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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The phenomenon of perturbative saturation has been the focus of intensive study in recent years. Since the appearance of the first RHIC data, saturation based ideas have motivated several attempts at understanding bulk properties of ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions such as the multiplicity, rapidity distribution and centrality dependence of particle production . In particular the recent work  suggests that the saturating properties of the nuclear gluon distribution may be responsible for the $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$ scaling of charged particle multiplicity at $`2<p_t<8`$ GeV with centrality in RHIC data. It is undoubtedly true that saturation effects suppress the number of gluons below the saturation momentum $`Q_s`$ in the nuclear wave function. It is then very plausible that the number of produced particles at $`p_t<Q_s`$ is also suppressed relative to simple perturbative prediction. The value of $`Q_s^2`$ is estimated to be of order $`2`$ GeV2 for most central collisions at RHIC . The suggestion of  goes beyond this simple statement and implies that the suppression persists also at higher momenta, namely in the so called scaling window $`Q_s<p_t<Q_s^2/Q_0`$.

On the other hand one expects a competing effect of transverse momentum broadening due to multiple rescatterings in the final state, the so called Cronin effect. This should enhance the number of particles produced in the intermediate momentum range and thus works against the saturation argument. The purpose of this note is to show that there is no outright contradiction between the appearance of the Cronin effect and the expectations based on the saturation scenario and that, in fact, the Cronin enhancement is inherent in some realizations of saturation physics. We show here that saturation models based on multiple rescattering lead to the relation

$$\frac{dN^{\mathrm{sat}}}{d^2p_t}>\frac{dN^{\mathrm{pert}}}{d^2p_t}$$
(1)
for all $`p_t>Q_s`$. This relation leads to Cronin enhancement when comparing gluon production in central and peripheral collisions.

For saturation models based not on multiple rescattering but rather on coherent suppression at low $`x`$ the situation is more complicated. Here it is also true that the number of gluons produced in the intermediate momentum range is greater than the prediction of the leading order perturbation theory. This overall enhancement is the result of the increase of the number of gluons in the nuclear wave function due to low $`x`$ evolution. The transverse momentum broadening is also present. This is manifested by the anomalous dimension generated by the low $`x`$ evolution, so that the decrease of the evolved distribution with momentum is very slow. However, whether this broadening results in the Cronin enhancement is determined by the behavior of saturated gluon distribution at high transverse momenta. The momenta which are important are those above the scaling window inside which the value of the anomalous dimension is analytically understood. If the distribution above the scaling window approaches quickly the leading order perturbative one, the Cronin effect is indeed generated. However if the distribution continues to vary much slower than $`1/p_t^2`$, the (properly normalized) multiplicity of produced gluons is always smaller for central collisions than for the peripheral ones.

In this light, the results of  should be understood in the following way. In a particular saturation ansatz considered in  for $`p_t`$ in the scaling window, $`\frac{dN^{\mathrm{sat}}}{d^2p_t}`$ as a function of centrality is indeed proportional to the number of participants $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$. However its value is always greater than that for the leading order perturbative prediction for the same momentum, even though the latter is proportional to the number of collisions $`N_{\mathrm{coll}}N_{\mathrm{part}}^{4/3}`$. This holds as long as the transverse momentum in question is greater than the saturation momentum for the most central collisions considered. Thus according to the saturation scenario, the number of produced particles in the intermediate transverse momentum range is enhanced and not suppressed relative to the leading order perturbative one. This enhancement in the overall production may or may not result in the Cronin enhancement when comparing the production rates for central versus peripheral collisions, as the evolution is equally effective for all impact parameters.

Before we proceed further, we wish to make clear the following points. First, to calculate the gluon production we use the $`k_t`$ factorized formalism as in . Although it has not been proved to hold for this process and is likely not to be strictly valid, one may hope as in  that it gives a qualitatively reasonable description of gluon production. Second, in this note we only address the multiplicity of produced gluons. For comparison with experimental data, this quantity has to be convoluted with gluon fragmentation functions to convert it to the number of produced hadrons. This introduces additional uncertainties related to our limited knowledge of the dynamics of the system between the time of production and the time of hadronization , and the possible medium-dependence of parton fragmentation . Thus our results have to be paralleled to those of  prior to convolution with fragmentation functions.

The simple $`k_t`$-factorized formula for the gluon yield at central rapidity in a collision of identical nuclei  used in  is

$$E\frac{d\sigma }{d^3pd^2b}=\frac{4\pi ^2\alpha _sS_{AA}(b)N_c}{N_c^21}\frac{1}{p_t^2}d^2k_t\varphi _A(y,k_t)\varphi _A(y,p_tk_t).$$
(2)
Here $`S_{AA}(b)`$ is the overlap area in the transverse plane between the nuclei at fixed impact parameter $`b`$, $`y`$ is the rapidity difference between the central rapidity and the fragmentation region and $`\varphi _A(y,k_t)`$ is the intrinsic momentum dependent nuclear gluon distribution function, related to the standard gluon distribution by

$$\varphi _A(y,k_t)=\frac{d(xG_A(x,k_t^2))}{d^2k_td^2b}.$$
(3)
Eq. (2) itself is an approximation even within the $`k_t`$-factorization scheme for two reasons. First, the gluon distribution is considered to be effectively impact parameter independent and taken at some representative impact parameter inside the overlap region. Second the rapidity of both distribution functions is taken to be the same rather than integrating over the relative rapidity of the two distributions. This amounts to the assumption that the gluons are produced locally in rapidity and keep the same rapidity label as in the parent distribution function. The first assumption in principle is easily relaxed by considering $`b`$-dependent distributions, although it makes the calculation considerably more cumbersome. The second assumption is more questionable. One certainly expects ”migration” in rapidity during the interaction, and in particular the relevant rapidities should depend on the produced transverse momentum. This is certainly the case in the collinear factorized perturbative formalism, where the parent rapidities are taken at $`x=k_t/\sqrt{s}`$. However in the present case the production is not necessarily through the $`22`$ process, and thus the rapidities are not fixed in the same way. Keeping these caveats in mind, we now consider the implications of Eq. (2).

In a purely perturbative approach, neglecting the effects of saturation the gluon distribution function at impact parameter $`b`$ has the shape

$$\varphi _A^{\mathrm{pert}}(k_t,b)=\frac{\alpha _s(N_c^21)}{2\pi ^2}K\frac{\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b)}{2}\frac{1}{(k_t+\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD})^2},$$
(4)
where $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b)`$ is the density of participants, taken as reference for $`AA`$ collisions. The role of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ in the denominator is to regulate the gluon distribution in the infrared. The additional numerical multiplicative factor $`K`$ reflects the fact that the gluons at low $`x`$ originate not only from the valence quarks, but also from the sea quarks and energetic gluons.

## 2 Models for the gluon distribution

Saturation effects modify the gluon distribution so that it is suppressed at low momenta $`|k_t|<Q_s`$. There are several models in the literature which provide such saturated distribution function. In this note we consider two types of models.

### 2.1 McLerran–Venugopalan gluon

The McLerran-Venugopalan model  achieves saturation by taking into account the Glauber-Mueller multiple scattering effects. The intrinsic glue distribution in this model was calculated in

$$\varphi _A^{\mathrm{MV}}(k_t)=\frac{N_c^21}{4\pi ^4\alpha _sN_c}\frac{d^2𝐱}{𝐱^2}\left(1e^{𝐱^2Q_s^2(𝐱^2)/4}\right)e^{ik_t𝐱}.$$
(5)
We will take the saturation momentum to be $`𝐱`$-dependent following

$$Q_s^2(𝐱^2,b)=\frac{4\pi ^2\alpha _sN_c}{N_c^21}xG(x,1/𝐱^2)\frac{\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b)}{2},$$
(6)
with $`G(x,k_t^2=1/𝐱^2)`$ being the nucleon gluon distribution. We will take the gluon distribution in the nucleon to be of the simple perturbative form

$$xG(x,1/𝐱^2)=K\frac{\alpha _s(N_c^21)}{2\pi }\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{1}{𝐱^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}^2}+a\right).$$
(7)
The small regulator $`a=\frac{1}{𝐱_c^2\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}^2}`$ ensures that the saturation momentum stays positive for $`𝐱^2𝐱_c^2`$. For the numerical evaluations we choose $`x_c=3\mathrm{GeV}^1`$, such that for momenta $`k_tO(1\mathrm{GeV})`$ the sensitivity on the infrared cut off $`a`$ is negligible. We take $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}=0.2\mathrm{GeV}`$, and $`\alpha _s=0.5`$. The saturation scale $`Q_s^2(b)`$ is obtained from the solution of the implicit equation Eq. (6), when evaluated at $`𝐱^2=1/Q_s^2(b)`$. At $`b=0`$ we fix $`Q_s^2=2\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ throughout this paper; this corresponds to $`K=1.8`$ in Eq. (7).

