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# The energy scale of inflation: is the hunt for the primordial B-mode a waste of time?

## I Introduction

Now that the era of precision cosmology is a reality, inflation is enjoying a period of stunning success . Inflation has not only been successful in its broad-brush prediction of a flat universe, but also in its more detailed prediction of a Gaussian, adiabatic, nearly (but not exactly) scale-invariant spectrum of primordial perturbations. Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) have been especially instrumental in confirming the predictions of inflation. In particular, the WMAP satellite has painted a picture of the universe that is precisely consistent with that expected from inflation peirisetal ; barger03 ; kkmr ; leach03 . Figure 1 shows the angular power spectra of CMB fluctuations observed by WMAP WMAPbasic .

Particularly exciting is that WMAP did not just measure the anisotropy in the temperature of the CMB, but also its polarization. The WMAP polarization measurement provides us with what is probably the least ambiguous signal for inflationary physics: a measured anticorrelation between the polarization and the temperature fluctuations on an angular scale around $`\mathrm{}=100`$, evident in the bottom panel of Fig. 1. This feature is important because it is an essentially foreground-free measurement of correlations in primordial fluctuations on scales larger than the horizon size, a “smoking gun” for the acausal physics characteristic of inflation zaldarriaga97 . (Large-angle correlations in the temperature do not provide a clean signal of such acausal physics because of the possibility of foregrounds such as the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect.)

Future CMB observations will improve considerably on existing data sets, especially in the measurement of the polarization signal. CMB polarization spectra divide into two types depending on their parity under reflections of the celestial sphere: even-parity, or “E-modes”, and odd-parity, or “B-modes”. The E-mode was first detected by DASI DASIemode , and the temperature / E-mode cross correlation was measured by WMAP. The B-mode signal is much smaller, and has yet to be detected. The B-mode is of particular interest for learning about inflation, because it is the only CMB signal that receives no contribution from primordial density fluctuations. Instead, the B-mode is generated entirely by primordial gravitational wave fluctuations. Since both scalar (density) and tensor (gravitational wave) fluctuations are generated during inflation, detection of tensor modes would greatly increase our ability to place constraints on the inflationary model space. In particular, the amplitude of the tensor fluctuations (unlike scalars) depends only on the value of the Hubble constant during inflation, or equivalently the potential of the scalar field driving inflation (the inflaton):

$$P_\mathrm{T}=\left(\frac{H}{2\pi m_{\mathrm{Pl}}}\right)^2=\frac{2V\left(\varphi \right)}{3\pi m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^4}.$$
(1)
Therefore, if we measure the amplitude of primordial tensor fluctuations, we can determine the energy scale of inflation. This makes the B-mode polarization an important observational target for cosmology. The big question is then, how large a B-mode do we expect to be generated by a typical inflation model?

## II Effective field theory and the energy scale of inflation

The prevailing prejudice in model building is that the inflaton is a fundamental field: a scalar degree of freedom in some low-energy limit of an underlying, fundamental theory such as supergravity or string theory. Therefore we expect the techniques of effective field theory, for which heavy degrees of freedom are integrated out, to be a correct description of the physics of inflation. In other words, expect the effective potential for the inflaton to be an expansion in nonrenormalizable operators suppressed by some higher energy scale, which we take to be the Planck mass:

$$V\left(\varphi \right)=V_0+\frac{1}{2}m^2\varphi ^2+\varphi ^4\underset{p=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\lambda _p\left(\frac{\varphi }{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}}\right)^p.$$
(2)
The effective Lagrangian for the inflaton will also in general contain corrections (also suppressed by the Planck mass) to kinetic terms, but we need not consider these for the purpose of the current argument. The important feature of this construction is that the effective theory is only self-consistent for $`\varphi <<m_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$, otherwise the series expansion for the effective potential (2) will not in general be convergent. The question we wish to answer here is: how well does such a construction work in the context of inflation?

To illustrate, we consider the simple case of a monomial “small field” potential with height characterized by a scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and width characterized by a scale $`\mu `$,

$$V\left(\varphi \right)=\mathrm{\Lambda }^4\left[1\left(\frac{\varphi }{\mu }\right)^p\right].$$
(3)
For potentials of this form, inflation takes place when the field value is small, $`\varphi \mu `$, and the slope of the potential is also small, $`V^{}V`$ so that the field is slowly rolling and the contribution of the potential to the energy density of the field dominates over the contribution of the kinetic energy. Eq. (3) represents the form of the potential near its maximum $`\varphi =0`$. Inflation ends and reheating takes place when the field value is comparable to the width parameter $`\varphi \mu `$. So the field travels a distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi \mu `$ during inflation. Therefore our assumption of a valid effective field theory expansion (2) is only consistent if $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi \mu m_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ lyth96 . We first take the case $`p=2`$. The spectral index of scalar fluctuations can be calculated to be

$$n=1\frac{1}{4\pi }\left(\frac{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}}{\mu }\right)^2.$$
(4)
We see that the scale-invariant limit is reached for $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi \mu >>m_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$. For $`n>0.95`$, we must have $`\mu >1.3m_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$, and we expect effective field theory to break down at some point during the inflationary evolution. Such potentials predict a tensor/scalar ratio $`r(C_2^T/C_2^S)0.01`$ for $`n0.95`$. This is not the most extreme example. For a potential of the form $`V\left(\varphi \right)=\lambda \varphi ^4`$, which predicts a large tensor/scalar ratio $`r0.1`$, the field travels $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi 4m_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ during inflation. However, consider a potential of the form (3) with $`p=4`$. The spectral index of scalar fluctuations is given by $`n0.95`$ regardless of the values of the fundamental scales $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\mu `$ in the potential kinney95 . So, unlike the case of the quadratic potential, it is perfectly consistent with observation to have a potential with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi \mu m_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$. However, one does this at the price of having a vanishingly small tensor/scalar ratio, $`r10^3`$.

Lyth lyth96  showed this to be true in general. Subject to the condition of a nearly scale-invariant spectrum, the height of the potential can be written in terms of the tensor/scalar ratio $`r`$ as approximately

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(\frac{r}{0.7}\right)^{1/4}\times 1.8\times 10^{16}\mathrm{GeV}.$$
(5)
This is the familiar result that a significant contribution of tensor fluctuations to the CMB requires that inflation take place at a high energy scale. More important for the discussion here is that the width of the potential can also be related to the tensor/scalar ratio

$$\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi }{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}}0.5\left(\frac{r}{0.07}\right)^{1/2}.$$
(6)
This means that for a tensor/scalar ratio of order $`0.1`$, the field must travel a distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }\varphi >m_{\mathrm{Pl}}`$ during inflation, so that the effective field theory expansion (2) must break down at some point during inflation. An effective potential that works near the beginning of inflation will be divergent near the end of inflation, and the entire description in terms of an effective Lagrangian is invalid. This fact has been used as an argument, based on self-consistency, for expecting a very small tensor/scalar ratio in a realistic inflationary universe.

This is a discouraging conclusion, because it means that the signature of primordial gravitational waves, in particular the B-mode component of the CMB, will be unobservably small. Knox and Song knox02  have shown that foregrounds from gravitational lensing by cosmological structure place a fundamental lower limit on how well the B-mode can be measured, corresponding to a lower limit on the tensor/scalar ratio of about

$$r>6\times 10^4,$$
(7)
which corresponds to an energy scale for inflation of roughly

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }>3.2\times 10^{15}\mathrm{GeV}.$$
(8)
If the energy scale of inflation is below this limit, the B-mode (and hence the primordial gravitational wave background) will be unobservable in the CMB. (A recent paper hirata03  indicates that it may be possible to use a more optimal estimator to improve the Knox and Song limit by as much as a factor of two. This does not substantially alter the discussion here.)

## III The flow approach to inflationary evolution

Arguments based on effective field theory, however, are not the only way to look at the dynamics of inflation. The inflaton, for example, may not be a fundamental field – all that is necessary for the predictions of single “field” inflation to be valid is that the evolution of the spacetime be governed by a single order parameter. It is desirable to look at the predictions of inflation without resorting to assumptions about effective field theory. One way to do this is to reformulate the dynamical equations for inflation as flow in the space of dimensionless slow roll parameters flowpapers . A major advantage of this approach is that it removes the field from the dynamical picture altogether, so that we can study the generic behavior of slow roll inflation without making assumptions about the nature of the underlying particle physics. To construct the hierarchy of flow equations, we start with the slow roll parameters

$$ϵ\frac{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2}{4\pi }\left(\frac{H^{}\left(\varphi \right)}{H\left(\varphi \right)}\right)^2,$$
(9)
and

$$\eta \frac{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2}{4\pi }\left(\frac{H^{\prime \prime }\left(\varphi \right)}{H\left(\varphi \right)}\right).$$
(10)
To lowest order, the observables $`r`$ and $`n`$ are given to lowest order in slow roll by111The normalization of $`r`$ used here differs from that used by the WMAP team, who define $`r16ϵ`$ peirisetal .

$`r`$ $``$ $`10ϵ,`$ (11)
$`n1`$ $`=`$ $`4ϵ2\eta \sigma .`$ (12)
Here we have introduced $`\sigma 4ϵ2\eta `$ for notational convenience. These can be seen as the first members of an infinite hierarchy of slow roll parameters liddle94

$${}_{}{}^{\mathrm{}}\lambda _{\mathrm{H}}^{}\left(\frac{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}^2}{4\pi }\right)^{\mathrm{}}\frac{\left(H^{}\right)^\mathrm{}1}{H^{\mathrm{}}}\frac{d^{(\mathrm{}+1)}H}{d\varphi ^{(\mathrm{}+1)}}.$$
(13)
Each of these parameters can be written as a function of the number of e-folds $`N`$ before the end of inflation, where

$$\frac{d}{dN}=\frac{m_{\mathrm{Pl}}}{2\sqrt{\pi }}\sqrt{ϵ}\frac{d}{d\varphi },$$
(14)
and we have an infinite series of differential flow equations describing the inflationary evolution

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dϵ}{dN}}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ\left(\sigma +2ϵ\right),`$ (15)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\sigma }{dN}}`$ $`=`$ $`5ϵ\sigma 12ϵ^2+2\left({}_{}{}^{2}\lambda _{\mathrm{H}}^{}\right),`$ (16)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\left({}_{}{}^{\mathrm{}}\lambda _{\mathrm{H}}^{}\right)}{dN}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(\mathrm{}1\right)\sigma +\left(\mathrm{}2\right)ϵ\right]\left({}_{}{}^{\mathrm{}}\lambda _{\mathrm{H}}^{}\right)+{}_{}{}^{\mathrm{}+1}\lambda _{\mathrm{H}}^{}.`$ (17)
The field has disappeared from the equations of motion altogether, although the underlying assumption of dynamics controlled by a single order parameter is of course still present. The flow equations allow us to investigate the model space for inflation using Monte Carlo techniques. Since the dynamics are governed by a set of first-order differential equations, the cosmological evolution is entirely specified by choosing values for the slow roll parameters $`ϵ,\sigma ,{}_{}{}^{2}\lambda _{\mathrm{H}}^{},\mathrm{}`$. Choosing such a point in the parameter space completely specifies the inflationary model, including the scalar field potential, which can be reconstructed for each choice, so-called “Monte Carlo reconstruction” montecarlorecon . The observable predictions for a given model can be evaluated as follows:

* Pick a point in the parameter space $`ϵ,\sigma ,{}_{}{}^{2}\lambda _{\mathrm{H}}^{},\mathrm{}`$
* Evolve forward in time until inflation ends, or reaches a late-time attractor.
* From the end of inflation, evolve backward in time about 60 e-folds, and calculate the values of the slow roll parameters at that point.
* Calculate the observables $`r`$, $`n`$, $`dn/d\mathrm{ln}k`$.

This procedure can be performed numerically for a large number of randomly chosen initial conditions. Instead of specifying a potential and calculating the predictions for that model (“hand crafting” inflation), we can process models on an industrial scale, investigating the behavior of millions of possibilities for the inflationary dynamics. The result is very interesting: models do not uniformly cover the observable parameter space, but instead cluster around attractor regions. How well do the attractors correspond to the expectations from effective field theory? Not especially closely. Figure 2 shows the models plotted in the $`r,n`$ plane, showing that there is a significant concentration of models with nonzero tensor/scalar ratio $`r`$.

