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# Resonant Enhancement of Inelastic Light Scattering in the Fractional Quantum Hall Regime at 𝜈=1/3

(June 25, 2003)

## Abstract

Strong resonant enhancements of inelastic light scattering from the long wavelength inter-Landau level magnetoplasmon and the intra-Landau level spin wave excitations are seen for the fractional quantum Hall state at $`\nu =1/3`$. The energies of the sharp peaks (FWHM $`0.2meV`$) in the profiles of resonant enhancement of inelastic light scattering intensities coincide with the energies of photoluminescence bands assigned to negatively charged exciton recombination. To interpret the observed enhancement profiles, we propose three-step light scattering mechanisms in which the intermediate resonant transitions are to states with charged excitonic excitations.

fractional quantum Hall effect, spin excitations, inelastic light scattering, resonance enhancement, charged excitons

Inelastic light scattering is a key method for the study of collective excitation modes in quantum Hall (QH) liquids Pinczuk et al. (1988, 1992, 1993); Davies et al. (1997); Schuller et al. (1997); Pellegrini et al. (1998); Eriksson et al. (1999); Kang et al. (2001); Kulik et al. (2001); Dujovne et al. (2003a). Resonant enhancement of the scattering cross-section is here crucial because the non-resonant scattering intensity in 2D electron systems is too small to be observable Burstein et al. (1979, 1980); Pinczuk et al. (1988); Pinczuk et al. (1994a); Platzman and He (1994); Das Sarma and Wang (1999). The enhancement of the scattering cross-section also plays a role in degenerate four-wave mixing Fromer et al. (2002) and coherent optical oscillation Bao et al. (2002) studies. In the presence of weak residual disorder, breakdown of wavevector conservation in light scattering processes offers direct access to critical points in the dispersions of charge and spin excitations of QH liquids Pinczuk et al. (1988, 1992); Marmorkos and Das Sarma (1992); Pinczuk et al. (1993); Davies et al. (1997); Eriksson et al. (1999); Kang et al. (2001). However, only brief attention has been given to the resonance profiles and the details of the underlying enhancement mechanisms of the observed collective excitations.

Here we present resonance enhancement profiles in the fractional QH (FQH) regime and discuss their implications, particularly in relation to optical transitions that have been the focus of much recent work MacDonald et al. (1992); Wang et al. (1992); Apalkov and Rashba (1993); Kheng et al. (1993); Wojs and Hawrylak (1995); Finkelstein et al. (1995); Shields et al. (1995); Palacios et al. (1996); Gekhtman et al. (1997); Wojs et al. (1999, 2000); Yusa et al. (2001); Schuller et al. (2001); Szlufarska et al. (2001); Nickel et al. (2002); Broocks et al. (2002). We focus our attention on the resonance enhancement profiles for inelastic light scattering when the electron system is in the major FQH state with $`\nu =1/3`$, where $`\nu =nhc/eB`$ is the Landau level filling factor for areal density $`n`$ and perpendicular magnetic field $`B`$. We consider the enhancement profiles of the inter-Landau level magnetoplasmon (MP) mode at the cyclotron energy $`\omega _c`$ and the intra-Landau level spin wave (SW) at the Zeeman energy $`E_z`$. In the MP mode only the electron Landau level index changes and in the SW mode there is only reversal in spin orientation of electrons and/or quasiparticles of quantum liquids. Both collective modes occur at $`q0`$, so that the impact of breakdown of wavevector conservation is ignored in a lowest order description.

We find strong enhancement of the light scattering intensity within a small range of incoming and outgoing photon energies. These enhancements coincide with optical transitions assigned to recombination of negatively charged excitons ($`X^{}`$) Kheng et al. (1993); Shields et al. (1995); Wojs et al. (2000); Yusa et al. (2001). The large resonance enhancements reported here enable light scattering studies at the very low light power densities required to achieve temperatures in the milliKelvin regime under experimental conditions Kang et al. (2000); Dujovne et al. (2003b); Hirjibehedin et al. (2003). In a qualitative interpretation, we propose three-step light scattering mechanisms that interpret the resonance enhancements with intermediate transitions to states with $`X^{}`$ excitations Burstein et al. (1979, 1980); Pinczuk et al. (1988); Pinczuk et al. (1994a); Platzman and He (1994); Das Sarma and Wang (1999).

The links between resonant enhancements of light scattering and the $`X^{}`$ excitations provides new venues for the study of the properties of $`X^{}`$. Studies of resonant enhancement of light scattering by modes seen due to breakdown of wavevector conservation in the FQH regime Kang et al. (2001); Dujovne et al. (2003b) will be the subject of future work. Well-defined polarization selection rules, which are seen in some resonances, also offer new venues for exploring the properties of $`X^{}`$ transitions.

The 2D electron systems studied here are formed in $`250\AA `$\- and $`330\AA `$-wide asymmetrically doped GaAs single quantum wells, referred to as samples A and B. The electron densities for the two samples are $`8.5\times 10^{10}cm^2`$ and $`5.4\times 10^{10}cm^2`$ and the low temperature mobilities are $`3.0\times 10^6cm^2/Vs`$ and $`7.2\times 10^6cm^2/Vs`$, respectively. As shown in the schematic in Fig. 1, the samples are mounted on the cold finger of a dilution refrigerator with a base temperature of $`50mK`$. This is inserted into the cold bore of a $`17T`$ superconducting magnet. The samples are mounted with the normal to the surface at an angle $`\theta `$ from the magnetic field, making the component of the field perpendicular to the 2D electron layer $`B=B_Tcos\theta `$ for a total applied field $`B_T`$.

As shown in the schematic in Fig. 1, light scattering measurements are performed through windows for direct optical access. The energy of the linearly polarized incident photons is tuned close to the fundamental optical gap of the GaAs well and the power density is kept below $`10^4W/cm^2`$. The samples are measured in a backscattering geometry, making an angle $`\theta `$ between the incident/scattered photons and the normal to the sample surface. The wavevector transferred from the photons to the 2D system is $`k=(2\omega _L/c)sin\theta `$. For typical measurement geometries, $`\theta <60^{}`$ so that $`k1.5\times 10^5cm^11/l_0`$, where $`l_0=(\mathrm{}c/eB)^{1/2}`$ is the magnetic length. Scattered light is dispersed by a Spex 1404 double spectrometer with holographic master gratings that reduce the stray light and provide a resolution as small as $`20\mu eV`$. The response of the spectrometer is linearly polarized, so that spectra can be taken with the linear polarization of the incident photons parallel (polarized) or perpendicular (depolarized) to the detected scattered photons’ polarization.

Figure 2a shows spectra at $`\nu =1/3`$. In these spectra, the collective excitation energy is measured as a shift below the laser energy $`\omega _L`$. The sharp peak labelled $`\omega _c`$, found at a constant shift of $`17.2meV`$ for various $`\omega _L`$, is inelastic light scattering from the long wavelength (i.e. at wavevector $`q0`$) MP. This mode is fixed by Kohn’s theorem at the cyclotron energy $`\omega _c=eB/m^{}c`$. Two additional features are also seen at shifts from the laser that depend on laser photon energy. These are more easily understood in Fig. 2b, where the spectra are plotted on an absolute energy scale. The features at $`1523.7meV`$ and $`1524.3meV`$ are luminescence from optical transitions identified as the singlet ($`S_1`$) and bright triplet ($`T_B`$) $`X^{}`$ recombination Kheng et al. (1993); Shields et al. (1995); Wojs et al. (2000); Yusa et al. (2001). From Fig. 2, it is clear that for the excitation at $`\omega _c`$ the light scattering process is resonant when the outgoing photon energy $`\omega _S`$ coincides with the $`T_B`$ transition.

Overlap of $`\omega _L`$ or $`\omega _S`$ with an $`X^{}`$ transition can cause striking increases in the light scattering intensities by excitation modes of liquids in the FQH regime. We see from Fig. 2a that the intensity of the MP mode in sample A becomes significantly larger when $`\omega _S`$ overlaps $`T_B`$. Remarkably, the intensity of the scattered light at the peak of this outgoing resonance can be larger than that of the luminescence. In Fig. 2b we show the resonance enhancement profile for the MP mode as a function of $`\omega _S`$ overlaid on the luminescence. The lineshape of the outgoing resonance profile of light scattering intensity corresponds very closely to that of the $`T_B`$ luminescence, and both are peaked at $`1524.28meV`$. The $`T_B`$ luminescence lineshape has a FWHM of $`0.17meV`$, which is narrower than the FWHM of $`0.23meV`$ for the resonance profile.

Figure 3a shows light scattering spectra from the long wavelength intra-Landau level spin wave (SW) excitation in sample B. The energy of this mode is fixed by Larmor’s Theorem at the Zeeman energy $`E_z=g\mu _BB_T`$, where $`g`$ is the Lande g-factor in GaAs and $`\mu _B`$ is the Bohr magneton Pellegrini et al. (1998). The SW is resonant throughout a broad range of $`\omega _L`$ and $`\omega _S`$. In the results reported here the focus of our current analysis is on the strongest and lowest energy resonance, where the peak intensity is at least a factor of two larger than in other resonances. One striking difference between these spectra and those for the $`\omega _c`$ resonance is that no luminescence is seen when $`\omega _L`$ overlaps or is below the energy of the neutral exciton ($`X`$) optical recombination energy. It is possible that photoexcited states are unable to relax and then emit if the exciting photon energy is below a certain threshold. This is consistent with our observations that the luminescence appears for higher energy $`\omega _L`$.

As seen in Fig. 3a, the SW has a relatively narrow $`FWHM=50\mu eV`$. However, its lineshape is asymmetric because of an enhanced tail on the high energy side. In Fig. 3b we show the SW dispersion $`\omega _{SW}=E_z+\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }_{SW}(q)`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{SW}(q)`$ is calculated exactly for finite sized systems Nakajima and Aoki (1994) and $`\alpha =0.59`$ is a constant scaling factor to account for finite width effects Kang et al. (2001); Hirjibehedin et al. (2003). Breakdown of wavevector conservation from residual disorder can activate larger wavevector SW excitations. As seen in Fig. 3b these occur above $`E_z`$, causing the observed asymmetry Pinczuk et al. (1998).

