text:
# Diffraction of He atoms from Xe monolayer adsorbed on the graphite (0001) revisited: The importance of multiple scattering processes

## Abstract

We comment and discuss the findings and conclusions of a recent theoretical study of the diffraction of He atoms from a monolayer of Xe atoms adsorbed on the graphite (0001) surface \[Khokonov et al., Surf. Sci. 496(2002)L13\]. By revisiting the problem we demonstrate that all main conclusions of Khokonov et al. that pertain to the studied system are at variance with the available experimental and theoretical evidence and the results of multiple scattering calculations presented in this comment.

Keywords: Atom-solid interactions, scattering, diffraction; surface phonons; graphite; xenon monolayers.

Published in Surf. Sci. 529, L269 (2003)

In a recent Letter and subsequent Erratum Khokonov, Kokov and Karamurzov (hereafter to be referred to as KKK) treated the problem of He atom scattering (HAS) from an ordered monolayer of Xe atoms adsorbed on the (0001) surface of graphite (Gr). The authors discussed a specific model of phonons in the Xe monolayer and used it in a scattering calculation based on the hard-wall model and the eikonal approximation with the aim to reproduce and interpret the experimental He atom diffraction intensities reported by Bracco et al.. However, as we shall show, neither their description of phonons in the Xe overlayer, nor the results of calculations for the scattering intensities are consistent with the previous experimental and theoretical studies of the system Xe/Gr(0001) and the results of revisited calculations described below.

The measurements of diffraction intensities from He beams incident normal to a $`(\sqrt{3}\times \sqrt{3})R30^0`$ monolayer lattice of Xe atoms on Gr(0001) carried out by Bracco et al. indicated large corrugation amplitudes as probed by HAS. These authors have attempted to interpret the measured diffraction spectra by using the hard corrugated wall (HCW) to model surface corrugation amplitudes obtained from pairwise summation of atomic He-Xe potentials, and the eikonal approximation  to calculate the diffraction intensities pertinent to the thus constructed HCW. However, their calculations showed that a more realistic scattering model was needed to obtain a better agreement between the experimental data and theoretical results.

The studies of phonons in a Xe monolayer on Gr(0001) surface by HAS have been presented in Ref. . These measurements have demonstrated that the scattered He atoms couple most strongly to a low energy dispersionless or Einstein-like mode with frequency of $``$ 3.2 meV. Both the lattice dynamical calculations  and the molecular dynamics simulations  utilising Xe-Xe potentials known from the gas-phase have shown that this nearly dispersionless mode corresponds to the vibrations of Xe atoms that are polarised perpendicular (vertical) to the surface plane, i.e. to a so called FTz or S-phonon mode localised in the adlayer (for illustration of dispersion of all three Xe adlayer modes see Fig. 4 of Ref. ). Low energy modes of the same S-character have been observed and measured also in Xe monolayers on Cu , Pt , Ag  and NaCl  surfaces. It has also been shown that a mode of this character hybridises with the substrate Rayleigh wave mode only for the two-dimensional phonon wavevectors restricted to a small region around the avoided crossing of the two dispersion curves in the first surface Brillouin zone (SBZ) where the S-mode polarisation vector is no more strictly localised in and perpendicular to the adlayer.

In their treatment of Xe overlayer phonons, KKK have assumed a rigid Gr substrate and in this approximation the S-mode remains localised in the adlayer for all phonon wavevectors in the SBZ. Their calculations predict that in Xe/Gr(0001) the vertically polarised S-mode exhibits dispersion from the value of 0.8 meV at the centre of the first SBZ up to 4.5 meV at the zone edge (see Fig 2. of Ref. ). A molecular dynamics simulation of the same system, that was also based on the assumption of a rigid substrate, was presented in Ref.  and yielded an almost dispersionless S-mode with vertical polarization, in accord with the experimental evidence. Lattice dynamics calculations of similar Xe adlayer systems, i.e. Xe/Cu(100) and Xe/Cu(111), have been presented in Ref. . There, it was found first experimentally, and then confirmed theoretically that also in these systems the adlayer S-mode is to an excellent approximation completely dispersionless. Hence, all the results pertaining to vibrations of Xe adlayers on Gr(0001) and several other substrates are at strong variance with the first finding of KKK who obtain that the S-mode in Xe/Gr(0001) exhibits strong dispersion. This type of acoustic-like dispersion is typical of the adlayer modes with longitudinal (L) and shear horizontal (SH) polarisation that couple much weaker to the scattered He atoms and hence their presence cannot explain why in the experiments of inelastic HAS from Xe/Gr(0001) surface the coupling is strongest to an almost dispersionless mode with a frequency of 3.2 meV. Hence, as a consequence of the inappropriate description of Xe adlayer in Ref. , the density of states they obtain for the S-mode displays a Debye-like behaviour (Fig 3.a of Ref. ), whereas it should follow the density of states characteristic of a flat, dispersionless mode. Thus, the mean square amplitudes of Xe atoms KKK could derive from such an inadequate density of states (Fig 3.b of Ref. ) would be generally wrong, although their magnitudes in a particular case may be close to the correct ones due to the fact that the very different models of vibrations can produce similar mean square displacements.

Although the above described erroneous premises and lattice dynamics description of Xe/Gr(0001) employed by KKK suffice to disqualify all the main conclusions of their analysis, we also show that their scattering calculation is inadequate and hence cannot provide a realistic description of the collision system He$``$Xe/Gr(0001).

KKK have used an eikonal-like semiclassical expression to calculate the scattering amplitudes in He$``$Xe/Gr(0001) collisions and in this approach the Xe/Gr(0001) surface was modelled by a corrugated hard wall without introducing Beeby’s correction to partly compensate the neglect of the potential well in front of the surface. However, the applicability of this approach suffers from two fundamental restrictions which were already noted and discussed in Ref. . First, the eikonal approximation is known to neglect the multiple scattering processes and therefore cannot be used in the cases of large surface corrugations and low projectile incident energies in which multiple scattering becomes important. Second, the calculations based on the HCW model can serve only as a rough estimate of the corrugation amplitudes and cannot be used as a tool for quantitative determinations of the surface structure and the details of interaction potential. These restrictions become especially important in the case of strongly corrugated surface profiles as is the case with the present system (see Fig. 1). In particular, if the repulsive part of He-target potential is treated as an infinitely steep wall it is known that it cannot realistically represent the features of He-target interactions. Also, since in the HCW model the attractive component of the interaction is completely neglected, this approximation cannot be expected to hold at low incident He atom energies. Even for the room temperature He beam energies (the case considered by KKK), for which $`E_i`$=63.8 meV, this approximation cannot be expected to provide reliable values for the intensities of diffraction peaks corresponding to He atoms scattered into the states with low energy in the $`z`$-direction (perpendicular to the surface). The well depth $`D`$ of the He-Xe/graphite potential is known with high precision from the studies reported in Refs.  and  and amounts to $`D=7.4`$ meV, and hence the He atoms scattered into the (50) and (60) channels (c.f. Figs. 1 and 4 of Ref.  and Fig. 2 of Ref. ) have components of energy in the $`z`$-direction of 26 meV and 9.4 meV, respectively, that are comparable to $`D`$. To remedy the shortcomings of the HCW model in applications to the He$``$Xe/Gr(0001) system, KKK have assumed the magnitudes of corrugation parameters of the HCW shape function $`\zeta (𝐑)`$ for modelling the Xe/Gr(0001) surface that are somewhat different from the best fit parameters suggested by Bracco et al. and, moreover, are inconsistent with the corrugation of the isopotential surface at 64 meV that can be constructed from the best available He-Xe gas phase binary potentials (c.f Fig. 1). Also, the HCW shape function employed by KKK in their eikonal approximation calculation of the scattering intensities, despite having the same functional form as the one given by Bracco et al., may appear as a possible source of computational errors because it is manifestly expressed in terms of the rectangular rather than oblique Cartesian coordinates introduced in Ref.  (c.f. Fig. 1 of Ref.  and inset in Fig. 2 of Ref. ).

To quantitatively substantiate the inadequacy of the scattering model on which the calculations in Refs.  and  had been based, we have performed a coupled channel calculation (CC) of the diffraction intensities for helium atom scattering from Xe/Gr(0001) surface using the realistic He-target potentials known from the literature. We treat the target as static and construct the total He-Xe/Gr(0001) potential as a sum of the pairwise He-Xe interactions known from the gas phase and the long range interaction of He with the graphite substrate. This potential is very similar to the one used by Hutson and Schwartz, and the very small differences are due to the fact that the He-Xe gas-phase potential we use is the one suggested by Cvetko et al. , whereas Hutson and Schwartz used a slightly different gas-phase He-Xe potential. The obtained total potential gives rise to the equipotential surface at 64 meV which exhibits the peak-to-peak corrugation amplitudes $`\chi _1=0.74`$ Å and $`\chi _2=0.96`$ Å in the two high symmetry directions along the surface (see inset in Fig. 1). A summary of peak-to-peak corrugation amplitudes characteristic of the HCW models of Refs.  and , of Ref. , and of the ones obtained from the present calculation is given in Table 1. Note here that in order to obtain the amplitudes given in the first row of this Table we have corrected two errors appearing in the HCW shape function $`\zeta _0(𝐑)`$ quoted in Eq. (7) of Ref. , viz. the misprinted value of the parameter $`\zeta _{10}`$ taken from Ref. , which should read $`\zeta _{10}=0.098`$ Å(c.f. Ref. ), and the role of $`x`$ and $`y`$ coordinates in the shape function of Ref.  which were here taken to have the same meaning of oblique coordinates as in Ref.  (c.f. the discussion at the end of the preceding paragraph).

The CC calculations with a static periodic potential yield intensities of the $`\delta `$-function-like diffraction peaks and in order to facilitate comparison with experiments we have broadened the calculated $`\delta `$-functions by Gaussians of width $`\sigma _{\theta _f}`$ to account for the finite energy spread of the incident beam, again given by a Gaussian of width $`\sigma _E`$. It is straightforward to show that the above Gaussian width parameters are related to each other, and for normal projectile incidence this relation reads:

$$\sigma _{\theta _f}=\frac{1}{2\mathrm{cos}\theta _f}\frac{G_f}{k_i}\frac{\sigma _E}{E_i},$$
(1)
where $`G_f`$ is the inverse lattice vector associated with a transition into a particular diffraction channel, $`k_i`$ is the projectile initial wave vector ($`k_i=\sqrt{2mE_i}/\mathrm{}`$, $`m`$ is the projectile mass) and $`\theta _f`$ is the final scattering angle with respect to the $`z`$-axis (in our calculations, we have taken $`\sigma _E/E_i=7`$ %).

