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# LONG-LIVED DOUBLE-BARRED GALAXIES: CRITICAL MASS AND LENGTH SCALES

## 1 Introduction

If long-lived double-barred galactic systems were not observed, explaining the fact would hardly pose a major theoretical challenge. It would be sufficient to suppose a situation whereby generic trajectories transit erratically between motion characteristic of resonant, bar-supporting orbits of the inner and outer bars — their shapes, in the process, supporting neither bar. Indeed, in general, trajectories that can switch between qualitatively different modes of motion, such as those of a pendulum near the vertical point or a ball near the top of the hill of a double-well potential, will be chaotic, unless the system exhibits exceptional symmetry.111In the case of the pendulum, it suffices that it be unperturbed. In fact the resulting “homoclinic” phenomena (which guarantee at least transiently erratic motion) can be taken as to define the phenomenon of dynamical “chaos,” in both its conservative and Hamiltonian manifestations (Holmes 1990; Ruelle 1989). In a galaxy with two bars tumbling with different pattern speeds, there are, in general, no special symmetries, and no corresponding smooth integrals of motion in the phase space.

Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that structures, such as nested bars, can materialize. Shlosman, Frank & Begelman (1989) have analyzed possible formation mechanisms. An argument was put forward that nuclear bars are secondary dynamical features which form due to gravitational instabilities in the gas accumulation within the central kpc and subsequently affect the background stellar component. Probably the most dramatic result of this analysis was that double bar systems spend a large fraction of their lifetime in a dynamically decoupled state, characterized by substantailly different pattern speeds of each bar.

High-resolution ground-based observations have revealed a number of galaxies with a sub-kpc secondary stellar bars (e.g., Buta & Croker 1993; Shaw et al. 1995; Friedli et al. 1996; Jungwiert, Combes & Axon 1997; Mulchaey & Regan 1997; Jogee, Kenney & Smith 1998; Erwin & Sparke 1999; Knapen, Shlosman & Peletier 2000; Emsellem et al. 2001). The first statistics on nested bar galaxies, has been limited exclusively to stellar bars due to superior resolution in detecting the stellar light distribution and kinematics. The most comprehensive, so far, HST survey of 112 galaxies finds that in excess of 20%—25% of disks host double bars, and about 1/3 of all barred galaxies host another (nuclear) bar (Laine et al. 2002). The former can even reach 40% (Erwin & Sparke). A clear indication that nested bars indeed tumble with different pattern speeds comes from their random mutual orientation (Friedli et al.) and, indirectly, from the bimodal length distribution of bars in these systems (Laine et al.)

The frequency of detection of double-barred systems suggests that, at least some of them, can be relatively long-lived. Since we do not expect that they can be built of trajectories that can transit between the modes of motion of the two subsystems, i.e., of untrapped chaotic orbits, we conjecture that such systems are composed of orbits that are trapped either around the outer (primary) or the inner (secondary) bar. Under this assumption (verified a posteriori), the system is made of regular orbits confined to each bar and trapped chaotic orbits in the vicinity of the regular regions.

Within the context of the KAM theorem (e.g., Arnold 1987), the continued stability of quasiperiodic solutions in a dynamical system requires that external perturbations be sufficiently small, in which case most of these orbits remain, even if slightly deformed. Our definition of decoupled bars as simply tumbling with different pattern speeds does not necessarily imply this. This is because the gravitational quadrupole interaction between the bars can, in principle, be strong enough so as to destroy a large fraction of the regular trajectories — which, in general, can result in the dissolution of either, or both, bars. Thus one has to ask under what conditions the supporting trajectories of each bar are also KAM-stable under the influence of the second bar perturbation. This issue is addressed here.