Figure 3 shows the same points plotted logarithmically in tensor/scalar ratio, with the lower bound from Knox and Song marked on the plot. There is a substantial population of dynamically valid inflation models with a tensor scalar ratio that is in principle observable, and there is no compelling reason to rule such models out. Observation of a significant tensor/scalar ratio would be a strong indication of some kind of exotic physics driving inflation, which is not adequately captured by a description in terms of a low-energy effective field theory with operators suppressed by powers of the Planck scale. Such a result would be of great interest from the standpoint of inflationary model building, but would not in itself weaken inflation as a viable theory.

## IV The current observational situation and future prospects

What are the prospects in the near future for detection of a tensor contribution to the CMB? Certainly, it is not likely that we will be able to approach the lensing bound on the B-mode any time soon. Current limits on the size of the tensor contribution to the CMB are still quite crude, although the recent WMAP result represents a substantial step forward. Figure 4 kkmr  shows the constraint on the $`n,r`$ plane from the WMAP data set in conjunction with seven additional CMB data sets (BOOMERanG-98 ruhl , MAXIMA-1 lee , DASI halverson , CBI cbi , ACBAR acbar , VSAE grainge , and Archeops benoit ). Figure 5 kkmr  shows the constraint in the $`n,dn/d\mathrm{log}k`$ plane, showing a preference for a negative running of the spectral index with scale, consistent with the results of the data analysis done by the WMAP teampeirisetal . The points plotted are models generated by Monte Carlo evaluation of the flow equations consistent with the data to $`3\sigma `$, and are coded by their “zoology”: small field, large field, and hybrid.222See Ref. kkmr  for a detailed discussion of this categorization. We see that while no class of models is ruled out by the data, the hybrid class shows the greatest consistency with the best-fit region. There is in fact a population of hybrid models with a strong negative running of the spectral index, showing that the WMAP best fit is quite consistent with what one might expect from inflation. Deviations from the limiting case of a scale-invariant power-law spectrum are exactly what one ought to expect in a realistic inflationary cosmology: astrophysical observations probe the last sixty e-folds, i.e. the end of inflation, when the limiting behaviors of slow roll are beginning to break down. In terms of the current data, inflation is in excellent shape as a model for production of the primordial density fluctuations.

What does WMAP tell us about the energy scale of inflation? As one would expect from the broad range of tensor/scalar ratios consistent with the data, the height of the potential during inflation is poorly determined. Figure 6 kkmr  shows an ensemble of potentials consistent with the current CMB data, generated by Monte Carlo reconstruction montecarlorecon .

From Fig. 6 we see that a wide range of energy scales are consistent with existing data, including scales large enough to generate an (in principle) observable tensor contribution to the CMB anisotropy. We can also see in concrete form that the width of such potentials is large enough in Planck units to signal a breakdown of the effective field theory approximation (2).

While a tensor/scalar ratio $`r>6\times 10^4`$ is observable in principle, it is very useful to understand what is going to be possible in practice in the near future. Figure 7 shows the expected errors from three experiments, plotted against models on the $`n`$ vs. $`\mathrm{log}r`$ plane: (1) a cosmic-variance limited (i.e. ideal) temperature-only CMB map, (2) the Planck Surveyor satellite, including measurement of CMB polarization Planck , and (3) a hypothetical measurement with the same angular resolution as Planck, but with a factor of three increase in sensitivity kinney98 . While the lensing limit on the B-mode is well below the expected sensitivity of these measurements, a tensor/scalar ratio of $`r0.01`$ is well within reach of presently feasible observations. It may well be possible to do considerably better.

This level of sensitivity represents an important observational milestone. A detection of tensor modes in the CMB with $`r>0.01`$ will be an indication that the effective field theory expansion (2) is not self-consistent, and that therefore inflation in the early universe is begin driven by some sort of exotic physics, for example the holographic renormalization group flow proposed by Larsen et al. rginfl . A non-detection, however, would validate low-energy effective field theory as a viable tool for inflationary model building, which would leave the door open for more conventional descriptions of the inflaton, such as inflation from supersymmetric moduli fields, pseudo-Nambu Goldstone modes, or other conventional particle physics candidates. (See Ref. lythriotto  for a review.)

## V Conclusions

Recent CMB observations, especially the results from the WMAP satellite, represent a sea change in our understanding of the physics of the early universe. For the first time, it is possible to place meaningful constraints on theories of the of the universe at its earliest stages, in particular the inflationary paradigm. If inflation really is the correct model for the evolution of the early universe and for the generation of primordial perturbations, a central question is: what was the energy scale of inflation? Determining the answer to this question requires a measurement of the primordial gravitational wave (tensor) fluctuations generated during inflation. The curl, or “B-mode” component of CMB polarization is a particularly sensitive probe of primordial tensor modes, because the B-mode does not receive contributions from primordial density fluctuations. However, gravitational lensing by cosmological structure also generates B-mode polarization, and this foreground cannot be perfectly subtracted. This places a lower limit on sensitivity to a primordial B-mode and hence on the amplitude of gravitational wave fluctuations. This can be expressed in terms of a lower limit on the tensor/scalar ratio $`r>6\times 10^4`$ knox02 .

Expectations based on the self-consistency of a low-energy effective field theory description of inflation, however, argue for a very small tensor/scalar ratio and a corespondingly low energy scale for inflation lyth96 . If this theoretical prejudice is correct, the primordial B-mode will almost certainly be too small to be detected. Nonetheless, looking at inflationary model building from the somewhat broader perspective of the flow formalism shows that there is a substantial population of dynamically viable inflation models with an observably large tensor/scalar ratio. The expected sensitivity of forthcoming CMB observations such as the Planck surveyor or (perhaps) dedicated searches for the B-mode polarization can realistically reach a sensitivity of $`r0.01`$, which is sufficient to distinguish between conventional effective field theory descriptions of inflation and models based on some more exotic order parameter. Whether the search for primordial B-mode polarization in the CMB is ultimately a success or a failure, we will learn something important about the physics of inflation.

## Acknowledgments

WHK is supported by ISCAP and the Columbia University Academic Quality Fund. ISCAP gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Ohrstrom Foundation.


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# Continuum QRPA response for deformed neutron-rich nuclei

## 1 Introduction

Without an exception, stable nuclei with a neutron number $`N`$=20 or 28, as well as their neigbouring nuclei, have a spherical intrinsic shape. Heavy neutron-rich nuclei, however, often exhibit deformed characters even around the shell closure. Typical examples include 32Mg , 34Mg , and 44S . This phenomenon is often interpreted as a disappearance of spherical magic shells .

In this contribution, we investigate the excitation structures of such deformed neutron-rich nuclei within the framework of quasi-particle random phase approximation (QRPA). For nuclei far from the $`\beta `$ stability line, it has been well recognised that both the pairing interaction and the couplings to the continuum spectra play an important role. The most robust and consistent framework to deal with these effects on the ground state properties is the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) method . The continuum QRPA framework based on the HFB approximation has also been developed recently . A problem with the HFB method, however, is that it can be computationally very demanding. For this reason, the application of the continuum QRPA on top of the HFB ground state has been limited only to spherical systems so far . In this paper, we avoid this difficulty by using the BCS approximation. This is an approximation to the HFB method, where one takes only time-reversed pairs in the Bogoliubov transformation. With this approximation, the particle-hole and the particle-particle channels are decoupled completely (for a density-independent pairing force at least) both in the ground state and in the QRPA calculations. Notice that the BCS method has been shown a reasonable approximation to the HFB, within the same treatment for the continuum states, even for nuclei close to the neutron drip line .

Another difficulty related to a deformed QRPA calculation is that the configuration space can be quite large. In the past, QRPA calculations for a deformed nucleus have been done either with a simple separable interaction  or with a drastic truncation of the configuration space . In this paper, we present a formalism which uses the response function in the coordinate space , which is most suitable to a zero-range interaction, eliminating these limitations. Together with the BCS approximation for the pairing interaction, we will demonstrate below that a deformed QRPA calculation now becomes feasible within a reasonable computation time.

## 2 Formalism

### 2.1 Coupled-channels approach to single-particle spectra

Let us consider a single-particle motion in a deformed mean-field potential,

$$\widehat{V}(𝒓)=V_{\mathrm{cent}}(𝒓)+(V_{\mathrm{ls}}(𝒓))(i\times 𝝈),$$
(1)
with

$`V_{\mathrm{cent}}(𝒓)`$ $`=`$ $`V_0(r)R\beta {\displaystyle \frac{dV_0(r)}{dr}}Y_{20}(\widehat{𝒓})+\left(V_C(r)+{\displaystyle \frac{3(Z1)}{5}}{\displaystyle \frac{R^2}{r^3}}\beta Y_{20}(\widehat{𝒓})\right)(1\tau _z),`$ (2)
$`V_{\mathrm{ls}}(𝒓)`$ $`=`$ $`V_{\mathrm{so}}(r)R_{\mathrm{so}}\beta {\displaystyle \frac{dV_{\mathrm{so}}(r)}{dr}}Y_{20}(\widehat{𝒓}).`$ (3)
Here, $`\beta `$ is the deformation parameter. For simplicity, we take into account only the linear order of $`\beta `$ in the potential. We have also assumed an axial symmetry, where both the parity $`\pi `$ and the spin projection $`K`$ onto the $`z`$ axis are conserved.

In order to obtain the single-particle levels and corresponding wave functions, we solve the coupled-channels equations for both negative and positive energy states . This method has an advantage that the correct scattering boundary conditions can be easily implemented for the positive energy solutions, that is important in a full continuum calculation for neutron-rich nuclei. In this paper, for the sake of simplicity, we instead discretize the positive energy spectra within the same framework by putting the nucleus in a large spherical box, as was recently demonstrated in Ref. , and leave the full continuum treatment as a future work (see sect. 4).

The coupled-channels method has sometimes a difficulty in finding all solutions in a deformed potential, especially when there are two states close to each other in energy. One can easily miss a few eigenvalues in a search routine. We have overcome this difficulty by introducing the generalized wave function node for a multi-channel system, which was originally proposed by Johnson . We have checked the efficiency of this method by applying it to a spherical system. We have also computed the Nilsson diagram of 238U and have confirmed that all the levels obtained were smoothly connected to the spherical levels. Evidently, the coupled-channels method with the generalized wave function node efficiently works even for heavy nuclei, where there are lots of intruder levels.

Using the single-particle levels obtained in this way, we then solve the BCS gap equation. As we emphasized in the introduction, we use the BCS approximation rather than the HFB approximation. The applicability of the BCS approximation for neutron-rich nuclei has been well tested in Ref. . In this paper, we particularly use the density-dependent zero-range force for the pairing interaction. We will specify the parameters in the next section.

### 2.2 Response function formalism for deformed QRPA

The elements of the QRPA matrices have been given in the textbook of Rowe :

$`A_{\alpha \beta ,\gamma \delta }`$ $`=`$ $`(E_\alpha +E_\beta )\delta _{\alpha \beta ,\gamma \delta }+\alpha \overline{\delta }|v_{ph}|\overline{\beta }\gamma (u_\alpha v_\beta +v_\alpha u_\beta )(u_\gamma v_\delta +v_\gamma u_\delta )`$ (4)
$`+\alpha \beta |v_{pp}|\gamma \delta (u_\alpha u_\beta u_\gamma u_\delta +v_\alpha v_\beta v_\gamma v_\delta ),`$
$`B_{\alpha \beta ,\gamma \delta }`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha \gamma |v_{ph}|\overline{\beta }\overline{\delta }(u_\alpha v_\beta +v_\alpha u_\beta )(u_\gamma v_\delta +v_\gamma u_\delta )`$ (5)
$`\alpha \beta |v_{pp}|\overline{\gamma }\overline{\delta }(u_\alpha u_\beta v_\gamma v_\delta +v_\alpha v_\beta u_\gamma u_\delta ),`$
where $`E_\alpha `$ is the quasi-particle energy and $`\overline{\alpha }`$ is the time reversed state of $`\alpha `$. In writing down these equations, we have used the identity, $`\alpha \overline{\delta }|v|\overline{\beta }\gamma =\alpha \overline{\gamma }|v|\overline{\beta }\delta `$, which follows from the property of the time-reversal operator. Notice that the particle-particle matrix elements vanish in the BCS approximation unless $`\beta =\overline{\alpha }`$ and $`\delta =\overline{\gamma }`$ in eqs. (4) and (5). On the other hand, the particle-hole contribution is finite only if $`\beta \overline{\alpha }`$ and $`\delta \overline{\gamma }`$ due to the BCS phase convention, $`v_{\overline{\alpha }}=v_\alpha `$ and $`u_{\overline{\alpha }}=u_\alpha `$. Therefore, the particle-particle and the particle-hole channels are decoupled completely in the BCS approximation, not only in the ground state but also in the QRPA calculations.

