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# Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays and Absolute Reference Frame defined by External Field

## 1 Historical Introduction

Energy spectrum of the cosmic rays extends by a power-law over more than ten decimal, decreasing in a power-law like $`E^\gamma `$ with energy $`E`$ and $`\gamma 2.5`$. Then a natural question is whether the high-energy end in the energy spectrum does exist or not. In 1966, a very clear-cut prediction was presented, which introduced a definite upper-limit in the power-low energy spectrum, which is called now as GZK(Greisen-Zatepin-Kuzmin) cut-off.

This cut-off prediction was invoked by the discovery of ”3K radiation” in 1965, which is now called as CMB(cosmic microwave background). Although CMB was observed just on the earth, CMB was supposed to fill up in the whole cosmic space uniformly, even in the extra-galactic space, as the relics of ”hot” big-bang. Therefore it became crucial to check the presence of CMB in the extra-galactic space, in order to settle the big debates between the steady state cosmology and Gamow’s hot big-bang cosmology. As an advocator of the steady-state cosmology, Fred Hoyle tried hard to present two types of counter arguments, one was about exotic interstellar dusts which masks the extragalactic view in this wave-band and another one was how much degree the high-energy cosmic radiations($`\gamma `$-rays,X-rays,electron-positron,etc) are masked by the extra-galactic presence of CMB. Hoyle’s motivation of the latter argument was to point out a contradiction of the hot big-bang cosmology but thi! s argument had created a rich implication of CMB toward the high-energy cosmic radiations, including the GZK cut-off.

Since then, the GZK cut-off energy of about $`10^{20}`$eV became an experimental target for the cosmic-ray physicist. Observation of the EAS(extensive air shower) started also in Japan and EAS-group led by K. Suga constructed the array of detectors in the suburb of Tokyo, a dense array in the site of the research institute and several remote stations at the sites of elementary school, the city office and so on. It was the autumn of 1971 when they announced that their detector had catched a huge EAS with energy over GZK cut-off in 1970. In following February, the workshop was organized in order to discuss this puzzling EAS event.

At the workshop, I gave a talk by the title ”Very high-energy cosmic-rays and the limitation of relativity principle”. If the high-energy end does not exist contrary to the GZK cut-off prediction, we could enumerate three possible ways of resolution, 1) ”3K”radiation is local, 2)source of such cosmic ray is local(within mean-free-path), 3) cosmic ray is not proton but some exotic primary. At the workshop of 1972, I added the fourth possibility 4) violation of relativity principle. Later the paper was written by the title ”Ultra-high Energy cosmic rays, Hot universe and Absolute reference frame”.

Although the energy estimation of this 1970-event was not accurate enough to claim the existence of super-GZK cut-off cosmic rays, this event promoted very much the effort toward a construction of bigger array in Akeno. This new big array, AGASA, finally presented more assured experimental evidences of super-GZK cut-off after 1997. Experimental data suggesting super-GZK cosmic rays given by AGASA as well as FlysEyes gave a great impact towards the bigger new observational projects such as Auger, EUSO , and others.

In such trend of research, an implication of the super-GZK cosmic ray has been discussed widely. In different from the situation in 1972, the first possible way(local ”3K”) has been eliminated and other three possibilities have been discussed; a) exotic local source such as cosmic string, mini black hole,etc.(so-called top-down scenario), b)exotic primaries such as neutrinos, neutrino with Z-burst in Galactic halo, etc, and finally c)violation of Lorentz invariance.

Even for the last possibility, there are variety of arguments. In this report, a specific toy model of violation of Lorentz invariance is proposed and an extension of Lorentz invariance with non-unique limiting velocities is discussed.

## 2 Comoving Frame in the Expanding Universe and Relativity Principle

In the expanding universe, we can clearly identify preferential inertia frames: (1)rest frame of baryon matter, (2)rest frame of astronomical objects, (3)frame in which CMB is isotropic, (4) frame in which the Hubble flow is observed isotropic. Furthermore, these four frames are approximately identical within a relative velocity difference of several hundreds km/sec. These inertia frames have a concrete physical effect when we understand the structure formation in the expanding universe.

According to recent theoretical view on the early universe, these cosmological frames are considered to have the same physical origin; spontaneous selection of the inertia frame in which the primordial black body radiation is isotropic via a reheating at Inflation. But even in the vacuum universe without material substance, the creation of the expanding universe itself is the browken state of Lorentz invariance. That is a formation of comoving frame perpendicular to the time direction. We call this cosmological and comoving frame as C-frame.

In spite of a lucid presence of the C-frame, however, the Lorentz invariance is supposed to hold in any local physical phenomena. The relativity principle does not respect this lucid presence. Whatever lucid this presence is, it has no physical effect. That is the spirit of the relativity since Galileo. In the derivation of GZK cut-off, the relativity principle is used as usual but its situation is very special because the Lorentz factor relative to the C-frame is as large as $`\gamma 10^{11}`$, which is far beyond the Lorentz factor in the particles the accelerators of about $`\gamma 10^5`$.

Here we should not confuse the two meanings of ”high energy”. One is an invariant energy(or center of mass energy) defined such as ,

$$p^\mu p_\mu =E^2P^2=Q^2$$

,where $`p^\mu `$ is total four momentum of the system. Another one is energy relative to a specific reference frame and it will be defined in the following manner as

$$N^\mu p_\mu =1E0P=E$$

, where $`N^\mu `$ is a four vector specifing the frame. For the C-frame, the component is given as $`N^\mu (1,0,0,0)`$ in the C-frame. The Relativity principle claims that the cross section of collision, $`\sigma `$, does depend solely on $`Q`$ but does not depend on $`N^\mu p_\mu `$ , such as $`\sigma (Q)`$ but not as $`\sigma (Q,N^\mu p_\mu )`$. In our early paper, the cut-off function in the momentum space was assumed to depend on $`N^\mu p_\mu `$ and the cross section involved to the GZK was altered not to give the cut-off of the spectrum.

In the discussion of GZK cut-off, $`Q`$ is $`10^{8.5}`$eV, which is rather low energy in high-energy physics, but, $`N^\mu p_\mu 10^{20}`$eV is extraordinarily large even in high-energy physics. The uniqueness of the GZK cut-off lies on the largeness of $`N^\mu p_\mu `$, but not on the so-called energy frontier of the high-energy physics, e.g., Energy frontier for supersymmetry, GUT, Planck scale, etc., those are talking about large $`Q`$ but not on the largeness of $`N^\mu p_\mu `$.

## 3 A Toy Model of Lorentz-Invariance Violation

Consider the following Lagrangian for a Dirac particle A,

$$L_A=\frac{i}{2}\overline{\psi }\gamma _\mu ^\mu \psi \alpha _A\varphi \overline{\psi }\psi +\frac{i}{2}g_AF_{\mu \nu }\overline{\psi }\gamma ^\mu ^\nu \psi ,$$

where $`\psi `$ is the Dirac field of A, $`\varphi `$ is Higgs scalar field with coupling coefficient $`\alpha _A`$ and $`F_{\mu \nu }`$ is a tensor field with coupling coefficient $`g_A`$.The first term in the right hand side is kinetic term and the second one is the Yukawa coupling term which creates mass by Higgs mechanism. In this Lagrangian, the dynamical parts of $`\varphi `$ and $`F^{\mu \nu }`$ has been omitted and $`\varphi `$ and $`F^{\mu \nu }`$ are both taken as an external field. They are un-removable given field in the present state of universe. Non-zero value of $`<\varphi >`$ gives the mass, $`m_A=\alpha _A<\varphi >`$, to this Dirac particle.

Next we assume that some component of the tensor field has got some non-zero value as followings,

$$<F^{00}>=B0\mathrm{and}<F^{\mu \nu }>=0\mathrm{for}\mathrm{other}\mathrm{components}.$$

$`B`$ is supposed to be constant in space and time but can be slowly changing with cosmological spacetime scale. Then the dispersion relation for plain wave is given as

$$p^\mu p_\mu m_A^2c^2=2g_AB(E/c)^2$$

, where only the first order terms of B has been retained and the higher term of B has been neglected.

This relation is rewritten by denoting the three momentum as $`p`$ as

$$(1+g_AB)(E/c)^2=p^2+m_A^2c^2,$$

where $`c`$ is the universal constant introduced at the definition of the spacetime length by space length and time length.

Renormalizing the velocity and mass as followings

$$c_A^2=\frac{c^2}{1+g_AB}\mathrm{and}m_{AB}^2=(1+g_AB)m_A^2,$$

the conventional energy-momentum relation is resumed

$$E^2=p^2c_A^2+m_{AB}^2c_A^4.$$

but now $`c_A`$ is depending on particle species through $`g_A`$, that is, the limiting velocity, velocity in the limit of $`E\mathrm{}`$, is depending on the particle species.

Here we remark some difference between the Higgs scalar $`\varphi `$ and the tensor external field $`F^{\mu \nu }`$. Different from a scalar field , we have adopted the C-frame as the preferential frame and the above energy-momentum relation holds only in the C-frame. If we modified the Lorentz transformation with psudo-Lorentz factor

$$\gamma _A=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1\left(\frac{v}{c_A}\right)^2}}\mathrm{instead}\mathrm{of}\gamma =\frac{1}{\sqrt{1\left(\frac{v}{c}\right)^2}},$$

the above relation keeps its form. However the Lorentz invariance apparently breaks down if we consider a system consisting of pariticles of different species.

The perturbative super string theory has suggested an existence of various hidden fields such as the above tensor field. If we assume a vector field $`A_\mu `$ in stead of $`F_{\mu \nu }`$ as the external field, the Lagrangian is written,

$$L_A=\frac{i}{2}\overline{\psi }\gamma _\mu ^\mu \psi m_A\overline{\psi }\psi f_AV_\mu \overline{\psi }\gamma ^\mu \psi .$$

, where the Higgs term is now rewritten by the mass term. Here we assume

$$<V_0>=V0\mathrm{and}<V_\mu =0>\mathrm{for}\mathrm{all}\mathrm{other}\mathrm{components}$$

and the the dispersion relation becomes like

$$E^2p^2c^2m_A^2c^4=2f_AVE.$$

If we define as

$$c_A(E)=\frac{c}{1+\frac{f_AV}{E}},m_{AV}^2=(1+f_AV/E)^2[m_A^2+(f_AV)^2/c^4],$$

the above dispersion relation resume a pseudo-conventional form like

$$E^2=p^2c_A(E)^2+m_{AV}^2c_A(E)^4.$$

$`c_A(E)`$ has anomaly in the limit of $`E0`$ but this limit would need a quantum mechanical correction. The violation of Lorentz invariance would dominate in the vector case similar to the scalar or Higgs case. Then the tensor case is necessary as the toy model which exhibits the violation of Lorentz invariance in the limit of large $`\gamma `$

## 4 Boost Particle-Transformation in the External Field

The above argument can be discussed from a different viewpoint. We can consider two types of transformation, boost particle-transformation and the Lorentz transformation. The Lorentz transformation is just a change of reference frame for the description of the same phenomena and is sometime called ”passive” transformation. The boost particle-transformation is ”active” transformation, where particle’s energy-momentum are changed actually. Relativity principle claims that the boosted state and the original state seen from the transformed reference frame are identical. For the system of particles, this is trivial and the classification into ”Boost” and ”Lorentz” has no particular meaning.