## 2 Model and Method

To answer the questions posed above, we define a generic model and vary its parameters. We find it appropriate to examine motion in a fixed potential, where bar parameters can be set at will, rather than attempt $`N`$-body experiments, and choose variants of one of the models for a double-barred galaxy previously investigated by Shlosman & Heller (2002). These consist of halo and bulge modeled as Plummer spheres (the former with a large core of 10 kpc) and a Miyamoto-Nagai (1975) disk, supplemented by two Ferrers (1877) bars of order 1, with the secondary bar rotating $`8.3`$ times faster than the primary one. The secondary bar mass has been varied by factors 2 and 4, above and below its mass in the Model 1 (hereafter generic model) of Shlosman & Heller. Qualitatively similar results are obtained if one varies the surface density of the secondary by changing its size around generic value, as long as the relevant primary bar orbits are still affected by the quadrupole moment of the secondary bar. The generic ratio of secondary-to-primary bar masses is 0.047 and their surface density ratio about 8. The bar size ratio is 0.08, which positions the secondary corotation between the inner Lindblad resonances (ILRs) of the primary. Each bar comprises about 20% of the total mass within bar radii.

We employ Liapunov exponents (see El-Zant & Shlosman  for complete details) in order to examine the stability of trajectories, and confine ourselves, in this first exploration, to two-dimensional motion. We choose a mesh of a hundred initial positions, equally spaced along the primary bar major axis. Each position is a starting point for a hundred trajectories with normal velocities equally subdivided in the range between $`1.25`$ times the local rotation velocity (excluding the bars’ contributions) to a hundredth of this value. Such initial conditions should adequately describe bar-supporting orbits, i.e., those aligned with each bar. These will mostly be parented by generalizations of the so-called closed $`x_1`$ orbits of single bar systems. As such, their symmetry requires that they, at some stage, cross the major axis of the bar with normal velocities. Starting from these initial values, we advance the trajectories for $`50,000`$ Myr. The rationalization for this particular value was discussed in detail in El-Zant & Shlosman.

## 3 Results

The rationale behind the present work is straightforward: given a primary bar which exists as a long-lived configuration, we are interested in investigating the range of parameters (if any) for which secondary bars are sustainable, yet do not sufficiently interfere with the primary bar dynamics, so as to destroy it.

Our findings are summarized in Fig. 1, where we display the five models with increasing secondary bar mass (by a factor of 2 each from top to bottom). The middle panels (third from the top) are those of the generic model. Specifically, (1) grayshades in the left column show values of the Liapunov exponents, our “measure of chaos;” (2) the middle column marks trajectories whose maximal extension along a bar is twice or more their extension normal to a bar, for both the outer (plus signs) and inner (dots) bars; and (3) the right column exhibits greyshades of axial ratios of orbits. Liapunov timescales are varied from $`10^4`$ Myr (white shades), corresponding to regular orbits, to $`10^2`$ Myr (black shades) corresponding to highly chaotic orbits. The axial ratio, $`pa/b`$, has values greater than unity, for all bar-supporting orbits, in the appropriate bar frame. However, it will be very close to unity in a given bar frame, if the trajectory is not trapped by that bar. It is appropriate, therefore, to take the maximal value of $`p`$ in each of the frames. In scaling the greyshades the following limits are employed: white corresponds to $`p3`$ and black to $`p1`$.

The generic model is characterized with wide regions of trajectories supporting each bar. In particular, almost all orbits corresponding to the secondary bar are aligned with its major axis (middle column) and appear regular (left), most having axial ratios $`p3`$ (right). On the other hand, the top panel has 4 times less massive secondary bar, and the bar surface density ratio of only 2, while most of the parameter space exhibits regular and trapped trajectories within the primary bar. In fact no orbits aligned with the secondary bar have been found for this model, meaning that for this value of the spatial and mass scales, the secondary bar is not dense enough to produce the orbits required to sustain it. As this bar increases its mass (2nd panel), these orbits materialize. Simultaneously, the chaotic region just outside the inner bar (bar-bar interface) expands decreasing orbital support for the primary bar by no longer displaying significant alignment with it, towards the lower panels. This dual behavior defines the critical mass fraction of the secondary bar, about $`2\%5\%`$ of the primary bar. Corresponding surface density ratio is $`48`$. Below this mass (and surface density) the inner bar is not sustainable, and above — the outer bar support is dramatically weakened. On the basis of the left and middle panels of Figure 1, we can safely rule out the top, the fourth and fifth panels. This leaves the second and the third panels — the latter corresponding to the generic model.

