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# Topological defects in 1D elastic waves

## I introduction

Gumen et al Gumenetal  have considered recently the consequences of introducing a topological defect, that is, a defect that breaks the long range order in an otherwise 1D periodic structure. They analyze the case of two semi-infinite equal lattices that match at a point which is not at the center of the unit cell. As an example, they consider the potential

$$V(x)=V_0\mathrm{cos}\left(2\pi \frac{x}{d}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{2}\text{sgn}(x)\right),$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is related to the strength of the defect. The authors then solve the stationary Schrödinger equation, which is Mathieu’s equation at both sides of the defect, and find that for special values of the defect strength $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, two levels appear in the forbidden band. The situation is different from what occurs with a point defect, where typically only one level lies in the energy gaps. In this paper we shall demonstrate this effect for the normal-mode frequencies of torsional waves in rods with notches, both numerically and experimentally.

## II Torsional waves for rods with topological defects: theory and experiment

In this note we deal with torsional vibrations of the elastic rod shown in Fig. 1. The rods consist of $`N`$ unit cells plus a defective cell, which is the topological defect. With the exception of the defect, each cell is formed by three cylinders, one of length $`lϵ`$ with cross section area $`S`$ and two cylinders of length $`ϵ/2`$ with cross section area $`s`$. In the defect the central cylinder has length $`(lϵ)+\chi `$. The wavelength is much larger than the radius of the rod, so the system is indeed one dimensional.

Using the electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) for low frequencies that we have recently developed MoralesGutierrezFlores , we can excite and measure normal-mode frequencies and wave amplitudes for torsional waves in metallic rods. The experimental apparatus has been described in detail elsewhere MoralesFloresGutierrezMendez-Sanchez . For locally periodic systems a band structure emerges. As shown in Ref. MoralesFloresGutierrezMendez-Sanchez , these normal-mode properties can also be computed using the transfer matrix method. The theoretical results agree very well with our experimental measurements; we should emphasize that this is a parameter free fit.

In Fig. 2 we present the band spectrum obtained for $`N=10`$, both from the theoretical and experimental points of view. We see that in the gap between the first and second bands only one frequency appears, but in the second forbidden gap two levels lie. In some of the higher gaps two frequencies are also found. This is an experimental realization of the theoretical findings of Gumen et al Gumenetal . In Fig. 3 we show the wave amplitudes of these two states; they are localized around the topological defect with an exponential decay. The theoretical values, both for the frequencies and wave amplitudes coincide well with our measurements, as these two figures show.

The theoretical results are easily extended for wider ranges of $`\chi `$. The band spectrum as a function of $`\chi `$ is given in Fig. 4. Since the frequencies of the localized states are proportional to $`m/(lϵ+\chi )`$, where $`m`$ is an integer number, more than one level can lie in the forbidden band. For example, as will be seen in Fig. 4, for $`\chi =18`$ cm two levels appear, whereas for higher values of $`\chi `$ three states are located in the second forbidden band.

## III CONCLUSION

We have measured and calculated numerically normal-mode frequencies and amplitudes of torsional waves in a rod with a topological defect. The theoretical prediction of Gumen et al Gumenetal  that for certain topological defects two levels instead of one become localized is shown to be true, and an experimental example is provided. We also give, via a numerical calculation, a generalization of the results found in Ref. Gumenetal , since for other special values of the topological defect more than two frequencies can lie within the forbidden bands.

###### Acknowledgements.

We would like to thank A. Krokhin for suggesting the problem. This work was supported by DGAPA-UNAM Project No. IN104400.


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# A Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission at 611 MHz

## 1 Introduction

Transient astronomical electromagnetic radiation is the signature of some of the most fascinating physical phenomena in the universe. Anywhere the physical conditions change with time, there is the potential for transient radiation. The detection of transient astronomical radiation presents challenges not encountered in observations of persistent sources. Sources which produce radiation sporadically cannot easily be studied with typical observatories and their schedules of observing time allocation; other techniques are required. Detecting transient astronomical signals at radio wavelengths in particular requires overcoming an even greater difficulty: the pervasive presence of radio frequency interference (RFI). The ever growing use of wireless services means the radio spectrum is crowded with a wide variety of signals, a large fraction of which are transient. Since it is the very nature of transient signals of terrestrial or astronomical origin to disappear unpredictably, they cannot reliably be distinguished from each other by repeated observing. Surveyors for transient astronomical radio signals must devise other methods to separate the desired astronomical signals from the seemingly ubiquitous RFI.

We describe here the Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission (STARE), a system for detecting transient astronomical radio signals. Sensitive to transient radio signals at 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ on time scales of 0.125$`\mathrm{s}`$ to a few minutes, STARE rejects RFI by requiring simultaneous observation of signals at three geographically separated sites.

### 1.1 Sources of Transient Astronomical Radio Emission

Many sources have been observed to produce transient astronomical radio emission. Perhaps the most familiar is the Sun, from which a large variety of transient radio signals emanate. From microwave spike bursts lasting $`10\mathrm{ms}`$ to Type III storms lasting weeks, the characteristics of solar radio bursts span wide ranges of brightness temperature, duration, frequency, and polarization. Associated with many different aspects of solar activity, the mechanisms producing the bursts run the gamut, from thermal bremsstrahlung to plasma radiation. Dulk (1985) and Hjellming (1988) provide reviews. Other stars have been seen to produce radio bursts as well. Events observed on flare stars are similar in character to those seen on the Sun, but imply radio luminosities $`10^4`$ times that of solar flares (Dulk, 1985). RS CVn systems, close binaries with orbital periods of $`1`$–30$`\mathrm{days}`$, have been observed to produce transient radio emission on time scales of minutes to days. The signals are thought to be due to two separate phenomena: the acceleration of electrons in the magnetic fields between the stars, and coherent emission from the individual stars (Hjellming, 1988). X-ray binaries as well are known to produce transient radio signals following X-ray events, although the mechanism in this case is thought to be quite different from that of the RS CVn binaries (Hjellming & Han, 1995). Jupiter was discovered many years ago to produce transient radio emission at decameter wavelengths (Burke & Franklin, 1955), thought to be due to synchrotron radiation from high-energy electrons trapped in the magnetic field of the planet. Details are reviewed in Carr et al. (1983). Brown dwarfs have been seen to flare in the radio: a recent VLA observation of a such a flare measured a flux density much higher than that expected from an empirical relation between the luminosities of brown dwarf radio flares and X-ray flares (Berger et al., 2001). Some radio pulsars are observed occasionally to produce “giant pulses.” For example, about 0.3% of the pulses from the Crab pulsar have amplitudes greater than 1000 times the average pulse height (Lundgren et al., 1995). High-energy cosmic rays can cause transient radio signals at the surface of the earth. The interaction of high-energy particles from space and the Earth’s atmosphere produces an “extensive air shower.” Pair production in the shower creates populations of electrons and positrons which are systematically separated by the magnetic field of the Earth, setting up a current which produces a radio pulse (Kahn & Lerche, 1966). These are only a few examples of known sources of transient astronomical radio emission.

Other sources have been postulated, but not observed, to produce short radio pulses. For example, Colgate et al. (1972) and Colgate (1975) have predicted that a Type I supernova should radiate an electromagnetic pulse at radio frequencies: during the collapse, the expanding envelope of the white dwarf acts as a “conducting piston,” compressing the transverse magnetic field, thus producing a short pulse of radio emission. Efforts to detect such pulses are described by Meikle & Colgate (1978) and Phinney & Taylor (1979). Another example is “exploding” black holes, predicted by Hawking (1974): the decrease in black hole mass due to quantum radiation causes an increase in surface gravity, which in turn increases the emission rate. Black holes near the ends of of their lives would radiate intensely, releasing $`10^{30}\mathrm{erg}`$ in the last 0.1$`\mathrm{s}`$. Rees (1977) has speculated that the expanding sphere of electrons and positrons would act like the conducting piston described by Colgate for supernovas, similarly producing a short radio pulse. Meikle (1977) and Phinney & Taylor (1979) have reported unsuccessful searches for these pulses.

Of particular interest for radio transient searches is the association between high-energy emission and radio emission. Mattox (1994) reports searching the CGRO/EGRET phase 1 full-sky survey for gamma-ray emission from X-ray selected BL Lac objects and from the 200 brightest radio-quiet quasars. None was detected, while EGRET did detect $`40`$ radio-loud quasars and radio-selected BL Lacs. This seems to suggest that “apparent gamma-ray emission is intimately linked to apparent radio-emission,” (Mattox, 1994) which is perhaps not surprising since the conditions which produce high-energy emission (relativistic particles), in the presence of even a weak magnetic field, produce radio emission through the synchrotron mechanism. This association has been noticed by others as well (e.g. Paczyński & Rhoads, 1993). The presence or absence of radio emission from high-energy sources can yield clues about their workings.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been observed to produce emission at longer wavelengths following the gamma-ray event (see van Paradijs et al., 2000 for a review). These so-called afterglows were first detected at radio wavelengths in the GRB of 1997 May 08 (Frail et al., 1997), and the field has since matured such that a catalog of radio afterglows is possible (Frail et al., 2003). The afterglows are believed to be due to emission from shocks produced when a relativistic fireball interacts with an ambient medium (Mészáros, 2002 reviews models). Another possibility, which has not been detected, is a prompt radio burst associated with the GRB event itself. Again, energetic charged particles in a magnetic field might serve as a source; for example, Usov & Katz (2000) suggest that strong low-frequency radio emission might be generated by time variability in the current sheath surrounding a magnetized jet. Examples of other ideas relevant to the detection of prompt radio emission from GRBs may be found in Palmer (1993), Hansen & Lyutikov (2001), and Sagiv & Waxman (2002).

Energetic particles can produce radio emission under other conditions as well. It was suggested some time ago (Askar’yan, 1962, 1965) that high energy neutrinos and cosmic rays would generate coherent Cerenkov emission as they travel through a dense dielectric medium such as water, ice, the earth, or the moon. The physical process is similar to that of the extensive air shower discussed earlier, involving the production of a shower with an imbalance of charge. The spectrum of Cerenkov light from such an event would be very broad, including radio and optical emission. The generation of coherent radio bursts has been verified in accelerator experiments (Saltzberg et al., 2001). The pulses generated by particles traveling through the lunar regolith are expected to be very bright and very short: more than thousands of Janskies for the highest energy particles, with durations on the order of a nanosecond (Alvarez-Muniz & Zaz, 2000). Hankins et al. (1996) report an unsuccessful search for such emission.