However some complication comes in when we consider the system consisting of particles and external given field. In the Lorentz transformation, both the particle’s energy-momentum and the components of the external field are transformed. Therefore the relative relation between particle and external field does not changed. In the boost particle-transformation, however, particle’s energy-momentum are transformed but the field configuration is kept unchanged. Therefore two states of the particles relative to the field are different. In this way, the actively boosted state of particle is not identical with the passively Lorentz transformed state having the same particle state but different field configuration. Thus we call this situation as an ”apparent” violation of Lorentz invariance but it is in fact a misconduct of the Lorentz transformation.

What we have done in the previous section is something like this. In the actual universe, the external fields like $`F^{\mu \nu }`$ are totally unknown to us upto now and ”misconduct” of application of the Lorentz transformation could happen. Conversely we also say that the apparent violation implies a finding of the hidden external fields.

## 5 Eigen State of the Limiting Velocity and GZK cut-off

Without touching on the origin of various limiting velocity, we can rise a question how much degree the universality of limiting velocity has been checked by direct experiment. The assumption of non-equality of the limiting velocity of a charged particle and light velocity is equivalent to the introduction of the Lorentz non-invariant term of the electromagnetic field into the Lagrangian. In general, this is true for any non-universal assumptions of the limiting velocity.

Coleman and Glashow also discussed this assumption, firstly in order to explain the neutrino oscillation. They also pointed out that the high-energy phenomena might disclose an apparent degeneracy of limiting velocity and reveal a splitting into a fine structure. They called various limiting velocity as eigen state of velocity. They have shown also that this modification does not hurt the standard theory of interaction based on the gauge field theory. The discussion in the section 3 is concerned the origin of such an ad hoc assumption of the eigen state of limiting velocity.

If we introduce the particle species dependent $`c_A`$, the GZK cut-off discussion could be modified very much. By the head-on collision between the cosmic-ray proton and the CMB photon, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ particle is produced if the following condition is satisfied.

$$(E_p+E_\gamma )^2(p_p+p_\gamma )^2c_\mathrm{\Delta }^2>m_\mathrm{\Delta }^2c_\mathrm{\Delta }^4,$$

while the proton obeys to $`E_p^2=p_p^2c_p^2+m_p^2c_p^4`$. In the situation of $`E_pm_pc_p^2`$ and $`|c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p|c_p`$, the condition becomes as followings

$$\frac{c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p}{c_p}E_p^2+2E_pE_\gamma >\frac{m_\pi ^2c^4}{2}$$

In the conventional case, $`c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p=0`$ and the threshold energy is obtained $`E_p>m_\pi ^2c^4/4E_\gamma `$.

If $`(c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p)0`$, the above equation gives a quite different result; the cut-off disappears for $`(c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p)>0`$ and the cut-off energy decreases compared with the GZK cut-off for $`(c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p)<0`$. For example, the above equation does not have solution if

$$\frac{c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p}{c_p}>2\left(\frac{E_\gamma }{m_\pi c^2}\right)^210^{22},$$

the cut-off does not exist.

On the other hand, for $`(c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p)<0`$, the cut-off energy is modified as

$$E_{GZK}\left[1\frac{|c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p|}{2c_p}\left(\frac{m_\pi c^2}{E_\gamma }\right)^2\right]\mathrm{for}\frac{|c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p|}{2c_p}\left(\frac{m_\pi c^2}{E_\gamma }\right)^2<1$$

and

$$\sqrt{\frac{c_p}{2|c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p|}}m_\pi c^2\mathrm{for}\frac{|c_\mathrm{\Delta }c_p|}{c_p}m_\pi ^2c^4E_\gamma ^2$$

## 6 Paradigm of Spontaneous Symmetry Breakdown

One of the achievement of the 20-century Physics was discovery of various symmetry hidden deep in the diversity of superficial phenomena: we can point out many symmetries such as rotational and boost symmetry of 3-space, past-future symmetry in mechanics, duality symmetry between electro- and magneto-fields, Lorentz symmetry of spacetime, discrete symmetry in atomic structure of solid, particle-antiparticle symmetry, isospin symmetry of nuclear force, chiral symmetry, ”eight-fold symmetry”, super-symmetry, colour symmetry and so on. Particularly, in the late of 1970’s, theory of fundamental interactions among elementary particles was formulated into the unified-gauge-theory, based on internal or local symmetry hidden in electro-weak and strong interactions among quarks and leptons.

This unification of the fundamental interaction was accomplished, however, by one extra idea called ”spontaneous symmetry breakdown(SSB)”, which is schematically written as

$$[\mathrm{observed}\mathrm{law}]=[\mathrm{symmetric}\mathrm{law}]\mathrm{x}[\mathrm{SSB}].$$

That is, the symmetric law itself is not realized in this universe because the universe is not empty but the external field called Higgs field has permeated by . The most essential difference of the Higgs field from a conventional field is that it is un-removable from the universe. Then the genuine symmetric law looses its chance to exhibit its original form in this universe.

This SSB has introduced a new ingredient about the concept of physics law, that is, the physics law itself is symmetric but our actual universe is not in a state of exact symmetry. This may be re-phrased also as followings; physics law is universal but our universe is not universal entity, or, physics law itself does not exhibit its original form in our universe where we live in. We call this kind of idea as the SSB paradigm.

In fact, some symmetries are not exact but show a tiny breakdown, like in case of CP-asymmetry. The actual composition of cosmic matter does not obey the particle-antiparticle symmetry in spite of CPT-symmetry in physics law itself. Following these considerations, we are tempted to think that any symmetry might be not exact in this actual universe, which has come into an existence through various spontaneous selections of non-universal parameters.

Lorentz invariance claims that there is no preferential inertia frame; that is the central dogma of relativity principle. However, in our universe filled with the CMB and cosmic matter, we can clearly identify the preferential frame, which we have called the C-frame. In the inflationay scenario, CMB is supposed to be created in association with some SSB of the vacuum state of quantum field theory. Some features of the particle interaction in this universe is supposed to have inherited the parameters chosen by a dynamical process of this SSB. Furthermore, the SSB paradigm is now extended to the creation of spacetime from higher dimensional space through a dynamical process similar to SSB. Thus we can speculate also the exact Lorentz symmetry might have been violated dynamically in ”our universe”, that is spontaneous breaking of Lorentz symmetry.

Lorentz symmetry, however, has been built in all fundamental concepts of modern physics, such as Dirac field, spin, renormalization group of quantum field theory, and so on. Therefore, the violation of this symmetry can not be introduced so easily. One of the outcomes of the relativity principle is the equivalence of all inertia frame. However this equivalence has not been directly proved so much. Only the accelerator experiments has proved this equivalence up to some Lorentz factor of $`\gamma _{\mathrm{acce}}10^5`$. In this respect, the GZK cut-off has an unique status for the experimental verification of the equivalence of all inertia frames and the validity limit may be extended up to $`\gamma _{\mathrm{GZK}}10^{11}`$. Following to the SSB paradigm, this verification has coupled with the universality of the limiting velocity. And if there were not the GZK cut-off, that may imply a finding of a un-removable hidden external field of tensor type. The SSB paradigm anyway describes our universe as ”un-universal” universe.


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# High-Precision Lattice QCD Confronts Experiment

HPQCD and UKQCD Collaborations

MILC Collaboration

HPQCD and Fermilab Lattice Collaborations

(31 March 2003)

## Abstract

We argue that high-precision lattice QCD is now possible, for the first time, because of a new improved staggered quark discretization. We compare a wide variety of nonperturbative calculations in QCD with experiment, and find agreement to within statistical and systematic errors of 3% or less. We also present a new determination of $`\alpha _{\overline{\mathrm{MS}}}^{(5)}(M_Z)`$; we obtain 0.121(3). We discuss the implications of this breakthrough for phenomenology and, in particular, for heavy-quark physics.

For almost thirty years precise numerical studies of nonperturbative QCD, formulated on a space-time lattice, have been stymied by our inability to include the effects of realistic quark vacuum polarization. In this paper we present detailed evidence of a breakthrough that may now permit a wide variety of nonperturbative QCD calculations including, for example, high-precision $`B`$ and $`D`$ meson decay constants, mixing amplitudes, and semi-leptonic form factors — all quantities of great importance in current experimental work on heavy-quark physics. The breakthrough comes from a new discretization for light quarks: Symanzik-improved staggered quarks Bernard et al. (1998a); Lepage (1998); Bernard et al. (1998b); Lepage (1999); Orginos and Toussaint (1999b, a); Orginos et al. (1999); Bernard et al. (2000).

Quark vacuum polarization is by far the most expensive ingredient in a QCD simulation. It is particularly difficult to simulate with small quark masses, such as $`u`$ and $`d`$ masses. Consequently, most lattice QCD (LQCD) simulations in the past have either omitted quark vacuum polarization (“quenched QCD”), or they have included effects for only $`u`$ and $`d`$ quarks, with masses 10–20 times larger than the correct values. This results in uncontrolled systematic errors that can be as large as 30%. The Symanzik-improved staggered-quark formalism is among the most accurate discretizations, and it is 50–1000 times more efficient in simulations than current alternatives of comparable accuracy. Consequently realistic simulations are possible now, with all three flavors of light quark. An exact chiral symmetry of the formalism permits efficient simulations with small quark masses. The smallest $`u`$ and $`d`$ masses we use are still three times too large, but they are now small enough that chiral perturbation theory is a reliable tool for extrapolating to the correct masses.

In this paper we demonstrate that LQCD simulations, with this new light-quark discretization, can deliver nonperturbative results that are accurate to within a few percent. We do this by comparing LQCD results with experimental measurements. In making this comparison, we restrict ourselves to quantities that are accurately measured ($`<1`$% errors), and that can be simulated reliably with existing techniques. The latter restriction excludes unstable hadrons and multihadron states (e.g., in nonleptonic decays); both of these are strongly affected by the finite volume of our lattice (2.5 fm across). Unstable hadrons, like the $`\rho `$ and the $`\varphi `$, are constantly fluctuating into on-shell or nearly on-shell decay products that can easily propagate to the boundaries of the lattice; similar problems afflict multihadron states. Consequently we focus here on hadrons that are at least 100 MeV below decay threshold or have negligible widths ($`J/\psi `$, $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$…); and we restrict our attention to hadronic masses, and to hadronic matrix elements that have at most one hadron in the initial and final states. These are the “gold-plated” calculations of LQCD — calculations that must work if LQCD is to be trusted at all.