In Fig. 4, we compare the SW resonance enhancement profile to the luminescence lineshape. Assignment of the two singlet ($`S_1`$ and $`S_2`$), dark triplet ($`T_D`$), and bright triplet ($`T_B`$) luminescence features is made based on the arguments presented in Refs. Kheng et al. (1993); Shields et al. (1995); Wojs et al. (2000); Yusa et al. (2001). The $`S_2`$ transition has a particularly low intensity, but is more clearly seen in other spectra (not shown). The peak in the resonance profile has a $`FWHM<0.1meV`$, which is slightly sharper than the luminescence linewidths. From Fig. 4a, we find the peak in scattering intensity occurs when $`\omega _S`$ coincides with the feature assigned to the $`S_1`$ luminescence transition. The incoming resonance shown in Fig. 4b indicates that the peak also overlaps the feature assigned to the $`S_2`$ luminescence.

The simplest mechanism for wavevector conserving light scattering processes that exhibit both incoming and outgoing resonances is a third-order process. The intensity of this process, which is described in the diagram shown in Fig. 5, can be written within time-dependent perturbation theory as Pinczuk et al. (1988); Danan et al. (1989)

$$I(\omega )\left|\underset{i,j}{}\frac{0|H_\gamma |jj|H_{int}|ii|H_\gamma |0}{(\omega _SE_j)(\omega _LE_i)}\right|^2,$$
(1)
where the intermediate states $`|i`$ and $`|j`$ have energies $`E_i`$ and $`E_j`$ above the ground state respectively. In the first step, the incoming photon $`\omega _L`$ is annihilated and the system goes from state $`|0`$ to an intermediate state $`|i`$ via a virtual transition through the electron-photon interaction $`H_\gamma `$. The system then goes from $`|i`$ to $`|j`$ through the $`H_{int}`$ interaction between the electrons and the collective excitations of the 2D system. In this second step there is emission of a collective excitation at $`\omega `$. In the third and final step, the electron system returns to state $`|0`$ with the additional collective excitation at $`\omega `$ and emits a photon at energy $`\omega _S=\omega _L\omega `$. The quasiparticle properties of the electron liquids are here incorporated into $`H_{int}`$. In the specific case of the SW we note that the excitation is a collective mode associated with spin-reversed transition of composite fermions (CFs) Nakajima and Aoki (1994); Mandal and Jain (2001). Here $`H_{int}`$ must arise from the residual interactions between composite fermions.

The peaks in the resonance profiles shown in Figs. 2 and 4 coincide with luminescence transitions of $`X^{}`$. From this, we infer that the intermediate states of the third-order light scattering mechanism are excitations of the ground state that can include $`X^{}`$ transitions and a collective excitation. Enhancement of light scattering in the FQH regime is then directly linked to $`X^{}`$ transitions, and their symmetry properties will determine the selection rules.

Light scattering from the MP mode is seen in Fig. 2 to have an outgoing resonance with the $`T_B`$ state. Assuming there is no double resonance condition (simultaneous incoming and outgoing resonances), the scattering intensity in this range can be written as

$$I(\omega )\frac{1}{(\omega _SE_{T_B})^2+\mathrm{\Gamma }^2},$$
(2)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is a broadening of the transition. The best fit of Eq. 2 to the resonance profile of the MP mode with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.11meV`$ is shown in Fig. 2. The FWHM is $`2\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.22meV`$, which is consistent with the width of the $`T_B`$ transition as measured by the luminescence linewidth.

From Fig. 4, the SW mode shows an outgoing resonance but no incoming resonance with the $`S_1`$ state. Assuming the product of matrix elements in Eq. 1 is the same under interchange of states $`i`$ an $`j`$, we would expect an incoming and outgoing resonance at close to the same intensity. Because the SW energy at $`1/3`$ in sample B is close to the spacing of the $`X^{}`$ transitions shown in the luminescence of Fig. 4, it is possible to have a double resonance condition, in which the incoming and outgoing resonances for two states coincide. For the SW resonance shown in Fig. 4, the spacing of the $`S_1`$ and $`S_2`$ transitions is close to $`E_z=0.19meV`$. The resonance lineshape from Eq. 1 can then be written as

$$I(\omega )\frac{1}{((\omega _SE_{S_1})^2+\mathrm{\Gamma }^2)((\omega _LE_{S_2})^2+\mathrm{\Gamma }^2)},$$
(3)
where both levels are assumed to have the same broadening. The best fit of Eq. 3 to the resonance profile of the SW mode with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.06meV`$ is shown in Fig. 4. The FWHM of the lineshape is slightly wider than this at $`0.08meV`$. This is sharper than the linewidth of $`S_1`$ or $`S_2`$, indicating that the luminescence transition is broadened by additional mechanisms that do not contribute to the light scattering process.

Large resonance enhancements of the light scattering intensities such as those reported here are crucial in the study of FQH liquids. Significant examples are found in recent work that examines the important low-lying excitations that manifest key characteristics of the liquids, as in recent studies between major fractions in the sequence $`\nu =p/(2p+1)`$ Dujovne et al. (2003b, a) and FQH states in the sequence $`\nu =p/(4p\pm 1)`$ Hirjibehedin et al. (2003) for integer $`p`$. The excitations measured in these studies typically have low energy ($`<0.5meV`$) and require temperatures reaching below $`100mK`$. Because of the small ($`<1meV`$) spacing between various $`X^{}`$ transitions, double resonances similar to those seen for the SW are possible for many low-energy excitations in the FQH regime. With such resonances, studies can be performed using the very low light power densities required to obtain very low temperatures.

In summary, we find strong resonance enhancement of inelastic light scattering in the FQH state at $`\nu =1/3`$. Enhancement profiles of long wavelength MP and SW modes show incoming and outgoing resonances that coincide with $`X^{}`$ optical transitions seen in luminescence. The enhancements are interpreted by three-step light scattering mechanisms in which the intermediate states are excitations of the ground state with $`X^{}`$ excitations.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported in part by the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Initiative of the National Science Foundation under NSF Award Number CHE-0117752, by a research grant of the W. M. Keck Foundation, and by the Israeli Academy of Science.


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# Quantum dissociation of a vortex-antivortex pair in a long Josephson junction

## Abstract

We report a theoretical analysis and experimental observation of the quantum dynamics of a single vortex-antivortex (VAV) pair confined in a long narrow annular Josephson junction. The switching of the junction from the superconducting state to the resistive state occurs via the dissociation of a pinned VAV pair. The pinning potential is controlled by external magnetic field $`H`$ and dc bias current $`I`$. We predict a specific magnetic field dependence of the oscillatory energy levels of the pinned VAV state and the crossover to a macroscopic quantum tunneling mechanism of VAV dissociation at low temperatures. Our analysis explains the experimentally observed increase of the width of the switching current distribution $`P(I)`$ with $`H`$ and the crossover to the quantum regime at the temperature of about $`100`$ mK.

Great attention has been devoted to the experimental and theoretical study of macroscopic quantum phenomena in diverse Josephson coupled systems Tinkham ; Clarke1 ; WalUst ; HanMartMoya . Most of these systems, e.g. dc biased single Josephson junctions (JJs), various SQUIDs and small Josephson junction arrays, contains a few lumped Josephson junctions, hence, they can be described by a few degrees of freedom (Josephson phases). At low temperature quantum-mechanical effects such as macroscopic tunneling, energy levels quantization Clarke1 ; WalUst , and coherent oscillations HanMartMoya  of the Josephson phase have been observed.

As we turn to spatially extended Josephson systems, including quasi-one-dimensional long Josephson junctions, parallel arrays and Josephson junction ladders, which present a particular case of interacting many particle systems, the analysis and observation of macroscopic quantum dynamics is more complex. These systems can support diverse nonlinear excitations, such as Josephson vortices (magnetic fluxons) and vortex-antivortex (VAV) pairs, which interact with inhomogeneities and linear (Josephson plasma) modes UstRev . The classical dynamics of such excitations is well established, and in particular, the thermal fluctuation induced escape of a Josephson phase from the metastable state has been studied Chirillo ; EscapeCl . It is necessary to stress that, while various macroscopic quantum-mechanical effects have been predicted KIM ; ShnBenMal ; WalLowTemp ; Maki ; MKR ; Kato , only few of them were observed in experiments Moya1 ; EscapeQn . In particular, studying the Josephson phase escape from the metastable state, the macroscopic quantum tunneling of a state with many vortices has been observed in Moya1 , and recently tunneling of a single vortex and its energy level quantization have been measured EscapeQn .

After the quantum dynamics of a single vortex, the next step in the study of macroscopic quantum effects is the dynamics of a single vortex-antivortex pair. States containing many VAV pairs are relevant to thin superconducting films or large two-dimensional Josephson arrays close to the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition Tinkham . A single VAV pair naturally appears in a long *annular* JJ placed in the external magnetic field $`H`$ parallel to the junction plane GrEn ; MM  (Fig. 1a).

In this Letter, we report a theoretical analysis and experimental observation of quantum-mechanical effects in the dynamics of a single vortex-antivortex pair. We show that in the presence of an externally applied magnetic field $`H`$ a single VAV pair can be nucleated in a long JJ. A pair is confined in a potential well created by externally applied magnetic field and dc bias current. Fluctuations, thermal and quantum, induce the internal oscillations of the pair. The switching of the JJ from the superconducting state to the resistive state occurs by dissociation of a pinned pair. At high temperature the dissociation takes place in a form of thermal activation over the barrier. At low temperature there occurs macroscopic quantum tunneling through the barrier.

First, we quantitatively analyze the penetration and following dissociation of a VAV pair in the presence of a small magnetic field $`H`$ and a large dc bias, namely $`\delta =\frac{I_{c0}I}{I_{c0}}1`$, where $`I_{c0}`$ is the critical current of a long JJ in for $`H=0`$. In this case the Josephson phase is written as $`\phi (x,t)=\frac{\pi }{2}+\xi (x,t)`$, where a small variable part ($`\xi (x,t)1`$) satisfies the equation:

$$\xi _{tt}\xi _{xx}\frac{\xi ^2}{2}=\delta h\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{2\pi x}{L}\right),$$
(1)
where $`L`$ is the junction length, and $`hH`$ is the normalized external magnetic field. Here, coordinate $`x`$ and time $`t`$ are normalized to the Josephson penetration length $`\lambda _J`$ and the inverse plasma frequency $`\omega _p^1`$, respectively. A particular solution of this equation satisfying the boundary conditions $`\xi _x=0`$ at $`x=\pm \mathrm{}`$ is written in the form

$$\xi (|xx_1|,A)=\sqrt{2\delta }\left[\frac{3}{\mathrm{cosh}^2\left(\frac{|xx_1|+A}{2}(2\delta )^{1/4}\right)}1\right].$$
(2)
Here, $`x_1(t)`$ is the center of a confined pair, and the parameter $`A(t)`$ which will be allowed to vary in time, determines the distance between vortex and antivortex.