### 1.2 Other Work

Experiments to detect transient astronomical radiation at radio wavelengths have traditionally followed one of two approaches. When transient radio emission is thought to originate from a particular source or region of the sky, a high-gain, small solid-angle approach is used. A high-gain radio telescope pointed at the region of interest provides good sensitivity and rejection of signals outside the region. When the location of the source of radiation is unknown, a low-gain, large solid-angle approach is more appropriate. Radio telescopes with large beams provide coverage of large fractions of the sky, but at the cost of reduced sensitivity, since the angular extent of any discrete source is likely to be much smaller than the telescope beam.

Some good examples of the high-gain, small solid-angle approach are those which were prompted in the early 1970s by Weber’s reports of detections of pulses of gravitational radiation (e.g. Weber, 1970). Since the gravitational waves were reported to have originated from the Galactic center, attempts to detect radio frequency activity focused on that region. Partridge & Wrixon (1972) monitored the Galactic center with two radiometers separated by 100$`\mathrm{km}`$. The first, at 16$`\mathrm{GHz}`$, provided a beamwidth of $`12^{}`$, sensitivity $`100\mathrm{Jy}`$, and response time $`0.5\mathrm{s}`$. The other, at $`19\mathrm{GHz}`$, provided beamwidth $`12\mathrm{deg}`$, sensitivity $`10^6\mathrm{Jy}`$, and response time $`3\mathrm{s}`$. Astronomical events were to be identified by their simultaneous appearance in the records at both sites. After 90 hours of monitoring, they detected no coincidences. Hughes & Retallack (1973) observed the Galactic center at 858$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ with beamwidth $`1.4\mathrm{deg}`$, sensitivity 85$`\mathrm{Jy}`$, and response time $`1\mathrm{s}`$. In 207 hours of monitoring the Galactic center, they report 97 detections of pulses. However, their interference rejection scheme is unclear, making uncertain their conclusion of the existence of discrete radio pulses from the Galactic center. O’Mongain & Weekes (1974) used the Mount Hopkins Observatory 10-meter optical reflector (which was fitted with two outboard 4.6-meter radio reflectors) to make a more general search including the Galactic center, the Coma cluster of galaxies, and the Andromeda galaxy at three radio frequencies and one optical frequency. In approximately 200 hours of observing, they detected no events of extraterrestrial origin, which were to be identified by the differences in pulse arrival times among frequencies, due to dispersion by the interstellar medium.

Other work has attempted to observe a much larger fraction of the sky with lower sensitivity. For example, Charman et al. (1970) assembled a system of five receiving stations in Great Britain and Ireland with station separations ranging from 110$`\mathrm{km}`$ to 500$`\mathrm{km}`$. Each station had similar receiving systems at 151$`\mathrm{MHz}`$, consisting of two half-wave dipole antennas operating as phase-switched interferometers, and receivers with sensitivities of $`10^5\mathrm{Jy}`$ and response times of $`1\mathrm{s}`$. Interference rejection was accomplished by requirement of five-fold coincidence. After $`2400`$ hours of observations, they detected no events. Mandolesi et al. (1977) used four receiving systems at Medicina (Bologna, Italy) operating at at 151, 323.5, 330.5 and 408$`\mathrm{MHz}`$. On 16 August 1976 all four instruments detected a radio burst, while sixty seconds earlier, a gamma-ray burst was detected by three satellites and one balloon-borne detector. Strong rejection of local interference was provided by an independent observation made at 237$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ at the Astronomical Observatory of Trieste (400$`\mathrm{km}`$ distant from Medicina). The investigators estimated the probability of a random coincidence between the five-fold radio event and the gamma-ray burst at $`8\times 10^5`$. Using geometric arguments, they localized the radio burst to a region on the sky. Unfortunately, later work on the gamma-ray burst data from the balloon-borne detector (Sommer & Müller, 1978) produced a position for the gamma-ray event which was well outside the radio emission error box, apparently ruling out a common origin for the gamma-ray and radio events. But the possibility remains that the radio event was astronomical in origin. Hugenin & Moore (1974) used two receiving systems separated by several hundred kilometers to monitor the sky at 270$`\mathrm{MHz}`$. Each station consisted of a helical antenna with beam area $`1\mathrm{sr}`$ centered on the north celestial pole, and a multi-channel receiver which provided a sensitivity of $`10^4\mathrm{Jy}`$ ($`1\sigma `$). The data were displayed with response times $`\tau =20\mathrm{ms}`$ to $`1\mathrm{s}`$ on an oscilloscope, and recorded by continuously photographing the oscilloscope screen. Interference was rejected by requiring coincidence between sites, and by examining for the frequency dispersion expected in extraterrestrial signals due to the interstellar plasma. In 213 hours of observing, they detected no events. Amy et al. (1989) constructed the Molonglo Observatory Transient Event Recorder (MOTER), which operated at 843$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ in parallel with normal Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (MOST) synthesis observations. This system used 32 total-power fan beams spaced at full beamwidth intervals of $`44^{\prime \prime }`$. When a transient event with flux density $`10\mathrm{mJy}`$ and duration $`1\mu \mathrm{s}`$ to $`800\mathrm{ms}`$ occurred in the field of view, MOTER compared the signals in the fan beams. Sources closer than about 3000$`\mathrm{km}`$ were significantly out of focus, and thus appeared in many beams simultaneously, while signals appearing in one beam only were thought to be due to random noise. In this way MOTER was able to reject signals of local origin. A signal which was not rejected was localized to an arc segment on the sky corresponding to the fan beam in which its maximum appeared. Over a full synthesis observation, the resulting ensemble of arc segments intersected at a point, the location of the source. While MOTER lacked instantaneous large solid-angle coverage, in time much of the southern sky was surveyed. In $`4000\mathrm{hours}`$ of observations, Amy, Large, & Vaughan detected only previously known pulsars.

### 1.3 STARE

We describe here a large solid-angle, low-gain system for detecting transient astronomical radio emission at 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ on time scales of a few minutes or less. Similar in spirit to the work of Charman et al. (1970) and Mandolesi et al. (1977), STARE updates previous efforts through the use of modern technology. The wide availability of fast computers and other hardware permits the collection of data in digital form. Such a data record makes possible a variety of analyses both during data collection and afterward, presenting a greater opportunity for discovery than the data sets from the 1970s which were generally in the form of analog chart records.

## 2 Methods

STARE was designed to be simple and inexpensive, and was intended to be a first look which might eventually foster further work with new instrumentation. The system operates at a frequency of 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ in a bandwidth of 4$`\mathrm{MHz}`$, corresponding to a frequency band protected in the United States for radio astronomy; if not protected, this band would contain the signal for channel 37 in the UHF television spectrum. Scientific arguments fail to indicate a clear choice of observing frequency: at higher frequencies, optically thick sources are brighter, while at lower frequencies, optically thin nonthermal processes radiate more intensely. Too low, however, and the sky brightness temperature becomes prohibitive. The choice of 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ was a compromise among these considerations, bolstered by technical factors such as the relative ease and low cost of constructing radio astronomy apparatus for this frequency range, and the existence of a protected band for astronomy.

### 2.1 Apparatus

The STARE system consists of detectors at three geographically separated sites: one at the VLBA111The VLBA is part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by Associated Universities, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. station in Hancock, New Hampshire, another at the VLBA station in North Liberty, Iowa, and the third at NRAO in Green Bank, West Virginia. The sites are close enough that they see the same part of the sky, while they are distant enough so that radio frequency interference at one of the sites (from terrestrial or low-altitude transmitters) will not be detected at the others. This provides a powerful filter for selecting signals of celestial origin: any signal which does not appear simultaneously at all three sites is rejected. These locations were chosen because they all have operating radio telescopes and so are expected to have low levels of RFI, and because NRAO was kindly willing to support STARE operations. The STARE instruments are highly self-sufficient, requiring only a standard AC electrical power connection, an internet connection, space for the antennas and electronics, and a staff member willing to perform occasional minor crisis intervention. The apparatus at a site consists of several systems: an analog receiving system, a Global Positioning System receiver for providing accurate time, and a PC which collects data and controls everything at the site. The entire system is overseen by a workstation at MIT, which is also where the data are archived. Figure 1 shows the organization of the entire system.

The analog receiving systems each consist of an antenna, a receiver, and a detector. The antennas are of the “crossed-dipoles in a cavity” type, shown schematically in Figure 2. This style of antenna provides broad sky coverage, although at the expense of sensitivity. Laboratory measurements (by J. Barrett, P. McMahon, and W. Baumgartner) on a scale model of the antennas found a broad beam with effective solid angle 1.4$`\mathrm{sr}`$, yielding a sensitivity of $`6.1\times 10^5\mathrm{K}\mathrm{Jy}^1`$. The receivers are dual-channel superheterodyne total-power radiometers, and are each divided between a front end which is outdoors attached to the antenna, and a back end which is indoors. The front end begins with low-noise ambient temperature preamplifiers (Harris & Lakatosh, 1987) with effective noise temperatures in the range 100-150$`\mathrm{K}`$. The front end also includes a laboratory-calibrated noise source for gain calibration and system temperature measurements. The back end performs bandpass filtering, further amplification, frequency downconversion, square-law detection, and anti-alias filtering at 25$`\mathrm{kHz}`$. The analog receiving systems were designed to provide sensitivity to the two orthogonal circular polarizations, with beam patterns independent of source azimuth. However, due to an error in the construction of the feeds, they receive two orthogonal elliptical polarizations, which vary with source azimuth. We avoid this problem by summing the two received polarizations. It can be shown (Katz, 1997), and is evident from symmetry, that the orthogonality of the received elliptical polarizations means that their sum is independent of the azimuth of the source. Thus in practice we are able to calibrate only the sum of the total power in both polarizations.

