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# Diffusive energy transport in the 𝑆=1 Haldane chain compound AgVP2S6

## I Introduction

Anomalous features of transport properties of one-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnetic (1D HAFM) spin $`S=1/2`$ systems were predicted decades ago. In particular, it was argued that both the spin and thermal conductivity are not expected to be of diffusive character as is typical for classical systems without long-range order,Kawasaki63 ; Stern65  but instead are based on ballistic transport of spin and energy, at least in the case of ideal 1D systems.Huber69 ; Huber69a ; Niemeijer71 ; Krueger71  On theoretical grounds it was recently demonstrated that this difference is due to the conservation of spin and energy currents in integrable models which apply for 1D S=1/2 spin systems.Castella95 ; Zotos97 ; Saito96 ; Narozhny98 ; Naef98  The situation is much less clear with respect to the theory of transport properties of 1D S=1 systems. Contrary to half-integer spin 1D HAFM systems with isotropic exchange, for which the spin excitations are $`S=1/2`$ spinons and the corresponding spectrum is gapless,Faddeev81  the integer-spin chains exhibit gapped excitation spectra and $`S=1`$ magnon excitations.Haldane83  Numerical calculations for $`S=1`$, 1D HAFM systems relate the gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ to the exchange integral $`J`$, such that $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0.41J`$.Sorensen93  Early theoretical work predicted that the transport in ideal 1D HAFM S=1 systems must be diffusive.Huber69  More recent discussions of Sachdev and Damle,Sachdev97 ; Damle98  considering the spin transport in Heisenberg S=1 chains in terms of the nonlinear $`\sigma `$-model (NL$`\sigma `$M), also concluded with the claim of diffusive spin transport. However, Fujimoto,Fujimoto99  based on the integrability of NL$`\sigma `$M, suggested that in a perfect 1D S=1 system, the spin transport is ballistic. The author noted, however, that external perturbations, unavoidable in real S=1 chain compounds and leading to the destruction of integrability, may restore diffusive transport. In this respect, Fujimoto refers to a previous experimental observation of spin diffusion in the S=1 chain compound AgVP2S6, by Takigawa et al.,Takigawa96  and suggests that the spin-phonon interaction might provide this type of perturbation.

Energy transport via spin excitations, which can be probed by measurements of the thermal conductivity, has not yet been investigated in S=1 chain compounds. It seems natural to expect that its features are similar to those of spin transport. In a recent paper by Alvarez and Gros,Alvarez02\_Con  relations between the spin and thermal conductivities in 1D spin systems, similar to the famous Wiedemann-Franz law for the ratio between the electrical and thermal conductivities in metals, were discussed. In the present work, we report the results of an experimental investigation of the thermal conductivity of AgVP2S6, a compound which is considered as one of the best physical realizations of an $`S=1`$ 1D AFM Heisenberg model system. AgVP2S6 crystallizes with a monoclinic crystal structure of type $`P2/a`$.Lee86  Each $`V^{3+}`$ ion with spin $`S=1`$ is located inside a distorted octahedron of sulfur ions. The zigzag chains formed by these vanadium ions run along the $`a`$ axis. Evidence for an energy gap in the spin excitation spectrum was found by measurements of the magnetic susceptibilityColombet87 ; Payen90\_Pow ; Asano94 ; Mutka95\_Fin  and inelastic neutron-scattering experiments.Mutka89 ; Mutka91  The magnetic properties of the compound are well described by the isotropic nearest-neighbor Heisenberg Hamiltonian and weak single-ion anisotropy

$$H=J\underset{i}{}𝐒^i𝐒^{i+1}+D\underset{i}{}(S_z^i)^2,$$
(1)
with the intrachain exchange constant $`J/k_B=780`$ K and $`D/J=5.8\times 10^3`$.Takigawa95  The interchain interaction $`J^{}10^5J`$ is very weak.Mutka91  The dynamics of the V3+ spins in AgVP2S6 was studied by NMR experiments by Takigawa et al.Takigawa96  The data are compatible with spin diffusion at temperatures exceeding $`100\mathrm{K}`$ and above a temperature-dependent frequency of the order of $`10^{11}10^{12}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Using these results, the temperature dependence of the spin diffusion constant $`D_S(T)`$ was established. Below we compare the experimental results for the temperature variation of the spin diffusion constant $`D_S(T)`$, probed by NMR, and the energy diffusion parameter $`D_E(T)`$, which is obtained from the results of our thermal conductivity measurements.

## II Samples and experiment

For the measurements of the thermal conductivity $`\kappa (T)`$, we grew several single crystals of AgVP2S6 by solid state reaction of stoichiometric amounts of Ag, V, P, and S, as described in Ref. Lee86, . The largest crystals had dimensions of several mm along the $`a`$-axis (the spin chain direction), a maximum of 0.5 mm along the $`b`$-axis and, at most, 0.2 mm along the $`c`$-axis. A single crystalline specimen with dimensions of $`2\times 0.5\times 0.15`$ mm3 (denoted as S1) was used for the thermal conductivity measurements along the chain direction. Another sample from the same batch served to measure the dc magnetic susceptibility $`\chi `$.

A standard method for separating the spin-mediated thermal conductivity $`\kappa _m(T)`$ from other, less anisotropic, contributions to $`\kappa (T)`$ is based on measurements of this quantity both along and perpendicular to the chain direction. Unfortunately, the dimensions of our crystals only allowed for measurements of $`\kappa (T)`$ along the chains. For this reason we investigated the heat transport also on grain-aligned specimens. Some of these samples were previously used for measurements of the magnetic susceptibilityAsano94  and for NMR experiments.Takigawa95 ; Takigawa96  Each of the specimens with typical sizes of $`4\times 2\times 0.2\mathrm{mm}^3`$ were single pieces consisting of many equally oriented flake-like single crystals. On one such piece (denoted as sample J1), the thermal conductivity was measured along the $`a`$-axis. Another sample, denoted as J2, with the largest spatial extension along the $`b`$-axis, was cut out from the central part of sample J1. Sample J2 was subsequently used for experiments with the heat flow perpendicular to the chain direction.

The thermal conductivity was measured using a standard uniaxial heat flow method, where the constant heat flux along a rectangular-bar shaped sample was produced by a heater attached to one end of the sample. The opposite end of the sample was attached to a copper heat sink. The temperature gradient was monitored by a system of 25 $`\mu `$m diameter Chromel-Au+0.07%Fe thermocouples. We estimate the uncertainty of the absolute value of $`\kappa `$ to be of the order of 10%, because of the uncertainty of the sample geometry. The relative error of the measured thermal conductivity, however, is only about 0.5%. The magnetic susceptibility was measured between 4.5 and 240 K, employing a commercial SQUID magnetometer.

## III Results and discussion

The magnetic susceptibility data are shown in Fig. 1. The measurements were taken in a magnetic field of $`H=40\mathrm{kOe}`$ oriented along the $`a`$-axis. The data are in good agreement with results of Mutka et al.,Mutka95\_Fin  also shown in Fig. 1. In particular, the nonlinear $`\chi `$ vs. $`1/T`$ dependence at low temperatures, noticed in Ref. Mutka93,  and attributed to the weak coupling between finite-length segments of spin chains, is well reproduced in our data (see the inset of Fig. 1).

The $`\chi (T)`$ data can be fit to the equationMutka95\_Fin

$$\chi (T)=\frac{A}{T^{1/2}}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }}{k_BT}\right)+\frac{B}{T^\alpha }+\chi _0,$$
(2)
where the first term on the right-hand side represents the contribution from the Haldane-gapped $`S=1`$ chains, the second term reflects the above mentioned finite segment interaction contribution and the last and constant term is due to the diamagnetic orbital susceptibility. The best fit, shown as the solid line in Fig. 1, is achieved with the fit parameters $`A=1.77\times 10^2\mathrm{emu}\mathrm{mol}^1\mathrm{K}^{1/2}`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }/k_B=244\mathrm{K}`$, $`B=3.60\times 10^3\mathrm{emu}\mathrm{mol}^1\mathrm{K}^{0.55}`$, $`\alpha =0.55`$, and $`\chi _0=2.5\times 10^4\mathrm{emu}\mathrm{mol}^1`$. The resulting value for the energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }/k_B`$ is consistent with estimates of 228 K (Ref. Mutka95\_Fin, ) and 250 K (Ref. Asano94, ) from the analyses of magnetic susceptibilities, but somewhat lower than the results obtained from NMRTakigawa95  (320 K) and the neutron scatteringMutka91  (300 K) measurements. The power-law exponent $`\alpha =0.55`$ is within the range $`0.5<\alpha <0.8`$ established in Ref. Mutka95\_Fin, .

The temperature dependences of the different thermal conductivities are shown in Fig. 2. Each curve exhibits a maximum at temperatures around 10 K and a region with a positive slope $`\kappa /T`$ at temperatures above about 200 K. The latter feature is presumably due to unaccounted heat losses via radiation, typical in standard steady-state thermal conductivity experiments probing materials with low values of $`\kappa `$ at high temperatures. Our numerical estimates suggest that for our AgVP2S6 samples, these effects are negligible only below about 170 to 200 K and therefore, our data analysis presented below is restricted to temperatures below 170 K.

By rapidly reducing the temperature of the grain-aligned samples (J1 and J2) from values in the region between 170 and 300 K to temperatures between 80 and 170 K with a cooling rate of approximately 1 K/s, subsequent slow relaxations of $`\kappa `$ with time were observed. As illustrated in the inset of Fig. 2, even upon a slow variation of the temperature (as slow as 0.01 K/s), a small hysteresis of $`\kappa (T)`$ was observed at intermediate temperatures above the maximum of $`\kappa (T)`$. We believe that these effects are not related to intrinsic properties of the material. Since they were not observed when probing the single-crystalline specimen, they are most likely due to the multigrain nature of these samples.

By inspecting the $`\kappa (T)`$ curves at temperatures below 60 K, we note that they all exhibit the same qualitative features. At higher temperatures, a shoulder-type feature in $`\kappa _a(T)`$, which is absent in the $`\kappa _b(T)`$ curve, may be identified. Similar high-temperature features emerging as a shoulder or a second maximum were observed for $`\kappa (T)`$ if measured along the chain or ladder direction of spin-chain and spin-ladder compounds. Salce98 ; Ando98 ; Takeya00 ; Sologubenko00\_Lad ; Hess01 ; Kudo01\_Spi ; Sologubenko00\_213 ; Sologubenko01  An obvious interpretation of this high-temperature feature is to ascribe it to a spin-mediated thermal conductivity $`\kappa _m`$, in addition to the common heat conduction via phonons, which is reflected in a contribution $`\kappa _{\mathrm{ph}}`$ to the total thermal conductivity.