The magnetic field and dc bias create a pinning potential for such a state. Assuming that the JJ length $`L`$ is much larger than the size of the pair (which is $`\delta ^{1/4}`$), we substitute (2) in the Hamiltonian of the underlying sin-Gordon model and minimize it with respect to $`x_1`$, which readily amounts to setting $`x_1=L/2`$. Then, we find an effective energy of the JJ as a function of $`A`$ ($`\dot{A}`$ stands for the time derivative),

$$E(A)=\frac{m_{eff}(A)}{2}\dot{A}^2+U_{pot}(A),$$

$$U_{pot}(A)=m_{eff}(A)12(2\delta )^{1/4}h\mathrm{tanh}\left(\frac{A(2\delta )^{1/4}}{2}\right),$$
(3)
where the effective mass of the VAV pair is

$$m_{eff}(A)=18(2\delta )^{3/2}_{\mathrm{}}^A𝑑x\frac{\mathrm{sinh}^2\left(\frac{x(2\delta )^{1/4}}{2}\right)}{\mathrm{cosh}^6\left(\frac{x(2\delta )^{1/4}}{2}\right)}.$$
(4)
The critical current in the presence of an external magnetic field is found by minimization of the energy $`E(A)`$ in $`A`$. Then, the critical current is found as the bias current at which the static solution disappears, which assumes that (in the absence of fluctuations) the confined pair dissociates into a set of free vortex and an antivortex moving in opposite directions. After some algebra, the critical current is found to be $`\delta _c(h)=2h/3`$, and the corresponding critical value $`A_0`$ of $`A`$ being determined by the condition $`\mathrm{sinh}\left((2\delta )^{1/4}A_0/2\right)=1`$. Note that the critical current decreases linearly with the magnetic field, in contrast to the case of *linear* long JJs, where similar consideration yields $`\delta _c^{\mathrm{lin}}(h)h^{4/3}`$. Both results are valid for the ideal uniform bias-current distribution and $`L/2\pi 1`$.

Next, we performed direct numerical simulations for the finite length JJ. The numerically found magnetic field dependence of the critical current is shown in Fig. 1d (dotted line). The simulations clearly show the nucleation and subsequent dissociation of the VAV pair (see, Fig. 1c). However, there is a discrepancy between the analysis and numerics in the values of $`I_c`$ (see, Fig. 1d). Analysis and numerics are in a good accord as the length of a Josephson junction is increased, $`L20`$. The lower branch of the critical current (see Fig. 1d (circles)) corresponds to the penetration of a well separated vortex and antivortex in the junction ($`AL/2`$). The quantum dynamics of such a state will be discussed elsewhere.

In the presence of thermal or quantum fluctuations the dissociation of the pinned VAV pair occurs at a random value of dc bias, i.e. at $`\delta \delta _c(h)`$. Assuming weak fluctuations, $`\delta \delta _c(h)\delta _c(h)`$, we expand the energy of the state around $`A=A_0`$ ($`\delta A=AA_0`$) as

$$E(A)=\frac{\chi h^{5/4}(\delta \dot{A})^2}{2}+\frac{3^{3/2}\sqrt{h}}{2}\left(\delta \delta _c(h)\right)(\delta A)\frac{h^2}{6}(\delta A)^3,$$
(5)
where $`\chi `$ is the numerical coefficient of order one. Thus, the problem of fluctuation induced dissociation of a confined VAV pair is mapped to a well known problem of particle s escape from a cubic potential. The probability of the dissociation depends on the height of the effective potential barrier

$$U_{eff}(\delta )=23^{5/4}h^{1/4}(\delta \delta _c(h))^{3/2}.$$
(6)
At high temperatures, the dissociation is driven by thermal activation over this barrier. Using the known theory describing the particle escape from such a potential well Tinkham ; Clarke1 , we find the switching rate of a long Josephson junction from the superconducting state to the resistive state, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_T(I)`$,

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_T(I)\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{23^{5/4}h^{1/4}\left(\delta \delta _c(h)\right)^{3/2}}{k_BT}\right].$$
(7)
Thus, at high temperature the standard deviation of the critical current $`\sigma `$ should increase with temperature and weakly depends on the magnetic field: $`\sigma _TT^{2/3}h^{1/6}`$. Notice that $`\sigma _T`$ increases with $`H`$, in contrast to the behavior of a small Josephson junction where $`\sigma _T\left(I_c(H)\right)^{1/3}`$ decreases with $`H`$.

At low temperatures the dissociation of the VAV pair occurs through a macroscopic quantum tunneling process. Such a quantum regime is realized at $`T<T_{cr}`$, where the crossover temperature $`T_{cr}`$ is determined by the frequency $`\omega (\delta )`$ of small oscillations of VAV pair, $`T_{cr}\frac{\mathrm{}\omega (\delta )}{2\pi k_B}.`$ In the quantum regime the frequency $`\omega (\delta )=\frac{3^{3/8}}{\sqrt{\chi }}\left(\delta \delta _c(h)\right)^{1/4}`$ determines the oscillatory energy levels $`E_n`$ ($`n=0,1,2\mathrm{}`$) of the pinned VAV state, $`E_n\mathrm{}\omega (\delta )(n+1/2)`$.

Neglecting the dissipative effects, in the quantum regime the switching rate $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_Q(I)`$ of the under-barrier dissociation can be estimated, as usual, in the WKB approximation, which yields

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_Q(I)e^{\frac{36U_{eff}(\delta )}{5\mathrm{}\omega (\delta )}}=\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{36\sqrt{\chi }h^{1/4}\left(\delta \delta _c(h)\right)^{5/4}}{53^{3/8}\mathrm{}}\right].$$
(8)
In this limit the standard deviation of the critical current $`\sigma `$ is independent of temperature and, (similar to the high temperature case), it weakly increases with magnetic field: $`\sigma _Qh^{1/5}.`$

Notice, that the process described above of the penetration and subsequent dissociation of the VAV pair is based on an assumption that the pair size is small with respect to the JJ length. We find that the Josephson phase escape in the form of the dissociation of the pair occurs (in normalized units) as $`h\frac{3}{4}(L/2)^4`$. In the opposite limit of very small magnetic field $`h(L/2)^4`$ the Josephson phase escape occurs homogeneously in a whole junction comment .

The analysis presented above is valid for small magnetic fields, $`h1`$. As the magnetic field $`h`$ increases, the critical current $`I_c(h)`$ is suppressed, and only a qualitative description of the VAV pair dissociation can be carried out. In the general case the pair size is $`l_b(1(I/I_{c0})^2)^{1/4}`$ (instead of $`l_b\delta ^{1/4}`$ that is valid for $`h1`$), and the amplitude of the state is $`\xi _b\mathrm{arccos}(I/I_{c0})`$ (instead of $`\xi _b\sqrt{\delta }`$). Following a similar procedure as above (see, Eqs. (3) and (4) ) we obtain the standard deviation dominated by thermal fluctuations

$$\sigma _T\frac{T^{2/3}h^{2/3}}{\mathrm{arccos}\left(\frac{I_c(h)}{I_{c0}}\right)},$$
(9)
and in the quantum regime

$$\sigma _Q\frac{h}{\left(\mathrm{arccos}\frac{I_c(h)}{I_{c0}}\right)^{8/5}}.$$
(10)
The standard deviation is determined by the magnetic field dependence of the critical current $`I_c(h)`$ that is given implicitly by equation (this dependence is shown in Fig. 1d by a dashed line):

$$h=\frac{3}{4}\sqrt{(1(I_c(h)/I_{c0})^2)}\mathrm{arccos}\left(\frac{I_c(h)}{I_{c0}}\right).$$
(11)
A most important consequence of this analysis is the saturation of $`\sigma _{T(Q)}`$ at moderate magnetic fields. The calculated dependencies $`\sigma _{T(Q)}(h)`$ are shown in Fig. 3 by dashed lines.

Next, we turn to an experimental study of Josephson phase escape in long annular JJs subject to an in-plane magnetic field. The junction of diameter $`d=100\mu `$m and width $`w=0.5\mu `$m was etched from a sputtered Nb/AlOx/Nb thin film trilayer and patterned using electron-beam lithography Technology . Having a relatively small junction width $`w`$ is essential for the observation of quantum effects, as the effective mass given by Eq. (4) (in natural units) is proportional to $`w`$. The critical current density of the junction was about $`220`$A/cm2, which corresponds to $`\lambda _J30\mu `$m and $`L\pi d/\lambda _J10.5`$. The measurement of the critical current versus magnetic field shows that no Josephson vortices are trapped in the junction, see Fig. 1d. The magnetic field dependence of the critical current displays a linear decrease in a broad range of magnetic fields, which is consistent with the analysis presented above.

We have measured the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the switching current distribution $`P(I)`$, see Fig. 2. The details of measurements have been discussed elsewhere Chirillo ; WalLowTemp ; EscapeCl ; EscapeQn . As shown in Fig. 2, the width of distribution $`\sigma `$ decreases with temperature and saturates below $`100`$ mK. This behavior indicates that at low temperatures the VAV dissociation in the quantum regime is observed.

For each temperature, the distribution width $`\sigma `$ has a minimum at zero magnetic field. Its magnetic field dependence displays a peculiar *increase* and a following saturation with magnetic field, see Fig. 3, both in thermal and quantum regimes. This behavior is characteristic for fluctuation induced dissociation of the VAV state. The $`\sigma (h)`$ dependence is in a qualitative agreement with the theoretical analysis given by Eqs. (9) and (10).

In conclusion, we have shown that in the presence of a magnetic field the switching of a long Josephson junction from the superconducting state to the resistive one occurs through the nucleation and subsequent dissociation of a single vortex-antivortex pair. At low temperatures we observe the pair dissociation, in the form of the tunneling under the barrier, in the direct experiment. The oscillatory energy levels of the pair can be further studied experimentally by applying an external resonant microwave radiation, similar to the case of a single Josephson vortex trapped in long Josephson junction EscapeQn ; FistUst .