In Fig. 2 we present the results of our CC calculations (full thick line in the lower panel) in comparison with the experimental data of Bracco et al.  (upper panel). As can be seen from Fig. 2, the agreement with the experimental data is very satisfactory as regards the relative intensity ratios. The calculated relative intensities are also in a very good agreement with the results of earlier calculations by Hutson and Schwartz. To illustrate the importance of the attractive component of the interaction that was completely ignored in the calculations of KKK, we also display the results of independent CC calculations in which either of the two important features associated with the existence of the potential well and modifying the multiple scattering effects is neglected, i.e. (i) the exclusion of closed channels (evanescent waves) from the CC basis, or (ii) the exclusion of attractive component of the total potential from the calculation. As can be seen from the comparison of the full and dash-dotted line in lower panel of Fig. 2, the first effect caused by the exclusion of closed channels is large for the (60) diffraction peak whose intensity turns out to be more than a factor of 2 weaker in this approximation. However, the second effect of exclusion of the attractive potential is much more important since it influences the open diffraction channels in a more profound way and not only through the closed scattering channels. This effect is demonstrated by carrying out the CC calculations in which all the Fourier components of the attractive He-Xe/Gr(0001) interaction potential are neglected. The resulting diffraction spectrum shown by the dashed line in lower panel of Fig. 2 is very different from the one obtained with the full potential and does not reproduce the experimental spectrum in any of the important aspects. This is in full accord with Ref.  where it has been shown that even small variations of the scattering potential can give rise to very large variations of the diffraction intensities. Hence, the recalculated CC-intensities that make use of the otherwise realistic He-Xe potentials with the attractive component removed produce the results which strongly differ from the ones obtained with the complete potential. This clearly demonstrates the inadequacy of the various approximate schemes based on the neglect of the effects of attractive components of the full potential in applications to He atom diffraction in the scattering regime in which the measurements reported in Ref.  were carried out. In other words, the relatively moderate differences among peak-to-peak corugation amplitudes displayed in Table 1 may be deceptive as regards the behaviour of calculated diffraction intensities because they may give rise to different effects and results in different scattering models.

The overall intensities of diffraction peaks obtained by the CC calculation with the full potential are about a factor of 10 larger than those obtained experimentally. This suggests that about 90% of He atoms in the experiment of Bracco et al. were scattered inelastically. Indeed, the experimental intensities when summed over all the measured diffraction peaks (c.f. Table 1 of Ref. ) yield only 11.2 % of the incident intensity, which means that nearly 88.8 % of the scattered He atoms end up in inelastic channels, in excellent agreement with the factor of 10 that can be deduced from comparison of the results of our calculations and experiments. Note that this also implies a multiphonon scattering regime since the mean number of phonons $`\overline{n}`$ excited in a scattering event can be estimated from $`\overline{n}_{exp}=\mathrm{ln}(I/I_0)=\mathrm{ln}(0.11)=2.21`$, where $`I`$ and $`I_0`$ are the experimental values of the total intensity scattered into the elastic channels and the incident beam intensity, respectively, and $`I/I_0`$ is the Debye-Waller factor (c.f. Ref. ). It should be pointed out that this finding is again at variance with the conclusion of Ref. , that ”the multiphonon processes can be neglected”. Namely, KKK have arrived at such a conclusion by uncritically employing Weare’s criterion for $`\overline{n}`$ in the regime in which this criterion is inapplicable (c.f. Figs. 1 and 2 in Ref. ) and, moreover, made a numerical error in their estimate. To clarify this issue we have also calculated the theoretical value $`\overline{n}_{th}`$ for the present system using the EBA multiphonon scattering formalism described in detail in Ref. . This yields $`\overline{n}_{th}=2.6`$, again in a very good agreement with the above discussed value of $`\overline{n}_{exp}`$ that can be extracted from experiments.

In summary, by making use of the available He-Xe atomic pair potentials (Ref. ) and the results of experimental investigations of the Xe/Gr(0001) surface by HAS (Refs.  and ), the coupled channel method for calculation of the diffraction intensities in thermal energy atom scattering from corrugated surfaces, and of the multiphonon scattering formalism in combination with the lattice and molecular dynamics analyses to calculate the Debye-Waller attenuation of diffraction intensities, we have demonstrated that the results and conclusions reached by the authors of Ref.  and pertaining to: (i) the dispersion of vertically polarised modes in the Xe monolayer, (ii) the properties and modelling of the He-Xe/Gr(0001) interaction with the relatively large potential well and surface corrugation profile, and (iii) the role of multiple scattering processes in thermal energy HAS from Xe/Gr(0001) surface, are either inadequate or in a complete disagreement both with the existing experimental evidence and with the theoretical assessments of the He$``$Xe/Gr(0001) collision system. The arguments which we supply to refute the conclusions reached in Ref.  show that: (i) the vertically polarised vibrational mode in Xe monolayer on Gr(0001) surface is nearly dispersionless, i.e. it is a flat S-mode which due to its low excitation frequency and perpendicular to the surface polarisation strongly couples to the scattered He atoms, (ii) the potential well depth and the surface corrugation amplitudes characteristic of the He-Xe/Gr(0001) interaction under the studied scattering conditions are large, which necessitates a self-consistent treatment of the diffraction intensities within a multiple scattering formalism (and therefore any agreement between the results of the diffraction intensity calculations of Ref.  and experimental data can be only accidental), and (iii) the multiphonon processes arising from the strong He atom-S-mode coupling play an important role in the Debye-Waller factor-induced attenuation of experimental diffraction peak intensities reported in Ref.  with which the authors of Refs.  and  have compared their calculated intensities.


format: text

text:
# Decoherence of the flux-based superconducting qubit in an integrated circuit environment

## I  INTRODUCTION

The possibility of observing quantum coherent behavior in macroscopic devices, such as superconducting circuits, was first suggested by A. J. Leggett in the mid 1980’s 1 . Since then, experimentalists have attempted to observe such behavior 2 ; 3  and, more recently, to extend the idea to a full scale quantum computer capable of executing quantum algorithms such as Shor’s algorithm 4 . Superconducting qubit types include charge qubits: created by a superposition of the number of electrons on a superconducting island 5 ; phase qubits: the superposition of energy states in a single Josephson junction 6 ; and flux qubits: the superposition of the quantity of flux threading a superconducting ring interrupted by a Josephson junction 7 . Quantum mechanical behavior has been verified in all three of these qubit systems, and experiments have shown that each system can be prepared in quantum superpositions. The coherence times which result from these environmental interactions, however, are far shorter than those predicted by current theories of open quantum systems.

Non-thermal sources of noise, such as fluctuations from room temperature laboratory control and measurement equipment and active circuit elements operating in the vicinity of the quantum device will contribute to the decoherence of the qubit in ways that are unique to different experimental configurations and methods. In this work we calculate the coherence time of a flux-based quantum bit exposed to classical noise sources consistent with those that would be found in an integrated circuit environment. We explicitly calculate the evolution of the qubit wavefunction under the influence of a Hamiltonian including environmental noise and infer decoherence times via an ensemble average of such calculations.

The future of solid state quantum computation will likely involve the integration of quantum bits onto a monolithic circuit also containing classical electronics used for quantum state preparation, manipulation and readout 4 ; 8 . For a large-scale quantum computer the classical control electronics will most likely be digital and be implemented in a well understood, robust technology such as superconducting rapid single flux quantum (RSFQ) technology. RSFQ logic is an integrated circuit family

that uses single flux quantum (SFQ) magnetic pulses as data bits. A diagram of a likely physical layout of an integrated circuit is illustrated in Fig. 1, where RSFQ digital circuitry is placed near by and inductively coupled to a rf-SQUID qubit. Unlike charge and phase based Josephson qubits, the flux based rf-SQUID qubit is inductively coupled to the environment making it susceptible to the effects of stray magnetic fields. The quantum dynamics of the rf-SQUID is exceedingly sensitive to the applied external magnetic field. The mutual inductance of the rf-SQUID qubit facilitates simple coupling procedures between qubits and classical circuitry, but also leaves the qubit vulnerable to unwanted coupling to active circuit elements integrated on the same chip. Although one clearly will attempt to shield the qubit from such stray fields these measures cannot be perfect. Furthermore, in order to be of any practical use, the flux qubits can not be completely isolated. Studies have been performed evaluating the effect of mutual inductive coupling in standard CMOS circuit technology 9 . Due to the robustness of digital logic, classical circuitry has a high level of immunity to these types of effects, contrary to quantum coherent technologies, which will be extremely sensitive to noise coupled through a mutual inductance.

Though quantum dynamics of the rf-SQUID have been verified, the macroscopic quantum coherent (MQC) oscillations of flux, predicted by A.J. Leggett 1  have not yet been directly observed due to the lack of sufficiently sensitive and fast means of measurement. By integrating the entire MQC experiment onto a monolithic circuit we believe it will be possible to create the necessary electronics to conduct the experiment. Furthermore, such chips used to perform the necessary experimental procedures can be used to explore decoherence mechanisms arising from qubit coupling to classical noise sources.

The calculation performed in the following sections models the decoherence of a rf-SQUID qubit integrated with active, classical circuitry. The effect of the classical circuits on the qubit is modeled by the inclusion of fluctuating terms in the Hamiltonian of the rf-SQUID. The classical sources of noise are characterized by Gaussian random variables with a finite bandwidth and predetermined power spectral density (PSD). The predicted qubit coherence times depend upon characteristics of the classical noise that may be measured experimentally.

## II The Decoherence Calculation

Decoherence can most easily be defined as the deviation of the behavior of a quantum mechanical system from that predicted by the Schr dinger equation for the closed quantum system. Traditionally, decoherence is defined in the context of the density matrix ($`\rho `$) representation where loss of coherence in a quantum system is indicated by the suppression of the off-diagonal elements of the density matrix. In a given basis,

$$\rho (t)=\frac{1}{N}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}|\psi _i(t)\psi _i(t)|,$$
(1)
where $`N`$ is the number of individual systems composing the ensemble about which quantum statistics are being described and $`|\psi _i(t)`$ is the state of the $`i^{th}`$ system. When the off-diagonal elements of $`\rho `$ are completely suppressed evaluation of the Schr¨dinger equation for the closed system ceases to be an accurate predition of the evolution of the state $`|\psi `$ of the open system. Decoherence models have been created to predict the time scales on which non-deterministic degrees of freedom of the environment become entangled with the qubit thereby destroying the coherence of the quantum system 10 . There is a large body of work on the decoherence of a spin-1/2 system coupled to a reservoir of harmonic oscillators 11 ; 12 . To our knowledge, however, an explicit, time-dependent calculation of the evolution of a flux-based qubit including the effects of a noisy environment has not been completed.

Two distinguishable decoherence mechanisms contribute to the suppression of the off-diagonal elements of $`\rho `$. Relaxation is associated with an increase or reduction of the expectation value of the energy. Dephasing is an adiabatic process whereby the phase of the system wavefunction becomes randomized. Dephasing typically occurs on a much shorter timescale than relaxation 13 .

The Hamiltonian for the rf-SQUID, derived in 1 , is given by,

$$H=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2C}\frac{^2}{\mathrm{\Phi }^2}+\frac{\left(\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Phi }_x\right)^2}{2L}\frac{I_c\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2\pi }\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{2\pi \mathrm{\Phi }}{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\right).$$
(2)
In this equation $`C`$ is the capacitance of the Josephson junction, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_x`$ is the magnetic flux applied to the device externally and $`L`$ is the loop inductance. The independent variable, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is the flux threading the superconducting loop. The first term represents the kinetic energy of the SQUID, while the second and third terms constitute the potential energy of the superconducting inductor and Josephson junction, respectively.