The MV distribution appears in the light cone gauge calculation as the average of the gluon number density operator in the state with random distribution of color charges distributed with the nuclear density . On the other hand as shown in , in the covariant gauge calculation of DIS-like processes it accounts precisely for the rescattering of the produced gluon inside the nucleus. The effect of these multiple rescatterings is to broaden the gluon transverse momentum spectrum by the amount $`\mathrm{\Delta }k_t^2Q_s^2`$. Accordingly, the low momentum part of $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{MV}}`$ is suppressed relative to the perturbative gluon, the region around $`k_tQ_s`$ is enhanced, while at large momenta $`k_tQ_s`$ there is no appreciable change relative to the perturbative gluon. Fig.1a shows the ratio of the MV gluon to the perturbative one as a function of momentum for fixed coupling constant $`\alpha _s=0.5`$. The multiple rescatterings do not change the total number of gluons but only redistribute the gluon momentum. Thus the gluon distribution $`G(Q^2)`$ calculated with $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{MV}}`$ is the same as the perturbative one for $`Q^2Q_s^2`$.

In a DIS-like process with a probe directly coupled to gluons, the intrinsic momentum distribution would be directly proportional to the spectrum of final state gluons. The Cronin effect is therefore present in the MV gluon ab initio. This has been noticed in . The question we are interested in, is to what extent this effect shows up in nuclear collisions.

### 2.2 Evolved gluons

The MV gluon distribution does not contain any evolution in $`x`$. One way to introduce the $`x`$ dependence is to adopt the Golec-Biernat-Wüsthoff procedure , whereby the saturation momentum is taken to be energy dependent with the factor $`x^\lambda `$, with $`\lambda =0.20.3`$. In this paper we are not going to explore the energy dependence of the spectrum, and thus for our purposes the energy independent MV ansatz is sufficient.

Another type of saturated gluon distribution has been used in . The energy dependence in the RHIC energy range is not large enough to allow one to explore the perturbatively predicted $`x`$ dependence of the distribution function. One can nevertheless consider $`\varphi `$ (at both 130 and 200 GeV) as being evolved by the perturbative evolution from lower energies. Such an energy evolution leaves a distinctive imprint on the $`k_t`$ dependence of the gluon. Although the solution of the nonlinear QCD evolution equation  has not been analyzed in great detail, its qualitative features have been discussed in . It has been argued in  that in the wide region of momenta $`Q_s(x)<|k_t|<\frac{Q_s^2(x)}{Q_0}`$ the evolved distribution behaves as

$$\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}(k_t)\left[\frac{Q_s^2}{k_t^2}\right]^\gamma $$
(8)
with the anomalous dimension

$$\gamma =0.64.$$
(9)
A slightly different analysis of  based on doubly logarithmic approximation suggests $`\gamma =0.5`$. In either case due to the large anomalous dimension, $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}`$ is very significantly enhanced over the perturbative $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ in the wide range of momenta. At asymptotically large momenta $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}`$ again reduces to the perturbative expression.

As we will see in the following it is important to know how the distribution behaves outside the scaling window. The behavior outside the scaling window is not known analytically. One expects that at asymptotically large momenta the behavior of $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}`$ is perturbative, and therefore $`\gamma _{|k_t|\mathrm{}}1`$. The crossover from the scaling with the anomalous dimension to the perturbative one can in principle be either sharp at the edge of the window, or can be very gradual and slow. To explore the possible differences between the fast and slow crossovers we will use two parametrizations of the distribution function.

To model the function with the fast crossover we take for illustration

$`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}}(k_t)={\displaystyle \frac{N_c^21}{4\pi ^3\alpha _sN_c}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{Q}_s^2}{k_t^2+\widehat{Q}_s^2}}\right)^{\gamma (k_t)},`$ (10)
where

$`\widehat{Q}_s^2=\widehat{Q}_s^2(b)=K2\pi \alpha _s^2N_c{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b)}{2}},`$ (11)
and

$`\gamma (k_t)={\displaystyle \frac{1+0.64w(k_t)}{1+w(k_t)}},w(k_t)=\left({\displaystyle \frac{10Q_s^2(b)}{(k_t+\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}})^2}}\right)^6.`$ (12)
Here, $`Q_s^2(b)=4\widehat{Q}_s^2(b)`$, consistent with Eq. (6) at $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}=3.1\text{fm}^2`$.

The parametrization of $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}(k_t)`$ is chosen to be consistent with the required behavior at large $`k_t`$ as well as at $`k_t=O(Q_s)`$ . The width of the scaling window in our parametrization is $`3Q_s`$. For $`k_t<Q_s`$, the gluon $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}`$ is supposed to saturate or grow at most logarithmically. In our ansatz this saturation is ensured by the presence of the term $`\widehat{Q}_s^2`$ in the denominator of Eq. (10).

To model the possibility of the slow crossover we will take simply the function with fixed anomalous dimension:

$`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLES}}(k_t)={\displaystyle \frac{N_c^21}{4\pi ^3\alpha _sN_c}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{Q}_s^2}{k_t^2+\widehat{Q}_s^2}}\right)^{0.64},`$ (13)
Although this function never approaches the perturbative asymptotics, for the purposes of numerical evaluation it is indistinguishable from a function with slowly varying $`\gamma (k)`$.

We note that Eq. (10) parametrizes the gluon distribution directly in momentum space. We found that this is the simplest way to generate an acceptable $`\varphi `$ to be used in the framework of Eq. (2). Alternatively one could try to define $`\varphi `$ via the frequently used relation involving the dipole scattering cross section $`N(𝐱)`$ :

$$\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}(k_t)=\frac{N_c^21}{4\pi ^4\alpha _sN_c}\frac{d^2𝐱}{𝐱^2}N(𝐱)e^{ik_t𝐱}.$$
(14)
where

$$N(𝐱)=\frac{\left(𝐱^2Q_s^2(𝐱^2)/4\right)^\gamma }{1+\left(𝐱^2Q_s^2(𝐱^2)/4\right)^\gamma },$$
(15)
with $`\gamma (x)`$ approaching $`\gamma =0.64`$ at small values of $`1/Q_s>x>\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}/Q_s^2`$ in a way similar to Eq. (12). Although strictly speaking $`\varphi _A(k_t)`$ is defined by the relation Eq. (14) only at large $`k_t`$, naively one could expect it to be also reasonable at $`k_tQ_s`$. However it turns out not always to be the case. The Fourier transform in Eq. (14) is not only sensitive to $`x1/k_t`$ but to all $`x<1/k_t`$. As a result depending on details of the parametrization of $`\gamma (x)`$, we sometimes found ”oscillating” unintegrated gluon functions which for some momenta were even negative. In general, this indicates that one should be very careful using relation Eq. (14), as even for a reasonable $`N(x)`$ it can produce unacceptable $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}(k_t)`$.

As seen from Fig.1, the qualitative features of the gluon distribution in the MV model (5) and the scaling models (10) are to some extent similar. When compared to the leading order perturbative distribution Eq. (4) they show suppression at $`k_tQ_s`$ and enhancement at $`k_t>Q_s`$. In Fig.1a, we show the ratio

$$R^{\mathrm{pert}}=\varphi _A(k_t)/\varphi _A^{\mathrm{pert}}(k_t).$$
(16)
In the scaling model the enhancement is much more pronounced. It is clear that using the same ansatz, but with $`\gamma =0.5`$ rather than $`\gamma =0.64`$ would make this enhancement even greater.

In relation to the MV gluon the perturbative distribution Eq. (4) is the relevant distribution to be used to model the peripheral collisions. For the evolved functions a more meaningful comparison is with the “peripheral” distribution of the same functional form as $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}`$ but with a smaller value of $`Q_s`$. In Fig.1b we plot the ratios

$$R_{\mathrm{NLEF}(\mathrm{S})}^{\mathrm{periph}}=\frac{\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}(\mathrm{S})}(b=0,k_t)/\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b=0)}{\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}(\mathrm{S})}(b=13\mathrm{fm},k_t)/\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b=13\mathrm{fm})}$$
(17)
with $`Q_s`$ corresponding to $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}=3.1\mathrm{fm}^2`$ and $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}=0.35\mathrm{fm}^2`$, (the values of impact parameters $`b=0`$ and $`b=13\mathrm{fm}`$) respectively. We observe that the ratios for $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}}`$ and $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLES}}`$ are very different. While the ratio $`R_{\mathrm{NLEF}}^{\mathrm{periph}}`$ exhibits enhancement for the momenta in the scaling window, no such enhancement is seen in $`R_{\mathrm{NLES}}^{\mathrm{periph}}`$. The reason is that with the ansatz $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}}`$ as long as $`k_t`$ is outside the scaling window of the peripheral distribution, but inside the window of the central one (that is for $`3Q_s(b=13\mathrm{f}\mathrm{m})<k_t<3Q_s(b=0)`$) the ratio $`R_{\mathrm{NLEF}}^{\mathrm{periph}}`$ is practically equal to $`R^{\mathrm{pert}}`$. This is not the case for $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLES}}`$ because of a very slow approach to asymptotic behavior. Instead, for all momenta of interest

$$R_{\mathrm{NLES}}^{\mathrm{periph}}=\left(\frac{Q_s^2(b=0)}{Q_s^2(b=13\mathrm{fm})}\right)^{\gamma 1}=\frac{\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b=13\mathrm{fm})}{\rho (b=0)}^{1\gamma }<1.$$
(18)
We note that the physics of the enhancement of $`R^{\mathrm{pert}}`$ for $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}`$ is different from that of $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{MV}}`$. According to  and  the anomalous dimension of the evolved distribution is a direct consequence of the linear BFKL (or doubly logarithmic) evolution and is not significantly affected by the nonlinearity of BK equation. As opposed to multiple rescatterings resummed in $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{MV}}`$, the BFKL evolution greatly increases the total number of gluons relative to the perturbative distribution. Thus the enhancement of $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}`$ is not due to the gluon number conserving redistribution of the gluon momentum, but rather due to the BFKL growth of the total number of gluons. The slow fall off of $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}`$ with momentum in the scaling window and the associated clear momentum broadening is the result of the BFKL diffusion, which fills the phase space very far from the momentum at which the distribution is peaked at initial energy.