In order to isolate the spin contribution $`\kappa _m(T)`$, accurate evaluations of other contributions to the total measured $`\kappa (T)`$ need to be made. Since AgVP2S6 is an insulator, no heat conduction by free charge carriers is expected, and only heat transport via lattice excitations needs to be considered. Because of the extremely weak interaction between spins of neighboring chains, no sizable heat transport via the spin system is expected for directions perpendicular to the $`a`$-axis. Hence only phonons contribute to $`\kappa _b(T)`$, shown in Fig. 2. The shape of the $`\kappa _b(T)`$ curve, typical for phonon heat transport, results from the competition between different phonon scattering mechanisms, most notably phonon scattering by sample or grain boundaries at the lowest temperatures and by phonons, defects and magnons at more elevated temperatures. In contrast to the boundary and defect scattering which is usually sample-dependent, the scattering of phonons by quasiparticles in general is expected to be sample-independent because it is related to intrinsic scattering processes.

At temperatures much less than $`\mathrm{\Delta }/k_B`$, the number of spin excitations that participate in the heat transport reflected in $`\kappa _a(T)`$ is decreasing exponentially with decreasing temperature. Therefore, at $`T\mathrm{\Delta }/k_B`$ the phonon heat transport is expected to also dominate $`\kappa _a(T)`$. While the different temperature dependences of $`\kappa `$ for different samples on the left of the $`\kappa (T)`$ maxima in Fig. 2 can be accounted for by differences in the boundary scattering conditions, it is remarkable that at temperatures above the maxima, up to about 40 K, the ratio between the $`\kappa `$ values for different samples is practically independent of temperature. This implies that the temperature dependence of these $`\kappa (T)`$ curves are identical and that in this temperature region, the intrinsic processes of phonon scattering dominate. As we have already argued in Ref. Sologubenko01, , the anisotropy of the purely phononic heat transport is not likely to change at high temperatures. This is why we assume that at high temperatures, the phonon thermal conductivity along different directions and for different samples merely differs by a constant factor. With this assumption, we calculated the magnon contribution

$$\kappa _{m,a}=\kappa _aK\kappa _b$$
(3)
with $`K=2.7`$ and $`K=2.3`$ for samples S1 and J1, respectively. The $`K`$ values were calculated as the averaged ratio $`\kappa _a/\kappa _b`$ in the temperature interval between about 20 and 35 K. The phonon contributions $`K\kappa _b`$ for samples S1 and J1 are shown by the broken lines in Fig. 2.

The resulting values of $`\kappa _m(T)`$ are presented in Fig. 3.

The uncertainties caused by the subtraction of two experimentally measured curves, each with a relative error of about 0.5%, are also displayed in Fig. 3. Because of the relatively large uncertainties inherent to the evaluation procedure below about 40 K, it is impossible to draw any conclusions about $`\kappa _m(T)`$ in that temperature region. Therefore, only data at temperatures above 50 K were considered for the following analysis. In the accessible regime, $`\kappa _m(T)`$ first increases with increasing temperature but tends to pass through a maximum or to reach saturation at higher temperatures. The maximum absolute values of $`1`$ W m-1 K-1 for the magnon thermal conductivity are one to two orders of magnitude smaller than the corresponding values for $`\kappa _m`$ in $`S=1/2`$ two-leg spin-ladder compounds (La,Sr,Ca)14Cu24O41 Sologubenko00\_Lad ; Hess01 ; Kudo01\_Spi  and various $`S=1/2`$ spin-chain materials, Salce98 ; Takeya00 ; Sologubenko00\_213 ; Sologubenko01 ; Sologubenko03\_Uni  where the enhanced spin-mediated thermal conductivity is thought to be the consequence of a quasiballistic energy transport.

In view of the implicit interpretation that heat may be transported via spin excitations, it seems natural to compare the energy transport with spin transport. The temperature dependence of the spin diffusion constant $`D_S(T)`$ in AgVP2S6 was measured by Takigawa et al.Takigawa96  Based on our $`\kappa _m(T)`$ data, we calculated the spin-related energy diffusion constant $`D_E`$ from $`D_E(T)=\kappa _m(T)/(C_s(T)a^2)`$, where $`C_s(T)`$ is the specific heat of the spin system and $`a=2.96\mathrm{\AA }`$ is the distance between neighboring spins along the chains. The low-temperature specific heat of Heisenberg type $`S=1`$ spin chains was analyzed by Jolicoeur and Golinelli Jolicoeur94  employing the quantum nonlinear $`\sigma `$-model. The energy $`\epsilon `$ versus the wavevector $`k`$, measured from the AFM wave vector $`\pi /a`$, is given by the equation

$$\epsilon (k)=\left[V^2(ka)^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2\right]^{1/2},$$
(4)
and the results of numerical calculations at $`T=0`$ are $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0=0.41J`$ and $`V=2.49J`$.Sorensen93  The energy diffusion constant $`D_E(T)`$, calculated for the single-crystalline sample S1 as outlined above and using $`C_s(T)`$ as calculated by Jolicoeur and Golinelli, Jolicoeur94 ; JolicoeurPriv  is shown in the left panel of Fig. 4; the data for the second sample, not shown here, are very similar. The spin diffusion constant $`D_S(T)`$ from Ref. Takigawa96,  is also displayed in the same figure.

The absolute values of the two parameters are similar in magnitude at high temperatures and they exhibit very similarly shaped temperature dependences. This is true although, in comparison with the corresponding feature of $`D_S(T)`$, the maximum value of $`D_E(T)`$ is about two times larger and slightly shifted to lower temperatures. The only other spin-chain compound for which data on both the spin and the energy transport are available, is the Heisenberg $`S=1/2`$ chain compound Sr2CuO3. In the right panel of Fig. 4, we present both $`D_S(T)`$ data from Ref. Thurber01,  and $`D_E(T)`$ data calculated from results of our previous thermal conductivity measurements on Sr2CuO$`_3.`$Sologubenko01  It is again obvious that both quantities vary similarly with temperature and $`D_E2D_S`$ in the covered temperature interval. The only other material for which $`D_E`$ and $`D_S`$ have been compared up to now is solid 3He in the region $`0.05<T<0.12\mathrm{K}`$, where the ratio $`D_E/D_S2.1`$ is, again, close to two.Hunt68  It is remarkable that indeed the factor of 2 difference between $`D_E`$ and $`D_S`$ is expected to be a general property of any Bravais lattice with identical spins on each lattice point. Redfield68  The fair agreement of our results with this expectation thus confirms the reliability of our calculation of the spin-mediated thermal conductivity.

The limited accessible temperature interval for the evaluation of $`\kappa _m(T)`$ and the increasing uncertainty with decreasing temperatures do not allow a serious analysis of its overall temperature dependence. The classical high-temperature limit of $`D_E`$ for a spin system is given byHuber69

$$D_{E,\mathrm{ht}}J[S(S+1)]^{1/2}/\mathrm{}.$$
(5)
For AgVP2S6, this high-temperature limit is $`D_{E,\mathrm{ht}}10^{14}\mathrm{sec}^1`$. The observed values in the temperature range covered in this study are, except at the lowest temperatures, consistently higher than $`D_{E,\mathrm{ht}}`$, but tend to approach this value with increasing temperature. The enhancement is, however, much less pronounced than in $`S=1/2`$ chain and ladder compounds. A better way to demonstrate this is by invoking the average mean free path of itinerant spin excitations $`\mathrm{}_m(T)`$, which can be defined as $`\mathrm{}_mD_E/v_m`$, where $`v_m(T)`$ is the average group velocity

$$v_m(T)=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}}\left[\frac{\epsilon }{k}f(\epsilon ,T)𝑑k\right]/\left[f(\epsilon ,T)𝑑k\right],$$
(6)
with $`f(\epsilon ,T)=(\mathrm{exp}(\epsilon /k_BT)1)^1`$ and the dispersion relation $`\epsilon (k)`$ as given by Eq. 4. We calculated $`\mathrm{}_m(T)`$ taking into account the temperature dependence of the energy gap, given by the NL$`\sigma `$M at low temperatures asJolicoeur94

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(T)\mathrm{\Delta }_0+(2\pi \mathrm{\Delta }_0k_BT)^{1/2}\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{\Delta }_0/k_BT).$$
(7)
The calculated values of $`\mathrm{}_m(T)`$, shown in the inset of Fig. 4, do not exceed 60 Å. In contrast, the mean free paths of spin excitations in many $`S=1/2`$ chains typically reach values of the order of 103 Å.Salce98 ; Ando98 ; Takeya00 ; Sologubenko01 ; Sologubenko03\_Uni

The data presented above and the subsequent comparison of $`S=1`$ and $`S=1/2`$ spin chains provoke the obvious question concerning the reasons for the much reduced spin-mediated energy transport in the $`S=1`$ system. Two possibilities may be considered. First, extrinsic causes, such as a much stronger scattering of magnons by defects and phonons might significantly reduce $`\kappa _m`$ in the compound studied here. Second, intrinsic causes of reduced energy transport, e.g., as a result of the non-integrability of the Hamiltonian even for the pure $`S=1`$ spin system should be considered. We argue that the influence of defects is hardly the major factor leading to low values of $`D_E`$, because the data for the two different samples of different quality that were studied in the course of this work provide very similar results for the magnon thermal conductivity (see Fig. 3). That the magnon-phonon scattering is the main source for low $`\kappa _m`$ values in AgVP2S6 cannot altogether be ruled out, but at present we cannot offer an obvious reason why this scattering should be much stronger in AgVP2S6 than in all other spin-chain compounds mentioned above.

The second and most likely possibility is that the energy diffusion observed in our experiments on AgVP2S6 is intrinsic and is governed by dynamic correlations of the $`S=1`$ spin system. Unfortunately, to our knowledge, there is no calculation of $`D_E(T)`$ available in the literature for temperatures much less than $`J/k_B`$ to compare our data with. However, a semiclassical consideration of $`S=1`$ chains by Damle and SachdevDamle98  and applied to AgVP2S6, results in $`D_S`$ values which are in fair agreement with the $`D_S(T)`$ data shown in Fig. 4. Since our values for $`D_E`$ are compatible with $`D_S`$, we take this as a clear indication for the same type of behavior of both parameters. Nevertheless, the reason for the divergence between $`D_E(T)`$ and $`D_S(T)`$ at low temperatures, namely below about 100 K is not understood. In Ref. Takigawa96, , the drop of $`D_S(T)`$ at temperatures below 100 K was considered to be the result of a crossover from spin diffusion to a region of freely propagating magnons. Our results do not contradict this assumption, however a rigorous analysis of $`D_E(T)`$ in this temperature regime is impossible, because of the prohibitively large uncertainty in $`\kappa _m`$ at these temperatures.