The qubit potential has two independent degrees of freedom, the height of the barrier separating the two minima, and the relative depth of the two minima. The Hamiltonian can be rewritten in a form similar to that of a two-state system as,

$$H_{tss}=\frac{\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Delta }}{2}\sigma _x+\frac{ϵ}{2}\sigma _z,$$
(3)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the tunnelling matrix element, and $`ϵ`$ is the difference in energy between the ground states of the two wells. The operators $`\sigma _x`$ and $`\sigma _z`$ are Pauli matrices. In principle these two degrees of freedom are separable, and can be considered independently. In a laboratory setting, however, they are subject to the same environmental influences and should be considered simultaneously when examining decoherence. The flux states of the system correspond to the eigenstates of $`\sigma _z`$. In this basis fluctuations in the barrier height are referred to as $`\sigma _x`$ fluctuations because they modulate the energy level spacing and fluctuations in the relative depths of the wells are called $`\sigma _z`$ fluctuations. When the flux bias deviates from $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2`$ by greater than $`10^4\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$, the energy and flux basis states are nearly the same. However, when the system is flux biased at exactly $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2`$ the energy bases are non-local in flux; there is finite probability of finding the flux in either well. Traditionally, $`\sigma _z`$ fluctuations are considered to be the most destructive to the coherence of a system. In a typical experiment, the single rf-SQUID junction is replaced by a double junction loop of small self-inductance. This added inductance will promote coupling between the environmental fluctuations and $`\sigma _x`$ degree of freedom in the system. The contribution to dephasing from $`\sigma _x`$ and $`\sigma _z`$ degrees of freedom will depend on the ratio of the self-inductances of the junction loop and SQUID loop, respectively. Reducing the junction loop inductance will allow $`\sigma _x`$ dephasing to be ignored.

As stated earlier, the calculation performed in this paper is an explicit solution of the time-dependant Schr dinger equation. Previous calculations of the decoherence of a rf-SQUID have focused on modeling the interaction of the environment as a continuous weak measurement 14  or by reducing the problem to a two-state system and using the spin-boson formalism 12 ; 15 . The shortcomings of these models are that they approximate the effect of a general environment on the system, but do not accurately reflect the dominant sources of noise in a circuit environment. For example, the spin-boson formalism reduces the qubit to a system with only two energy levels and models the interaction between the qubit and environment as bilateral, in that the state of the qubit affects the state of the environment. In an integrated circuit environment the back action of the qubit on the sources of the fluctuating fields is insignificant.

The illustration in Fig. 1 depicts an RSFQ integrated circuit, consisting of resistors and superconducting inductors and Josephson junctions near a rf-SQUID qubit. The magnetic data pulses that propagate through the RSFQ circuit will inductively couple flux to the qubit perturbing the otherwise constant external flux bias; it is necessary to determine the magnitude of these decoherence causing fluctuations. Stray magnetic flux coupled to the qubit from the RSFQ circuitry is determined by the magnitude of the current pulses in nearby RSFQ circuits and the mutual inductance ($`M`$) between the circuits and qubit. A typical estimate for $`M`$ when the circuit and qubit are $`20\mu m`$ apart is on the order of $`10fH`$. A SFQ data pulse passing through a superconducting inductor of typical size in RSFQ circuits has a peak amplitude of approximately $`150\mu A`$ and a duration of $`24ps`$. With these parameters the excess flux coupled to the qubit is $`720\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_0`$. An analysis of the decoherence effects in such a situation follows.

The effect of a large number of nearby RSFQ circuits, each passing SFQ pulses at seemingly random times from the point of view of the qubit, may be represented by introducing a random component to the flux in the vicinity of the qubit. Thus, our calculation was performed by introducing noise terms directly into the Hamiltonian, Eq. 2, and then solving the time-dependant Schr dinger equation with the random Hamiltonian. The rf-SQUID can be perturbed by the flux environment in two ways: the external flux bias applied to the qubit can deviate from $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2`$, or magnetic flux can couple to the Josephson junction thereby changing the effective $`I_c`$. As shown earlier the influence of the fluctuations of the applied flux bias, $`\sigma _z`$ noise, dominates the effect of qubit junction critical current fluctuations, the $`\sigma _x`$ noise. Therefore a random term was added to in the Hamiltonian and the evolution of the qubit was computed. The initial wavefunction, $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_0`$, used in the calculation was determined by the ground state of the system with slightly less than $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2`$ applied flux. At milliKelvin temperatures the system will completely relax to this state. $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_0`$ is then projected onto the basis functions of the symmetric double well potential. The state of the system is nearly a pure superposition of the ground and first excited state of the symmetric potential. There are, however, excitations of higher lying states that are small but nonetheless included in the calculation.

The time evolution of the system is determined using a time varying propagator operating on the wavefunction,

$$|\psi _m(t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)=exp(iH_m(t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)\mathrm{\Delta }t)|\psi _m(t),$$
(4)
where $`H_m(t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ is the Hamiltonian of the system with $`\mathrm{\Phi }_x(t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ and $`I_c(t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$ ; we also chose $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ to be $`100ps`$, much shorter than the period of the MQC oscillations. At each time step the wave function $`|\psi _m(t)`$ is projected onto the basis states of the new Hamiltonian $`H_m(t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$, which are determined before the calculation and stored in a look up table, and then evolved through time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ to produce the new wavefunction, $`|\psi _m(t+\mathrm{\Delta }t)`$. The result for short time-scales is a randomization of the phase of the coherent oscillations of the flux. On a longer time-scales the populations of the energy levels will deviate from those of $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_0`$. Since the loss of phase coherence occurs on a shorter time-scale that is the dominant form of decoherence and thus will be the subject of this work.

In order to calculate the dephasing time of the MQC oscillations in the fluctuating potential the simulation described above is repeated many times, and the separate results are averaged as shown in Eq. 1. An experimental technique similar to the one described here was used in 16  to measure the phase stability of classical oscillators. For our calculation we used $`N=50`$. For each trial the phase of the oscillations becomes unpredictable after some period of time. Thus averaging over a large number of random phases leads to the vanishing of the off-diagonal elements of the density matrix in Eq. 1.

A set of $`N`$ evolutions was performed and summed for each value of

flux noise variance, and the results are plotted in the surface plot of Fig. 2. The bandwidth of the noise in Fig. 2 is $`4GHz`$. To quantify the dephasing time resulting from each value of flux noise variance, the damped sinusoid resulting from the set of N evolutions was fit to a function of the form,

$$P(t)=exp(D_\varphi t)cos(\omega _0t+\pi ),$$
(5)
where $`\omega _0`$ is the resonant frequency of the tunnelling flux, which is also equal to the energy splitting between the ground and first excited states. The value of the dephasing time constant, $`D_\varphi `$, for each value of flux noise variance was

determined using a least squares fit to the data obtained in Fig. 2. Fig. 3 shows the plot of $`D_\varphi `$ as a function of the flux noise variance, $`\sigma _\varphi `$, applied to the qubit. From the graph in Fig. 3 the relation between $`D_\varphi `$ and the variance is $`D_\varphi =3.6310^4\left(\sigma _\varphi \right)^2`$ (1/ns), where $`\sigma _\varphi `$ is in units of $`\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_0`$. Since $`\sigma _\varphi ^2=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}S_\mathrm{\Phi }(\omega )𝑑\omega `$, $`D_\varphi `$ is linearly proportional to the amplitude of the power spectral density of the environmental flux noise at a given bandwidth. Fig. 2 shows that if the flux noise variance is increased above approximately $`10\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_0`$ , then the coherence of the qubit lasts less than $`20ns`$. From the physical scenario described above, it is evident that $`M`$ must be reduced by at least two orders of magnitude, to below $`.1fH`$, in order for the excess flux to be reduced to these levels and for acceptable coherence times to be achieved.

An analysis was also performed to measure the dependence of $`D_\varphi `$ on the bandwidth of the noise signal. It was seen that if the noise is bandlimited to a cutoff frequency, $`\omega _c`$, below $`\omega _0`$, then $`D_\varphi `$ varies approximately linearly with the noise bandwidth. If $`\omega _c\omega _0`$, $`D_\varphi `$ is nearly independent of the bandwidth of the noise signal. When the noise is bandlimited so that $`\omega _c\omega _0`$ the frequency of the oscillations is no longer $`\omega _0`$ due to the fact that on the timescales in question noise bandlimited below $`\omega _0`$ can no longer be considered white, and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Phi }_x}\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2}`$. This yields a noticeable increase in the coherent tunnelling frequency of the system. At noise frequencies greater than $`\omega _0`$ the noise can be considered white and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Phi }_x}=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{2}`$ over the 35 ns time scale of the simulation. At large noise frequencies the dephasing rate, $`D_\varphi `$, is dependent primarily on the variance of the flux noise and nearly independent of the bandwidth of the noise. In an integrated circuit environment, especially one operating at GHz speeds, the bandwidth of the noise created by the circuitry will certainly exceed that of $`\omega _0`$, which in this case is approximately 280 MHz.

## III Conclusions

The ultimate goal of integrating classical electronics with coherent quantum circuitry is to efficiently prepare and manipulate the coherent states of the qubits. This will require that classical circuitry, such as RSFQ, be placed in close proximity to the quantum coherent bits in order to provide the necessary interaction, which in this case is inductive. Unwanted interactions between unintentionally coupled classical circuitry and qubits will no doubt exist and it must be determined what effect that will have on the coherence time of the qubits. We have calculated that for current RSFQ technology there is a threshold value for the mutual inductance between RSFQ circuitry and a qubit of approximately $`0.1fH`$ below which qubit coherence times may persist for longer than $`20ns`$.

We have used an explicit formulation of the Hamiltonian of the rf-SQUID in a noisy environment in order to determine a realistic value for the dephasing time in an integrated circuit environment. Moreover, the parameter that accounts for the loss of coherence in this model, the flux noise variance, is easily measured by incorporating a dc-SQUID magnetometer in the vicinity of the qubit. The approach presented here for estimating the coherence time of a rf-SQUID qubit is not intended as a general model of decoherence for two-state systems. Rather it provides an explicit model from which coherence times of rf-SQUID qubits may be estimated based upon experimentally measurable quantities. Models such as this one coupled with measurements of the flux noise at the location of the qubit will help quantum computer architects design large scale computers capable of executing the algorithms for which they were originally intended.

