text:
# Information Flow in Social Groups

## Abstract

We present a study of information flow that takes into account the observation that an item relevant to one person is more likely to be of interest to individuals in the same social circle than those outside of it. This is due to the fact that the similarity of node attributes in social networks decreases as a function of the graph distance. An epidemic model on a scale-free network with this property has a finite threshold, implying that the spread of information is limited. We tested our predictions by measuring the spread of messages in an organization and also by numerical experiments that take into consideration the organizational distance among individuals.

preprint: Preprint

The problem of information flows in social organizations is relevant to issues of productivity, innovation and the sorting out of useful ideas out of the general chatter of a community. How information spreads determines the speed with which individuals can act and plan their future activities. In particular, email has become the predominant means of communication in the information society. It pervades business, social and scientific exchanges and as such it is a highly relevant area for research on communities and social networks. Not surprisingly, email has been established as an indicator of collaboration and knowledge exchange wellman02computersocial ; whittaker96email ; guimera02email ; tyler03email ; eckmann03email . Email is also a good medium for research because it provides plentiful data on personal communication in an electronic form.

Since individuals tend to organize both formally and informally into groups based on their common activities and interests, the way information spreads is affected by the topology of the interaction network, not unlike the spread of a disease among individuals. Thus one would expect that epidemic models on graphs are relevant to the study of information flow in organizations. In particular, recent work on epidemic propagation on scale free networks found that the threshold for an epidemic is zero, implying that a finite fraction of the graph becomes infected for arbitrarily low transmission probabilities zoltan02halting ; pastor-satorras01epidemic ; newman02emailnetworks . The presence of additional network structure was found to further influence the spread of disease on scale-free graphs eguiluz02epidemicclust ; vazquezPRE2003 ; newman02assortative .

There are, however, differences between information flows and the spread of viruses. While viruses tend to be indiscriminate, infecting any susceptible individual, information is selective and passed by its host only to individuals the host thinks would be interested in it.

The information any individual is interested in depends strongly on their characteristics. Furthermore, individuals with similar characteristics tend to associate with one another, a phenomenon known as homophily lazarsfeld54friendship ; touhey74similarity ; feld81social . Conversely, individuals many steps removed in a social network on average tend not to have as much in common, as shown in a study adamic03friends  of a network of Stanford student homepages and illustrated in Figure 1.

We therefore introduce an epidemic model with decay in the transmission probability of a particular piece of information as a function of the distance between the originating source and the current potential target. In the following analysis, we show that this epidemic model on a scale-free network has a finite threshold, implying that the spread of information is limited. We further tested our predictions by observing the prevalence of messages in an organization and also by numerical experiments that take into consideration the organizational distance among individuals.

Consider the problem of information transmission in a power-law network whose degree distribution is given by newman01graphs

$$p_k=Ck^\alpha ,$$
(1)
where $`\alpha >1`$, and $`C`$ is determined by the normalization condition. The generating function of the distribution is

$$G_0(x)=\underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}p_kx^k=\frac{\mathrm{Li}_\alpha (x)}{\mathrm{Li}_\alpha (1)}.$$
(2)
Following the analysis in newman02epidemic  for the SIR (susceptible, infected, removed) model, we now estimate the probability $`p_m^{(1)}`$ that the first person in the community who has received a piece of information will transmit it to $`m`$ of their neighbors. Using the binomial distribution, we find

$$p_m^{(1)}=\underset{k=m}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}p_k\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k}{m}\right)T^m(1T)^{km},$$
(3)
where the *transmissiblity* $`T`$ is the probability that a person will transmit an item to a neighbor and the superscript “$`(1)`$” refers to first neighbors, those who received the information directly from the initial source. The generating function for $`p_m^{(1)}`$ is given by

$`G^{(1)}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=m}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}p_k\left({\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k}{m}}\right)T^m(1T)^{km}x^m`$ (4)
$`=`$ $`G_0(1+(x1)T)=G_0(x;T).`$ (5)
Suppose the transmissibility decays as a power of the distance from the initial source. We choose this weakest form of decay as the results that are obtained from it will also be valid for stronger functional forms. Then the probability that an $`m`$th neighbor will transmit the information to a person with whom he has contact is given by

$$T^{(m)}=(m+1)^\beta T,$$
(6)
where $`\beta >0`$ is the decay constant. $`T^{(m)}=T`$ at the originating node ($`m=0`$) and decays to zero as $`m\mathrm{}`$.

The distribution of the number of 2nd neighbors can be written as

$$G^{(2)}(x)=\underset{k}{}p_k^{(1)}[G_1^{(1)}(x)]^k=G^{(1)}(G_1^{(1)}(x)),$$
(7)
where

$$G_1^{(1)}(x)=G_1(x;2^\beta T)=G_1(1+(x1)2^\beta T).$$
(8)
Similarly, if we define $`G^{(m)}(x)`$ to be the the generating function for the number of $`m`$th neighbors affected, then we have

$$G^{(m+1)}(x)=G^{(m)}(G_1^{(m)}(x))\text{for }m1,$$
(9)
where

$$G_1^{(m)}(x)=G_1(x;(m+1)^\beta T)=G_1(1+(x1)(m+1)^\beta T),$$
(10)
and

$$G_1(x)=\frac{G_0^{}(x)}{G_0^{}(1)}=\frac{1}{z}G_0^{}(x).$$
(11)
Or, more explicitly,

$$G^{(m+1)}(x)=G^{(1)}(G_1^{(1)}(G_1^{(2)}(\mathrm{}G_1^{(m)}(x)))).$$
(12)
The average number $`z_{m+1}`$ of $`(m+1)`$th neighbors is

$$z_{m+1}=G_{}^{(m+1)}{}_{}{}^{}(1)=G_{1}^{(m)}{}_{}{}^{}(1)G_{}^{(m)}{}_{}{}^{}(1)=G_{1}^{(m)}{}_{}{}^{}(1)z_m.$$
(13)
So the condition that the size of the outbreak remains finite is given by

$$\frac{z_{m+1}}{z_m}=G_{1}^{(m)}{}_{}{}^{}(1)<1,$$
(14)
or

$$(m+1)^\beta TG_1^{}(1)<1.$$
(15)
For any given $`T`$, the left hand side of the inequality above goes to zero when $`m\mathrm{}`$, so the condition is eventually satisfied for large $`m`$. Therefore the average total size

$$s=\underset{m=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}z_m$$
(16)
is always finite if the transmissibility decays with distance. Note that if $`T`$ is constant the average total size is infinite for values of $`\alpha <3`$ as shown previously.

