$ be a topological principal $`G`$-bundle over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Then the moduli space of gauge equivalence classes of flat connections on $`P`$ is nonempty and connected.


text:
# Free expansion of two-dimensional condensates with a vortex

## 1 Introduction

Two-dimensional (2D) condensates in harmonic confinement are attracting a lot of attention. By varying the anisotropy parameter, measured as the ratio between the trap frequencies in the $`z`$\- and the planar directions, flatter and flatter (pancake-shaped) condensates are being produced in magnetic or optical traps  with the ultimate goal of observing the special features of low dimensionality. As the gas approaches the 2D limit, its collisional properties start to influence the boson-boson coupling parameter, which becomes dependent on the density of the system in contrast to the situation in 3D where at low density the interactions are described by a constant coupling strength.

The quantized vortex states are important in establishing the superfluid nature of the condensates . Current experiments on vortices  have utilized elongated geometries, but one may expect that studies on pancake-shaped condensates will follow. Understanding vortices in 2D is important since they are expected to play a role in the transition from the superfluid to the normal state . Their role in inhomogeneous systems such as trapped gases is less well known.

From the experimental point of view, observing a vortex in a trapped gas is difficult because of the smallness of the core region compared to the size of the gaseous cloud. Several solutions have been suggested to circumvent this problem. The size of the core relative to the cloud radius is larger in systems made of a smaller number of particles. Another possibility is to create vortices with large angular momentum as achieved in a recent experiment . The vortex core increases in a free expansion after the release of the trap. Indeed, it has been suggested  that the vortex core may expand faster than the condensate cloud. Vortices were first experimentally observed by releasing the trap and allowing the condensate to expand .

Several theoretical works have studied the free expansion of vortices in Bose condensed systems inside anisotropic trap potentials employing various 3D models for the coupling constant . In a recent work  we have calculated the equilibrium density profiles of pancake-shaped condensates using various models for the coupling and we have found that, when the condensate is in the 2D regime for what concerns its collisional properties, its density profile is very different in size from what is predicted by the 3D model.

We consider in this paper pancake-shaped condensates with a vortex, employing various models for the coupling parameters to describe the 2D regimes of interest. We study both their equilibrium profile and the expansion properties after the trapping potential is released. By calculating the time evolution of the condensate size and of the vortex core radius and their expansion rates in 2D we again establish how the crossover regime may be identified in such experiments. We find that the condensate cloud expands faster in its plane as the system goes from being Q3D to 2D. The expansion rate of the vortex core radius, on the other hand, decreases in the dimensionality crossover. We also find that the expansion characteristics of the condensate cloud and of the vortex core are rather different when the trap potential is released only in the radial plane or in both the $`z`$\- and the perpendicular directions. In the latter case the velocity of the vortex core can be greater than that of the condensate cloud in the initial phase of the expansion.

The paper is organized as follows. We first introduce our description of condensates with a vortex for different regimes of scattering properties in Sec. II. We then present our results in Sec. III and conclude with a brief summary in Sec. IV.

## 2 The model

We consider a dilute Bose-condensed gas at zero temperature under anisotropic harmonic confinement characterized by a trap frequency $`\omega _{}`$ in the $`x`$-$`y`$ plane and an axial trap frequency $`\omega _z=\lambda \omega _{}`$, with $`\lambda 1`$. The motion in the $`z`$-direction is frozen and we may describe the ground state of the condensate by the wave function $`\psi (r)`$ in the $`x`$-$`y`$ plane, to be determined from a 2D Schrödinger equation. The dynamics of the 2D condensate which accommodates a quantized vortex state is described by a time-dependent nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE), which reads

$$i\mathrm{}\frac{}{t}\psi (r,t)=\left[\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}^2+\frac{\mathrm{}^2\kappa ^2}{2mr^2}+\frac{1}{2}m\omega _{}^2r^2+g(\psi (r,t))|\psi (r,t)|^2\right]\psi (r,t).$$
(1)
Here, $`\mathrm{}\kappa `$ is the quantized angular momentum along the $`z`$-axis, $`m`$ is the atomic mass, and $`g(\psi )`$ is the coupling strength in 2D which depends on the condensate wave function as discussed below. We have assumed that the order parameter entering the NLSE can be written as $`\mathrm{\Phi }(𝐫,t)=\psi (r,t)e^{i\kappa \varphi }`$ where $`\varphi `$ is the azimuthal angle. We consider repulsive interactions between the atoms in the condensate, which enter the coupling strength $`g`$ through a positive scattering length $`a`$.

As we have discussed previously , the density profile of the condensate reflects the modified shape of the confining potential and the modified scattering properties. When the linear dimension $`a_z=(\mathrm{}/m\omega _z)^{1/2}`$ of the condensate cloud in the $`z`$-direction is much larger than the 3D scattering length ($`a_za`$), the collisions take place in three dimensions and the coupling constant to be used in the NLSE is

$$g_{Q3D}=2\sqrt{2\pi }\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{m}\frac{a}{a_z},$$
(2)
including only the geometrical effects of the reduced dimensionality.

When the anisotropy further increases and $`a_z`$ becomes comparable with $`a`$ ( $`a_za`$), the collisions start to be influenced by the confinement in the $`z`$-direction and the interaction strength assumes a form appropriate to a quasi-two-dimensional condensate,

$$g_{Q2D}=\frac{2\sqrt{2\pi }(\mathrm{}^2/m)(a/a_z)}{1+\frac{a}{\sqrt{2\pi }a_z}|\mathrm{ln}(g_{Q2D}n(2\pi m/\mathrm{}^2)a_z^2)|}.$$
(3)
Here, $`n(r,t)=N|\psi (r,t)|^2`$ is the areal density of the condensate cloud, whose dependence on the radial coordinate and on time is to be calculated self-consistently during the numerical solution of Eq. (1). This expression was originally derived by Petrov et al.  by studying the scattering amplitude in a system which is harmonically confined in the $`z`$-direction and homogeneous in the $`x`$-$`y`$ plane. The same result has also been obtained by Lee et al.  within a many-body $`T`$matrix approach. Note that the coupling strength now depends on density, as is to be expected for 2D collisions. Furthermore, $`g_{Q2D}`$ is given by an implicit relation which has to be solved numerically during the solution of the NLSE .

Finally, the strictly 2D regime is approached as $`a_z`$ becomes much smaller than $`a`$ ($`a_za`$) and the system is described by the coupling

$$g_{2D}=\frac{4\pi \mathrm{}^2}{m}\frac{1}{|\mathrm{ln}(na^2)|},$$
(4)
as was first derived by Schick  for a homogeneous Bose gas of hard disks . The use of the coupling strength $`g_{2D}`$ for inhomogeneous systems, involving a dependence on the local density, has been proposed by Shevchenko  and more recently by Kolomeisky et al. . Note that also $`g_{2D}`$ has a spatial dependence due to $`n`$ but, contrary to $`g_{Q2D}`$, carries no information on the confinement in the $`z`$-direction.

We solve the time-dependent NLSE iteratively by discretization using a split-step Crank-Nicholson scheme . In the case of 2D calculations a simple one-dimensional array of grid points is sufficient to describe the spatial part of $`\psi (r,t)`$ at each time step. The 3D calculations that we subsequently report for $`\psi (r,z,t)`$ as a solution of the standard Gross-Pitaevski equation (GPE) involve a two-dimensional grid because of the cylindrical symmetry of this wave function.