In order to reject local interference, we must be able to determine simultaneity from site to site, requiring an accurate timekeeping method. This is provided by the Global Positioning System (GPS). At each STARE site is a GPS antenna and receiver. When initially installed, each GPS system was allowed to compute its position continuously for several days. The data were then suitably averaged to increase the accuracy of the position determinations. Those positions were then programmed into the GPS systems, allowing four satellites to be used for timekeeping alone. In this “static timing mode,” the GPS receivers have a claimed timing accuracy of $`\pm 100\mathrm{ns}`$.

Data acquisition and all other activity at each site are controlled by a standard desktop PC. The filtered square-law detector outputs are digitized at 50$`\mathrm{kHz}`$ by a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter card which is clocked by a 100$`\mathrm{kHz}`$ signal from the GPS receiver. Timestamps are assigned to the data by switching in a short pulse from the GPS receiver and finding the sample during which the pulse is detected, yielding a timestamp accuracy of 20$`\mu \mathrm{s}`$. The samples are boxcar integrated, then collected and saved on the disk for some specified period, then are transferred to a workstation at MIT. In addition to performing overall coordination and data archiving, the workstation is responsible for the data analysis: the data files from each site are analyzed individually to produce a record of transient radio signals there. The site event records are then compared to find three-way coincidences.

The entire STARE system runs automatically, producing a daily report of site events and coincidence detections. The computer systems are set up so that most routine maintenance can be performed without travelling to the sites. The system is quite robust, having required human attention on average less than once a month. Sometimes attention is necessary to clear a fault condition, but most often routine maintenance (e.g. clearing a full disk) is the cause. Occasionally a phone call to a site is necessary (e.g. to identify and replace an electrical fuse blown during an electrical storm).

In normal operation, the power received by each antenna at 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ in 4$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ bandwidth and two polarizations is boxcar averaged for 0.125$`\mathrm{s}`$ and recorded. Every 15$`\mathrm{min}`$, the noise source in the front end is switched on for 2$`\mathrm{s}`$, to provide receiver gain calibration. Each hour, the data from the previous hour are uploaded to the workstation at MIT, where they are processed and archived.

### 2.2 Coincidence Detection

Coincidences among sites are detected by the simplest possible method: the records of each site are examined to find events at that location, then the lists of single-site events are compared to find instances where all three sites recorded events simultaneously. Note that with this simple scheme, the overall sensitivity to three-way coincidences is determined by the site with the poorest detection sensitivity. If one site fails to detect an event, the event cannot be identified as a three-way coincidence. More sophisticated schemes could no doubt produce better detection sensitivity.

The first step, the detection of events at each site individually, is performed using a two-pass sliding-window baseline fit. On the first pass, a quadratic model is fit to the data in a 240$`\mathrm{s}`$ window using a least-squares algorithm, and the dispersion $`\sigma `$ of the data around this fit is calculated. On the second pass, the model is again fit to the data in the 240$`\mathrm{s}`$ window, this time using the robust estimation method described by Press et al. (1992), §15.7. We implemented the method with a Lorentzian weighting distribution with the width set to the dispersion $`\sigma `$ calculated in the first pass. This method was chosen so that we could follow the wandering baseline in the data without our fit being skewed by outlier points, of which there are many, including the transient signals we are trying to detect. Note that this results in a loss of sensitivity to events longer than a few minutes. Greater sensitivity to long-lived events could be achieved by increasing the width of this boxcar averaging window, at the expense of reducing the baseline-removal effectiveness for shorter time periods.

Once the baseline fit is determined, the data are examined for samples which deviate from the baseline by more than some threshold specified as a multiple of $`\sigma `$. When a sample is seen to deviate by more than the threshold, an event is considered to be in progress, and the next sample is examined. This continues until the deviation falls below one-half of the threshold, at which time the event is considered to have ended. We use this adaptive threshold to reduce the incidence of long, temporally spiky events being broken up into multiple events as the flux density level varies around the threshold. Once the events are detected, they are classified as “single-point” or “multi-point,” depending on whether the thresholds were exceeded only in a single sample (i.e. event duration $`0.125\mathrm{s}`$), or in more than one consecutive sample.

The thresholds for event detection were chosen so that from site to site, the flux density required to trigger an event is about the same. Using receiver noise temperature $`150\mathrm{K}`$, zenith antenna sensitivity $`6.1\times 10^5\mathrm{K}\mathrm{Jy}^1`$, integration time $`0.125\mathrm{s}`$, and bandwidth $`4\mathrm{MHz}`$, we calculate a theoretical zenith flux density sensitivity for our systems of about 4$`\mathrm{kJy}`$. Of course in practice the system temperatures are higher than the receiver temperatures because our $`1.4\mathrm{sr}`$ beam admits RFI from sources far and wide, degrading the system sensitivity. We found that the system temperatures also vary widely with time. At Green Bank and North Liberty, the median system temperatures through 18 months of observations were similar at about $`200\mathrm{K}`$. At Hancock, the system temperatures were typically higher by a factor of 2. To make the zenith flux density sensitivities consistent from site to site, we chose a threshold of $`5\sigma `$ for transient detection at Green Bank and North Liberty, and $`2.5\sigma `$ at Hancock. These thresholds correspond to a zenith flux density triggering threshold of about $`26\mathrm{kJy}`$. For sources away from zenith, the threshold is of course higher due to the decrease in antenna gain.

Once the single-site event lists are produced, they are compared to find events detected simultaneously at all three sites. Three-way coincidences are classified as “single-point” if the three single-site events are all single-point events, “multi-point” if they are all multi-point events, and “mixed-type” if the simultaneous single-site events are a combination of single-point and multi-point. To assess the coincidence detection sensitivity of STARE, we examined the flux density sensitivity at each site for every minute of time that all three sites were on-line. We then chose the poorest sensitivity of the three as the STARE coincidence sensitivity, since the site with the poorest sensitivity would determine the overall sensitivity. The results are shown in a normalized histogram in Figure 3. Not shown are the 5.6% of the values which lie beyond the right side of the plot, due to noisy times at one or more of the sites. The median overall STARE zenith sensitivity of 26.7$`\mathrm{kJy}`$ is very close to the median single-site detection sensitivity of 26$`\mathrm{kJy}`$, indicating that most of the time, the three sites run with comparable sensitivities.

### 2.3 Calibration

Event data were calibrated in several steps. First, the receiver gains were determined using the noise source on/off data. These were used to convert the data to antenna temperatures in each polarization channel. The antenna temperatures were summed to find the total antenna temperature, and to avoid the problem with the unknown polarizations of the feeds (see the discussion of the analog receiving systems in §2.1). Then, using the antenna sensitivity determined from measurements on a scale model of the antennas, the antenna temperatures were converted to the flux densities that would be measured if the source were at the zenith. This resulted in a lower limit on the flux density of the source. For sources of known elevation, such as the Sun, the zenith flux densities were corrected for the elevation response of the antenna, yielding a source flux density measurement.

The calibration is rather coarse. In practice we find that the flux densities of solar radio bursts measured by the STARE systems generally agree from site to site only within a factor of 2 or so. Comparing measurements between sites, we find that the Green Bank instrument systematically reports flux densities approximately a factor of 2 larger than those reported by Hancock, which in turn are approximately a factor of 2 larger than those reported by North Liberty. In addition, there is significant variation of these ratios from event to event. We believe this is due primarily to uncertainties in two parts of the receiving systems. First, the beam patterns of the antennas were determined on a $`1/10`$ scale model, and may not transfer very well to the actual feeds. This would cause elevation dependent variations in the calibration and could account for the scatter in the systematic differences between sites. Second, the excess noise temperatures of the noise sources used for gain calibration were measured when the systems were constructed, and may have changed over the several years of aging they have experienced. This could be the cause of the overall systematic differences between sites.

Clearly the calibration accuracy could be improved by measuring or computing numerically the antenna beam patterns, and by measuring the present noise source characteristics. But for our purpose here, we consider the calibration accuracy of a factor of a few to be adequate and defer the improvements to later work.

## 3 Results

The first STARE site was set up at the VLBA station in Hancock, NH. A subsequent period of site evaluation and debugging led to the final configuration with sites at Hancock, New Hampshire; North Liberty, Iowa; and Green Bank, West Virginia. The system operated in this state for approximately 18 months. We describe here the results obtained from the data collected from 1998 May 27 through 1999 November 19.

### 3.1 Single-Site Event Detection

In 18 months of operation, STARE detected hundreds of thousands of events at Green Bank and North Liberty, and millions at Hancock with its weaker triggering threshold. The exact numbers are given in Table 1.

Using the mean single-point event rates computed from the single-site event detection results, we can estimate the rate of accidental single-point coincidences among the sites. For a mean event rate $`r`$, the probability that a time interval $`\delta t`$ contains an event is $`r\delta t`$ (assuming $`r1/\delta t`$, which is true for STARE since $`\delta t=0.125\mathrm{s}`$). Thus for three sites with mean event rates $`r_1`$, $`r_2`$, and $`r_3`$, the probability that a time interval $`\delta t`$ contains an event at all three sites is $`r_1r_2r_3(\delta t)^3`$. The mean time $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$ between accidental three-site coincidences is then $`\mathrm{\Delta }T=1/r_1r_2r_3(\delta t)^2`$. Using the rates given in Table 1, we find $`\mathrm{\Delta }T3\mathrm{years}`$. With only two sites (even those with the lowest event rates: Green Bank and North Liberty), this time is $`\mathrm{\Delta }T=1/r_1r_2\delta t11\mathrm{days}`$. This illustrates the power of the coincidence requirement in filtering out local radio frequency interference. It also makes clear that the third site is required to reduce the accidental coincidence rate to a manageable level.

A similar examination of accidental coincidence rates for multi-point events is not necessary, since their temporal structure provides much more information than is available with single-point coincidences. Accidental coincidences may be ruled out simply by direct comparison of the time-series data from each of the sites. Unless the events have the same shape, they can be rejected as events of interest.