In the real world however, the size of a network is always finite, and in order to define a transmissibility threshold one needs an outbreak size that is compatible with the size of the whole network. Furthermore, many real world networks have a cutoff $`\kappa `$ far below their size. Thus we can write for the link distribution $`p_k=Ck^\alpha \mathrm{exp}(k/\kappa )`$.

As an example, consider a network made up of $`10^6`$ vertices. We define an epidemic to be an outbreak affecting more than 1% or $`10^4`$ vertices. Thus for fixed $`\alpha ,\kappa `$ and $`\beta `$, we can define $`T_c`$ as the transmissibility above which $`s`$ would be made to exceed $`10^4`$.

The numerical result of $`T_c`$ as a function of $`\alpha `$ is shown in Fig. 2, where we choose $`\kappa =100`$ and $`\beta =1`$. It is seen that when there is no decay, $`T_c`$ is very near zero for $`\alpha `$ close to 2, which means that for most values of $`T`$ epidemics occur. However, when the transmissibility decays, $`T_c`$ rises substantially. For example, $`T_c`$ jumps to 0.54 at $`\alpha =2`$, implying that the information may not spread over the network.

In order to validate empirically that the spread of information within a network of people is limited, and hence distinct from the spread of a virus, we gathered a sample from the mail clients of 40 individuals (30 within HP Labs, and 10 from other areas of HP, other research labs, and universities). Each volunteer executed a program that identified URLs and attachments in the messages in their mailboxes, as well as they time the messages were received. This data was cryptographically hashed to protect the privacy of the users. By analyzing the message content and headers, we restricted our data to include only messages which had been forwarded at least one time, thereby eliminating most postings to mailing lists and more closely approximating true inter-personal information spreading behavior. The median number of messages in a mailbox in our sample is 2200, indicating that many users keep a substantial portion of their email correspondence. Although some messages may have been lost when users deleted them, we assume that a majority of messages containing useful information had been retained.

Figure 3 shows a histogram of how many users had received each of the 3401 attachments and 6370 URLs. The distribution shows that only a small fraction (5% of attachments and 10% of URLs) reach more than 1 recipient. Very few (41 URLs and 6 attachments) reached more than 5 individuals, a number which, in a sample of 40, starts to resemble an outbreak. In follow-up discussions with our study subjects, we were able to identify the content and significance of most of these messages. 14 of the URLs were advertisements attached to the bottom of an email by free email services such as Yahoo and MSN. These are in a sense viral, because the sender is sending them involuntarily. It is this viral strategy that was responsible for the rapid buildup of the Hotmail free email service user base. 10 URLs pointed to internal HP project or personal pages, 3 URLs were for external commercial or personal sites, and the remaining 14 could not be identified.

In our sample, one group is overrepresented, allowing us to observe both the spread of information within a close group, and the lack of information spread across groups. A number of attachments reaching four or more people were resumes circulated within one group. A few attachments were announcements passed down by higher level management. This kind of top down transmission within an organization is another path through which information can be efficiently disseminated.

Next we simulated the effect of decay in the transmission probability on the email graph at HP Labs in Palo Alto, CA. The graph was constructed from recorded logs of all incoming and outgoing messages over a period of 3 months. The graph has a nearly power-law out degree distribution, shown in Figure 4, including both internal and external nodes. Because all of the outgoing and incoming contacts were recorded for internal nodes, their in and out degrees were higher than for the external nodes for which we could only record the email they sent to and received from HP Labs. We however considered a graph with the internal and external nodes mixed (as in ebel02email ) to demonstrate the effect of a decay on the spread of email specifically in a power-law graph.

We simulated the spread of an epidemic by selecting a random initial sender to infect and following the email log containing 120,000 entries involving over 7,000 recipients in the course of a week. Every time an infective individual was recorded as sending an email to someone else, they had a constant probability $`p`$ of infecting the recipient. Hence individuals who email more often have a higher probability of infecting. We also assume that an individual remains infective (willing to transmit a particular piece of information) for a period of 24 hours.

Next we introduced a decay in the transmission probability $`p`$ as $`pd_{ij}^{1.75}`$, where $`d_{ij}`$ is the distance in the organizational hierarchy between two individuals. This exponent roughly corresponds to the decay in similarity between homepages shown in Figure 1. The decay represents the fact that individuals closer together in the organizational hierarchy share more common interests. Individuals have a distance of one to their immediate superiors and subordinates and to those they share a superior with. The distance between someone within HP labs and someone outside of HP labs was set to the maximum hierarchical distance of 8.

In figure 5 we show the variation in the average outbreak size, and the average epidemic size (chosen to be any outbreak affecting more than 30 individuals). Without decay, the epidemic threshold falls below $`p=0.01`$. With decay, the threshold is set back to $`p=0.20`$ and the outbreak epidemic size is limited to about 50 individuals, even for $`p=1`$.

As these results show, the decay of similarity among members of a social group has strong implications for the propagation of information among them. In particular, the number of individuals that a given email message reaches is very small, in contrast to what one would expect on the basis of a virus epidemic model on a scale free graph. The implication of this finding is that merely discovering hubs in a community network is not enough to ensure that information originating at a particular node will reach a large fraction of the community. We expect that these findings are also valid with other means of social communication, such as verbal exchanges, telephony and instant messenger systems.


format: text

text:
# Object Database for Constants: The common CLEO Online and Offline solution

## I The CLEO experiment

The 10.6 GeV $`e^+e^{}`$ collider CESR at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has served as an outstanding Particle Physics research facility for over 20 years. The measured peak luminosity is $`1.3\times 10^{33}\text{cm}^2\text{s}^1`$. Its unique detector, constructed and operated by the CLEO collaboration, has been able to provide a wealth of results from its focus on B meson studies and a variety of other topics such as charm and tau physics. Since the year 2000, the CLEO III detector (cleoiii ) has operated with a 4 layer Si vertex detector, and a particle identification system based on Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detectors.