Although some qualitative features of saturating gluon distributions appear to be model-independent, quantitative results can vary significantly, see Fig.1a and Fig.1b. In the rest of this paper, we discuss the implications of this model-dependence for the spectrum Eq. (2), and we study the behavior of $`dN/d^2p_t`$ as a function of transverse momentum and centrality.

## 3 Gluon production in A-A collisions

For the perturbative gluon distribution Eq. (4), the main contribution to the integral in Eq. (2) comes from the region of phase space $`k_tp_t0`$ and $`k_t0,p_tk_tp_t`$. The contribution from the bulk of the phase space $`k_tk_tp_tp_t`$ is logarithmically suppressed due to the fast decrease of the perturbative distribution function with $`k_t`$. One finds

$$\frac{dN^{\mathrm{pert}}(b)}{dyd^2p_t}|_{y=0}=2S_{AA}(b)\frac{N_c^21}{4\pi ^3\alpha _sN_c}\frac{\widehat{Q}_s^4(b)}{p_t^4}\left(\mathrm{ln}\frac{p_t^2}{4\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}^2}+2\gamma _E\right),$$
(19)
where $`\gamma _E`$ is the Euler constant. With Eq. (11) this spectrum scales with $`N_{\mathrm{coll}}S_{AA}(b)\rho _{\mathrm{part}}^2(b)`$ as expected perturbatively.

For the saturated gluon distribution in the MV model the gluon yield Eq. (2) is expressed by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}}|_{y=0}={\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi ^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{N_c^21}{\alpha _sN_c}}{\displaystyle \frac{S_{AA}(b)}{p_t^2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{dx}{x^3}}\left(1e^{𝐱^2Q_s^2(𝐱^2)/4}\right)^2J_0(p_tx).`$ (20)
Since small momenta $`p_t`$ are suppressed in the MV gluon distribution, expression (20) is smaller than the perturbative one. For small $`|p_t|`$, the $`𝐱`$-dependence of the saturation scale Eq. (6) is frozen, and one finds

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}}|_{y=0}^{p_tQ_s(b)}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4\pi ^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{N_c^21}{\alpha _sN_c}}{\displaystyle \frac{Q_s^2(b)S_{AA}(b)}{p_t^2}}\mathrm{ln}(4).`$ (21)
Thus, for small transverse momentum, the spectrum (21) scales with the number of participants, i.e.

$$N_{\mathrm{part}}(b)=S_{AA}(b)\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b).$$
(22)
Numerically, however, we find that the limit (21) provides a fair approximation for the full expression (20) in a very small $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b)`$-dependent region below $`p_t<0.1`$ GeV only.

In Fig.2 we plot the result of the numerical evaluation of the formula Eq. (20) normalized to the peripheral (perturbative) yield Eq. (19), i.e.

$$\frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}/\frac{dN^{\mathrm{pert}}(b)}{dyd^2p_t},$$
(23)
for $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}=3.1(\mathrm{fm}^2)`$, and with $`Q_s^2=2\mathrm{GeV}^2`$. This corresponds to the normalized ratio of central over peripheral yields

$$\frac{1}{N_{\mathrm{coll}}(b=0)}\frac{dN(b=0)}{dyd^2p_t}/\frac{1}{N_{\mathrm{coll}}(b=13\text{fm})}\frac{dN(b=13\text{fm})}{dyd^2p_t}.$$
(24)
To understand the $`p_t`$-dependence of (23) qualitatively, we consider the integral $`d^2k_t`$ $`\varphi _A(y,k_t)`$ $`\varphi _A(y,p_tk_t)`$ in (2). For a saturated gluon distribution and $`|p_t|>Q_s`$, one does not gain a logarithmic enhancement factor from the low momentum region, $`|k_t||p_t|`$. However due to enhancement in the intermediate region one gets a bigger contribution to the integral from $`|k_t||k_tp_t|Q_s`$. Since both factors of $`\varphi `$ are enhanced in this region, we expect that for some momentum range this enhancement will overcome the suppression in the small momentum range, and therefore will lead to a net excess of produced gluons relative to the perturbative result. This is seen in Fig.2 as a small but clear Cronin enhancement of the produced gluon number for momenta just above the saturation scale. The amount of enhancement depends on the value of the coupling constant, but qualitatively the phenomenon persists for any $`\alpha _s`$.

For the evolved distributions $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLE}}`$, since the $`k_t`$ dependence is very slow, the contribution to the integral comes from a very large range of momenta - for $`p_t`$ in the scaling region the integral is dominated by $`|k_t||k_tp_t||p_t|`$. This leads to a significant enhancement of gluon production for all $`|p_t|>Q_s`$ relative to the perturbative expression. It is however more interesting to consider the ratio of the central to peripheral yields. Again, taking $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b=0)=3.1\mathrm{fm}^2`$ and $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b=13)=0.35\mathrm{fm}^2`$ we display the results of the numerical integration of Eq. (2) in Fig.2. This plot mirrors the plot for a single distribution Fig.1b. The distribution $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}}`$ displays a clear Cronin effect similar to the MV gluon, while $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLES}}`$ shows uniform suppression for the central/peripheral ratio for all momenta. Although the ratio of the yields for $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}}`$ is smaller than unity at $`p_t1020\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$, we have checked numerically that at very large $`p_t`$ it slowly approaches unity from below. We thus conclude that the properties of the ratio are very sensitive to the way in which the distribution behaves outside the scaling window.

We discuss now to what extent the gluon spectrum (2) shows an approximate $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$ or $`N_{\mathrm{coll}}`$ scaling in some kinematic regime. To this end, we plot the gluon yield normalized to the yield for peripheral collisions at $`b=13.0\mathrm{fm}`$, corresponding to $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}=0.35\mathrm{fm}^2`$ ,

$$\frac{2}{N_{\mathrm{part}}(b)}\frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}/\frac{dN(b=13.0)}{dyd^2p_t}.$$
(25)
This quantity is plotted for the MV gluon in Fig.3 and for the evolved gluon distributions (10) and (13) in Fig.4, for various fixed values of $`p_t`$ as a function of $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$. We also replot in Fig.5 this quantity for the evolved gluon as a function of $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$ using the relation between $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ and $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$ given in . We explore the dependence on $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ beyond the experimentally accessible range to illustrate better the functional dependence. For the MV gluon a steep increase with $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ indicative of $`N_{\mathrm{coll}}`$ scaling is found for $`p_t1\mathrm{GeV}`$. For smaller transverse momentum, e.g. $`p_t=0.25\mathrm{GeV}`$, the $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$-dependence is seen to level off.