Unambiguous tests of LQCD are particularly important with staggered quarks. These discretizations have the unusual property that a single quark field $`\psi (x)`$ creates four equivalent species or “tastes” of quark. “Taste” is used to distinguish this property, a lattice artifact, from true quark flavor. A quark vacuum polarization loop in such formalisms contributes four times what it should. To remove the duplication, the quark determinant in the path integral is replaced by its fourth root. This construction introduces nonlocalities that are potentially worrisome, but much is known about the formalism that is reassuring: for example,

* perturbation theory, which governs the theory’s short-distance behavior, is correct to all orders;
* phenomena, such as $`\pi ^02\gamma `$, connected with chiral anomalies are correctly handled (because the relevant (taste-singlet) currents are only approximately conserved);
* the CP violating phase transition that occurs when $`m_u+m_d<0`$ does *not* occur in this formalism, but the real world is neither in this phase nor near it;
* the nonperturbative quark loop structure is correct up to short-distance taste-changing interactions, which are perturbative; these interactions are suppressed by $`a^2\alpha _s`$ and can be systematically removed Mason et al. (2002); or they can be removed after the simulation using modified chiral perturbation theory Bernard (2002); Aubin et al. (2002).

To press further requires nonperturbative studies. The tests we present here are among the most stringent nonperturbative tests ever of a staggered quark formalism (and indeed of LQCD).

The gluon configurations that we used, together with the raw simulation data for pions and kaons, were produced by the MILC collaboration; heavy-quark propagators came from the HPQCD collaboration. The lattices have lattice spacings of approximately $`a=1/8`$ fm and $`a=1/11`$ fm. The simulations employed an $`𝒪(a^2)`$ improved staggered-quark discretization of the light-quark action Lepage (1999), a “tadpole-improved” $`𝒪(a^2\alpha _s)`$ accurate discretization of the gluon action Alford et al. (1995), an $`𝒪(a^2,v^4)`$ improved lattice version of NRQCD for $`b`$ quarks Davies et al. (1995), and the Fermilab action for $`c`$ quarks El-Khadra et al. (1997). Several valence $`u/d`$ quark masses, ranging from $`m_s/2`$ to $`m_s/8`$, were needed for accurate extrapolations, as were sea $`u/d`$ masses ranging between $`m_s/2`$ and $`m_s/6`$. Only $`u`$, $`d`$ and $`s`$ quark vacuum polarization was included; effects from $`c`$, $`b`$ and $`t`$ quarks are negligible ($`<1`$%) here.

To test LQCD, we first tuned its five parameters to make the simulation reproduce experiment for five well-measured quantities. The five parameters are the bare $`u`$ and $`d`$ quark masses, which we set equal, the bare $`s`$, $`c`$ and $`b`$ masses, and the bare QCD coupling. There are no further free parameters once these are tuned.

Setting $`m_u=m_d`$ simplifies our analysis, and has a negligible effect ($`<1`$%) on isospin-averaged quantities. We tuned the $`u/d`$, $`s`$, $`c`$, and $`b`$ masses to reproduce measured values of $`m_\pi ^2`$, $`2m_K^2m_\pi ^2`$, $`m_{D_s}`$, and $`m_\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$, respectively. In each case the experimental quantity is approximately proportional to the corresponding parameter, and approximately independent of the other parameters.

Rather than tune the bare coupling, one normally sets the coupling in LQCD to a particular value, and determines the lattice spacing $`a`$ in its place (*after* the simulation). We adjusted the lattice spacing to make the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$-$`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}^{}`$ mass difference agree with experiment. We chose this mass difference since it is almost independent of all quark masses, including, in fact, the $`b`$ mass Davies et al. (1997). We could equally well have chosen, instead, any of the nine test quantities discussed below, with similar results.

Having tuned all free parameters in the simulation, we then computed a variety of experimentally accessible quantities (in addition to the five used for tuning). Our results are summarized in Fig. 1 where we plot the ratio of LQCD results to experimental results for nine quantities: $`\pi `$ and $`K`$ decay constants, a baryon mass splitting, a $`B_s`$$`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ splitting, and mass differences between various $`J/\psi `$ and $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ states. On the left we show ratios from QCD simulations without quark vacuum polarization ($`n_f=0`$). These results deviate from experiment by as much as 10–15%; the deviations can be made as large as 20–30% by tuning QCD’s input parameters against different physical quantities. The right panel shows results from QCD simulations that include realistic vacuum polarization. These nine results agree with experiment to within systematic and statistical errors of 3% or less — with no free parameters.

The dominant uncertainty in the light-quark quantities in this plot (the top four) comes from extrapolations in the sea and valence light-quark masses. We used partially quenched chiral perturbation theory to extrapolate pion and kaon masses, and the weak decay constants $`f_\pi `$ and $`f_K`$. Chiral perturbation theory was unnecessary for correcting the $`s`$-quark mass; simple linear *interpolation* is adequate, and preferable since chiral perturbation theory converges slowly for masses as large as $`m_s`$. We also kept $`u/d`$ masses smaller than $`m_s/2`$ in our fits, so that low-order chiral perturbation theory was sufficient. Our chiral expansions included the full first-order contribution Sharpe and Shoresh (2000), and also approximate second-order terms, which are essential given our quark masses. We corrected for errors caused by the finite volume of our lattice (1% errors or less), and by the finite lattice spacing (2–3% errors). The former corrections were determined from chiral perturbation theory; the latter by comparing results from the coarse and fine lattices. Residual discretization errors, due to nonanalytic taste-violations Bernard (2002); Aubin et al. (2002), were estimated as 1.9% for $`f_\pi `$ and 1% for $`f_K`$. Perturbative matching was unnecessary for the decay constants since they were extracted from partially conserved currents. Our final results for $`f_K`$ and $`f_\pi `$ agree with experiment to within systematic and statistical uncertainties of 2.8%. For the $`n_f=0`$ case we analyzed only $`a=1/8`$ fm, but extrapolated to the continuum in an approximate way based upon our $`n_f=3`$ analysis.

Fig. 2, which shows our fits for $`f_\pi `$ and $`f_K`$, demonstrates that the $`u/d`$ masses currently accessible with improved staggered quarks are small enough for reliable and accurate chiral extrapolations, at least for pions and kaons. The valence and sea $`s`$-quark masses were 14% too high in these simulations; and the sea $`u/d`$ masses were $`m_s/2.3`$ and $`m_s/4.5`$ for the top and bottom results in each pair. The dashed lines show the fit function with corrected $`s`$ and sea-quark masses; these lines extrapolate to the final fit results. The extrapolations are not large — only 4–9%. Indeed the masses are sufficiently small that simple linear extrapolations give the same results as our fits, within few percent errors. These decay constants represent the current state of an ongoing project; a more thorough analysis will be published soon.

The other quantities in the ratio plot, Fig. 1, are much less sensitive to the valence $`u/d`$ mass and soft-pion effects. Consequently, they are more stringent tests of LQCD. The combinations $`3M_\mathrm{\Xi }M_N`$ and $`2M_{B_s}M_\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ depend upon the valence $`s`$ mass, but the $`s`$ masses we used in our simulations are off by only 10–20% and easily corrected. The $`b`$’s rest mass cancels in $`2M_{B_s}M_\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$, making this a particularly clean and sensitive test. The same is true of all the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ splittings, and our simulations confirm that these are also independent ($`1`$–2%) of the sea quark masses for our smallest masses. The $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(P)`$ masses are averages over the known spin states; the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(1D)`$ is the $`1^3D_2`$ state recently discovered by CLEO Csorna et al. (2002).

It is important to appreciate that our heavy-quark results come directly from the QCD path integral, with only bare masses and a coupling as inputs — five numbers. Furthermore, unlike in quark models or HQET, $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ physics in LQCD is inextricably linked to $`B`$ physics, through the $`b`$-quark action. Our results strongly suggest that effective field theories, like NRQCD, are reliable and accurate tools for analyzing heavy-quark dynamics.

Another important ingredient in high-precision LQCD is perturbation theory, which connects lattice results to the continuum. We tested perturbation theory by extracting values of the coupling from our simulations and comparing them with non-LQCD results. We determined the renormalized coupling, $`\alpha _V(6.3\mathrm{GeV})`$, by comparing $`2^{\mathrm{nd}}`$-order perturbation theory for the expectation value of a $`1\times 1`$ Wilson loop with (exact) values from the simulations Davies et al. (1997, 2002). Results for several sea-quark masses are shown in Table 1; the masses become more realistic as one moves down the table.

The QCD coupling is sensitive to the tuning of the lattice spacing, since this in effect tunes the bare coupling. We show results for two different tunings: one using the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(1P1S)`$ splitting, and the other using $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}(2S1S)`$. The two tunings give couplings that are ten standard deviations apart and 25% smaller than the physical coupling when the sea-quark masses are infinite.

With smaller, more realistic sea-quark masses, the two tunings agree to within 1%, and the coupling becomes mass independent. Our results, converted to $`\overline{\mathrm{MS}}`$ and evolved perturbatively to scale $`M_Z`$, imply

$$\alpha _{\overline{\mathrm{MS}}}^{(5)}(M_Z)=0.121(3),$$
(1)
which agrees well with the current world average of $`0.117(2)`$ Hagiwara et al. (2002). Ours is the first determination from lattice QCD simulations with realistic quark vacuum polarization, the first with $`𝒪(a^2)`$ improved actions, and the first that is verified by a wide range of heavy-quark *and* light-quark calculations; and it is by far the most thorough study of the light-quark mass dependence (or independence) of lattice QCD determinations. A more detailed discussion will be presented elsewhere.

The results presented here suggest that we now have a reasonably generic and accurate tool for solving a real-life, strongly coupled, quantum field theory — for the first time in the history of particle physics. Much is required to complete the argument. Chiral extrapolations for non-strange baryons, for example, are expected to be much larger than for pions and kaons, as are finite-volume errors; computations with these hadrons are not yet under control. Also a wider variety of tests is important. Heavy-quark mixing amplitudes, and semileptonic decay form factors, for example, are essential to the high-precision experiments at $`B`$ factories; our lattice techniques for these require independent tests. The new CLEO-c program will be particularly useful for this.