## IV AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Supported in part by AFOSR grant F49620-01-1-0457 funded under the Department of Defense University Research Initiative on Nanotechnology (DURINT) program and by the ARDA. J.L.H. is supported by a NASA GSRP fellowship.


text:
# Isovector Giant Dipole Resonance of Stable Nuclei in a Consistent Relativistic Random Phase Approximation

Phone Number: ++86-10-8823-6167

Fax Number: ++86-10-8823-3085

E-mail: caolg@mail.ihep.ac.cn

## Abstract

A fully consistent relativistic random phase approximation is applied to study the systematic behavior of the isovector giant dipole resonance of nuclei along the $`\beta `$-stability line in order to test the effective Lagrangians recently developed. The centroid energies of response functions of the isovector giant dipole resonance for stable nuclei are compared with the corresponding experimental data and the good agreement is obtained. It is found that the effective Lagrangian with an appropriate nuclear symmetry energy, which can well describe the ground state properties of nuclei, could also reproduce the isovector giant dipole resonance of nuclei along the $`\beta `$-stability line.

The investigation both experimentally and theoretically on various modes of nuclear collective giant resonances has become one of major research fields in the nuclear structure physics since the isovector electric (non-spin flip) giant dipole resonance (IV GDR) had been investigated firstly by Baldwin and KlailerBal47  at the end of 1940’s. The isoscalar electric giant monopole resonance (IS GMR) in heavy nuclei is a unique direct source of experimental information on the compression modulus and the equation of state. The electric giant dipole resonance (GDR) and giant quadrupole resonance (GQR) are relevant to the symmetry energy coefficient and effective mass of nucleon, respectively. Much is already known about the electric giant resonance, especially for the isoscalar GMR, GQR and isovector GDR in cold nuclei, where exist extensive data sets on the excitation energy, strength distribution and width. The systematic behavior of the isovector GDR was reviewed by Berman and FultzBer75  in 1975. The latest one was given by SpethSpe90  in 1991. On the other hand, many theoretical works have been done to understand the physics mechanism of various collective vibrations. Furthermore, by comparing with the experimental data, one can test the microscopic theory and effective interactions which are used to reproduce the experimental data. One of the effective methods used to study properties of the giant resonance is the random phase approximation (RPA).

In recent years, the relativistic mean field (RMF) theory with non-linear meson self-interactions has achieved a great success in describing bulk properties of nuclei, not only spherical but also deformed nuclei and nuclei far from the $`\beta `$-stability lineRing96 . In particular, the RMF theory has also been applied in studying the dynamical processes of nuclei. The linear response of a system to an external field can be calculated in the relativistic RPA. Early investigations using the relativistic RPAKur85 ; Hui89 ; She89  were based on Walecka’s linear $`\sigma `$-$`\omega `$ models, which provides considerably larger incompressibilitySer86 . Therefore, one could not expect to obtain quantitative agreement with experimental data in those early calculations. Recently the meson propagators with non-linear self-interactions have been worked out numerically and the relativistic RPA calculations with the non-linear terms were performed Ma97 ; MTG97 ; GMT99 . A fully consistent relativistic RPA has been established in the sense that the relativistic mean field wave function of nucleus and particle-hole residual interactions in the relativistic RPA are calculated from a same effective LagrangianMa99 ; MGR01 . A consistent treatment of relativistic RPA within the RMF approximation requires the configurations including not only the pairs formed from the occupied Fermi states and unoccupied states but also the pairs formed from the Dirac states and occupied Fermi states. It has been formally proved RGM01  that the fully consistent relativistic RPA is equivalent to the time dependent RMF (TDRMF) at the small amplitude limit Vre99 ; Lal97 . The response functions for the closed shell nuclei Ma99 ; MGR01  have been calculated using the fully consistent relativistic RPA. The isoscalar GMR, GQR and isovector GDR for some double magic nuclei, such as 208Pb, 144Sm, 114Sn, 90Zr were performed with different effective Lagrangian parameter sets NL3Lal97 , NL1Rei86 , NL-SHSha93 , and TM1Sug94 . A good agreement with experimental data is obtainedMCG01 .

In this letter, we aim at the investigation on the systematic behavior of the isovector GDR in $`\beta `$-stable nuclei by focusing our attention to the centroid energies of response functions. By evaluating various moments of the response functions, we extract the centroid energies of response functions for each nucleus and compare with the available experimental data and discuss the systematic behavior. The method employed in our investigation is the fully consistent relativistic RPAMa97 ; MTG97 ; GMT99 , which is a relativistic extension of non-relativistic RPA for studying microscopically nuclear dynamic excitations and giant resonances. The motivation of this work is to test the effective Lagrangians recently developed in a more wide case. We shall investigate the electric GDR relevant to the symmetry energy coefficient.

The response function of a quantum system to an external field is given by the imaginary part of the polarization operator,

$$R^L(Q,Q;𝐤,𝐤^{};E)=\frac{1}{\pi }Im\mathrm{\Pi }^R(Q,Q;𝐤,𝐤^{};E),$$
(1)
where Q is an external field operator. The relativistic RPA polarization operator is obtained by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation,

$`\mathrm{\Pi }(Q,Q;𝐤,𝐤^{},E)=\mathrm{\Pi }_0(Q,Q;𝐤,𝐤^{},E)`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}g_i^2{\displaystyle d^3k_1d^3k_2\mathrm{\Pi }_0(Q,\mathrm{\Gamma }^i;𝐤,𝐤_1,E)}`$
$`D_i(𝐤_1,𝐤_2,E)\mathrm{\Pi }(\mathrm{\Gamma }_i,Q;𝐤_2,𝐤^{},E),`$ (2)
where the i runs all mesons. In order to obtain the centroid energies of the response functions, we first calculate various moments of the response function in a given energy interval,

$$m_k=_0^{E_{max}}R^L(E^{^{}})E^{}_{}{}^{}k𝑑E^{^{}},$$
(3)
Emax is the maximum excitation energy, which is carried out till 60 MeV in the present calculations. From those moments, then, we can define the centroid energy of the response function,

$$\overline{E}=m_1/m_0.$$
(4)
We apply the fully consistent relativistic RPA to the collective excitations, especially in the isovector GDR mode. The isovector dipole operator is $`Q=\gamma ^0rY_{10}\tau _0`$, which excites an $`L=1`$ type electric (spin-non-flip) ($`\mathrm{\Delta }T=1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }S=0`$) giant resonance with spin and parity $`J^\pi =1^{}`$. The response functions of the nuclear system to the external operator are calculated at the limit of a small momentum transfer. It is also necessary to include the space-like parts of vector mesons in the relativistic RPA calculations, although they do not play role on the ground stateMGR01 . The self-consistent treatment guarantees the conservation of the vector current.

First, we show nuclear matter properties: incompressibility $`K_{\mathrm{}}`$, effective mass $`M^{}/M`$, and symmetry energy $`a_{asy}`$ in Table I, which are calculated in the RMF with various non-linear parameter sets: NL-SH, TM1, NL3, and NL1. The calculated centroid energies of the isovector GDR in the relativistic RPA with those non-linear models for some double closed shell nuclei: 208Pb, 116Sn, 90Zr, and 40Ca are also listed in Table I. We also compare the calculated values with the corresponding experimental data. It is found that the relativistic RPA with those effective interactions can to a great extent give a good description of the experimental results for the centroid energies of the isovector GDR. According to the macroscopic hydrodynamics modelsGold47  the restoring force of the giant dipole mode is proportional to the symmetry energy of nuclear system. Although the nuclear symmetry energies for the four parameter sets vary from 43.6 MeV to 36.1 MeV, all of them give more or less reasonable centroid energies of the isovector GDR once they could well describe ground state properties of nuclei. The results of the centroid energy of the isovector GDR do not show a strong relationship between excited energies of GDR and the nuclear symmetry energy. Actually, even the symmetry energy at saturation density is not well constrained experimentally. Recently, it is reportedVre03  theoretically that the nuclear matter symmetry energy at saturation density (volume asymmetry) can be located in the range of 32 MeV $``$ a4 $``$ 36 MeV based on effective Lagrangians with density-dependent meson-nucleon vertex function in the framework of RMF theory. Up to now the density dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy is still under investigation by various theoretical approachesSat02 ; Tod03 .

We also apply the relativistic RPA to make a systematic investigation on isovector dipole mode for stable nuclei along $`\beta `$-stability line. It is known that the best results have been obtained with the NL3 effective interaction for ground state properties as well as the collective giant resonance. Therefore, we shall employ the NL3 effective interaction to perform the relativistic RPA calculations for response functions of isovector dipole mode. In our investigation we consider even-even, odd and odd-odd nuclei, which are stable against $`\beta `$-decay in a wide range of mass number $`12<A<240`$. There are more than 130 nuclei under our investigation, including spherical, deformed, and some stable isotope nuclei. In our calculations a spherical symmetry is assumed to simplify the relativistic RPA calculations, because most of nuclei we are dealing with are of closed shell or sub-closed shell, even are open shell. For some open-shell nuclei the last single particle level is partially occupied, the excitation of a deeper state to this partially occupied state is allowed. In order to take account of such excitations, an average assumption is adopted and each wave function is multiplied by its occupation factorMTC97 .

The centroid energies of the isovector GDR for nuclei along $`\beta `$-stability line as a function of nuclear mass number are plotted in Fig.1. The theoretical results calculated with the parameter set NL3 in this work are indicated by stars. The solid-circles represent the experimental data, which are taken from Ref.Ber75 . It is noted that some heavy nuclei with mass number located in the region of $`150<A<200`$ as well as some light nuclei are deformed nuclei. The response functions of the isovector GDR for deformed nuclei are split into two peaks due to the fact that the vibration frequencies along the long-axis and the short-axis are different. The experimental centroid energies given in Fig.1 for those deformed nuclei are the average value of that two excited energiesBer75 . As can be seen from the figure, the theoretical results calculated with parameter set NL3 agree with the experimental data perfectly not only for heavy nuclei but also for medium-weight nuclei. For light nuclei with mass number is less than 40, the theoretical result is not in a good agreement with experimental data. In fact, the distributions of response functions of isovector GDR for those nuclei are very fragmented and less collectivity, it is difficult to extract the centroid energies of isovector dipole mode experimentally. This might be the reason of difference between theoretical and experimental results for light nuclei.

On the other hand, the peak energy of the isovector GDR has been predicted by various collective models of giant resonances to be proportional either to $`A^{1/3}`$ or $`A^{1/6}`$. However, it is found experimentally that the excited energy can be well described by the relationship combined between $`A^{1/3}`$ and $`A^{1/6}`$, read as,

$$E_m=31.2A^{1/3}+20.6A^{1/6}.$$
(5)
In Fig.1, we give the result calculated by eq(5), which is plotted by a solid curve. At the same time, we also show the curve calculated by the systematic behavior, $`E_m=79A^{1/3}`$, which is failed to describe the experimental data for the medium and light nuclei as can be seen in the figure.

In a summary, we have studied the isovector GDR for some double closed shell nuclei: 208Pb, 116Sn, 90Zr, and 40Ca in a fully consistent relativistic RPA with different effective Lagrangians recently developed. By compare the centroid energies of those nuclei with experimental data, it is found that the parameter set NL3 can perform a good description on the properties of isovector GDR. The centroid energies of nuclei along $`\beta `$-stability line calculated with the parameter set NL3 are compared with corresponding experimental data and make a systematic investigation. The general conclusion is that the effective Lagrangian with an appropriate nuclear symmetry energy, which can well describe the ground state properties of nuclei, could also reproduce the isovector giant dipole resonances of nuclei along the $`\beta `$-stability line.