Majority of the trajectories aligned with the primary bar and virtually all those aligned with the secondary bar are parented by families analogous to the single-periodic $`x_1`$ family in time-independent single-barred systems, some by higher order families. The symmetry of these orbits requires that one of the coordinates is maximal when the other is null (a variation of 10% on the exact values was introduced to allow for the effect of the perturbing bar). We have verified this by recording the $`y`$-coordinate of maximal $`x`$-excursion and vice versa. Between 1/3 to 2/3 orbits (from the top to bottom panels) of trajectories have been found to be quasi-periodic regular ones, with exponential timescales of the order of a Hubble time or larger. They represent about 50% of trajectories in the generic model. Most ($`50\%70\%`$) of the regular trajectories are elongated in the direction of either bars, when viewed in the relevant frame.

However, a significant fraction of the trajectories supporting the bars includes trapped chaotic orbits. This is especially true in the case of the primary bar, where such trapped orbits constitute about 16% of the supporting trajectories in the generic model. Their fraction peaks at 20% when the secondary bar mass is halved, while they are quickly replaced by “strongly chaotic” orbits when the mass is doubled. Although the trapped trajectories have a non-zero Liapunov exponent, many of them mimic bar-supporting orbits for a Hubble time or so. In general, trapped chaotic trajectories may wander intermittently between regular and chaotic phases with a distribution described by non-standard statistics (Zaslavsky 2002). If the initial conditions are such that a significant number of these trajectories are in a trapped phase, they may be of crucial importance to building such systems as double-barred galaxies. This issue will be elaborated elsewhere.

## 4 Discussion and Conclusions

Observations suggest that galaxies with nested bars are not an exceptional but rather a common phenomenon. However, dynamical and evolutionary consequences of such systems are still unclear in comparison e.g., with important effects of the large-scale stellar bars on galaxy evolution. The steadily increasing spatial resolution of multiwavelength observations will shortly provide the necessary details of stellar and gas kinematics and distribution of star formation in secondary bars confined to the central kpc. Here we outline the parameter space restricted to such long-lived systems. Based on the well-studied, simple but generic example of a double-well oscillator, we suggest that unless one of the bars dominates the gravitational potential, the trajectories should shift erratically between the potential wells formed by the bars, with one or both structures dissolving, thus contradicting the high frequency of double-barred galaxies observed in the local universe.

Indeed, in a somewhat analogous situation of a bar embedded in a non-rotating triaxial halo, we have shown that the bar is unsustainable unless its contribution significantly exceeds that of the halo, in which case it is able to trap its supporting orbits and stabilize (El-Zant & Shlosman 2002). In nested bar systems a similar situation can be constructed by invoking separation of mass and length scales, with each bar dominating its own domain. In the case of spatial scales there seems, in fact, to be observational support for this thesis. Laine et al. (2002) find a bimodal length distribution of bars in double-barred galaxies, with secondary bars confined to within 12% of galactic radius (given by $`D_{25}/2`$). More precisely, while large stellar bars are found to correlate linearly with the disk size, secondary bars do not exhibit this property. A straightforward explanation of this phenomenon is that secondary bars are confined to within the ILR of the primary bar. The ILR is expected to be located where the 3-dimensional nature of the disk cannot be ignored, i.e., at about the bulge radius for early-type (S0-Sb) disks and at about 1 kpc for the late types, where the disk thickness becomes comparable to its radius. This confirms theoretical expectations that ILR serves as a dynamical separator between the bars.

Concurrently, a critical mass necessarily exists for the secondary bar. Below its value, this bar does not generate supporting orbital families, as it is not dense enough to be self-gravitating and to maintain a self-consistent orbital structure. Moreover, above this critical mass, as we have shown here, orbits of the primary bar become substantially affected and destabilized. Consequently, too massive a secondary bar, with major axis extending to near ILR of the primary, will tend to weaken and ultimately dissolve the primary one. The implication being that it is only within a limited range of masses and linear sizes that double-barred systems can develop into long-lived configurations. This raises the following interesting question: how, in practice, is a physical system guided into the limited range of parameter space where it posseses the right phase space structure necessary for its survival?