A rigorous approach to transport properties of low-dimensional quantum spin systems, based on the notion of a thermal Drude weight $`D_{\mathrm{th}}(T)`$ in integrable spin systems, analogous to the familiar Drude weight in the theory of metallic conductivity, has recently been developed. Kluemper02 ; Alvarez02\_Low ; Alvarez02\_Ano ; Alvarez02\_Con ; Saito02 ; HeidrichMeisner02 ; Orignac03 ; Saito03  The spin-related thermal conductivity $`\kappa _{\mathrm{spin}}`$, which here corresponds to a conductivity via either magnons in the $`S=1`$ case ($`\kappa _m`$) or spinons in the $`S=1/2`$ case ($`\kappa _s`$), is given as

$$\kappa _{\mathrm{spin}}(T)=\underset{\omega 0}{lim}\kappa _{\mathrm{spin}}(\omega )$$
(8)
with

$$\kappa _{\mathrm{spin}}(\omega )=D_{\mathrm{th}}(T)\delta (\omega ).$$
(9)
For an ideal integrable system, $`\kappa _{\mathrm{spin}}`$ diverges if $`D_{\mathrm{th}}`$ is nonzero. If perturbations introduce a finite lifetime $`\tau `$, the thermal conductivity is also expected to be finite and can be represented as $`\kappa _{\mathrm{spin}}=D_{\mathrm{th}}\tau `$. In Ref. Orignac03, , where this approach was applied to S=1 HAFM chains, it is noted that this is true only in the case of a large and energy-independent $`\tau `$ or, equivalently, to a long mean free path $`\mathrm{}`$. However, impurity scattering, for example, is shownOrignac03  to invoke energy-dependent lifetimes, thus leading to a more complicated behaviour of $`\kappa _m`$ which is not simply given by a product of the thermal Drude weight and the average relaxation time. Since in our case, as reflected in the small values of $`\mathrm{}_m`$ which approach the interspin distance (see the inset of Fig. 4), the relaxation is quite strong, we do not attempt a direct application of the thermal Drude weight formalism to our result for $`\kappa _m(T)`$ of AgVP2S6. This approach seems, however, well justified for the analysis of $`\kappa _s`$ in $`S=1/2`$ 1D spin systems, where the spinon mean free paths are often rather large.Sologubenko03\_Uni

## IV Summary and conclusions

In conclusion, by probing the anisotropy of the thermal conductivity of the S=1 Haldane-gap HAFM compound AgVP2S6, we established the magnitude and the temperature variation of the spin-related energy transport in the temperature region between about 50 and 170 K. By comparing the energy and the spin diffusion parameters $`D_E(T)`$ and $`D_S(T)`$, both derived from experimental data, we note that they not only exhibit similar temperature dependences but that also their absolute values are of the same order of magnitude. We argue that the previous suggestion of an intrinsic origin of the spin diffusion at high temperatures in this systemDamle98  also applies to the energy transport that is investigated here. The character of the energy transport at low temperatures remains to be investigated.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was financially supported in part by the Schweizerische Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung.


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# 1 (a): Electron-phonon vertex 𝑔(𝐪) as function of the Hubbard repulsion 𝑈 for 𝐪=(𝜋/4,𝜋/4) and 𝐪=(𝜋,𝜋). The temperature was set here 𝛽=2 and the electronic filling 𝑛=0.88. (b)-(c) Plot of 𝑔(𝐪) as function of 𝐪=(𝑞,𝑞)𝜋 for 𝑈={2,4,6} (respectively circles, squares and diamonds in panel b) and for 𝑈={7,8,9} (respectively crosses, triangles up and triangles down in panel c).

Comment on “ Electron-phonon Vertex in the Two-dimensional One-band Hubbard Model”

In the past months a variety of experiments have pointed out an important role of the electron-phonon (el-ph) interaction in many physical properties of the cuprates lanzara ; keller ; dastuto . These recent findings have triggered a renewed interest for a theoretical understanding of the electron-phonon properties in strongly correlated systems.

One of the most remarkable effects of the strong electronic correlation on the el-ph properties is a to favor forward (small $`𝐪`$) scattering in the electron-phonon vertex, $`𝐪`$ being the exchanged phonon momentum. This feature was investigated in the past by means of analytical techniques based on slave-bosons or Hubbard $`X`$-operators grilli ; zeyher ; kulic . The assumption of forward scattering predominance within an el-ph framework was shown to explain in a natural way several anomalous properties of cuprates as the difference between transport and superconducting el-ph coupling constants zeyher , the linear temperature behaviour of the resistivity cp , the $`d`$-wave symmetry or the superconducting gap kulic ; pgp . Small $`𝐪`$ scattering selection was shown moreover to be responsible in a natural way for high-$`T_c`$ superconductivity within the context of the nonadiabatic superconductivity gpsprl .

So far, this important feature was analyzed only by means of analytical approaches in the $`U=\mathrm{}`$ limit and a definitive confirm of it based on numerical methods was lacking. With these motivations in a recent paper Huang et al have address this issue in the twodimensional Hubbard model with generic $`U`$ by using Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) techniques on a $`8\times 8`$ cluster huang . Their results provide a good agreement with the previous analytical studies and represent an important contribution to assess the relevance of el-ph interaction in correlated system.

Moved by similar motivations, we have recently investigated the onset of forward scattering predominance in the el-ph vertex by using slave-boson techniques based on four auxiliary fields cerruti . While the previous analytical studies were limited to the $`U=\mathrm{}`$ limit grilli ; zeyher ; kulic , we were able in this way to evaluate the small momenta selection in the whole phase diagram of parameters $`U`$-$`n`$, where $`n`$ is the electron filling, in direct comparison with Huang et al. huang . Our findings reproduce in more than a qualitative way the results of Ref. huang , and they will be object of a future publication which is in preparation at the moment ccp .

Besides the direct numerical confirmation of small momenta predominance in correlated systems, Huang et al. report in their paper an increasing of the el-ph vertex as function of $`U`$ in the large $`U`$ regime for small phonon momenta and a relative saturation for large $`𝐪`$ huang . The origin of this puzzling feature has been not well understood so far and a possible connection with charge excitations driven by the exchange term $`Jt^2/U`$ in the large $`U`$ limit was mentioned huang .

In this Comment we would like to make clearer the issue. In particular our analytical calculations suggest that the increase of the el-ph vertex function at small $`𝐪`$ as function of $`U`$ is a peculiar feature of the high temperature regime and it could be associated to the tendency towards a phase-separation instability.

Our technical approach was based on the four slave-boson method first introduced in Ref. kotliar . The electron-phonon vertex function for a finite $`U`$ Hubbard model has been evaluated as linear response to an external field coupled with charge density. In the spirit of functional integral representation the screening of the electron-phonon function is due to the Gaussian fluctuations of the auxiliary boson fields around the mean-field solution. A similar study at finite $`U`$ was introduced by A. Lavagna who however did not addressed the momentum modulation of the electron-charge density response lavagna . A different choice for the renormalization of the $`z_i`$-operators was in addition done in comparison with Refs. kotliar ; lavagna  to avoid unphysical divergences in the electron-slave boson matrix elements. Technical details will appear in Ref. ccp . Based on this analytical approach, we can now evaluate the electron-phonon function with the same physical parameters of Ref. huang , namely $`n=0.88`$, $`\beta =2`$, where $`n`$ is the electron filling and $`\beta =t/k_\mathrm{B}T`$ the inverse temperature in unit of the nearest neighbor hopping parameter $`t`$. As only slight difference with respect to Ref. huang  we assume the incoming electron momentum $`𝐩`$ to be averaged over the Fermi surface and the exchanged frequency to be exactly zero. These marginal differences are expected to not significantly affect the comparison between our results and Ref. huang .

In Fig. 1a we plot the electron-phonon vertex function $`g(𝐪)`$ at $`𝐪=(\pi /4,\pi /4)`$ and $`𝐪=(\pi ,\pi )`$ as function of the Hubbard repulsion $`U`$ for $`n=0.88`$ and $`\beta =2`$. For $`𝐪=(\pi /4,\pi /4)`$ we note that while for relatively small $`U`$ the el-ph vertex function is steady decreasing with $`U`$, such a behaviour has an upturn for $`U8`$ until a divergence occurs for $`U_c9.3`$. According this view one is attempted to associate the upturn of $`g(𝐪)`$ as function of $`U`$ as an incipient transition towards some charge instability. Note also that for $`𝐪=(\pi ,\pi )`$ no charge instability is observed.

The appearance of charge instability can be also detected by looking at $`g(𝐪)`$ plotted as function of $`𝐪`$ ($`𝐪=(q,q)\pi `$). The evolution of $`g(𝐪)`$ by varying the Hubbard repulsion $`U`$ is shown in Fig. 1b,c where we see that the el-ph vertex function is initially suppressed at small $`𝐪`$ by increasing $`U`$ (panel b), then it increases as function of $`U`$ (panel c) until a divergence is established.

Note that for $`U=9`$ a lattice instability already occurs although for a $`q`$ ($`0.2`$) less than $`q1/4`$. This reflects the fact that a instability for $`q=0`$ (phase separation) is first onset for some critical value of $`U`$, and then the vector instability is gradually shifted by further increasing of $`U`$. In this perspective it is not surprising that momenta on the Brillouin zone edge $`𝐪=(\pi ,\pi )`$ are less sensitive to the increase of $`U`$.

The similarity between our findings and the Quantum Monte Carlo analysis suggests that also the upturn of $`g(𝐪)`$ as function of $`U`$ reported in Ref. huang  could be related to the same tendency towards phase separation or charge instabilities. This does not imply however that phase separation is effectively established, and it should be remarked that the actual occurrence of phase separation in the Hubbard model is still object of debate cosentini . On one hand expansions around the mean-field solution even including Gaussian fluctuations could enforce unphysical instabilities which could disappear once higher order fluctuations are taken into account, especially in two dimensional systems. On the other hand, small size cluster effects ($`L\times L`$) and large temperature effects in Ref. huang  question in principle the generalization of the QMC results in the thermodynamic limit ($`L\mathrm{}`$) and at low temperatures. Our results should thus viewed as analytical indications which can trigger further numerical work.

As a final step, we can also employ our slave-boson analysis to extend the range of investigation in regions of parameters not addressed in Ref. huang . In particular we show that a crucial role is played by the temperature that is limited in QMC techniques by the sign problem and by the requirement to be larger that the energy spectrum discretization.

In Fig. 2a we report the dependence of the el-ph vertex function $`g(𝐪)`$ at $`𝐪=(\pi /4,\pi /4)`$ as varying $`U`$ in the large ($`\beta =2`$) and small ($`\beta =50`$) temperature limit. As a surprising result, no charge instability is found in the low temperature regime in the contrast with the high temperature range ($`\beta =2`$). Same conclusions hold true for the phase separation $`𝐪=0`$ instability (not shown in figure). This results in thus compatible with the absence of phase separation at zero or low temperature.