We would like to thank A. Kemp for technical help and A. Abdumalikov for useful discussions. We acknowledge the partial financial support of this project by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).


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# Microwave Emission from Aligned Dust

## 1 Introduction

Diffuse Galactic microwave emission carries important information on the fundamental properties of the interstellar medium, but it also interferes with Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments (see Bouchet et al. 1999, Tegmark et al. 2000, Efstathiou 2003, this volume ). Polarization of the CMB provides information about the Universe that is not contained in the temperature data alone. In particular, it offers a unique way to specifically trace the primordial perturbations of tensorial nature (i.e. cosmological gravitational waves, see Seljak & Zaldarriaga 1997, Kamionkowski et al. 1997, Kamionkowski 2003, this volume), and allows one to break some important degeneracies that remain in the measurement of cosmological parameters with intensity alone (Zaldarriaga et al. 1997, Davis & Wilkinson 1999, Lesgourgues et al. 1999, Prunet et al. 2000). Therefore, a number of groups around the world (see Table 1 in Staggs et al. 1999) work hard to measure the CMB polarization. The first exciting measurements of CMB polarization have recently been reported (Carlstrom 2003, this volume, and Page et al. 2003). The polarization of Galactic emission, long of interest for ISM studies, is now also an important foreground for cosmology.

Among different sources of polarized foregrounds, interstellar dust is probably the most difficult to deal with, for many reasons. First of all, dust has both a population of tiny grains (Leger & Puget 1984), which are frequently called PAH, in addition to the “classical” power-law distribution of larger grains (Mathis, Rumpl & Nordsieck 1977). Then the typical composition of grains changes with their size, with equilibrium temperature depending on both size and composition (Draine & Lee 1984, Finkbeiner et al. 1999). The degree of grain alignment may depend on size and composition, leading to a frequency dependence of the polarization (Hildebrand et al. 2001). Moreover, both recent experience with microwave emissivity and theoretical studies of expected polarization response (Draine & Lazarian 1999) show that the naive extrapolation of the grain properties from FIR to microwave does not work. In addition, in spite of the evident progress achieved by the grain alignment theory (see review by Lazarian 2003), unanswered questions still remain there.

The discovery of the anomalous emission in the range of 10-100 GHz illustrates well the treacherous nature of dust. Until very recently it has been thought that there are three major components of the diffuse microwave Galactic foreground: synchrotron emission, free-free radiation from plasma (thermal bremsstrahlung) and thermal emission from dust. In the microwave range of 10-90 GHz the latter is subdominant, leaving essentially two components. However, it is exactly in this range that an anomalous emission was reported (Kogut et al. 1996a, 1996b). In the paper by de Oliveira-Costa et al. (2002) this emission was nicknamed “Foreground X”, which properly reflects its mysterious nature. This component is spatially correlated with 100 $`\mu `$m thermal dust emission, but its intensity is much higher than one would expect by directly extrapolating the thermal dust emission spectrum to the microwave range. Similar surprises may await in the foreground polarimetry data.

In this review, we briefly summarize what is known about the grain populations, grain emission and grain alignment. We discuss the origin of the Foreground X and its expected polarization. Recent reviews of the subject include Draine & Lazarian 1999, Lazarian & Prunet 2002.

## 2 Observational Evidence

### 2.1 Infrared emission: extrapolation to microwave range

The emission spectrum of diffuse interstellar dust was mostly obtained by the InfraRed Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) and infrared spectrometers on the COsmic Background Explorer (COBE) and on the InfraRed Telescope in Space (IRTS).

The emission at short wavelength, e.g. $`<50`$ $`\mu `$m, arises from transiently heated very small grains. These grains have such a small heat capacity that the absorption of a single 6 eV starlight photon raises their temperature to $`T>200`$K. Typically these grains have less than $`300`$ atoms and can be viewed as large molecules rather than dust particles. They are, however, sufficiently numerous to account for $`35\%`$ of the total starlight absorption. The thermal (vibrational) emissivity of these grains is thought to be negligible at low frequency, because they spend most of their time cold, but emit most of their energy when they are hot.

The dominant dust emission above $`100`$ GHz is emission from grains large enough to be in equilibrium with the interstellar radiation field. Emission from this dust peaks at $`140\mathrm{\mu m}`$ and deviates strongly from a thermal blackbody spectrum. A Rayleigh-Jeans emissivity function of $`\nu ^2`$ has often been assumed in the literature (e.g. Draine & Lee 1984, Schlegel, Finkbeiner & Davis 1998) but when dust temperature variation is accounted for, the COBE FIRAS data (Fixsen et al. 1997) are better fit by a steeper power law emissivity ($`\beta =2.6`$) near the peak and $`\beta =1.7`$ at lower frequencies, with a break at about $`500`$ GHz (Finkbeiner et al. 1999). This fit tied the IRAS and DIRBE data to FIRAS via a fit with only 4 global parameters describing the two emissivity laws, and the requirement that the emission is dominated by grains in equilibrium with the interstellar radiation field. Predictions at $`6^{}`$ resolution based on this fit are available on the web.111http://skymaps.info

The two-component model is a substantially better fit (reduced $`\chi ^2=1.85`$ compared to 31 for a $`\nu ^2`$ model) even when the spatial and spectral covariance of the FIRAS data (Fixsen et al. 1997) are included (Finkbeiner et al. 1999). And the model is physically plausible: amorphous silicates with a wide range of emissivity indices $`\beta 1.22.7`$ have been observed in the lab (Agladze et al. 1996), including amorphous MgO$``$2SiO2 which has a very high microwave emissivity to optical absorption ratio, leading to rather different mean temperatures (9K and 16K) for the two components. These lab emissivities were measured at $`300`$ GHz and 20K and may become steeper at lower frequencies. However, this interpretation of the spectral break is hardly unique; if the dominant emitter has such a break in its emissivity function at 500 GHz, then a single component could explain the data just as well. Another explanation that has been advanced is very cold dust grains spatially mixed with the warm dust (Reach et al. 1995), though a physical mechanism for keeping the grains so cold is not proposed. Such a model would presumably predict a steeper slope at lower frequencies as well.

Regardless of interpretation, the Finkbeiner et al. (1999) model has been very successful in the sub-mm - microwave, though small but interesting deviations from the model have been observed by BOOMERANG (Masi et al. 2001). At lower frequencies, however, there is a surprise.

Comparing these predictions to COBE DMR, Finkbeiner et al. found that COBE 90 GHz was slightly higher, but at 53 and 31 GHz the emission per dust column is a factor of 2.2 and 31 higher than expected. These results are similar to the earlier Kogut et al. (1996) results derived without an explicit dust temperature correction. Because of this it was expected that the FIRAS-based predictions would agree well with WMAP 94 GHz, but be significantly contaminated by some other dust-correlated emission mechanism at lower frequencies, and this appears to be true. Until this other emission is understood, extrapolation of far IR polarization measurements to the microwave regime will be perilous.

### 2.2 Anomalous microwave emission

The first detection of anomalous dust correlated emission by COBE (Kogut et al. 1996a, 1996b) was quickly followed by detections in the data sets from Saskatoon (de Oliveira-Costa et al. 1997), OVRO (Leitch et al. 1997), the 19 GHz survey (de Oliveira-Costa et al. 1998), and Tenerife (de Oliveira-Costa et al. 1999, Mukherjee et al. 2000). Initially, the anomalous emission was identified as thermal bremsstrahlung from ionized gas correlated with dust (Kogut et al. 1996a) and presumably produced by photoionized cloud rims (McCullough et al. 1999). This idea was scrutinized in Draine & Lazarian (1997) and criticized on energetic grounds. Poor correlation of H$`\alpha `$ with 100 $`\mu `$m emission also argued against the free-free explanation (McCullough et al. 1999). These arguments are summarized in Draine & Lazarian (1999). Recently de Oliveira-Costa et al. (2000) used Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper (WHAM) survey data and established that the free-free emission “is about an order of magnitude below Foreground X over the entire range of frequencies and latitudes where it is detected”. The authors conclude that the Foreground X cannot be explained as free-free emission. Additional evidence supporting this conclusion has come from a study at 5, 8 and 10 GHz by Finkbeiner et al. (2002) of several dark clouds and HII regions, two of which show a significantly rising spectrum from 5 to 10 GHz.

The recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data were used to claim a lower limit of 5% for the spinning dust fraction at 23 GHz (Bennett et al. 2003). However, other models of spinning dust are not ruled out by the WMAP data, and in fact fit reasonably well. Finkbeiner (2003) performed a fit to WMAP using only a CMB template, a free-free template (based on H$`\alpha `$ correlated emission plus hot gas emission near the Galactic center), a soft synchrotron template traced by the 408 MHz map, a thermal dust extrapolation (Finkbeiner et al. 1999) and a spinning dust template consisting of dust column density times $`T_{dust}^3`$. This fit results in excellent $`\chi ^2/dof`$ values (1.6,1.09,1.08,1.05,1.08) at (23,33,41,61,94) GHz and a reasonable spectral shape for the average spinning dust spectrum. The whole sky $`|b|<30`$ degrees was used where H$`\alpha `$ extinction is less than 2 mag, except for point sources, Orion, and NGC5090. The derived emissivities, expressed as Jy/sr-1 per H atom for comparison with DL98b, are shown in Fig. 1. Note that there is considerable variation around the sky in the spinning dust spectrum, and Figure 1. shows only the average. The data points *red filled circles* fall somewhat lower than the WNM, CNM, and WIM ISM models and appear flatter, but some superposition of spinning dust models would produce this average spectrum.

This WMAP analysis alone does not rule out the Bennett et al. (2003) hypothesis of hard synchrotron emission, but when combined with the Green Bank Galactic Plane survey data (Langston et al. 2000) at 8 and 14 GHz, spinning dust appears to provide a much better fit than hard synchrotron (Finkbeiner, Langston, & Minter 2003). Some caution is necessary, because the rising ISM spectrum seen from 8 to 14 GHz is observed in the Galactic plane (red stars in Fig. 1), while the WMAP fit is done at higher latitudes; however it is currently a good working hypothesis that spinning dust emission is a substantial contribution to ISM emission at $`10<\nu <50`$ GHz. Other groups analysing WMAP data found more evidence in favor of spinning dust (Hildebrand, private communication, Lagache 2003). For instance, recent results in Hildebrand & Kirby (2003, preprint) on L1622 (one of the clouds observed by Finkbeiner et al. (2002) at 5, 8 and 10 GHz) obtained using WMAP data show a smooth continuation of the spectrum in agreement with the spinning dust model expectations.