Retaining only the particle-hole channel, one can write down the QRPA equations in the following form:

$`0`$ $`=`$ $`(E_\alpha +E_\beta \omega )X_{\alpha \beta }+{\displaystyle 𝑑𝒓𝑑𝒓^{}D_{\alpha \overline{\beta }}(𝒓)v_{ph}(𝒓,𝒓^{})T(𝒓^{})},`$ (6)
$`0`$ $`=`$ $`(E_\alpha +E_\beta +\omega )Y_{\alpha \beta }+{\displaystyle 𝑑𝒓𝑑𝒓^{}D_{\alpha \overline{\beta }}^{}(𝒓)v_{ph}(𝒓,𝒓^{})T(𝒓^{})}.`$ (7)
Here, we have explicitly expressed the matrix elements of the particle-hole interaction in the integral form. Using the single-particle wave function $`\varphi _\alpha (𝒓)`$, $`D_{\alpha \overline{\beta }}(𝒓)`$ and $`T(𝒓)`$ are defined by

$`D_{\alpha \overline{\beta }}(𝒓)`$ $`=`$ $`(u_\alpha v_\beta +v_\alpha u_\beta )\varphi _\alpha ^{}(𝒓)\varphi _{\overline{\beta }}(𝒓),`$ (8)
$`T(𝒓)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\gamma \delta }{}}(D_{\gamma \overline{\delta }}^{}(𝒓)X_{\gamma \delta }+D_{\gamma \overline{\delta }}(𝒓)Y_{\gamma \delta }),`$ (9)
respectively. From these equations, one obtains the generalised (Q)RPA dispersion relation ,

$$0=𝑑𝒓^{}\left[\delta (𝒓𝒓^{})𝑑𝒓^{\prime \prime }\mathrm{\Pi }_0(𝒓,𝒓^{\prime \prime })v_{ph}(𝒓^{\prime \prime },𝒓^{})\right]T(𝒓^{})𝑑𝒓^{}W(𝒓,𝒓^{})T(𝒓^{}),$$
(10)
where the unperturbed response function is given by

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_0(𝒓,𝒓^{\prime \prime })=\underset{\alpha \beta }{}\left(\frac{D_{\alpha \overline{\beta }}^{}(𝒓)D_{\alpha \overline{\beta }}(𝒓^{})}{E_\alpha +E_\beta \omega i\eta }+\frac{D_{\alpha \overline{\beta }}(𝒓)D_{\alpha \overline{\beta }}^{}(𝒓^{})}{E_\alpha +E_\beta +\omega +i\eta }\right).$$
(11)
The response of the system to an external field can be calculated using the QRPA response function defined by

$$\mathrm{\Pi }(𝒓,𝒓^{})=𝑑𝒓^{\prime \prime }W^1(𝒓,𝒓^{\prime \prime })\mathrm{\Pi }_0(𝒓^{\prime \prime },𝒓^{}).$$
(12)
For axially symmetric wave functions $`\varphi _\alpha `$, the response function can be decomposed into multipoles as

$$\mathrm{\Pi }(𝒓,𝒓^{})=\underset{L,L^{}}{}\underset{K}{}\frac{1}{rr^{}}\mathrm{\Pi }_K(rL,r^{}L^{})Y_{LK}(\widehat{𝒓})Y_{L^{}K}^{}(\widehat{𝒓}^{}).$$
(13)
We assume a zero range particle-hole interaction of the form

$$v_{ph}(𝒓,𝒓^{})=\left[\underset{\lambda :even}{}v_\lambda (r)Y_{\lambda 0}(\widehat{𝒓})\right]\delta (𝒓𝒓^{}).$$
(14)
Then, the QRPA response function (12) is obtained by solving the Bethe-Salpeter equation for each $`K`$,

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_K(rL,r^{}L^{})=\mathrm{\Pi }_K^{(0)}(rL,r^{}L^{})+\underset{L^{\prime \prime }}{}𝑑r^{\prime \prime }\left[\mathrm{\Pi }^{(0)}v\right]_K(rL,r^{\prime \prime }L^{\prime \prime })\mathrm{\Pi }_K(r^{\prime \prime }L^{\prime \prime },r^{}L^{}),$$
(15)
where

$$\left[\mathrm{\Pi }^{(0)}v\right]_K(rL,r^{}L^{})\underset{\lambda }{}\underset{L^{\prime \prime }}{}\mathrm{\Pi }_K^{(0)}(rL,r^{}L^{\prime \prime })v_\lambda (r^{})Y_{L^{\prime \prime }K}|Y_{\lambda 0}|Y_{L^{}K}.$$
(16)
The strength function $`S`$ for an external field $`V_{\mathrm{ext}}(𝒓)=f(r)Y_{LK}(\widehat{𝒓})`$ is then obtained in the usual way as,

$`S(\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}Im{\displaystyle 𝑑𝒓𝑑𝒓^{}V_{\mathrm{ext}}^{}(𝒓)\mathrm{\Pi }(𝒓,𝒓^{})V_{\mathrm{ext}}(𝒓^{})}`$ (17)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}Im{\displaystyle r^2𝑑rr^2𝑑r^{}\frac{1}{rr^{}}\mathrm{\Pi }_K(rL,r^{}L)f(r)f(r^{})},`$ (18)
where $`Im`$ denotes the imaginary part.

A typical dimensionality of the QRPA response function $`\mathrm{\Pi }_K`$ goes as follows. If one includes the radial mesh up to $`r`$=15 fm with 0.5 fm step, there are 30 points for the $`r`$ integrals. For the interaction given by eq. (14), only those $`L`$ with the same parity are coupled to each other, and generally the convergence is rather quick. Therefore, for the quadrupole response for example, one would include only $`L=0,2`$ and 4. By treating proton and neutron separately, the total dimension of the response function is 30 (for $`r`$) $`\times `$3 (for $`L`$) $`\times `$2 (for $`\tau _z`$) = 180. This is much smaller than the number of 2 quasi-particle configurations, which can be more than several thousands for a deformed system.

## 3 Quadrupole collectivity of 38Mg

We now apply the formalism to the quadrupole response of the 38Mg nucleus. We assume a Woods-Saxon form for the mean-field potential $`V_0(r)`$ and $`V_{\mathrm{so}}(r)`$ in eqs. (2) and (3) with parameters given in Ref. . We take the deformation parameters $`\beta `$ from the results of HFB calculations with a Skyrme interaction by Terasaki et al. . For 38Mg, the deformation parameters are 0.33 and 0.28 for protons and neutrons, respectively. Notice that the deformation parameters are different for protons and neutrons by an amount of 0.05. We use the same pairing interaction as in Ref.  for our BCS calculations. This is a density-dependent zero-range interaction with an energy cut-off at 5 MeV above the Fermi energy. Although a smooth energy cut-off was employed in Ref. , we use a sharp energy cut-off for simplicity. With these parameters, we obtain $`\lambda _p=24.4`$ MeV and $`\lambda _n=0.56`$ MeV for the proton and the neutron Fermi energies, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}_p=0.0`$ MeV and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Delta }}_n=1.50`$ MeV for the proton and the neutron average pairing gaps. For the residual interaction $`v_{ph}`$, we use the SIII parameter set  of the Skyrme interaction with the Landau-Migdal approximation for the momentum dependent terms . We include the single-particle levels up to 50 MeV in the calculations. The continuum states are discretized with the box discretization method with the box size of 15 fm. We have checked that the results are not altered by more than 10% even if we use a larger box size. For single-particle states above the pairing cut-off energy, we simply take $`v^2=0`$ for the BCS occupation probabilities.

Since our calculations are not self-consistent in the sense that the residual interaction is not related to the mean field potential, we renormalize the residual interaction as $`fv_{ph}`$ so that the Goldstone modes appear at zero excitation energy. For a spherical system, there is only one Goldstone mode for the center-of-mass motion, and one can use a single value for the renormalization factor in order to define the effective residual interaction and study several multipole responses. In contrast, for a deformed system, the center-of-mass motion splits into two excitation modes according to the $`K`$ quantum number ($`K^\pi =0^{}`$ and 1-). Moreover, there is another Goldstone mode associated with the rotation motion of the whole nucleus. This motion carries $`K^\pi =1^+`$. We find that the renormalization factors required to put these modes at zero energy are significantly different from each other for the configuration space mentioned above. The renormalization factors are found to be 1.00075 for $`K^\pi =0^{}`$, 0.95585 for $`K^\pi =1^{}`$, and 1.0300 for $`K^\pi =1^+`$. Since we are interested in only the quadrupole motion in this paper, our prescription is to use $`f_{1^+}`$ for the other $`K`$ quantum numbers, i.e., $`K^\pi =0^+`$ and $`2^+`$. Note that the Goldstone mode for the number conservation does not appear in our calculation, since we include only the particle-hole channel in QRPA.

Figure 1 shows the isoscaler (IS) quadrupole strength distribution of the 38Mg nucleus (the lower panel) in comparison with that of the 24Mg nucleus (the upper panel). We set $`\eta =0.5`$ MeV in eq. (11) in order to smear out the results for the presentation purpose. The dotted, dashed, and solid lines are for $`K^\pi `$=0+, 1+, and 2+ modes, respectively. Since we use a density-dependent pairing interaction, there is a small coupling between the particle-hole and the particle-particle channels for the $`K^\pi =0^+`$ mode (notice that a time-reversed pair can form only a $`K^\pi =0^+`$ state) even in the BCS approximation, when the residual interaction is evaluated as the second derivative of the energy functional . We simply neglect this effect in this work. The $`K^\pi `$=1+ and 2+ modes are free from this approximation.

In the figure, one observes the splitting of the giant quadrupole resonances (GQR)  in the energy region 10 – 20 MeV both in 24Mg and in 38Mg. In contrast to the stable nucleus 24Mg, we notice that the IS GQR is more fragmented in the neutron-rich nucleus 38Mg due to a large neutron contribution. We have also computed the neutron response, and found that the $`K^\pi =2^+`$ mode in the energy region 3 – 10 MeV is almost a pure neutron mode. Another interesting result is that the collectivity of the lowest $`K^\pi =2^+`$ mode is increased considerably in 38Mg. This is due both to the pairing effect  and to the different deformation between proton and neutron, as we discuss below.

In Ref. , Terasaki et al. have suggested that a low-lying quadrupole isovector mode may appear when the protons and the neutrons have different deformation parameters. In neutron-rich nuclei, the isovector and the isoscalar modes are coupled to each other , and thus this effect would also enhance the low-lying isoscalar quadrupole strength. In order to confirm this, we repeat the calculations by setting the proton and the neutron deformation parameters to be identical. Figure 2 shows the low-lying part of the isoscalar quadrupole response of 38Mg for the $`K^\pi =0^+`$ (the top panel), $`K^\pi =1^+`$ (the middle panel), and $`K^\pi =2^+`$ (the bottom panel). The dotted and the dashed curves are for the case where the proton and the neutron deformations are set to be the smaller value 0.28 and the larger value 0.33, respectively. The solid line denotes the original calculation shown in fig. 1, where the proton and the neutron have different deformations. For $`K^\pi =0^+`$ and 1+, those three lines are very similar to each other, while, in marked contrast, the lowest $`K^\pi =2^+`$ excitation (the gamma vibration) clearly shows a different behaviour. When the deformation is different between proton and neutron, the excitation energy of this stae becomes significantly smaller and at the same time the strength is increased considerably. The effect of a larger proton deformation parameter simply changes the dotted curve to the dashed curve. There is an additional effect originating from the different proton and neutron deformations, that enhances the collectivity of the gamma vibration.