### 3.2 Coincidence Detection

In approximately 18 months of data collection, the three STARE sites recorded well over 4 million radio bursts. Of these, 3898 were identified to be in temporal coincidence among all three sites: 1859 at Hancock, 1069 at Green Bank, and 970 at North Liberty. The numbers are unequal because of the spiky temporal nature of many of the events. Despite the use of the adaptive threshold algorithm described in §2.2, the event detection algorithm tended to break up long events into multiple events, depending on exactly how the measured power varied around the detection thresholds. In many instances, a single long event observed at one site was broken up into multiple events at the others, due to sensitivity differences between sites. In this case, STARE reported multiple coincidences despite one site reporting only a single event. To account for this effect, the data for each reported coincidence were examined visually to determine which of these multiple events were really just parts of the same overall event. After this reduction step, we found that the reported coincidences collapsed into 126 distinct events. Examining each of these more carefully, we found that 27 were accidental. Accidental events were identified using two criteria: the time dependence of the events differed obviously among the sites, and/or one or more of the sites showed a temporarily very high event rate, due to some local RF emitting phenomenon. Ignoring the accidental events, we find that STARE detected 99 events which appear to be of astronomical origin.

Since we expect that the Sun is the most intense source of transient radio emission in the sky, we compared the STARE events with those detected independently by a solar monitoring station. The United States Air Force operates a worldwide “Radio Solar Telescope Network” (RSTN) for the purpose of producing warnings about solar weather events which could disrupt terrestrial systems. Conveniently for us, one of the stations of the RSTN is Sagamore Hill Solar Radio Observatory in Hamilton, Massachusetts, approximately 80$`\mathrm{km}`$ distant from our STARE instrument in Hancock, New Hampshire. The RSTN monitors the Sun for transient activity at eight fixed frequencies, one of which is 610$`\mathrm{MHz}`$, the same as the STARE observing frequency. Thus the record from the Sagamore Hill RSTN station is useful to us for comparison and verification purposes.222Data from the RSTN are available through the National Geophysical Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The RSTN 610$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ system operates on an 8.5$`\mathrm{m}`$ dish, using a dipole feed to measure a single linear polarization, recording the solar flux density once per second (Heineman & Ambrisco, 1997).

During the 18 months of STARE three-site data collection, the RSTN Sagamore Hill station reported 146 solar radio bursts at 610$`\mathrm{MHz}`$. After combining these events with the 99 detected by STARE during this time, we divided the ensemble of events into three groups: those detected by STARE only (58 events), those detected by RSTN only (105 events), and those detected by both STARE and RSTN (41 events). Of course the first group is potentially the most interesting as it may include transient astronomical radio emission from non-solar sources. The other groups are useful in understanding the behavior of the STARE system. To illustrate a typical event, we show in Figure 4 the event detected by STARE and RSTN on 1999 May 23 at 17:30 UTC.

We first compared the peak flux densities of the events measured by STARE and RSTN, and we found that the Hancock site produces flux density estimates which are on average closest to those of the RSTN. The Green Bank site produces higher values, and the North Liberty site produces lower values, more or less consistent with the systematic flux density scale differences described in §2.3, although with a large scatter around these averages. Note however that we do not expect particularly good agreement between STARE and RSTN flux density measurements since STARE measures the total flux density in both polarizations, while RSTN measures a single linear polarization. The exact ratios of the measurements depend on the polarization of the received radiation.

We used the full ensemble of 204 events to help characterize the triggering criteria of STARE and RSTN. Figure 5 shows plots of event flux density against event duration for both RSTN-measured values and STARE-measured values (from Hancock, since it is in closest agreement with RSTN). We can draw several conclusions from these plots. From the left plot, we see that STARE is more sensitive to short duration events. This is to be expected, since STARE takes eight samples per second, while the RSTN takes one. From the right plot, we see that the RSTN has better sensitivity. This is also to be expected, since RSTN uses a parabolic dish which tracks the Sun. To properly interpret the right plot in Figure 5, note that RSTN reports only the start and end times for events, with one-minute accuracy, accounting for the distinct columns of points in the plot. For this plot, we arbitrarily assigned a duration of 1$`\mathrm{s}`$ to events listed as starting and ending in the same minute.

We then examined the 105 events detected by RSTN only, and found three reasons that they were not detected by STARE. 74 of the events were simply too faint for detection by STARE. For another 25 of the events, manual examination of the STARE data showed that the events were indeed recorded, but that they did not exceed the trigger threshold at all three sites, so they were not identified as 3-way coincidences. For the remaining 6 events, there were no data recorded by one or more STARE sites at the time of the RSTN event, due to the systems being off the air for maintenance or other purposes. From these results we gain confidence that during the 18 months of three-site data collection, STARE detected the events we expected it to detect.

Finally, we examined the final group of 58 events: those detected by STARE but not by the RSTN. From the left plot in Figure 5, we see that many of these events are of short duration, suggesting that they might have been of solar origin but were too short to trigger a radio burst alert from RSTN. In addition, all of the events occurred during daytime hours. To determine unequivocally whether these events were from the Sun, we obtained the RSTN 1-second data stream and compared it directly with the STARE records. For 51 of the events, the signal was easily discernible in the Sagamore Hill RSTN record, matching the STARE event well in time and shape. A somewhat deeper investigation into why these events were not reported by RSTN determined that when events are detected by RSTN, a human examines the data to decide whether burst alerts should be issued (Heineman & Ambrisco, 1997), so we should not count on the burst alerts as a complete record. The other 7 events were not found in the Sagamore Hill RSTN record because of gaps in the data, due to equipment outages or calibration. For these, we obtained and examined the data from two other RSTN sites: San Vito, Italy, and Palehua, Hawaii. Five of the remaining events were unambiguously identified in these records. The two remaining events occurred at times when no RSTN data were available; at San Vito, the sun had already set, and at Palehua, the events occurred during gaps in the data. However, we suspect that these two are due to solar radio bursts as well. For one event, the Sagamore Hill data resume several seconds after the STARE event time, and show the final moments of an event in progress. For the other, a large solar radio burst (detected by both STARE and RSTN) occurs less than 30 minutes after the event. In both the RSTN and STARE records we see that events tend to be clustered in time, so it would not be unusual if this event were related to the following large burst. In addition, both of the unidentified STARE events are very short ($`<0.5\mathrm{s}`$), and so are unlikely to have been detected by RSTN, as discussed above in reference to Figure 5. Although we cannot definitively associate these two events with solar radio bursts, we believe that the indirect evidence indicates that such an association is warranted. From these results we deduce that all of the astronomical signals detected by STARE were due to solar radio bursts.

## 4 Discussion

We have presented evidence that all of the astronomical events detected by STARE are of solar origin. With this result we can speculate about astrophysical scenarios that could result in STARE detections. To do this we establish a fiducial flux density detection threshold for the system. From the results in §2.2, we begin with $`26.7\mathrm{kJy}`$, the observed median STARE zenith coincidence detection sensitivity. Then, since most events would happen away from zenith, we multiply by 3, the approximate factor by which the antenna response is reduced at $`45^{}`$ elevation. This yields approximately $`80\mathrm{kJy}`$, which we adopt for this section as the typical STARE coincidence detection sensitivity.

To interpret this limit in an astrophysical context, it is useful to recast it in terms of brightness temperature $`T_B`$. For a source with a uniform spatial brightness distribution, the flux density is $`S_\nu =I_\nu \mathrm{\Omega }`$, where $`I_\nu `$ is the specific intensity of the source, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is its solid angle. Then in the Rayleigh-Jeans limit ($`h\nu k_BT`$), the source has brightness temperature

$$T_B=\frac{c^2S_\nu }{2k_B\nu ^2\mathrm{\Omega }}.$$
(1)
Using our detection limit fixes $`S_\nu 80\mathrm{kJy}`$. An object of linear size $`\mathrm{}`$ at distance $`d`$ occupies a solid angle $`\mathrm{\Omega }\frac{\pi }{4}\left(\frac{\mathrm{}}{d}\right)^2`$, yielding

$$T_B\left(\frac{2c^2S_\nu }{\pi k_B\nu ^2}\right)\left(\frac{d}{\mathrm{}}\right)^2=8.9\mathrm{K}\left(\frac{d}{\mathrm{}}\right)^2$$
(2)
Figure 6 shows this relation plotted for several choices of $`\mathrm{}`$. For a source of linear size $`\mathrm{}`$ at a distance $`d`$, this plot indicates the brightness temperature required to produce a flux density which would trigger a detection by STARE.

It is immediately obvious that at this sensitivity STARE has no hope of detecting distant objects. For nearby objects, say within a few kpc, the required brightness temperatures are high but not unprecedented. For example, we have shown the unequivocal detection of solar radio bursts. Typical flux densities of these events are $`1\mathrm{MJy}`$, corresponding to a brightness temperature of

$$T_B\frac{2c^2S_\nu d^2}{\pi k_B\nu ^2\mathrm{}^2}=5.1\times 10^6\mathrm{K}\left(\frac{1R_{\mathrm{}}}{\mathrm{}}\right)^2.$$
(3)
Many of the observed solar radio bursts display intensity variations at the STARE time resolution of 0.125$`\mathrm{s}`$, which with a light travel-time argument yields an upper limit on the size of the emission region of $`\mathrm{}37,500\mathrm{km}0.05R_{\mathrm{}}`$. Using these values, we find a brightness temperature limit of $`T_B2\times 10^9\mathrm{K}`$. This combination of duration and brightness suggests that the detected events are Type I or Type III solar bursts, both of which arise from coherent plasma radiation (Dulk, 1985).

Although it is unlikely that any members of known classes of non-solar sources would be near enough for detection by STARE, it is illustrative to consider what conditions would be required of them for detectability. One example of a class of source known to produce very high brightness temperatures is that of the radio pulsars. As mentioned in §1.1, the Crab pulsar has been observed to produce individual giant pulses with flux densities exceeding 2000$`\mathrm{Jy}`$. With observing frequency $`\nu =800\mathrm{MHz}`$ (Lundgren et al., 1995), distance $`d=2\mathrm{kpc}`$ to the pulsar, and choosing $`\mathrm{}=100\mathrm{km}`$ for the size of the emission region, the brightness temperature is

$$T_B\frac{2c^2S_\nu d^2}{\pi \nu ^2k_B\mathrm{}^2}8\times 10^{28}\mathrm{K}.$$
(4)
The steep spectrum of pulsar emission would make this even brighter at 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ (Lyne & Graham-Smith, 1990). This is close to the detection threshold for STARE, but since the pulses are significantly shorter than the STARE averaging time, the signal would be too diluted to detect. However, this suggests that another closer pulsar which produced such bright giant pulses might be detectable.