For the evolved gluon the centrality dependence is again sensitive to the large momentum behavior. For $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}}`$ at $`p_t=3\mathrm{GeV}`$ the centrality dependence is similar to the MV gluon. One does not recover $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$ scaling even in the enlarged centrality region $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}<8\mathrm{fm}^2`$. The qualitative features of Figs.4 and 5 at small and large $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ at $`p_t=3\mathrm{GeV}`$ can be understood as follows: At small $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$, the saturation momentum $`Q_s`$ is small so that the scaling window does not exist; the overall yield scales with $`N_{\mathrm{coll}}`$, like the perturbative one. This $`N_{\mathrm{coll}}`$ behavior should persist as long as 3 GeV is above the scaling window, $`3\text{GeV}>Q_s^2(b)/Q_0`$ (for our parametrization $`Q_0=0.5\mathrm{GeV}`$). This is indeed seen for small $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ in Figs.4 and 5. In the other extreme, when $`Q_s^2`$ becomes very large and 3 GeV lies well inside the scaling window, the main contribution to the yield comes from the integration over the momentum in the scaling window and one obtains

$$\frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}S(b)Q_s^{2\gamma }.$$
(26)
This dependence is much flatter. For $`\gamma =0.5`$ as in , it scales with $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$ rather than $`N_{\mathrm{coll}}`$. For the value $`\gamma =0.64`$ used here, the dependence is only slightly steeper. This is the argument given in . However, as we have shown above, at these large values of $`Q_s`$ the absolute magnitude of $`\frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}`$ is greater than that of $`\frac{dN^{\mathrm{pert}}(b)}{dyd^2p_t}`$. Hence there must be an intermediate region of $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ where $`\frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}`$ grows faster than $`N_{\mathrm{coll}}`$ so that $`\frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}`$ can overtake $`\frac{dN^{\mathrm{pert}}(b)}{dyd^2p_t}`$ and then stay flat for some region of large $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ 111Of course $`\frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}`$ does not stay above $`\frac{dN^{\mathrm{pert}}(b)}{dyd^2p_t}`$ for arbitrarily large $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$. When the value of $`Q_s`$ reaches $`p_t`$, $`\frac{dN^{\mathrm{pert}}(b)}{dyd^2p_t}`$ overtakes $`\frac{dN(b)}{dyd^2p_t}`$ consistently with our discussion of the previous section.. Such behavior is indeed seen in Figs.4 and 5. However, the values of $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ for which the curve flattens out, are larger than the experimentally relevant ones, see Fig.5. The reason why the scaling of Eq. (26) is not reached faster is that the argument leading to Eq. (26) neglects the finite width of the scaling window. Since the function $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}}`$ decreases quite slowly in the scaling window, the yield gets significant contributions from momenta above $`Q_s^2/Q_0`$. These momenta bring in additional $`Q_s`$ and therefore $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ dependence, and slow down the onset of scaling Eq. (26). At smaller momenta ($`p_t=1\mathrm{G}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}`$) the normalized yield is flat in $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}`$ for $`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}>2\mathrm{fm}^2`$, since these gluons are produced below the saturation momentum.

For $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLES}}`$ on the other hand, the centrality dependence is very flat for all momenta we explored, consistent with .

## 4 Gluon production in p-A or d-A collisions

Finally, we discuss the gluon production in the situation where the distribution of one of the nuclei is perturbative. This situation pertains to proton-nucleus and deuteron-nucleus collisions. Following the previous discussion, we use the $`k_t`$-factorized formula (2) for the gluon yield, replacing $`\varphi _A(y,k_t)`$ $`\varphi _A(y,p_tk_t)`$ in (2) by the product of a perturbative gluon distribution for the proton and a saturated MV or evolved gluon distribution for the nucleus. We also compare the results of this calculation to the gluon production cross section derived in the quasi–classical approximation . This quasi classical expression can be written as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma ^{pA}}{d^2p_tdyd^2b}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle d^2𝐱d^2𝐲\frac{1}{(2\pi )^2}\frac{\alpha _sC_F}{\pi }\frac{𝐱𝐲}{𝐱^2𝐲^2}e^{ip_t(𝐱𝐲)}}`$ (27)
$`\times \left[\left(e^{(𝐱𝐲)^2Q_s^2/4}1\right)+\left(1e^{𝐱^2Q_s^2/4}+1e^{𝐲^2Q_s^2/4}\right)\right],`$
where $`b`$ is the impact parameter, which we choose to be $`b=0`$, $`p_t`$ is the gluon’s transverse momentum, and $`y`$ its rapidity. Although this expression also has a factorized form in momentum space, this form is distinct from Eq. (2) . For the numerical evaluation, we regulate the $`𝐲`$-integration of the first bracket of (27) by an infrared cut-off $`1/\mu `$ where we choose $`\mu =\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$. This cut-off can be introduced using $`\mathrm{ln}\frac{1}{𝐳^2\mu ^2}=\frac{1}{\pi }d^2𝐲\frac{𝐲(𝐳+𝐲)}{𝐲^2(𝐳+𝐲)^2}`$. As in Eq. (6), we use for the saturation scale

$`Q_s^2(𝐱)={\displaystyle \frac{4\pi ^2\alpha _sN_c}{N_c^21}}(2R\rho )xG(x,1/𝐱^2),`$ (28)
where $`\rho `$ denotes the nuclear density and $`xG`$ is the gluon distribution of Eq. (7). For the numerical analysis, we use $`2R\rho =\rho _{\mathrm{part}}(b=0)/2=1.5\mathrm{fm}^2`$.

In order to compare with the perturbative behavior, we calculate for central rapidity $`y=0`$ the asymptotic limit of (27),

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma ^{pA}}{d^2p_tdyd^2b}}|_{p_tQ_s}={\displaystyle \frac{4\alpha _s^3C_F}{\pi }}K(2R\rho ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{p_t^4}}(\mathrm{ln}[{\displaystyle \frac{p_t^2}{4\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}^2}}]+2\gamma _E1).`$ (29)
In the limit of small momenta, we quote

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma ^{pA}}{d^2p_tdyd^2b}}|_{p_tQ_s}={\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _sC_F}{\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{p_t^2}},`$ (30)
which is obtained for ”frozen”, i.e. constant $`Q_s`$. We use Eq. (29) as the baseline for comparison for the MV gluon. For the evolved gluon we calculate the yield using the standard factorized formula. We take the proton distribution in the same functional shape as that of the nucleus, i.e. Eq. (10) and Eq. (13) with $`\widehat{Q}_s=\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$. We compare the central yield ($`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}=3.1\mathrm{fm}^2`$) to the peripheral yield ($`\rho _{\mathrm{part}}=0.35\mathrm{fm}^2`$). Results are plotted in Fig.6.

For moderate momenta, i.e. above about twice the saturation scale $`Q_s1.4\mathrm{GeV}`$, the full rate for the MV gluon shows a Cronin-type enhancement with respect to the perturbative one. For small momenta $`p_tQ_s`$, there is significant suppression, which can be immediately deduced when comparing (30) with (29). A qualitatively similar behavior is found when calculating the gluon spectrum from the factorized ansatz (2). As in the case of the nucleus-nucleus collisions, we find also that in p-A collisions the Cronin ratio in the evolved case depends strongly on the properties of the evolved distribution above the scaling window.

## 5 Conclusion

In summary, our study illustrates that quantitative results depend largely on the precise model-dependent implementation of saturation effects. A generic qualitative feature for the multiple scattering situation is that perturbative saturation leads to Cronin-type transverse momentum broadening of the produced gluon spectrum in both nucleus-nucleus and proton(deuteron)-nucleus collisions. In the evolved case there is an overall enhancement of the production yield relative to the perturbative baseline. The spectrum also exhibits strong transverse momentum broadening due to relatively large anomalous dimension. On the other hand, the absence or presence of the Cronin effect strongly depends on the behavior of the distribution function outside the scaling window. At present the shape of the evolved distribution in this momentum range is not known analytically. The recent numerical study  strongly indicates that crossover from the scaling regime to the perturbative one is very slow and gradual, and that the Cronin effect which is present in the MV gluon is wiped out by the quantum evolution at high energies. Thus, $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLES}}`$ in Eq. (13) seems to provide a more realistic parametrization of the evolved gluon distribution than $`\varphi _A^{\mathrm{NLEF}}`$ in Eq. (10).

Although the centrality dependence of the produced gluon spectrum shows $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$ scaling in some limiting case, it can differ significantly from a simple $`N_{\mathrm{part}}`$ or $`N_{\mathrm{coll}}`$ scaling in the experimentally accessible regime depending on the shape of the gluon distribution .

A detailed comparison of perturbative saturation models to data not only requires the knowledge of the distribution and the improvement of the calculation of the gluon production yield beyond the factorized expression (2) used in this paper. It also requires the inclusion of fragmentation functions for gluons into pions, and a discussion of their possible medium-dependence .

On the qualitative level however we observe that the gluon distributions which lead to the Cronin effect in d-Au collisions also lead to the Cronin enhancement in the Au-Au collisions. And vice versa, if no Cronin effect appears in Au-Au, none is seen in d-Au collisions. Given the recent experimental observation of the Cronin enhancement in d-Au collisions at RHIC  this supports the view that significant final state (“quenching”) effects are needed in order to account for the Au-Au data .

Note added. When preparing the revised version of this paper we were made aware of  and  which also study the effects of saturation on the Cronin enhancement. These references agree with our results regarding the MV gluon. Regarding the evolved gluon, the detailed numerical study is reported in .

#### Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington for its hospitality and the Department of Energy for partial support during the completion of this work. We thank A. H. Mueller for clarifying remarks and important suggestions when revising this work. We also thank E. Levin for asking the right questions. Useful discussions with N. Armesto, Y. Kovchegov, P. Jacobs, C. A. Salgado and D. Schiff are gratefully acknowledged. R. B. is supported, in part, by DFG, contract FOR 329/2-1. A. K. is supported by PPARC Advanced Fellowship.