## 4 Concluding remarks

At present, a continuum QRPA calculation based on the HFB method is still too costly to apply to deformed nuclei. The only possible way to overcome this difficulty is to employ the BCS approximation for the pairing correlations, where the particle-hole and the particle-particle channels are decoupled. Contrary to a general belief, the BCS approximation for the description of ground state properties has been shown adequate even for neutron-rich nuclei . We presume that this is the case also for the description of excited states, and have developed the QRPA method based on the BCS approximation. Particularly, we have presented the response function method for deformed QRPA, which substantially reduces the computational effort to solve QRPA compared with the conventional method which diagonalises the non-hermitian QRPA matrix. We have applied the method to quadrupole responses of the deformed neutron-rich nucleus 38Mg. We have shown that the collectivity of the gamma vibration is increased when the protons and the neutrons deform in a different way from each other as the mean-field calculation predicts.

In this paper, we have discretized the continuum states by putting the nucleus in a large spherical box. For a more consistent description, one would need to treat the continuum spectra exactly. This applies both to the BCS and to the QRPA calculations. In the continuum BCS calculation for the ground state, the single-particle resonance states play an essential role . Recently, we have shown that the coupled-channels approach with the eigenchannel basis offers an efficient way to identify a deformed single-particle resonance state through the so called eigenphase sum . We have also derived a factorization formula for the energy and the radial dependences of a scattering wave function near an isolated resonance state . This formula will be useful when one computes the matrix elements of pairing interaction over a wide energy region including the continuum spectra. As for a continuum QRPA calculation, it is well known that the exact treatment of the continuum couplings is possible if one uses the single-particle Green function in the coordinate space representation . An extension of this approach to a deformed system has been done in the field of atomic and molecular physics , which again uses the coupled-channels method with the eigenchannel basis (see also Ref. ). We have also recently extended the Green function approach to spherical open-shell nuclei within the BCS approximation . We plan to combine these two extensions of the Green function approach in order to calculate the continuum response of superfluid deformed nuclei built on top of the continuum BCS ground state. We will report the results elsewhere.


text:
# 1 The dashed lines 𝑆1 and 𝑆2 are for tan²{𝜃_{𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑟}} as functions of r. The two solutions for sin²{𝜃_{𝑎𝑡𝑚}} are indicated by solid lines 𝐴1𝑎 and 𝐴2𝑎, and 𝐴1𝑏 and 𝐴2𝑏, respectively. Here the indices “1” and “2” indicate the cases with |𝑉_{𝑒3}| equals to 0.22 and 0.15, respectively.

Is the Zee model neutrino mass matrix ruled out?
Xiao-Gang He

Department of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin

and

Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei

## Abstract

A very economic model of generating small neutrino masses is the Zee model. This model has been studied extensively in the literature with most of the studies concentrated on the simplest version of the model where all diagonal entries in the mass matrix are zero. SNO, and KamLAND data disfavor this simple version, but only when one also combines information from atmospheric and K2K data, can one rule out this model with high confidence level. We show that the simplest version of Zee model is ruled out at $`3\sigma `$ level. The original Zee model, however, contains more than enough freedom to satisfy constraints from data. We propose a new form of mass matrix by naturalness consideration. This new form of mass matrix predicts that $`m_{\nu _3}=0`$, and $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ increases with $`|V_{e3}|`$. For the best fit value of $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$, $`|V_{e3}|`$ is sizeable but below the upper bound.

There are abundant data from solar, atmospheric, laboratory and recent long baseline (K2K and KamLAND) experiments on neutrino mass and mixing. It is certain that some of the neutrinos have non-zero masses and also different neutrino spices mix with each other. In the minimal Standard Model (SM) in which there is just one Higgs doublet in the scalar sector and there are no right-handed neutrinos, neutrinos are massless. In order to have non-zero neutrino masses and mixing, one must go beyond the minimal SM.

There are different possible ways to generate neutrino masses. A very economic way of generating neutrino masses is to introduce a charged scalar and an additional Higgs doublet into the minimal SM as proposed by Zee. The Zee model provides a natural mechanism to generate small neutrino masses because they can only be induced at loop level, and also suggests special forms for the mass matrix. If one imposes a discrete symmetry such that only one of the Higgs doublets couples to the leptons as suggested by Wolfenstein, one obtains a simple mass matrix with all diagonal entries zero. We will refer this simple version as the Zee-Wolfenstein model. This model has been studied extensively in the literature. In this paper we further study the Zee model using the most recent experimental data. We show that the Zee-Wolfenstein model is ruled out at the 99.73% ($`3\sigma `$) C.L.. However the original Zee model contains more than enough freedom to satisfy experimental constraints. We propose a new form of neutrino mass matrix resulting from naturalness condition. This model predicts that $`m_{\nu _3}=0`$, and $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ increases with $`|V_{e3}|`$. For the best fit value of 0.4 for $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$, $`|V_{e3}|`$ is sizeable but below the 3$`\sigma `$ upper bound.

The Zee model contains, in addition to the gauge bosons and the minimal fermion contents, a singlet scalar $`h`$ and two Higgs doublets $`\varphi _{1,2}`$ transforming under the SM gauge group $`SU(3)_C\times SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y`$ as (1,1,1) and (1,2,-1/2). With these particles it is not possible to have tree level neutrino masses from renormalizeable Lagrangian, but it is possible at one loop level. The relevant terms in the Lagrangian are,

$`L=\overline{l}_{dR}\stackrel{~}{f}_\gamma ^{\varphi ,db}\varphi _\gamma ^i\psi _{bL}^jϵ_{ij}\psi _{aL}^{Ti}\stackrel{~}{f}^{ab}C\psi _{bL}^jϵ_{ij}hM^{\alpha \beta }\varphi _\alpha ^i\varphi _\beta ^jϵ_{ij}h+H.C.,`$ (1)
where $`\psi _{aL}^i=(\nu _{aL},e_{aL})`$ and $`l_{aR}`$ are the left- and right-handed leptons with “a” the generation index and “i,j” the $`SU(2)_L`$ indices. $`ϵ_{ij}`$ is the anti-symmetric symbol. $`C`$ is the Dirac charge conjugation matrix. $`\stackrel{~}{f}_\gamma ^{\varphi ,ab}`$ are the Yukawa couplings responsible for charged lepton masses. $`\stackrel{~}{f}^{ab}`$ is an anti-symmetric matrix in generation indices $`a`$ and $`b`$ due to Fermi statistics.

The mass matrix $`\stackrel{~}{m}`$ for the charged leptons is given by, $`\stackrel{~}{m}=(v_1\stackrel{~}{f}_1^\varphi +v_2\stackrel{~}{f}_2^\varphi )=v(\mathrm{sin}\beta \stackrel{~}{f}_1^\varphi +\mathrm{cos}\beta \stackrel{~}{f}_2^\varphi )`$. Here $`v_\gamma =<\varphi _\gamma >`$ are the vacuum expectation values (VEV), $`v=\sqrt{v_1^2+v_2^2}=174`$ GeV and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta =v_1/v_2`$. The mass matrix $`\stackrel{~}{m}`$ can be diagonalized to obtain the eigen-mass matrix $`m=Diag(m_e,m_\mu ,m_\tau )`$ by a bi-unitary transformation multiplying two unitary matrices $`V_{L,R}`$ from left and right, $`m=V_R\stackrel{~}{m}V_L^{}`$.

The linear combination $`\varphi _W^{}=\mathrm{cos}\beta \varphi _1^{}+\mathrm{sin}\beta \varphi _2^{}`$ is “eaten” by $`W^{}`$. The physical combination which mixes with $`h`$ is $`\varphi ^{}=\mathrm{sin}\beta \varphi _1^{}\mathrm{cos}\beta \varphi _2^{}`$. We indicate the two mass eigenstates of masses $`M_1`$ and $`M_2`$ for the charged scalars as $`h_1=\mathrm{cos}\theta _Zh\mathrm{sin}\theta _Z\varphi ^+`$ and $`h_2=\mathrm{sin}\theta _Zh+\mathrm{cos}\theta _Z\varphi ^+`$. Here $`\mathrm{sin}\theta _Z`$ is proportional to $`M_{\alpha \beta }`$ characterizing the strength of the $`h\varphi ^+`$ mixing.

The terms responsible for neutrino mass generation in the previous equation, in the mass eigenstates basis for the charged lepton and scalar fields, can be written as

$`L`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{E}_RmE_L\overline{E}_R({\displaystyle \frac{1}{v\mathrm{tan}\beta }}m{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{sin}\beta }}f_2^\varphi )\nu _L(\mathrm{sin}\theta _Zh_1^{}\mathrm{cos}\theta _Zh_2^{})`$ (3)
$`2\nu _L^TfCE_L(\mathrm{cos}\theta _Zh_1+\mathrm{sin}\theta _Zh_2)+\mathrm{}`$
where $`f_\gamma ^\varphi =(f_\gamma ^{\varphi ,ab})=V_R\stackrel{~}{f}_\gamma ^\varphi V_L^{}`$, $`f=(f^{ab})=V_L^{}\stackrel{~}{f}V_L^{}`$, $`E_{L,R}=(e,\mu ,\tau )_{L,R}`$, and $`\nu _L=(\nu _1,\nu _2,\nu _3)_L`$.

Exchange of charged scalars $`h_{1,2}`$ and charged leptons at one loop level, Majorana neutrino mass term $`L_m=(1/2)\nu _L^TM_\nu C\nu _L`$ can be generated with

$`M_\nu =A[(fm^2+m^2f^T){\displaystyle \frac{v}{\mathrm{cos}\beta }}(fmf_2^\varphi +f_2^{\varphi T}mf^T)],`$ (4)
where $`A=\mathrm{sin}(2\theta _Z)log(M_2^2/M_1^2)/(16\pi ^2v\mathrm{tan}\beta )`$ which is of order $`O(10^5)`$ if the $`\mathrm{sin}(2\theta _Z)`$ and $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ are both of order one. This is the general mass matrix in the Zee model. The mixing matrix is the unitary matrix $`V`$ which diagonalizes the mass matrix and is defined by, $`D=V^TM_\nu V`$, with $`D=diag(m_{\nu _1},m_{\nu _2},m_{\nu _3})`$.

The present experimental data on neutrino masses and mixing angles can be summarized as follow. The $`3\sigma `$ allowed ranges for the mass-squared differences are constrained to be: $`1.6\times 10^3`$ eV2 $`|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2|4.8\times 10^3`$ eV2, and $`4.7\times 10^5`$ eV2 $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{solar}^21.7\times 10^4`$ eV2, with the best fit values given by $`|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{atm}^2|=2.5\times 10^3`$ eV2, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{solar}^2=7.0\times 10^5`$ eV2. The mixing angles are in the ranges of $`0.3\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{atm}0.7`$ and $`0.29\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}0.63`$. Also the CHOOZ experiment gives an upper bound of $`0.22`$ on the $`\nu _e\nu _x`$ (where $`\nu _x`$ can be either $`\nu _\mu `$ or $`\nu _\tau `$ or a linear combination) oscillation parameter for $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{x1}^2=|m_x|^2|m_{\nu _1}|^2>10^3`$ eV2.

In the model discussed here the atmospheric neutrino and K2K data can be explained by oscillation between the muon and the tauon neutrinos, and the solar neutrino and KamLAND data explained by oscillation between the electron and muon (or a linear combination of muon and tauon neutrino) neutrinos. In this case the CHOOZ limit applies to the oscillation between the electron and tauon neutrinos ***There are additional evidences for oscillation between electron and muon neutrinos from LSND experiment. If confirmed more neutrinos are needed to explain all the data..