We can consider more generally the radio emission due to a particular emission mechanism. For example, many sources produce radio emission at 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ by the synchrotron mechanism, in which high-energy electrons are accelerated through a spiral path by a magnetic field. It is well known that in general a source emitting incoherent synchrotron radiation cannot shine with brightness temperature greater than $`T_B10^{12}\mathrm{K}`$, since inverse Compton scattering becomes the dominant energy sink (e.g. Shu, 1991). From Figure 6 we see that a synchrotron source with $`T_B=10^{12}\mathrm{K}`$ would only be detectable by STARE if it were improbably large and close. For example, a source of size 1$`\mathrm{A}.\mathrm{U}.`$ would have to be within a few tens of parsecs to produce a flux density above the STARE detection threshold. However, it is possible for such sources to exceed the $`T_B10^{12}\mathrm{K}`$ limit temporarily during a phenomenon which causes an impulsive injection of energy and a corresponding flare (Hughes & Miller, 1991). One class of source which is known to radiate via the synchrotron mechanism and produce rapid variability is that of the Galactic “microquasars” (Mirabel & Rodríguez, 1999). Rodríguez et al. (1995) monitored the microquasar GRS 1915+105 for several months, observing large outbursts, reaching a maximum of 1.5$`\mathrm{Jy}`$ at 1.4$`\mathrm{GHz}`$. Using this flux density and the observed spectral power-law index of -0.87, we obtain the expected flux density at 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$; with the source distance of 12.5$`\mathrm{kpc}`$ and assuming a source size of 1$`\mathrm{A}.\mathrm{U}.`$, we can calculate a brightness temperature of $`T_B10^{15}\mathrm{K}`$ for this outburst. Figure 6 shows that with these physical parameters, such an outburst might be detectable by STARE if it were closer than a kiloparsec or so.

To view the radio sky somewhat differently, STARE could operate with a shorter boxcar averaging period than the 0.125$`\mathrm{s}`$ (6250 samples of 20$`\mu \mathrm{s}`$ each) used for the data presented here, yielding better time resolution (at the expense of sensitivity, of course). If the averaging length were shortened to less than the light travel time from one STARE station to another, the localization of sources in the sky would be possible in principle by comparing arrival times of signals at the STARE stations. In addition to source positions, this method would provide another filter for rejecting terrestrial interference. At the highest data acquisition rate (50$`\mathrm{kHz}`$), the three STARE stations could theoretically produce localizations of transient astronomical radio sources to better than $`1^{}`$ over much of the sky (Katz, 1997). In practice, operating STARE in such a mode would require further technical development to handle the high data rate described. With the dizzying pace of computer technology advancement, however, the required technical improvements are much more tractable at this writing than they were just a few years ago when STARE was constructed. A burst localization mode like that described here will likely be an important feature of future work.

STARE has assembled in digital form a large record of the temporal behavior of the radio sky at 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$, presenting wide opportunity for further analysis. One possibility is to take advantage of the multiple sampling of the same region of sky every 24 hours by averaging and performing a frequency domain analysis to search for periodic signals. This would be very much in the same vein as the work of Chakrabarty et al. (1995) and Bildsten et al. (1997), who analyzed the archived BATSE 1.024$`\mathrm{s}`$ data stream to find previously unknown X-ray pulsars. While the sensitivity of the BATSE large-area detectors is well below its optimum at the typical peak energies of X-ray pulsars, the large volume of data collected by BATSE allowed excellent sensitivity by averaging. The situation is much the same with STARE. By averaging many months worth of data, good sensitivity can in principle be achieved for periods greater than 0.25$`\mathrm{s}`$. A significant number of radio pulsars have periods longer than this, with many exceeding 1$`\mathrm{s}`$ (Taylor et al., 1993). Unknown radio pulsars with such long periods would be candidates for detection by STARE through this technique.

## 5 Conclusions

We have operated the Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission from 1998 May 27 to 1999 November 19, monitoring the 611$`\mathrm{MHz}`$ radio sky to detect transient radio signals of astronomical origin with durations of a few minutes or less. STARE observed the sky above the northeastern part of the United States using three geographically separated zenith-looking detectors which made 8 measurements per second, 24 hours per day. In 18 months of observing we detected a total of 4,318,486 radio bursts at the three STARE stations. Of these, 99.9% were determined to be due to local sources of radio noise. The remaining 3,898 were found to be associated with 99 solar radio bursts observed in coincidence at the three stations. These results demonstrate the remarkable effectiveness of an RFI discriminator based on a coincidence technique using precision timing (such as the GPS) at geographically separated sites.

Technological advances have allowed STARE to update similar experiments performed in the 1970s. With the STARE data stored digitally, the potential for further analysis is much greater than for those experiments which recorded data on chart paper. The data could easily be reanalyzed to detect transients on longer time scales. In addition, the large temporal and solid angle coverage could make the data useful for a variety of other purposes, such as searches for periodic signals and studies of the radio frequency interference environment at the observatory sites.

We can interpret the non-detection of extrasolar transient astronomical radio emission as indicative of the absence of bright bursting or flaring sources within 1$`\mathrm{kpc}`$ or so of the solar system, over the 18 months of our observations. This rules out the existence of any known classes of sources in the solar neighborhood. Perhaps more importantly, it rules out the existence of nearby sources of previously unknown types which might produce short timescale transient radio emission. The absence of quiescent radio emission from such sources means that they would not have been detected by traditional pencil-beam surveys; through their flaring activity they may have revealed their existence only to a program such as STARE.

The detection of transient astronomical electromagnetic radiation requires different observing techniques than those offered by the typical observatory with its scheduled blocks of time. Since signals may appear unexpectedly in time and space, their detection requires a different class of temporal and spatial coverage than that provided by traditional telescopes. In a simple system like STARE, spatial coverage is achieved at the expense of reduced brightness sensitivity, while temporal coverage is achieved by the use of dedicated automated unattended instruments which can monitor continuously. STARE has been a useful exercise for exploring the techniques required to detect unexpected signals from astronomical sources. We consider this to be preliminary work in this area, which we expect will progress to development of more sophisticated techniques and instruments providing better coverage with higher sensitivity. Indeed, we observe in the planning for new radio telescopes such as the Square Kilometer Array and the Low-Frequency Array for Radioastronomy renewed interest in the transient radio sky, with discussions of sources such as neutron star magnetospheres, gamma-ray burst sources, planetary magnetospheres and atmospheres, accretion disk transients, and even extraterrestrial intelligence, to name a few. And of course the most exciting prospect for such work is the detection of entirely new types of sources. It appears that the detection of transient astronomical radio emission will be a topic of great interest for many years to come.

We thank the many people who have made STARE possible. At the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, M. Goss offered the use of VLBA stations for STARE receivers, while F.J. Lockman offered the use of space at Green Bank. Development and operation of STARE would have been impossible without the help of T. Baldwin and D. Whiton at the Hancock VLBA station, D.J. Beard and B. Geiger at the North Liberty VLBA station, and M. McKinnon and R. Creager at Green Bank. Some initial STARE testing was performed at Hat Creek Radio Observatory, where space and support were offered by D. Backer, and the work was aided by R. Forster and M. Warnock. Development of the STARE instrumentation was helped along by advice from A. Rogers, L. Beno, and P. Napier. J. Ellithorpe contributed to the computer work, and J. Barrett provided many hints and lessons. H. Coffey and E. Irwin at the National Geophysical Data Center provided the data from the RSTN telescopes, and TSgt C. Hoffman, U.S.A.F., of the Sagamore Hill RSTN station answered many questions about RSTN operations and methods. Finally, we thank the anonymous referee whose insightful comments led to significant improvements in this article. We are grateful for the support STARE has received from a variety of sources, including a David and Lucille Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, a Bruno Rossi Graduate Fellowship in Astrophysics, the MIT Class of 1948, a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator grant (AST-9158076), and a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution.


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# Density Matrix Renormalization Group Study of a Lowest Landau Level Electron Gas on a Thin Cylinder

We investigate the ground state properties of a two-dimensional electron gas in the lowest Landau level using the Density Matrix Renormalization Group. The electron gas is confined to a cylinder with a strong magnetic field perpendicular to the surface. For a thin cylinder, the ground state is for generic filling factors a charge density wave state, however, at $`\nu =1/2`$ a homogeneous and apparently gapless ground state is found and particle and hole excitations are studied.

Of the many different methods used for studying strongly correlated systems the Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) invented by White  in 1992 is one of the most successful. The method, which is an extension of Wilson’s Renormalization Group (RG) , provides a reliable method for analyzing one-dimensional quantum systems that are far out of reach with exact diagonalization methods. For higher dimensional systems the DMRG is much less useful.

The two-dimensional electron gas in a perpendicular magnetic field becomes effectively one-dimensional when the field is strong enough for the motion to be restricted to the lowest Landau level (LLL). In this limit the DMRG may become an efficient tool. The finite size DMRG has recently been applied to this system for an electron gas confined to a torus . The results are in excellent agreement with exact diagonalization studies, extending the latter from around 15 to 25 particles. In this article, we apply the infinite size version of the DMRG to the lowest Landau level problem when the electron gas is confined to a cylinder. This makes it possible to study the limit where the number of particles $`N`$ tends to infinity. On the other hand, the range of the interaction limits us to study thin cylinders.

For generic quantum Hall (QH) filling fractions such as $`\nu =1/3`$ we find charge density wave ground states where, for $`\nu =1/3`$, approximately every third site is occupied by an electron. This result is in agreement with previous results on smaller systems  where the $`1/3`$ state is shown to be a charge density wave on a thin cylinder. However, for the half-filled Landau level we find a non-trivial result—a homogeneous ground state with excitations that appear to be gapless. (For even smaller $`L`$, this state also gives way to a crystalline state.)