Although our conclusions are based on purely dynamical considerations, they nevertheless naturally fit the context of a broader physical picture. How can the separation of scales be achieved in a physical configuration? In a pure stellar system, this probably can be obtained through a restrictive set of initial conditions only, i.e., the system is preset to develop double bars (e.g., Friedli & Martinet 1993). A more general way is to invoke the gas redistribution in the galaxy and its accumulation within the central few hundred pc as a precondition to formation and dynamical decoupling of the secondary bars (e.g., Shlosman et al. 1989; Friedli & Martinet 1993; Knapen et al. 1995; Heller, Shlosman & Englmaier 2001). The secondary bars in this latter scenario require a gravitational runaway in the gas to initiate the decoupling. When the gas gravity triggers the cascade of smaller bars, the phenomena is expected to be transient due to the finite gas supply and dissipation present. Stellar secondary bars in this picture are by-products of the runaway, through stellar capture and induced star formation in the gas. These two processes can regulate the parameters of the inner bar so as to be in a critical state of “marginal” self-gravity which also happens to be dynamically long-lived. This can explain the remarkable frequency of double-barred systems, depite their a priori improbability.

In this Letter we have avoided varying the pattern speeds of the bars, assuming that the primary bar extends to near corotation and the secondary comprises about 2/3 of its corotation, as argued in Shlosman & Heller (2002). We also expect that slower rotating secondary bars, with pattern speeds closer to those of the primary ones, will generate more orbital instability, and will, therefore, tend to destroy more of the regular trajectories. This effect is similar to the well known adiabatic invariance (e.g., Arnold 1989), namely, when frequencies differ substantially, averaging over a fast frequency allows one to neglect, to first order, the imposed perturbation.

Finally, it is important to emphasize that the schematic picture whereas bar-supporting orbits are completely regular is an idealization. As we find, in reality many “trapped” chaotic trajectories, constrained in shape to fit the bar pattern for many rotations, also contribute. Enigmatic issues related to their preponderance and importance have been known for decades (e.g., Goodman & Schwarzschild 1981). Yet there is still no systematic manner of characterizing their evolution. We have touched on this role here in a heuristic manner, by employing diagnostics such as orbital axis ratios and maximal extensions within a limited time period. The complex time-dependent structure of these trajectories will be examined elsewhere, by analyzing the time correlations of orbital segments.

This work was supported in part by NASA grants NAG 5-3841, NAG 5-13063, WKU-516140-02-07 and HST GO-08123.01-97A (provided by NASA through a grant from the STScI, which is operated by the AURA, under NASA contract NAS5-26555), and AST 02-06251.


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# Out-of-equilibrium relaxation of a time-dependent effective temperature

## Abstract

Constitutive equations are proposed for the relaxation of a glassy material in contact with a thermal reservoir. The dynamics of a single state variable, identified as an effective temperature accounts for the emergence of glassy behavior at low bath temperature. Memory effect in cooling/reheating experiments are discussed along with several aspects of the response to shear: aging of the response to step strains, response to oscillatory forcing, and steady rheology.

The purpose of the present work is to introduce a limited set of kinetic equations which describe the out-of-equilibrium relaxation of a structural glass and its response to shear deformation. It was originally motivated by recent theories for the plasticity of amorphous solids, falk98 ; falk00  in an attempt to incorporate glassy relaxation at an elementary level. lemaitre02b ; lemaitre02c  A quite simple picture emerges, which accounts for important properties of glassy materials, while its premises may hold for general classes of complex fluids; larson99  it echoes early theories of structural relaxation turnbull61 ; adam65 ; narayanaswamy71 ; moynihan76  in a much more systematic framework, and provides theoretical grounding for phenomenological rate-and-state equations. derec01