Setting $`f_2^\varphi `$ in eq. (4) to zero, one obtains the famous Zee-Wolfenstein mass matrix,

$`M_\nu =\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill 0& \hfill \stackrel{~}{a}& \hfill \stackrel{~}{b}\\ \hfill \stackrel{~}{a}& \hfill 0& \hfill \stackrel{~}{c}\\ \hfill \stackrel{~}{b}& \hfill \stackrel{~}{c}& \hfill 0\end{array}\right),`$ (8)
where $`\stackrel{~}{a}=Af^{e\mu }(m_\mu ^2m_e^2)`$, $`\stackrel{~}{b}=Af^{e\tau }(m_\tau ^2m_e^2)`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{c}=Af^{\mu \tau }(m_\tau ^2m_\mu ^2)`$. One can redefine the neutrino and charged lepton phases such that all $`\stackrel{~}{a}`$, $`\stackrel{~}{b}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{c}`$ are real.

Unfortunately the Zee-Wolfenstein model is now ruled out by experimental data. This can be seen from the following.

The above mass matrix satisfies the “zero sum” condition $`m_{\nu _1}+m_{\nu _2}+m_{\nu _3}=0`$, therefore all the neutrino masses are determined in terms of the mass-squared differences. We have

$`m_{\nu _1}^2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\left[2\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2+\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^22\sqrt{(\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2)^2+\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2+(\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2)^2}\right].`$ (9)
The other two masses are given by, $`m_{\nu _2}^2=\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2+m_{\nu _1}^2`$ and $`m_{\nu _3}^2=\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2+m_{\nu _2}^2`$. The “zero sum” condition admits two types of mass hierarchy if the absolute value of $`r=\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2/\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2`$ is much smaller than one (experimentally $`|r|<0.106`$ at $`3\sigma `$ level), with one of them the normal one: $`m_{\nu _3}>m_{\nu _2}>m_{\nu _1}`$ and $`m_{\nu _1}m_{\nu _2}`$, and another the inverted one: $`|m_{\nu _2}|>|m_{\nu _1}|>|m_{\nu _3}|`$ and $`m_{\nu _2}m_{\nu _1}`$. One finds that $`|x|=|m_{\nu _1}/m_{\nu _2}|`$ is determined to be very close to one.

The mass matrix element $`M_{11}=0`$ leads to, $`V_{e1}^2m_{\nu _1}+V_{e2}^2m_{\nu _2}+V_{e3}^2m_{\nu _3}=0`$, which can be rewritten as

$`V_{e2}^2={\displaystyle \frac{x+(1+2x)V_{e3}^2}{1x}}.`$ (10)
Since $`|x|`$ is smaller but close to one, the above equation only allows negative $`x`$ for small $`V_{e3}^2`$ implying that only the inverted mass hierarchy is possible. One thus obtains a minimal $`V_{e2,min}^2`$ of $`V_{e2}^2`$ close to $`(1V_{e3,max}^2)/20.47`$, while data from SNO and KamLAND prefers a smaller $`V_{e2}^2`$. Therefore SNO and KamLAND data disfavor the Zee-Wolfenstein model. This has been noticed in Ref.. However, we would like to point out that although the Zee-Wolfenstein model can not produce the central values for the mixing and mass difference from solar and KamLAND data, the present data can not rule out the model at more than even 2$`\sigma `$ level.

To have a more quantitative statement, we have carried out a detailed study and the results are shown in Figure 1. The dashed lines in Figure 1 are for $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ ($`\mathrm{sin}^22\theta _{solar}=4|V_{e1}|^2|V_{e2}|^2`$) with two values (0.22 and 0.15) of $`V_{e3}`$ as a function of r. When $`|V_{e3}|`$ decreases, $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ increases. $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ is about 0.53 for the $`3\sigma `$ upper bound of $`|V_{e3}|`$, and becomes larger than the $`3\sigma `$ allowed value of 0.63 when $`|V_{e3}|`$ decreases to be lower than 0.15. One therefore can take $`|V_{e3}|`$ to be larger than 0.15 at 3$`\sigma `$ level. It is clear that the model is not possible to produce the best fit value of 0.4 for $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$. However at 2$`\sigma `$, $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ can be as large as 0.54. Therefore it is not possible to rule out the model at more than 2$`\sigma `$ level from data on solar and KamLAND.

Data on $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{atm}`$ can provide further constraints on the model. The condition $`M_{22}=m_1V_{\mu 1}^2+m_2V_{\mu 2}^2+m_3V_{\mu 3}^2=0`$ in the model can be used to determine $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{atm}=V_{\mu 3}^2`$. The mixing matrix $`V`$ can be parameterized using three rotation angles, for example $`V_{e2}=s_{12}c_{13}`$, $`V_{e3}=s_{13}`$ and $`V_{\mu 3}=s_{23}c_{13}`$. Here $`s_{ij}=\mathrm{sin}\theta _{ij}`$ and $`c_{ij}=\mathrm{cos}\theta _{ij}`$. Two of the angles, $`\theta _{12,13}`$ can be determined in terms of $`V_{e3}`$ and $`r`$ from previous discussions. The condition

$`M_{22}=m_{\nu _1}(s_{12}+c_{12}s_{13}t_{23})^2+m_{\nu _2}(c_{12}s_{12}s_{13}t_{23})^2+m_{\nu _3}c_{13}^2t_{23}^2=0,`$ (11)
then determines $`\theta _{23}`$ in terms of $`V_{e3}`$ and $`r`$. Here $`t_{23}=s_{23}/c_{23}=\mathrm{tan}\theta _{23}`$. There are two solutions for $`\mathrm{tan}\theta _{23}`$ for given $`V_{e3}`$ and y which we indicate by “a” and “b”.

In Figure 1 the solid lines show $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{atm}`$ as a function of $`r`$ for $`|V_{e3}|`$ equals to its 3$`\sigma `$ allowed upper value of 0.22 and the allowed lower value of 0.15. From the figure we see that $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{atm}`$ decreases for solution “a”, and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{atm}`$ increases for solution “b” as $`r`$ increases from the 3$`\sigma `$ lower bound of -0.106 to the allowed upper bound of 0. All solutions for $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{atm}`$ are outside the 3$`\sigma `$ allowed range of $`0.30.7`$. For $`|V_{e3}|`$ smaller than 0.15, it is possible for $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{atm}`$ of solution “b” to become smaller than the 3$`\sigma `$ allowed upper bound. However $`|V_{e3}|`$ smaller than 0.15 will drive $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ to move out the $`3\sigma `$ allowed range. Therefore the combined neutrino data on $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ and $`\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _{atm}`$ rule out the Zee-Wolfenstein model at more $`3\sigma `$ level.

The above discussions show clearly that the Zee-Wolfenstein neutrino mass matrix is in trouble. That does not, however, mean that the Zee model itself is in trouble. The mass matrix given in eq. (4) contains more than enough freedom to fit data. Here we encounter a common problem for physics beyond the SM that there are too many new parameters. Additional theoretical considerations have to be applied to narrow down the parameters.

We find that an interesting neutrino mass matrix emerges if one requires that there should be no large hierarchies among the new couplings, that is all $`f^{ij}`$ and $`f_2^{\varphi ,ab}`$ are of the same order of magnitude, respectively. This can be considered as a naturalness requirement. From eq. (4) one sees that all terms in the mass matrix are either proportional to $`m_l`$ or $`m_l^2`$. Since $`m_\tau >>m_{\mu ,e}`$, the leading contributions to the neutrino mass matrix are proportional to $`f^{ij}m_\tau ^2`$ and $`f_2^{\varphi ,ab}m_\tau `$. To this order we have

$`M_{11}`$ $`=`$ $`2A{\displaystyle \frac{v}{\mathrm{cos}\beta }}f^{e\tau }f_2^{\varphi ,\tau e}m_\tau ,M_{22}=2{\displaystyle \frac{v}{\mathrm{cos}\beta }}f^{\mu \tau }f_2^{\varphi ,\tau \mu }m_\tau ,M_{33}=0,`$ (12)
$`M_{12}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{v}{\mathrm{cos}\beta }}A(f^{e\tau }f_2^{\varphi ,\tau \mu }+f^{\mu \tau }f_2^{\varphi ,\tau e})m_\tau ,`$ (13)
$`M_{13}`$ $`=`$ $`Af^{e\tau }m_\tau (m_\tau {\displaystyle \frac{v}{\mathrm{cos}\beta }}f_2^{\varphi ,\tau \tau }),M_{23}=Af^{\mu \tau }m_\tau (m_\tau {\displaystyle \frac{v}{\mathrm{cos}\beta }}f_2^{\varphi ,\tau \tau }).`$ (14)
Without loss of generality, by appropriate choices of neutrino filed phases, the 11, 13, 23 entries can be made real with just one physical phase $`\delta `$ in the mass matrix. One can rewrite the above mass matrix as

$`M_\nu =a\left(\begin{array}{ccc}1& (ye^{i\delta }+x)/2& z\\ (ye^{i\delta }+x)/2& xye^{i\delta }& xz\\ z& xz& 0\end{array}\right),`$ (18)
with $`a=|M_{11}|`$, $`x=|f^{\mu \tau }|/|f^{e\tau }|`$, $`y=|M_{22}|/xa`$, $`z=|M_{13}|/a`$.

This is a highly constrained form of mass matrix. This matrix is rank two implying that one of the neutrinos has zero mass. The non-zero eigenvalues are given by

$`m_\pm ^2={\displaystyle \frac{a^2}{4}}(\sqrt{1+2xy\mathrm{cos}\delta +x^2+y^2}\pm \sqrt{(1+x^2)(1+y^2+4z^2)})^2.`$ (19)
Since experimentally $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2>0`$, there are two types of eigen-mass hierarchies, a) $`m_{\nu _1}=0`$, $`|m_{\nu _2}|=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2}=m_{}`$, $`|m_{\nu _3}|=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2}=m_+`$; and b) $`|m_{\nu _1}|=\sqrt{|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2}=m_{}`$, $`|m_{\nu _2}|=\sqrt{|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2|}=m_+`$, $`m_{\nu _3}=0`$. The five parameters in the mass matrix are severely constrained from data on $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21,32}^2`$, $`V_{e2}`$, $`V_{e3}`$ and $`V_{\mu 3}`$.

To have some idea about what parameter space may satisfy experimental constraints, let us discuss the situation with the phase $`\delta `$ set to be zero for simplicity. For type a) of mass hierarchy since $`|r|=|\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21}^2/\mathrm{\Delta }m_{32}^2|`$ is much smaller than 1, one would have $`(1+xy)^2`$ to be almost equal to $`(1+x^2)(1+y^2+4z^2)`$. To satisfy this, $`x`$ should be close to $`y`$ and $`z`$ to be much smaller than 1. Expanding the mixing matrix elements around $`x=y`$ and small $`z`$, we find that $`(V_{e2},V_{\mu 2},V_{\tau 2})`$ to be proportional to $`(z,xz,(1+x^2))`$. Since $`z`$ is much smaller than 1, one would obtain too small a $`V_{e2}`$ in contradiction with solar and KamLAND data. This qualitative feature is not changed even if a non-zero $`\delta `$ is introduced. There is no solution for the normal mass hierarchy of type a).

For type b) of mass hierarchy, one has $`(V_{e3}V_{\mu 3},V_{\tau 3})`$ is proportional to $`(2xz,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}2}z,xy)`$. A small $`|r|`$ requires $`xy`$ to be close to -1. Then small $`V_{e3}`$, and large $`|V_{\mu 3}|`$ and $`|V_{\tau 3}|`$ require $`x`$ to be small and $`2xz`$ to be of order one. We indeed find solutions for the mixing matrix satisfying experimental constraints. We also find that the size of $`V_{e3}`$ anti-correlates with $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ strongly, that is, when $`|V_{e3}|`$ decreases, $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ increases. If $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ is close to its best fit value of 0.4, $`|V_{e3}|`$ is close to, but below, the 3$`\sigma `$ upper bound of 0.22. In the following we present a sample solution with $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_{21,32}^2`$ have their best fit values,

$`m_{\nu _1}=4.93\times 10^2\text{eV},m_{\nu _2}=5.00\times 10^2\text{eV},m_{\nu _3}=0.`$ (20)
$`V=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill 0.8244& \hfill 0.5312& \hfill 0.1953\\ \hfill 0.2961& \hfill 0.6989& \hfill 0.6511\\ \hfill 0.4823& \hfill 0.4789& \hfill 0.7335\end{array}\right).`$ (24)
The $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ is 0.415 close to the best fit value. The value $`0.1953`$ for $`V_{e3}`$ is below, but close to the 3$`\sigma `$ allowed upper bound.