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 10075080 and 10275094, and Major State Basic Research Development Programme in China under Contract No G2000077400. One of the authors (CAO) wishes to thank Prof. Zhang Zong-ye and Prof. Yu You-wen for many stimulating discussions and Prof. Su Zong Di for supplying us with the experimental data.


text:
# Signatures of QCD Phase Transition in a Newborn Compact Star

## 1 Introduction

The Bodmer-Witten proposal that symmetric deconfined u,d,s-quark matter may be the absolute ground state of matter and forms the so-called strange stars (Bodmer, 1971; Witten, 1984) has aroused much interest, and the properties of strange stars have been widely studied (Alcock, 1986; Cheng, 1998a; Farhi, 1984; Glendenning, 1996; Haensel, 1986). An important question is whether the observed compact stars are neutron stars or strange stars. One possibility to distinguish the two is to study their cooling curves, which are significantly different (Weber, 1999; Ng, 2003; Usov, 1998, 2001, 2002).

In this paper, we study the effects of the Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD) phase transition on the cooling of a compact star and possible signatures of the quark phase. Regardless of the validity of the Bodmer-Witten proposal, the formation of quark-gluon plasma should be favoured in high temperature and density (Shuryak, 1988); we therefore suggest that a strange star may be formed just after a supernova explosion, in which both conditions are satisfied (Benvenuto, 1999). Because the initial temperature is so high (Petschek, 1990) $`T_i40\mathrm{M}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$, the initial compact star is likely to be a bare strange star (Usov, 2001). When it cools down to the phase transition temperature $`T_p`$, the quark matter becomes energetically unstable compared to nuclear matter, and the strange star will convert to a neutron star. The conversion energy released during this QCD phase transition can be of the order $`10^{53}`$ erg. The temperature drops drastically at the completion of the phase transition, which is accompanied by the emission of a second neutrino burst due to the higher neutrino emissivity of neutron matter.

In Section 2, we will first present the equation of state (EOS) that we use in the calculation for the quark phase. This is then followed by a discussion of the stability properties of strange stars in Section 3. Section 4 is devoted to the study of the phase transition scenario, which is fixed once the EOS’s are chosen. We then discuss the cooling processes of strange stars in Section 5, and the results of our calculation are presented in Section 6. We summarize in Section 7.

## 2 COLD EQUATION OF STATE FROM PERTURBATIVE QCD

Lattice QCD calculation of $`T_p`$ is highly uncertain at high chemical potential, but the latest results (Allton, 2002) indicate, though with relatively large uncertainties at high chemical potential, that $`T_p`$ drops from its zero density value of 140 MeV to about 50 MeV at 1.5 times nuclear matter density $`\rho _0=0.17\text{ fm}^3`$ and down to a few MeV for density a few times $`\rho _0`$. Some previous proto-neutron star evolution calculations indeed show that it is feasible to reach the phase transition in supernovae (Benvenuto, 1999). While there are still large uncertainties in both high density QCD and the proto-neutron star evolution, we believe it is worthwhile studying the possible consequences of the QCD phase transition in supernovae. We assume a constant $`T_p`$ in the star and present results for $`T_p=1,10`$ MeV for comparison. We adopt the simple picture that matter at temperature above (below) $`T_p`$ is in the quark (hadronic) phase.

To study the properties of quark matter, various EOS’s have been used. The MIT Bag model is most widely used due to its simple analytic form (Alcock, 1986). Here we follow Fraga $`et`$ $`al.`$ (Fraga, 2001) and use the EOS derived from perturbative QCD for cold, dense quark matter up to second order in the strong coupling constant $`\alpha _s`$. $`\alpha _s`$ becomes small in the high density limit, with a value of about 0.4 in the relevant density regime. It turns out that this EOS is very similar to the MIT Bag model EOS, with an effective Bag constant (Fraga, 2001), and we would have obtained basically the same results using the latter. None of our results in the cooling calculation depends on the validity of perturbative QCD in compact star regime.

All thermodynamic properties can be obtained from the thermodynamic potential $`\mathrm{\Omega }(\mu )`$, where $`\mu `$ is the chemical potential. At zero quark mass limit, the number densities of u, d, s quarks are the same, and hence charge neutrality is automatically satisfied, without any need of electrons. The zero temperature perturbative QCD thermodynamic potential has been calculated up to order $`\alpha _s^2`$ (Freedman, 1978; Baluni, 1978) in the modified minimal subtraction scheme (Baluni, 1978):

$$\mathrm{\Omega }(\mu )=\frac{N_f\mu ^4}{4\pi ^2}\left\{12\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_s\left[G+N_f\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_s+\beta _0\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\right]\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_{s}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\right\},$$
(1)
where $`\beta _0=112N_f/3`$, $`N_f`$ is the number of quark flavors, $`G=G_0+N_f(\mathrm{ln}N_f0.536)`$, $`G_0=10.374\pm 0.13`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_s\alpha _s/\pi `$, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\mathrm{\Lambda }/\mu `$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ being the renormalization subtraction point, and

$$\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_s(\mathrm{\Lambda })=\frac{4}{\beta _0u}\left\{1\stackrel{~}{\beta }_1\mathrm{ln}u+\stackrel{~}{\beta }_1^2\left[\left(\mathrm{ln}u\frac{1}{2}\right)^2+\stackrel{~}{\beta }_2\frac{5}{4}\right]\right\},$$
(2)
with $`u=\mathrm{ln}(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\overline{MS}}^2)`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\overline{MS}}=365`$ MeV, $`\beta _1=5119N_f/3`$, $`\beta _2=2857325N_f^2/27`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\beta }_1=2\beta _1/\beta _0^2u`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\beta }_2=\beta _2\beta _0/8\beta _1^2`$. It is believed that $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ lies in the range between 2 and 3 (Fraga, 2001). Both the first and second order terms decrease the pressure of the strange quark matter relative to the ideal gas. The pressure depends weakly on the strange quark mass $`m_s`$, changing only by less than 5% for $`m_s`$ up to 150 MeV (Wong, 2003). We will therefore use the massless EOS in the calculation.

## 3 STABILITY OF STRANGE QUARK MATTER

The structure of a static, non-rotating and spherically symmetric strange star can be calculated by solving the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkov (TOV) equations together with the EOS (Glendenning, 1996). A strange star can be stable even at zero temperature if its binding energy is larger than that of a neutron star with the same baryonic mass, which is indeed the case for $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ around 2.7 (see Table I), for several commonly used neutron star EOS’s (Weber, 1999). We are however interested in the possibility that strange quark matter is only stable for $`T>T_p`$, and so we choose a $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}<2.7`$, so that when the hot strange star cools to low temperature, it will convert to a neutron star. For $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=2.473`$, the maximum gravitational mass is $`1.516M_{}`$ with a baryonic mass of $`1.60M_{}`$ and radius $`8.54`$ km. We will use this set of parameters in the calculation of the cooling behaviour because the maximum mass is close to observational data of compact stars. In fact, we have also used other values of $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$, and the cooling behavior is qualitatively similar, as long as the star undergoes a phase transition.

## 4 PHASE TRANSITION FROM STRANGE STARS TO NEUTRON STARS

It has long been suggested that strange stars can be formed from a phase transition of neutron stars to strange stars due to an abrupt increase in density (Cheng, 1996, 1998b). However, from the theoretical point of view, formation of quark-gluon plasma is favoured when both temperature and chemical potential are high enough (Shuryak, 1988). We propose that strange stars are formed in supernovae where both the temperature and density are high, with initial temperature (Petschek, 1990) $`T_i40\mathrm{M}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}>T_p`$. The star then cools to $`T_p`$ and hadronizes into a neutron star containing ordinary baryons. This is just the same scenario believed to occur in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions (Shuryak, 1988). If the baryonic mass $`M_B`$ is conserved during the phase transition, the total conversion energy $`E_{\text{conv}}`$ released is:

$$E_{\text{conv}}=[M_G(\mathrm{SS})M_G(\mathrm{NS})]c^2,$$
(3)
where $`M_G(\mathrm{SS})`$ and $`M_G(\mathrm{NS})`$ are the gravitational masses of the strange star and neutron star respectively (Bombaci, 2000). Whether a phase transition can occur and how much energy is released depend on both the EOS’s of quark matter and nuclear matter. We choose several commonly used neutron star EOS’s, $`M_G=1.40M_{}`$ (Weber, 1999), and the conversion energy for different $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ are summarized in Table I. For $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=2.473`$, typically $`10^{53}`$ erg is released during the conversion process, which depends only weakly on the nuclear matter EOS.

## 5 COOLING PROPERTIES

The surface of a newborn strange star is so hot that all the materials, other than quark matter, are evaporated leaving the strange star nearly bare without any crust (Usov, 2001). Since the thermal conductivity of strange matter is high and the density profile of the strange star is very flat, we take the uniform temperature and density approximation. The strange star cools according to:

$$C_q\frac{dT}{dt}=L_q,$$
(4)
where $`C_q`$ is the total heat capacity of all the species in quark matter, and $`L_q`$ is the total luminosity of the star. When the temperature drops to $`T_p`$, the star undergoes a phase transition releasing a conversion energy $`E_{\text{conv}}`$.

During the phase transition, we assume that the quark and neutron matter are distributed uniformly and calculate the luminosity of the mixed phase by the weighted average of those of the quark matter and the neutron matter (Lattimer, 1991; Wong, 2003). When the strange star has converted completely to a neutron star, it then follows the standard cooling of a neutron star with an initial temperature of $`T_p`$.

The detailed thermal evolution is governed by several energy transport equations. We adopt a simple model that a neutron star has a uniform temperature core with high conductivity and two layers of crust, the inner crust and the outer crust, which transport heat not as effectively as the core or quark matter. The typical thickness of the crust is $`10\%`$ of the radius, and we can use the parallel-plane approximation to describe the thermal evolution of the inner crust. The thermal history of the inner crust can be described by a heat conduction equation:

$$c_{\text{crust}}\frac{T}{t}=\frac{}{r}\left(K\frac{T}{r}\right)ϵ_\nu ,$$
(5)
where $`c_{\text{crust}}`$ is the specific heat of the inner crust, $`K`$ is the effective thermal conductivity, and $`ϵ_\nu `$ is the neutrino emissivity. As a rule of thumb, the effective surface temperature $`T_e`$ and the temperature at the interface of inner and outer crust, $`T_b`$, are related by (Gudmundsson, 1983):

$$T_{b8}=1.288(T_{s6}^4/g_{s14})^{0.455},$$
(6)
where $`g_{s14}`$ is the surface gravity in the unit of $`10^{14}`$ cm $`\text{s}^2`$, $`T_{b8}`$ is the temperature between the inner and outer crusts in the unit of $`10^8`$ K, and $`T_{s6}`$ is the effective surface temperature in the unit of $`10^6`$ K. The luminosity at the stellar surface, $`L_{\text{surface}}`$, is equal to the heat flux at the interface of inner and outer crusts:

$$K\frac{T}{r}=L_{\text{surface}}/(4\pi R^2),$$
(7)
where $`R`$ is the radius of the star. The boundary condition at the interface of the core and inner crust is:

$$C_{\text{core}}\frac{T}{t}=K\frac{T}{r}A_{\text{core}}L_\nu ^{\text{core}},$$
(8)
where $`C_{\text{core}}`$ is the total heat capacity of the core, $`A_{\text{core}}`$ is the surface area of the core, and $`L_\nu ^{\text{core}}`$ is the total neutrino luminosity of the core.