The larger challenge facing LQCD is to exploit these new techniques in the discovery of new physics. Again, $`B`$ and $`D`$ physics offer extraordinary opportunities for new physics from LQCD. There are, for example, gold-plated lattice quantities for every CKM matrix element except $`V_{tb}`$ (Fig. 3). An immediate challenge is to *predict* the $`D/D_s`$ leptonic and semi-leptonic decays rates to within a few percent *before* CLEO-c measures them.

This work was supported by PPARC, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, and by computing allocations at NERSC, LANL, ORNL, SDSC, NCSA, PSC, FNAL, and Indiana. We thank M. Alford, T. DeGrand, P. Drell, L. Gibbons, J. Hein, M. Peskin, and E. Witten for useful discussions and comments.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Shor’s striking discovery , that quantum computers could accomplish tasks such as factoring large numbers exponentially faster than the best (known) classical methods, motivates the quest for further quantum algorithms exhibiting an exponential speed-up, see, e.g.,  for a review. Together with a number of black-box problems , some of which also admit an exponential speed-up, Shor’s algorithm can be generalised to the so-called “hidden subgroup problem”: given a function $`f`$ with the property

$`x,y:f(x)=f(y)yU^{}x,`$ (1)
for some transformation $`U`$, find $`U`$. I.e., $`f`$ is constant on the co-sets of the subgroup $`\{x,Ux,U^2x,U^3x,\mathrm{}\}`$ generated by $`U`$ and assumes a different value at each co-set. (Here we restrict our consideration to the case of one generator $`U`$ only, for more than one generators, the situation is analogous.) For example, in the case of Shor’s algorithm, the transformation $`U`$ is given by $`U[x]=x+p`$, and for Simon’s  problem, it is $`U[x]=xp`$ with $``$ denoting the bit-wise addition modulo two, e.g., $`10010101=1100`$. (Note that $`xpp=x`$.)

Hence, in comparison with classical methods, the number of known quantum algorithms which are (as far as we know) significantly faster is tiny – but one might hope that there are many more to be discovered. The question we wish to examine is: which other problems – and perhaps further expansions of the known tasks – could (also) admit an exponential speed-up? More precisely, we shall investigate whether there are general features of problems which are important for an exponentially fast quantum algorithm, and give a specific example (in which such a speed-up is accomplished) via an extension of Simons’s and Shor’s problem.

In particular we shall consider problems which can be cast into the following form: given a function $`f:xf(x)`$ on an exponential number of arguments $`x`$, where $`f`$ is known to possess some property (from a given class of properties), find that property – where the term “property” can refer to any extracted information in general. Evaluating $`f(x)`$ on a given arbitrary argument $`x`$ is assumed to be polynomially (in the length of $`x`$) implementable I.e., the problem to be solved must be at least in PSPACE – remember that P$``$NP$``$PSPACE, see, e.g., .. We shall investigate some features  of the class of properties with an (apparently) exponential speed-up by a quantum computer over a classical one. We shall also show how such an exponential speed-up can be achieved for a property we call a hidden symmetry.

Note that our discussion will not be concerned with the use of quantum computation to simulate physical systems, nor with the application of quantum phenomena to transmit information (quantum cryptography or super-dense coding, etc.) or to extract information from an external physical system (such as quantum imaging, see, e.g., , or Elitzur-Vaidman-type problems ), i.e., we only consider quantum information processing.

## 2 Relevance of arguments

One aspect which seems  to be important for an exponential speed-up is the relevance of the arguments $`x`$ with respect to the property under consideration.

Typically, sequential  quantum algorithms for solving problems as described above can be formulated as black-box algorithms which can be cast into the following most general form

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }=𝒰_m𝒰_f𝒰_{m1}\mathrm{}𝒰_1𝒰_f𝒰_0|0,`$ (2)
where the unitary gate $`𝒰_f`$ calculates the (black-box) function $`f`$, i.e., $`𝒰_f|x|y=|x|yf(x)`$, with the possible extension $`𝒰_f𝒰_f\mathrm{𝟏}`$; and additional unitary operations $`𝒰_0\mathrm{}𝒰_m`$. Even if the algorithm originally contained an intermediate measurement, it could still be rewritten in this form by using ancilla qubits and quantum-controlled operations.

In order to achieve an exponential speed-up the number $`m`$ as well as the realisations of the unitary operations $`𝒰_0\mathrm{}𝒰_m`$ have to be polynomial. Consequently, if the number of arguments $`x`$ of the function $`f(x)`$ that contain relevant information (for the solution of the problem) is exponentially small, then the part of the output state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ corresponding to this relevant information is apparently  also exponentially small, and therefore impossible to extract with a polynomial number of measurements. Supportive (though not conclusive ) to this point is inserting the identity

$`𝒰_f=\left(𝒫_{\mathrm{rel}}+𝒫_{\mathrm{irr}}\right)𝒰_f\left(𝒫_{\mathrm{rel}}+𝒫_{\mathrm{irr}}\right),`$ (3)
into Eq. (2), where $`𝒫_{\mathrm{rel}}`$ and $`𝒫_{\mathrm{irr}}`$ denote the (orthogonal) projections onto the subspaces of relevant and irrelevant arguments $`x`$, respectively. Assuming that the unitary operations $`𝒰_0\mathrm{}𝒰_m`$ do not favour  the subspace spanned by $`𝒫_{\mathrm{rel}}`$ (we do not know in advance which arguments $`x`$ are going to be important and which not) the norm of (the sum of) all terms containing at least one $`𝒫_{\mathrm{rel}}`$ is exponentially small for the unitary operations are norm-preserving.

As a result, a function with an exponentially small number of relevant arguments $`x`$ does not seem suitable for an exponential speed-up. Of course, this feature crucially depends on the particular way of encoding the problem to be solved by a function – e.g., a function defined as $`f(x)=1`$ if $`x`$ is a factor of $`y`$ and $`f(x)=0`$ otherwise would not be the best choice for factoring . One should also bear in mind that the above arguments do not exclude polynomial speed-up – the Grover search routine  achieves a quadratic speed-up by exploiting the bilinear structure of quantum theory, i.e., the normalisation by $`1/\sqrt{N}`$ instead of $`1/N`$.

The task of period-finding, for example, where all arguments $`x`$ are equally relevant for the solution, is therefore indeed (as it should be) a good candidate for an exponential speed-up by a quantum algorithm. As counter-examples (which are probably not good candidates for an exponential speed-up), we may quote the usual form of the travelling salesman problem \[with $`x`$ being one particular route and $`f(x)`$ the associated length\] or the task of evaluating the position in chess§§§ If $`x`$ denotes one possible continuation of the game (a so-called “line”) and $`f(x)`$ the outcome (win, loss, or draw) then the vast majority of arguments $`x`$ are irrelevant for accessing the position because almost all lines with random moves are completely uninteresting. where a posteriori almost all arguments $`x`$ are completely irrelevant – but we do not know a priori which.

## 3 Excess information

Since every quantum computation is (at least in principle) unitary and hence reversible, it is impossible to lose any information during this process – except by the (final) measurement (e.g., the phases are lost) or by transferring the information from the quantum system (computer) alone to its entanglement with the “environment”. We want to extract only a certain property of the function $`f`$ – other details of $`f`$ are irrelevant – and, therefore, we have to find a way to dispose of this excess information. For example, in Shor’s problem $`f(x)=f(x+p)`$, we only want to know the period $`p`$, and not any other details of $`f`$. After the measurement of the register $`|f`$ one is left with the state

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{L}}}{\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{L1}{}}}|x_0+lp.`$ (4)
This state contains very little information – basically just the starting point $`x_0`$ and the period $`p`$ – which, after a quantum Fourier transform, determine the phase and the value of the wave-number, respectively.

Of course, here we have to explain the phrase “very little information”. To this end we introduce the notion of the “classical information of a quantum state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$” as the information required to reproduce the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ starting from the state $`|0`$ in the computational basis via elementary operations . Note that this notion is obviously not a unitarily invariant (quantum) information measure (as $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is still a pure state). But since we want to speed up the solution of classical problems, we should consider the involved quantum operations from a classical point of view.

In summary, we arrive at an (admittedly rather vague ) additional condition – “not too much excess information” – for a (classical) problem which is supposed to admit an exponential (quantum) speed-up. As a counter-example, we might consider the average invertability check (collision problem) of a function $`f(x)`$ – i.e., for a given (representative) $`y`$ in the co-domain, how many $`x`$ satisfy (in average) $`f(x)=y`$. (This problem is relevant for cryptography.) Although obviously almost all arguments $`x`$ are equally important, the state after the measurement of $`f`$ apparently still contains too much excess informationNote that our notion “classical information of a quantum state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$” is different from the generalisation of the Kolmogorov complexity to the quantum case introduced in . The latter quantity is bounded from above  and its upper bound of approximately $`2n`$ (where $`n`$ is the number of qubits) would just correspond to the information contained in $`x_0`$ and $`p`$ for Shors algorithm. In contrast, the “classical information of a quantum state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$” introduced here can exceed this bound by far: For the collision problem, the different and independent coordinates $`x`$ satisfying $`f(x)=y`$ typically contain much more information. Hence the generalisation of the Kolmogorov complexity proposed in  cannot be used to discriminate between the two cases (Shors algorithm and the collision problem). (the different and independent coordinates $`x`$ satisfying $`f(x)=y`$) to get rid of .

## 4 Hidden symmetries

As one would reasonably expect, the hidden subgroup problem satisfies the above requirements – all arguments $`x`$ are equally relevant and the state after the measurement of $`f`$ is basically determined by one starting point $`x_0`$ and the generator $`U`$ (e.g., $`p`$) of the subgroup. This feature is ensured by the existence of the symmetry (1) connecting the values of the function $`f`$ at each two points $`x`$ and $`U[x]`$ with a certain relation, i.e., $`f(x)=f(U[x])`$. In view of the above remarks, one might expect a similar effect for a more general hidden two-point symmetry of the form

$`V\{f(x),f(U[x])\}=0,`$ (5)
where $`V`$ is some relation generalising the equality in the hidden subgroup problem (1).

Of course, it remains to be shown whether it is possible to design a quantum algorithm which determines $`U`$ and $`V`$ exponentially faster than classical methods. One of the major benefits of quantum computation is the superposition principle allowing us to test all possible values of $`x`$ at once (“quantum parallelism”). In view of this observation one would expect that it is advantageous to represent the symmetry operations in a (somehow ) linear fashion. (This seems to be much easier for Abelian than for non-Abelian symmetry groups.) For this reason, and for the sake of simplicity, we focus on Simon- and Shor-type symmetries in the following.