We consider, in this study, a piece of material at pressure $`P`$, in contact with a thermal reservoir at temperature $`T`$. We sort the material into subsystems adam65  (or zones) of, say, $`z`$ molecules, and characterize structural disorder by the distribution $`\rho `$ of volumes, $`v_i[v_0,\mathrm{}]`$, or enthalpies ($`h_i=Pv_i`$) of these molecular configurations. ($`v_0`$ is a lower bound imposed by excluded volume effects.) At low $`T`$, the distribution $`\rho `$ evolves slowly, as opposed to the vibrations of the molecular structure which quickly equilibrate with the thermal bath. The evolution of $`\rho `$ is expected to result from transitions between metastable basins in phase space, and these transitions are supposed to be triggered by conformational changes of molecular subsystems (rearrangements). The typical size of a rearranging zones fixes $`z`$, which is here supposed to be independent of $`T`$ and $`P`$. At all times, molecular subsystems are in mechanical contact with neighboring subsystems, hence likely to exchange energy among themselves: very small displacements of the average positions of the molecules are sufficient to ensure these volume (or enthalpy) transfers. Mediated by acoustic modes (phonons), these transfers are thus expected to be fast, collective, processes, in contrast with rearrangements which, at low $`T`$, are expected to be rare, space-localized events.

This observation in the basis of the present work: it permits to separate these two thermodynamic processes (equilibration with the bath v.s. transfers between subsystems) and assume that spatial enthalpy fluctuations equilibrate on timescales at which the system is not in contact with the thermal reservoir. At all time, approximation is made that spatial fluctuations are in “adiabatic equilibrium”, characterized by a ($`P`$,$`H`$)-ensemble: the distribution $`\rho `$ is determined at every single moment by statistical inference: it maximizes entropy under the single constraint that $`H=dh\rho (h)h`$ is known, whence $`\rho (h)=\frac{1}{Z}\mathrm{exp}(\lambda h)`$, with the partition function $`Z=_{h_0=Pv_0}^{\mathrm{}}dh\mathrm{exp}(\lambda h)=(1/\lambda )\mathrm{exp}(\lambda h_0)`$, and where $`\lambda `$ is the Lagrange multiplier that enforces adiabaticity. $`\mathrm{\Theta }=1/(k\lambda )`$ is an effective temperature, but differs from the temperature of the thermal reservoir, unless the system has reached thermal equilibrium. This effective temperature is a generalization of Edwards’: edwards94  I made no assumption here that the system is exploring all configurations of some ergodic component at any relevant timescale but, rather, that, by being very large, it samples, at any single time, all possible configurations allowed by macroscopic constraints. At all time, $`k\mathrm{\Theta }(t)=H(t)Pv_0`$111$`k\mathrm{\Theta }(t)=P(Vv_0)`$ is proportional to a Van der Walls’ free-volume: gallavottibook99  in light of the following discussion, free-volume activation turnbull61  and effective temperature, edwards94  appear to be closelly related concepts.

The previous Ansatz for $`\rho `$ serves here as a basis to investigate the relaxation of the system towards equilibrium. At any time, $`H`$ (or $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$) suffice to characterize the internal state of the material. 222 The limit we consider is in some sense, “opposite” to the mean-field approximation, in which case every variable $`v_i`$ is directly coupled with the average $`\overline{v}`$, whence the full distribution $`\rho (v_i\overline{v})`$ becomes the dynamical variable. We see that the mechanical contacts between subsystems may (below some critical dimension) drastically reduce the dimensionality of the relevant dynamics. Their dynamics is specified by energy conservation: it results from the balance between thermal exchanges with the reservoir (heat) and the work of external forces. Estimating the rate of thermal exchanges with the bath is a difficult task; it requires, in principle, to determine all probabilities $`p(hh^{})`$ for the reconformations of molecular subsystems, leading to:

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}H}{\mathrm{d}t}=dhdh^{}p(hh^{})\rho (h)(h^{}h)+W^{\mathrm{ext}}.$$
(1)
I argue that a generic form of this equation arises from the study of dominant contributions to the integral term. Then, I show that the resulting equation accounts for the emergence of slow relaxation and glassy behavior at low $`T`$, with a marked cooling rate dependence of the glass transition point. A study of the response to shear in various experimental set-up completes my presentation.