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# Searching good strategies in adaptive minority games

## I Introduction

Various systems of natural and societal origin show complex behaviour, which can be attributed to competition among interacting agents for scarce resources and their adaptation to continuously changing environment parisi ; huberman ; nowak ; lux ; arthur . Such agents could be diverse in form, function and capability, for example, cells in an immune system or firms in a financial market, so that in the studies one should first focus on the capabilities of individual agents to understand better the nature of interactions between large number of agents. The behaviour of an agent may be considered as a collection of rules governing responses to stimuli. In order to model these complex adaptive system, a major concern is the selection and representation of the stimuli and responses, through which the behaviour and strategies of the agents are determined. In a model, the rules of action serve as a direct way to describe the strategies of agents, and one studies their behaviour by monitoring the effect of rules acting sequentially. As mentioned above there is another key process to be included to the model, namely adaptation, which in biology serves as a mechanism by which an organism tries to make itself fit to changing environment but the timescale over which the agents adapt vary from system to system.

What makes these systems fascinatingly complex, is the fact that the environment of a particular agent includes other adaptive agents, all of them competing with each others. Thus, a considerable amount of an agent’s effort goes in adaptation and reaction to the other agents. This feature is the main source of interesting temporal patterns and emergent behaviour these systems produce. In fact this kind of adaptive systems are far more complicated than systems in which agents just react following some fixed rules of strategy and foresight for outcome as a consequence of their behaviour. This latter case can be tackled with the traditional game theory game  since it studies consistent patterns in behavioural equilibrium that induce no further interactions. In the adaptive case, however, further interactions emerge during the evolution of the system, thus rendering the applicability of the traditional game theory difficult if not impossible.

In this paper, we will study a simple game model, in which agents adapt dynamically to be competitive and perform better. In such a model the strategies, which an agent uses to decide the course of action, must be very good or best for the agents to survive – similar to the idea of “survival of the fittest” in biology. So just like an organism adapts itself to its natural environment, we propose that the agents of the game adapt themselves by modifying their strategies from time to time, depending on their current performances. For this purpose we borrow the concept of genetic crossover from biology and use it to modify the strategies of agents in the course of the game, in the same way as in genetic algorithms holland ; goldberg ; lawrence . More specifically we apply this adaptation scheme to the minority game, introduced by Challet and Zhang challet1 ; challet2 ; riolo ; cavagna ; lamper . Although the behaviour of this minority game is believed to expose a number of important characteristics of complex evolving systems, one of its weaknesses is that agents have limited possibilities in improving to their own performance whereas in real competitive environment attempts to improve ones skills continuously are imperative. Our adaptation scheme Marko1 ; Marko2  proposes a natural and simple way to take this essential feature into account, and its application turns out to yield results quite different from earlier studies of the basic minority game and its variants challet1 ; challet3 ; li1 ; li2 .

This paper is organized such that in the next section we briefly introduce our minority game model together with various adaptation mechanisms or strategy changes based on one-point genetic crossover. This is followed by the results section, where we first compare comprehensive computer simulation results of these strategies and then focus on analysing results of the model of one-point genetic crossover with offsprings replacing parents, and of hybridized one-point genetic crossover in which the two new strategies replace the two worst strategies. Finally we draw conclusions.

## II Model

Let us start by briefly describing the basic minority game (BG) model of Challet and Zhang challet1 ; challet2 . It consists of an odd number of agents $`N`$ who can perform only two actions denoted here by $`0`$ or $`1`$, at a given time $`t`$. An agent wins a round of game if it is one of the members of the minority group. All the agents are assumed to have access to finite amount of “global” information, in the form of a common bit-string “memory” of the $`M`$ most recent outcomes of the game. With this there are $`2^M`$ possible “history” bit-strings. Now, a “strategy” consists of two possible responses, which in the binary sense are an action $`0`$ or the opposite action $`1`$ to each possible history bit-strings. Thus, there are $`2^{2^M}`$ possible strategies constituting the whole “strategy space” $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$, from which each agent picks $`S`$ strategies at random to form its own pool $`\mathrm{\Omega }_i`$, where $`i=1,\mathrm{},N`$ denotes an agent number. Each time the game is played, time $`t`$ is incremented by unity and one “virtual” point is assigned to the strategies that have predicted the correct outcome and the best strategy is the one which has the highest virtual point score. The performance of an agent is measured by the number of times the agent wins, and the strategy, which the agent used to win, gets a “real” point. The number of agents which choose one particular action, changes with time and is denoted by $`x_t`$.

In order to describe the collective behaviour of the agents, we define the concept of the scaled utility as a function of $`x_t`$, in the following way:

$$U(x_t)=[(1\theta (x_tx_M))x_t+\theta (x_tx_M)(Nx_t)]/x_M,$$
(1)
where $`x_M=(N1)/2`$ is the maximum number of agents who can win, and

$$\theta (x_tx_M)=\{\begin{array}{cc}0\hfill & \text{ when }x_tx_M\hfill \\ 1\hfill & \text{ when }x_t>x_M,\hfill \end{array}$$

is the Heaviside’s unit step function. When $`x_t=x_M`$ or $`x_t=x_M+1`$, the scaled utility of the system is maximum $`U_{max}=1`$, as the highest number of agents win. The system is more efficient when the deviations from the maximum total utility $`U_{max}`$ are small, or in other words, the fluctuations in $`x_t`$ around the mean ($`N/2`$) become small.

At the level of individual agents, their performances in the basic minority game evolve such that the agents who begin to perform badly do not improve as the time evolves and those who do well, continue doing so challet1 ; Marko1 . This indicates that by chance well performing agents were blessed with good strategies while badly performing agents got bad strategies. Although this is what may happen in some real environments, there are other competitive environments, in which individual agents try to adapt themselves to do better or to survive. However, being good at one moment does not guarantee that one would stay good later. In fact, there are many examples in business, sports, etc. which show that those who have decided to rest on their laurels have been superseded by those who have decided to adapt and fight back, and do so persistently. This feature of dynamic competition needs to be included in the model, and it can be simply realized by allowing agents to modify strategies in their individual pools. How well an agent does then in reality, depends on the agent’s capabilities and skills, and how the agent refines its strategies. For the adaptation or strategy modification scheme we have chosen genetic algorithms lawrence , which have turned out to be useful in various optimisation problems. Within the framework of the minority game this adaptation scheme is realised by letting agents check their performances at time interval $`\tau `$, and if an agent finds that it is among the worst perfoming fraction $`n`$ (where $`0<n<1`$), it modifies its strategies by applying genetic operands to its strategy pool Marko1 ; Marko2 . Here the quantity $`\tau `$ describes a time scale that characterizes the adaptation rate of agents in the system. Hence it can vary on a wide range for systems of natural origin to systems of societal nature.

In the genetic adaptation schemes we have used in this study, an agent chooses two “parents” from its current pool of strategies $`\mathrm{\Omega }_i(t)\mathrm{\Omega }`$, and draws a random number (uniformly distributed) to determine the crossover point. Then the parts of the strategies, above and below this point are interchanged to produce two new strategies called the “offsprings”. In addition to this, there are various choises as for which strategies are selected as the parents and also which strategies are replaced by the reproduced offsprings. The mechanism which works the best depends on the circumstances and can vary from system to system. In some cases it is possible that saving the parent strategies would threaten the success of the newborn strategies or create too stiff competition amongst the strategies leading to possible disorder, and in other cases the opposite might happen. In this study, we have considered four different adaptation schemes of first selecting from the strategy pool of an agent, the parent strategies to perform genetic crossover for producing offsprings, and then selecting the two old strategies that are to be substituted by the offspring strategies:

(a) Two parent strategies from the agent’s strategy pool are drawn at random and after crossover these parents are substituted with the two new strategies (offsprings). This procedure is called One Point Genetic (OPG) crossover mechanism with parents killed.

(b) Two parent strategies from the agent’s strategy pool are drawn at random and after crossover the two worst performing strategies in the strategy pool are substituted with the two new strategies (offsprings) while the parent strategies are saved. This procedure is called One Point Genetic crossover mechanism with parents saved.

(c) Two best strategies are chosen from the agent’s strategy pool as parents and after crossover these parents are substituted with the two new strategies (offsprings). This procedure is called the Hybridized Genetic (HG) crossover mechanism with parents killed.

(d) Two best strategies are drawn from the agent’s strategy pool as parents and after crossover the two worst performing strategies in the strategy pool are substituted with the two new strategies (offsprings) while the parent strategies are saved. This procedure is called the Hybridized Genetic crossover mechanism with parents saved.