## 3 Results and discussion

### 3.1 Equilibrium profiles and radial expansion

The numerical solution of the NLSE with a centrifugal term in equilibrium conditions gives the ground-state wave function of the condensate with a single vortex ($`\kappa =1`$). We first take values of the anisotropy parameter and of the scattering length as appropriate for 23Na atoms in the experiment of Görlitz et al.  ($`\lambda =26.33`$ and $`a=2.8`$ nm, so that $`a/a_z=3.8\times 10^3`$). We scale the radial coordinate by the harmonic oscillator length $`a_{}=(\mathrm{}/m\omega _{})^{1/2}`$ and the radial wave function by $`1/a_{}`$. We take $`N=5000`$ since it is easier to observe vortices for smaller numbers of particles. For these parameters, the system undergoes collisions in 3D but has 2D characteristics for what concerns the confinement effects. As in the absence of the vortex, we find that the Q3D and Q2D models yield wave function profiles identical to each other as shown in Fig. 1(a), whereas the 2D model produces a quantitatively very different result.

We next look at the planar free expansion of the condensate with a vortex for the same parameters, holding fixed the confinement in the axial direction. The time-dependent NLSE is solved after the trap potential $`\frac{1}{2}m\omega _{}^2r^2`$ is switched off at time $`t=0`$. Figure 1(b) shows the time dependence of the root-mean-square (rms) value of the radial coordinate $`r_{rms}=r^2^{1/2}`$, which describes the size of the condensate cloud, and of the vortex core radius $`R_c`$ in three different models of the coupling. As in , the core radius is chosen to be the value of $`r`$ where the condensate density reaches $`1/e`$ of its peak value, viz. $`|\psi (R_c)|^2=e^1\text{max}\{|\psi (r)|^2\}`$. We see from Fig. 1(b) that the strictly 2D model predicts a much faster expansion compared to the Q3D and Q2D models, which again yield identical results for the present set of parameters. The vortex core expands much more slowly than the condensate cloud, as indicated in the same figure. We also show in Fig. 1(c) the velocity of expansion of the atomic cloud and of the vortex core as functions of time. After an initial accelerated motion both velocities attain a constant value for $`t\omega _{}2`$.

We increase the anisotropy parameter to $`\lambda =2\times 10^5`$ and take $`a/a_z=0.33`$ in order to investigate the regime of crossover from 3D to 2D. As shown in Fig. 2(a), the profiles of the wave function with a vortex all look similar in this regime of parameters. Consequently the time dependence of the radial coordinate and of the vortex core radius display similar behaviours during the expansion, as shown in Fig. 2(b). We note that the expansion of the condensate cloud is faster than in the Q3D regime. This is also indicated by the higher velocities depicted in Fig. 2(c). The velocity of the vortex core radius, however, decreases compared to the previous regime. The small wiggles seen in $`\dot{R}_c`$ in the inset of Fig. 2(c) are due to numerical differentiation of the results shown in Fig. 2(b) and are not expected to be physical.

The system enters the strictly 2D regime when we further increase the scattering length to $`a/a_z=2.68`$. In this case, the vortex wave function is best described by the 2D model using $`g_{2D}`$, although the results of the Q2D model using $`g_{Q2D}`$ are very similar. As the initial shape of the cloud in the Q3D model extends out to a larger radial distance as shown in Fig. 3(a), one may again distinctly identify the truly 2D regime by the wave function profile. Furthermore, we observe in Fig. 3(b) that the atomic cloud expands slightly faster compared to the previous Q3D and crossover regimes. This is also evident in Fig. 3(c), where the expansion velocity of the cloud is larger. The velocity $`\dot{R}_c`$ of the vortex core radius, on the other hand, is very small in the strictly 2D regime.

The above results indicate that the initially trapped Bose condensate expands faster in the $`x`$-$`y`$ plane as the system moves from being 3D to 2D. The opposite behaviour is observed for the vortex core. However, the expansion rate of the condensate cloud remains larger than that of the vortex in all cases that we have considered. Our numerical results are in good agreement with previous studies of vortices in Bose-condensed fluids  for similar values of the parameters.

### 3.2 Three-dimensional expansion

We focus now on the case of a free expansion in 3D space, adopting the set of experimentally relevant parameters as in Fig. 1. In this case the presence of the confinement does not affect the binary collisions between the atoms and the system is well described by the 3D time-dependent GPE with coupling constant $`g_{3D}=4\pi \mathrm{}^2a/m`$.

We have first tested the consistence of our Q3D model by solving the GPE for a 3D anisotropic system to study the expansion when only the radial trap potential $`m\omega _{}^2r^2/2`$ is turned off (i.e. the potential $`m\omega _z^2z^2/2`$ remains throughout the expansion). The results are identical to those obtained earlier in Figure 1 with the 2D kinematics and the Q3D scattering properties, showing the correctness of our physical picture.

We have then studied the expansion properties of a 3D anisotropic condensate when the trap potentials in both $`r`$ and $`z`$ directions are released. Essentially identical results are obtained for two different choices of the initial configuration, i.e. starting from the ground state of the 3D GPE or from the ground state of the 2D GPE with Q3D coupling combined with a Gaussian profile in the third direction. In both cases we calculate the time-dependent behaviour of the rms values of the radial and axial coordinates, as well as that of the core radius $`R_c`$. The results are shown in Fig. 4. We observe a much faster expansion for the $`z`$ coordinate, reflecting the initially tighter axial confinement. It also appears that the vortex core radius undergoes a slow oscillation, as is more evident in Fig. 4(b) where we plot the velocities.

The oscillatory behaviour of the vortex core can be understood as being closely related to the repulsive interactions, which strongly affect the density profile. As compared to the ground state of the noninteracting case, the repulsive interactions give rise to a smaller vortex core radius and to a larger rms radius. The density suddenly decreases when the trap is released in both $`r`$ and $`z`$ directions, as a result of the fast expansion in the $`z`$ direction, and this causes the nonlinear interaction energy to rapidly vanish on the time scale of the radial expansion. Therefore, in the first part of the expansion (for $`t\omega _{}0.8`$ in our study) the compressed density at the centre of the cloud expands faster than the remaining part, with the result that the core expansion rate is larger than that of the condensate cloud. Similar results were also found by Dalfovo and Modugno . Then, when the density is so low that the interaction energy becomes negligible, the vortex cannot continue to expand faster than the cloud and the velocity $`\dot{R}_c`$ even reverses sign around $`t\omega _{}1.5`$, as shown in Fig. 4(b).

We have also studied the expansion properties of systems with $`N=5\times 10^4`$ and $`N=5\times 10^5`$ particles and the same trap frequencies and scattering length as in Fig. 1, finding again a much rapid expansion in the $`z`$ direction and oscillatory behaviour in the vortex core radius. These results are not shown since they are qualitatively very similar to those in Fig. 4.

## 4 Summary and concluding remarks

In the perspective of experimental investigations on low-dimensional condensates, we have studied the free expansion of pancake-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates with a vortex. By choosing various values of the trap anisotropy and scattering length we have explored different scattering regimes, from a quasi-three-dimensional regime to a strictly two-dimensional one. We have described the cloud at mean field level, taking as coupling strengths for the boson-boson interactions the density-dependent expressions derived by Petrov et al.  for the quasi-2D regime and by Kolomeisky et al.  for the strictly 2D regime.