Rearrangements correspond to elementary contacts with the thermal reservoir: a fluctuation $`\delta h`$ of enthalpy requires a transfer of heat $`\delta q=\delta h`$ from the thermal reservoir, hence occurs with probability $`\mathrm{exp}(\delta S/k)=\mathrm{exp}(\delta h/(kT))`$. These thermally activated processes are very sensitive to the external constraints imposed on a molecular subsystem by its surroundings: for low $`v`$, the reconformation of the molecules may require to deform their “cage” and pay a consequent price in elastic energy; for large $`v`$, molecules may move freely. Suppose, for the sake of simplicity, that the transitions $`hh^{}`$ are controlled by some energy barrier $`h_b`$ which is a simple function of the volume $`v`$. Obviously, $`h_b(v)`$ must be non-increasing, hence there exist an activation volume $`v_a`$, such that $`h_b(v_a)=Pv_ah_a`$; beyond this point ($`v>v_a`$) the notion of barrier breaks down. Two different families of reactional pathways must be identified: when $`h,h^{}<h_b`$, transitions are activated, and transition state theory indicates that the rates must be written: $`p(hh^{})=\nu \mathrm{exp}((h_bh)/(kT))`$; otherwise, there is no barrier per se and Monte-Carlo weights read: $`p(hh^{})=\nu \mathrm{min}(1,\mathrm{exp}((h^{}h)/(kT)))`$. These transition probabilities verify detailled balance and are continuous functions of either $`h`$ or $`h^{}`$ when they cross $`h_a`$. $`\nu `$ is an update frequency, the temperature dependence of which might be neglected as it brings only minimal corrections. The calculation of the rhs of equation (1) is further simplified by allowing only transitions such that $`hh^{}=\pm \delta q`$; the integral is separated into the sum $`I_1`$ over $`h,h^{}[h_0,h_a]`$, and $`I_2`$ over the complementary domain of integration. It appears that $`I_1`$ (resp. $`I_2`$) is of order $`O((\mathrm{\Theta }T)^2)`$ (resp. $`O(\mathrm{\Theta }T)`$) close to equilibrium, and is proportional to a factor of the form $`\mathrm{exp}(A/(kT))`$ (resp. $`\mathrm{exp}(A^{}/(k\mathrm{\Theta }))`$) when $`\mathrm{\Theta }>>T`$. In both these limits, $`I_1`$ is dominated by $`I_2`$: the dynamics of $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is controlled by the transition pathways (found with a frequency $`\mathrm{exp}(P(v_av_0)/(k\mathrm{\Theta }))`$) which do not involve the crossing of energy barriers. It is therefore sufficient to restrict our discussion to the situation in which $`I_10`$. To fix ideas, I assume that $`h_b(v)\mathrm{}`$ below $`v_a`$ and drops sharply at that point. (Such steep decay of $`h_b`$ is expected, for example, in the case of hard-sphere materials.)

After integration one gets from equation (1):

$$k\dot{\mathrm{\Theta }}=E_1\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }h}{k\mathrm{\Theta }}\right]\left(\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\delta q}{k\mathrm{\Theta }}\frac{\delta q}{kT}\right)1\right)+\sigma \dot{\gamma },$$
(2)
with $`E_1=\nu \delta q`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }h=P(v_av_0)`$. I anticipate here on the second part of this paper where the deformation of a material in a pure shear geometry will be considered: $`\sigma `$ is the (deviatoric) shear stress, $`\dot{\gamma }`$ the plastic strain rate, whence $`W^{\mathrm{ext}}=\sigma \dot{\gamma }`$. The results presented here do not depend qualitativelly on further dependencies of $`E_1`$ on $`T`$ or $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$, which may, however, bring logarithmic corrections.