It should be noted, however, that there are a number of other adaptation possibilities, but the ones presented here could be considered in a loose sense to bear some resemblance with reality. From the point of view of choosing parents, schemes (a) and (b) – being random – correspond to “democratic” or equal opportunity reproduction, while schemes (c) and (d) are “elitist” due to searching best parents and allowing reproduction between them. As for substitutions in the agents’ strategy pools, in the schemes (a) and (c) parents give space for their offsprings to live and develop without the need to fight for the limited resources with their parents, a sacrifice for improving the survival of the species. Examples of parents dying after reproduction are numerous in nature. On the other in decision making environments the interpretation of killing the parent strategies is that old strategies - unable to lead into success - are removed to give way to hopefully better strategies. Schemes (b) and (d), with parents being saved and agents getting rid of their worst strategies, bear some resemblance with “natural selection” of the fittest surviving species. In decision making situations these schemes correspond to agents eradicating their loosing strategies. Thus it is expected that schemes (b) and (d) lead to tightening competition between agents. Furthermore, it could be expected that the scheme (d) is the most efficient one, because it removes the worst strategies and replaces them with the crossovers of the best ones, while saving the so far best two strategies in the game. In order to study the effects of stiff competition between agents with continuously improving strategies, in more detail, large scale simulations are needed. In these simulations it turns out that when agents use genetic operands, the scaled utility of the system increases and tends to maximise with different rates depending on the mechanism and the parameters of the game.

It should be noted that our mechanisms of evolution based on the genetic algorithms are considerably different from the mechanisms applied before within the framework of the minority games challet1 ; challet3 ; li1 ; li2 . Here, the strategies are changed by the agents themselves and they belong to the same strategy space $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ whose size and dimension do not change.

## III Results

### III.1 Comparison between adaptation mechanisms

In order to compare the above discussed four genetic adaptation mechanisms, we have first studied the quantity $`x_t`$, which describes the number of agents taking a particular action, of the two possible ones, as a function of time. The results for $`N=801`$ agents with $`M=6`$ memories, $`S=16`$ strategies, and adaptation time $`\tau =40`$ for the worst performing fraction $`n=0.4`$ of the agents, are depicted in Fig. 1.

First in Fig. 1(a) we present the results of the adaptation scheme (a), i.e. One Point Genetic crossover between two randomly chosen parent strategies replaced then with the reproduced offsprings. In this case it turned out that fluctuations in $`x_t`$ around its mean ($`400`$) decay very rapidly from the initial level, which corresponds to the amount of fluctuations of the basic minority game, to a more or less constant level less than half of the initial level. This renders our scheme (a) game more efficient than the basic minority game. Second in Fig. 1(b) we present the results of adaptation scheme (b), i.e. One Point Genetic crossover between two randomly chosen parent strategies with the reproduced offsprings then replacing the two worst strategies of the agent’s pool. In this case we observe that fluctuations in $`x_t`$ around the mean decay, first rapidly below the value produced by scheme (a) and then slower to very small values. Thus the efficiency of the system is further improved. Third in Fig. 1(c) we present the results of the adaptation scheme (c), i.e. Hybridized Genetic crossover mechanism between the best two strategies as parents, replaced after crossover with their offsprings. In this case fluctuations in $`x_t`$ around the mean once again decay rapidly then seemingly stabilizing to a level which is smaller than for adaptation scheme (a) but larger than for adaptation scheme (b). Fourth in Fig. 1(d) we present the results of adaptation scheme (d), i.e. Hybridized Genetic crossover mechanism between the best two strategies as parents and then the reproduced offsprings replacing the two worst strategies of the agent’s pool. In this case we see that fluctuations in $`x_t`$ die off very rapidly, thus making the system most efficient.

Next we focus our attention to the scaled utility $`U(x_t)`$, defined in Eq. 1, which is expected to give insight not only to the efficiency of the basic minority game and games with different adaptation mechanisms, but also their dynamical behaviour. Instead of the standard practice of studying the variation of $`\sigma ^2/N`$ versus $`2^M/N`$, where $`|\sigma |`$ stands for the difference in the number of agents between the majority and minority groups, we study the function $`U`$. This is because fluctuations in $`x_t`$ decay strongly for adaptation mechanisms (b) and (d), in the latter case sometimes even disappearing completely. In Fig. 2 we show the results of the scaled utility $`U`$ as a function of the scaled time for the four adaptation mechanisms, with the same set of paramaters as before ($`N=801`$, $`M=6`$, $`S=16`$, $`\tau =40`$, and $`n=0.4`$), such that panel (a) is presented in the linear scale and panel (b) $`1U`$ in the log-log scale to see differences better. We find that the scaled utility rapidly saturates for the basic minority game, at a value which is considerably less than the maximum that can be achieved. On the other hand it is clearly seen that our four adaptation mechanisms greatly enhance the utilities close to the maximum. The value at which $`U`$ saturates depends on the mechanism of adaptation and also on the parameters. In Fig. 1 it was observed that the efficiencies of mechanisms (b) and (d) are continually improving over time. This is clearly reflected in Fig. 2, where in the left panel the scaled utilities for mechanisms (b) and (d) approach asymptotically unity, and in the right panel the quantity $`1U`$ reveals the asymtotic behaviour for mechanism (d) to be the fastest. Therefore, we can conclude that the adaptation mechanisms with parent strategies saved are worthwhile, and best result is achieved with the adaptation mechanism (d), i.e. with the elitist scheme. Later we will investigate in detail the parametric dependence of mechanism (d) in comparison with the simplest adaptation mechanism (a).

In order to examine the evolution of strategies in the agents’ pools we use the Hamming distance, which serves as a measure how similar the strategies in the pools are. The Hamming distance between two strategies is defined as the ratio of the uncommon bits to the total length of the strategy, denoted by $`d_H`$. The strategies are said to be “correlated”, if all the bits are pairwise the same, i.e. $`d_H=0`$; “anticorrelated”, if all bits are opposite, i.e. $`d_H=1`$, and they are “uncorrelated” when exactly one half of the bits differ, i.e. $`d_H=0.5`$.

Let us now consider the average Hamming distance, which for the whole strategy space is calculated by first taking the average of the Hamming distances over all possible strategy pairs in the agent’s pool, and then taking the average over all the agents. While it is obvious that individual Hamming distances between pairs of strategies can change as a result of genetic crossovers, the situation is more complex for the overall average Hamming distance. As a matter of fact in the adaptation schemes in which the parent strategies after crossover are replaced by their offsprings (i.e. schemes (a) and (c)), all the bits in the agent’s strategy pool and for that matter in the whole strategy space remain the same and thus no change in the average Hamming distance can take place. So this measure is useful only for the games where the bits in a strategy pool can change over time, i.e. adaptation schemes (b) and (d) depicted in Fig. 3. Here it is seen that as the game evolves, the average Hamming distance decreases in both cases towards small values, but for scheme (b) game this happens considerably slower than for the scheme (d) game. In the latter case $`d_H`$ reaches very small values, indicating that each agent tends to end up using a particular strategy in its pool for best performance. In the case of scheme (b) the same tendency exists but one would have to wait at least an oder of magnitude longer to achieve the same level of singularity among strategies. On the other hand the plots of $`x_t`$ (i.e. the number of agents choosing a particular action, depicted in Fig. 1) shows that these strategies are such that the total utility, and thus the efficiency of the system tends to maximize. In Fig. 3 we have depicted results of varying the memory size $`M`$ and the number of strategies $`S`$ in each agent’s pool. We can observe that in the case of adaptation mechanism (b) increasing $`M`$ while keeping $`S=10`$ fixed makes the decay in the average Hamming distance faster, yielding $`M=8`$ case the fastest decaying, overall for adaptation scheme (b). On the other hand, increasing $`S`$ and keeping $`M=6`$ fixed does not seem to yield systematic behaviour, while $`S=10`$ case seems to give rise to the fastest decay in the average Hamming distance. In the case of adaptation mechanism (d) the situation is even less systematic, since increasing $`M`$ and keeping $`S=10`$ fixed yields $`M=6`$ case the fastest decaying, overall for adaptation scheme (d), and increasing $`S`$ and keeping $`M=6`$ yields $`S=50`$ case the fastest decaying.

Next we study a “test” situation to investigate whether the genetic operations can increase the performance (i.e. the number of times an agent wins) of individual agents in an environment where few agents are allowed to modify their strategies while the others continue using the predetermined set of initial strategies playing the basic minority game. At the beginning all the agents play the basic minority game and after $`t=3120`$ simulation time steps three of the agents begin to adapt using hybridized genetic crossover with parents saved (adaptation scheme (d)) and another three agents using one point genetic crossover with parents killed mechanisms (adaptation scheme (a)). All the other agents continue playing the basic minority game. It turns out that adaptive agents, although some of them were the worst agent at the beginning, outperform all the other agents. Furthermore, we observe that all the agents who use the hybridized genetic crossover mechanism perform better than those using the one point genetic crossover mechanism. Nevertheless, the competition in these three agent groups is severe, as clearly seen in Fig. 4. The success rate, the slope of the performance curve, is clearly different between adaptive and other agents; the best agents in the basic game stay far below the adaptive ones. The curves are scaled such that the average performance of all the agents stays zero. Furthermore it is seen in this figure that the adaptive agents stay initially in the neighbourhood of the average performance, but crossovers lead them quickly to success.