Due to the greatly increased luminosity during the CLEO III phase, a new readout and computing system was designed to cope with higher demands (chep2000 ,chep2001 ). Throughout the development process, object oriented principles were applied consequently, resulting in a coherent and easily extensible set of software components that now cover all aspects of CLEO computing. Part of this is the CLEO III database domain, implemented in an Object Database Management System (objy ). Six individual Online databases for alarms, program code, histograms, run setup data, run statistics data, and constants, comprise this system. All are implemented as C++ database servers, accessible to the distributed software components via CORBA communication interfaces (corba ,vbroker ).

Two Online databases, for run statistics and constants, are also used in the CLEO Offline analysis framework. This framework is used for all CLEO physics analysis tasks, such as detector calibration, track reconstruction, Monte Carlo data generation, and user analysis. It is based on a lightweight on-demand data delivery approach, as described elsewhere in these proceedings (jones ).

### I.1 CLEO-c

The CLEO III phase has ended in 2003. The storage ring is in the process of being converted to a charm factory (CESR-c,cleo-c ), adapted for center of mass energies between 3 GeV and 5 GeV. It will serve as a new research tool for precision charm quark measurements, searches for new physics, and $`\tau `$ lepton studies. It is expected to provide an array of Quantum Chromo Dynamics (QCD) results that permit comparison to the most recent generation of lattice QCD calculations with unprecendented precision.

Since the original facility was not constructed for this energy domain, a set of superconducting wiggler magnets is installed to ensure luminosities around $`2\times 10^{32}\text{cm}^2\text{s}^1`$. Several of these devices are already in operation; the upgrade will be completed in early 2004. In parallel, the CLEO detector, now called CLEO-c, is undergoing modifications to allow operation at those lower energies. Unfortunately, shortly after its deployment, the CLEO III vertex detector developed severe particle detection inefficiencies. This effect reduced its usability considerably by causing limitations in secondary vertex identification. In preparation for CLEO-c, it was replaced with a 6 layer conventional vertex drift chamber.

## II The CLEO constants database

The data structure of a CLEO constants object is determined by the user, who writes a definition file in c-style syntax, e.g.:

```
    Name: RICHChannel
    {
    UInt32 ΨΨChannelAddress
    UInt16 ΨΨCrateΨSelectBy
    UInt16 ΨΨThreshold
    UInt16 ΨΨPedestal
    }

```

The CLEO build system reads this file and autogenerates a number of source code files for object database storage, database server management, CORBA interfacing, client data access, and java classes for Graphical User Interfaces. This code is compiled and made available to all higher level software (Online and Offline) in libraries and java archives.

A single constants dataset, called a constants version, consists of one of more instances (lines) of data in the form of the described structure, such as the four integers in the above example. In CLEO, some versions have reached ca. 230000 lines. Every dataset receives a unique version number when it is written to the database. In addition, a usage tag and run validity range can be associated with each constants version.

Users usually do not have write access to the constants database. Instead, a user can create new constants objects programmatically, store them as ascii file, and then submit them to the central constants management system for installation. After applying some consistency checks and safeguards, that system writes the new data to the database and updates validity information.

After 2 years of operations, the CLEO constants database had proven to be a reliable design that was extendable for new data types. It became clear that separate copies of the full database were needed for Online operation, track reconstruction processing, public analysis, and remote site Monte Carlo generation. For that purpose, the protected Online database was designated to be the master database, i.e. the only existing copy available for write access. A number of copies acted as slave mirrors, readonly versions that were updated from the master as needed. This scheme allowed minimization of the load on the master, a requirement for smooth and independent Online detector operation.

## III The constants database redesign

Despite the success in some areas, experience revealed that the constants database system was designed in a way that did not match the predominant usage patterns. Performance degraded with increased database size, causing concern for Online operation. Hard disk and CPU contention on the server nodes could lead to wait times of minutes for a single request. The system could not be expected to scale well for the rising number of clients. This situation led to the decision to rewrite all constants database access code to ensure future scalability and efficiency.

### III.1 Redesign - why?

A data object that is stored in an object database requires a unique identifier (object identifier, OID) for data management within the database and for retrieval. Such an object can have almost any shape, typically expressed in a c-style structure (or a C++-style class). A certain overhead for OID and storage is necessary and typically amounts to 20–30 Bytes, in addition to the space needed by the object itself. Retrieving an object also entails a certain computing overhead that is mostly independent of object size. From this fact we conclude that it is desirable to keep the number of objects retrieved in a single database transaction small.

This notion was not part of the original constants database design: A CLEO constants version, with a structure as described in the above example, could have many lines. The original system architects had implemented this as a series of many OIDs, one per line. The consequence was considerable overhead in storage space and CPU time needed for retrieval: a download request always asked for a complete constants version, i.e. many OIDs. In addition, an inefficient search algorithm that often had to iterate through a large number of objects contributed to a steady decline in download performance as data volume rose over time.

Another limitation became relevant when new versions for one of the existing data types were created in greater numbers than originally foreseen. Since every object must have a unique OID, the number of objects in any part of a database is limited. In this case, there could not be more than $`2^{15}1=32767`$ versions. A workaround was possible, but only at the expense of more complicated data distribution and longer search times.

In the data organization domain, the original system violated a basic rule of database design: Data normalization: the data contents of a constants version was stored not only together with its version number, but also with its usage information (usage tag and run validity range). In such a setup, one is severely limited in how data access can be managed. It is, for example, not possible to associate more than one validity range - usage tag combination efficiently with an object, since a search with a certain tag and run number requires examination of many data objects. Since CLEO required several such combinations, a cumbersome set of separate structures had to be invented to provide this functionality. The maintenance of those structures was particularly arduous.

The combination of the described shortcomings eventually provided a strong justification for the redesign of the database structure.