We consider a charged particle moving in two dimensions in a perpendicular magnetic field $`B`$. By solving the Schr dinger equation in Landau gauge, $`\stackrel{}{A}=Bx\widehat{y}`$, we map the two-dimensional system onto a one-dimensional system. The eigenfunctions in the lowest Landau level are $`\psi _k(\stackrel{}{r})=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi ^{1/2}L}}e^{iky}e^{\frac{1}{2\mathrm{}^2}(x+k\mathrm{}^2)^2}`$, where $`L`$ is the circumference of the cylinder, $`\mathrm{}=\sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{}c}{eB}}`$ is the magnetic length and $`k`$ is the momentum in the $`y`$-direction. Imposing periodic boundary conditions in the $`y`$-direction gives $`k=\frac{2\pi m}{L},m𝐙`$ and the density of states in the LLL is $`n_s=1/2\pi \mathrm{}^2`$. The eigenfunction with $`y`$-momentum $`k`$ is centered at $`x=X_k=k\mathrm{}^2`$. This provides a mapping of the LLL onto a one-dimensional problem which can be thought of as a spin chain where each site $`k`$ has two states—either the site is occupied by an electron or it is empty.

Following Trugman and Kivelson , we introduce a repulsive short range potential between the particles which can be expanded as

$$V(\stackrel{}{r})=\underset{j}{}c_jb^{2j}^{2j}\delta ^2(\stackrel{}{r}),$$
(1)
where $`b`$ is the range of the interaction. Taking the limit of short range, $`b0`$, the expression (1) reduces to $`V(\stackrel{}{r})=c_1b^2^2\delta ^2(\stackrel{}{r})`$ since $`\delta ^2(\stackrel{}{r})=0`$ for any antisymmetric state. The form of this interaction can be motivated by the fact that the physics of quantum Hall systems does not change qualitatively if the interaction is made more local than the more realistic Coulomb interaction.

From the interaction and the single particle states in the LLL we find a second quantized form of the Hamiltonian. The Hamiltonian is then analyzed and the low energy states are approximated by use of the DMRG method. The Hamiltonian is

$$H=𝒥\underset{n}{}\underset{k>l}{}(k^2l^2)e^{\frac{1}{2}(k^2+l^2)}c_{l+n}^{}c_{k+n}^{}c_{l+k+n}c_n,$$
(2)
where $`n`$, $`k`$ and $`l`$ denote all possible momentum states and we use units where $`\mathrm{}=1`$ and set $`𝒥=1`$. The DMRG algorithm becomes inefficient when the interaction extends over too many sites. The most local interaction in position space leads to the momentum space interaction in (2). We introduce a cut-off $`d`$ in the range of the interaction—$`d`$ is the number of sites the interaction extends over. Since the distance between the sites is $`2\pi \mathrm{}^2/L`$ it follows that we are restricted to small circumferences $`L`$ in order for the cut-off not to modify the shape of the interaction. Thus we are studying the QH system on a thin cylinder. Note, however, that alternatively we may view this as a large two-dimensional system with an interaction that extends only a distance $`2\pi d\mathrm{}^2/L`$ in the $`x`$-direction. Albeit being an unphysical interaction this is a mathematically well-defined limit where the system can be studied. We perform calculations for $`d6`$. From the form of the interaction in (2) it follows that this restricts $`L`$ to at most about 10 magnetic lengths. The results presented below are for $`L=2\pi \mathrm{}`$—this corresponds to the distance between the sites being $`\mathrm{}`$.

As it stands, the Hamiltonian has a trivial ground state since the interaction is repulsive – the energy is minimal (and equal to zero) when there are no particles present. However, in a real physical system the density of electrons, $`n_e`$, is finite—the negative charge of the electron gas is compensated for by a positive background charge that makes the whole system neutral. Thus we want to analyze the case when the filling fraction $`\nu \frac{n_e}{n_s}=2\pi \mathrm{}^2n_e`$ is fixed and nonzero. In order to target a state with a specific filling fraction, $`\nu `$, we add a term to the Hamiltonian that favours the chosen density: $`H^{}=H+\mathrm{\Delta }H=H+\gamma N^2(\frac{1}{N}_{i=1}^Nc_i^{}c_i\nu )^2`$. (All energies presented below are of course for $`\gamma =0`$.)

The Hamiltonian commutes with $`_i^Nc_i^{}c_i`$, hence the total number of particles is a conserved quantum number. As a consequence, for given $`N`$ only the filling fractions $`\nu =0,1/N,2/N,\mathrm{},(N1)/N,1`$ can be obtained. This makes it in general necessary to keep states with different number of particles when studying a certain state in the $`N\mathrm{}`$ limit.

For generic filling fractions we find charge density wave ground states in agreement with earlier work . As an example, we show in Fig. 1 results for $`\nu =1/3`$. The ground state is, to a good approximation, obtained by putting an electron on every third site. Thus the range of the interaction is so short that this simple crystal has lower energy than, e.g., a homogeneous state .

However, for the half-filled Landau level we find a very different and much more interesting result—a homogenous ground state .

In Fig. 2 we present some of our results for the $`\nu =1/2`$ state. The obtained ground state has an almost perfectly uniform density throughout the system111This is true except near the boundaries of the system. The repulsive interaction, in combination with free boundary conditions, favours crystalline states for small systems and also near the edges of large systems.. The mean density is $`1/2`$ up to the precision of at least $`16`$ digits—this precision is a consequence of $`N_e`$ being a conserved quantum number. Furthermore, the standard deviation of the single site density $`c_i^{}c_i`$ is as small as $`10^{12}`$ for large systems. We also note that the energy of the homogeneous state is very low compared to the crystalline states obtained when $`d2`$. Thus the obtained state has used the off-diagonal elements of the Hamiltonian to reduce the energy in a very efficient way. The results quoted are independent of the number of states, $`m`$, that are kept in each iteration.

The density $`c_i^{}c_i`$ given above, is really the linear density along the cylinder, i.e. the full density integrated around the cylinder. The density operator is

$`\rho (\stackrel{}{r})={\displaystyle \underset{m,n}{}}\psi _m^{}(\stackrel{}{r})\psi _n(\stackrel{}{r})c_m^{}c_n`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{m,n}{}}e^{i(nm)y}e^{\frac{1}{2}((x+n)^2+(x+m)^2)}c_m^{}c_n.`$ (3)
However, we find that $`c_m^{}c_n\delta _{m,n}`$ to a very high precision222The deviation from this result is roughly of the same order as the deviation of the single site density $`c_i^{}c_i`$, i.e. $`10^{12}`$.. Hence the density is constant on the cylinder333The finite distance $`2\pi \mathrm{}^2/L=\mathrm{}`$ between two sites leads to a variation in the spatial density of roughly $`0.01\%`$..

For $`d2`$, the $`\nu =1/2`$ ground state is crystalline. At $`d=1`$ every other site is occupied and at $`d=2`$ two occupied sites alternate with two empty—these are exact ground states. At $`\nu =1/4`$ the ground state is a crystal for $`d6`$.

We have made a preliminary investigation of charged excitations at $`\nu =1/2`$ by targeting states with density $`\nu =1/2\pm 1/N`$ for $`N`$ sites444When doing this we target also the $`\nu =1/2`$ state.. We find a particle excitation with charge $`|e|`$ relative to the ground state and energy $`E_p=2.0`$ and a hole with charge $`|e|`$ and energy $`E_h=1.8`$ ($`𝒥=1`$, $`d=4`$ and we keep $`m=4`$ states in total). This gives an energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }=E_p+E_h=0.2`$ to creating a separated particle-hole pair. We take the smallness of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ compared to $`E_p,E_h`$ to indicate that $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ approaches zero in the thermodynamic limit and that the system is gapless. To test this we should consider the limit $`N\mathrm{}`$ and $`m\mathrm{}`$. For the particle this is straightforward, however, for the hole the calculations are unstable when $`m`$ is increased. Increasing $`N`$ only moderately (to avoid the instability) we find that $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ decreases with increasing $`m`$, supporting the conclusion that $`\mathrm{\Delta }0`$. We believe the instability is due to a degeneracy in the energy of the hole state. We find that the hole forms at the center of the system—there should then be degenerate states where the hole is translated to other positions. That no instability is seen for the particle indicates that it forms at the edge of the system. Fig. 3 shows the density profile of the hole. The charge integrated over the area, with length $`34\mathrm{}`$, shown in the figure is $`0.98|e|`$ relative to the ground state in Fig. 2.

A further indication of the existence of gapless excitations is shown in Fig. 4. It shows the increase in total energy of the $`\nu =1/2`$ ground state per iteration up to large systems555The figure shows only data from every second iteration since there is a “parity-effect” that distinguishes even and odd iterations.. In these calculations, states at density $`\nu =1/2`$ and $`\nu =1/2+1/N`$ are kept. Initially, a smooth convergence to the homogeneous $`\nu =1/2`$ ground state is observed—this is reflected in the figure in that the same amount of energy is added at each step. In each iteration two sites and one electron are added at the center of the superblock, thus keeping the average density fixed at $`\nu =1/2`$. Then suddenly at iteration 470 a slightly smaller energy is added. A new ground state is formed as a superposition of the homogeneous $`\nu =1/2`$ ground state in the previous iteration (adding two sites and one electron to this) and the state containing one particle excitation (adding two sites and no particle to this). The energy of this state is actually lower than the energy of the homogeneous state since the added energy in the last iteration decreased666Eventually, after further iterations, the state converges to a state with a well separated particle-hole pair. That this is picked out rather than the homogeneous state (or a linear combination) is a consequence of our algorithm.. We take this as indicating that the particle-hole excitation is gapless.

In addition to the above studies of excitations, where we always target only the lowest energy state, we have also targeted the two or three lowest states. We then find that these states become degenerate as $`N`$ and $`m\mathrm{}`$ thus lending further support to the gaplessness of the ground state.

To conclude, for a thin cylinder we find a homogeneous, presumably gapless, ground state for the half-filled lowest Landau level—at all other filling fractions that we have investigated, including $`\nu =1/4`$, we find charge density wave states. It is of course tempting to identify the obtained ground state as the Rezayi-Read state , that is known from comparison to exact diagonalization studies to describe the $`\nu =1/2`$ state on the sphere very well. It remains to compare our state to the Rezayi-Read state. It is computationally nontrivial to compare large systems whereas small systems suffer from large edge effects, presumably making a comparison meaningless. A natural solution to this would be to employ the finite size DMRG method, possibly on the torus. An interesting questions is why there is a homogeneous state on thin cylinders only, as it seems, at $`\nu =1/2`$. If this state is indeed the Rezayi-Read state, does our results shed any further light on the $`\nu =1/2`$ quantum Hall state? A study of our $`\nu =1/2`$ ground state indicates that it can be understood in terms of free fermions .