### III.2 Parametric studies

Let us now move on to analyse the dependence of our adaptive games on the model parameters: memory size $`M`$, number of strategies in the pool $`S`$, crossover time $`\tau `$, and fraction of worst performing agents $`n`$. Here we will concentrate mainly on two different adaptation mechanisms: one-point genetic crossover with offsprings replacing parents (scheme (a)), and hybridized genetic crossover with the offsprings replacing the two worst strategies in the agent’s pool (scheme (d)).

In Fig. 5 we present the results of changing the crossover time $`\tau `$ and the fraction $`n`$ of the worst performing agents. The series of plots in Fig. 5 illustrates the effect of changing the crossover time $`\tau `$ and the value of the fraction $`n`$ of the worst performing agents. In this case the strategies have been modified using one point genetic crossover mechanism where offsprings replace the parents. In panel (a) of this figure we have plotted the total utility $`U`$ for five different values of $`\tau `$, while the other parameters were kept fixed, and in panel (b) we have plotted the same data for quantity $`1U`$ in the log-log scale, since from this panel it is easier to compare the efficiencies at the end of the simulation. In panels (c) and (d), we have varied the fraction $`n`$ from $`0.2`$ to $`0.6`$ in increments of $`0.1`$ units, while the rest of the parameters are kept fixed and same as in panels (a) and (b). We find in panel (a) that as $`\tau `$ increases it takes longer time for $`U`$ to saturate and the efficiency decreases. On the other panel (c), changing $`n`$ does not have significant effect on the behaviour of the scaled utility.

In order to investigate the dependency of the utility quantity $`1U`$ on the memory and on the crossover time, we have carried out extensive simulations for different $`M`$ and $`\tau `$ values, depicted in Fig. 6. In this case the memory is increased from $`M=5`$ in panel (a) to $`M=8`$ in panel (d). We observe that the decay rate between different adaptation times remain quite the same, and there exists a threshold after which the decay slows down. It is interesting to note that longer adaptation times lead to higher efficiency as the memory size increases. This is due to the fact that for higher dimensional strategy space it takes longer time until sufficiently many histories are gone through to verify the success of a particular strategy. On the other hand if we do not allow this adaptation to happen, strategies are changed too often and even the good ones are likely to be disregarded. Inspired by this observation we have studied also the effect of adaptation time to the final utility value which depends on the simulation time as we will discuss later.

In Fig. 7 we have studied the effect of changing the memory size $`M`$ and the number of strategies $`S`$ on the quantity $`1U`$. In panel (a) as $`M`$ increases we first observe an increase in efficiency, but then it starts to decrease with further increase in $`M`$. In panel (b) as $`S`$ increases the efficiency decreases. The decay rate remains almost the same for all $`S`$ values as can be seen from the slopes of the curves.

Next we study what is the effect of changing memory to the scaled utility as the worst fraction is varied from $`n=0.2`$ to $`n=0.6`$ and other parameters remain fixed. Results can be seen in Fig. 8, from which we find that the scaled utility increases as $`n`$ increases for moderate $`M`$ values, i.e. from $`4`$ in panel (a) to $`6`$ in panel (c). This behaviour changes for higher $`M`$ values, and shows that the system can reach a more efficient state, if the fraction of adaptive agents at any time is not too high.

As stated before, we have found that the total utility, at the end of the game, varies with different crossover times, while other parameters were kept fixed. Especially, larger memory values increase the dimension of the strategy space and require longer adaptation times. In order to study this dependency in more detail we have simulated the hybridized genetic crossover with parents saved mechanism (i.e. scheme (d)) for several $`M`$ values and different values of total simulation time $`T`$. Results are illustrated in Fig. 9. The minima in the curves are found dependent on the simulation time, as can be seen by the slight differences between the curves for same value of $`M`$ but different values of $`T`$. If the simulation times were unrestricted there would not exist an increase in the curves as adaptation time increases. The longer the agent can observe its strategies the more certain it can be of their mutual performance. If the adaptation time is reduced too much, crossovers take place more at random. Thus it could be envisaged these curves to give guidance for a preferable adaptation time. Intuitively, one could guess that a good adaptation time would be close to $`2^M`$, because if the occurrence of a history were uniformly distributed, this would constitute the expectation time for an agent to go through all the histories once and thus see how successful a response determined by a strategy has been in each case.

## IV Discussions

In this paper we have applied various adaptation mechanisms based on genetic algorithms within the framework of the minority game and found significant changes in the collective and individual behaviour of the agents. We found that the hybridized genetic crossover mechanism in which the best strategies are chosen as parents and their offsprings replace the two worst strategies in the agent’s pool leads the system fast towards a state where the scaled utility tends to its maximum. This mechanisms is clearly better than those where the parent strategies are chosen randomly and those where parents are replaced by their offsprings. The pre-eminence of the hybridized mechanism can be seen on the system as well as on the agent level: fluctuations in $`x_t`$ smooth down quickly and the agents outperform those using other mechanisms participating the same game. The success of genetic algorithm based adaptation mechanisms in minority games is interesting and suggests its use also in other game theoretic optimization problems. It should be noted, that the minority game deviates from the traditional optimization problems because it does not include a particular object function or functions that are tried to be maximized. This makes our finding even more interesting, exposing a certain characteristic of the minority game: if agents have the possibility to adapt trough the responses to the stimuli, they drive towards a state where their own performance improves and the collective of all participants gain maximum amount of utility every time the game is played. This property is not trivial to understand but it bases on the convergence of strategies in the strategy space towards, in a way, the optimal ones. They are optimal just in the sense that they tend to bring the maximum utility for the collective, meaning that at each time step the number of agents who win is as large as possible: the number of satisfied individuals is at maximum. Adaptation mechanism further extends the class of phenomena, minority games are roughly able to describe. This is because the basic minority game lacks an efficient learning mechanism, but still the number of systems where individuals try to improve their performances in competitive environments is huge. Our way to include adaptation is not arbitrary but has analogies with reality and is based on learning and combination of different adaptation schemes, a way that is very simple and common in nature and social systems.

###### Acknowledgements.

This research was partially supported by the Academy of Finland, Research Centre for Computational Science and Engineering, project no. 44897 (Finnish Centre of Excellence Programme 2000-2005).


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# Secure Key Distribution by Swapping Quantum Entanglement

## Abstract

We report two key distribution schemes achieved by swapping quantum entanglement. Using two Bell states, two bits of secret key can be shared between two distant parties that play symmetric and equal roles. We also address eavesdropping attacks against the schemes.

Cryptography has been one of the most fruitful applications coming out of quantum information theory and it appears to be practically implementible in the nearest future among quantum technology review . Since the first key distribution protocol using four quantum states was proposed in 1984 (called BB84) BB84 , a number of cryptographic methods based on quantum mechanics have been proposed ekert ; bennett2 ; goldenberg ; bruss ; bech ; cabello1 ; cabello2 ; long ; guo ; beige ; zhao ; kim1 ; kim2 . At the heart of quantum technology, including that of cryptography, lies entanglement. Quantum entanglement is a subtle nonlocal correlation between the parts of a quantum system and has no classical analog. In 1991, Ekert showed ekert  that quantum entanglement can be useful in sharing private keys between the two parties. Suppose Alice and Bob share many maximally entangled pairs of qubits. They then make measurements in jointly determined random bases. After the measurements, Alice and Bob publicly announce which basis they have used. If they had measured in the same basis, the keys would be perfectly correlated. Instead of discarding the keys resulting from measuring in different bases, Alice and Bob use them to check whether or not Bell’s inequality is satisfied. If it is, then Eve’s presence is detected. If not, Eve is absent and they keep the perfectly correlated keys. Entanglement swapping zukowski  (also see bose ; hardy ) is a method that enables one to entangle two quantum systems that do not have direct interaction with one another. Based on entanglement swapping, quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols have been introduced cabello1 ; zhao ; kim2  as well as the ones without alternative measurements cabello1 ; cabello2 ; goldenberg ; beige ; zhao  as seen in BB84 and Ekert’s protocols.