### III.2 The new constants database system

Motivated by a wealth of experiences from the CLEO Online and Offline production systems, the specifications for the redesign could be determined with ease:

* One OID per constants version
* No linear search on retrieval
* Copious OID space for a large number of versions
* Constants data stored independently of usage information
* Navigational elements that allow flexible usage management incorporated into the basic design

According to these requirements, the new design consolidated all lines of one constants version into a single database object. This approach reduces a database query to the retrieval of one object; download pattern and storage structure are exactly matched. The new organization now permits very fast data retrieval through a set of management structures that can be traversed quickly. A lookup with a usage tag and run number is organized so that a validity list is searched in a tag dictionary, which then holds a direct reference to the desired data object. The need for linear object searches was completely eliminated by using indexed version lists and hash maps for fast lookup via dynamic usage tags. Loading an object with a specified version number is as easy as opening a version list and dereferencing it with the version number as array index.

With the number of database objects greatly reduced, the available OID space is now considerably larger than needed for the lifetime of the CLEO experiment. At the same time, the space requirements are less than half of the original needs. A remarkable success story of object oriented client-server design was also the fact that the client interfaces did not have to be modified at all, since the redesign could remain completely confined to the database server implementation. This allowed a smooth transition of all running build and production systems.

For an illustration of the performance improvement that was achieved through the redesign, see Figure 1. While the average load time of a single constants version ($``$ 0.2 s), requested by regular physics reconstruction and analysis programs, were already an improvement from intermediate changes, the new system was able to reduce this time by more than a factor of five. The distribution is much narrower, which translates into a fast, responsive, and reliable behaviour. Since a single analysis job can request over 100 different constants versions, the impact on real world operation is dramatic.

### III.3 Experiences with commercial software

The generic trend in the High Energy and Nuclear Physics computing community to purchase commercial software for their ever growing production systems has generated many varied experiences. Physicists do not write their own CORBA implementations, but they have realized that their database needs may be different from what industry requires, and that developing solutions on their own is possible and may turn out to be the better way. Of concern for the entire community is the fact that the widely used commercial implementation of an Object Database Management System by Objectivity Inc. (objy ) is being deprecated by almost all major collaborations for their large scale data storage needs. A variety of reasons is cited:

* The Physics community is reluctant to adopt software without access to the source code, since its computing systems are usually highly non-standard implementations that require customization.
* An object database does not match traditional data access and usage patterns.
* Large scale data storage with an object database requires a highly sophisticated and finetuned setup and time consuming expert operation.
* Financial means in public research are limited.

Although those issues are of little direct consequence for the project described here, because of the much smaller database sizes, a decline in overall acceptance will have an impact on product pricing, availability, and support.

Similarly, the situation continues to be challenging with regard to platform support. Third party software packages, such as CORBA implementations, make inroads into the Linux world at a slow pace. But the Linux on Intel platform is in the process of displacing all other hardware/operating system combinations in the field. This situation has placed limitations on what can be done with commercial software, and may prove a confining factor in future upgrades of the CLEO computing systems.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work has been supported by the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the Alexander von Humboldt foundation.


text:
# Evidence for parallel confinement in resonant charge transfer of H- near metal surfaces

## Abstract

Using a wave packet propagation approach, we find that the resonant charge transfer process of H- near a Cu(111) surface is strongly influenced by transient hybrid states. These states originate from an ion-induced confinement parallel to the surface together with the surface-localization character of the metal potential along the surface normal. The lowest members of these states have lifetimes of the order of interaction times in typical particle-surface scattering experiments. The propagation of the electron probability density provides clear evidence for this effect in visualizing the evolution and the decay of these transient states.

The investigation of electron transfer and orbital hybridization processes during the interaction of a projectile atom or ion with a metal surface is of both fundamental and practical importance. The ensuing knowledge finds valuable use in various applied fields of physics, such as, development of ion sources, control of ion-wall interactions in fusion plasma, surface chemistry and analysis, secondary ion mass spectroscopy, and reactive ion etchinggauy96 ; shao94 . Of basic interest is the detailed understanding of single-electron transfer leading to either ionization or neutralization of a surface-scattered projectile. This process of resonant charge transfer (RCT) has been addressed by employing different non-perturbative theoretical methods, including single-center basis-set-expansionbahr99 , complex coordinates rotationnord92 , two-center expansionthumm02-98 , multi-center expansion techniquesmart96 , and the direct numerical integration of the effective single-electron Schrödinger equation by Crank-Nicholson wave packet propagation (CNP)bori98 ; bori99 ; press93 ; thumm02 .

Of all these methods, CNP is most flexible in the sense that it can readily be applied to any parametrized effective potential that may be used to represent the electronic structure of substrate and projectile. In contrast to expansion methods that usually simplify the target to a free-electron (jellium) metal, CNP allows for a significantly more detailed representation of the substrate electronic structure, including the effect of band gapsbori98 ; guil99 , surface statesbori99 , and image states on the RCT dynamics.

The Cu(111) surface is of particular interest since (a) the affinity level of H- lies within the $`L`$-band gap of the surface and (b) it serves as a prototype of a metal surface that can localize a surface state within its band gap. We show that for the H-/Cu(111) system charge transfer is to a large extent channeled through transient hybrid states that are confined parallel to the surface by the combined influence of surface and projectile potentials. H- is described by an effective potential that models the interaction of the active electron with a polarizable corecohe86 . A one-dimensional \[in the co-ordinate ($`z`$) of surface normal\] single-electron effective potential, constructed from pseudopotential local density calculations, is employed to model the surfacechul99 . This potential reproduces the observed and/or ab initio $`L`$-band gap position, surface state and image states for zero electron momentum component $`k_{\text{par}}`$ parallel to the surface ($`x`$ direction). Note that the first image state lies in the band gap while higher ones are degenerate with the conduction bandchul99 . We employ the CNPpress93 ; thumm02  of the initial free H- wave function $`\varphi _{\text{ion}}`$over a two-dimensional numerical grid in which the metal continuum is approximated by free electronic motion in $`x`$ direction. Our grid includes 100 layers on the bulk and extends to $`z`$ = 200 a.u. on the vacuum side. The topmost layer of lattice points defines $`z`$ = 0. The grid covers 200 a.u. in $`x`$. The grid spacings $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ = $`\mathrm{\Delta }x`$ = 0.2 a.u. yield good convergence.