We have considered both the case of a 2D expansion keeping the confinement along $`z`$ fixed and the case of a fully 3D expansion. In the 2D case we have observed that with increasing anisotropy the expansion rate of the cloud increases while that of the vortex core decreases. In the 3D expansion, performed in the regime where the collisions are three-dimensional and the Q3D model is the most appropriate, the expansion rate of the vortex core exhibits an oscillatory behaviour due to the interplay between nonlinear interactions and anisotropic confinement.

Whereas in this work we have restricted our analysis to the case of a condensate with a single vortex at $`T=0`$, it may also be interesting to investigate the role of the noncondensate cloud at finite temperature, as vortices are intimately connected with the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition. To explore this area it would be necessary to take into account multiple vortices within the condensate cloud .

We acknowledge partial support by INFM within the PRA-Photonmatter Initiative. O. H. thanks TUBITAK-BAYG. B. T. acknowledges the support of TUBITAK, NATO-SfP, MSB-KOBRA and TUBA, and the hospitality of Scuola Normale Superiore during part of this work.

## References


text:
# Calculations in the Light-Cone Representation*footnote **footnote *This work is supported by the U.S. DoE

## I Induced Operators

The procedure of light-cone quantization is to specify initial conditions for the fields (the canonical commutation relations) on the surface $`x^+=0`$ then solve for the fields as a function of $`x^+`$ . For the bound state problem this is done by solving

$$(P^+P^{}+P_{}^2)|\psi =M^2|\psi $$

In light of the complications I will discuss below it is appropriate to provide some justification for thinking that light-cone quantization can have advantages. Perhaps the three most often quoted advantages are: boost invariance (boosts in the z-direction are kinematical in the light-cone representation); a much less complicated vacuum; and much simpler eigenstates. These last two properties are related and, from the point of view of this paper, are the important advantages. In addition to these advantages there are problems which either do not occur in the equal-time representation or are different in form. In this section I shall discuss the problem of induced operators; in the next section I shall discuss the problem of regularization and renormalization.

I shall first discuss the case of the Schwinger model; the one case of an induced operator which is understood in complete detail. In light-cone gauge, the operator solution to the Schwinger model is given by

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_+=Z_+e^{\mathrm{\Lambda }_+^{()}}\sigma _+e^{\mathrm{\Lambda }_+^{(+)}}$$

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_+=i2\sqrt{\pi }(\eta (x^+)+\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}(x^+,x^{}))$$

$$Z_+^2=\frac{m^2e^\gamma }{8\pi \kappa }$$

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_{}=Z_{}e^{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{}^{()}}\sigma _{}e^{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{}^{(+)}}$$

$$Z_{}^2=\frac{\kappa e^\gamma }{2\pi }$$

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_{}=i2\sqrt{\pi }\varphi (x^+)$$

$$A_+=\frac{2}{m}_+(\eta +\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Sigma }})$$

Here, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}`$ is a massive pseudoscalar (free) field, the physical field which creates the Schwinger particle. $`\varphi `$ is an auxiliary positive metric field while $`\eta `$ is a negative metric auxiliary field. This solution will be found by quantizing at equal-time, on $`x^{}=0`$ or on $`x^+=0`$. If we quantize at $`t=0`$ (or on $`x^{}=0`$) no special care is needed to include $`\varphi `$ and $`\eta `$ in the solution; they will automatically be included by using standard techniques. It is clear, however, that if we are to include them in the solution when quantizing on $`x^+=0`$, which we must do if we are to get the correct answer, some care must be taken.

Before discussing how the $`x^{}`$-independent fields appear in the light-cone representation, let me briefly discuss what their role is in the solution — that is, what bad things will happen if we leave them out. $`\eta `$ changes the singularity in the $`\mathrm{\Psi }_+`$ two-point function from an unacceptable $`e^{2\gamma }\frac{4}{m^2}\frac{1}{ϵ^+ϵ^{}}`$, if we keep only the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}`$ field, to the correct $`\frac{1}{2\pi ϵ^{}}`$. $`\varphi `$ and $`\eta `$ are the only fields in the problem which carry a charge, so leaving them out would be doing electrodynamics without charges. Finally, $`\varphi `$ and $`\eta `$ provide the only operators that create states which can dress the bare vacuum. As is generally known, the Schwinger model has a one-parameter vacuum ambiguity — the $`\theta `$-ambiguity. All of the $`\theta `$-states are dressed by operators from the $`\varphi `$ and $`\eta `$ fields, but in the light-cone representation they are still far simpler than the corresponding vacua in the equal-time representation where they are more heavily dressed by $`\varphi `$ and $`\eta `$ and are also dressed by $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}`$. If we leave out $`\eta `$ or $`\varphi `$ we will not be able to form a $`\theta `$-state and will therefore not be able to implement invariance under the large gauge transformations. If we include $`\varphi `$ and $`\eta `$ we can form a correct vacuum, and, for instance, can easily calculate the expected chiral condensate:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(\theta )|\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }|\mathrm{\Omega }(\theta )=\frac{m}{2\pi }\mathrm{e}^\gamma \mathrm{cos}\theta $$

The fields $`\varphi `$ and $`\eta `$ appear in light-cone quantization as integration constants. Light-cone quantization typically involves the solution of differential constraint relations and we must be careful with the boundary conditions. For the Schwinger model these constraint relations are

$$2_{}^2A^{}=J^+$$

$$i_{}\mathrm{\Psi }_{}=0$$

Looking at the solution given above we see that $`\varphi (x^+)`$ is one of the integration “constants” associated with solving the constraint equation for $`A^{}`$ (the other integration “constant” is zero), while the entire field, $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{}`$, is the integration constant associated with solving the constraint equation for $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{}`$. There must be some principal which determines the value of these integration constants. It is that these fields should be canonical at space-like separations. It is best to think of it as follows: there is only one operator solution although it may be written in an infinite number of bases; if we quantize at equal-time we know we will have canonical fields at space-like separations; changing the basis does not change the algebra. The thing that makes space-like separations special is that each point is causally disconnected from every other point whereas at light-like separations the algebra can become ill defined as we see by looking at the full solution to the Schwinger model given above. So far we have found that the integration constants are not generally zero but we do not yet have an induced operator. That is because the integration constants do not change the spectrum of the Schwinger model. They will effect the spectrum and we will find an induced operator if we add a bare mass to our Lagrangian and consider the massive Schwinger model.