### 5.1 Heat capacity of quark stars

The total heat capacity is the sum of the heat capacities of all species in the star. Without the effect of superfluidity, the quark matter can be considered as a free Fermi gas, with a specific heat (Iwamoto, 1980) $`c_q=2.5\times 10^{20}\stackrel{~}{\rho }^{2/3}T_9\text{ erg cm}^3\text{ K}^1`$, where $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ is the baryon density in units of $`\rho _0`$ and $`T_9T/10^9`$ K. In the superfluid state, the specific heat is modified as (Horvath, 1991; Maxwell, 1979):

$$c_q^{\text{sf}}=3.15c_qe^{\frac{1.76}{\stackrel{~}{T}}}\left[\frac{2.5}{\stackrel{~}{T}}1.66+3.64\stackrel{~}{T}\right],\text{for }\stackrel{~}{T}1,$$
(9)
where $`\stackrel{~}{T}=T/T_c`$, $`k_BT_c=\mathrm{\Delta }/1.76`$, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the energy gap in MeV. It has been argued that for quark matter, even with unequal quark masses, in the Color-Flavor Locked (CFL) phase in which all the three flavors and colors are paired, quark matter is automatically charge neutral and no electrons are required (Rajagopal, 2001). However, for sufficiently large strange quark mass and the relatively low density regime near the star surface, the 2 color-flavor SuperConductor (2SC) phase is preferred. Therefore in a real strange star, electrons should be present. The contribution of electrons can be parametrized by the electron fraction $`Y_e`$ which depends on the model of strange stars. We choose $`Y_e=0.001`$ as a typical value. The specific heat capacity of electrons in the strange star is given by (Ng, 2003) $`c_e=1.7\times 10^{20}\left(Y_e\stackrel{~}{\rho }\right)^{2/3}T_9\text{ erg cm}^3\text{ K}^1`$, which is unaffected by the superfluidity of quark matter. Hence it dominates the total heat capacity of the strange star when the temperature drops below $`T_c`$.

### 5.2 Luminosity of quark stars

The total luminosity is the sum of all the energy emission mechanisms, including photon and neutrino emission. The dominating neutrino emission mechanism is the quark URCA process, with emissivity (Iwamoto, 1980):

$$ϵ_d2.2\times 10^{26}\alpha _s\left(\stackrel{~}{\rho }\right)Y_e^{1/3}T_9^6\text{ erg cm}^3\text{s}^1,$$
(10)
and we have chosen $`\alpha _s=0.4`$ as a constant value throughout the quark star. In the superfluid state, the neutrino emissivity is suppressed by a factor of $`\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{\Delta }/T)`$.

It has been pointed out that the bare surface of a strange star is a powerful source of $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs due to the strong surface electric field (Usov, 1998). We adopt the $`e^+e^{}`$ pair luminosity given in (Usov, 2001) for our calculation. We also include the thermal equilibrium and non-equilibrium blackbody radiation in our calculation using standard treatment (Alcock, 1986; Usov, 2001); the contribution of the latter is small compared to other mechanisms at high temperature. Once the temperature drops, the cooling is dominated by the relatively low power non-equilibrium blackbody radiation, as long as the star is still in the quark phase.

### 5.3 Microphysics of the neutron star

There are many different models of neutron star cooling. We adopt the one described by Ng (Ng, 2003; Maxwell, 1979). The neutrino emission mechanisms are the direct URCA processes (Lattimer, 1991), the electron-proton Coulomb scattering in the crust (Festa, 1969), and the neutrino bremsstrahlung (Ng, 2003). The surface luminosity will be of the blackbody radiation $`L_{bb}=4\pi R^2\sigma T_s^4`$, with the effective surface temperature $`T_s`$. The blackbody radiation will be the dominating cooling mechanism after neutrino emissions are switched off.

For the thermal conductivity of the inner crust $`K`$, we use a temperature dependent model (Lindblom, 2000), $`K=2.8\times 10^{21}/T_9\text{ erg cm}^1\text{ s}^1\text{ K}^1`$. The choice of $`K`$ will not be important after the epoch of thermal relaxation, which is of the order $`10100`$ years. The temperature of the inner crust and the core will be uniform after that.
When a strange star is born just after the stellar collapse, its temperature is very high, of the order $`10^{11}`$(Petschek, 1990). $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ mainly affects the conversion energy, which affects the duration of the phase transition. The cooling mechanisms depend only weakly on $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$ while the cooling curves depend weakly on $`T_i`$. We assume $`T_i=40`$ MeV for our calculations. We choose a gap value $`\mathrm{\Delta }=100`$ MeV (Ng, 2003) to describe the superfluidity phase of quark matter, and we have checked that using $`\mathrm{\Delta }=1`$ MeV gives qualitatively similar results (Wong, 2003).

## 6 Results

The observables are the luminosity and the surface temperature at infinity, $`L^{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`T_s^{\mathrm{}}`$, which are related to the stellar surface values, $`L`$ and $`T_s`$ (Tsuruta, 2002): $`T_s^{\mathrm{}}=e^{\varphi _s}T_s`$, $`L^{\mathrm{}}=e^{2\varphi _s}L`$, where $`e^{\varphi _s}=\sqrt{12M_G/R}`$ is the gravitational redshift at the stellar surface. The various cooling curves (solid lines) for $`T_p=1(10)`$ MeV are shown in left (right) panels of Fig. 1.

For a large range of parameter values and nuclear matter EOS’s, we obtain a large energy released, of order $`10^{53}`$ erg. The duration of this energy release depends sensitively on $`T_p`$; a higher $`T_p`$ results in a higher luminosity and shorter phase transition duration. It can be as short as seconds for $`T_p=10`$ MeV, or as long as hundred thousands of seconds for $`T_p=1`$ MeV. The surface temperature of the star drops rapidly (top panels of Fig. 1), reaching $`10^7`$ K already within the first second ($`T_p=10`$ MeV) to first hundred thousand seconds ($`T_p=1`$ MeV). The decrease in surface temperature is particularly drastic at the completion of the conversion, which is a unique feature of the phase transition not seen in either a pure strange star (dotted curves) or a pure neutron star (dot-dashed curves).

The photon luminosity (middle panels in Fig. 1) is initially dominated by the $`e^+e^{}`$ pair emission mechanism and is large in the quark phase due to the strong surface electrostatic field. Since the $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs are not affected by the superfluidity gap, the photon luminosity is hardly affected by the gap values. The total energy radiated by $`e^+e^{}`$ pair emission is $`4.24\times 10^{50}(1.47\times 10^{53})`$ erg for $`T_p=10(1)`$ MeV. Once the phase transition is completed, the surface field of a neutron star is much weaker and this mechanism is turned off. The photon luminosity therefore drops by over ten orders of magnitudes, and this is more drastic for larger $`T_p`$, because the phase transition occurs earlier and with shorter duration.

A distinct second burst of neutrinos shows up in the neutrino luminosity (bottom panels of Fig. 1), which accompanies the completion of the phase transition and arises because of the higher neutrino emissivity in neutron matter. For $`T_p=10`$ MeV, the neutrino flux rises by over ten orders of magnitudes within a small fraction of a second. Note that we have not incorporated a detailed transport calculation for the neutrinos, which results in a broadening of the neutrino bursts we present here. Indeed, for $`T_p=10`$ MeV, the peak neutrino intensity of about $`10^{56}`$ ergs<sup>-1</sup> lasts only for $`10^3`$ s, and these neutrinos will be spread out over a diffusion time scale of ($`110`$ s) (Petschek, 1990), reducing the peak intensity by a factor of $`10^3`$. The first and second neutrino peaks are likely rendered indistinguishable by the relatively slow neutrino diffusion out of the dense medium. A much more careful treatment of the neutrino transport is clearly needed here (Liebendörfer, 2004). However, if $`T_p`$ is as low as 1 MeV, the two bursts of similar flux can be separated by as long as $`10^5`$ s, which should be observable by modern neutrino observatories. The two neutrino bursts can in principle be distinquished also by their energy spectra. The first burst is emitted near the initial high temperature of the newborn strange star, while the second burst is associated with the phase transition temperature $`T_p`$, and therefore the second neutrino burst has a softer energy spectrum. The total energy radiated in neutrino is $`3.15(1.27)\times 10^{53}`$ erg for $`T_p=10(1)`$ MeV.

This scenario of a second burst of neutrinos can be compared to two previous similar proposals (Benvenuto, 1999; Aguilera, 2002). In our model, the burst is due to the phase transition from a quark star to a neutron star, which has a higher neutrino emissivity, whereas in previous proposals, the second burst accompanies the phase transition from a neutron star to a quark star. In Benvenuto’s theory, the phase transition is delayed by a few seconds after the core bounce due to the presence of the neutrinos (Benvenuto, 1999). In Aguilera $`et`$ $`al.`$’s theory (Aguilera, 2002), the burst is due to the initial trapping of neutrinos when the temperature is high and their sudden release when the quark star cools. If quark matter is not as stable as nuclear matter at low temperature, then there should be yet another phase transition back to nuclear matter, which is what we focus on, and the “second” neutrino burst we proposed is then the “third” neutrino burst.

If multiple neutrino bursts are observed, as may indeed be the case for the Kamiokande data for SN1987A (Hirata, 1987), whether the compact star changes from the quark phase to neutron phase (our model) or the other way around can be distinguished observationally in at least two ways. First, our model predicts that the cooling is much faster before the phase transition, but it will become slower after it. Second, the size of the post-phase-transition compact star, being a normal neutron star, would be larger in our model.

## 7 Discussion and conclusion

Based on the lattice QCD phase diagram, we propose that the new born compact star in a supernova is a strange star and it transforms to a neutron star when it cools down to a critical temperature $`T_p`$. The conversion energy can be of the order $`10^{53}`$ erg and is adequate to supply energy for GRB’s. The strange star cools rapidly due to neutrino and $`e^+e^{}`$ emission, and its surface temperature drops drastically at the completion of the conversion, when a second neutrino burst emerges due to the higher neutrino emissivity of neutron matter. In our models, the phase transition is treated in a simplified manner. Hydrodynamic calculation is needed for a detailed description of the process starting from a supernova explosion. Here we discuss semi-quantitatively the signatures left by the quark to hadron phase transition, if it occurs in supernovae.