For fixed ion-surface distances $`D`$, the numerical propagation over time $`t`$ yields $`\mathrm{\Phi }(t)`$ and the ionic survival amplitude $`A(t)=\mathrm{\Phi }(t)|\varphi _{\text{ion}}`$. The real part of the Fourier transform (FT) of this amplitude yields the projected density of states (PDOS) that exhibits resonance structures. The position, width, and amplitude of these resonances provide, respectively, the energy, lifetime, and population of the states. Contrary to the parametric fitting adopted in Ref. bori99, , a direct FT of $`A(t)`$ is performed by propagating, in time-steps $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ = 0.1 a.u., over a period long enough for acceptable convergence. Figure 1 depicts the PDOS (thick solid curve) for three typical values of $`D`$. Results neglecting the electronic motion parallel to the surface are obtained by propagating over a one-dimensional grid along $`z`$ and are shown (short-dashed curve) for comparisons. Note, although for this 1-D propagation, due to the absence of any decay continuum, $`A(t)`$ never fully converges, we still carry out the FT of $`A(t)`$ calculated over a finite time, since we are interested only in identifying resonances in the 1-D PDOS.

At $`D`$ = 11 a.u. \[Fig 1(a)\], our results with or without the parallel motion included show discretized structures corresponding to the valence and conduction band. The affinity level resonance (at $``$1.56 eV) and the surface state resonance (at $``$5.31 eV) are also present in both calculations, although the affinity level is shifted downward from the unperturbed asymptotic affinity of $``$0.76 eV. Strikingly, two small peaks appear just above the surface state resonance for the results that include the parallel motion. For $`D`$ = 5 a.u. \[Fig. 1(b)\], the affinity level and the surface state resonance are present in both results, with and without parallel motion, but the structures in between for the calculation that incorporates electronic parallel motion increase in number and strength. Clearly, these new resonances appear only when the electronic parallel degree of freedom is switched on. For a jellium Cu surface the PDOS \[Fig. 1(b), long-dashed curve\] only shows a wide affinity level peak, as expected, thus indicating that the resonances are due to details in the surface band structure that are not accounted for in the simplistic jellium model. For a more complete portrayal of the origin of these features we also show the PDOS \[Fig. 1(b), thin solid curve\], including the parallel motion, for Cu(100), which has a similar band gap in the direction normal to the surface but, contrary to Cu(111), no surface state inside the gapchul99 . This shows valence band structures up to $``$3.1 eV and the affinity level at $``$1 eV but no significant feature in between. Evidently, the extra features in the Cu(111) PDOS between the surface state and the affinity level resonances must be originating both from the parallel degree of freedom of the electron and the special localizing property of the Cu(111) potential along the surface normal that binds a surface state inside the band gap. For very close ion-surface separation, $`D`$ = 1 a.u., these features almost disappear, while two similar resonances superimposed on the conduction band spearhead, at $``$0.67 and $``$0.35 eV \[Fig. 1(c)\], above the affinity level. These resonances, in analogy with the ones below the affinity level, also originate from the electron parallel motion and the weak binding of the long-range tail of the surface potential.

The origin and evolution of this effect with decreasing $`D`$ can be understood as follows. As H- moves towards the surface, the ion potential gradually deepens following, at large $`D`$, the classical image interaction. Consequently, the spherical symmetry of the ion potential gets broken by the surface potential “slope”, which becomes steepest in the vicinity of metal-vacuum interface. Sufficiently close to the surface, the parallelly-stretched asymmetric top of the ion potential confines a new state. Although this state is bound in the parallel direction, whether or not it will live long will depend on how much binding it experiences in the direction normal to the surface. Indeed, for Cu(111) the surface potential has enough reflectivity to enable the formation of a localized surface state within the band gap. As a consequence, the new state, confined parallelly by the incoming ion, is also (temporarily) bound in the normal direction by the Cu(111) potential. This state is relatively long-lived and appears as a fairly narrow peak in the PDOS spectrum \[Fig 1(a)\]. As the ion moves closer to the surface, the number of states confined parallelly increases and additional peaks emerge in the PDOS \[Fig. 1(b)\]. For the H-/Cu(100) system, in contrast, since the surface potential lacks sufficient surface-localizing reflectivity (it fails to support a surface state within the band gap), the states, confined parallelly by the ion, decay rapidly into the metal valence band, as indicated by the broad bump in the valence band of Cu(100) \[Fig. 1(b)\]. Therefore, these new resonances near Cu(111) are parallelly confined hybrids.

The surface state is not bound in the parallel direction. A resonance state that energetically lies above the surface state while being confined parallelly has to be less bound in the normal direction than the surface state. A reduction of the normal binding can be achieved by sliding up the potential at the bulk-vacuum interface, that is, by moving the mean position of the wave function in normal direction towards the ion. This increases the overlap between the ionic wave function and that of the confined state. Consequently, for a given ion-surface separation, we expect the lowest parallelly confined state to be populated first because of its strongest wave function overlap with the ion. This is seen in Fig. 2, which depicts the propagated wave packet probability density $`|\mathrm{\Phi }(t)|^2`$ at $`t`$ = 30, 70, 120 and 165 a.u. for fixed $`D`$ = 5 a.u. Figure 2(a) ($`t`$ = 30 a.u.) shows an approximately nodeless structure outside the surface plane implying that over a short propagation time the ion populates predominantly the lowest parallelly confined state. However, at later times and increasing population of higher parallelly confined states, the wave packet spreads along the parallel co-ordinate forming additional nodal structures. Notably, since the parallel component of the wave packet outside the surface is a time-dependent linear combination of parallelly confined stationary states with different nodal structures, the position of a node moves with time. The ripples seen along the normal direction inside the bulk are due to the periodic bulk potential and a faint blob beyond $`z`$ 20 a.u. on the vacuum side \[Fig. 2(b-d)\] represents the evolution of weakly populated image states.