With a nonzero bare mass, $`\mu `$, the constraint relation for $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{}`$ becomes

$$_{}\mathrm{\Psi }_{}+i\frac{1}{2}\mu \mathrm{\Psi }_+=0$$

This we solve as

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_{}=\mathrm{\Psi }_{}^0(x^+)i\frac{1}{2}\mu \mathrm{\Psi }_+𝑑x^{}$$

$`\mathrm{\Psi }_{}^0(x^+)`$ is again determined by the requirement that $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{}`$ be canonical at space-like separations:

$$\{\mathrm{\Psi }_{}(x),\mathrm{\Psi }_{}(x+ϵ_{SPACE})\}=\delta (ϵ_{SPACE})$$

and the physical subspace requirement (I am glossing over the point that while the requirement of canonical fields at space-like separations determines the integration constants, that requirement may not be particularly convenient to use in practical cases). Now, the operator, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }`$ will include a cross term involving the integration constant which will act in the physical subspace:

$$\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }(\mathrm{\Psi }_{}^0\mathrm{\Psi }_++\mathrm{\Psi }_+^{}\mathrm{\Psi }_{}^0)$$

This term leads to the linear growth of the mass squared of the Schwinger particle with the bare mass :

$$p|P^+\delta P^{}|p=4\pi \mu \mathrm{\Omega }|\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }|\mathrm{\Omega }=2m\mu e^\gamma \mathrm{cos}\theta $$

The part of $`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}\mathrm{\Psi }`$ which depends on the integration constant is an example of an induced operator. It is very important to understand that it is not a new operator: if we quantized at equal-time it would automatically be included in our Hamiltonian. The only reason for giving it the special name of an induced operator is that when we quantize on the light-cone, correctly including it in the dynamics requires that we take special care with the integration constants which are associated with the constraint relations — the operator, which acts in the physical subspace, is induced by the integration constants even though those are auxiliary fields.

There will be such operators for many realistic field theories including QCD. They have not all been worked out. For speculation as to the one in QCD which most closely corresponds to the one in the Schwinger model see ref. . There will be other induced operators in QCD in addition to that one.

## II Regularization and Renormalization

For several years Brodsky, Hiller and I have been trying to develop procedures for performing nonperturbative renormalization ; more recently we have also been collaborating with Franke, Prokhvatilov and Paston on the same topic. The Basic idea is to add Pauli-Villars fields to regulate the theory in a way which preserves as many of the sacred symmetries as we can; were we must break these symmetries we must add counter terms. Only after the theory is finite do we truncate the Fock space so as to get a problem we can solve. Since there is a finite target which we hope to approximate, the validity of this last step is a question of accuracy rather than symmetry. If our approximate answer lies sufficiently close to the answer which preserves the symmetries it does not matter if the small difference breaks the symmetries.

Most of our studies so far have been on Yukawa-like theories so that we have no infrared problem to face and we do not have to worry about protecting gauge symmetries; we are now extending our calculations to QED so some of those complications will now have to be faced. We have learned two important lessons from the studies so far performed. The first lesson is that at some point there is always a rapid drop off of the projection of the wave function onto higher Fock sectors. Just where this occurs depends on the theory, the coupling constant and the value of the Pauli-Villars masses. At weak coupling only the lowest Fock sectors are significantly populated. At stronger coupling more Fock sectors will be populated but eventually the projection onto higher sectors will fall rapidly. The projection onto the higher Fock sectors also grows as the values of the Pauli-Villars masses increase. The rapid drop off in the projection of the wave function onto sufficiently high Fock sectors is the most important reason why we do our calculations in the light-cone representation. For any practical calculations on realistic theories we have to truncate the space and we must have a framework in which that procedure can lead to a useful calculation. The rapid drop off in the projection of the wave function will not happen in the equal-time representation mostly due to the complexity of the vacuum in that representation. These features can be explicitly demonstrated by setting the Pauli-Villars masses equal to the physical masses. In that case the theory becomes exactly solvable . The spectrum is the free spectrum and the theory is not useful for describing real physical processes due to the strong presence of the negative normed states in physical wave functions but it still illustrates the points we have been trying to make. In that case the physical vacuum is the bare light-cone vacuum while it is a very complicated state in the equal-time representation. Physical wave functions project onto a finite number of Fock sectors in the light-cone representation but onto an infinite number of sectors in the equal-time representation. While the operators that create the physical eigenstates from the vacuum are more complicated in the equal-time representation than in the light-cone representation the major source of the enormous complication of the equal-time wave functions is the equal-time vacuum. As the Pauli-Villars masses become larger than the physical masses, the light-cone wave functions project on to more of the representation space and more so as the coupling constant is larger and the Pauli-Villars masses are larger, but the wave functions remain much simpler than in the equal time representation and to the extent we can do the calculations there is always a point of rapid drop off of the projection onto higher Fock sectors.

The other lesson that we have learned is not really a new lesson: we should not plan to take the masses of the Pauli-Villars fields all the way to infinity even if we have the computational ability to do so. That restriction comes from the problem of uncancelled divergences which will always occur when we do a nonperturbative calculation in a truncated representation space. To illustrate the problem, consider the nonperturbative calculation of an anomalous magnetic moment of a fermion dressed with a single boson. The result has the form

$$\mu ^{}=\frac{g^2[finitequantity]}{1+g^2[finitequantity]+g^2[finitequantity]\mathrm{log}\mu _2}$$

where $`\mu _2`$ is the Pauli-Villars mass scale. If we let $`\mu _2`$ go to infinity we will get zero. That would not happen in perturbation theory: since the numerator is already order $`g^2`$ we would use only the 1 from the denominator and might get a nonzero result. In order $`g^4`$ we would use the divergent term in the denominator but there would be new terms in the numerator which would contain canceling divergences. This is the problem of uncanceled divergences. The solution is to keep the Pauli-Villars masses finite. We think of it this way: If the limit of infinite Pauli-Villars masses would give a useful answer then there must be some finite value which would also give a useful answer. The question is whether we can use a sufficiently large value. To answer that question we must consider that there are two types of error associated with the value of the Pauli-Villars masses. The first type of error results in having these masses too small; then our wave function will contain too much of the negative normed states. That type of error goes like

$$E_1M_1/M_2$$

Where $`M_1`$ is the mass of the heaviest physical particle and $`M_2`$ is the mass of the lightest Pauli-Villars particle. The other type of error results from having the Pauli-Villars masses too large, in which case our wave function will project significantly onto the parts of the representation space excluded by the truncation. That error can be roughly estimated as

$$E_2\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_+^{}|\mathrm{\Phi }_+^{}}{\mathrm{\Phi }_+|\mathrm{\Phi }_+}$$

where $`|\mathrm{\Phi }_+^{}`$ is the projection of the wave function onto the excluded sectors. In practice this quantity can be estimated by doing a perturbative calculation using the projection onto the first excluded Fock sector as the perturbation. If both types of error are small, we can do a useful calculation; otherwise not. But, due to the eventual rapid fall off of the projection of the wave function onto higher Fock sectors, we believe it will always be possible, in principle, to include enough of the space to do a useful calculation. Computational limitations might mean that it would not be possible in practice.

We believe that the calculations have progressed to the point where we need to attempt a calculation for a problem to which we know the answer. We are therefore attempting a nonperturbative calculation of the electron’s magnetic moment. To perform this calculation successfully we must overcome three problems: the problem of uncanceled divergences, which I have just been discussing; the problem of the appearance of new divergences which do not occur in perturbation theory; and the problem of maintaining gauge invariance (not a trivial problem). We believe that we have techniques to overcome each of these problems and we hope to report a successful calculation in the near future.


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# Simultaneous single-pulse observations of radio pulsars

## 1 Introduction

Perhaps one of the most elusive qualities of the highly polarized pulsar radio emission is its circular polarization. Although it is generally lower than its linearly polarized counterpart, it is amongst the highest observed in astrophysical objects. Circular polarization in pulsars has been attributed in the past to propagation effects on the radiation as it travels through the pulsar magnetosphere, geometrical effects or the emission mechanism itself.