### 2.3 Alignment of Classical Dust

Polarization due to interstellar dust alignment was discovered in the middle of the last century (Hiltner 1949, Hall 1949) and was studied initially via starlight extinction and more recently through emission. Correlation of the polarization with the interstellar magnetic field revealed that electric vector of light polarized via starlight extinction tend to be parallel to magnetic field222The polarizations in emission and in extinction are orthogonal if they are produced by the same grains.. This corresponds to grains being aligned with their longer axes perpendicular to the local magnetic field. Due to the presence of the stochastic magnetic field, the polarization patterns are pretty involved.

The existing data presents a complex picture. It is generally accepted that the observations indicate that the ability to produce polarized light depends on grain size and grain composition. For instance, a limited UV polarimetry dataset available indicates that graphite grains tend not to be aligned (see Clayton et al. 1997), while maximum entropy technique applied to the existing data by Martin & Kim (1995) show that large $`>6\times 10^6`$ cm grains are responsible for the polarization via extinction.

Moreover, the environment of grains seems to matter a lot (Goodman 1995, Lazarian, Goodman & Myers 1997). A study by Arce et al. (1998) indicates that grains selectively extinct starlight up to optical depth $`A_v<3`$. Recent emission studies (Hildebrand et al. 1999, 2001) produced a polarization spectrum for dense clouds that reveal a tight correlation between grain temperature and its ability to emit polarized light. As multicomponent fits invoking grains of different temperature were claimed to provide a better fit for the observed 1 mm-100 $`\mu `$m emission (see Finkbeiner, Schlegel & Davis 1999), this correlation may be very troublesome for the attempts to construct polarization templates.

The balloon-borne Archeops mission detects polarization at 353 GHz (850$`\mu `$m) at the level of 4-5%, and over 10% in some clouds (Benoit et al. 2003). This is about the level expected based on polarization of starlight and emission at shorter wavelengths. We eagerly await polarization data from WMAP at $`2394`$ GHz.

## 3 Polarized Emission from Classical Dust

The basic explanation of polarized radiation from dust is straightforward. Aligned dust particles preferentially extinct (i.e. absorb and scatter) the $`E`$-component of starlight parallel to their longer axis. The $`E`$-component of the emitted thermal radiation, on the contrary, is higher along the longer axis. Thus for aligned grains one must have polarization. What is the cause of alignment?

Grain alignment is an exciting and very rich area of research. For example, two new solid state effects have been discovered recently in the process of understanding grain dynamics (Lazarian & Draine 1999, 2000). It is known that a number of mechanisms can provide grain alignment (see review by Lazarian 2000 and Table 1 in Lazarian, Goodman, & Myers 1997). Some of them rely on paramagnetic dissipation of rotational energy (Davis-Greenstein 1951, Purcell 1979, Mathis 1986, Lazarian & Draine 1997, Lazarian 1997a, Roberge & Lazarian 1999) , some appeal to the anisotropic gaseous bombardment when a grain moves supersonically through the ambient gas (Gold 1951, Purcell & Spitzer 1971, Dolginov & Mytrophanov 1976, Lazarian 1994, 1997b, Roberge, Hanany & Messinger 1995, Lazarian & Efroimsky 1996). Many grains are definitely paramagnetic and some may be strongly magnetic. Supersonic grain motions may be due to outflows (Purcell 1969), MHD turbulence (Lazarian 1994, Lazarian & Yan 2002, Yan & Lazarian 2003) or ambipolar diffusion (Roberge & Hanany 1990).

At present, grain alignment via radiative torques (Draine & Weingartner 1996, 1997) looks preferable, although the theory and the understanding of the mechanism are far from being complete (see review by Lazarian 2003). The mechanism appeals to a spin-up of a grain as it differentially scatters left and right polarized photons ( Dolginov 1972, Dolginov & Mytrophanov 1976). This process acts efficiently if the irregular grain has its size comparable with the photon wavelength. The mechanism can account for the systematic variations of the alignment efficiency with extinction. However, other mechanisms should also work. For instance, the paramagnetic mechanism may preferentially act on small grains (Lazarian & Martin 2003, in preparation), while mechanical alignment may act in the regions of outflows (Rao et al. 1998). In general, the variety of astrophysical conditions allows various mechanisms to have their niche.

Note that in interstellar environments grain alignment respects the magnetic field orientation, even if the mechanism of alignment is not magnetic in nature. This is because the Larmor precession of grains is so fast compared to the time scales over which either the magnetic field changes its direction or the alignment mechanism acts. In general, the alignment may happen either parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field. However, in most cases, the alignment happens with long grain axes perpendicular to magnetic field.

Alignment of grains is different in diffuse gas and molecular clouds. Lazarian, Myers & Goodman (1997) showed that in dark clouds without star formation all alignment mechanisms fail. Indeed, grain alignment depends on non-equilibrium processes while interiors of dark clouds are close to thermodynamic equilibrium. As soon as stars are born within clouds, the conditions in their vicinity become favorable for grain alignment. This explains why far infrared polarimetry detects aligned grains, while near infrared and optical polarimetry does not.

We may hope that grain alignment in diffuse clouds is more uniform. Radiation freely penetrates them and therefore the radiative torques must ensure good alignment. This assumption was used by Fosalba et al (2001) to relate the polarization from dust extinction and the polarization from dust emission. Discussion of this problem is presented in Cho & Lazarian (2003, this volume).

As we have already discussed, grain alignment traces the direction of the local magnetic field. In the presence of turbulence, this field is very complex. It was shown by Cho & Lazarian (2002a) that MHD turbulence can explain the spatial variations of both synchrotron emission and starlight polarization. We note when we deal with dust aligned with a turbulent magnetic field, the resulting polarization depends on the telescope resolution at a particular wavelength. A possible way of dealing with this complication is to correct for the field stochasticity. A tensor description of turbulent magnetic fields was obtained in Cho, Lazarian & Vishniac (2002) and this can be used for this purpose (see also Cho & Lazarian 2002b). The corresponding research should also yield insight into the operation of the Galactic dynamo, high latitude MHD turbulence, and turbulent mixing, and will lead to many yet unforeseen discoveries.

## 4 Polarized Emission from Spinning Dust

Can the ultrasmall grains observed via Mid-IR be important at the microwave range? The naive answer to this question is no, as the total mass in those grains is small. However, DL98a considered a different mechanism of emission, namely, the rotational emission333The very idea of grain rotational emission was first discussed by Erickson (1957). More recently, after the discovery of the population of ultrasmall grains, Ferrara & Dettmar (1994) noted that the rotational emission from such grains may be observable, but their treatment assumed Brownian thermal rotation of grains, which is not true. that must emerge when a grain with a dipole moment $`\mu `$ rotates with angular velocity444The calculations in DL98a were questioned by Ragot (2002) who considered the effect of plasma wave drag on spinning dust grains. However, the treatment of ionized particles as a continuous plasma when less than a few particles have chance to interact with the grain over its period does not seem to be right. Moreover, it is possible to show that if it were right, the plasma would not be transparent to microwave emission. $`\omega `$.

For the model with the most likely set of parameters, DL98a obtained a reasonable fit with observations available at that time. It is extremely important that new data points obtained later (de Oliveira-Costa et al. 1998, de Oliveira-Costa et al. 1999) correspond to the already published model. The observed flattening of the spectrum and its turnover around $`20`$ GHz agree well with the spinning dust predictions.

Microwave emission from spinning grains is expected to be polarized if grains are aligned. Alignment of ultrasmall grains (essentially large molecules) is likely to be different from alignment of large (i.e. $`a>10^6`$ cm) grains. One of the mechanisms that might produce alignment of the ultrasmall grains is the paramagnetic dissipation mechanism of Davis and Greenstein (1951). The Davis-Greenstein alignment mechanism is straightforward: for a spinning grain the component of interstellar magnetic field perpendicular to the grain angular velocity varies in grain coordinates, resulting in time-dependent magnetization, associated energy dissipation, and a torque acting on the grain. As a result grains tend to rotate with angular momenta parallel to the interstellar magnetic field.

Lazarian & Draine (2000, henceforth LD00) found that the traditional picture of paramagnetic relaxation is incomplete, since it disregards the so-called “Barnett magnetization” (Landau & Lifshitz 1960). The Barnett effect, the inverse of the Einstein-De Haas effect, consists of the spontaneous magnetization of a paramagnetic body rotating in field-free space. This effect can be understood in terms of the lattice sharing part of its angular momentum with the spin system. Therefore the implicit assumption in Davis & Greenstein (1951)– that the magnetization within a rotating grain in a static magnetic field is equivalent to the magnetization within a stationary grain in a rotating magnetic field – is clearly not exact.

LD00 accounted for the “Barnett magnetization” and termed the effect of enhanced relaxation arising from grain magnetization “resonance relaxation”. It is clear from Fig. 2 that resonance relaxation persists at the frequencies when the Davis-Greenstein relaxation vanishes. However the polarization is marginal for $`\nu >35`$ GHz anyhow. The discontinuity at $`20`$ GHz is due to the assumption that smaller grains are planar, and larger grains are spherical. The microwave emission will be polarized in the plane perpendicular to magnetic field.

Can we check the alignment of ultrasmall grains via infrared polarimetry? The answer to this question is “probably not”. Indeed, as discussed earlier, infrared emission from ultrasmall grains, e.g. 12 $`\mu `$m emission, takes place as grains absorb UV photons. These photons raise grain temperature, randomizing grain axes in relation to its angular momentum (see Lazarian & Roberge 1997). Taking values for Barnett relaxation from Lazarian & Draine (1999), we get the randomization time of the $`10^7`$ cm grain to be $`2\times 10^6`$ s, which is less than the grain cooling time. As a result, the emanating infrared radiation will be polarized very marginally. If, however, Barnett relaxation is suppressed, the randomization time is determined by inelastic relaxation (Lazarian & Efroimsky 1999) and is $`0.1`$ s, which would entail a partial polarization of infrared emission.