Fig. 3 shows the energy and the width of various resonances as a function of $`D`$. Our results for affinity level and surface state resonances are qualitatively similar to previous calculationsbori99 . At large distances, the energy \[Fig. 3(a)\] of the affinity level resonance (filled circles) is solely governed by image interactions leading to a good agreement with corresponding jellium results (opaque circles). In Fig. 3(b) on the other hand, affinity level resonance widths for Cu(111) are smaller than the jellium predictions at large distances, since in the jellium case no band gap exists and electrons can decay in the normal direction. The strong interaction, seen in the distance-dependent widths and energies between the affinity level resonance and the surface state resonance (filled squares) for small $`D`$, is the consequence of an indirect coupling between the corresponding discrete quasi-stationary states through the surface state continuumbori99 . Interestingly, both energy and width of the parallelly confined resonances depend only weakly on $`D`$ (Fig. 3). We explain this near-stabilization by couplings of a given parallelly confined state with both affinity and surface state that have comparable strength. These couplings result in opposite level shifts and comparable rates (widths) for transitions between the affinity and parallelly confined state and between the parallelly confined state and the surface state. The same argument explains the stabilization of resonances just above the ionic resonance for very close $`D`$ where the states are interacting with the ion and the conduction band. Furthermore, as discussed before, the state with maximum binding in the parallel direction has the strongest overlap with the affinity level and the weakest with the surface state. As a result, while it is “fed” by the ion the most, it decays through the surface state continuum the least acquiring a narrow width \[Fig. 3(b)\]. The counter-argument explains the large widths for minimally confined states in the parallel direction.

During the approach to the surface the projectile gradually decelerates in the normal direction along its incoming trajectory, owing to the repulsive interaction between its neutral core and surface atoms, until its normal velocity becomes zero at the point of closest approach. For specular reflection, it re-gains its original normal velocity. For a given initial kinetic energy and angle of incidence, we simulate the classical ion-trajectory by modeling the core-surface interaction via a plane-averaged interatomic potentialbier82 . This defines a distance of closest approach as a function of the initial normal velocity. Since the ion moves slowly near the surface, the adiabatic (fixed-ion) results (Figs. 1-3) provide a good guideline to understand the calculations for a moving ion. In Fig. 4, we present four wave packet probability densities, a pair each from the incoming and the outgoing part of the trajectory of H- ions with 50 eV asymptotic energy at 60o incidence with respect to the surface. In Fig. 4(a), $`D`$ = 10.5 a.u., the ion predominantly populates the state confined most strongly in the parallel direction. Reaching $`D`$ = 2.76 a.u., Fig. 4(b), the wave packet spreads over all available parallelly confined states, and clear nodal structures emerge symmetrically along the parallel direction outside the surface with each “bead” emanating a jet into the bulk. Electrons in the central jet have small parallel velocity indicating their ejection from the most tightly confined state. A steady increase of the parallel velocity is evidenced going symmetrically away from the center in parallel direction since the more distant jets originate from less strongly confined states. In Fig. 4(c), the ion arrives roughly at the distance of closest approach, 0.5 a.u., where the adiabatic energy position of the ionic resonance moves very close to the conduction band \[Fig. 3(a)\] and induces new resonances above the ionic level. Again, the node formation and resulting jets are seen, although the shape of the wave packet density is now dominated by a strong decay into the conduction band as well as by the subsequent population of image states, degenerate with the conduction band, on the vacuum side of the projectile. A remarkable signature of the parallel confinement is finally seen on the outward excursion of the ion in Fig. 4(d) at $`D`$ = 6.59 a.u.: the entrapment of the electron back in parallelly confined states results in decay-jets into the bulk and subsequent re-ionization of the projectile (note the strong trapping at the ion position). As an observable consequence of the strong participation of parallelly confined states in the decay near Cu(111), we find about 6% ion survival after the scattering of H- from this surface as opposed to about 2% from Cu(100), which is free from this effect. A detailed comparative study will be published elsewherechak03 .

In conclusion, we demonstrate significant parallel confinement effects in resonant neutralization of H- near Cu(111) by directly analyzing the evolution of the active electron’s wave packet probability density. A surface-induced breakdown of the ionic spherical symmetry and significant reflectivity of the surface potential is responsible for this confinement. Finally, there is nothing special about Cu(111). Any of the surfaces, namely, Ag(111), Au(111), Pd(111) etc., supporting a surface state in the $`L`$-band gap is expected to show similar parallel confinement phenomena during the RCT process.

This work is supported by the NSF (grant PHY-0071035) and the Division of Chemical Sciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Energy Research, US DoE.


text:
# Polariton Squeezing in Semiconductor Microcavities

## Abstract

We report squeezed polariton generation using parametric polariton four-wave mixing in semiconductor microcavities in the strong coupling regime. The geometry of the experiment corresponds to degenerate four-wave mixing, which gives rise to a bistability threshold. Spatial effects in the nonlinear regime are evidenced, and spatial filtering is required in order to optimize the measured squeezing. By measuring the noise of the outgoing light, we infer a 9 percent squeezing on the polariton field close to the bistability turning point.

Cavity polaritons are two-dimensional mixed states of light and matter, obtained in high finesse semiconductor microcavities in the strong coupling regime weisbuch . They present a sharply distorted dispersion relation houdre  and novel nonlinear features possessed neither by photons nor by excitons alone. Coulomb interaction between excitons gives rise to an effective nonlinear interaction between polaritons ciuti . Strongly nonlinear emission has been observed under both resonant magic  and nonresonant nonres  pumping.

Nonlinear emission under resonant pumping is usually studied by exciting the microcavity at the so-called ”magic angle” fulfilling both energy and in-plane momentum conservation for the conversion of two pump polaritons with wave vector $`𝐤_𝐩`$ into a pair of signal and idler polaritons with wave vector $`\mathrm{𝟎}`$ and $`\mathrm{𝟐}𝐤_𝐩`$, respectively (polariton four-wave mixing). However, a pronounced nonlinear behavior can also be obtained by exciting the microcavity at normal incidence prl ; academie ; karr ; dunbar . In this configuration, the nonlinear mechanism is quasi-degenerate four-wave mixing between polaritons with $`𝐤\mathrm{𝟎}`$. The coherent nature of the nonlinear process was demonstrated by observing the phase dependence of the emission prl .