In the absence of external stress ($`\sigma =0`$), equation (2) admits thermodynamic equilibrium, $`\mathrm{\Theta }=T`$, as its single fixed point. The timescale of the relaxation towards equilibrium increases with decreasing $`T`$, and at low $`T`$ the system may remain out-of-equilibrium on any observable timescale by the mere fact that $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is small (or tries to). When $`\mathrm{\Theta }>>T`$, equation (2) is dominated by:

$$k\dot{\mathrm{\Theta }}=E_1\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }h}{k\mathrm{\Theta }}\right]+\sigma \dot{\gamma }.$$
(3)
In this limit, the long-time relaxation of the variable $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is easily obtained by integrating (3) (with $`\dot{\gamma }\sigma =0`$): $`_{\mathrm{\Theta }_0}^{\mathrm{\Theta }(t)}\mathrm{exp}\left[\mathrm{\Delta }h/k\mathrm{\Theta }\right]kd\mathrm{\Theta }=E_1t`$, and keeping only the dominant contribution: $`k\mathrm{\Theta }(t)\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }h}{\mathrm{log}\left(E_1t/\mathrm{\Delta }h\right)}`$. For finite $`T`$, this process dominates so long as $`t<<\tau _T=\mathrm{\Delta }h\mathrm{exp}\left[\mathrm{\Delta }h/(kT)\right]/E_1`$: $`\tau _T`$ diverges in the limit $`T0`$.

An important property of the glass transition is that the observed transition point depends on the cooling rate. moynihan76 ; larson99  Consider the following experiment: enthalpy is monitored during a steady cooling from an initial temperature $`T_{\mathrm{max}}`$; after reaching $`T_{\mathrm{min}}`$, the temperature is increased at the same rate back to $`T_{\mathrm{max}}`$. This procedure is reproduced here by integrating equation (2) for different cooling/reheating rates. The resulting dynamics are portrayed figure (1) (left), where energy is shown as a function of $`T`$. Slowing down is seen as energy does not reach equilibrium at low temperature; upon reheating, energy does not go back along the same curve. As in the experiments, heat capacity is then extracted from this data according to the formula, $`C_T=\mathrm{d}H/\mathrm{d}T`$; the result is displayed figure (1) (right). The large increase of $`C_T`$ observed upon reheating marks a fictive glass transition point, which clearly depends on the cooling rate.

The rest of this paper is devoted to the study of a material under shear. Like thermal equilibration, the deformation of a material under an applied shear stress is expected to proceed by space-localized rearrangements. falk98  However, the transition pathways that contributes respectivelly to elementary shear and elementary thermal equilibration processes, are not necessarily identical at the molecular level. Therefore they may, in general, display different activation enthalpies. Without more knowledge, we can expect the response to small shear stresses to be of the form: 333 I do not consider, in this work, dynamics of shear transformation zones. falk98

$$\dot{\gamma }=E_0\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}}{k\mathrm{\Theta }}\right]\sigma .$$
(4)
The update frequency $`E_0`$ normalizes the frequency of elementary vibrations, and incorporates corrections specific to this mode of deformation. Any dependency of $`E_0`$ on $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ or $`T`$ is neglected. ($`E_0/E_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }h/\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}`$ are expected to be of order 1.)

With equations (4) and (2) in hands I now study three experimental protocols: aging in the stress-linear response to step strains, response to oscillatory forcing, and rheology of steady deformation.

Aging is characterized by monitoring the response of a material to a perturbation at various times after an initial quench from a high temperature equilibrium state. struik76 ; larson99  The procedure is as follows: At time $`t=0`$, the system is suddenly quenched from an equilibrium state ($`\mathrm{\Theta }_0=T_0`$) to low temperature. Relaxational dynamics take place from then on, and we study the situation when $`\mathrm{\Theta }>>T`$: equation (3) leads at long time to a time-logarithmic decay of enthalpy. At time $`t_w`$, a small strain $`\delta ϵ`$ is applied; it provokes a quasi-instantaneous elastic response $`\sigma =2\mu \delta ϵ`$, followed by a slow occurence of plastic deformations and stress release as: $`\dot{\sigma }=2\mu \dot{\gamma }`$. For small $`\delta ϵ`$, the term $`\dot{\gamma }\sigma `$ in equation (3) is negligible at all times.