## 5 Simon-type symmetry

As an expansion of Simon’s problem with the periodicity condition $`f(xp)=f(x)`$ we consider

$`V\{f(x),f(U[x])\}=f(x)f(xp)q=0f(xp)=f(x)q,`$ (6)
with $`x,f(x),p,q\{0,1\}^n`$, and the task is to find out $`p`$ and $`q`$. For convenience, we shall identify bit-strings with integers $`\{0,1\}^n\{0,\mathrm{},2^n1\}`$ via the usual binary representation in the following. I.e., $`x,f(x),p,q`$ are treated as integers with $`0x,f(x),p,q<N=2^n`$.

In complete analogy to Simon’s algorithm we apply the usual trick of inquiring all entries at once (quantum parallelism) and obtain the state

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }={\displaystyle \underset{\{x_0\}}{\overset{(N/2)}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{|x_0|f(x_0)+|x_0p|f(x_0)q}{\sqrt{N}}}.`$ (7)
But instead of measuring the second register $`|f`$ we now perform a multiple application of the Hadamard gate to both, the first $`|x`$ and the second $`|f`$ register

$`^{(2n)}|\mathrm{\Psi }={\displaystyle \frac{2}{\sqrt{N^3}}}{\displaystyle \underset{\{x_0\}}{\overset{(N/2)}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{\{Y:RY=0\}}{\overset{(N^2/2)}{}}}(1)^{XY}|Y,`$ (8)
where we have introduced the abbreviations $`|X=|x_0|f(x_0)`$ and $`|R=|p|q`$ as well as the scalar product modulo two given by

$`RY={\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{2n}{}}}R_lY_l\mathrm{mod}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}={\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{n}{}}}\left(p_lY_lq_lY_{n+l}\right).`$ (9)
Assuming that the values $`f(x_0)`$ are pseudo-randomly distributed, i.e., without any internal order (cf. the next Section), the measurement of $`Y`$ returns arbitrary values satisfying the constraint $`RY=0`$. Again in complete analogy to Simon’s algorithm, after $`𝒪(n)`$ runs we have enough measured values of $`Y`$ for determining $`R`$, i.e., $`p`$ and $`q`$, with arbitrarily high probability (exponential speed-up).

## 6 Requirements

In which cases can the above quantum algorithm fail, i.e., what exactly does the aforementioned condition ”without any internal order” imply?

As a counter-example – where the algorithm must fail – consider the function

$`f(x)=\underset{¯}{A}xb,`$ (10)
with a binary $`N\times N`$-matrix $`\underset{¯}{A}`$ and the bit-wise scalar product modulo two as in Eq. (9). This function exhibits a strong internal order and hence a plethora of symmetries: any $`p`$ and the corresponding $`q`$ given by

$`q=\underset{¯}{A}p,`$ (11)
satisfies Eq. (6).

On the other hand, as an example where the above quantum algorithm works, we might construct the function $`f(x)`$ as follows: After splitting up the set of all arguments $`\{x\}=\{0\mathrm{}N\}`$ into two disjoint sets of equal strength $`N/2`$ via $`\{x_0\}`$ and $`\{x_0p\}`$, we assign all $`f(x_0)`$ random values between 0 and $`N`$ and determine the remaining ones via $`f(xp)=f(x)q`$. In this rather artificial way we can make sure that there is no additional internal order which could spoil the above algorithm.

In summary, we do not allow additional (exact or average) symmetries apart from the one in Eq. (6) which lead to another value $`R^{}R`$ with the probability of measuring $`R^{}Y=1`$ being strongly suppressed.

Let us discuss the relation of the hidden symmetry discussed above to the hidden sub-group problem. Defining new functions such as

$`h_1(x,y)=f(x)y,h_2(x,y)=f(x)f(y),`$ (12)
the symmetry $`f(xp)=f(x)q`$ translates into periodicity

$`h_1(x,y)=h_1(xp,yq),h_2(x,y)=h_2(xp,yp).`$ (13)
However, this identification does not imply that the property in Eq. (6) can be mapped onto the hidden sub-group problem as in Eq. (1) because the functions $`h_{1,2}:\{1,\mathrm{},N^2\}\{1,\mathrm{},N\}`$ are highly degenerate and hence not distinct on different co-sets.

The fact that one can nevertheless find $`p`$ (and $`q`$) by a quantum algorithm (which is not necessary for such a large degeneracy) is caused by the special underlying symmetry $`f(xp)=f(x)q`$ and the assumption discussed above (no additional internal order). Therefore, this is a true expansion of the hidden sub-group problem  with the distinctness on different co-sets being replaced by the pseudo-randomness requirement.

## 7 Shor-type symmetry

As a second example for a hidden (two-point) symmetry, we study the following expansion of Shor’s problem $`f(x+p)=f(x)`$

$`f(x+p)=f(x)+q,`$ (14)
with $`0x,f(x)<N=2^n`$. Similar to the original period-finding algorithm, we demand that $`p`$ is much smaller than $`N`$, say $`p=𝒪(N^\epsilon )`$ with a small but positive number $`0<\epsilon <1`$, which will be determined below. In addition, we assume $`pq`$ (but still $`q1`$) – otherwise we would have to insert a “modulo $`N`$”, i.e., $`f(x+p)=f(x)+qmodN`$.

In this situation, the usual superposition state after the application of the unitary gate calculating the function $`f`$ reads

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }{\displaystyle \underset{x_0=0}{\overset{p1}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{[N/p]}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{|x_0+lp|f(x_0)+lq}{\sqrt{N}}},`$ (15)
where $`[N/p]`$ denotes the integer part of $`N/p1`$ and the $``$ sign is caused by the corresponding neglect of a small number of arguments $`x`$ and the fact that not all periods are complete (remember $`pq`$).

Again we do not measure the second register at this stage but apply a double quantum Fourier transform, i.e., we Fourier transform each register

$`^{(2)}|\mathrm{\Psi }{\displaystyle \underset{k_x=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k_y=0}{\overset{N1}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{x_0=0}{\overset{p1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^{2\pi i(x_0k_x+f(x_0)k_y)/N}}{\sqrt{N^3}}}{\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{[N/p]}{}}}\mathrm{exp}\left\{2\pi i{\displaystyle \frac{pk_x+qk_y}{N}}l\right\}|k_x|k_y.`$ (16)
Although the measurements of $`k_x`$ and $`k_y`$ considered separately typically return almost random numbers – provided that there is no structure (e.g., an additional periodicity, cf. the previous example as well as Sec. 8) in the values $`f(x_0)`$ – these numbers $`k_x`$ and $`k_y`$ display an extremely strong correlation: the above $`l`$-sum exhibits a constructive interference if and only if

$`{\displaystyle \frac{pk_x+qk_y}{N}}\pm 𝒪\left({\displaystyle \frac{p}{N}}\right)`$ (17)
holds; and, accordingly, a large fraction of the measured values for $`k_x`$ and $`k_y`$ will obey this relation.

However (in contrast to Shor’s algorithm) one measurement of $`k_x`$ and $`k_y`$ may not suffice for determining $`p`$ and $`q`$ in general. To this end, it might be necessary to repeat the whole process a few times – resulting in pairs of measured values $`(k_x^a,k_y^a)`$ with $`a`$ labelling the number of the measurement. One possibility to derive $`p`$ and $`q`$ is to find a set of $`A\mathrm{poly}(n)`$ integers $`\alpha _a`$ with $`|\alpha _a|<MN`$ which satisfy

$`{\displaystyle \underset{a=1}{\overset{A}{}}}\alpha _ak_y^amodN=𝒪(M).`$ (18)
Inserting the above condition back into Eq. (17), we obtain (remember $`pq`$)

$`{\displaystyle \frac{p}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{a=1}{\overset{A}{}}}\alpha _ak_x^a\pm 𝒪\left({\displaystyle \frac{ApM}{N}}\right).`$ (19)
Having eliminated $`q`$ in this way, we may find $`p`$ via the continued fraction expansion  of

$`\xi ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{a=1}{\overset{A}{}}}\alpha _ak_x^a{\displaystyle \frac{}{p}}\pm 𝒪\left({\displaystyle \frac{AM}{N}}\right),`$ (20)
provided that the denominator $`p`$ is small enough, i.e., $`p\sqrt{N}/\sqrt{AM}`$. There are two limits on the size of the auxiliary number $`M`$: firstly, it should be small enough to allow the detection of sufficiently large values of $`p`$ with $`p\sqrt{N}/\sqrt{AM}`$, and, secondly, $`M`$ must be adequately large such that a small number of measured pairs $`(k_x^a,k_y^a)`$ will allow us to satisfy Eq. (18) with the probability that all of these pairs obey the resonance condition (17) not being exponentially suppressed.

For example, choosing $`M=\sqrt{N}`$, we may find $`A=2`$ numbers $`|\alpha _1|<\sqrt{N}`$ and $`|\alpha _2|<\sqrt{N}`$ via the continued fraction expansion of the ratio $`k_y^1/k_y^2`$ truncated at order $`\sqrt{N}`$ which then satisfy $`\alpha _2/\alpha _1+k_y^1/k_y^2=𝒪(1/N)`$ and thus $`\alpha _1k_y^1+\alpha _2k_y^2=𝒪(\sqrt{N})`$. This allows us to find periods $`p`$ satisfying $`p\sqrt[4]{N}`$ in two runs of the quantum algorithm with high probability. Note the difference of the above method to Shor’s algorithm which requires $`p\sqrt{N}`$ instead.

More generally, if $`p=𝒪(N^\epsilon )`$ is small enough (e.g., $`\epsilon <1/4`$, see the above example), we are able to determine $`p`$ (i.e., $`U`$) and thereby also $`q`$ (i.e., $`V`$) in polynomial time (exponential speed-up).

## 8 Discrete self-similarity

Let us give an example where the above algorithm could be useful. Starting from the Shor-type symmetry $`f(x+p)=f(x)+q`$ in Eq. (14) and setting

$`f=\mathrm{log}(\varphi ),x=\mathrm{log}(\chi ),`$ (21)
with respect to some base(s), we arrive at

$`\varphi (\alpha \chi )=\beta \varphi (\chi ),`$ (22)
i.e., the function $`\varphi (\chi )`$ is discretely self-similar. Discrete self-similarity – also called discrete scale invariance – is a characteristic feature of some non-linear systems (e.g., in condensed matter) exhibiting critical phenomena, see, e.g., .

For example, let us assume that the unitary gate $`𝒰_\varphi `$ represents some characteristic parameter in the quantum simulation of a condensed matter system in the critical régime and that this parameter $`\varphi `$ displays a discretely self-similar but otherwise chaotic dependence on some input $`\chi `$. For the sake of simplicity, let us further assume that we can calculate the logarithms of the output $`\varphi `$ and the input $`\chi `$ with respect to suitable bases within an appropriate discretisation (either artificial or natural, e.g., physical lattice). In this way the accomplished generalisation of pure periodicity $`f(x+p)=f(x)\varphi (\alpha \chi )=\varphi (\chi )`$ to discrete self-similarity in Eq. (22) in the presented quantum algorithm allows us to detect the discretely self-similar behaviour exponentially faster than any (known) classical method.