Cordes et al. (1978) were the first to point out an association between the position angle (PA) of the linear polarization and the handedness of the circular polarization. More specifically, $`90^o`$ jumps in the PA were observed to occur simultaneously with sense reversals in the circular polarization ($`V`$) in PSR B2020+28. The authors argued that this could be adequately explained by disjoint or superposed orthogonal polarization modes (OPMs). In the disjoint case, each of the OPMs is emitted independently and only individual modes are observed at a time. On the other hand, the superposed case supports the idea that the observed radiation at any instant is a mix of both modes, which are effectively emitted at the same time, despite each mode having its own properties. A number of authors argued for the identification of OPMs as the natural polarization modes in the pulsar magnetosphere (e.g. Barnard & Arons 1986, McKinnon 1997, von Hoensbroech et al. 1998, Petrova 2001). Elliptically polarized natural modes could then provide the origin for the circular polarization as a propagation effect.

Stinebring et al. (1984a, b) studied the polarization behaviour of single pulses from a number of pulsars using grey-scale density plots to investigate the fluctuations of the PA, the linear polarization, $`L`$, and $`V`$. They noticed that PA jumps often occur at the same pulse longitude at 430 and 1404 MHz and that the orthogonal polarization mode (OPM) phenomenon was becoming more prevalent at higher frequencies. They also noticed that at the phase bins where OPM jumps occur, the degree of linear polarization was significantly reduced, which led to the idea that, at any given instant, the radiation observed is the incoherent sum of OPMs. This has the advantage of naturally reducing the linear polarization and attributing its fluctuations to fluctuations in the polarization of the OPMs, which have a constant degree of linear polarization. In contrast, if OPMs were emitted independently, the emission mechanism would have to intrinsically produce a largely fluctuating degree of linear polarization. McKinnon & Stinebring (1998) realized that the assumption of incoherent addition of OPMs can be used to decompose an integrated pulse profile into the profiles of each OPM. By accounting for the effects of instrumental noise, this method can be used to reproduce the histograms of the distributions of the PA and $`L`$ from Stinebring et al. (1984b). Mode decomposed average profiles of PSRs B0525+21 and B2020+28 were shown in McKinnon & Stinebring (2000) using their technique on the average profiles of these pulsars.

In this paper, the association of circular polarization with the orthogonal polarization modes is examined in PSR B1133+16 at 1.41 GHz and 4.85 GHz, having studied the correlation of OPMs between these two frequencies in Karastergiou et al. (2002, hereafter Paper II). We make use of contingency tables to quantify this association at each frequency, which we compare to the findings of Cordes et al. (1978). We develop a method to decompose single pulses into the individual OPMs. The method is simple and only assumes that the observed Stokes $`I`$, $`Q`$, $`U`$, $`V`$ are the incoherent sum of the 100% polarized OPMs. We show the different mode-decomposed profiles of PSR B1133+16 by following our method and that of McKinnon & Stinebring (2000) and discuss the differences. Finally, we present example single-pulses from our simultaneous data set to highlight the observed effects and we discuss possible interpretations.

## 2 The data

We use the same dataset on PSR B1133+16 as in Paper II. It consists of 4778 pulses at 4.85 and 1.41 GHz observed with the Effelsberg and Jodrell Bank radio telescopes respectively. Full details of the observing, calibration and data reduction can be found in Paper II. The mean S/N of $`V`$ detected in the single pulses is $`<<1`$. However, in a significant number of cases, the signal in $`V`$ exceeds the rms of the noise by many times at both frequencies. At 4.85 GHz, where the flux density of this pulsar is much less than 1.41 GHz, the sensitivity of the Effelsberg telescope largely compensates. This is evident from the S/N of $`V`$ shown in Fig. 1 and favours our results to be intrinsic to the pulsar emission rather than products of the instrumental noise.

### 2.1 Distributions of $`V`$ and $`V/I`$

To investigate the single-pulse behaviour of circular polarization, the value of $`V`$ is plotted against the corresponding pulse phase for every single pulse. Such density plots reveal the pulse to pulse fluctuations of $`V`$. Fig. 1 shows two such plots for the single-pulse data of PSR B1133+16 observed simultaneously at 4.85 GHz and 1.41 GHz. The density plots reveal that the distributions of $`V`$ at each pulse phase bin range over a few tens of rms units at both frequencies.

In the leading component, it has been shown that the OPMs are almost equally strong and dominate equally often at both frequencies (Paper II). The distribution of $`V`$ in this component shows an almost equally dense population of positive and negative values. On the other hand, the trailing component is almost always dominated by one OPM and the respective $`V`$ distribution favours negative values. Under incoherent addition of OPMs, the observed $`V`$ is the difference between the $`V`$ of each OPM and therefore the above observation is in accordance with a particular handedness of $`V`$ being associated with a certain OPM.

The seemingly bimodal distributions of $`V/I`$ in the leading component in Fig. 1 are caused by the threshold applied to exclude the noise. Fig. 2 shows the specific distributions of $`V`$ and $`V/I`$ together with the PA histogram of bin 50. The bottom row corresponds to the 1.41 GHz data and the top row to the 4.85 GHz data. The threshold on $`V`$ is not applied here, in order to demonstrate how much of the distribution lies within the instrumental noise, the $`rms`$ of which is represented by a small horizontal bar inside the $`V`$ distribution. Only the pulses in which the signal-to-noise (S/N) of the total power exceeds 2 and the fractional linear polarization exceeds 20% are considered, in order to exclude ambiguous PA values. Bin 50 exhibits a clear bimodal PA distribution at both frequencies and at the same time a mean $`V`$ value very close to 0. On the other hand, Fig. 3 shows bin 65 from the trailing pulse component, that presents a slightly different picture. The PA distributions at both frequencies are dominated by one OPM (at 4.85 GHz this is not entirely clear due to the small population of points that survive the threshold) and the $`V`$ distributions have a significantly non-zero negative mean. This picture is consistent with incoherently superposed OPM, each mode favouring a particular handedness of $`V`$: in bin 50 where both modes dominate equally often, $`V`$ is distributed around 0, which is not the case for bin 65, where one mode essentially dominates and the handedness of $`V`$ associated with this mode gives mean $`V`$ its negative value.

Figs. 2 and 3 show a difference between the distributions in $`V`$ and $`V/I`$. All four $`V/I`$ histograms can be adequately approximated by Gaussian distributions. In bin 50, the best fit has a mean of $`2.5\%`$ and a $`\sigma `$ of $`19\%`$ at 4.85 GHz and a mean of $`0.6\%`$ and a $`\sigma `$ of $`18\%`$ at 1.41 GHz. In bin 65 on the other hand, the best fit has a mean of $`12\%`$ and a $`\sigma `$ of $`27\%`$ at 4.85 GHz and a mean of $`13\%`$ and a $`\sigma `$ of $`24\%`$ at 1.41 GHz. These broad distributions are consistent with those seen in other pulsars (Stinebring et al. 1984a, b) and are largely dominated by instrumental noise (McKinnon 2002).

In summary, the density plots of the circular polarization in Fig. 1 and the individual distributions in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, together with the OPM analysis presented in Paper II, provide evidence that each OPM is associated with a certain handedness of $`V`$. This association, however, is obviously not perfect, and we discuss this in the following.