In this paper, we demonstrate that this coherent nonlinear mechanism allows one to beat thermal effects, often dominant in the noise of semiconductor structures, and to enter into the quantum regime, that is to generate squeezed polaritons. While light squeezing has been obtained with a number of nonlinear media, including semiconductors fox , the presence of strong coupling inside the microcavity allows to produce a new type of squeezing involving a part-light, part-matter field, the polariton. Polariton squeezing opens the way to the use of semiconductor microcavities in the field of quantum information, for the processing of quantum variables.

As a general rule, quasi-degenerate four-wave mixing is well suited to generate squeezing. The effective Hamiltonian for the lower polariton in the case of resonant excitation at normal incidence is

$$H=E_{LP}(0)p_0^{}p_0+\frac{1}{2}X_0^4V^{eff}p_0^{}p_0^{}p_0p_0$$
(1)
where $`p_0`$, $`p_0^{}`$ are the annihilation and creation operators for a lower branch polariton with in-plane wave vector $`𝐤=0`$, $`E_{LP}(0)`$ is the lower polariton energy at $`𝐤=0`$ and $`V^{eff}=6e^2a_{exc}/ϵ_0A`$ is the effective potential due to exciton-exciton interaction, where $`a_{exc}`$ is the exciton two-dimensional Bohr radius, $`ϵ_0`$ is the dielectric constant of the quantum well and $`A`$ is the quantization area. $`X_0`$ is the Hopfield coefficient hopfield  representing the exciton content of the polariton. In view of the low excitation level, exciton-exciton interaction can be treated as a perturbation compared to the normal mode coupling, allowing to ignore the effect of the upper polariton. Other nonlinear effects khitrova  such as exciton bleaching houdre2  or carrier quantum correlations ell  are effective for much higher excitation densities than the ones considered here. We have checked the presence of two peaks in reflectivity for all the used laser intensities, and measured excitation induced shifts which were always small compared to the vacuum Rabi splitting prl .

This Hamiltonian is analogous to that of an optical field in a cavity containing a Kerr medium. It is well known that very good squeezing is expected for the optical field in this case collett . In the same way, squeezing of the polariton field has been predicted in semiconductor microcavities messin ; academie ; quattropani . In this paper, we report the first observation of polariton squeezing. We make measurements on the light going out of the cavity, i.e. the photon part of the polariton field, which allows to obtain the amount of polariton squeezing inside the cavity.

Unlike experiments using transparent optical Kerr media, excitation in a microcavity is resonant both with the cavity and with the nonlinear medium. As a consequence, the squeezing rate is expected to be reduced due to the excess noise added by the polariton photoluminescence. It is important to evaluate the amount of excess noise in order to assess the feasibility of squeezing. In the framework of the input-output formalism entreesortie , the Heisenberg-Langevin equation for the lower polariton operator $`p_0`$ can be deduced from the Hamiltonian (1):

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dp_0}{dt}}`$ $`=`$ $`(\gamma _0+i\delta _0)p_0iX_0^4\alpha p_0^{}p_0p_0`$ (2)
$``$ $`C_0\sqrt{2\gamma _{cav}}A^{in}+X_0\sqrt{2\gamma _{exc}}B^{in}`$
In this equation $`\delta _0=E_{LP}(0)/\mathrm{}\omega _L`$ is the detuning from the polariton of the excitation laser of frequency $`\omega _L`$ ; $`\gamma _0`$, $`\gamma _{cav}`$ and $`\gamma _{exc}`$ are the linewidths of the polariton, cavity and exciton. $`A^{in}`$ ($`B^{in}`$) is the input term due to the photonic (excitonic) part of the polariton, $`C_0`$ and $`X_0`$ are the Hopfield coefficients and $`\alpha =V^{eff}/\mathrm{}`$.

Using this equation, the mean values of the polariton field inside the microcavity and of the optical field outside can easily be calculated. Distortion of the reflectivity curve as well as optical bistability are obtained, as shown by the dashed line in Fig. 1. Evidence for a bistable behavior is given in Fig. 3. This new effect will be described in more detail in a forthcoming publication. Bistability has been predicted already in semiconductor microcavities tredicucci ; chen , however in different conditions.

We now turn to the study of fluctuations. The input term for the light field $`A^{in}`$ is the driving laser field, which has fluctuations equal to the vacuum noise. The input term for the exciton field $`B^{in}`$ comprises only noise since there is no direct excitation of the exciton field. Let us stress that the presence of relaxation processes for the exciton implies the existence of fluctuations, due to fluctuation-dissipation theorem. These input fluctuations are at least the vacuum noise. In addition there is thermal noise coming from phonon interaction. Assuming that the noise is due to an exciton reservoir which is populated by collisions of the pump polaritons with acoustic phonons, we find that the correlation function of the input noise is $`<B^{in}(t)B^{in}(t+\tau )>=\beta n_b\delta (\tau )`$, where $`n_b`$ is the population of the $`𝐤=0`$ exciton mode and $`\beta `$ is the excitation rate of the reservoir karr .

Using these assumptions for the polariton excess noise input, we have calculated from equation (2) the noise properties of the light going out of the microcavity. This noise is made of a superposition of quadrature components with phases distributed over 2$`\pi `$. In the linear regime this emission has no phase dependence, i.e. all the quadrature components have the same intensities. As shown previously prl , in the presence of nonlinear polariton interaction the noise exhibits a phase dependence, i.e. some quadrature components are amplified while some other quadrature components are deamplified. Using a linearized version (to lowest order) of equation (2) and of its hermitian conjugate allows to predict the behavior of all the noise quadratures. Here, we will concentrate on the quadrature that exhibits the minimal noise.

Fig. 1 shows the minimal noise as a function of the laser detuning, for various excess noise parameters, zero cavity-exciton detuning and an input intensity corresponding to the bistability threshold. One obtains squeezing provided the parameter $`\beta `$ is smaller than a critical value $`\beta _c=\alpha /2\gamma _{exc}`$ karr . The best squeezing is obtained in the vicinity of the bistability turning point.