In the above solution, the input parameters are: $`x=0.3`$, $`y=3.455`$, $`z=1.667`$, $`a=1.94\times 10^2`$ eV. One can choose different signs for the parameters $`x`$, $`y`$ and $`z`$. As long as the signs for $`x`$ and $`y`$ are simultaneously changed, the magnitudes of the eigen-masses and the mixing matrix elements are not changed. We will stick to the signs with $`x`$ to be negative, $`y`$ and $`z`$ to be positive in our later discussions.

One can also find solutions with smaller $`|V_{e3}|`$. For example, with $`x=0.165`$, $`y=6.531`$ and $`z=3.030`$, we obtain $`V_{e3}=0.11`$, but $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}=0.624`$ which is close to the 3$`\sigma `$ upper bound.

We searched for other solutions. We find that it is also possible to have solutions with non-zero CP violating phase $`\delta `$. For example with $`a=1.92\times 10^2\text{eV}`$, $`x=0.276`$, $`ye^{i\delta }=3.467i0.0573`$, and $`z=1.571`$, we have

$`m_{\nu _1}=4.93\times 10^2e^{i16.9^{}}\text{eV},m_{\nu _2}=5.00\times 10^2e^{i11^{}}\text{eV},m_{\nu _3}=0.`$ (25)
$`V=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill 0.8147& \hfill 0.5048i0.2311& \hfill 0.1676i0.0024\\ \hfill 0.3110i0.1995& \hfill 0.7035& \hfill 0.6071i0.0087\\ \hfill 0.4166i0.1619& \hfill 0.4402i0.0561& \hfill 0.7767\end{array}\right).`$ (29)
The value for $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ is about 0.464 which is within the 1$`\sigma `$ region. The value $`|V_{e3}|=0.168`$ is below the $`3\sigma `$ upper bound, but not far below. The CP violating Jarlskog parameter $`J=Im(V_{11}V_{22}V_{12}^{}V_{21}^{})`$ is predicted to be $`0.0165`$ which may be studied in future neutrino factories. We have kept masses in the form with phases to illustrate the existence of Majorana phases which can be rotated away by multiplying a phase matrix from the right on $`V`$ obtained above.

The neutrino masses obtained in the model are in the interesting ranges. The sum of the absolute neutrino masses, $`m_{sum}=|m_{\nu _1}|+|m_{\nu _2}|+|m_{\nu _3}|`$, in this model is around $`0.1`$ eV which is several times smaller than the recent bound of 0.69 eV from WMAP, but can be probed in the near future by the PLANK experiment where the sensitivity on $`m_{sum}`$ can be as low as 0.03 eV. Laboratory neutrino mass experiments can also test the model. A non-zero value $`a=|m_{ee}|`$ can induce neutrinoless double beta decays. $`|m_{ee}|`$ obtained here is about $`0.02`$ eV which is safely below the present bound of 0.4 eV. However it can be probed by future experiments, such as GENIUS, MOON and CUORE, where sensitivity of about 0.01 eV may be reached. The effective mass $`<m_e>=\sqrt{|m_{\nu _1}V_{e1}|^2+|m_{\nu _2}V_{e2}|^2+|m_{\nu _3}V_{e3}|^2}`$ measured by the end point spectrum of beta decay in our case is around $`0.05`$ eV which is unfortunately a factor of 2 smaller than the sensitivity of future KATRIN experiment.

The off-diagonal entries of the couplings $`f^{ab}`$ and $`f_2^{\varphi ,ab}`$ can induce flavor changing interactions. One should make sure that constraints on related parameters will not rule out the regions of the parameters to produce the mass matrix discussed above. It is not possible to completely determine the couplings using just information from neutrino masses and mixing. We therefore take a simple situation with $`f_2^{\varphi ,\tau \tau }=0`$ for illustration. In this case for the example given in eq. (29): $`f_2^{\varphi ,\tau e}/\mathrm{cos}\beta =0.33\times 10^2`$, $`f_2^{\varphi ,\tau \mu }/\mathrm{cos}\beta =(1.14i0.02)\times 10^2`$, $`Af^{e\tau }=0.93\times 10^{11}(\text{GeV}^1)`$, and $`Af^{\mu \tau }=0.26\times 10^{11}(\text{GeV}^1)`$. It is interesting to note that the solution obtained here is consistent with the naturalness requirement that $`f_2^{\varphi ,\tau e}`$ to be the same order of magnitude as $`f_2^{\varphi ,\tau \mu }`$, and $`f^{e\tau }`$ to be the same order of magnitude as $`f^{\mu \tau }`$. If one chooses a smaller $`x`$ one would obtain bigger hierarchy for the parameters, $`f^{\mu \tau }`$ and $`f^{e\tau }`$. The qualitative features will not change when other values for the parameters are used.

Exchange of the neutral Higgs boson $`\varphi _1`$ (with mass $`M_0`$) can induce at tree level $`l_il_jl_k\overline{l}_k`$ decays. For the values of $`f_2^{\varphi ,\tau \mu }`$ and $`f_2^{\varphi ,\tau e}`$ obtained in the example of eq.(29) we have

$`B(\tau \mu \mu \overline{\mu },\mu e\overline{e})3.5\times 10^9B_\tau ,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.80}\times 10^{13}B_\tau ;B(\tau \mu \gamma )0.76\times 10^8B_\tau ;`$ (30)
$`B(\tau e\mu \overline{\mu },ee\overline{e})2.9\times 10^{10}B_\tau ,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.67}\times 10^{14}B_\tau ;B(\tau e\gamma )0.63\times 10^9B_\tau .`$ (31)
In the above $`B_\tau =(100(\text{GeV})/M_0\mathrm{tan}\beta )^4B^{SM}(\tau \nu _\tau \mu \overline{\nu }_\mu )`$ with $`B^{SM}(\tau \nu _\tau \mu \overline{\nu }_\mu )17\%`$.

There are experimental constraints on the above decays with the 90% C.L. bounds given by: $`B(\tau \mu \mu \overline{\mu },\mu e\overline{e})=1.9\times 10^6`$, $`1.7\times 10^6`$, $`B(\tau e\mu \overline{\mu },ee\overline{e})=1.8\times 10^6`$, $`2.9\times 10^6`$, $`B(\tau \mu \gamma ,e\gamma )=1.1\times 10^6`$, $`2.7\times 10^6`$. For $`\mathrm{tan}\beta `$ of order one, all the branching ratios predicted above are safely below the experimental values if the mass $`M_0`$ is of order 100 GeV.

Non-zero $`f^{ij}`$ can also induce radiative charged lepton decays by exchanging charged scalars. If the parameter $`A`$ is not too much smaller than a natural value of $`A=10^5`$ (GeV-1), their contributions for the rare decays mentioned will be much smaller. The rare decays of the types discussed in the above will not provide significant constraints.

From the above discussions we see that the new form of mass matrix proposed is consistent with present experimental data. It also predicts $`m_{\nu _3}=0`$ and a sizeable $`|V_{e3}|`$. In particular, if the error on $`\mathrm{tan}^2\theta _{solar}`$ is reduced and the present best fit value holds, $`|V_{e3}|`$ will be close to the 3$`\sigma `$ allowed upper bound. The model can be tested in the future.

###### Acknowledgements.

I thank A. Zee for many useful suggestions. This work was supported in part by NSC under grant number NSC 91-2112-M-002-42, and by the MOE Academic Excellence Project 89-N-FA01-1-4-3 of Taiwan,


text:
# Linking the chiral and deconfinement phase transitions

thanks: Present address: Center for Theoretical Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139

## Abstract

We show that the electric glueball becomes critical at the end-point of the deconfinement phase transition in finite temperature QCD. Based on this observation and existing lattice data, we argue that the chiral phase transition at a zero quark mass and the deconfinement phase transition at an infinite quark mass are continuously connected by the glueball-sigma mixing.

Confinement and chiral symmetry breaking are the fundamental properties of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in the nonperturbative regime. It has been often speculated how the two phenomena are related to each other. There are several arguments that the confined vacuum necessarily breaks chiral symmetry casher ; thooft , which suggest that the energy scale of chiral symmetry breaking is higher than that of confinement. The separation of these scales, i.e., $`4\pi f_\pi `$ ($`f_\pi `$ is the pion decay constant) for chiral symmetry breaking and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{\mathrm{QCD}}`$ for confinement, has been successfully exploited to reproduce the low energy hadronic properties Georgi .

In view of such experiences at zero temperature, it is quite surprising that the lattice data at finite temperature suggest that chiral symmetry restoration and the deconfinement phase transition occur at the same temperature Kogut ; fukugita ; Karsch ; aoki ; karsch2 ; gat ; allton . In this Brief Report we argue how this could be realized.

Fig. 1 is the schematic phase diagram of QCD in the ($`T,m`$) plane. ($`T`$ is the temperature and $`m`$ is the current quark mass.) The deconfinement phase transition has a definite meaning only at an infinite quark mass. In SU(3) pure gluodynamics the transition is known to be first order yaffe . The expectation value of the Polyakov loop polyakov ; sus ,

$`L(𝒙)=\text{tr}𝒫\mathrm{exp}\left(\mathrm{i}{\displaystyle _0^{1/T}}A_0(𝒙,\tau )d\tau \right),`$ (1)
where $`𝒫`$ is the path ordering operator, serves as an order parameter and jumps at the deconfinement transition temperature. The first order phase transition persists at a finite but very large quark mass (solid curve in Fig. 1) and eventually terminates at a second order phase transition point D where $`L(𝒙)`$ becomes continuous. The universality class of this phase transition is that of the three-dimensional Ising model. The critical quark mass at D is estimated to be $`\mathrm{O}(1)`$ GeV in the two-flavor lattice simulations ha ; attig .

In contrast, chiral symmetry is a true symmetry only at zero quark mass. The order parameter of the chiral phase transition is the quark condensate $`\overline{q}q`$. For three flavors, the phase transition is of first order rob . With finite but small quark masses (which we take to be equal for all flavors), the first order transition persists and eventually terminates at a second order phase transition point C. The jump in the chiral condensate disappears and the sigma meson screening state $`\sigma \overline{q}q`$ becomes gapless at this point Gavin ; schmidt . The location of C and D depends on the number of flavors and their mass ratios. \[For example, C lies on the $`m=0`$ axis for two flavors rob .\] The following argument does not depend on the details of the flavor sector, however.

Between the points C and D, there is no true phase transition. There are just two crossover phase transitions starting from C and D. The location of the crossover transition (the pseudo-critical temperature) is determined from the peak position of the susceptibility of each order parameter. The lattice data suggest that the two pseudo-critical temperatures coincide for all values of the quark mass, which means that two crossover curves are smoothly connected at some intermediate point (dotted curve in Fig. 1). It is as if the deconfinement phase transition in the pure gluonic theory is ‘guided’ towards the chiral phase transition traveling over an infinite range of the quark mass.

The nature of this ‘coincidence’ has been discussed in gock ; chen ; satz ; fuku , where the authors attributed the (almost) singular behavior of the Polyakov loop to the coupling of the Polyakov loop and the chiral condensate. It turns out that their observation can be incorporated in a very simple and intuitive picture which enables us to grasp what is going on near the finite temperature QCD phase transition for all values of the quark mass.

Since the center symmetry is explicitly broken by dynamical quarks quark , the Polyakov loop has a nonzero expectation value at D. Thus the phase transition at D would be characterized by the infinite correlation length (or the vanishing screening mass) of the shifted order parameter

$`L^{}(𝒙)L(𝒙)L,`$ (2)
where $`L`$ is the expectation value of $`L`$ at D. However, there is an apparent puzzle. What is the physical meaning of the ‘mass’ of the $`L^{}`$ field? A naive guess is the string tension as in the case of the pure SU(2) theory. This is wrong because the string eventually breaks at large distances in the presence of dynamical quarks no matter how heavy they are, whereas the second order phase transition requires an infinite correlation length. We will show that the massless mode at D is actually the scalar glueball screening state.