## 9 Summary

By means of a simple example, it has been demonstrated that the task of finding hidden (two-point) symmetries of a given function described by Eq. (5) – as an expansion of the hidden subgroup problem in Eq. (1) – can also be accomplished exponentially faster by a (probabilistic) quantum algorithm than by classical methods.

There are two main possibilities for generating NP-problems (i.e., the solution is potentially hard to find but easy to verify, at least probabilistically) in this way – either both, $`Up`$ and $`Vq`$, are unknown or $`Vq`$ is given and we have to find “only” $`Up`$ . (Of course, if $`p`$ was known, the problem would be trivial.)

Note that the task under consideration is very similar to an inverse problem where the input(s) and the output(s) of a function depending on a parameter are given and one has to find the fitting parameter. We consider the main importance of our result in its being a small step towards the goal of better understanding the class of problems which can be solved exponentially faster by quantum algorithms.

## 10 Outlook

Eq. (5) does not represent the most general (explicit) two-point symmetry, which can be written as

$`V\{x,f(x),f\left(U[x,f(x)]\right)\}=0.`$ (23)
In this case there is no $`f`$-independent co-set in general and it would be interesting to study the possibilities of speeding up these more complicated (consistency, etc.) problems by quantum algorithms. As another extension of Eq. (5), it appears quite natural to ask about relations involving more, say $`(m+1)`$, points

$`V\{f(x),f(U_1[x]),\mathrm{},f(U_m[x])\}=0.`$ (24)
Further interesting symmetries As one possibility one might consider the case where the operations on the argument (“inside”) and on the value of the function (“outside”) differ. However, one must be careful: For instance, if one defines the problem as, say, $`f(xp)=f(x)+q`$ or $`f(x+p)=f(x)q`$, the first case is inconsistent in general since another iteration leads to a contradiction $`f(x)=f(x)+2q`$; and the second example can be reduced to Shor’s case $`f(x+2p)=f(x)`$. could include other transformations $`U`$ and relations $`V`$ – think of gauge symmetries, for example, or permutations (and other possibly non-Abelian groups).

Another point is that, in the examples considered above (and in the hidden subgroup problem, of course), $`V`$ was invertible, i.e., one could solve the relation Eq. (5) for $`f(x)`$. Relaxing this invertability condition would be another interesting object of study. As a very simple example, one might consider the following symmetry

$`{\displaystyle \underset{l=0}{\overset{n}{}}}f_l(x)f_l(xp)=0,`$ (25)
where one can determine $`p`$ (again assuming appropriate conditions) via defining a new function $`F(x)=\underset{l=0}{\overset{n}{}}f_l(x)`$.

## Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge valuable conversations with R. Cleve, P. Høyer, A. Kitaev and R. Laflamme. This work was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Pacific Institute of Theoretical Physics. R. S. gratefully acknowledges financial support by the Emmy-Noether Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG) under grant No. SCHU 1557/1-1,2.


text:
# The Innsbruck EPR Experiment: A Time-Retarded Local Description of Space-like Separated Correlations

## I Background

If one takes locality seriously, recognizing that reality is best described by the equations of QED and QFT rather than non-relativistic Schrödinger equations, then one would expect any explantion of EPR experiments to involve time-retardation effects mediated by zero-point fields.

It does not seem to be widely known or appreciated that one can describe the process of spontaneous emission within QED as the stimulated emission by the zero-point ($`\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{}\omega `$) waves, although to be correct, the zero-point waves account for only half the spontaneous emission and the radiation reaction the other half, when time-symmetric ordered operators are used Milonni (1994).

Given this justification, and assuming that if standard quantum mechanical photons can maintain their entanglement through kilometers of optical fiber then the zero-point field can also support entanglement over those lengths, we assume the stimulation of “spontaneous” emission is related to time-retarded polarizer positions. We further assume that the polarization of emitted photons is not isotropic but only in the directions of the polarizers (and $`90\mathrm{deg}`$ offset). That is to say, we use the zero-point field to collapse the wave-function at the instant of emission instead of at the instant of detection.

### I.1  Loopholes in the Proofs

Most derivations of the Bell/CHSH inequalities Bell (1964); Clauser et al. (1969); Clauser and Horne (1974), in making the assumption of locality, assume that the hidden variable ($`\lambda `$) is not an explicit function of the detector settings (at the time of detection). In footnote 13(b) of reference Clauser and Horne (1974), Clauser and Horne explicitly reject the possibility that “systems originate at the analyzers and impinge upon the source, thus effecting the ensemble in a manner dependent upon $`a`$ and $`b`$.” This dependence of $`\lambda `$ on the detector settings at the retarded time, of course, is exactly what obtains if the time-retarded zero-point field induces emission, vitiating their derivation.

Aspect Aspect (1976) calculated a correlation coefficient that was dependent upon the time-retarded detector settings, but by assuming that each possible retarded state was an independent random variable, his constraint doesn’t apply to the current model of dependent correlated variables.

The proofs of non-locality are not that strong.

### I.2 Experimental Loopholes

If the various photon detectors are not perfectly efficient (5-10 percent are recent numbers Weihs et al. (1998); Kwiat et al. (1995)), then standard quantum mechanical (SQM) predictions may not violate the “strong” Bell inequalities. Only by making assumptions of “joint detection independence” Clauser et al. (1969), “no enhancement” Clauser and Horne (1974) or “faithful sampling” Aspect et al. (1982); Weihs et al. (1998) can one derive weaker Bell inequalities that SQM does violate.

In the case that photon detectors don’t detect every photon, various authors Gisin and Gisin (2002); Caro and Garuccio (1994); Szabo (2000) have noted that local models can be constructed that reproduce the quantum mechanical violations of the weaker Bell inequalities. These constructs are ad hoc, and no attempt is made to provide a physical justification for the features of the model(s). Interestingly, the mere possibility that both photons from a parametric down-conversion event might end up in a single detector lowers the quantum mechanical predicted values to within the Bell inequality bounds Caro and Garuccio (1994).

## II The Time-Retarded Model

The algorithm is quite simple: given a coincidence at time $`t`$ in detectors at distance $`L`$ from a source, it posits that the source emitted particles at time $`tL/c`$, based on stimuli from the detector/polarizers at time $`t2L/c`$ (stimuli that may have traveled down long fiber optic cables). In a static EPR setup, this zero-point-stimulated “spontaneous” emission comprises 4 polarities of equal weight (intensity) in any unit of time: aligned or not with Alice’s polarizer at $`\alpha `$ or $`\alpha ^{}=\alpha +\frac{\pi }{2}`$, or aligned or not with Bob’s polarizer at $`\beta `$ or $`\beta ^{}`$. In essence, this picture implies that when a polarizer is introduced to an experimental setup, the character of spontaneously emitted photons changes from uniformly distributed polarization vectors to nonuniform fixed directions, keeping the overall intensity constant.

### II.1 A Static Experimental Interlude

There are two general types of static EPR experiments: those using a polarizer followed by a single detector, and those using polarizing beam splitters (PBS’s) followed by two detectors.

In the former case, this model has 50 percent efficiency: the quarter of photons emitted at angle $`\alpha `$ are detected byAlice’s detector with perfect efficiency and its mates in Bob’s detector with probability $`\mathrm{sin}^2(\alpha \beta )`$; similarly for the quarter emitted at $`\beta `$. The other quarters, at $`\alpha ^{}`$ and $`\beta ^{}`$, are absorbed by the polarizing media.

In the latter (PBS) case, $`\alpha `$’s are detected perfectly (in the ($`+`$) channel) and all the mates are detected, split between Bob’s two channels with probabilities $`\mathrm{cos}^2(\alpha \beta )`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2(\alpha \beta )`$; ditto for the $`\beta `$’s. The $`\alpha ^{}`$’s and $`\beta ^{}`$’s are similarly detected in the respective ($``$) channels, and their mates split similarly.

In either such static experimental setup, this algorithm clearly reproduces the standard quantum mechanical predictions, the only (conceptual) difference being that the wavefunction has “collapsed” at the moment of emission instead of at the moment of detection.

### II.2 The Dynamical Experiment of Weihs, et al. Weihs et al. (1998)

In the Innsbruck experiment Weihs et al. (1998), the experimental setup used dynamic polarization modulators in front of static polarizing beam-splitter detectors. Alice’s two-channel polarizer was aligned at the angles $`\alpha =\frac{\pi }{8}`$ and $`\alpha ^{}=\frac{5\pi }{8}`$, while Bob’s was aligned at $`\beta =0`$ and $`\beta ^{}=\frac{\pi }{2}`$. The modulator in front of each detector was adjusted to either perform no modulation, or to rotate the polarization by $`\frac{\pi }{4}`$ from $`\alpha `$ to $`\alpha ^{}`$ or $`\beta `$ to $`\beta ^{}`$. The choices to modulate by $`0`$ or $`\frac{\pi }{4}`$ were made in a random manner on a time-scale of order 100 ns, significantly less than the time of flight of the photons.

The experiment measured coincidence rates between the various combinations of transmitted($`+`$) and reflected($``$) beams in the two detectors. Standard quantum mechanics predicts that $`C_{++}^{qm}(\alpha ,\beta )\mathrm{sin}^2(\beta \alpha )`$, since the parametric down-conversion process results in the two photons’ polarizations at right angles to each other.

The coincidence rates are combined into an expectation value for that setting:

$`E(\alpha ,\beta )={\displaystyle \frac{C_{++}+C_{}C_+C_+}{C_{++}+C_{}+C_++C_+}},`$
($`E^{qm}(\alpha ,\beta )=\mathrm{cos}2(\beta \alpha )`$) and these are combined into the Bell/CHSH parameter:

$`S(\alpha ,\alpha ^{},\beta ,\beta ^{})`$ $`=`$ $`|E(\alpha ,\beta )E(\alpha ^{},\beta )|`$
$`+|E(\alpha ,\beta ^{})+E(\alpha ^{},\beta ^{})|.`$
For local realistic models that conform to the derivations of the inequality, $`S2`$, while $`S^{qm}2\sqrt{2}`$.

The rapid polarization modulation does have the effect of putting Alice’s choice of modulator setting outside the light cone of Bob’s detector for any given measurement. However, these detector settings see a common source and that source in its turn will only have seen a finite number of different detector settings in its past light cone: at its moment of emission, it will have been stimulated by $`(\alpha ,\beta )`$, $`(\alpha ,\beta ^{})`$, $`(\alpha ^{},\beta )`$, or $`(\alpha ^{},\beta ^{})`$. By virtue of the complete randomness of the choices, each of these possibilities should occur one quarter of the time.