This work is partially supported by a Hong Kong RGC Earmarked Grant CUHK4189/97P and a Chinese University Direct Grant 2060105. We thank Prof. K. S. Cheng for useful discussion.


text:
# Critical Resistance of the Quantum Hall Ferromagnet in AlAs 2D Electrons

## Abstract

Magnetic transitions in AlAs two-dimensional electrons give rise to sharp resistance spikes within the quantum Hall effect. Such spikes are likely caused by carrier scattering at magnetic domain walls below the Curie temperature. We report a critical behavior in the temperature dependence of the spike width and amplitude, from which we deduce the Curie temperature of the quantum Hall ferromagnet. Our data also reveal that the Curie temperature increases monotonically with carrier density.

Various forms of order have been shown to derive from or compete with the quantum Hall (QH) state in two-dimensional (2D) electron systems, including charge density waves, the Wigner crystal, stripe and bubble phases, and liquid crystal states. Recent experimental evidence, often in the form of magnetic hysteresis, also points to the existence of a ferromagnetic phase within the integer and fractional QH states koch93 ; daneshvar97 ; jungwirth98 ; cho98 ; piazza99 ; eom00 ; depoortere00 ; smet01 ; muraki01 ; jaroszynski02 ; chokomakoua03 . The analogy with spontaneous polarization in conventional Ising ferromagnets exists when two Landau levels (LL’s) with opposite spin quantum numbers and different orbital indices are degenerate \[Fig. 1(b), inset\]. Experimentally, this LL coincidence is obtained by tilting the normal of the sample at an angle $`\theta `$ with respect to the magnetic field. Exchange energy ensures that at temperature $`T=0`$, one of the two crossing levels is fully occupied and the other empty. Magnetic domains form as the temperature is raised, and the electronic state within each domain is described as an Ising-like QH ferromagnet with either one of two possible spin orientations. In materials such as AlAs depoortere00 , (Cd,Mn)Te jaroszynski02 , InGaAs koch93 , InSb chokomakoua03 , and wide GaAs quantum wells muraki01 , LL crossings and the associated magnetic domains lead to resistance maxima within the integer QH or Shubnikov-de Haas minima of the magnetoresistance ($`R_{xx}`$) (Fig. 1), while in GaAs 2D electrons, sharp resistance peaks are observed in the fractional QH $`R_{xx}`$ minima. In the latter case, the spikes are caused by crossing LL’s of composite fermions smet01 .

Theorists have begun to address the nature of domain boundaries in Ising QH ferromagnets jungwirth01b ; brey02 ; chalker02 , though no calculation of the domain wall resistance in these systems exists at present. Estimates for the domain wall energies, however, yield the Curie temperature of the ferromagnet jungwirth01b , which can be determined experimentally. Determination of this temperature is the first objective of our work. Furthermore, AlAs resistance spikes can be separated fairly easily from the background resistance of the 2D system, so that they provide a direct measure of the domain wall magnetoresistance. Measurements of the resistance spike dimensions, namely its amplitude ($`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$) and width in magnetic field ($`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$) \[see Fig. 2(a)\], therefore supply an experimental basis against which future models of the domain walls can be tested, and provide a second motivation for our study.

In this Letter, we report temperature- and density-dependence measurements of the resistance spikes in AlAs 2D electrons. Our results reveal that: (1) $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ increases with $`T`$ up to a characteristic temperature, $`T_M`$, beyond which it decreases with $`T`$; (2) below the same temperature $`T_M`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$ is relatively constant, while above $`T_M`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$ increases significantly with temperature; (3) $`T_M`$ increases with the 2D electron density ($`n`$). Comparing the temperature dependence of the spike width with that expected from a mean-field 2D Ising model, we are able to identify $`T_M`$ with the Curie temperature of the QH ferromagnet.

AlAs offers several advantages for the study of QH ferromagnets: first, the band $`g`$-factor of 2D electrons in AlAs is approximately 2 vankesteren89 , while the effective electron masses (at the $`X`$ points of the Brillouin zone) are 1.1 and 0.19 in the longitudinal and transverse directions, respectively adachi85 . The latter properties ensure that the Zeeman ($`E_Z`$) and cyclotron ($`E_c`$) energies are comparable in magnitude for low values of $`\theta `$, a regime in which the orbital effect of the titled field can be neglected jungwirth01b . Second, the high quality of our AlAs quantum wells (QW’s), in which we have observed developing fractional QH states at high-order fillings depoortere02a , implies that the interparticle Coulomb interaction, rather than disorder, dominates the ground state of the 2D system.

The sample studied here is a 150 Å-wide AlAs QW surrounded by Al0.4Ga0.6As barriers, modulation-doped on the front side with Si, and grown by molecular beam epitaxy on a GaAs (411)B substrate. For magnetotransport measurements, a $`100\times 325\mu `$m Hall bar was lithographically etched on the sample surface, and 1500 Å-thick AuGeNi contacts were deposited and alloyed at 440 oC for 10 minutes in forming gas. Front and back gates were fitted to the sample. Experiments were performed in pumped 3He and dilution refrigerators in magnetic fields up to 18 T. Prior to measurements, the sample was illuminated with a red LED at $`T4`$ K, while a positive bias was applied between the back gate and the 2D system. This procedure is required to make Ohmic contact to the 2D system in our sample, and is detailed in depoortere03 .

Figure 1(a) gives an overview of the sample magnetoresistance for $`n=2.5\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 and $`\theta =38^o`$, showing the resistance spikes near $`\nu =3`$ and 5. The $`T`$ and $`n`$ dependence of the $`\nu =3`$ spike are given in Fig. 1(b) constantnu . From these data we first plot, in Fig. 2(b), the spike amplitudes as a function of $`T`$. We see that $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ reaches a maximum at a temperature $`T_M`$, and that $`T_M`$ increases monotonically with $`n`$ \[Fig. 2(c)\]. Furthermore, $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ decreases quickly as the density increases; for $`n2.7\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 in this sample, the spike amplitude is too small to be measured. On the other hand, at the lowest measured density, the maximum $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ is about 700 $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, comparable to the $`R_{xx}`$ maxima at half-integer $`\nu `$, when the Fermi level lies close to the energies of extended states. We note that an even stronger resistance spike is seen near $`\nu =4`$ in this sample: its $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ is more than twice the magnitude of the neighboring $`R_{xx}`$ maxima at or near half-integral fillings \[Fig. 1(c)\]. The large magnitude of $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ at low $`n`$ and near $`\nu =4`$ indicates that the scattering process at the resistance spike is fundamentally different from that present in the sample when the Fermi level nearly coincides with that of an extended state. In the following paragraphs, we concentrate on the resistance spike near $`\nu =3`$.

The $`T`$ dependence of the spike width, $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$, is plotted for two different densities in Figs. 3(a) and (b). Both graphs show that $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$ decreases as the 2D electrons cool down, and tends to saturate below a given temperature that depends on the density. Although $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$ depends smoothly on $`T`$, the onset of its rise with $`T`$ appears to occur near $`T_M`$, the temperature at which $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ is maximum. More quantitatively, a “threshold” temperature can be defined for the $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}(T)`$ data in Figs. 3(a) and (b), by first fitting straight lines to the low- and high-$`T`$ ranges, and taking the intersection of these lines. In Fig. 3(a), the resulting $`T`$ is 500 mK, a value close to $`T_M`$. This correspondence suggests a common physical process for the $`T`$ dependencies of both $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$.

In order to better understand our data, we use a Bragg-Williams model chaikin95  applied to a system composed of two energy levels with respective relative fillings $`f_1`$ and $`f_2`$, corresponding to the highest occupied level and the lowest unoccupied level at $`\nu =3`$. We define the magnetization ($`m_z`$) as $`m_z=f_1f_2`$, so that $`m_z=1`$ (-1) if the first (second) level is fully occupied. The electron energy can then be written as $`E(m_z)=bm_z\frac{1}{2}Jm_z^2`$, where $`b`$ is a reduced magnetic field ($`b=0`$ at the transition) that includes contributions from single-particle energies ($`E_Z`$ and $`E_c`$) and from interactions, and $`J`$ is an effective interaction strength jungwirth01a . The free energy of the 2D system is given by

$$F(b,m_z)=TS(m_z)+E(b,m_z),$$
(1)
where $`S(m_z)`$ is the mixing entropy of the two phases chaikin95 . For every $`b`$ and $`T`$, we minimize $`F`$ with respect to $`m_z`$, and thus obtain the equilibrium magnetization. The model predicts that for $`T<T_C=J`$ (the Curie temperature), two different $`m_z`$’s minimize $`F`$, and that the system divides into magnetic domains.

Above the Curie point, the transition in field becomes increasingly gradual as $`T`$ increases. The width of the transition can be quantified by the reduced field ($`b_+`$) at which $`m_z=1/2`$, halfway between the transition ($`m_z=0`$) and full polarization ($`m_z=1`$). By symmetry, the field width of the transition, defined between $`m_z=+1/2`$ and -1/2, is thus $`\mathrm{\Delta }b=2b_+`$. From Eq. 1 we derive:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }b=2b_+(T)=T_C+1.1T(T>T_C).$$
(2)
We see that $`\mathrm{\Delta }b`$, plotted in the inset of Fig. 3(b) as a function of $`T`$, vanishes at $`T`$ close to $`T_C`$ (i.e., at $`T=0.91T_C`$), and increases for larger $`T`$. This behavior is similar to that of the measured $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$, suggesting that the “threshold” temperatures in Figs. 3(a) and (b) are close to the Curie temperatures of the QH ferromagnet at the respective carrier densities. An implication of our analysis is that $`T_MT_C`$, since the peak in $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}(T)`$ agrees with the temperature threshold of $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}(T)`$.

The fact that the $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ maximum occurs near $`T_C`$ is qualitatively consistent with calculations of the critical resistance in ferromagnetic semiconductors degennes58 ; alexander76  and with recent experiments in (Ga,Mn)As ohno01 . According to those calculations, the diverging correlation length of spin fluctuations as $`TT_C`$ causes a peak resistance at a temperature $`T_M`$ close to $`T_C`$, with $`|T_MT_C|/T_C10^5`$ in typical semiconductors alexander76 . Although the origin of scattering at the spike in our system is unclear at present, data in Fig. 2(b) confirm qualitatively the predicted peak resistance near $`T_C`$. We also note that we obtain similar empirical correspondences between the $`T`$ dependencies of $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$ for $`n=2.35`$ and $`2.47\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2, two other densities for which the data ranges are large enough for comparison to be possible.

In Fig. 2(c), we plot the density dependence of $`T_M`$ deduced from the $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ peaks in Fig. 2(b). Within the small density range allowed by our experiment, we observe that $`T_M`$ increases with $`n`$. This is consistent with our expectation that $`T_CT_M`$, through the exchange interaction, should scale with the Coulomb energy, $`e^2/4\pi ϵl_B`$ \[$`ϵ10ϵ_0`$ is the dielectric constant of AlAs and $`l_B=(\mathrm{}/eB_{})^{1/2}`$ is the magnetic length\] macdonald86 : the latter increases with $`B_{}`$, which in turn increases with $`n`$ at a fixed $`\nu =3`$. The values we obtain for $`T_C`$ also agree with the estimate ($`500`$ mK) calculated by Jungwirth and MacDonald for the Curie temperature of AlAs 2D electrons at $`n=2.5\times 10^{11}`$ cm-2 jungwirth01b .