For this purpose, first we work in the pure SU(2) gauge theory. In this case the deconfinement phase transition is second order in the universality class of the three dimensional Ising model. The string tension $`K`$ goes to zero smoothly as the critical temperature is approached

$`K|t|^\nu ,(t<0)`$ (3)
where $`t`$ is the reduced temperature and the universal exponent is $`\nu 0.63`$ Engels .

One can realize the relevance of glueballs by considering the specific heat $`C_\mathrm{v}`$. In the theory of critical phenomena, the singular part of the specific heat is represented by the integrated correlator of the order parameter squared zinn ,

$`C_\mathrm{v}{\displaystyle \mathrm{d}^dxL^2(𝒙)L^2(\mathrm{𝟎})_\mathrm{c}}|t|^\alpha ,`$ (4)
where $`\alpha 0.11`$ and $`d=3`$ is the spatial dimension. The subscript c denotes the connected part. (Note that $`L(𝒙)`$ is real for SU(2) and $`L^2(𝒙)`$ stays nonzero at any temperature.) The scaling dimension of the order parameter squared is $`d1/\nu `$ zinn . Thus the explicit structure of the divergence is

$`{\displaystyle \mathrm{d}^dx\frac{\mathrm{e}^{m_\mathrm{G}|𝒙|}}{|𝒙|^{2(d\frac{1}{\nu })}}}|t|^\alpha ,`$ (5)
where we have assumed that the connected part of the correlator in (4) exponentially decays as $`\mathrm{e}^{m_\mathrm{G}|𝒙|}`$ at large distances. Matching the powers of $`|t|`$ and using Josephson’s law $`\alpha =2d\nu `$ (hyperscaling), we obtain,

$`m_\mathrm{G}|t|^\nu .`$ (6)
Hence the operator $`L^2`$ couples to a state with zero screening mass at the phase transition. By using the SU(2) identity

$`L^2(𝒙)=1+L_\mathrm{A}(𝒙),`$ (7)
where $`L_\mathrm{A}`$ is the Polyakov loop in the adjoint representation (i.e., the trace in Eq. (1) is taken in the adjoint representation), or just by noticing that $`L^2`$ is invariant under the center transformation, $`LL`$, we see that the massless state is the glueball glue . \[More precisely, the electric glueball screening state. See below.\]

It should be noted that Eq. (6) does not mean that the (electric) glueball is another order parameter field. Rather, it is a trivial consequence of the scaling property at general second order phase transitions; the only relevant scale is the correlation length $`\xi |t|^\nu `$. \[The word ’massless’ may be somewhat misleading since we normally associate it with the order parameter field, namely, the Polyakov loop.\]

One might suspect that the vanishing of the glueball screening mass would contradict with the presence of the trace anomaly. In the simple phenomenological Lagrangian of glueballs at zero and low temperatures sch ; ellis , the glueballs acquire their mass entirely from the trace anomaly, or the gluon condensate. However, the exact lattice sum rule for the glueball mass rothe  shows that only $`\frac{1}{4}`$ of the glueball mass comes from the expectation value of the trace anomaly in the glueball state measured relative to the vacuum. Moreover, the scalar glueball mass at zero temperature splits into two branches at finite temperature. The glueballs which become massless at the phase transition are the electric glueballs (those containing $`A_0`$, or time-like links), while the screening mass of the magnetic glueball (composed of $`A_i`$, or space-like links) remains finite. This crucial difference has to be taken into account in phenomenological models such as sannino . As long as the specific heat diverges in the usual manner at the SU(2) deconfinement phase transition cv , we believe that the vanishing of the electric glueball screening mass and the non-vanishing of the trace anomaly are compatible. A significant decrease of the electric glueball mass near the SU(2) deconfinement transition has been observed on the lattice datta .

Let us go back to the end-point D of SU(3) QCD with dynamical quarks. We can think of an effective Ginzburg-Landau theory near D in terms of the new order parameter $`L^{}`$ defined in Eq.(2). However, due to our identification

$`G(𝒙)|L(𝒙)|^2=|L^{}(𝒙)+L|^2,`$ (8)
the glueball field $`G(𝒙)`$ contains a linear term in $`L^{}`$. Hence the screening mass of the Polyakov loop which vanishes at D is equal to the screening mass of the glueball, and we may as well construct a Ginzburg-Landau theory of $`G`$ around D. \[Note that in contrast to the SU(2) case, the electric glueball is the order parameter field in the case of SU(3).\] The crucial point is that, in the presence of dynamical quarks, the electric glueballs must mix with the $`\overline{q}q`$ states. In fact, the correct massless field associated with the second order phase transition at D is a linear combination of the pure glueball interpolating field $`G`$ and the sigma meson interpolating field $`\sigma `$ with large gluonic content,

$`\varphi =G\mathrm{cos}\theta +\sigma \mathrm{sin}\theta ,\mathrm{sin}\theta 1.`$ (9)
The other linear combination with large mesonic content,

$`\varphi ^{}=G\mathrm{sin}\theta +\sigma \mathrm{cos}\theta ,`$ (10)
is massive, hence decouples at D.

The mixing Eq. (9) inevitably occurs if the first order phase transition line makes an angle with the quark mass axis at D, and there is no symmetry to keep them parallel. In the same way, at C the critical sigma screening state slightly mixes with the glueball screening state. The simultaneous enhancement of the chiral susceptibility

$`\chi _{\mathrm{ch}}{\displaystyle \mathrm{d}^dx\overline{q}q(𝒙)\overline{q}q(\mathrm{𝟎})},`$ (11)
and the Polyakov loop susceptibility along each crossover phase transition line is a trivial consequence of the mixing satz ; fuku .

Now we address a deeper question: The lattice data suggest that there is only one crossover phase transition line in the $`(T,m)`$ plane, not two. With the above line of argument we are led to the following scenario which naturally explains this longstanding puzzle. Let us decrease the quark mass $`m`$ and follow the crossover phase transition line starting from D. The screening mass of the $`\varphi `$ field first increases from zero with a certain critical exponent. At the same time, the mixing angle $`\theta `$ gradually increases. If the mixing angle stops growing and stays small, the $`\varphi ^{}`$ field, which is then always sigma-like, serves as the order parameter at C. In this case, the two phase transitions would have nothing to do with each other and there would be two peaks in both the chiral and Polyakov loop susceptibilities. \[Remember that the coincidence occurs irrespective of whether or not the two crossover lines meet.\] However, the observed single peak means that the $`\varphi `$ field describes the field with the smallest screening mass (or the longest correlation length) in the system for all values of the quark mass and the mixing angle gradually changes from $`\theta 0`$ to $`\theta \pi /2`$. Namely, the $`\varphi `$ ($`\varphi ^{}`$) field is first glueball-like (sigma-like) for large values of the quark mass and it becomes sigma-like (glueball-like) as the quark mass gets smaller. In order for this to be realized, a level repulsion between the $`\varphi `$ state and the $`\varphi ^{}`$ state must occur at an intermediate value of the quark mass. The fate of the $`\varphi `$ field is predominantly sigma-like and is nothing but the order parameter of the genuine QCD phase transition, the chiral phase transition. This gives a simple and intuitive explanation of why there seems to be only one phase transition in finite temperature QCD lattice simulations.

An immediate consequence of the mixing Eq. (9) is that the electric glueball (or the Polyakov loop) and the sigma meson screening masses coincide at the common pseudo-critical temperature of the crossover phase transition. \[Note that in principle, the mixing between the sigma and the glueball could occur in the entire phase diagram (Fig. 1). However, we expect that in most regions the mixing is too small to be observed on the lattice. For example, above the chiral phase transition temperature, at small quark masses the sigma meson and the pions fall in a multiplet due to (approximate) chiral symmetry. The glueball screening mass is indeed different from the sigma screening mass in this region gavai . Also, at low temperatures the glueball will primarily mix with nearby scalar quarkonium states. The point is that near the crossover phase transition, the sigma meson and the glueball conspire to create the lightest particle which drives the phase transition. At large distances, no other states can couple to this mode. Thus the glueball-sigma mixing and the resulting degeneracy in their screening mass should be observable in this region (but not necessarily in other regions).\] Detailed lattice measurements of the correlators (or the off-diagonal correlators) of electric glueballs, Polyakov loops and sigma mesons around the region between C and D would give us the information of the lowest and the second lowest screening masses as well as the quark-mass dependence of the mixing angle. Compilation of such measurements would confirm or exclude our scenario.

It is intriguing to consider the phase diagram for different values of $`N_\mathrm{c}`$, the number of colors. As $`N_\mathrm{c}`$ increases, it is likely that the first order deconfinement phase transition strengthens teper  and the point D moves downward. Presuming that our scenario also holds for general $`N_\mathrm{c}3`$, we expect that the point D reaches the point C at some value of $`N_\mathrm{c}=N_\mathrm{c}^{}`$ and the high and low temperature phases are separated by a single first order phase transition line for $`N_\mathrm{c}N_\mathrm{c}^{}`$. This is consistent with the early observations neri . From our viewpoint, $`N_\mathrm{c}=2`$ is special. The Ginzburg-Landau theory of $`G`$ does not make sense at D which now lies on the $`m=\mathrm{}`$ axis. Also the nature of the chiral phase transition is peculiar for $`N_\mathrm{c}=2`$ due to the Pauli-Gürsey symmetry nishida . It is thus interesting to pursue a similar link (glueball-sigma-diquark mixing) between the two phase transitions in $`N_\mathrm{c}=2`$ QCD at finite temperature and baryon density.

In conclusion, based on the existing lattice data, we have proposed a novel scenario of the finite temperature QCD phase transition. The chiral phase transition at zero quark mass and the deconfinement phase transition at infinite quark mass are continuously connected by the glueball-sigma mixing which is a well-known phenomenon in the zero temperature scalar meson spectrum. In other words, the two phase transitions are just different limits of a single (crossover) phase transition driven by a single field. Phenomenological consequences of this scenario remain to be explored.

Acknowledgements:

We thank M. Creutz, L. McLerran, P. Petreczky, R. D. Pisarski, K. Splittorff and M. A. Stephanov for their interest in this work and helpful comments. Y. H. thanks RIKEN BNL Reserch Center. K. F. is supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists.


text:
# Coarse-grained probabilistic automata mimicking chaotic systems

## Abstract

Discretization of phase-space usually nullifies chaos in dynamical systems. We show that if randomness is associated with discretization dynamical chaos may survive, and be indistinguishable from that of the original chaotic system, when an entropic, coarse-grained analysis is performed. Relevance of this phenomenon to the problem of quantum chaos is discussed.

Chaos is a common characteristic of motion in continuous spaces. It is signaled by many indicators. Among these, positivity of the Kolmogorov-Sinai (K-S) entropy is perhaps the most significant, both in theory and applications avez ; poli . On the other hand, trajectories in discrete spaces are always asymptotically periodic—hence, of null K-S entropy. They may arise in the discretization of continuous systems, as in the numerical simulation of differential equations, but arguably their rôle is most significant in the correspondence of classical and quantum dynamics.

Consider for instance the paradigmatic example of the quantum Arnol’d cat. Its dynamics are algorithmically equivalent to classical motion on a regular lattice, whose spacing is inversely proportional to the Planck constant berry ; joegio . When the spacing diminishes, the lattice becomes denser in continuous, classical phase-space. Yet, it has long been recognized that chaos cannot be naively revived in such a limit procedure joegio ; noi1 ; viva . A way out of this impasse is obtained by randomly perturbing the dynamics ott : is this addition enough to bring back the full algorithmic content, that is the distinctive signature of chaos joe  ? We attempt here an answer to this question in the most general and simple terms.