The value of $`\beta `$ can be evaluated experimentally by measuring the noise at very low excitation density. In such conditions the nonlinear term in equation (2) can be neglected and the reflected field has thermal excess noise increasing linearly with the excitation intensity. We verified this and deduced the value of $`\beta `$ from the slope of the excess noise vs the intensity. It was found to be smaller than $`\beta _c`$ for all detunings. This means that the level of excess noise should be low enough to get squeezing. At this point, this treatment ignores other noise sources like the exciton-exciton interaction itself that is at the origin of the coherent nonlinear effect but also causes incoherent effects such as broadening and fluctuations.

This effect can in principle be calculated from the Hamiltonian (1) gardiner . It is however quite difficult to evaluate by this method. We have estimated it phenomenologically by using the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. For this, we replace $`\gamma _{exc}`$ in eq. (2) by its value in the presence of collisional broadening, that is, we take into account the incoherent effect of exciton-exciton interaction, the coherent part of which is accounted for by the second term on the right hand side of eq. (2). As a result, additional dissipation is included by means of the first term and additional fluctuations are included by means of the last term. Using the measured value of the broadening, we obtain the curve shown in the inset of Fig. 1, which shows an overall reduced squeezing, as compared to the squeezing predicted without broadening for the same value of $`\beta `$=0.5 $`\beta _c`$. It can also be noted that, in this case no squeezing is predicted around the minimum of the reflectivity curve. This can be understood from the fact that in this region, the driving laser light intensity is high, and so is the polariton number, which leads to an increased collision rate. On the contrary, right below the bistability threshold, the collision rate is reduced, while the coherent nonlinear interaction is still high enough to allow for squeezing.

In the experiments presented below, we show how this squeezing can be evidenced.

The sample used in these experiments is a high finesse GaAs microcavity containing one InGaAs uantum well with low indium content and is described in more detail in Ref. prl . The Rabi splitting is 2.8 meV. The linewidth (FWHM) of the lower polariton at 4K is of the order of 200 $`\mu `$eV. The light source is a single-mode tunable cw Ti:sapphire laser with a linewidth of the order of 1 MHz. The laser beam is power-stabilized using an electro-optic modulator and spatially filtered by a 2 m-long single mode fiber. The spot diameter is 50 $`\mu `$m. In all experiments the lower polariton branch is excited close to resonance at normal incidence with a $`\sigma ^+`$ polarized beam. The outgoing beam is spatially filtered in order to select a region of the sample of about 10 $`\mu `$m in diameter (see Fig. 2) and analyzed by means of a homodyne detection setup bachor . For this the light going out of the microcavity is mixed on two photodiodes with an auxiliary laser beam, the local oscillator, that has the same frequency as the driving laser. The frequency spectrum of the beat signal detected by the two photodiodes is analyzed with an RF spectrum analyzer. The reflected laser light and the light scattered at the laser frequency yield a large interference peak at zero frequency, which is filtered out. The incoherent luminescence emission yields a broad noise signal. The phase of the local oscillator can be varied, allowing to explore all the quadrature components present in the emitted noise.

We first studied the near field of the reflected beam. At sufficiently low excitation intensity, the spot shows a dark vertical line corresponding to absorption occurring on the polariton resonance. The variation of absorption with the position is due to the slight angle between the cavity mirrors, and the dark line is a line of equal thickness of the microcavity. At higher laser intensities, even well below the bistability threshold, one observes a strong distortion of the resonance line as shown in Fig. 3. When scanning the spot position on the sample (which amounts to scanning the polariton energy) one can see an evolution from a crescent shape to a ring shape, and then to a dot shape. The shape of the resonance region can be understood as resulting from compensation between the nonlinear energy shift due to the intensity variations linked to the gaussian shape of the beam, and the linear energy shift due to the cavity thickness variations.

According to the above model, the best squeezing rate is expected in the vicinity of a turning point of bistability, as in other nonlinear systems (see for example hilico ). Therefore we performed noise measurements close to the turning points, where the resonance region is dot-shaped. In this case, only the central part of the beam has entered the microcavity, the remaining part has been reflected by the input mirror. In order to avoid averaging the noise over the whole reflected beam, we have selected the light emitted by the resonance region (about 10 $`\mu `$m) by means of a spatial filter. This means that the combination of geometrical and nonlinear effect leads to selecting a squeezed class of polariton that has broader dispersion in $`k`$ than the excitation laser spot.

The resulting noise signal is shown in Fig. 4. After corrections for detection efficiency, we measure a squeezing in the reflected field of 6%. Squeezing is achievable only in a narrow range of detunings and laser intensities below the bistability threshold. The value of $`\beta `$ for the detuning $`\delta `$=0.3 meV (evaluated at low excitation intensity) is 0.5 $`\pm `$ 0.2 $`\beta _c`$. The squeezing value predicted by the phenomenological model under these conditions is about 12%, as can be seen in Fig. 1. The order of magnitude is in satisfactory agreement with the experimental value, in view of the approximations made in the model.

From the measurement of the reflected field fluctuations we deduce a squeezing of 9% of the internal polariton field using the method of Ref. walls . In contrast to the case of a Kerr medium in a cavity, the squeezing of the reflected field is smaller than the internal mode squeezing, because the squeezed mode is a polariton mode and not a photon mode, which causes additional losses at the output of the cavity (since only the photon fraction of the polariton goes through the cavity mirror). In some way, measuring the output light field is like looking at the polariton mode through a beamsplitter with an amplitude transmission coefficient equal to $`C_0`$ (the Hopfield coefficient representing the photon fraction of the polariton) which leads to a reduction of the measured squeezing with respect to the internal polariton squeezing.

In conclusion, we have reported the first experimental demonstration of squeezed polariton generation in semiconductor microcavities, using polariton degenerate four-wave mixing. The polariton squeezing generates squeezing of the outgoing light, that is measured to be $`6\%`$. The squeezing was obtained just above the bistability threshold, close to a turning point, and the bistable region was selected by spatial filtering. A squeezing of $`9\%`$ of the part-light, part-matter polariton field can be inferred from the measurements. This result opens the way to the generation of nonclassical states of light and matter in semiconductor microcavities. Such nonclassical effects should also be observed in nondegenerate four-wave mixing, since quantum correlations between the polariton signal and idler fields have been recently predicted quattropani .