In order to understand in more detail the origin of the phase separation instability as function of the temperature $`T`$ we show in Fig. 2b the phase diagram in the $`T`$ vs. $`U`$ space with respect to phase separation ($`𝐪=0`$) and to charge ordering ($`𝐪=(\pi /4,\pi /4)`$). As above mentioned, a phase separation instability occurs in our slave-boson calculations only above a certain temperature $`T/t\stackrel{>}{}0.2`$ ($`\beta \stackrel{<}{}5`$) cz . As expected, finite $`𝐪`$ instability, in the absence of any long-range Coulomb repulsion, is prevented by the occurrence of phase separation at $`𝐪=0`$ in the whole phase space. A interesting insight comes from the comparison of the critical temperature $`T_c`$ at which the instability towards phase separation occurs with the band narrowing factor $`Z`$ due to the correlation effects kotliar ; lavagna ; ccp  (dashed line in Fig. 2b). The similar dependence on $`U`$ of $`T_c`$ and $`Z`$ points out that the onset of phase separation by increasing temperature is ruled by the comparison between the temperature $`T`$ and the effective bandwidth $`W=Z8t`$ energy scales. In particular phase separation is established when $`T`$ become is of the same order of with $`Zt`$ ($`=W/8`$). Once again we stress that the phase separation instability found by our slave-boson calculations which include Gaussian fluctuations could be washed out when higher order fluctuations are taken into account, so that it should be regarded as indicative of tendency towards this kind of instability. Numerical work based on Quantum Monte Carlo techniques will help to answer about the effective role of phase separation or charge ordering in the Hubbard model.

B. Cerrutia, E. Cappellutib,∗ and L. Pietroneroa

aDepartment of Physics
University of Rome “La Sapienza”
P.le Aldo Moro 2, 00185 Rome, Italy

bCentro Ricerche “Enrico Fermi” of Rome
v. Panisperna 89a, c/o Compendio Viminale
00184 Rome, Italy

Corresponding author: emmcapp@pil.phys.uniroma1.it


text:
# Spin Fluctuations and Non-Fermi-Liquid Behavior of CeNi2Ge2

## Abstract

Neutron scattering shows that non-Fermi-liquid behavior of the heavy-fermion compound CeNi2Ge2 is brought about by the development of low-energy spin fluctuations with an energy scale of 0.6 meV. They appear around the antiferromagnetic wave vectors $`(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}0)`$ and $`(00\frac{3}{4})`$ at low temperatures, and coexist with high-energy spin fluctuations with an energy scale of 4 meV and a modulation vector $`(0.23,0.23,\frac{1}{2})`$. This unusual energy dependent structure of $`\text{Im}\chi (𝑸,E)`$ in $`𝑸`$ space suggests that quasiparticle bands are important.

Non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) behavior has been investigated in an increasing number of $`d`$\- and $`f`$-electron systems in recent years Stewart (2001); Coleman et al. (2001). In usual heavy-fermion systems, although strong correlation effects of $`f`$ electrons bring about a mass renormalization $`m^{}/m`$ by a factor of up to a few thousands, the systems remain in Fermi liquid (FL) states, which are typically observed as $`C/T`$ = const and $`\rho \rho _0T^2`$ at low temperatures. The large mass enhancement originates from fluctuations of the spin degrees of freedom of the $`f`$ electrons participating in the quasiparticles. When spin fluctuations are slowed down by certain mechanisms, the FL description breaks down, and NFL behavior appears as, for example, $`C/T\mathrm{ln}(T_0/T)`$ and $`\rho \rho _0T^x`$ with $`x<2`$.

A mechanism of NFL behavior is critical spin fluctuations near a quantum critical point (QCP), i.e., a zero-temperature magnetic phase transition, $`T_\text{N}`$ (or $`T_\text{C}`$) = 0 Moriya and Takimoto (1995); Her ; Coleman et al. (2001). Observation of a QCP requires tuning of the competition between quenching of spin by the Kondo effect and interspin coupling by Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interactions using chemical substitutions, static pressures, or magnetic fields v. Löhneysen et al. (1994). Recent experimental studies on critical behavior of CeCu5.9Au0.1 v. Löhneysen et al. (1994); A. Schröder, G. Aeppli, R. Coldea, M. Adams, O. Stockert, H. v. Löhneysen, E. Bucher, R. Ramazashvili, and P. Coleman (2000) posed an intriguing theoretical question: Is the singularity described by the standard spin-fluctuation theories Moriya and Takimoto (1995); Her  or a locally critical quantum phase transition Coleman et al. (2001); Q. Si, S. Rabello, K. Ingersent, and J. L. Smith (2001)? For chemically substituted systems, disorders inevitably affect singularities, ranging from perturbative effects to disorder-driven NFL behaviors dis . Experiments using stoichiometric compounds showing NFL behavior without tuning, such as CeNi2Ge2 Ste  and YbRh2Si2 O. Trovarelli, C. Geibel, S. Mederle, C. Langhammer, F. M. Grosche, P. Gegenwart, M. Lang, G. Sparn, and F. Steglich (2000), are thus expected to clarify the QCP or other mechanisms of NFL in the clean limit.

CeNi2Ge2, which crystallizes in a body-centered tetragonal structure (see Fig. 1), is a paramagnetic heavy-fermion compound with enhanced $`C/T350`$ mJ/K2 mol G. Knopp, A. Loidl, R. Caspary, U. Gottwick, C. D. Bredl, H. Spille, F. Steglich, and A. P. Murani (1988). It shows Kondo behavior with a temperature scale of $`T_\text{K}30`$ K G. Knopp, A. Loidl, R. Caspary, U. Gottwick, C. D. Bredl, H. Spille, F. Steglich, and A. P. Murani (1988) and has a metamagnetic behavior at $`H_\text{M}42`$ T Fukuhara et al. (1996). For $`T<5`$ K, i.e., well below $`T_\text{K}`$, CeNi2Ge2 exhibits NFL behavior with $`C/T\mathrm{ln}(T_0/T)`$ and $`\rho \rho _0T^x`$, where $`1<x<1.5`$ Ste . CeNi2Ge2 also displays superconductivity near the QCP Gro  which may be spin-fluctuation mediated Mathur et al. (1998).

The NFL behavior has been thought to be caused by the spin fluctuations being slowed down by a QCP of an antiferromagnetic phase, which would be one of those observed in Pd, Rh, or Cu substituted compounds Sparn et al. (1997); T. Fukuhara, S. Akamaru, T. Kuwai, J. Sakurai, and K. Maezawa (1998); G. Knebel, M. Brando, J. Hemberger, M. Nicklas, W. Trinkl, and A. Loidl (1999). However, previous neutron-scattering experiments B. Fåk, J. Flouquet, G. Lapertot, T. Fukuhara, and H. Kadowaki (2000) on single crystalline CeNi2Ge2 disagree with this simple interpretation. The dynamical susceptibility is well described by the standard form

$$\text{Im}\chi _\text{L}(𝑸,E)=\chi (𝑸)\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸\frac{E}{E^2+\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸^2},$$
(1)
used in the spin-fluctuation theory Moriya and Takimoto (1995). However, the energy scale $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸4`$ meV $`\text{k}_\text{B}T_\text{K}`$ shows only a weak $`𝑸`$ dependence. This is in contradiction with the QCP scenario, in which $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸`$ is expected to depend strongly on $`𝑸`$ and vanish at the antiferromagnetic wave vector $`𝒌_1=(0.23,0.23,\frac{1}{2})`$ at $`T=0`$.

In this Letter, we present neutron-scattering measurements that reveal a second type of spin fluctuations, which are shown to be characterized by a lower-energy scale and highly relevant to the NFL behavior. The main part of the measurements was performed on the triple-axis spectrometer HER at JAERI, equipped with a PG(002) monochromator and a horizontally focusing PG(002) analyzer. The typical energy resolution using a final energy of $`E_f=3.1`$ meV was 0.1 meV \[full width at half maximum (FWHM)\] at the elastic position. Complementary measurements at lower energies were done on the IRIS time-of-flight spectrometer at RAL, with an energy resolution of 15 $`\mu `$eV (FWHM). Single crystals were grown by the Czochralski method using isotopic 58Ni, which is important to avoid the large incoherent elastic scattering of natural Ni. Four crystals with a total volume of 2.2 cm3 were aligned together and mounted in He flow or dilution cryostats. All the data shown are converted to the dynamical susceptibility and corrected for the magnetic form factor. It is scaled to absolute units by comparison with the intensity of the incoherent scattering from a vanadium sample.

A number of constant-$`E`$ scans covering an irreducible Brillouin zone were performed to search for low-energy spin fluctuations at $`T=1.6`$ K. Constant-$`E`$ scans at $`E=0.75`$ meV in the $`(HHL)`$ scattering plane show (see Fig. 1) that there are two peak structures around $`𝑸=(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}1)`$ and $`(11\frac{3}{4})`$, i.e., at reduced wave vectors of $`𝒌_2=(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}0)`$ and $`𝒌_3=(00\frac{3}{4})`$. The wave vector $`𝒌_2`$ is the $`X`$ point in the Brillouin zone, which also corresponds to $`𝑸=(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}0)`$ in Fig. 1, where a smaller peak is seen. We note that strong intensities were observed only around $`𝒌_2`$ and $`𝒌_3`$ in the whole Brillouin zone, except for the vicinities of the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ point, where the high background prohibited us from measuring the magnetic scattering. Possible antiferromagnetic spin configurations modulated by $`𝒌_2`$ and $`𝒌_3`$ are illustrated on the left and right sides of the contour map, respectively, assuming that the spins are parallel to the $`a`$ axis.

The spin-fluctuation scattering at $`E=0.75`$ meV is peaked at the wave vectors $`𝒌_2`$ and $`𝒌_3`$, in contrast to that at $`4`$ meV, which is centered at $`𝒌_1`$ (see Fig. 1) and elongated in the  direction B. Fåk, J. Flouquet, G. Lapertot, T. Fukuhara, and H. Kadowaki (2000). This feature cannot be accounted for by the spin-fluctuation theory of Ref. Moriya and Takimoto (1995), since the product $`\chi (𝑸)\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸`$ of Eq. (1) is predicted to be $`𝑸`$ independent. A constant $`\chi (𝑸)\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸`$ implies that $`\text{Im}\chi _\text{L}(𝑸,E)`$ peaks at a $`𝑸`$ vector where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸`$ is minimum, which excludes the possibility to have other peaks in $`\text{Im}\chi _\text{L}(𝑸,E)`$ at different energies. The archetypal heavy fermions CeRu2Si2 and CeCu6, on the other hand, are in agreement with the $`𝑸`$ independent product $`\chi (𝑸)\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸`$ Rossat-Mignot et al. (1988). The failure of the description of CeNi2Ge2 by the spin-fluctuation theory will be a clue to clarify its NFL behavior.

To investigate the energy response around $`𝒌_2`$, we performed constant-$`Q`$ scans at $`𝑸=(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}1)`$ and time-of-flight measurements with a locus approximately along the line $`(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}L)`$ for $`0.8<L<2.2`$. We note that $`𝒌_2`$ is close to the antiferromagnetic wave vectors of Ce(Ni1-xMx)2Ge2 with M = Pd and Rh Fak . Figure 2(a) shows energy spectra in the temperature range $`0.1<T<20`$ K. One can see a pronounced enhancement of the low-energy spin fluctuations at low temperatures where NFL behavior in bulk properties become evident. In order to show the relevance of these low-energy spin fluctuations to the NFL behavior, we measured the magnetic-field dependence of the intensity at $`E=0.4`$ meV. The inset of Fig. 2(a) shows a significant reduction in the intensity, in agreement with the recovery of the FL behavior with applied field Ste . We conclude that the observed enhancement of the low-energy spectral weight is at the origin of the NFL behavior.