Anders Karlhede was supported by the Swedish Science Research Council.


text:
# Stability of stationary solutions of the Schrödinger-Langevin equation

## 1. Introduction

The study of dissipative quantum mechanical systems is of widespread interest in different areas of physics . In several approaches the microscopic systems are embedded in an environment and the dissipation is given with a detailed description of that assumed macroscopic background. However, the structure of the environment is principally unobservable or unknown, moreover, its details are not very important but only some basic properties. Several developments of the stochastic approach to decoherence and quantum dissipation can be interpreted as a search after these important properties and get rid of the details of the background. The unacceptable negative densities in the soluble Caldeira-Leggett model  can be cured by additional damping terms  according to the requirement of positivity of the irreversible dynamics . However, complete positivity alone does not give automatically physically meaningful results, there are indications that some further refinements are necessary .

On the other hand, the approaches from the phenomenological, thermodynamic side  are fighting with the right interpretation and properties of thermodynamic quantities in quantum systems.

The situation is further complicated with the fact that there is no common agreement in the nature of quantum dissipation, there is no unique quantum version of the simplest dissipative classical systems like the damped harmonic oscillator. The problem is that the lack of a uniformly accepted variational principle prevents to use normal canonical quantization . Hence quantization can be accomplished in several different ways and the quantizations based on different variational principles are not equivalent at all, moreover show peculiar physical properties. The best example and a kind of parade ground of the different methods is the mentioned quantum harmonic oscillator with the simplest possible damping .

In this paper we approach dissipation in quantum mechanics from a different point of view and, instead of the von Neumann equation, we investigate the properties of some simple generalizations of the Schrödinger-Langevin equation, where the damping force is negatively proportional to the velocity

(1)
$$i\mathrm{}\frac{\psi }{t}=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\mathrm{\Delta }\psi +U\psi \frac{i\mathrm{}k}{2}\psi \mathrm{ln}\frac{\psi }{\psi ^{}}.$$

The above equation is a quantized form of Newton equation of a classical mass-point with mass $`m`$, moving in a potential $`U`$ and with damping term proportional to velocity

(2)
$$m\ddot{𝐱}=m\dot{𝐯}=Uk𝐯.$$

One can give several derivations of Schrödinger-Langevin equation based on different assumptions  and the equation has several appealing properties. It can be derived by canonical quantization, the dissipation term has a clear physical meaning, the equation preserves the uncertainty relations, and all the stationary states of a quantized Hamiltonian system are necessarily stationary states of the corresponding dissipative quantum system. The later property can be true in more general systems, too . At the first glance this last fact seems to be in contradiction with the apparent instability of excited states  and incited some criticism  therefore it requires a more detailed investigation that can be expected partially from stability investigations. The relationship between the Schrödinger-Langevin equation and the master equation approaches is important also from fundamental theoretical point of view, as it was indicated for example in .

There are some known exact solutions of equation (1) for the cases of free motion, motion in a uniform field, and for a harmonic oscillator in one dimension . These exact solutions have the remarkable property that the stationary states of the system are asymptotically stable.

We will show that the above properties are valid not only for these known exact solutions of the damped harmonic oscillator but in general for any kind of initial conditions, moreover not only for the oscillator, but in case of (almost) arbitrary potentials. The stability investigation is based on the hydrodynamic model of quantum mechanics, which recently gained a renewed interest because of the development of powerful numerical codes of computational fluid dynamics , and of its relationship to some quantum field theories as non-Abelian fluid dynamics , in perturbational cosmological calculations curing some instabilities of the Euler equation , etc. In the last section the above properties will be demonstrated numerically on the traditional parade ground of dissipative quantum mechanics, on the example of the damped harmonic oscillator.

## 2. Stability properties of the damped Schrödinger equation

Let us consider a classical mass-point with mass $`m`$, moving in a potential $`U`$, governed by the following Newton equation:

(3)
$$m\frac{\mathrm{d}^2𝐱}{\mathrm{d}t^2}=m\frac{\mathrm{d}𝐯}{\mathrm{d}t}=U+𝐅_\mathrm{d},$$

where $`U`$ is the potential of the conservative part, $`𝐅_\mathrm{c}=U`$, of the total force.

It is well-known that the equation of motion of the corresponding quantized system can be given when $`𝐅_\mathrm{d}=\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and is the Schrödinger equation, (1) with $`k=0`$. The Schrödinger equation can be transformed into various thought provoking classical forms via the Madelung transformation

$$\psi =Re^{iS},$$

and by introducing the so-called hydrodynamic variables, defining the probability density $`\rho `$ and a velocity field $`𝐯`$ as

(4) $`\rho `$ $`:=R^2=\psi ^{}\psi ,`$
(5) $`𝐯`$ $`:={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}}{m}}S={\displaystyle \frac{i\mathrm{}}{2m}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{\psi }{\psi ^{}}}.`$
Here the star denotes the complex conjugate. With these variables the real and imaginary parts of the Schrödinger equation give

(6) $`{\displaystyle \frac{\rho }{t}}`$ $`+(\rho 𝐯)=0,`$
(7) $`m{\displaystyle \frac{𝐯}{t}}`$ $`=\left(m{\displaystyle \frac{v^2}{2}}+U_q+U\right),`$
with the condition that the vorticity of the “fluid” is zero:

(8)
$$\omega =\times 𝐯=\mathrm{𝟎}.$$

Here

$$U_q=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }R}{R}=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{4m\rho }\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\rho \frac{(\rho )^2}{2\rho }\right)$$

is sometimes called the quantum potential, and the equations (6)-(7) are governing equations of the fields $`(\rho ,𝐯)`$. In particular, (6) is the balance of “mass” or probability density. The second equation (7) is the Newtonian equation for a point mass moving in superposed normal and quantum potentials. The governing equations are more apparent if we transform them into a ‘comoving’ form:

(9) $`\dot{\rho }+\rho 𝐯`$ $`=0,`$
(10) $`m\dot{𝐯}`$ $`=\left(U_q+U\right).`$
Here the dot derivative denotes the substantial time derivative, $`_t+𝐯`$. It is easy to see that the above equations preserve the probability and vorticity. In the hydrodynamic formalism it is apparent that any other kind of dissipative forces that would destroy the condition of zero vorticity would destroy the connection to the single Schrödinger equation and initiate coupling to the electromagnetic field or/and the development from pure into mixed states. It is straightforward to transform the above system into a true hydrodynamic form, because the quantum potential can be pressurised that is, the corresponding force density can be written as a divergence of a quantum pressure tensor $`P_q`$:

$$\rho U_q=P_q,$$

where the quantum pressure is not determined uniquely from this condition. It can be chosen as

$$P_{q_1}=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{4m\rho }\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\rho I\frac{\rho \rho }{\rho }\right),$$

or as

$$P_{q_2}=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{4m\rho }\left[()\rho \frac{\rho \rho }{\rho }\right]=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{4m}()\mathrm{ln}\rho ,$$

or in some other form that differs only in a rotation of a vector field. Here $``$ is the traditional notation of tensorial product in hydrodynamics, and $`I`$ is the second order unit tensor. Let us remark that thermodynamic considerations result in a unique quantum pressure . Therefore, the second equation of the above system, (10), can be written in a true Cauchy form momentum balance as well, introducing the mass density $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }=m\rho `$,

(11) $`{\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{\rho }}{t}}+(\stackrel{~}{\rho }𝐯)`$ $`=0,`$
(12) $`{\displaystyle \frac{(\stackrel{~}{\rho }𝐯)}{t}}+\left(\stackrel{~}{\rho }𝐯𝐯+P_q\right)`$ $`=\stackrel{~}{\rho }U.`$
All these kinds of transformations of the Schrödinger equation are well- known in the literature with different interpretations. The Newtonian form was investigated and popularized e.g. by Bohm and Holland . The hydrodynamic form was first recognized by Madelung ) and extensively investigated by several authors, e.g. . Moreover there is also a microscopic-stochastic background , giving a reasonable explanation of the continuum equations. Independently of the interpretation, one can exploit the advantages of the hydrodynamic formulation to solve the equations or investigating its properties.

First of all let us remark that the quantum mechanical equation (10) can be supplemented by forces that are not conservative in classical mechanics but still admit a hydrodynamic formulation:

(13)
$$m\dot{𝐯}=\left(U_q+U\right)+𝐅_\mathrm{d}(𝐯).$$

The corresponding balance of momentum is

(14)
$$\frac{(\stackrel{~}{\rho }𝐯)}{t}+\left(\stackrel{~}{\rho }𝐯𝐯+P_q\right)=\stackrel{~}{\rho }\left(U+𝐅_\mathrm{d}\right).$$

It is easy to check that all force fields of the form $`𝐅_\mathrm{d}=k(S)𝐯`$ are rotation free, therefore do not violate the vorticity conservation and the corresponding quantized form can be calculated by canonical quantization with the help of the velocity potential $`S`$ . The hydrodynamic transformation gives the quantized form of the damping force expressed with the wave function as $`𝐅_\mathrm{d}=\frac{i\mathrm{}k(S)}{2}\mathrm{ln}\frac{\psi }{\psi ^{}}`$. Moreover, the Schrödinger equation is transformed into the Schrödinger-Langevin form (1). Let us mention here that the nonlinearity of equation (1) means only a practical, not a fundamental problem .

The real stationary solutions of the above system are those where the substantial time derivatives are zero. Thus we can eliminate the virtual effect of the motion of the continuum, and the stationary solution will not depend on any kind of external observers, stationarity becomes a frame independent property. Then, the nontrivial ($`\rho 0`$) stationary solutions ($`\rho _s,𝐯_s`$) coincide with the stationary solutions of the Schrödinger equation without damping, and in the hydrodynamic language are characterized by the conditions,

(15) $`𝐯_s`$ $`=0,`$
(16) $`U_q(\rho _s)+U`$ $`=E_s=\mathrm{𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑡}.`$
For the sake of simplicity, in what follows we choose units in which $`\mathrm{}=1`$ and $`m=1`$ and which make all quantities dimensionless.