Deterministic-probabilistic systems (such as those occurring in cellular automata grass ) have long been investigated, with respect to their invariant measures ruel , and also to the entropic content of their motion karol . We now extend this study to the regime where continuous, discrete, and random effects are simultaneously present, and intermix in non-trivial ways.

Let us therefore consider the deterministic map

$$x_{t+1}=f(x_t),$$
(1)
where $`t`$ is discrete time, $`x`$ belongs to $`[0,1]^D`$ and $`D`$ is the dimension of the space. We embed in $`[0,1]^D`$ a uniform rectangular lattice, of spacing $`\eta `$, and we label its states by integer vectors $`n`$ in $`[1,\frac{1}{\eta }]^D`$ ($``$ is the integer part) notadis . We then restrict the map $`f`$ to act on this lattice, and we add randomness:

$$n_{t+1}=\frac{1}{\eta }f(\eta n_t)+\sigma _t.$$
(2)
We stipulate that the uncorrelated, random “jumps” $`\sigma _t`$, extend to lattice neighbors with total probability $`p`$, so that $`\sigma _t=0`$ with probability $`1p`$. Note that when $`p=0`$ the system is purely deterministic. For definiteness, we shall study the generalized tent map in one dimension:

$$x_{t+1}=\{\begin{array}{ccc}ax_t\text{for}0x\frac{1}{a}\hfill & & \\ a(1x_t)/(a1)\text{for}\frac{1}{a}x1\hfill & & \end{array}$$
(3)
with $`a=3`$, the two-dimensional Arnol’d cat map avez :

$$\begin{array}{ccc}x_{t+1}=x_t+y_t\text{mod}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1},\hfill & & \\ y_{t+1}=x_t+2y_t\text{mod}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}\hfill & ,\hfill & \end{array}$$
(4)
and their probabilistic lattice automata, eq. (2).

We are now ready to briefly introduce our analytical tools. Let $`\{E_1,E_2,\mathrm{}\}`$ be a finite partition of phase space consisting of identical hyper-cubic cells of side $`ϵ`$. Let $`w_ϵ=w_ϵ^1,w_ϵ^2,\mathrm{},w_ϵ^n`$ be a finite symbolic trajectory, of length $`n=|w_ϵ|`$: $`w_ϵ^i=j`$ if and only if $`x_iE_j`$. Let also $`p(w_ϵ)`$ be the frequency of $`w_ϵ`$, defined by the physical ergodic measure. The $`n`$-block entropies $`H_n(ϵ)`$, $`n=1,2,\mathrm{}`$, are defined by the sums

$$H_n(ϵ)=\underset{w_ϵ:|w_ϵ|=n}{}p(w_ϵ)\mathrm{log}p(w_ϵ).$$
(5)
The partition entropy $`h(ϵ)`$ is the limit of $`H_n(ϵ)/n`$, or, with faster convergence, of the information rate $`h_n(ϵ)=H_n(ϵ)H_{n1}(ϵ)`$, as $`n\mathrm{}`$ shan ; koleps . The K-S entropy $`h_K`$ is the supremum of the partition-entropies, with respect to all countable partitions; hence, $`h(ϵ)h_K`$, and $`h_K`$ can be obtained letting $`ϵ`$ go to zero. However, the function $`h(ϵ)`$ for finite $`ϵ`$ is interesting in its own right gasp . This is because it gauges the rate of information production, for observations of finite accuracy, as a function of the resolution desired. In line with our approach in noi1  we also ascribe importance to the full behavior of $`H_n(ϵ)`$ versus $`n`$, and not only to the limit $`h(ϵ)`$.

It is well-known that the systems (3), (4) have positive K-S entropy. In contrast, the dynamics of the purely discrete systems (i.e. eq. (2) with $`p=0`$) are periodic, hence of null entropy. Yet, at scales larger than the lattice spacing, $`ϵ>ϵ_m:=\eta `$, they approximate the continuous dynamics for a finite time, roughly of the order of the logarithm of the period of the trajectory rannou ; disfranco ; levy ; coste ; grebogi . As a consequence, the entropies $`H_n(ϵ)`$ are also close to those of the continuous system, for $`n\overline{n}`$. The upper boundary $`\overline{n}`$ can be estimated requiring that at $`n=\overline{n}`$ the number of different $`ϵ`$-histories of length $`n`$ of the continuous system, $`𝒩_ϵ(n)\mathrm{exp}(h(ϵ)n)`$, be of the same order of the number of discrete states, $`M(1/\eta )^D`$. Here $`D`$ is the dimension of the attractor or, in the absence of this latter, the dimension of the space. This leads to:

$$\overline{n}\frac{\mathrm{log}M}{h(ϵ)}\frac{D\mathrm{log}\eta }{h(ϵ)}.$$
(6)
Dependence of $`\overline{n}`$ on the average period of trajectories, $`T`$, follows equally well. Since $`TM^{D_2/2}`$, where $`D_2`$ is the correlation dimension of the ergodic measure grebogi ,

$$\overline{n}\frac{2D}{D_2}\frac{\mathrm{log}T}{h(ϵ)}.$$
(7)
In the deterministic discrete systems (eq. (2) with $`p=0`$), $`\overline{n}`$ may be large enough to observe the entropic growth of the continuous map, and sometimes to compute the entropy $`h(ϵ)`$ of the latter to a fair accuracy. However, when $`n`$ exceeds $`\overline{n}`$, the $`n`$-words entropies, $`H_n`$, quickly saturate at a constant value, of the order of $`\mathrm{log}T`$, or $`\mathrm{log}(1/\eta )`$, or $`\mathrm{log}M`$, which reveals the periodic regime of the dynamics. It is clear that while the time $`\overline{n}`$ is model-dependent, its logarithmic scaling with the parameters is universal: the discrete, “pseudo” chaos seems to be very short-lived joegio ; noi1 ; viva . It is at this point that the random jumps $`\sigma _t`$ completely change the scenario.

First of all, the null-entropy, periodic system is turned into an aperiodic stochastic process of maximal entropy $`h_p`$. If $`\sigma _t`$ extends to $`k`$ neighbors with equal probability $`p/k`$, then $`h_p=p\mathrm{ln}(p/k)(1p)\mathrm{ln}(1p)`$. Since $`h_p`$ totally originates from the random jumps at the lattice scale $`ϵ_m`$, it can be fully detected only at this scale: $`h_ph(ϵ_m)h(ϵ)`$, for $`ϵϵ_m`$.

It is clear that $`h_p`$ has no relation with the K-S entropy $`h_K`$. Then, two cases must be considered. In view of the above, when $`h_p<h_K`$, addition of randomness, and observational coarse-graining, cannot achieve the full entropy content of the continuous system. This no-go rule does not apply in the opposite case. We find that when $`h_ph_K`$ and $`ϵϵ_m`$, the partition-entropies of the continuous system and of the discrete ones tend to coincide. Notice that the condition $`ϵϵ_m`$ requires that the number of discrete states per cell, $`Mϵ^D`$, be large.

To prove these claims, let us first consider the tent map, eqs. (2,3), with $`p=0.05`$, and nearest-neighbor random jumps. In this case $`h_p0.233`$ is much smaller than $`h_K0.636`$. Fig. 1 plots $`H_n(ϵ,M)`$ versus $`n`$, for different values of $`M`$, and $`ϵ=1/18`$. This partition is generating, so that the partition entropy of the continuous map, $`h_{\text{cont}}(1/18)`$, is equal to $`h_K`$. We observe that for $`n<\overline{n}`$, $`h_n(ϵ)`$ is approximately equal to $`h_K`$, the entropy of the continuous system. Later on, for $`n>\overline{n}`$, the curve $`H_n`$ bends and—rather than tending to a constant, as it would if randomness were not present—redirects its growth to a different linear regime: $`H_nh(ϵ,M)(n\overline{n})+A\mathrm{log}M`$, with $`A`$ a suitable constant. Numerically, we also find that $`h(ϵ,M)0.20h_p`$, independently of $`M`$, even if $`ϵ=1/18`$ is much larger than $`ϵ_m`$. This is noteworthy: were the evolution driven only by the probabilistic diffusion, $`n_{t+1}=n_t+\sigma _t`$, the $`ϵ`$-entropy would have been ten times smaller, $`h_{\text{diff}}(1/18,252)0.02`$. The effect of randomness is strongly enhanced by the deterministic evolution berger .

By raising the value of the jump probability $`p`$ noise  the entropy $`h_p`$ increases, and it may exceed the K-S entropy $`h_K`$, or $`h_{\text{cont}}(ϵ)`$ for a given $`ϵ`$. Fig. 2 plots $`h(ϵ,M)`$ versus $`h_p`$, for different values of $`M`$. At fixed, low $`h_p`$, the $`M`$ dependence is rather mild, as was observed in Fig. 1, and $`h(ϵ,M)`$ is smaller than $`h_{\text{cont}}(ϵ)`$. Raising $`h_p`$ at fixed $`M`$ to well exceed this value, and then increasing $`M`$, we obtain convergence of $`h(ϵ,M)`$ to $`h_{\text{cont}}(ϵ)`$.

This convergence is further illustrated in Fig. 3 by fixing $`h_p=1.5`$, by choosing $`ϵ=1/7`$ and $`ϵ=1/10`$, and by plotting $`h(ϵ,M)`$ versus $`z=Mϵ`$, the number of lattice points enclosed in a cell of the partition. The different curves tend to coincide for small $`z`$, where the entropies overshoot: when coarse graining is too fine (too few states in a cell) the direct action of randomness is dominating. This effect fades in the opposite direction: randomness becomes a germ that gets scale-amplified by the dynamics, and $`h(ϵ,z/ϵ)`$ tends to $`h_{\text{cont}}(ϵ)`$, the partition-entropy of the continuous system.

This behavior appears to be generic, as indicated by the results for the two-dimensional Arnol’d cat map, subject to a random perturbation with $`k=4`$ and $`h_p=1.5`$, plotted in Fig. 4. Since $`ϵ=1/4,1/16,1/64`$, all provide generating partitions, the corresponding values of $`h_{\text{cont}}(ϵ)`$ are equal to $`h_K0.962`$. As a consequence the data fall on a single line, starting from the entropy of the random perturbation, $`h_p=1.5`$, and converging to the K-S entropy $`h_K0.962`$. The convergence of $`h_n(ϵ,M)`$ to the asymptotic values is shown in the inset of Fig. 4, together with the partition entropies obtained for the purely discrete system ($`p=0`$), and for the purely stochastic motion. This comparison proves that $`h(ϵ,z/ϵ)`$ are truly asymptotic values, and provides further evidence in support of our explanation of the phenomenon, with which we now conclude.

Imposing a finite lattice to the otherwise continuum set of states of a dynamical system, inevitably bounds the algorithmic complexity of its trajectories, and the value of its partition entropies, to the logarithm of the number of states. If the lattice is perceived with some fuzziness—or if random errors are allowed, following the approach of this paper—one expects that on large scales continuum properties, and chaos might re-emerge, and be indistinguishable from that of the original system chorno . We have determined the conditions for this to happen. Firstly, observational coarse-graining must be invoked. Secondly, the action of the external randomness must be confined to the “microscopic”, unresolved scales. The instability of deterministic dynamics amplifies these microscopic, random errors, and carries them over to the large, observation scales. Finally, by a sort of conservation law, the flow of information supplied by the microscopic “zitterbewegung” must not be less than $`h_K`$, the maximum entropy production rate of the continuous system.

For a long time, research in quantum chaos has looked for quantum characteristics related to classical chaotic motion. The fact that none of these could be properly called chaos led to the concept of pseudo-chaos, and cast doubts on the very existence of chaos in nature. The results presented in this paper suggest that one might try to reverse this approach and consider classical dynamics as an effective theory that, via truly chaotic deterministic dynamical systems, models a randomly perturbed quantum motion under observational coarse-graining.

G.M. was supported by PRIN-2000 Chaos and localization in classical and quantum mechanics, and by HPRN-CT-2000-00156 Quantum Transport on an atomic scale. M.F and A.V. were supported by INFM (Centro di Ricerca e Sviluppo SMC) and MIUR (Cofin. “Fisica Statistica di Sistemi Complessi Classici e Quantistici”).