The energy spectrum at $`T=20`$ K is well described by the Lorentzian form of Eq. (1) with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸=4`$ meV, as reported in Refs. B. Fåk, J. Flouquet, G. Lapertot, T. Fukuhara, and H. Kadowaki (2000); G. Knopp, A. Loidl, R. Caspary, U. Gottwick, C. D. Bredl, H. Spille, F. Steglich, and A. P. Murani (1988). To fit the additional peak structure below 1.5 meV at $`T<8`$ K, we parametrize the data by adding an ad hoc Gaussian

$$\text{Im}\chi _\text{G}(𝑸,E)=\delta \chi (𝑸)\frac{\sqrt{\pi }E}{\gamma _𝑸}\text{e}^{(E/\gamma _𝑸)^2}$$
(2)
to Eq. (1). The resulting fits of Eqs. (1) and (2) give an excellent description of the data \[solid lines in Fig. 2(a)\]. It is also possible to describe the data by two Lorentzians for $`E<1.5`$ meV, but the long tail of the second Lorentzian disagrees with the data at higher energies. Below $`T<1.6`$ K, the energy width \[half width at half maximum (HWHM)\] of the low-energy Gaussian (Lorentzian) term is 0.7 (0.45) meV. We note that the necessity to include Eq. (2) expresses the failure of the spin-fluctuation theory Moriya and Takimoto (1995) in another way.

Figure 2(b) shows that antiferromagnetic correlations, peaked at integer values of $`L`$ along $`𝑸=(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}L)`$ at $`E=0.75`$ meV, develop only at low temperatures. The slow $`𝑸`$ variation of the intensity can be described by an orientation factor $`(1+\widehat{Q}_c^2)`$ \[see dashed curve in Fig. 2(b)\], which implies that the spins fluctuate predominantly in the $`ab`$ plane. This spin anisotropy is consistent with the antiferromagnetic structures of the Pd-doped compounds Fak . However it disagrees with the susceptibility measurements Fukuhara et al. (1996), which indicate an Ising-like anisotropy along the $`c`$ axis at $`T50`$ K.

To characterize the spin fluctuation at $`𝒌_3`$, constant-$`E`$ scans along $`(11L)`$ and $`(00L)`$ are shown in Fig. 3. The similar intensities between the $`(11L)`$ and $`(00L)`$ scans indicate that the spin fluctuations are isotropic. The energy spectrum at the peak position $`𝑸=(1,1,0.7)`$ (see the inset of Fig. 3) was also parametrized using Eqs. (1) and (2) assuming $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸=4`$ meV for the Lorentzian. The energy width of the Gaussian is 0.9 meV (HWHM) at 1.6 K. This is slightly larger than that of $`𝒌_2`$, suggesting that the spin fluctuations at $`𝒌_3`$ have a smaller importance for the NFL behavior.

Finally, we compare the present neutron data with other measurements. The wave-vector dependent susceptibilities $`\chi (𝑸)`$ at $`𝑸=(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}1)`$ ($`𝒌_2`$), $`(1,1,0.7)`$ ($`𝒌_3`$), and $`(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2})`$ Kadowaki et al. (2003) were calculated using the Kramers-Kronig relation from $`\text{Im}\chi (𝑸,E)`$, and are shown in Fig. 4(a) together with the uniform susceptibilities $`\chi ^c`$ and $`\chi ^a`$. While the susceptibility $`\chi (𝑸)`$ at $`𝑸=(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2})`$ shows a $`T`$ independent FL behavior, $`\chi (𝒌_2)`$ reproduces the upturn at low temperatures of $`\chi ^c`$ and $`\chi ^a`$.

Since spin fluctuations dominate the specific heat at low temperatures, one would like to ask to what extent the observed low-energy spin fluctuations account for the NFL behavior of $`C/T`$. This can be answered semiquantitatively by using the self-consistent renormalization (SCR) theory of spin fluctuations Moriya and Takimoto (1995), which were applied to several heavy fermions Kambe et al. (1997). Since $`C`$ is theoretically calculated from $`\text{Im}\chi (𝑸,E)`$ approximated by the Lorentzian form, a contribution from the 4 meV spin fluctuation can be calculated using the SCR technique. Figure 4(b) shows this part of $`C/T`$, evaluated assuming a $`𝑸`$ independent $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸=4`$ meV, by a solid line together with the observed $`C/T`$ Koe . These show reasonable agreement above $`T>5`$ K. An estimate of $`C/T`$ including the low-energy spin fluctuations was obtained by replacing the Lorentzian spectral weight with the observed data SCR . It is plotted by a dashed curve in Fig. 4(b), showing an NFL upturn below $`T<5`$ K with almost the same magnitude as the observed $`C/T`$. We conclude that the NFL behaviors observed in bulk properties are crossover effects due to the antiferromagnetic low-energy spin fluctuations. From the nondivergent behavior of $`\chi (𝒌_2)`$ \[see Fig. 4(a)\] and $`1/\gamma _{𝒌_2}`$ \[see Fig. 2(a)\] in the limit $`T0`$, we also conclude that the location of CeNi2Ge2 is slightly off the QCP. This is supported by the fact that the $`E/T`$ scaling is not observed in CeNi2Ge2; most easily seen from the fact that the peak position of the low-energy response is independent of $`T`$ \[see Fig. 2(a)\]. In agreement with this interpretation, the recovery of the FL behavior, i.e., $`C/T=`$ const has been reported Koe  for some stoichiometric samples at the lowest temperatures $`T<0.3`$ K.

An aspect of the antiferromagnetic low-energy spin fluctuations that cannot be explained by the spin-fluctuation theory Moriya and Takimoto (1995) was addressed in the itinerant-localized duality theory Dua . The dynamical susceptibility $`\chi (𝑸,E)`$ was derived in the theory as $`\chi (𝑸,E)^1=\chi _0(E)^1\mathrm{\Pi }(𝑸,E)J(𝑸)`$, where $`\chi _0(E)`$ is a local spin susceptibility and $`J(𝑸)`$ the Fourier transform of the RKKY interactions. The function $`\mathrm{\Pi }(𝑸,E)`$ reflects properties of the quasiparticle bands, and is usually absorbed into $`J(𝑸)`$ by neglecting its $`E`$ dependence. The resulting $`\chi (𝑸,E)^1=\chi _0(E)^1J(𝑸)`$ was used as the starting assumption in the spin-fluctuation theory Moriya and Takimoto (1995). However, the development of a particular quasiparticle band can bring about a non-negligible $`E`$ dependence of $`\mathrm{\Pi }(𝑸,E)`$, which was discussed in Ref. Dua  in connection with two kinds of spin fluctuations with energy scales of 5 meV and 0.2 meV in the heavy-fermion superconductor UPt3 Aeppli et al. (1988). We may speculate that the enhanced low-energy spin fluctuations and the deviation from the standard spin-fluctuation description of CeNi2Ge2 can be explained in this fashion. At present, however, other theoretical scenarios will have to be pursued.

It is interesting to compare the present results with two other compounds that are close to QCP and which have been studied in detail by single-crystal neutron scattering: CeCu6-xAux with $`x_\text{c}=0.1`$ A. Schröder, G. Aeppli, R. Coldea, M. Adams, O. Stockert, H. v. Löhneysen, E. Bucher, R. Ramazashvili, and P. Coleman (2000) and Ce1-xLaxRu2Si2 with $`x_\text{c}=0.075`$ Raymond et al. (1997). The dynamical susceptibilities of these systems can be, at least approximately, described by a single Lorentzian \[cf. Eq. (1)\] with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸0`$ at the antiferromagnetic $`𝑸`$, in agreement with the spin-fluctuation theories Moriya and Takimoto (1995); Her . The essential problem of QCP is to determine the singularity, which may be different from the mean-field-type solutions of the spin-fluctuation theories. For CeCu$`_{6x_\text{c}}`$Au$`_{x_\text{c}}`$ A. Schröder, G. Aeppli, R. Coldea, M. Adams, O. Stockert, H. v. Löhneysen, E. Bucher, R. Ramazashvili, and P. Coleman (2000), a detailed study of the divergence revealed a significant deviation from the single Lorentzian, which led them to propose an extended functional form with a non-standard exponent of $`\alpha 0.75`$. On the other hand, for Ce$`_{1x_\text{c}}`$La$`_{x_\text{c}}`$Ru2Si2 Raymond et al. (1997) $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝑸`$ stays finite in the limit $`T0`$. In this context, an exactly tuned system, e.g., CeNi$`_{2x_\text{c}}`$Pd$`_{x_\text{c}}`$Ge2 T. Fukuhara, S. Akamaru, T. Kuwai, J. Sakurai, and K. Maezawa (1998); G. Knebel, M. Brando, J. Hemberger, M. Nicklas, W. Trinkl, and A. Loidl (1999) with $`x_\text{c}0.09`$, is a promising candidate for studying divergent behavior of the Gaussian term of Eq. (2).

In conclusion, we have identified the low-energy spin fluctuations that lead to the NFL behavior in CeNi2Ge2. They are antiferromagnetic correlations around wave vectors $`(\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}0)`$ and $`(00\frac{3}{4})`$ with a characteristic energy scale of 0.6 meV.

We wish to acknowledge T. Moriya for valuable discussions, especially on the SCR theory.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

All the present experimental evidence is compatible with the existence of only three spatial and one time dimensions. However, some of the modern theories of the fundamental interactions predict the existence of additional spatial dimensions. Such theories include Kaluza-Klein models, supergravity, string theory and the more recent M-theory.

In particular, in the last years, it has been found that certain fundamental extended object, similar to multidimensional membranes embedded in a higher dimensional bulk space, and known as branes, play a fundamental role in the dynamics of string and M theory. Recently, it has been suggested that all the Standard Model (SM) fields could be confined in one of those (world) branes with three spatial dimensions whereas gravitation would have access to the whole bulk space . In this scenario, the fundamental scale of gravity is not the Planck scale, but another scale $`M_F`$ which could be as low as the electroweak scale. In such a model, known as ADD model, the enormous difference between the Planck scale (1016 TeV) and the electroweak one (1 TeV) could be explained due to the existence of two or more compactified large extra dimensions (with sizes ranging from 0.1 mm to 1 fm for two and seven extra dimensions respectively).

## 2 New phenomenlogy: KK gravitons, brane fluctuations and topological states

Probably the main phenomenological consequences of this scenario are, on one hand, the modification of the gravitational interaction at short distances . Thus, whereas at large distances the inverse square law is respected, it is expected to be modified at distances close to the size of the extra dimensions. On the other hand, the existence of extra dimensions implies that new fields will appear on the brane, corresponding to the tower of light Kaluza Klein (KK) modes of the bulk gravitons.