### 2.2 The $`V`$ \- OPM correlation

In Cordes et al. (1978), observations of PSR B2020+28 at 404 MHz were used to investigate a possible connection between the handedness of $`V`$ and the PA value. To this goal, they plotted $`V`$ versus PA in the single pulses they observed. In their paper, they give an example of a particular pulse longitude where the distribution of PAs is bimodal, in other words a phase bin where the dominant OPM alternates from pulse to pulse. The plot of $`V`$ versus PA for this bin demonstrates a clear correlation between the handedness of $`V`$ and the OPM.

In Paper II, a detailed study of the frequency dependence of the OPMs in PSR B1133+16 demonstrated that, at higher frequencies, the OPMs are seen to dominate almost equally often and the individual fluxes of the OPMs become more equal to each other. Given this frequency evolution, we investigate whether the $`V`$ \- OPM association is also frequency dependent. Instead of $`V`$ \- PA plots, we follow a different route, namely to display the tips of the polarization vectors of all the single pulses from specific bins on the Poincar$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{e}}`$ sphere. The coordinates of a given point on the surface of the sphere are given by two angles, the latitude ($`\mathrm{tan}^1V/L`$) and longitude ($`2PA`$). The latitude is a measure of the ellipticity of the polarization state: values of $`0^o`$ correspond to linearly polarized states whereas values of $`\pm 90^o`$ correspond to purely circular states of opposite handedness.

Fig. 4 shows the bimodal distributions of PA in phase bin 50, the modes being $`90^o`$ apart in PA. It also shows that the majority of points in each mode prefer a certain handedness in $`V`$ and therefore lie on either side of the equator ($`V=0`$). Comparing Fig. 4 to Fig. 6 Cordes et al. (1978), reveals that the association of $`V`$ with PA is not as clear in PSR B1133+16 at these frequencies as it was in PSR B2020+28 at 404 MHz. A quantitative test is therefore necessary.

In the scheme of OPM superposition, it is very important to stress again that the observed PA is that of the dominant mode, regardless of the flux density difference of the two modes. Therefore, by testing the PA vs. the sign of $`V`$ association, one is effectively testing the association of the handedness of $`V`$ with OPM. For each phase bin of the pulse and for the total number of pulses, we quantize the observed quantities according to the following $`3\times 2`$ possibilities: dominant mode 1, dominant mode 2 or not defined PA, and positive-$`V`$ or negative-$`V`$. By composing such contingency tables for each phase bin, it is possible to quantify the association between the handedness of $`V`$ and the dominant OPM. An example for bin 50 at each observed frequency is shown in Table 1.

The numbers have been obtained by applying a two step process. Where the S/N of $`L`$ in the given bin is less than 2.5, we are unable to compute the PA and therefore classify these as “Undefined” in Table 1. Then, we compare the observed PA in each single pulse to the PA of the integrated profile in this bin, to determine which mode is dominating at this particular instant. From the numbers presented in Table 1, it is possible to compare the observed cases to the null hypothesis, by using the formula

$$D=\pm \frac{(ObsNull)^2}{Null}$$
(1)
where $`Obs`$ are the observed numbers and $`Null`$ the null hypothesis. Negative values denote a deficit of the observed cases from the null hypothesis. For every bin such as the one presented in Table 1 there will be four values of $`D`$, one for each table element.

We perform this analysis across the whole profile of PSR B1133+16. What we find is that there is an excess from the null hypothesis of negative $`V`$ cases across the pulse for the most common OPM (Mode 1) and a positive $`V`$ excess from the null hypothesis for the other OPM (Mode 2). Fig. 5 shows $`D`$ as measured by Eq. (1), plotted across the pulse. The top panel of the plot shows the $`D`$ values for the association between Mode 1 and negative $`V`$, whereas the bottom panel shows the same for Mode 2 and positive $`V`$, at both frequencies. From the definition of $`D`$ we find that values over 5 are statistically significant. Two facts are evident from these plots. First, the values of $`D`$ are generally large enough to support a strong correlation between the handedness of $`V`$ and the dominant OPM. Second, the $`D`$ values are consistently larger at 1.41 GHz than at 4.85 GHz, indicating that the correlation is weaker at 4.85 GHz. Also, as we have seen before, Mode 2 hardly ever dominates in the trailing pulse component and therefore the corresponding $`D`$ values are all close to zero.

## 3 OPM separation

Our statistical analysis of the dual frequency PSR B1133+16 data has shown us that there is a frequency dependent correlation between the handedness of $`V`$ and the dominant OPM. The contingency tables, however, show that there is a significant population of cases where the handedness of $`V`$ is opposite from the expected. In other words, the $`V`$ \- OPM association is not perfect. This is a very important result with serious implications on the technique of decomposing pulse profiles into the individual OPMs. The significance lies in the fact that each OPM that dominates in a given single pulse may be observed instantaneously with either handedness of $`V`$. However, averaging the single pulses and decomposing the average profile is based on an assumption that is not met, namely that each OPM is clearly associated with a particular sign of $`V`$ in all the single pulses. To demonstrate this, we detail the mathematics of mode-decomposition in single pulses and show the difference between the obtained profiles by decomposing and then averaging, and averaging and then decomposing the PSR B1133+16 data.

The orthogonality of the modes means that their polarization states at a given instant are represented by antiparallel vectors on the Poincar$`\stackrel{´}{\mathrm{e}}`$ sphere. By definition therefore the PAs can only take values which are exactly $`90^o`$ apart. Incoherent superposition allows the addition of the individual Stokes parameters. The mathematical process is as follows:
The observed Stokes parameters can be written in terms of the OPMs

$`I`$ $`=`$ $`I_1+I_2`$
$`Q`$ $`=`$ $`Q_1+Q_2`$
$`U`$ $`=`$ $`U_1+U_2`$
$`V`$ $`=`$ $`V_1+V_2`$
$`L`$ $`=`$ $`L_1+L_2,`$
where $`L_i=\sqrt{Q_i^2+U_i^2}`$. The 100% polarized modes add up to produce the observed, partially polarized radiation, where $`L^2+V^2I^2`$. Defining $`P`$ as the polarized intensity $`\sqrt{L^2+V^2}`$, and considering that the antiparallel vectors must have opposite senses of circular polarization, the orthogonal polarization states imply that,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{L_i}{I_i}}=d_L={\displaystyle \frac{L}{P}},`$ (3)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{|V_i|}{I_i}}=d_V={\displaystyle \frac{V}{P}}.`$ (4)
Also, the OPMs are 100% polarized, which means that

$$d_L^2+d_V^2=1\mathrm{or}d_V=\sqrt{1d_L^2}.$$
(5)
Taking into account the antiparallel vectors of the OPM polarization states and ignoring $`Q`$ and $`U`$ for the moment, Eq. (3) can be written as

$`I`$ $`=`$ $`I_1+I_2`$
$`L`$ $`=`$ $`d_L(I_1I_2)`$
$`V`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{1d_L^2}(I_1I_2),`$
which are sufficient to solve for $`I_1`$ and $`I_2`$, so that

$`I_1`$ $`=`$ $`0.5(I+{\displaystyle \frac{L}{d_L}})`$
$`I_2`$ $`=`$ $`0.5(I{\displaystyle \frac{L}{d_L}}).`$
and therefore, Eqs. (3) and (4) lead to

$`L_1`$ $`=`$ $`d_LI_1`$
$`L_2`$ $`=`$ $`d_LI_2`$ (8)
$`V_1`$ $`=`$ $`d_VI_1`$
$`V_2`$ $`=`$ $`d_VI_2.`$ (9)
To decompose $`Q`$ and $`U`$, the PA is used. The PA of the strongest mode should be equal to the observed PA, and the PA of the weak mode should be orthogonal to this. Therefore,

$$\frac{U}{Q}=\frac{U_1}{Q_1}=\frac{U_2}{Q_2}=\frac{U_2}{Q_2},$$
(10)
from which $`Q_i`$ and $`U_i`$ can be determined as

$`Q_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{L_i}{L}}Q`$
$`U_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{L_i}{L}}U.`$
The above method shows that there is a unique way to decompose the received Stokes parameters into the Stokes parameters of the individual orthogonal modes. In practice, special care must be taken in the cases of very small $`L`$ and $`V`$ to avoid significant errors. The equations also express the intrinsic assumption of this method that the modes are orthogonal, so the circular polarization sense is clearly opposite in each mode in a given single pulse. However, the sense of $`V`$ that is associated with a particular OPM may change from pulse to pulse.