Plotted in Fig. 3(a) are the $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$ data for both upward and downward $`B`$ sweeps. These values, which depend on the sweep direction at sufficiently low $`T`$, reflect the observed $`R_{xx}`$ hysteresis (which mostly occurs in amplitude rather than in field). Figure 3(a) shows that the temperature corresponding to the onset of hysteresis is lower than the Curie temperature derived from the $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}(T)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}(T)`$ dependencies. This implies that magnetic domains present (below $`T_C`$) at the LL crossing do not necessarily give rise to hysteretic $`R_{xx}`$. Furthermore, the strength of hysteresis depends on sample cooldown, while $`T_C`$ as defined above does not show such sensitivity, suggesting that hysteresis is controlled by cooldown-dependent parameters such as the precise nature of impurity disorder.

While the $`T`$ and $`n`$ dependencies described in our work apply to resistance spikes at $`\nu =3`$, we have obtained similar data for LL crossings at other filling factors, though in a less complete manner. The $`T`$ dependencies of $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}`$ for the spike near $`\nu =5`$, e.g., are analogous to our $`\nu =3`$ spike data; the amplitude of the spike at $`\nu =4`$ (at $`T=30`$ and 300 mK) also decreases monotonically as $`n`$ increases. Spike measurements at $`\nu =4`$ and 5 are thus qualitatively consistent with results obtained from the $`\nu =3`$ spike.

We now outline the main differences between our work and that of Jaroszyński et al. jaroszynski02 , who recently performed a detailed study of resistance spikes in (Cd,Mn)Te quantum wells. First, authors in jaroszynski02  determine $`T_C`$ from the temperature at which the total value of the resistance at the spike ($`R_{tot}`$) reaches a maximum, whereas we treat the spike amplitude $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}`$ as the physical parameter reflecting the contribution of the domains (or, near $`T_C`$, of the spin fluctuations) to the total resistance. Second, the onset of hysteresis in Ref. jaroszynski02  matches the peak in $`R_{tot}(T)`$ (for one of the measured densities). In our samples, as can be seen in Fig. 1(b), $`R_{tot}`$ increases monotonically with $`T`$, so that the peak in $`R_{tot}(T)`$, if it exists, occurs at $`T>700`$ mK, i.e., at a much higher $`T`$ than the onset of spike hysteresis hyst . Third, $`T_C`$ determined in Ref. jaroszynski02  decreases with increasing $`n`$, a trend that is contrary to our experimental results and unexpected based on theoretical grounds. While we do not understand the origin of these various differences between spikes in AlAs and (Cd,Mn)Te, we emphasize that the latter contains magnetic Mn ions that may play a role in the formation of magnetic domains, while AlAs is nonmagnetic.

In conclusion, we have observed critical behaviors (at matching temperatures) in both the amplitude and the linewidth of the resistance spikes in the AlAs QH ferromagnet, and determined from these the Curie temperature of the ferromagnet. The critical behaviors are qualitatively consistent with the results of two independent models: the observed peak in $`\mathrm{\Delta }R_{sp}(T)`$ is predicted by calculations of the critical resistance in ferromagnetic semiconductors, and the measured $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_{sp}(T)`$ dependence can be understood by a mean-field analysis of the Ising model.

This work was supported by the Princeton University NSF MRSEC grant. We acknowledge fruitful discussions with Ravin Bhatt, Duncan Haldane, and Allan MacDonald, and thank Eric Palm and Tim Murphy for their technical assistance. Part of this work was performed at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, FL, which is also supported by the NSF.


text:
# Thermal Radiation from Nucleons and Mesons

## Abstract

Thermal photon emission rates due to meson-nucleon interactions have been evaluated. An exhaustive set of reactions involving $`p(\overline{p})`$, $`n(\overline{n})`$, $`\rho `$, $`\omega `$, $`a_1`$, $`\pi `$ and $`\eta `$ is seen to provide a sizeable contribution to the emission rate from hot hadronic matter. Contributions from baryonic resonances are found to be negligibly small.

With results coming in from Au-Au collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), the search for signals of quark gluon plasma (QGP) is being pursued with renewed vigour. It is well known that electromagnetic signals are the only ones which probe the entire space-time history of the collisions as they are emitted at all stages and undergo very little re-scattering. Since signals from QGP have to be unearthed from the huge debris of radiations from hadronic sources it becomes all the more necessary to have an accurate estimation of the same. Apart from this the emission of photons from the hadronic matter is also important to investigate the modifications of the hadronic spectral functions in a thermal bath annals .

The hadronic matter is usually considered to be a gas of the low lying mesons $`\pi `$, $`\rho `$, $`\omega `$ and $`\eta `$. Reactions between these as well as the decays of the $`\rho `$ amd $`\omega `$ were considered old1  to be the source of thermal photons from hadronic matter. In old2  the role of the intermediary $`a_1`$ meson in the $`\pi \rho \pi \gamma `$ channel was discussed. We our\_npa  found an enhancement in the photon production by incorporating medium effects through thermal loop corrections on the hadronic decay widths and masses. In our quest for additional sources of thermal photon production we failed to find discussions on the role of baryons and a priori we find no reason for this. We hence consider it worthwhile to investigate, in particular, the role of meson-nucleon interactions for photon emission. In an earlier work prc03  we had found the contribution due to the decay of baryon resonances to be small.

In this work we evaluate photon emission due to nucleon (and antinucleon) scattering from $`\pi `$, $`\rho `$, $`\omega `$, $`\eta `$ and $`a_1`$ mesons in the thermal bath. Listed below are the standard phenomenological interactions which have been used:

$`_{VNN}`$ $`=`$ $`g_{\rho NN}\left[\overline{N}\gamma ^\mu 𝝉N𝝆_\mu {\displaystyle \frac{\kappa }{2m_N}}\overline{N}\sigma ^{\mu \nu }𝝉N_\nu 𝝆_\mu \right]g_{\omega NN}\overline{N}\gamma ^\mu N\omega _\mu `$
$`_{ANN}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_{\pi NN}}{m_\pi }}m_{a_1}\overline{N}\gamma ^5\gamma ^\mu 𝝉N𝒂_{\mathrm{𝟏}}^{}{}_{\mu }{}^{}`$
$`_{PNN}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g_{\pi NN}}{m_\pi }}\overline{N}\gamma ^5\gamma ^\mu 𝝉N_\mu 𝝅+{\displaystyle \frac{g_{\eta NN}}{m_\eta }}\overline{N}\gamma ^5\gamma ^\mu N_\mu \eta `$
$`_{em}`$ $`=`$ $`eA^\mu \left[\overline{N}\gamma _\mu N[𝝅\times _\mu 𝝅𝝆^\nu \times (_\nu 𝝆_\mu _\mu 𝝆_\nu )]_3\right]+{\displaystyle \frac{e}{2}}F^{\mu \nu }(𝝆_\mu \times 𝝆_\nu )_3+g_{a_1\pi \gamma }𝒂_{\mathrm{𝟏}}^{}{}_{\mu }{}^{}_\nu 𝝅F^{\mu \nu }`$
Here, $`N`$ represents the nucleon isospin doublet $`\left(\begin{array}{c}p\\ n\end{array}\right)`$, $`F_{\mu \nu }=_\mu A_\nu _\nu A_\mu `$ and $`𝝉`$ are the Pauli matrices. We have included monopole form factors at the strong vertices. They have the generic form $`(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2M^2)/(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2X^2)`$ where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`M`$ stand for the cutoff and the mass of the exchanged particle in the $`X(=t/u)`$ channels respectively. The values of the cutoff and the coupling constants have been taken from Ref. roper  and are listed in Table 1. It is to be noted that the number of Feynman diagrams involved in the present calculations with all the isospin combinations of mesons and baryons is very large. The invariant amplitudes for these diagrams will require too large a space to be presented here.

In Fig. 1, we plot the rate of photon emission from a thermal hadronic medium consisting of mesons and baryons at $`T`$=170 MeV and zero baryonic chemical potential. For convenience we have subdivided the large number of photon producing reactions into three categories involving nucleons and pseudoscalar mesons ($`P`$=$`\pi `$, $`\eta `$), vector mesons ($`V`$=$`\rho `$, $`\omega `$ and $`\varphi `$) and axial vector ($`A`$=$`a_1`$) meson. Type $`P`$ consists of reactions of the kind $`PN\gamma N`$ and $`N\overline{N}\gamma P`$, $`V`$ of the type $`VN\gamma N`$ and $`N\overline{N}\gamma V`$ and $`A`$ of the type $`AN\gamma N`$ and $`N\overline{N}\gamma A`$. Due to the the relatively high abundance of pions in the system, type $`P`$ has the highest contribution at lower energies. $`V`$ type reactions are found to dominate after about 1.5 GeV. The important factor in this case is the large spin-isospin degeneracy of the $`\rho `$ meson. Also shown is the contribution to the photon emission rate from the decay of heavy baryons $`R`$ to nucleons, $`N`$ and photons, $`R\gamma N`$. Here $`R`$ consists of the baryonic resonances N(1440), N(1520), N(1535), N(1650), N(1675), N(1680), N(1700), $`\mathrm{\Delta }(1232),\mathrm{\Delta }(1620),\mathrm{\Delta }(1700),\mathrm{\Delta }(1905)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(1950)`$. The partial decay widths of $`R`$ have been taken from Ref. PDG .

In fig. 2 the emission rates from the baryonic degrees of freedom have been shown at a temperature 140 MeV. The introduction of the monopole form factors at the meson nucleon vertices reduces the the production rate by a factor of 3 around $`E_\gamma 2`$ GeV. A similar kind of suppression (see first reference of old1 ) has been observed with the inclusion of form factors at the interaction vertices in the emissivity from the reactions involving only mesons ($`\pi `$, $`\rho `$, $`\omega `$$`\eta `$ and $`a_1`$). A factor of $`3`$ suppression of the production rate of photons from a mesonic gas will make it comparable with that from the $`P`$, $`V`$ and $`A`$ types of reactions defined before.

The emission rates of photons from $`P`$, $`V`$ and $`A`$ types of reactions will become important with increase in temperature. In fact, the production rates with only mesonic degrees of freedom is comparable to the corresponding rates from $`P`$, $`V`$ and $`A`$ type of reactions if the effects of the vertex form factors are ignored (fig. 3). Considering the fact that the form factors at the interaction vertices suppress the emission rates from mesons as well as from reactions involving nucleons, the production rates involving nucleons are not negligible.

In summary, we have evaluated the production rate of photons from an exhaustive set of reactions involving mesons and baryons. In all the earlier works, the role of the baryons on the photon emission rates were neglected, though it appears to be important. We observe that the production rates from the reactions involving nucleons are suppressed primarily because of the inclusion of the form factors at the meson-nucleon vertices. At non-zero baryonic chemical potential the emission rates from the reactions involving nucleonic degrees of freedom may be enhanced. However, for very high colliding energies such as at RHIC the value of the chemical potential is expected to be small.