In addition to these features, the fact that a relativistic brane cannot be a rigid object, requires the existence of some other new particles describing its fluctuations with respect to the equilibrium position . These excitations, known as branons, couple to the energy-momentum tensor of the SM fields with a strength suppressed by the brane tension scale ($`f`$) . Another interesting consequence of the brane flexibility is the suppression  of the couplings of the KK modes to the SM particles when the tension scale is much smaller than $`M_F`$. In this case, for flexible enough branes, the only relevant degrees of freedom at low energies would be the branons and the SM fields. Finally, in addition to the branons, the brane can support also a new set of topological states. These states are defects that appear due to the non-trivial homotopies of the vacuum manifold. In fact, string, monopole, skyrmion and wrapped brane configurations have been studied in different works . However, the existence of this kind of states depends very much on the topology of the extra space, unlike the brane fluctuations, whose low-energy dynamics is universal, depending only on the number of branons and the brane tension. The geometry of the bulk space determines only the branon masses .

## 3 The branon field

Since the mechanism responsible for the creation of the brane is in principle unknown, we will assume that the brane dynamics can be described by an effective action. In this sense, the branons could be interpreted as the mass eigenstates of the brane fluctuations in the extra-space directions. Thus, branons are a kind of new scalar fields, which are massless only in ideal cases in which the extra space isometries are not explicitly broken, but only spontaneously broken by the presence of the brane. In such a case they could be identified with the Goldstone bosons of this ideal symmetry breaking pattern .

## 4 Brane dark matter

Branons interact typically by pairs. Therefore they are expected to be stable, massive and difficult to detect since their interactions are suppressed by the tension scale (f). Thus the massive oscillations of the brane are natural candidates to dark matter  in the brane-world scenario where $`f<M_F`$ (see FIG. 1).

## 5 Future prospects

Brane fluctuations could be, not only natural cosmological dark matter candidates, but they could also make up the galactic halo and explain the local dynamics. In such case, they could be detected in direct search experiments through their interactions with nucleons, or in indirect ones, due to annihilations in the galactic halo which give rise to pairs of photons, positron-electron or neutrinos. This kind of experimental analysis is complementary to the searches in colliders  whose present bounds are also plotted in FIG. 1.

Acknowledgements: This work has been partially supported by the DGICYT (Spain) under project numbers FPA2000-0956 and BFM2000-1326.


text:
# Thermal Tachyon Cosmology

## Abstract

We show that in a multi DD̄ branes system with high temperature, there may exist a thermal cosmological phase before usual tachyon inflation. Though this thermal phase can be very transitory, it may has some interesting applications for early tachyon/brane cosmology.

Recently many efforts have been devoted to studying non-BPS configurations of branes, such as DD̄ brane pairs, non-BPS branes . For such a configuration, the spectrum of open strings will contain a tachyon field, for non-BPS brane it is real and for DD̄ brane pairs it is complex, which indicates that this configuration is unstable. The tachyon field will roll down from the vacuum of open string toward the minimum of the tachyon effective potential. There has been a lot of studies on various cosmological effects of the rolling tachyon .

However, for generic initial conditions, an early universe with more high temperature may be more possible. Thus it is interesting to investigate the cosmology of this kind of non-BPS configuration in high temperature. It has been shown that in high temperature the non-BPS configuration can become stable and not decay . Thus in analogy with high temperature symmetry restoration in usual field theories , see  for a thermal inflation, there may be a thermal cosmological evolutive phase before the usual tachyon inflation, especially when the number of branes is very large. The interest of this thermal evolution lies in providing an initial condition for subsequent tachyon inflation. We will show and discuss it in the following.

We focus on a system of N D3-D̄3 branes pairs with finite temperature. The free energy for the N D3-D̄3 branes and mixed gas system at temperature $`T=\beta ^1`$ can be written as, following Ref. ,

$`f(\varphi ,\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`2\tau _3\left(\mathrm{Tr}e^{2|t|^2}\right)`$ (1)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{cN^2\mathrm{\Omega }}{(2\pi )^3\beta ^4}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}x^2\mathrm{ln}\left(1e^{\sqrt{x^2+\beta ^2m^2}}\right)𝑑x,`$
where

$$\tau _3=\frac{M_s^4}{(2\pi )^3g_s}$$
(2)
is D3 or D̄3 brane tension, $`t`$ is related to the background tachyon field $`\varphi `$ appearing in the D brane worldsheet action through an error function as follows

$$|\varphi |=\sqrt{\frac{\pi }{2}}\mathrm{Erf}(|t|),$$
(3)
and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the volume of a unit two-sphere, the constant $`c`$ is given by $`c=8+8(7/8)`$ for the relevant eight bosonic and eight fermionic degrees of freedom, which include gauge fields, transverse scalars and superpartners and form a mixed gas system, $`mM_s|\varphi |`$ is the mass given to gauge fields by Higgs effect. If the tachyon fields start at $`\varphi =0`$, then the tachyon rolling along the effective potential will lower the energy of the system, but it also gives mass to the relative gauge fields and decrease the entropy of the mixed gas system. Thus, an amount $`\delta \varphi `$ gives mass to $`N`$ out of the $`N^2`$ species of particles in the gas. Varying (1), one have

$$\delta f(\varphi ,\beta )=2\tau _3(\delta \varphi )^2+\frac{15}{24}N\beta ^2(\delta m)^2$$
(4)
Therefore, for large enough temperature

$$TT_c=\frac{T_h}{\sqrt{g_sN}}$$
(5)
where the numerical constants have been disregarded, and $`T_c`$ is regarded as a critical temperature, $`\delta f>0`$, i.e. the open string vacuum becomes a minimum of the free energy and is stable. In this case, the tachyon field is no longer tachyonic and the DD̄ brane pairs do not annihilate. $`T_hM_s`$ is the Hagedorn temperature, for open string, which is a limiting temperature, i.e. in all senses $`T<T_h`$. When approaching this temperature, the energy is converted to the massive modes of open string and the creation of D D̄ brane pairs may become more important . Since the existence of the limiting temperature, from (5), we see that in usual case, $`T`$ can hardly exceed $`T_c`$, only when $`g_sN1`$, $`T>T_c`$ becomes possible. But in this case, open strings are strongly coupled, which leads that the perturbative calculation used here becomes distrusted. However we may take $`g_sN𝒪(1)`$ marginally for our purpose. In this case $`T_cT_h`$. Thus when the temperature $`TT_h`$, the system will be stable. Further to suppress closed string loops, $`g_s1`$ must be taken, which makes the radiation process of closed string disfavored, and thus the temperature of system is mainly relevant to open string. Thus a large enough $`N`$ will be generally required, which may be also required by some other cosmological consideration .

Now we assume that $`N1`$ and $`T_cT_h`$ and focus on the cosmology of brane system consisting of $`N`$ DD̄ brane pairs. In this case, the open string vacuum is stable. The energy density of mixed gas system considered is given by

$$\rho _{gas}N^2T^4,$$
(6)
since the number of massless mode of open strings on $`N`$ DD̄ branes pairs is proportional to $`N^2`$. Thus initially for $`TT_cM_s`$, we have $`\rho _{gas}N^2M_s^4`$, in the meantime the energy density of branes tensor is $`\rho _{brane}N\tau _3`$. Thus considering (2), we have

$$\rho _{brane}\frac{NM_s^4}{(2\pi )^3g_s}\frac{N^2M_s^4}{(2\pi )^3}10^2\rho _{gas},$$
(7)
where $`g_sN𝒪(1)`$ has been used. This result indicates that when the temperature of the brane system approaches the Hagedorn temperature $`T_h`$, the energy density of mixed gas system will be dominated, while the branes tension is subdominated. Thus generally there will be a radiation-dominated thermal phase in the tachyon/brane cosmology before the tachyon becomes tachyonic. During this period,

$$H^2\frac{N^2M_s^4}{M_p^2}=\frac{g_s^2N^2}{v}M_s^2,$$
(8)
where in second equation, we use $`M_p^2=\frac{vM_s^2}{g_s^2}`$, where $`v=(M_sR)^61`$ is the volume of extra spaces in string unit. Thus for $`g_sN𝒪(1)`$, we have $`\frac{1}{H}l_s`$, where $`l_s=\frac{1}{M_s}`$ is the string length. Therefore, during the cosmological evolution of brane system, the description of 4D effective field theory for tachyon/brane cosmology seems reasonable.

In the following we will use the 4D effective description for the cosmology of above brane system. Initially the temperature $`TT_cT_h`$, and the brane cosmology is dominated by the mixed gas system with the energy density $`\rho 1/a^4`$ where $`a`$ is the scale factor of expanding brane cosmology. In this case the temperature $`T\frac{1}{a}`$, and thus will decrease rapidly with the cosmological expansion. When the temperature drops to $`T0.3T_h`$, in which $`\rho _{gas}\rho _{brane}`$, the energy density of branes tensor will begin to dominated the universe. This means that

$$H^2\frac{2N\tau _3}{M_p^2},$$
(9)
and is a nearly constant. Thus the universe will enter into an inflation stage, as usual tachyon inflation. In this stage, since $`TT_hT_c`$ the open string vacuum has became unstable and will evolve toward closed vacuum, i.e. the minimum of tachyon potential. The relevant cosmology with large $`N`$ branes has been discussed in Ref. .

Note also that during the radiation-dominated, $`\rho 1/t^2`$. Thus the time of existence of this thermal phase is given by

$$t(T_h^2/T^2)t_c10t_c,$$
(10)
which seems very transitory. However, the transitory appearance of this thermal evolutive phase before usual tachyon inflation may be interesting for some purposes as follows, Imagining a model where branes warp some cycles of the compact manifold, and the volume of cycles is generally not constant due to the pinching singularities of compact manifold, we can see that branes and antibranes will minimize their energy and move towards points in which the cycles have minimal volume . The kind of singularities or points can be regarded as collectors of branes and antibranes, in which branes will be collected and coincident. The occurrence of thermal expanding phase will be helpful to remove singularities or points of small cycle volume in generic compact manifolds and prevent early collapse of brane universe, In addition, since in $`TT_hT_c`$ the open string vacuum is a minimum and is stable again decay, it is easily localized $`\varphi `$ into $`\varphi =0`$ from the viewpoint of effective field theory. This in some sense corresponds to provide an initial conditions for subsequent tachyon inflation.

In summary, we discuss the cosmological evolution of a multi DD̄ branes system with high temperature, and its possible application for early universe. This work implies that the brane cosmology with high temperature may have some interesting phenomena, which is worth studying further.

Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Qing-Guo Huang and Miao Li for earlier helpful discussions. This work is supported in part by NNSFC under Grant Nos: 10405029 and 90403032, as well as in part by National Basic Research Program of China under Grant No: 2003CB716300.


text:
# Updated Limits on TeV–Scale Gravity from Absence of Neutrino Cosmic Ray Showers Mediated by Black Holes

## I Introduction

Forthcoming colliders Giddings:2001bu , cosmic ray observatories Feng:2001ib ; Anchordoqui:2001ei ; Emparan:2001kf , neutrino telescopes Kowalski:2002gb , and space-based experiments Dutta:2002ca  will be able to observe black holes (BHs) if the fundamental scale of gravity is sufficiently close to 1 TeV Antoniadis:1998ig . Observations of highly characteristic BH events at any of these facilities could conceivably provide the first evidence for the existence of extra dimensions and make possible the direct study of strong quantum gravity effects and strings. On the other hand, the lack of such events in any experiments to date leads to lower limits on the scale of higher-dimensional gravity Anchordoqui:2001cg .

To make useful predictions about higher-dimensional gravity based on observations of such events, or their absence, a quantitative understanding of the process of BH production in high-energy collisions is required. An intuitive picture of this process is provided by a simple model known as Thorne’s hoop conjecture Thorne:ji , according to which a BH forms in a two-particle collision when and only when the impact parameter is smaller than the radius $`r_s`$ of a Schwarzschild BH of mass equal to the total center-of-mass energy $`E_{\mathrm{CM}}`$. The hoop conjecture thus predicts a total cross section for BH production equal to the area subtended by a “hoop” of radius $`r_s`$:

$$\sigma _{BH}^{\text{hoop}}=\pi r_s^2(E_{\mathrm{CM}}).$$
(1)
Up to now, all studies of BH production in TeV-scale gravity have been based on this rather heuristic cross section, and have thus been subject to substantial theoretical uncertainties.

Relatively recently, significant progress has been made in determining the cross section for BH production. Early analytic calculations in four dimensions Penrose ; D'Eath:hb  for head-on collisions illustrated the process of horizon formation and found that the mass of the final BH was about 84% of the initial center-of-mass energy. These calculations were extended to nonzero impact parameter by Eardley and Giddings Eardley:2002re , who analytically derived a lower bound on the total cross section of approximately 65% of Eq. (1). Relatively recently, a calculation of the cross section in higher dimensions was performed by Yoshino and Nambu using numerical techniques Yoshino:2002br . In addition, these authors observed significant reductions in the mass of the final-state black hole as a function both of impact parameter and dimension.

If TeV-scale gravity is realized in nature, then the first observational evidence for it will likely come from BH-mediated neutrino cosmic ray showers. Ultra-high energy cosmic rays hit the Earth with collision center-of-mass energies ranging up to roughly $`10^5\text{GeV}`$. QCD cross sections dominate over the BH production cross section by a factor of roughly $`10^9`$. Thus, black holes produced by hadronic cosmic rays are effectively unobservable. This is not the case for incoming neutrinos, whose cross section for producing black holes can be orders of magnitude larger than SM cross sections, but much less than hadronic Feng:2001ib . As a consequence, neutrinos interact with roughly equal probability at any point in the atmosphere, and the light descendants of the black hole may initiate quasi-horizontal showers in the volume of air immediately above the detector. Because of these considerations the atmosphere provides a buffer against contamination by mismeasured hadrons, allowing a good characterization of BH-induced showers when the BH entropy $`S1`$ Anchordoqui:2001ei . Additionally, neutrinos that traverse the atmosphere unscathed may produce black holes through interactions in the ice or water Kowalski:2002gb . Because the BH production cross section is suppressed by a power of the fundamental Planck scale $`M_D`$ (approaching $`M_D^2`$ for large numbers of extra dimensions), the absence of neutrino showers mediated by black holes implies lower bounds on $`M_D`$.

In this article, we bring up to date existing limits Anchordoqui:2001cg ; Anchordoqui:2002vb  on $`M_D`$ from the nonobservation of BHs at cosmic neutrino detection experiments. Besides incorporating the cross section and energy loss results of Yoshino and Nambu, we also make use of updated parton distribution functions and recently available cosmic ray data.

## II Energy Loss in Black Hole Creation

Previous calculations of the cross section for producing a BH have neglected energy loss in the creation of a BH, assuming that the mass of the created black hole $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ was identical to the incoming parton center-of-mass energy $`\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$. However, recent work Yoshino:2002br  has shown that the energy lost to gravitational radiation is not negligible, and in fact is large for larger $`n`$ and for large impact parameters. The trapped mass (called $`M_{\mathrm{A}.\mathrm{H}.}`$ in Ref. Yoshino:2002br , and which we continue to call $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ Hawking ), is given by

$$M_{\mathrm{BH}}(z)=y(z)\sqrt{\widehat{s}},$$
(2)
where the inelasticity $`y`$ is a function of $`zb/b_{\mathrm{max}}`$. Here $`b`$ is the impact parameter and

$$b_{\mathrm{max}}=\sqrt{F(n)}r_s(\sqrt{\widehat{s}},n,M_D)$$
(3)
is the maximum impact parameter for collapse, where

$$r_s(\sqrt{\widehat{s}},n,M_D)=\frac{1}{M_D}\left[\frac{\sqrt{\widehat{s}}}{M_D}\right]^{\frac{1}{1+n}}\left[\frac{2^n\pi ^{(n3)/2}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{n+3}{2})}{n+2}\right]^{\frac{1}{1+n}}$$
(4)
is the radius of a Schwarzschild BH in $`(4+n)`$ dimensions Myers:un , and $`F(n)`$ is the form factor explicitly given in Ref. Yoshino:2002br .

This complicates the parton model calculation, since the production of a BH of mass $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ requires that $`\widehat{s}`$ be $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^2/y^2(z)`$, thus requiring the lower cutoff on parton momentum fraction to be a function of impact parameter note1 . In what follows we take the $`\nu N`$ cross section as an impact parameter-weighted average over parton cross sections, with the lower parton fractional momentum cutoff determined by the requirement $`M_{\mathrm{BH}}^{\text{min}}=x_{\mathrm{min}}M_D`$ note3/2 . This gives a lower bound $`x_{\mathrm{min}}^2M_D^2/[y^2(z)s]`$ on the parton momentum fraction $`x`$. With this in mind, the $`\nu N\mathrm{BH}`$ cross section is

$$\sigma (E_\nu ,x_{\text{min}},n,M_D)_0^12z𝑑z_{\frac{(x_{\text{min}}M_D)^2}{y^2s}}^1𝑑xF(n)\pi r_s^2(\sqrt{\widehat{s}},n,M_D)\underset{i}{}f_i(x,Q),$$
(5)
where $`x_{\text{min}}`$ is determined by the requirement that the BH have at least an approximate semi-classical description, $`\widehat{s}=2xm_NE_\nu `$, $`i`$ labels parton species, and the $`f_i(x,Q)`$ are parton distribution functions (pdfs) Anchordoqui:2001cg .

The choice of the momentum transfer $`Q`$ is governed by considering the time or distance scale probed by the interaction. Roughly speaking, the formation of a well-defined horizon occurs when the colliding particles are at a distance $`r_s`$ apart. This has led to the advocacy of the choice $`Qr_s^1`$ Emparan:2001kf , which has the advantage of a sensible limit at very high energies. However, the dual resonance picture of string theory would suggest a choice $`Q\sqrt{\widehat{s}}`$. Fortunately, as noted in Refs. Anchordoqui:2001cg ; Anchordoqui:2002vb , the BH production cross section is largely insensitive to the details of the choice of $`Q`$. In what follows we use the CTEQ6M pdfs Pumplin:2002vw  with $`Q=\mathrm{min}\{r_s^1,10\mathrm{TeV}\}`$.

In Fig. 1 we show the BH production cross section for $`n=1,\mathrm{},7`$ extra dimensions with energy loss incorporated as given in Eq. (5). The rapid rise in cross section is pushed to higher $`E_\nu `$ than in the case with energy loss neglected. However, the cross sections are still well above the SM cross section at $`E_\nu 10^8\text{GeV}`$ and above, where, as we will see, the cosmogenic neutrino flux is large.

## III Cosmic Neutrino Detectors

Energy loss also impacts event rates at cosmic neutrino detectors, not only because the cross section is modified, but also because the apertures of cosmic neutrino detectors are functions of shower energy. Let $`N_A`$ be Avogadro’s number, $`A(yE_\nu )`$ the neutrino aperture of a given experiment for shower energy $`yE_\nu `$, and $`T`$ be the experiment’s running time. The number of neutrino showers mediated by BHs is then

$`𝒩(x_{\text{min}},n,M_D)`$ $`=`$ $`N_AT{\displaystyle 𝑑E_\nu _0^12z𝑑z_{\frac{(x_{\text{min}}M_D)^2}{y^2s}}^1𝑑x\frac{d\mathrm{\Phi }}{dE_\nu }A(yE_\nu )}`$ (6)
$`\times F(n)\pi r_s^2(\sqrt{\widehat{s}},n,M_D){\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}f_i(x,Q),`$
where $`d\mathrm{\Phi }/dE_\nu `$ is the diffuse flux of cosmic neutrinos hitting the Earth.

There are several techniques employed in detecting neutrino showers Sigl:2001th . The most commonly used method involves giant arrays of particle counters that sample the lateral and temporal density profiles of the muon and electromagnetic components of the shower front. Another well-established method involves measurement of the air shower evolution — its growth and subsequent attenuation — as it develops by sensing the fluorescence light produced via interactions of the charged particles in the atmosphere. A third method exploits naturally occurring large volume Čerenkov radiators such as deep water or ice. Especially useful at relevant center-of-mass energies for BH production is emission of Čerenkov radiation at radio frequencies. For fluorescence data, a direct measurement of the depth of shower maximum $`X_{\mathrm{max}}`$ and the shape of the longitudinal profile provide sensitive diagnostics in discrminating between neutrino and hadron showers. In the case of surface arrays, the composition information is extracted from a number of shower characteristics which reflect the depth of shower maximum and the ratio of muon to electromagnetic content of the shower.

The AGASA Collaboration Yoshida  reports no significant enhancement of deeply-developing shower rates given the detector’s resolution. Specifically, there is only 1 event observed, consistent with the expected background of 1.72 from hadronic cosmic rays. For details, see Ref. Anchordoqui:2001cg .

The Fly’s Eye detector ceased operation in July 1992 after a life of 11 years. It was designed to collect the atmospheric nitrogen fluorescence light produced by air shower particles on moonless nights without cloud cover, achieving an overall duty cycle of $`10\%`$. The experiment recorded more than 5000 events, but no unusual deeply developing showers have been found Baltrusaitis:mt .