## 5 Polarized Emission from Magnetic Grains

While the spinning grain hypothesis got recognition in the community, the magnetic dipole emission model suggested by Draine & Lazarian (1999, henceforth DL99) was left essentially unnoticed. This is unfortunate, as magnetic dipole emission provides a possible alternative explanation for the Foreground X. Magnetic dipole emission is negligible at optical and infrared frequencies. However, when the frequency of the oscillating magnetic field approaches the precession frequency of electron spin in the field of its neighbors, i.e. $`10`$ GHz, the magneto dipole emissivity becomes substantial.

How likely is that grains are strongly magnetic? Iron is the fifth most abundant element by mass and it is well known that it resides in dust grains (see Savage & Sembach 1996). If $`30\%`$ of grain mass is carbonaceous, Fe and Ni contribute approximately $`30\%`$ of the remaining grain mass. Magnetic inclusions are widely discussed in grain alignment literature (Jones & Spitzer 1967, Mathis 1986, Martin 1995, Goodman & Whittet 1996). If a substantial part of this material is ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic, the magneto-dipole emission can be comparable to that of spinning grains. Indeed, calculations in DL99 showed that less than $`5\%`$ of interstellar Fe in the form of metallic grains or inclusions is necessary to account for the Foreground X at 90 GHz, while magnetite, i.e. Fe3O4, can account for a considerable part of the anomalous emissivity over the whole range of frequencies from 10 to 90 GHz. Adjusting the magnetic response of the material, i.e. making it more strongly magnetic than magnetite, but less magnetic than pure metallic Fe, it is possible to get a good fit for the Foreground X (DL99).

How can magneto-dipole emission be distinguished from that from spinning grains? The most straightforward way is to study microwave emission from regions of different density. The population of small grains is depleted in dark clouds (Leger and Puget 1984) and this should result in a decrease of contribution from spinning grains. Private communication from Dick Crutcher who attempted such measurements corresponds to this tendency, but the very detection of microwave emissivity is a 3$`\sigma `$ result. Obviously the corresponding measurements are highly desirable. As for now, magnetic grains remain a strong candidate process for producing part or even all of Foreground X. In any case, even if magnetic grains provide subdominant contribution, this can be important for particular cases of CMB and interstellar studies. For instance, polarization from magnetic grains may dominate that from spinning grains even if the emission from spinning grains is more of higher level.

The mechanism for producing polarized magneto-dipole emission is similar to that producing polarization of electro-dipole thermal emission emitted from aligned non-spherical grains (see Hildebrand 1988). There are two significant differences, however. First, strongly magnetic grains can contain just a single magnetic domain. Further magnetization along the axis of this domain is not possible and therefore the magnetic permeability of the grains gets anisotropic: $`\mu =1`$ along the domain axis, and $`\mu =\mu _{}`$ for a perpendicular direction. Second, even if a grain contains tiny magnetic inclusions and can be characterized by isotropic permeability, polarization that it produces is orthogonal to the electro-dipole radiation emanating through electro-dipole vibrational emission. In case of the electro-dipole emission, the longer grain axis defines the vector of the electric field, while it defines the vector of the magnetic field in case of magneto-dipole emission.

The results of calculations for single domain iron particle (longer axis coincides with the domain axis) and a grain with metallic Fe inclusions are shown in Fig. 3. Grains are approximated by ellipsoids $`a_1<a_2<a_3`$ with $`𝐚_\mathrm{𝟏}`$ perfectly aligned parallel to the interstellar magnetic field $`𝐁`$. The polarization is taken to be positive when the electric vector of emitted radiation is perpendicular to $`𝐁`$; the latter is the case for electro-dipole radiation of aligned grains. This is also true (see Fig. 3) for high frequency radiation from single dipole grains. It is easy to see why this happens. For high frequencies $`|\mu _{}1|^21`$ and grain shape factors are unimportant. The only important thing is that the magnetic fluctuations happen perpendicular to $`𝐚_\mathrm{𝟏}`$. With $`𝐚_\mathrm{𝟏}`$ parallel to $`𝐁`$, the electric fluctuations tend to be perpendicular to $`𝐁`$ which explains the polarization of single domain grain being positive. For lower frequencies magnetic fluctuations tend to happen parallel to the intermediate size axis $`𝐚_\mathrm{𝟐}`$. As the grain rotates about $`𝐚_\mathrm{𝟏}𝐁`$, the intensity in a given direction reaches maximum when an observer sees the $`𝐚_\mathrm{𝟏}𝐚_\mathrm{𝟐}`$ grain cross section. Applying earlier arguments it is easy to see that magnetic fluctuations are parallel to $`𝐚_\mathrm{𝟐}`$ and therefore for sufficiently large $`a_2/a_1`$ ratio the polarization is negative. The variation of the polarization direction with frequency presents the characteristic signature of magneto-dipole emission from aligned single-dipole grains and it can be used to separate this component from the CMB signal. Note that the degree of polarization is large, and such grains may substantially interfere with attempts at CMB polarimetry. Even if the intensity of magneto-dipole emission is subdominant to that from rotating grains, it can still be quite important in terms of polarization. A relatively weak polarization response is expected for grains with magnetic inclusions (see Fig. 3). The resulting emission is negative as magnetic fluctuations are stronger along longer grain axes, while the short axis is aligned with $`𝐁`$.

Systematic studies of dust foreground polarization should improve our insight into the formation dust, its structure, its composition. For instance, DL99 showed that the present-day microwave measurements do not allow more than 5% of Fe to be in the form of metallic iron. More laboratory measurements of microwave properties of candidate materials are also necessary. Some materials, e.g. iron, were studied at microwave range only in the 1950’s and this sort of data must be checked again using modern equipment.

## 6 Summary

The principal points discussed above are as follows:

* Dust provides the most intricate pattern of polarized radiation. The dependence of polarization of grain temperature, composition, size and environment makes the use of templates difficult.
* If anomalous emission in the range of 10-100 GHz is due to spinning dust particles, the polarization of the emission is marginal for frequencies larger than $`35`$ GHz. If the anomalous emission or part of it is due to magneto-dipole mechanism the polarization may be substantial and may exhibit reversals of direction with frequency.
* To get a better insight into the microwave properties of dust more laboratory studies are necessary. Some of them, e.g. measurements of the magnetic susceptibility of candidate materials at microwave frequencies, are straightforward using the modern technology.

AL was writting this review in a stimulating atmosphere of Ecole Normale Superier and he is happy to acknowledge his ENS Visiting Professor position there. DF is a Hubble Fellow.


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# Hot Spots and Transition from 𝒅–Wave to Another Pairing Symmetry in the Electron-Doped Cuprate Superconductors

## I Introduction

The superconducting pairing symmetry in the electron-doped cuprates Uchida , such as $`\mathrm{Nd}_{2\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{Ce}_\mathrm{x}\mathrm{CuO}_4`$ and $`\mathrm{Pr}_{2\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{Ce}_\mathrm{x}\mathrm{CuO}_4`$, has been debated for a long time. Originally, it was thought to be of the $`s`$-wave type s-wave . Later, observation of the half-quantum magnetic flux in tricrystals Kirtley , improved microwave measurements of temperature dependence of the London penetration depth Kokales , the angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) Armitage-SC  and Raman scattering Blumberg  studies, and observation of the $`\sqrt{H}`$ dependence of specific heat on magnetic field $`H`$ Balci  pointed to the $`d`$-wave symmetry. Recently, evidence was found for a transition from $`d`$\- to $`s`$-wave pairing symmetry with the increase of electron doping Biswas ; Skinta . Biswas et al. Biswas  concluded that $`\mathrm{Pr}_{2\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{Ce}_\mathrm{x}\mathrm{CuO}_4`$ has $`d`$-wave pairing at $`x0.15`$ and $`s`$-wave pairing at $`x0.17`$. In this paper, we propose a simple scenario for the transition from the $`d`$-wave to another pairing symmetry and argue that the latter can actually be triplet $`p`$-wave.

First we present a qualitative picture in terms of the Fermi surface geometry shown in Fig. 1. According to the theoretical model Scalapino ; Pines ; Ueda , the antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations (ASF) peaked at the wave vector $`𝑸=(\pi ,\pi )`$ are responsible for $`d`$-wave superconductivity in the hole-doped cuprates. Commensurate ASF at the wave vector $`𝑸`$ are also observed in the electron-doped cuprates Yamada . The interaction via ASF has the highest strength at the so-called hot spots, the points on the Fermi surface connected to each other by the vector $`𝑸`$. These points are labeled in Fig. 1 by the consecutive numbers from 1 to 8. Since the interaction via ASF is repulsive in the singlet channel, the superconducting pairing potential $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝒑)`$ has opposite signs at the two hot spots connected by the vector $`𝑸`$:

$$\mathrm{\Delta }(𝒑+𝑸)=\mathrm{\Delta }(𝒑).$$
(1)
Thus, the eight hot spots can be divided into four groups (1,6), (2,5), (3,8), and (4,7), with the signs of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝒑)`$ being opposite within each group. However, the relative signs of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝒑)`$ between the different groups have to be determined from additional considerations.

In Fig. 1, the dashed and solid lines show the Fermi surfaces corresponding to the hole- and electron-doped cuprates. Notice that the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ point $`(0,0)`$ is located at the corner of Fig. 1, so that the area inside the Fermi surface is occupied by holes and outside by electrons. The dashed Fermi surface, corresponding to the hole-doped case, encloses a larger area, and the pairs of hot spots shown by the open circles in Fig. 1 are located close to the van Hove points $`(0,\pi )`$, $`(\pi ,0)`$, $`(2\pi ,\pi )`$, and $`(\pi ,2\pi )`$. It is natural to assume that $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝒑)`$ has the same sign within each pair of the neighboring hot spots. This assumption, in combination with Eq. (1), immediately results in the familiar $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ symmetry of the pairing potential.

However, the situation does change in the electron-doped case. With the increase of electron doping, the Fermi surface shrinks, and the hot spots move away from the van Hove points toward the Brillouin zone diagonals. The following pairs of the hot spots approach each other: (1,2), (3,4), (5,6), and (7,8). The $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ pairing potential has opposite signs within each pair and vanishes at the zone diagonals. Thus, in the electron-overdoped cuprates, when the hot spots get close enough, the $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ pairing becomes suppressed. Then, a superconducting pairing of another symmetry may emerge, with the pairing potential of the same sign on both sides of the zone diagonals. This is the mechanism that we propose for the transition observed in Refs. Biswas ; Skinta .