In the following we investigate the stability of the stationary solutions (15)-(16) of the equations (11) and (14).

Let us assume that the functions $`(\rho ,𝐯)`$ are two times continuously differentiable and the density $`\rho _s`$ exponentially tend to zero as $`|𝐱|`$ goes to infinity

(17)
$$\underset{|𝐱|\mathrm{}}{lim}\rho _s(𝐱)𝐞^{|𝐱|}=\mathrm{𝟎}.$$

Furthermore the dissipative force obeys the following inequality for all possible solutions of the above equations (11) and (14)

(18)
$$\rho 𝐯𝐅_\mathrm{d}dV0.$$

Here equality is valid only if $`\rho 𝐯_s=0`$.

With these conditions we show that

(19)
$$L(\rho ,𝐯)=\rho \left[\frac{v^2}{2}+\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{\rho }{2\rho }\right)^2+UE_s\right]dV$$

is a Liapunov functional for the stationary solution in question.

First we show that, (19) is decreasing along the solutions of the differential equation. Indeed, the first derivative (variation) of $`L`$ for $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}\delta \rho & \delta 𝐯\end{array}\right)`$ is

$$\delta L=\left[\rho 𝐯\delta 𝐯+\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+U+U_qE_s\right)\delta \rho \right]dV+\frac{\mathrm{ln}\rho }{4}\delta \rho d𝐀,$$

where the surface for the second integral is a sphere with the radius increasing to infinity. That term zero at the corresponding equilibrium (stationary) solution under the asymptotic condition (17). Therefore the derivative according to the differential equation is

(20)
$$\frac{\mathrm{d}L}{\mathrm{d}t}=\left[\rho 𝐯\left(\frac{v^2}{2}+U_q+UE_s\right)+\frac{\mathrm{ln}\rho (\rho 𝐯)}{4}\right]d𝐀+\rho 𝐯𝐅_\mathrm{d}dV0,$$

because the first surface integral vanishes according to the asymptotic conditions, and the second integral is negative due to (18).

Next, the definiteness of the second derivative of (19) is investigated. Evaluating the second variation between $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}\delta \rho & \delta 𝐯\end{array}\right)`$ and $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}\delta ^{}\rho & \delta ^{}𝐯\end{array}\right)`$ that yields

(21)
$$\begin{array}{c}\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\delta 𝐯& \delta \rho & \delta \rho \end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\rho & 𝐯& \mathrm{𝟎}\\ 𝐯& \frac{(\rho )^2}{4\rho ^3}& \frac{\rho }{4\rho ^2}\\ \mathrm{𝟎}& \frac{\rho }{4\rho ^2}& \frac{1}{4\rho }\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\delta ^{}𝐯& \delta ^{}\rho & \delta ^{}\rho \end{array}\right)dV.\hfill \end{array}$$

We can see that the minors of the above matrix under the integration are

(22)
$$\mathrm{\Delta }_1=\rho ,\mathrm{\Delta }_2=\left(\frac{\rho }{2\rho }\right)^2𝐯^2,\mathrm{\Delta }_3=\frac{𝐯^2}{4\rho }.$$

The matrix in (21) is positive semidefinite in case of stationary solutions, therefore the linearized system is marginally stable.

Remarks:

* The continuity and asymptotic conditions are valid for stationary solutions in case of several classical potentials (harmonic, Coulomb, etc..). Moreover, one can find different (weaker) asymptotic conditions to ensure the differentiability of L.
* The physical meaning of the Liapunov function (19) is that it is essentially the expectation value of the energy difference of the given and the stationary states. The decreasing property of $`L`$ is simply the decreasing of energy in our dissipative system. The Liapunov function can be expressed with the wave function as

(23)
$$\widehat{L}(\psi )=\left(\frac{\psi ^{}}{8\psi }(\psi )^2+\frac{\psi }{8\psi ^{}}(\psi ^{})^2+(UE_e)\psi \psi ^{}\right)dV$$
* According to the structure of the second derivative of $`L`$, given in (21), the function space of $`(\rho ,𝐯)`$ functions looks like a Soboljev space with our asymptotic conditions and norm

$$(\rho ,𝐯)_\mathrm{S}=\left\{\left[\rho ^2+𝐯^2+(\rho )^2\right]dV\right\}^{1/2}$$
* If $`𝐅_\mathrm{d}\mathrm{𝟎}`$ then the equilibrium solution is stable with the above conditions. We can see that the dissipative, damping force makes the stationary solutions attractive, therefore we can expect asymptotic stability (the conditions can be rather involved see e.g. ). In ordinary quantum mechanics without damping forces the stationary solutions can be only stable. Furthermore, the above condition can serve as a definition of damping (dissipative) forces, i.e. we can say that a force is damping (dissipative) if $`\rho 𝐯𝐅_\mathrm{d}0`$ and $`\rho 𝐯𝐅_\mathrm{d}dV<0`$ for any configuration $`\rho ,𝐯`$.
* The marginal stability indicates a rich structure of possible instabilities and therefore the need of further stability investigations. On the other hand a rich stability structure is expected considering the infinite number of stationary states. Moreover, in more than one dimension and if the domain of the functions $`(\rho ,𝐯)`$ is not the whole space (e.g. in case of a Coulomb potential), the perturbations destroying the rotation free streams requires to consider Casimir functions for the stability investigations .
* The given conditions are capable to estimate the basin of attraction of the different quantum states. The physical role of dissipation is to relax the process to the lowest energy element within a basin of attraction. Moreover, the above local (!) statement regarding the formal stability of stationary states does not exclude the possibility that for a given initial condition the whole set of stationary solution is the attractor of the quantum dynamics. On the other hand transition from one basin to another possibly can be induced by some additional interaction introduced in the system.

## 3. Stability properties of the harmonic oscillator

As a demonstration of the previous stability properties we investigate the one dimensional dissipative harmonic oscillator, with constant damping coefficient. In this case the hydrodynamic equations are simplified into the following form

(24) $`{\displaystyle \frac{\rho }{t}}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{(\rho v)}{x}},`$
(25) $`m{\displaystyle \frac{v}{t}}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{}{x}}\left[m{\displaystyle \frac{v^2}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{4m\rho }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{^2\rho }{x^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\rho }}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\rho }{x}}\right)^2\right)D{\displaystyle \frac{x^2}{2}}\right]kv.`$
Let the initial condition be a standing wave packet ($`v_{\mathrm{init}}=0`$), having the shape $`\rho _{\mathrm{init}}=\rho _{(0,0.05)}`$, and with its maximum shifted from the center of the oscillator potential to the left by two units. We will investigate the time development of this initial distribution in a potential with elasticity coefficient $`D=0.02`$ and different damping coefficients. In the numerical calculations the equations have been solved with a modified leapfrog method, adapted to the presence of the nonlinear hydrodynamic term and for dissipative forces. The asymptotic conditions at the infinity were considered by extrapolating the internal velocity values at the boundaries.

On the first two figures one can see the time development of the probability distribution and the current, respectively. In this calculations the damping was large, with a coefficient $`k=1`$. On figure 1 the center of the oscillator is at point 41 and the solutions starting from $`\rho _{(0,0.05)}`$ are given in every 5 time units from 0 to 100. One can observe that the distribution tends toward the stationary solution, denoted by dots. At the same time, the probability current goes to zero as one can see on figure 2. It is interesting to observe that, in the beginning, there is a space interval where the velocity is negative and later the direction of the motion become everywhere positive.

At the calculations leading to the next two figures the damping was smaller, with a coefficient $`k=0.1`$. On figure 3 the center of the oscillator is at point 21 and the solutions are given in every 1 time units from 0 to 20. One can observe that the trend to equilibrium is different from that of the previous case. A new period of a damped oscillation starts, as one can conclude from figure 4 of the probability current.

At figures 5-6 there are the undamped solutions with $`k=0`$. The center of the oscillator is at point 21 and the solutions starting from $`\rho _{(0,0.05)}`$ are given in every 0.95 time units from 0 to 19.

On figure 7 one can see the $`L^2`$ distance from the stationary solution in the three cases as a function of time. Remarkably, the starting oscillations are clearly nonlinear. The new, starting periods indicate clearly that the $`L^2`$ norm is not the suitable one for stability considerations. The expected asymptotic stability requires a monotonous tending to the stationary solution.

## 4. Conclusions

The stability properties of the stationary solutions of the Schrödinger equation were investigated. It has been shown that the stability of stationary states can be treated by Liapunov’s direct method, where the expectation value of the energy is a good starting point for stability investigations. However, the semidefiniteness of the second derivative at the stationary states and the infinite number of stationary solutions of the equation indicates a rich stability structure. These properties are more apparent in the chosen hydrodynamic model of quantum mechanics, enabling the use of the methods and a direct comparison of the well understood hydrodynamic stability problems. Moreover, the hydrodynamic analogy shows that in one space dimension we do not need Casimirs therefore the energy is also sufficient for exact and physically relevant results.

We have shown that in the nondissipative case, for the Shrödinger equation one can expect only stability. Moreover, the above properties were demonstrated for the damped harmonic oscillator. This property indicates that an arbitrarily perturbed nondissipative quantum system cannot move from a given stationary state to an other one, it will oscillate around the perturbed state.

Finally we would like to emphasize again that the stability results are independent on any interpretation and could be formulated with the help of wave functions or stochastic processes, too. However, in case of dissipation the hydrodynamic formulation has the advantage of a clear nonequilibrium thermodynamic background with well established stability results and clean concepts of dissipation. This kind of distinction of dissipation types can be crucial if one would like to compare and extend the above calculations to successful and experimentally tested frictional models as e.g. the one of Gross and Kalinowski for heavy ion collisions .

## 5. Acknowledgements

This research was supported by OTKA T034715 and T034603. The authors thank T. Matolcsi, J. Verhás, S. Katz, F. Bazsó and K. Oláh for the enlightening and interesting discussions on the foundations and paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The calculations have been performed by the software Mathematica. Thank for our referee for his/her valuable remarks.