In Stinebring & McKinnon (2000), the average profiles of PSRs B0525+21 and B2020+28 are decomposed into the OPMs, using the assumption of superposed OPM emission. We apply our method of single-pulse decomposition and their method of average profile decomposition to PSR B1133+16 to identify and interpret the differences.

Figs. 6 and 7 show the results of the two different approaches to OPM-decomposition at 4.85 GHz and 1.41 GHz respectively. First of all, the averaged profiles created using the two methods are obviously different. The average circular polarization in the case of the single-pulse decomposition has a constant sense across the profile, which is not true for the average profile decomposition. Also, it can be seen that the average flux density of $`V`$ in each of the modes is considerably smaller in the case of single-pulse decomposition. Another aspect of the observed differences between the profiles is the linear polarization, which is $`100\%`$ in the decomposed average profiles and significantly less in the decomposed single-pulse profiles. We claim that the reduced degree of polarization is due to the spread in the PA distributions. We have found that a $`45^o`$ spread in the PA distribution of a particular phase bin, results in a $`20\%`$ decrease in the mean linear polarization after averaging a few hundreds of single pulses. For this reason, it is impossible to obtain mode-separated average profiles constructed from decomposed single pulses that exhibit $`100\%`$ polarization unless the PA distributions are delta-functions.

## 4 Simultaneous pulses

The significant correlation between $`V`$ and OPM is in agreement with the initial result for PSR B2020+28 (Cordes et al. 1978) and constitutes evidence that circular polarization is closely linked to the OPM phenomenon. However, we have demonstrated that decomposing single pulses into the OPMs and averaging produces different mode-separated profiles from averaging single pulses first and then decomposing the resulting profile. This happens because the correlation of $`V`$ with OPM, although significant, is not perfect, and becomes worse with frequency. Obviously, the entire mechanism that determines the polarization we observe is not well understood.

In Karastergiou et al. (2000, Paper I) and Paper II it was shown that single pulses of PSRs B1133+16 and B0329+54 observed simultaneously at two, widely spaced frequencies may often disagree in terms of the dominant OPM. Despite these frequent cases of disagreement, the cases of agreement were statistically more significant and therefore revealed a high degree of correlation in OPMs between the observed frequencies. The correlation of OPMs between frequencies is facilitated by the fact that the PAs of the OPMs are, by definition, orthogonal. Therefore, it is possible to distinguish the prevailing OPM at both frequencies and count the cases of agreement and disagreement. Unfortunately, the observed $`V`$ has wide unimodal distributions around a usually very small mean. An investigation of the correlation of the handedness of $`V`$ between the frequencies, is therefore dominated by the mean and the $`rms`$ of the $`V`$ distribution. As an example, the bins in the trailing pulse component of PSR B1133+16 as seen in Fig. 1, show broad $`V`$ distributions of a clearly negative mean. A test of the association in handedness of $`V`$ between the frequencies in this component obviously shows a high correlation, forced by the underlying distributions themselves. As for the leading pulse component, we have demonstrated that each mode is clearly associated to a particular handedness in $`V`$ at a given frequency. The high degree of the correlation of the OPMs between the frequencies therefore also results in a high correlation in the handedness of $`V`$. To summarize, we see a high correlation in the handedness of $`V`$ between the observed frequencies, which is what we expect from our previous knowledge. This correlation, however, does not add significantly to our interpretation of the observations.

Given the simultaneity of our data, we have the opportunity to inspect single pulses as a whole observed at both frequencies. Two example single-pulses are provided in Figs. 8 and 9. Fig. 8 shows pulse number 1562 from PSR B1133+16 at 4.85 GHz (top panel) and 1.41 GHz (bottom panel). The leading pulse component shows the characteristic swing and change of handedness in $`V`$ usually associated with core components. The sense of the swing is opposite between the two frequencies although the PAs agree. They both show a PA jump in the same direction, although the jump happens slightly earlier at the lower frequency. In pulse 2438 in Fig. 9, an OPM jump occurs in bin 48 and the PA jumps back again in bin 52, at both frequencies. Both jumps correspond closely to the peaks in $`V`$. The shape of the $`V`$ profile around these bins is also very similar between the two frequencies, but the handedness is opposite. The examples also help to extend the significance of our results to timescales comparable to the pulsar component widths.

## 5 Summary

In this paper we have demonstrated a method for decomposing single pulses into the OPMs, assuming incoherently superposed OPM emission. We support this method in light of our findings for PSR B1133+16, where the handedness of the circular polarization has been observed not to be perfectly associated to the dominant OPM. We have shown that the correlation of $`V`$ with OPM is worse at 4.85 GHz than at 1.41 GHz, which is consistent with the conclusion of Paper II that propagation through the pulsar magnetosphere causes more severe effects at higher rather than lower frequencies. Finally, we show two examples of single pulses to demonstrate that our bin-by-bin analysis is also applicable to structures with timescales similar to pulsar components.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors would like to thank everybody at the Effelsberg and Lovell radio telescopes who helped in any way with the observations. AK would like to thank the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst for their financial support.


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# Comment on Reply of Benedetto et al.

## Abstract

We regret to point out several inaccurate and misleading statements that Benedetto et al. make in their ReplyBenedetto et al. (2003) to our CommentKhmelev and Teahan (2003) on their paper titled “Language Trees and Zipping”Benedetto et al. (2002).

We regret to point out several inaccurate and misleading statements that Benedetto et al. make in their ReplyBenedetto et al. (2003) to our CommentKhmelev and Teahan (2003) on their paper titled “Language Trees and Zipping”Benedetto et al. (2002).

First they confusingly state in paragraph 7 that Russian and Greek alphabets are not phonetic, putting Russian and Greek in a row with Chinese, the latter enjoing hieroglyphic writings. Second, they use unfair and irrelevant experiments in order to convince the reader that the gzip-based approach is better than the Markov chains based approach. Third, the figures reported for Newsgroups corpus seems to be obtained on a randomly selected small subset of the Newsgroups corpus, which probably makes them completely meaningless in the discussed topic. Fourth, their reference to RAR compressor classification performance for refuting our Comment is irrelevant to our Comment and their LetterBenedetto et al. (2002). And fifth, authors of Benedetto et al. (2003) obviously experience some problems with scientific English language. We elaborate on each of these points in more detail in the subsequent paragraphs.