### II.3 The Original Algorithm

Our first model makes no further assumptions about the behavior of polarized photons: if an $`\alpha `$-polarized photon hits a polarizer at angle $`\alpha `$, it is transmited with unit probability; if it encounters a polarizer at angle $`\alpha ^{}`$, it is transmited with probability $`\mathrm{cos}^2(\alpha \alpha ^{})`$. The associated photon in the other direction has similar transmission probabilities (e.g. $`\mathrm{cos}^2(\alpha ^{}\beta )`$). Coincidence probabilities multiply, and we average the four possible emission patterns onto the current setting of the detector to cumulate a correlation function.

The Innsbruck experimenters also did an experiment where they varied the voltage on Alice’s modulator, in order to measure other angles than the four “canonical” ones. Figure 1 shows the results that this local model predicts for the Bell parameter for different modulator settings. It is clear that this model never violates the Bell inequality, while the SQM results do. We remark that the total coincidence rates of the various detectors ($`N=C_{++}+C_{}+C_++C_+`$) were identical for the local and SQM models – both had perfect efficiency – and that both were independent of the modulator amplitude (half the individual rates showed sinusoidal behavior, as expected).

### II.4 The Second Local Model

Our second model introduces the notion of a “master” photon, in order to recover the SQM coincidence pattern. If the source emits a “master” photon with polarization $`\alpha `$ which encounters a polarizer in configuration $`\alpha `$, then the photon will always be detected and its slave projected as usual onto $`\beta `$. On the other hand, if the “master” (at $`\alpha `$) encounters the polarizer in configuration $`\alpha ^{}`$, that photon will not be detected at all, but its slave will contribute to the singles’ count rates in the usual manner. In this aspect, this model resembles the prism model of Fine Szabo (2000); it differs in that for a static experiment, this model has perfect efficiency.

This model’s predictions for the Bell parameter are shown in figure 2, where they overlie the SQM prediction for all values of the polarization modulator amplitude.

The total coincidence rates for this experiment with this model, as one might have expected, are always half of those of the SQM prediction. Given that half of all the PDC events double up in one fiber or the other (for this experiment’s fiber coupling), the ratio of coincidences to singles for this model is 1/3, while SQM would expect to see 2/3. Weihs et al. Weihs et al. (1998) note that their experiment only observed a ratio of about $`0.05`$ given the efficiencies of their detectors.

If each modulator had had three settings, this local model would have required the non-detection of $`2/3`$ of the “master” photons, and in general, $`(n1)/n`$ for $`n`$ settings. An experiment whose modulators could randomly choose between 20 different amplitude settings could differentiate between this model (1/40) and SQM (2/3) at the current detector efficiencies (1/20).

This model makes a further prediction that can also be tested with less than ideal detectors: if Alice and Bob examine the polarizer patterns that occur $`2L/c`$ earlier than each occurrence of, e.g. an $`(\alpha ,\beta )`$ coincidence, they should never find an $`(\alpha ^{},\beta ^{})`$ occurrence; all other autocorrelation times should see that pattern in one quarter of the histories, assuming the times are binned in units of the polarizer modulator period (100 ns in this experiment), although in principle one would prefer to see the retarded settings’ time ($`2L/c`$) measured with the same temporal acceptance window used for coincidences between Alice and Bob.

### II.5 Mining the Innsbruck Data

After downloading the sample data provided on the web by the Innsbruck group Zeilinger and group (2003), a program was written to examine the coincidence data and look at temporal correlations. Alice’s 388K and Bob’s 302K singles events yielded 15134 coincidences in a $`6`$ ns window. These events generated a Bell parameter of $`2.71\pm 0.50`$ 111The error of $`\pm 0.50`$ results from assuming statistical independence of the 16 terms contributing to $`S_{Bell}`$, adding the relative errors in quadrature, given that the individual $`C_{ij}`$’s were between $`186`$ and $`1992`$ for this data set. , consistent with the published result of $`2.73\pm 0.02`$.

Of these, there were only 19 coincidences separated by a time interval between 4.3 and 5.2 $`\mu `$s. Table 1 indicates how these 19 were distributed in 3 coarse bins centered around the round-trip travel time, $`2L/c=4.8\mu `$s 222Given that the fibers were 500m long, and that at 700nm the index of refraction in fiber cable is about 1.45 then $`c=20.7`$ cm/ns, and $`2L/c4.8\mu `$s.. Unfortunately, the statistical uncertainty in these numbers is so large that no definitive conclusion can be drawn – one would like to see about 100 events in 6 ns windows about $`2L/c`$ for this experiment.

## III Conclusion

We have presented a time-retarded local hidden variable theory that “collapses the wave-function” at the source rather than at the detector. This model can reproduce all statically measured correlation experiments, with perfect efficiency. It can also reproduce the dynamically space-like separated correlation data of Weihs et al. Weihs et al. (1998), albeit with 50 percent efficiency.

We have found that there is insufficient data available to determine whether there is an absence of “complement” patterns of Alice and Bob’s polarizer settings at a retarded time of $`2L/c`$ in accordance with this time-retarded local model and propose further data-mining and experiments. We also propose what should be a practical experiment involving multi-choice ($`20`$way) polarizers that should be able to discriminate between this local model and SQM with current detector efficiencies.

Most importantly, this counter example shows that the various derivations of Bell’s inequalities, all of which assume a time-independent “locality”, do not apply to any of the experiments conducted to date with static (or stochastically periodic) settings. It is not enough that Alice and Bob make decisions independent of each other, those decisions cannot be the same as those made $`2L/c`$ earlier, if experiments are to preclude local processes mediated by zero-point waves.

The “non-localities” of 3- and 4-particle GHZ experiments also appear to be explainable with time-retarded zero-point waves that stimulate the sources to emit radiation polarized or phased in exactly the correct manner to be detected in the various setups, e.g. Rarity and Tapster (1990).

###### Acknowledgements.

We wish to acknowledge Lewis Little Little (1994), who started us thinking about how information could get from detectors back to sources.


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# Giant magnetoresistance oscillations caused by cyclotron resonance harmonics

## Abstract

For high-mobility two-dimensional electrons at a GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction, we have studied, both experimentally and theoretically, the recently discovered giant magnetoresistance oscillations with nearly zero resistance in the oscillation minima which appear under microwave radiation. We have proposed a model based on nonequilibrium occupation of Landau levels caused by radiation which describes the oscillation picture.
PACS numbers: 73.40.-c, 73.43.-f

Recent observations, in high-quality two-dimensional electron systems, of microwave-stimulated giant magnetoresistance oscillations (MSGMO)  with positions corresponding to subharmonics of the cyclotron resonance  and especially the discover of zero-resistance states in the MSGMO minima  attract a great attention to this spectacular phenomenon . Observation of zero-resistance states was a reason to assume  their collective origin, like photon-stimulated superconductivity . Alternative approach to explanation of zero-resistance states is based on the peculiarities of electron motion in crossed electric and magnetic fields, when electron drift along electric field can occur only as a result of scattering events. In recent preprint , it has been demonstrated that MSGMO with negative magnetoresistance in minima can result from transitions between broadened Landau levels caused by photon absorption and accompanied by elastic scattering on short-range scatterers. Similar effect was shown rather long ago  to give a sequence of photocurrent peaks of different signs for unbroadened Landau levels and nonlinear conditions with respect to electric field. For bulk semiconductors and quantising magnetic fields, photocurrent oscillations with negative conductivity in minima were predicted in Ref.  for $`\delta `$ -type photoelectron energy distribution function. A link between states with negative dissipative conductivity and the zero-resistance states was proposed in Ref  (see also Ref. ). It implies that negative dissipative resistivity gives rise to instability in a system which finally breaks its symmetry and produces inhomogeneous states with nearly zero average resistance. This result allows to associate theoretical states with negative dissipative resistivity and the experimental zero-resistance states. The inhomogeneous states are characterized by high local current density even at zero net current through a sample. One more approach to explanation of MSGMO based on edge magnetoplasma instability was considered in preprint .

In this paper, we reproduce previous experimental observations  of MSGMO with some additional data and compare them with our calculations based on results of self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA) which are capable of explaining the main features of MSGMO in terms of nonequilibrium occupation of broadened Landau levels under microwave radiation. Additionally, our model predicts appearance of the second harmonic in the Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations under appropriate choice of microwave frequency and sample parameters.

We have measured a Hall bar sample with conducting channel of a L-shape. Channel width was equal to 0.2 mm, the distances between neighboring potential probes were either 0.4 or 0.6 mm. Magnetoresistance per square $`R_{\mathrm{xx}}`$ and Hall resistance $`R_{\mathrm{xy}}`$ have been measured by the standard technique exploiting the low-frequency AC current excitation and phase sensitive detection of a voltage between potential probes with the use of a Lock-in amplifier. We used the frequency 9.2 Hz and amplitude of the current 1 $`\mu A`$, well within ohmic regime. Results for $`R_{\mathrm{xx}}`$ and $`R_{\mathrm{xy}}`$ presented in this paper do not depend on pairs of potential probes used for measurements. The sample has been produced from a GaAs/AlGaAs wafer of the standard architecture containing a two-dimensional electron system at a single remotely doped GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction with the spacer width about 55 nm. The most pronounced MSGMO were observed after illumination of the sample until saturation of electron density at about $`n_\mathrm{s}=3\times 10^{11}\mathrm{cm}^2`$. The corresponding mobility of electrons was $`\mu =7\times 10^6\mathrm{cm}^2/\mathrm{V}\mathrm{s}`$. The sample was placed in the close ended rectangular waveguide of the WR-28 type with cross-section sizes $`16\times 8\text{mm}^2`$ which entered a $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{He}`$ refrigerator. The two arms of the L-shaped sample were parallel to the long and the short sides of the rectangular. The microwave radiation in the frequency range 10 -170 GHz was produced by a set of oscillators. The microwave power reached the low temperature end of the waveguide was estimated to be always below 2 mW. At frequencies greater than 50 GHz, transmission coefficient between oscillator output and the low-temperature part of the waveguide was rather low falling down to values of the order of 0.01.