Recently, data from an upscaled version of the Fly’s Eye experimet have become available Archbold:rp . The effective aperture of the High Resolution Fly’s Eye detector is on average about 6 times the Fly’s Eye aperture, with a threshold around $`10^8`$ GeV. The instrument includes two sites (HiRes I and II) located 12.6 km apart. Each site consists of a large number (22 at HiRes I and 42 at HiRes II) of telescope units pointing at different parts of the sky. Between November 1999 and September 2001, 1198 events were recorded with at least one reconstructed energy greater than $`10^{8.7}\text{GeV}`$ Archbold:rp . Because of bad weather conditions, 272 events were discarded from the sample. None of the 723 events that survived all of the cuts required for stereo-mode triggering has $`X_{\mathrm{max}}>1200`$ g/cm2. Additionally, there are no events detected in monocular mode with $`X_{\mathrm{max}}>1500`$ g/cm2. In the spirit of Ref. Yoshida:1996ie , we parametrize the HiRes aperture for deeply ($`X_{\mathrm{max}}>1500`$ g/cm2) developing showers by

$$A(E_\nu )=1.8\left\{\left[2.7+\mathrm{log}\left(\frac{E_\nu }{10^{10}\mathrm{GeV}}\right)\right]^20.5\right\}\mathrm{km}^3\mathrm{we}\mathrm{sr}.$$
(7)
We note that there is an additional small contribution to the HiRes exposure in the energy range $`10^810^9`$ GeV from data collected during 2878 hours livetime Abu-Zayyad:1999xa .

The Radio Ice Čerenkov Experiment (RICE) is designed to detect the radio frequency Čerenkov radiation produced by neutrino-induced showers in ice Frichter:1995cn . Specifically, the electromagnetic channel of the shower produces a radio pulse with a duration of a few nanoseconds and with power concentrated around the Čerenkov angle. Several radio antennae positioned in the ice allow for reconstruction of the interaction vertex. For primary energies above $`10^9\text{GeV}`$, the Landau Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect Landau:um  leads to a significant suppression of the Bethe-Heitler cross sections for the pair production and Bremsstrahlung processes in dense materials, and thus dramatically changes the character of the development of electromagnetic showers.

Almost instantaneously after its formation, the TeV-scale BH decays Hawking:1975sw , predominantly through radiation of standard model (SM) particles Emparan:2000rs . About 75% of the BH energy is carried off by quarks and gluons and rougly a third of this energy goes into the electromagnetic channel via $`\pi ^0`$ decay. Only about 5% of particles directly emitted from the BH ($`\nu `$’s, $`\tau `$’s, $`\mu `$’s) do not partake in the shower. The rest of the energy eventually devolves into secondary electromagnetic cascades with particle energies below that for which the LPM effect is important note2 . As a conservative estimate we model the aperture for neutrino showers mediated by BHs using the hadronic effective volume reported by the RICE Collaboration Kravchenko:2002mm  with average inelasticity $`y=0.8`$. This estimate is supported by the fact that BH-induced showers mimic SM neutral current events, characterized by hadronic dominated showers with no leading charged lepton. A more rigorous analysis of the BH acceptance at the RICE facility is underway McKay .

The RICE detector comprises 16 dipole radio receivers installed in the holes drilled for the AMANDA experiment in the Antaractic ice. Four transmitter antennae are also deployed in the ice for calibration purposes. The trigger requires a 4-fold coincidence within a 1.2 $`\mu `$s time window, and various cuts are applied to reject thermal and anthropogenic backgrounds. For example, shower vertices are reconstructed using a $`\chi ^2`$ fit to the signal arrival times, and the resulting fits are required to be of sufficient quality and to indicate vertices at least 50 m below the ice’s surface. During a 1 month run in August of 2000 with a livetime of 333.3 hours, a total of 22 events passed all the automated cuts. These events were then scanned for quality and the RICE Collaboration concluded that there are no events consistent with neutrino sources Kravchenko:2002mm .

The relative exposures for the different experiments are given in Fig. 2. For details on the apertures of AGASA and Fly’s Eye, the reader is referred to our previous paper Anchordoqui:2002vb . All in all, there is only 1 event observed with an expected background of 1.72 from hadronic cosmic rays, leading to a 95% CL limit of 3.5 BH events Feldman:1997qc .

To derive the bounds on $`M_D`$, we use the “guaranteed” flux of cosmogenic neutrinos arising from the decay of $`\pi ^\pm `$ produced in collisions of ultra-high energy protons with the cosmic microwave background. As in our previous analyses, we conservatively adopt the estimates of Protheroe and Johnson Protheroe:1996ft  with nucleon source spectrum scaling as $`d\mathrm{\Phi }_N/dEE^2`$ and extending up to the cutoff energy $`10^{12.5}\text{GeV}`$. The total ultra-high energy cosmogenic neutrino flux is also shown in Fig. 2.

## IV Bounds

In Fig. 3 we show 95% CL lower bounds on $`M_D`$ as derived from Eq. (6) using the exposures and the cosmogenic neutrino flux given in Fig. 2, requiring $`𝒩<3.5`$ events to be observed in cosmic neutrino data samples Giddings:2000ay . The BH entropy is a measure of the validity of the semi-classical approximation. For $`x_{\text{min}}3`$ and $`n5`$, the entropy

$$S=\frac{4\pi M_{\text{BH}}r_s(M_{\text{BH}})}{n+2}10,$$
(8)
yielding small thermal fluctuations in the emission process Preskill:1991tb . Hence, for $`x_{\text{min}}3`$ and $`n5`$, strong quantum gravity effects may be safely neglected. Moreover, gravitational effects due to brane back-reaction are expected to be insignificant for $`M_{\text{BH}}`$ well beyond the brane tension, which is presumably of the order of $`M_D`$. The uncertainty illustrated in Fig. 3 associated with $`x_{\text{min}}`$ only concerns BH production and is highly insensitive to decay characteristics Anchordoqui:2002cp . This is because the signal in neutrino detection experiments relies only on the existence of visible decay products. Whatever happens around $`x_{\text{min}}1`$, it seems quite reasonable to expect that BHs or their Planckian progenitors will cascade decay on the brane.

String theory provides a more complete picture of the decay for $`M_{\text{BH}}`$ close to $`M_D`$, which may further justify setting $`x_{\text{min}}=1`$. (Such arguments do not address the issue of brane back-reaction, however.) In string theory, the ultimate fate of the black hole is determined by the string/BH correspondence principle Susskind:ws : when the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole shrinks to the fundamental string length $`\mathrm{}_s\mathrm{}_D`$, where $`\mathrm{}_D`$ is the fundamental $`(4+n)`$-dimensional Planck length, an adiabatic transition occurs to a massive superstring mode. Subsequent energy loss continues as thermal radiation at the unchanging Hagedorn temperature Amati:1999fv . The continuity of the cross section at the correspondence point, parametrically in both the energy and the string coupling, provides independent support for this picture Dimopoulos:2001qe . Thus, the cross sections given in Fig. 1 can be thought of as lower bounds on $`\sigma `$ as $`M_{\text{BH}}`$ approaches $`M_D`$ Cheung:2002aq .

## V Summary

Incorporation of the results of Ref. Yoshino:2002br  has eliminated many of the sources of uncertainty enumerated in Ref. Anchordoqui:2001cg  and recapitulated in Ref. Ahn:2003qn . In Ref. Anchordoqui:2001cg  we identified two sources of uncertainty that could reduce the total cross section: the reduction of the mass of the final-state BH relative to the initial center-of-mass energy, and expectations for a reduced cross section at nonzero center-of-mass angular momentum.111In fact, a slight modification of our estimate for the modification of the cross section due to angular momentum effects has been used to give a surprisingly accurate postdiction of the higher-dimensional cross section for BH production Ida:2002ez , providing further evidence for the correctness of the Yoshino and Nambu calculations. On the other hand, we pointed out that the classical photon capture cross section and nonrelativistic estimates suggest a possible enhancement to the naïve geometric cross section $`\pi r_s^2`$ by a factor of 2 or more. (The claim of Ahn:2003qn  that this upside uncertainty casts doubt on the program of setting limits on $`M_D`$ from nonobservation of BHs is mistaken.) Thus we concluded that, in the absence of a better quantitative understanding of the process of BH formation, the naïve geometric cross section provided a reasonable estimate.

With such calculations now in hand Yoshino:2002br  we have repeated our analysis and eliminated much of the uncertainty contained in our previous limits on $`M_D`$, as well as incorporating updated exposures from the HiRes and RICE facilities and updated pdfs. (Incidentally, using the new pdfs contributed a net difference of about 2% to our results, confirming our previous claim Anchordoqui:2001cg  that there is very little sensitivity to different choices of pdfs. Furthermore, the bulk of the sensitivity is for pdfs at $`x>m_{\text{BH}}^2/(2m_NE_\nu )10^2`$ and large $`Q`$, where the pdfs are expected to be quite accurate.) In the course of our analysis we observed a competition of effects leading to corrections to our previous estimates: enhancement of the geometric cross section by form factors of up to 1.9 and enhancement of apertures from new cosmic ray data, but a simultaneous reduction in the rate of production of BHs of mass greater than $`x_{\mathrm{min}}M_D`$, after taking energy losses into account. It turns out that the latter effect dominates and leads to a slight weakening of our limits on $`M_D`$. At the same time, our limits are now on a much firmer theoretical footing, and maximally conservative in all respects.

In Fig. 4 we compare the bounds derived in this article with existing limits on the fundamental scale of large extra dimensions. Tests of the gravitational inverse-square law at length scales well below 1 mm show no evidence for short range Yukawa interactions. For $`n=2`$, this negative result can be translated into a 95% CL upper limit of 150 $`\mu `$m on the compactification radius of flat extra dimensions, or equivalently to a unification mass scale $`M_D>1.8`$ TeV Hoyle:2000cv . In such toroidal compactifications the accessibility of towers of Kaluza-Klein gravitons may drastically affect the phenomenology of supenovae and neutron stars. For $`n3`$, anomalous cooling of supernovae due to bulk graviton emission and neutron star heating by decay of gravitationally trapped Kaluza-Klein modes provide limits on $`M_D`$ that greatly exceed 1 TeV Cullen:1999hc .

For $`n4`$ the sensitivity of table-top experiments and astrophysical observations to TeV-scale gravity is largely reduced: already for $`n=4`$ ($`n=5`$) supernova cooling yields $`M_D>4.0`$ TeV ($`M_D>0.8`$ TeV) Hewett:2002hv . For $`n5`$, the best existing limits on TeV-scale gravity are from the absence of trans-Planckian signatures (BH/stringball production) in neutrino detection experiments discussed here, and from searches for sub-Planckian signatures (graviton emission and virtual graviton exchanges) at the Tevatron Abbott:2000zb  and LEP Acciarri:1999jy . For $`n5`$ we have derived conservative bounds incorporating the lower limits on the the mass trapped in the gravitational collapse. The resulting bounds, $`M_D>1.01.4`$ TeV for $`x_{\text{min}}=13`$, are competitive with those obtained in colliders and among the most stringent to date.

###### Acknowledgements.

HG thanks the Aspen Center for Physics for hospitality during the performance of some of this research. The work of LAA and HG has been partly supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), under grants No. PHY–0140407 and No. PHY–0073034, respectively. The work of JLF is supported in part by NSF CAREER grant No. PHY–0239817. The work of ADS is supported in part by Department of Energy grant No. DE–FG01–00ER45832 and NSF grants PHY–0071312 and PHY–0245214.