## II Suppression of $`d`$-wave pairing

To illustrate how the $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ pairing evolves with doping, we perform calculations employing the typical electron dispersion law

$$\xi (𝒑)=\mu 2t_0(\mathrm{cos}p_x+\mathrm{cos}p_y)+4t_1\mathrm{cos}p_x\mathrm{cos}p_y$$
(2)
with $`t_1/t_0=0.45`$. The chemical potential $`\mu `$ controls the hole concentration $`n`$, which is determined by the area $`S`$ inside the Fermi surface in Fig. 1: $`n=2S/(2\pi )^2`$. The doping $`x=n1`$ is defined as the deviation of $`n`$ from half filling, so that $`x>0`$ and $`x<0`$ correspond to hole and electron doping x-doping . The relation $`S1+x`$ is in agreement with ARPES, except for the region of small doping around $`x=0`$, where the antiferromagnetic Mott insulating state intervenes. For $`\mathrm{Nd}_{2\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{Ce}_\mathrm{x}\mathrm{CuO}_4`$, this was established in Ref. Armitage-FS , and movement of hot spots toward the zone diagonals with the increase of electron doping was directly observed in Refs. Armitage-FS ; Armitage-PG ; Armitage-SC . Notice that, for the dispersion law (2), the hot spots exist only within a finite range of chemical potential $`4t_1\mu 0`$, which corresponds to the range of doping $`0.25=x_{}<x<x_+=0.53`$. The respective pairs of the hot spots merge and disappear at the van Hove points when $`xx_+`$ and at the zone diagonals when $`xx_{}`$. Thus, in this model, the $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ superconductivity can exist only within a finite range of electron and hole doping, in qualitative agreement with the experimental phase diagram of cuprates. Doping dependence of the Fermi surface in the electron-doped cuprates obtained from the ARPES measurements Armitage-FS ; Armitage-PG ; Armitage-SC  was quantitatively interpreted within a simple band-structure model in Ref. Kusko . The results are in qualitative agreement with the Hall coefficient measurements Dagan .

To verify the qualitative picture given in the Introduction, we solve the BCS equation for the pairing potential

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{\alpha \beta }(𝒑)=V_{\alpha \beta }^{\gamma \delta }(𝒑𝒑^{})\frac{\mathrm{tanh}\frac{E(𝒑^{})}{2T}}{2E(𝒑^{})}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\gamma \delta }(𝒑^{})\frac{d^2𝒑^{}}{(2\pi )^2}.$$
(3)
Here $`E(𝒑)=\sqrt{\xi ^2(𝒑)+\mathrm{\Delta }^2(𝒑)}`$, $`T`$ is temperature, and $`V_{\alpha \beta }^{\gamma \delta }(q)=V_c(q)\delta _\alpha ^\gamma \delta _\beta ^\delta +V_s(q)𝝈_\alpha ^\gamma 𝝈_\beta ^\delta `$ is the effective interaction between electron charges and spins, where $`𝝈`$ are the Pauli matrices, and $`\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma ,\delta `$ are the spin indices. For singlet and triplet pairings, the functions $`V_0(q)=V_c(q)3V_s(q)`$ and $`V_1(q)=V_c(q)+V_s(q)`$ enter Eq. (3), respectively. To simplify our calculations, we ignore the frequency dependence of $`V`$ and use the conventional ASF interaction of the form Pines

$$V_0(q)=\frac{g}{(𝒒𝑸)^2+\sigma ^2}$$
(4)
with the coupling constant $`g=2t_0`$ and the width $`\sigma =0.1`$ disclaimer .

The $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ pairing potential $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, calculated at $`T=0`$ for three different dopings, is shown in the main panel of Fig. 2 vs. the angle $`\phi `$ on the Fermi surface (see Fig. 1). The dashed line refers to the strong hole doping $`x=0.37`$ close to $`x_+`$, the dotted line to the strong electron doping $`x=x_{}=0.25`$, and the solid line to the intermediate electron doping $`x=0.1`$. The angle $`\phi _{\mathrm{hs}}`$ indicates the position of the hot spot 1 for these dopings. We see that the maxima of $`|\mathrm{\Delta }(\phi )|`$ are achieved at the hot spots, i.e. at $`\phi \phi _{\mathrm{hs}}`$, as discussed in Ref. KY . The solid curve in Fig. 2 qualitatively agrees with the nonmonotonic function $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\phi )`$ inferred from the Raman scattering in $`\mathrm{Nd}_{1.85}\mathrm{Ce}_{0.15}\mathrm{CuO}_4`$ Blumberg . We also observe that $`|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$ drops precipitously when the hot spots approach the zone diagonals. This happens because the integral in Eq. (3) is suppressed when positive and negative peaks of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\phi )`$ are close to each other.

## III Alternative superconducting pairings

Once the $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ pairing is suppressed in the case of strong electron doping, pairing of a different symmetry may emerge in the system. Evidently, this pairing should provide the same sign of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ within each pair (1,2), (3,4), (5,6), and (7,8) of the approaching hot spots. There are three possibilities depending on the relative signs of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ between the different pairs of the hot spots. The same sign for all the hot spots corresponds to $`s`$-wave, the opposite sign between (1,2) and (3,4) to $`d_{xy}`$-wave, and the opposite sign between (1,2) and (5,6) to triplet $`p`$-wave pairing. We need to find out which of these states wins.

Measurements of the temperature dependence of the penetration depth $`\lambda (T)`$ show a transition from a gap with nodes to a nodeless gap with the increase of electron doping in Pr2-xCexCuO4 and La2-xCexCuO4-y Skinta . The point contact spectroscopy of Pr2-xCexCuO4 Biswas  shows a transition from a strong zero-bias conductance peak, originating from the midgap Andreev surface states in the $`d`$-wave case, to double peaks typical for $`s`$-wave. These experiments eliminate $`d_{xy}`$-wave pairing, because it has gap nodes and the midgap Andreev states. $`d_{xy}`$-wave pairing was proposed in Ref. Guinea  as a possible successor to $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ in the electron-overdoped phase. In the theoretical model of Ref. Guinea , nonlocal corrections to the Hubbard interaction $`U`$ due to spin fluctuations were taken into account only in the lowest order in $`U`$, whereas in our model (4) the peak at $`𝑸`$ is obtained by summing an infinite number of RPA-like diagrams. The interaction (4) peaked at $`𝑸=(\pi ,\pi )`$ is not favorable for $`d_{xy}`$-wave pairing.

The simplest alternative pairing symmetry consistent with the experiments Biswas ; Skinta  is $`s`$-wave, which can be produced by phonons. This scenario was proposed by Abrikosov Abrikosov , who argued that, with the increase of doping, $`d`$-wave superconductivity is destroyed by disorder, whereas $`s`$-wave superconductivity survives. The $`s`$-wave energy gap $`|\mathrm{\Delta }|`$ has no nodes and is roughly uniform along the Fermi surface. However, the $`s`$-wave scenario encounters some problems. When $`|\mathrm{\Delta }(𝒑)|`$ varies along the Fermi surface, measurements of $`\lambda (T)`$ yield the minimal value of the gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{min}}`$ at $`T=0`$. The experiment Skinta-0.85  found $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{min}}/T_c0.85`$, whereas, for the phonon-induced $`s`$-wave superconductivity, this ratio should be close to the BCS value 1.76. Furthermore, for the phonon mechanism, $`T_c`$ is not expected to depend on doping significantly Abrikosov , whereas the experimental $`T_c`$ declines steeply at $`|x|0.15`$ and vanishes for $`|x|0.2`$ outside of the dome-shaped phase diagram of the electron-doped cuprates Uchida ; Peng . Incidentally, the value of doping where superconductivity disappears is close to $`x_{}`$, which indicates that the hot spots may be equally important for the alternative superconducting pairing.

Thus, it is worth considering the last alternative pairing, namely the triplet $`p`$-wave. It has the order parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }ϵ_{\alpha \gamma }𝝈_\beta ^\gamma 𝒏`$, where $`ϵ_{\alpha \gamma }`$ is the antisymmetric spin tensor, and $`𝒏`$ is the unit vector of spin-polarization Wolfle . The symmetry of triplet pairing in a tetragonal crystal was classified in Ref. symmetry . In the $`\mathrm{E}_\mathrm{u}`$ representation, $`𝒏`$ points along the $`𝒄`$ axis, and the phase of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝒑)`$ changes by $`2\pi `$ around the Fermi surface. This order parameter is chiral and breaks the time-reversal symmetry. The simplest example is $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝒑)(\mathrm{sin}p_x\pm i\mathrm{sin}p_y)`$, which was originally proposed for Sr2RuO4 Miyake99 . In the $`\mathrm{A}_{1\mathrm{u}}`$, $`\mathrm{A}_{2\mathrm{u}}`$, $`\mathrm{B}_{1\mathrm{u}}`$, and $`\mathrm{B}_{2\mathrm{u}}`$ representations, the vector $`𝒏`$ lies in the $`(𝒂,𝒃)`$ plane and rotates around the Fermi surface by the angle $`2\pi `$. These order parameters are not chiral and do not break the time-reversal symmetry. Both types of the pairing potential have two components $`(\mathrm{\Delta }_1,\mathrm{\Delta }_2)`$, the real and imaginary parts of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in the chiral case and $`(n_x\mathrm{\Delta },n_y\mathrm{\Delta })`$ in the nonchiral case, which satisfy the symmetry relation $`|\mathrm{\Delta }_2(p_x,p_y)|=|\mathrm{\Delta }_1(p_y,p_x)|`$. Then, the gap $`|\mathrm{\Delta }|^2=\mathrm{\Delta }_1^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_2^2`$ does not have nodes, but is modulated along the Fermi surface. This easily explains the reduced value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{min}}/T_c`$ observed in Ref. Skinta-0.85 . The tunneling spectrum, shown in Fig. 3 of Ref. Sengupta  for $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\mathrm{sin}p_x\pm i\mathrm{sin}p_y)`$, has double peaks, as in the experiment Biswas . Thus, the experiments Biswas ; Skinta ; Skinta-0.85  are compatible with both $`s`$\- and $`p`$-wave pairings and are not sufficient to distinguish between them.