Typical experimental data are shown in Fig.1. In the absence of microwave radiation, magnetoresistance $`R_{\mathrm{xx}}`$ demonstrates at $`H1.5`$ T standard Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations periodic in the inverse magnetic field with the period determined by areal density of electrons $`n_\mathrm{s}`$ in a two-dimensional system. Corresponding oscillations in $`R_{\mathrm{xy}}`$ become visible only at magnetic fields higher than 0.4 T. Microwave radiation suppresses Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations at low magnetic fields and gives rise to new oscillations (microwave stimulated giant magnetoresistance oscillations) also periodic in the inverse magnetic field with the period determined by microwave frequency (compare Fig.1a and Fig. 1b). Positions of MSGMO follow those of subharmonics of the cyclotron resonance $`\omega =\omega _\mathrm{c}^{(\mathrm{k})}k(eH^{(\mathrm{k})}/m^{}c)`$. Here $`m^{}=0.067m_\mathrm{e}`$ is the effective mass of electrons in GaAs. The main minima and maxima of MSGMO are shifted to different sides from the corresponding subharmonic. Additional weaker oscillation arises at comparatively low-frequency and high-power radiation at $`\omega <\omega _\mathrm{c}`$ and can be associated with the cyclotron resonance harmonic $`\omega =\omega _\mathrm{c}/2`$ (see Fig.1b). In the main MSGMO minima, the magnetoresistance can become rather close to zero (see also Refs ). MSGMO peaks have characteristic asymmetric triangular-like form with a steep drop at low-magnetic-field side. At the same time, the microwave radiation has practically no effect on the Hall resistance (in Fig.1a the solid $`R_{\mathrm{xy}}`$ curve measured in the presence of the microwaves is practically indistinguishable from the ”dark” dotted curve).

Our calculations of magnetoconductivity tensor components $`\sigma _{\mathrm{xx}}`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{xy}}`$ are based on formulas obtained within self-consistent Born approximation in the absence of Landau level mixing (see review  and Refs. therein):

$$D(ϵ)=\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{2N_0}{\pi \mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}}\left[1\left(\frac{ϵϵ_\mathrm{n}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}}\right)^2\right]^{1/2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{2N_0}{\pi \mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}}Z_\mathrm{n}^{1/2}(ϵ)$$
(1)
$$\sigma _{\mathrm{xx}}=\frac{e^2}{\pi ^2\mathrm{}}\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xx}}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}}\right)^2_{ϵ_\mathrm{n}\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}}^{ϵ_\mathrm{n}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}}\left(\frac{df}{dϵ}\right)Z_\mathrm{n}(ϵ)𝑑ϵ$$
(2)
$$\sigma _{\mathrm{xy}}=\frac{n_\mathrm{s}ec}{H}+\frac{e^2}{\pi ^2\mathrm{}}\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{\left(\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xy}}\right)^4}{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^3\mathrm{}\omega _\mathrm{c}}_{ϵ_\mathrm{n}\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}}^{ϵ_\mathrm{n}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}}\left(\frac{df}{dϵ}\right)Z_\mathrm{n}^{3/2}(ϵ)𝑑ϵ$$
(3)
Here $`D(ϵ)`$ is the density of states, $`ϵ_\mathrm{n}=\mathrm{}\omega _\mathrm{c}(n+1/2)`$ is the energy of the n-th spin-degenerate Landau level with the width $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}`$ and the total number of states on the level $`N_0=2eH/hc`$. Contribution of this level to $`\sigma _{\mathrm{xx}}`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{xy}}`$ are characterized by parameters $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xx}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xy}}`$, respectively. Our modification of Eqs. of Ref.  is the use of nonequilibrium distribution function $`f(ϵ)`$ which would be formed, at zero temperature, as a result of direct one-photon transitions (induced and spontaneous), i.e., transitions accompanied by the energy change by $`\mathrm{}\omega `$ and the nearly zero momentum variation equal to the photon momentum. We neglect all other excitation and relaxation processes. Such function can arise if the life time of a photo- excited electron is the shortest time in the problem. This condition is normally justified if the energy of this electron is less than the energy of optical phonon (see, for example, Ref ), which is well fulfilled in our experiment. As can be shown, the distribution function obtained under these conditions is appropriate for calculations of the magnetoconductivity in accordance with Eqs.(2,3).

At zero temperature, it is easy to write down condition of the steady state which relates values of the distribution function $`f(ϵ)`$ at energies differing by $`\mathrm{}\omega `$:

$$f(ϵ)=\frac{\lambda f(ϵ\mathrm{}\omega )}{\lambda +1f(ϵ\mathrm{}\omega )}$$
(4)
Here parameter $`\lambda `$ characterizes microwave intensity. This relation is applicable at non-zero densities of states $`D(ϵ)`$ and $`D(ϵ\mathrm{}\omega )`$. If $`D(ϵ)=0`$ or $`D(ϵ\mathrm{}\omega )=0`$ we set $`f(ϵ)=f_0(ϵ)`$, where $`f_0`$ is the Fermi distribution function at $`T=0`$. Eq. (4) and condition $`\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}f(ϵ)D(ϵ)𝑑ϵ=n_s`$ define nonequilibrium distribution function which was used for calculations of the conductivity. Fig.2 demonstrates that, in some ranges of energy, photon-stimulated interlevel transitions can give rise to inverted population of electron states ($`df/dϵ>0`$) leading to negative contributions to the conductivity $`\sigma _{xx}`$. The inversion is possible only if $`\omega >\omega _\mathrm{c}`$. The inverted occupation shown in the right panel of Fig.2 is obviously independent of the position of the Fermi energy on the lower level, i.e., of the filling factor of Landau levels. Our computation shows (see Fig.3) that appearance of energy regions with inverted population of broadened Landau levels can lead to the negative sign of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{xx}}`$ and, consequently, to the negative magnetoresistance $`R_{\mathrm{xx}}=\sigma _{\mathrm{xx}}/(\sigma _{\mathrm{xx}}^2+\sigma _{\mathrm{xy}}^2)`$. We have considered two limiting cases of the short- and long-range scatterers when analytical formulas are available for dependencies of parameters $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xx}}`$, and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xy}}`$ on $`n`$ and magnetic field . For the short-range (long-range) scatterers there is only one (two) independent parameter(s). Fig. 3 shows results of our calculations. To get data corresponding to the absence of radiation we have set parameter $`\lambda `$ to very low value $`\lambda =1\times 10^{10}`$. The results obtained under radiation provide MSGMO with both, form of the oscillations and their positions, in reasonable agreement with the experiment (namely, the minimum (maximum) associated with particular subharmonic lies at $`\omega >k\omega _\mathrm{c}^{(\mathrm{k})}`$ ($`\omega <k\omega _\mathrm{c}^{(\mathrm{k})}`$)). The main difference from the experiment is in the fact that calculated magnetoresistance in the MSGMO minima is negative. Elimination of this discrepancy lies beyond our model applicable for macroscopically homogeneous systems and could be referred to results of Ref. . Additionally, there are at least two more mechanisms leading to suppression of the negative conductivity which are finite temperature and all kinds of relaxation processes. These arguments show that the calculated regions of negative magnetoresistance can be associated with the experimental minima of MSGMO. For $`\omega =k\omega _\mathrm{c}^{(\mathrm{k})}`$ our model predicts absence of the photoresponse in magnetoresistance. But this is valid only for the two limiting cases of short-range and long-range scatterers, when the width of a Landau level $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}`$ is independent of a level number $`n`$ . For the intermediate-range scatterers, points where $`R_{\mathrm{xx}}|_{\mathrm{P}=0}=R_{\mathrm{xx}}|_{\mathrm{P}0}`$ should depend on the radiation power $`P`$ and be shifted from the positions of the subharmonics, which is consistent with our experimental data where these points appear always at lower magnetic fields than the corresponding subharmonics. Additional shift of these points can result from relaxation processes.

It is necessary to discuss a role of different unknown parameters which enter our model. Absolute values of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xx}}`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xy}}`$, and $`\lambda `$ affect only amplitude and detailed form of the Shubnikov- de Haas oscillations and MSGMO. Neither of these parameters influences positions of the oscillations. Explanation of the experimentally established absence of the photoresponse in the Hall resistance is closely related to absolute values of parameters $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xx}}`$, and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{n}^{\mathrm{xy}}`$. Within SCBA this result appears rather naturally for the case of long-range scatterers (in Fig.3a the solid and dotted $`R_{\mathrm{xy}}`$ lines overlap) and needs very narrow Landau levels in the other limiting case. A problem arises with absolute values of the magnetoresistance even in the absence of microwaves (see also results of Ref.  obtained within SCBA for short-range scatterers). In comparison with experiment, SCBA gives either too high or too low values of magnetoresistance for two limiting cases of short-range and long-range scatterers, respectively. But it seems to be possible to get reasonable absolute values of the magnetoresistance together with the absence of the photoresponse in the Hall resistance for intermediate-range scatterers. Comparison of the lower limit for the range of potential fluctuations, given by the spacer width, with the cyclotron radius in magnetic fields involved shows that in our experimental conditions intermediate-range scatterers are of great importance.

Important aspect of the experimental results is existence of MSGMO in very weak magnetic fields where Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations are not observed. Obviously, appearance of MSGMO proves existence of the Landau quantization in corresponding magnetic fields. We explain absence of the Shubnikov - de Haas oscillations in these fields by inhomogeneous broadening of the oscillations picture caused by long-range carrier density fluctuations in a sample. MSGMO are much less affected by this broadening because of larger period of these oscillations measured in filling factors of Landau levels. Inhomogeneous broadening is not included in our model and Shubnikov - de Haas oscillations and MSGMO coexist at the same magnetic fields.

It is interesting to note that, in addition to SMGMO, results of our calculations describe some additional features of the experimental data. In the case of comparatively narrow Landau levels, the Shubnikov - de Haas oscillations are only slightly modified by microwave radiation at $`\omega <\omega _\mathrm{c}`$ and in-between $`k=1`$ minimum and $`k=2`$ maximum of MSGMO (compare Figs 1a and 3a). At rather wide Landau levels, experimentally realized at weaker magnetic field, our model describes strong suppression of the magnetoresistance at $`\omega \omega _\mathrm{c}`$ in very good agreement with our observations (compare Figs. 1b and 3b) and leads to appearance of additional minima related to the $`\omega =\omega _\mathrm{c}/2`$ harmonic (shown by arrow in Fig.3b). Note that the latter effect appears in our model without two-photon processes. Our model predicts that, for appropriate choice of Landau level width, microwave frequency and power, great second harmonic can appear in the Shubnikov-de Haas oscillation picture (in Fig 3b it occurs at $`\omega _\mathrm{c}/\omega >2.5`$).

In summary, we have shown that experimentally measured photoresponse of two-dimensional electrons on microwave radiation, including MSGMO, is consistent with our theory considering conventional magnetotransport effects under conditions of nonequilibrium occupation of electronic states.

The author is very thankful to Professor K. von Klitzing and Dr. J.H. Smet for kind opportunity to carry out the experimental part of this research in the Max-Planck-Insitut für Festkörperforschung (Stuttgart, Germany) and to Dr. V.Umansky for providing the author with nice GaAs/AlGaAs material. The author gratefully acknowledges valuable discussion with S.V.Iordansky and partial support of this work by INTAS and RFBR.