In this paper, we report two QKD schemes using entanglement swapping which also do not require alternative measurements, thereby improving the rate of generated key bits per transmitted qubit, i.e. two bits per two Bell states. This rate of generated key bits is an improvement from the protocols introduced in cabello1 ; zhao . In order to illustrate entanglement swapping, we first define four Bell states as $`\mathrm{\Phi }^\pm (|00\pm |11)/\sqrt{2}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }^\pm (|01\pm |10)/\sqrt{2}`$. Suppose two distant parties, Alice and Bob, share $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{34}^+`$ where Alice has qubits 1 and 4, and Bob possesses 2 and 3. A measurement is performed on qubits 2 and 3 with the Bell basis, $`\mathrm{\Phi }^\pm `$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }^\pm `$, then the total state is projected onto $`|\eta _1=\mathrm{\Phi }_{23}^+\mathrm{\Phi }_{14}^+`$, $`|\eta _2=\mathrm{\Phi }_{23}^{}\mathrm{\Phi }_{14}^{}`$, $`|\eta _3=\mathrm{\Psi }_{23}^+\mathrm{\Psi }_{14}^+`$, and $`|\eta _4=\mathrm{\Psi }_{23}^{}\mathrm{\Psi }_{14}^{}`$ with equal probability of 1/4 for each. Previous entanglement between qubits 1 and 2, and 3 and 4 are now swapped into entanglement between qubits 2 and 3, and 1 and 4. Although we considered entanglement swapping with the initial state $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}^+\mathrm{\Phi }_{34}^+`$, similar results can be achieved with other Bell states. For example, when Alice and Bob initially share $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{34}^+`$, there are four possible measurement outcomes with equal probability. If Bob gets $`\mathrm{\Phi }^+`$ when qubits 2 and 3 are measured, then Alice will obtain $`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}`$ for qubits 1 and 4. We denote this possibility as $`\{\mathrm{\Psi }_{14}^{},\mathrm{\Phi }_{23}^+\}`$. There are three other possibilities, $`\{\mathrm{\Phi }_{14}^+,\mathrm{\Psi }_{23}^{}\}`$, $`\{\mathrm{\Phi }_{14}^{},\mathrm{\Psi }_{23}^+\}`$ and $`\{\mathrm{\Psi }_{14}^+,\mathrm{\Phi }_{23}^{}\}`$. Table 1 shows Bell measurement outcomes for initial states of a different combination of four Bell states.

In order to illustrate QKD based on entanglement swapping, we assign two bits to the measurement results as shown in table 2. This assignment of two bits has a stipulation that one has to know both Alice and Bob’s results in order to know the key bits. For instance, even if Eve knows $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{14}^+`$ without knowing Bob’s result, there are still four different possible keys. We also introduce another basis, i.e. a rotated basis, $`\omega ^\pm (|0+\pm |1)/\sqrt{2}`$ and $`\chi ^\pm (|0\pm |1+)/\sqrt{2}`$ where $`|+\sqrt{1/4}|0+\sqrt{3/4}|1`$ and $`|\sqrt{3/4}|0\sqrt{1/4}|1`$. The first proposed QKD protocol, which we will call $`SchemeI`$, goes as follows (see Fig. 1):

1. Alice prepares qubits 1 and 2 either in Bell basis, i.e. chosen from $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{12}^\pm `$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}^\pm `$, or on a rotated basis, $`\omega _{12}^\pm ,\chi _{12}^\pm `$, known only to herself.
2. Bob also prepares qubits 3 and 4 either in Bell basis chosen from $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{34}^\pm ,\mathrm{\Phi }_{34}^\pm `$, or on a rotated basis of $`\omega _{34}^\pm ,\chi _{34}^\pm `$ , known only to himself.
3. Alice sends qubit 2 to Bob and Bob transmits qubit 4 to Alice through public channels.
4. Alice and Bob each publicly confirm that the other received the qubits.
5. Alice and Bob also announce which basis have been used (i.e. either Bell basis or a rotated basis).
6. If the received qubit had been prepared in the rotated basis, Alice (or Bob) rotates back the received qubit into Bell basis by applying $`U_R=\sqrt{1/4}|00|+\sqrt{3/4}|01|+\sqrt{3/4}|10|\sqrt{1/4}|11|`$.
7. Alice and Bob perform Bell measurements on 1 and 4, and 2 and 3, respectively.
8. Alice and Bob announce which initial Bell states (If the initial state were prepared on a rotated basis, then it would correspond to one of four Bell states after rotating it back, using the same local unitary operation $`U_R`$ in (S6)) each had prepared.
9. Now knowing the initial Bell states prepared by each other and their own measurement result, they could determine which Bell measurement result the other had obtained.
10. Finally, with the given Bell measurement result, Alice and Bob share two key bits according to table 2.

For example, suppose Alice initially prepared $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{12}^+`$ (or $`\chi _{12}^+`$) while Bob prepared $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{34}^{}`$ (or $`\omega _{34}^{}`$). After they publicly announce their prepared states as in (S8), from table 1, they could find out that there are four possible Bell measurement outcomes: $`\{\mathrm{\Phi }_{14}^+,\mathrm{\Psi }_{23}^{}\}`$, $`\{\mathrm{\Phi }_{14}^{},\mathrm{\Psi }_{23}^+\}`$, $`\{\mathrm{\Psi }_{14}^+,\mathrm{\Phi }_{23}^{}\}`$, and $`\{\mathrm{\Psi }_{14}^{},\mathrm{\Phi }_{23}^+\}`$. Therefore, Alice and Bob, knowing their own measurement results, could determine which correlated measurement result both are sharing. If Alice got $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{14}^{}`$ and Bob obtained $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{23}^+`$, then they will share the key bits “01”according to table 2.

In order to describe the second QKD scheme, we will assign two bits to the initial state preparations. Just as we assigned two bits to Alice and Bob’s measurement results, we will assign the same two bits where initial state for qubits 1 and 2 replacing Alice’s measurement result and initial Bell state of qubits 3 and 4 replacing Bob’s measurement result in table 2. As in $`SchemeI`$, the key bits for $`\omega ^\pm `$ ($`\chi ^\pm `$) will be same as $`\mathrm{\Phi }^\pm `$ ($`\mathrm{\Psi }^\pm `$). The second protocol is very similar to the first one, and it proceeds the same as the first one until (S7) of $`SchemeI`$. Then it goes as follows:

1. Alice and Bob announce the result of their measurements.
2. Now each knowing the measurement results for both and their own prepared state, Alice and Bob could determine the initial state preparation by each other from table 3.
3. This enables Alice and Bob to share two key bits according to table 2.

For example, if Alice’s measurement result is $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{14}^{}`$ and Bob obtains $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{23}^{}`$, then from table 3, there are four possible state preparation: $`\{\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}^+,\mathrm{\Psi }_{34}^+\}`$,$`\{\mathrm{\Phi }_{12}^{},\mathrm{\Psi }_{34}^{}\}`$, $`\{\mathrm{\Psi }_{12}^+,\mathrm{\Phi }_{34}^+\}`$, and $`\{\mathrm{\Psi }_{12}^{},\mathrm{\Phi }_{34}^{}\}`$. If Alice initially prepared $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{12}^+`$ and Bob prepared $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{34}^+`$ then they will share the key bits “01”according to table 2.

Although in the QKD schemes described above assert that Alice and Bob publicly confirm whether the other received the qubits and announce initial state preparation or measurement result, in practice, this communication will be through a private channel. In order to prevent Eve from listening and altering these classical messages, encrypted messages can be used. Note that two proposed QKD schemes assume equal roles played by Alice and Bob.

As in BB84, Alice and Bob can detect eavesdropping by comparing the shared information publicly. They will take out a sample and compare by publicly announcing both the correlated measurement results and the initial states. Comparing measurement result and initial states rather than key bits gives extra safety since there are four different possible measurement results (or initial preparations for $`SchemeII`$) for each key. Let us consider an eavesdropping scenario for $`SchemeI`$ as shown in Fig. 2. Eve prepares $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{56}^+`$ while Alice and Bob, as before, prepare initial states. Alice sends her qubit 2, and Eve intercepts it and sends qubit 6 to Bob instead. Suppose Alice and Bob use only the Bell basis rather than using both Bell and the rotated basis. Eve could perform Bell measurement on qubits 5 and 4 and perform local unitary operation, $`\mathrm{𝟏}`$ for $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{54}^+`$, $`\sigma _z`$ for $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{54}^{}`$, $`\sigma _x`$ for $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{54}^+`$, and $`\sigma _x\sigma _z`$ for $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{54}^{}`$, on qubit 2 and return it to Alice. After Alice and Bob announce initial preparation, Eve could find out the key bits Alice and Bob are sharing. However, this would not be possible since Alice and Bob prepared their initial states in both Bell and the rotated bases and announced the choice of basis after they confirmed the other received the qubit. Therefore, it is important for Alice and Bob not to reveal which state had been prepared initially and perform measurements after they confirm the other received the qubits.

Practical feasibility of the proposed schemes can be sought in experiments that use Bell operator measurements, such as teleportation teleportation  and entanglement swapping pan . Successful Bell type measurements have been performed using two photons, which were both path- and polarization entangled. Although there is an improvement of the key bit generation rate compared to the protocol introduced by Zhao et. al. in zhao , practical implementation of the proposed scheme will have difficulty with classical information needed to perform neccessary local unitary operations before performing a Bell measurement for each photon received.

The author thanks E. Knill for pointing out an error in the previous version of the proposed protocol and making many helpful comments. The author is also grateful to R. Boisvert, G. Brennen, and R. Kuhn for helpful discussions.