Measurements of the Knight shift can distinguish between singlet and triplet pairing. The Knight shift in the electron-doped $`\mathrm{Pr}_{0.91}\mathrm{LaCe}_{0.09}\mathrm{CuO}_{4\mathrm{y}}`$ was found to decrease below $`T_c`$ consistently with the singlet $`d`$-wave pairing Zheng . However, the Knight shift in $`\mathrm{Pr}_{1.85}\mathrm{Ce}_{0.15}\mathrm{CuO}_{4\mathrm{y}}`$ was found not to change below $`T_c`$ Zamborszky . This is an indication of triplet pairing, like in Sr2RuO4 Ishida98  and in the organic superconductors $`(\mathrm{TMTSF})_2\mathrm{X}`$ Chaikin . To obtain a complete picture, it is desirable to measure the Knight shift in the superconducting state systematically as a function of electron doping across the transition from $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ pairing to a new pairing.

Spontaneous time-reversal-symmetry breaking in the chiral $`p`$-wave state can be detected by the muon spin-relaxation measurements Sonier  as in Sr2RuO4 Luke , or by measuring the local magnetic field produced by the chiral Andreev surface states. Quantitative estimates done in Ref. Kwon  show that the latter effect can be realistically observed with a scanning SQUID microscope SQUID .

## IV Competition between $`d`$\- and $`p`$-wave pairings

As discussed after Eq. (3), the ASF interaction $`V_s`$ enters in the singlet and triplet superconducting pairing channels with opposite signs. Thus, it is unfavorable for $`p`$-wave pairing, and a different mediator is needed. Triplet pairing is usually associated with the ferromagnetic spin fluctuations, e.g. in the superfluid He–3 Wolfle  or Sr2RuO4 Mazin . In Ref. Kuboki , the symmetry of superconducting pairing was studied as a function of the Fermi surface change with doping in a square lattice model with nearest-neighbor interaction. It was found that the symmetry changes with doping from $`d`$-wave to $`p`$-wave to $`s`$-wave. The results were applied to Sr2RuO4, but they may be also relevant to the electron-doped cuprates.

In the calculations given below, we focus on another possible mediator for $`p`$-wave pairing, namely the charge-density fluctuations (CDF) enhanced in the vicinity of the charge-density-wave (CDW) instability. The role of CDW fluctuations in cuprates was emphasized in Ref. DiCastro . In a crystal, the CDW wave vector is expected to be close to $`𝑸=(\pi ,\pi )`$, and the CDF interaction $`V_c(q)`$ would have a peak at this vector. Such interaction has repulsive sign in the singlet and triplet particle-particle channels, resulting in the condition (1) and supporting both $`d`$\- and $`p`$-wave superconducting pairings.

The relative strength of CDF vs. ASF in cuprates is subject to debate, and detailed evaluation of $`V_c(q)`$ is not the purpose of our paper disclaimer . Instead, we employ a toy model with the same interaction in the triplet and singlet channels: $`V_1(q)=V_0(q)=V_c(q)`$, where $`V_c(q)`$ is given by Eq. (4). Then, the difference in the solutions of the BCS equation (3) for $`d`$\- and $`p`$-wave pairings results only from the geometry of the Fermi surface. The upper inset in Fig. 2 shows the magnitude $`|\mathrm{\Delta }(\phi )|`$ and the lower inset the phase $`\theta `$ of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\phi )=|\mathrm{\Delta }|e^{i\theta }`$ calculated for the chiral $`p`$-wave pairing. We observe that $`|\mathrm{\Delta }(\phi )|`$ has maxima at the hot spots angles $`\phi _{\mathrm{hs}}`$, but, unlike in the $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ case, it does not vanish at $`\phi =\pi /4`$ and is not suppressed when the hot spots approach the zone diagonals.

In Fig. 3, we show how various quantities depend on doping $`x`$. Panel (a) shows the hot spot angle $`\phi _{\mathrm{hs}}`$. Panels (b), (c), and (d) show the transition temperature $`T_c`$, the maximal gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{max}}`$, and the condensation energy $`F`$ for the $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ and chiral $`p`$-wave pairings. It is clear from Fig. 3 that, at the doping around $`x8\%`$, where the hot spots approach the zone diagonals closely enough, $`p`$-wave pairing wins over $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ pairing. With further increase of electron doping beyond $`x_{}`$, hot spots disappear, and the proposed $`p`$-wave superconductivity rapidly vanishes, in qualitative agreement with the experimental phase diagram Uchida ; Peng . It would be very interesting to verify this conjecture by ARPES measurements of the hot spots positions simultaneously with the superconducting phase diagram in the electron-overdoped regime.

Notice that the doping $`x_1=8.8\%`$, where the $`T_c`$ curves for $`d`$\- and $`p`$-waves cross in panel (b), is slightly different from the doping $`x_2=6.6\%`$, where the $`F`$ curves cross in panel (c). This means that the critical dopings for the transition from $`d`$\- to $`p`$-wave are slightly different at $`T_c`$ and $`T=0`$. Thus, the $`d`$-$`p`$ transition line, obtained by connecting the transition points at $`T_c`$ and $`T=0`$, is not vertical, as shown in Fig. 4 by the solid line. If a sample has the doping $`x`$ in between $`x_1`$ and $`x_2`$, it should experience a transition from $`p`$-wave to $`d`$-wave with the increase of temperature, as shown in Fig. 4 by the dashed line. This effect was actually observed experimentally in the slightly overdoped samples of $`\mathrm{Pr}_{1.85}\mathrm{Ce}_{0.15}\mathrm{CuO}_4`$ Balci-new . At low temperature, specific heat was found to depend linearly on a magnetic field $`H`$, indicating a fully-gapped pairing potential consistent with $`s`$\- or $`p`$-wave. With the increase of temperature, the field dependence was found to change to $`\sqrt{H}`$, indicating a transition into $`d`$-wave state, as shown in Fig. 4.

In the simplest case, the $`d`$-$`p`$ transition line in Fig. 4 is the first-order phase-transition line. Another possibility, calculated in Ref. Kuboki , is that this line is split into two second-order phase-transition lines, and the $`p`$ and $`d`$ phases coexist in the intermediate region. Which of the two scenarios takes place is determined by the higher-order coefficients of the Landau expansion of the free energy (e.g. see discussion in Ref. Scheven ). Calculations of these coefficients depend on fine details of a theoretical model and may be unreliable, e.g. they may be affected by renormalization Sachdev . Thus, the question of one first-order vs. two second-order transitions between $`d`$\- and $`p`$-wave phases remains open, both theoretically and experimentally. We would like to point out that a similar question applies to a cascade of the magnetic-field-induced phase transitions in observed in organic conductors Scheven . It was found experimentally Scheven  that in high magnetic fields the system exhibits single first-order phase transitions with hysteresis, whereas in lower fields it exhibits double-split second-order phase transitions without hysteresis. Thus, both scenarios can take place in the same sample under different conditions.

Positive $`x`$ in Fig. 3 corresponds to hole doping. At $`x=x_+`$, the hot spots merge and disappear at the van Hove points $`(0,\pi )`$ and $`(\pi ,0)`$. Comparing panels (a) and (b) in Fig. 3, one may notice that the maximum of $`T_c`$ is achieved at a hole doping $`x<x_+`$, and $`T_c`$ rapidly decreases to zero for $`x>x_+`$. Naively one would expect maximal $`T_c`$ at $`x=x_+`$, where the van Hove singularity is at the Fermi surface. However, the four hot spots surrounding each saddle point at $`x<x_+`$ cover more momentum space and, thus, produce a higher $`T_c`$ than at $`x=x_+`$, where the four hot spots merge into one. These results are in qualitative agreement with the phase diagram of $`\mathrm{La}_{2\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{Sr}_\mathrm{x}\mathrm{CuO}_4`$ mapped to the ARPES measurements of its Fermi surface in Figs. 8 and 7 of Ref. Fujimori . In the experiment, the maximal $`T_c`$ is achieved at $`x=15\%`$, the Fermi surface passes through the van Hove points at $`x=22\%`$, and $`T_c`$ vanishes at $`x=27\%`$. Our theoretical Fig. 3 shows the same sequence albeit at different values of $`x`$, because our dispersion law parameters $`t_0`$ and $`t_1`$ in Eq. (2) are not optimized for $`\mathrm{La}_{2\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{Sr}_\mathrm{x}\mathrm{CuO}_4`$.

## V Conclusions

We have shown that, when the hot spots approach the Brillouin zone diagonals in the electron-overdoped cuprates, $`d_{x^2y^2}`$ pairing becomes suppressed and is replaced by either singlet $`s`$-wave or triplet $`p`$-wave pairing. The transition is most likely of the first order as a function of doping $`x`$. To verify the proposed scenario, it is desirable to measure correlation between superconducting $`T_c`$ and the hot spots positions by ARPES. We have given a number of arguments in favor of the triplet $`p`$-wave pairing, which may break the time-reversal symmetry. The Knight shift measurements in different samples of electron-doped cuprates show both singlet Zheng  and triplet Zamborszky  superconducting pairing, which may be an indication of the transition between the two types. Muon spin-relaxation and the scanning SQUID experiments can detect spontaneous violation of the time-reversal symmetry. Relationship between our proposed theoretical scenario of the superconducting symmetry change and the phenomenon of the electron dispersion law flattening is discussed in review Clark .

###### Acknowledgements.

VMY thanks S. E. Brown and H. Balci for sharing their unpublished experimental results Zamborszky  and Balci-new . VAK and VMY thank R. L. Greene for useful discussions, and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at Santa Barbara for the opportunity to start this collaboration. VAK and HK thank the Condensed Matter Theory Center for arranging their visits to the University of Maryland. VMY is supported by the NSF Grant DMR-0137726, HK by the scholarship from Ewha Womans University and by Korean Research Foundation, VAK by the NSF Grant PHY-0140316 and by the McDonnell Center for Space Sciences, and VAK and MVZ by the Grant NS-1885.2003.2 from the Russian Ministry of Industry and Science.

*Note added in proofs.* Recently we became aware of Refs. Honerkamp  and Tremblay , which studied evolution of $`d`$-wave superconductivity in the electron-doped cuprates.