It is a well-established fact that Russian language as well as Greek enjoys phonetic alphabet. Perhaps, Benedetto *et al.* Benedetto et al. (2002) meant to use the transliteration for the construction of Language Tree (LT). However this procedure has its drawbacks like non-uniqueness, non-reversability, and inexactness of the transformation. Most importantly this procedure requires some *knowledge* about the language, which shows that the requirement for *a-priori* information, pointed out in Khmelev and Teahan (2003) remains valid contrary to the claim in Benedetto et al. (2002).

We believe that if one wants to compare the perfomance of several classification methods then the comparision should be performed in the same experimental framework. To start with, let us denote by $`M`$, $`G`$, $`g`$ the classification performance of the following methods, respectively, on the corpus, discussed in Khmelev (2000): Markov Chains approach Khmelev (2000); attribution with a single source using gzip Kukushkina et al. (2001); and attribution with multiple-source using gzip Benedetto et al. (2002). Let us denote by $`M^{}`$, $`G^{}`$, $`g^{}`$ the classification performance of these methods in the framework of Benedetto et al. (2002), and, finally, let $`M^{\prime \prime }`$, $`G^{\prime \prime }`$, $`g^{\prime \prime }`$ denote the classification performance of the same methods on the Newsgroups dataset. Notice that in Benedetto et al. (2002) only values for $`G^{\prime \prime }=60\%<g^{\prime \prime }=85\%`$ and $`G^{\prime \prime }=77\%<g^{\prime \prime }=93\%`$ are presented. One can not make any conclusion about $`M^{}`$ or $`M^{\prime \prime }`$ using these data, so our statement about superiority of Markov Chains approach with respect to gzip approach (either with a single- or multiple-source files) remains valid. Moreover, we have stated in our Comment Khmelev and Teahan (2003) that $`M=69/8284\%`$ is greater than $`G=50/8261\%`$. We also reported to editors of Phys.Rev.Lett. in our answer to the referee report of Benedetto *et al.* that $`g=53/8265\%`$, which can indeed be considered as an argument for our claim that generally Markov chains are more attractive than gzip-based approach.

In our opinion the “slightly different method” of Benedetto et al. (2002) should be considered as an approach to the design of the experiment, which leads to an extremely slow classification speed especially in the case of thousands of documents to classify, where a thousand source documents makes prohibitive the really large experiment on classification. This gives rise to the question of the validity of the figures $`G^{\prime \prime }=60\%`$ and $`g^{\prime \prime }=85\%`$ outlined in Benedetto et al. (2003). Traditionally, the precision of the classification method on the Newsgroups is measured in the following way: one performs a random 10-fold or 5-fold split and reports the average results of cross-validation. Typical numbers reported are around 80% Teahan (2000), with 82.1% for PPM (Markov-based) approach. It would be interesting to know the technique used byBenedetto et al. (2003), since even 5-fold split validation by their method would require about $`5\times (18828/5)\times (4\times 18828/5)284\times 10^6`$ calls of gzip compression program, which is prohibitive on conventional computers. If one wants to apply a complete cross-validation as suggested in Benedetto et al. (2002), then one has to do even more $`18828^2354\times 10^6`$ calls of gzip. We suspect that the figures $`G^{\prime \prime }=60\%`$ and $`g^{\prime \prime }=85\%`$, outlined in Benedetto et al. (2003), are obtained on a randomly selected small subset of the Newsgroups, are subject to essential random variation, and hence $`G^{\prime \prime }=60\%`$ and $`g^{\prime \prime }=85\%`$ should not be used for quantitative comparision of a single- and multiple-source file setting.

Finally, in our Comment we stated that Markov chain approach as reported in Kukushkina et al. (2001) is superior to LZ approach *used in* Benedetto et al. (2002). This statement was misinterpreted in Benedetto et al. (2003) as a general statement that LZ approach is outperformed by the *simple Markov chain* approach and Benedetto *et al.*Benedetto et al. (2003) easily refute the misinterpreted statement using our own result on RAR Kukushkina et al. (2001). The correct generalization (and the only possible understanding in view of references given) of our statement is: *for any modification of LZ compression scheme there exists a modification of Markov Chain approach (PPM compression scheme), which outperforms LZ in classification* (this statement is similar to a well-known postulate among specialists: any modification of LZ compression scheme can be outperformed by a properly modified PPM compression scheme). The highly sophisticated, going far beyond the naive use of Ziv-Lempel theory, algorithm of RAR, know-how of its creator Eugene Roshal, should be compared with, for example, the the state-of-art PPMd (PPMonstr) algorithm developed recently by Dmitry Shkarin. And we find extremely interesting and scientifically valuable that the tough first-order Markov chain produce results competitive to highly sophisticated algorithms. As for the polemical comparision between Markov Chain and RAR compressor by Benedetto *et al.*Benedetto et al. (2003), we find it irrelevant in the framework of their paper Benedetto et al. (2002). Indeed, if Benedetto *et al.*Benedetto et al. (2003) stand for technical details, like multiple- and single- source classification, they should restrict their method to application of gzip only, which is the main technical detail of their Letter Benedetto et al. (2002).

As a final remark we would like to point out that Reply Benedetto et al. (2003) exhibits some language mistakes of it’s authors themselves. Indeed, they reference to our comment Khmelev and Teahan (2003) using expression “Khmelev *et al*” as if Khmelev and Teahan (2003) has at least three co-authors (common meaning of *et al* is *and others*).

To sum up, one can not draw any conclusion on the comparision between $`n`$th order Markov chain approach (by which we meantKhmelev and Teahan (2003) the PPM approach as well) with gzip-based approach from the statements, given in Benedetto et al. (2003). We also believe that the authors ofBenedetto et al. (2003) were not aware of our reported figure for $`g=64\%`$; otherwise it looks very strange that they did not mention this argument in their Reply. Also we suggest to authors of Benedetto et al. (2003) to present a fair comparision of their method against others, Teahan (2000), Kukushkina et al. (2001) and, e.g., SVM approach Allwein et al. (2000); Crammer and Singer (2000); Weston and Watkins (1998).

P.S. This story shows that editors of physical journal like Phys.Rev.Lett. perhaps should avoid publishing papers like Benedetto et al. (2002), because Phys.Rev.Lett. referees do not have enough experience to identify scientifical value and mistakes in non-physical papers. We also encourage physicists and mathematicians to send their non-physical and non-mathematical papers to appropriate scientific journals, even if they are not so well-known as Phys.Rev.Lett. Probably such a publication would not yield much publicity, but the quality and scientific value of the paper would increase significantly.

The example with Benedetto et al. (2002) is not unique. A similar story, which reappears time-to-time in newspapers, is the story about computing using DNA, described in details in Gusfield (1997). It is possible to do computations with DNA. However, the amount of DNA, required for solution of, say, salesmen problem with 100 cities, is comparable with the Earth mass, which makes it’s use impractical and impossible. Notice that computer science methods allow to solve practical salesmen problem in reasonable time for number of cities like $`10^6`$ on contemporary computers. However, the authors of DNA computation speculative approach speculate that the effectiveness issue will be solved in future, a strange analogy with suggestion of Benedetto et al. (2003).

Notice also that a publication of non-physical paper in physical journal evidence the crisis in physics, which responsible phisicists should aware of. Otherwise why phisicists are publishing speculative papers on non-physical subjects? Is not this the evidence that they can not find application of their abilities in physics?