At short times, stress decays exponentially, with a timescale, $`\tau _\mathrm{\Theta }=(1/(2\mu E_0))\mathrm{exp}\left[\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}/(k\mathrm{\Theta }_w)\right]`$, which depends only on $`\mathrm{\Theta }_w=\mathrm{\Theta }(t_w)`$. At long-times, stress release is controlled by the slow relaxation of $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$, and integrates as:

$$G(t,t_w)\frac{\sigma (t)}{\sigma (t_w)}\mathrm{exp}\left[A\left(t_w^\beta t^\beta \right)\right]$$

with $`\beta =1\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}}{\mathrm{\Delta }h}`$ and $`A=\frac{2\mu E_0}{\beta }\left(\frac{E_1}{\mathrm{\Delta }h}\right)^{\beta 1}`$. If $`\mathrm{\Delta }h>\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}`$, $`\beta >0`$ and stress undergoes KWW relaxation. The crossover between the short-time exponential relaxation and the long-time streched exponential is illustrated figure (2). A plateau appears in the crossover region: this typical pattern emerges here solely from a change in the dynamical regime of $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$. Relaxation curves for different ages $`t_w`$ are shown figure 3 (top). If fitted by $`\mathrm{exp}(t^\beta /\tau (t_w))`$, it is easy to check that the apparent relaxation timescale $`\tau (t_w)`$ grows like, $`t_w^\alpha `$, with $`\alpha =1\beta `$; this phenomenon, usually refered as sub-aging is here a mere artifact of the lin-log representation: this type of scaling – which are very often used to treat experimental data – may be very misleading and hide, as it does here, the true aging behavior. If $`\mathrm{\Delta }h=\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}`$, $`\beta =0`$, we find $`G(t)1/t`$. If $`\mathrm{\Delta }h<\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}`$, $`\beta <0`$ and stress assumes a non-vanishing asymptotic value after relaxation, which increases with the age of the sample: $`G(t\mathrm{})\mathrm{exp}\left[|A|t_w^{|\beta |}\right]`$.

Another important experimental protocol consist in measuring the in-phase and out-of-phase moduli, $`G^{}`$ and $`G^{\prime \prime }`$, when the material is forced at time $`t_w`$ by an oscillatory shear, $`\gamma (t)=\gamma _0\mathrm{sin}(\omega (tt_w))`$. In practice, the measurement is performed by integrating the response a fixed number of periods $`n`$, for each frequency $`\omega `$. Since the material ages, every point on the spectrum depends on the whole history of the sample prior to its measurement. The resulting $`G^{}`$ and $`G^{\prime \prime }`$ are shown figure 3 (bottom). They clearly show an $`\alpha `$ relaxation peak which, here is solely the signature of the slow evolution of $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$. This peak is obtained for large intervals of the parameters, under the conditions that $`\mu `$ is somewhat large (which, indeed, is reasonable, given the usual values of elastic constants); it weakens with the increasing age of the material.

To conclude this study, let me consider the regime of stationary deformation of the material, at temperature $`T`$, under a constant shear rate $`\dot{\gamma }`$. The steady state value of the variable $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ is the solution of:

$$\dot{\gamma }^2=E_0E_1\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }h+\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}}{k\mathrm{\Theta }}\right]\left(1\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\delta q}{k\mathrm{\Theta }}\frac{\delta q}{kT}\right)\right).$$

For $`\mathrm{\Delta }h=\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}`$, one finds, $`\eta \dot{\gamma }=\sigma (1+\frac{E_0}{E_1}\sigma ^2)^{\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }h}{\delta q}}`$. For $`\mathrm{\Delta }h\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}`$, and $`k\mathrm{\Theta }>>\mathrm{\Delta }h+\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}`$, this solution is dominated by the contribution, $`\mathrm{\Theta }=kT/(1+(kT/\delta q)\mathrm{log}\left(1\dot{\gamma }^2/(E_1E_0)\right))`$ which, for small $`\dot{\gamma }`$, indicates that the system behaves as a newtonian liquid with a viscosity, $`\eta =\mathrm{exp}\left[\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}/kT\right]/E_0`$. For $`kTk\mathrm{\Theta }<<\mathrm{\Delta }h+\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}`$, the solution is dominated by its $`T0`$ value, which leads to a power relation between stress and strain rate: $`\sigma \dot{\gamma }^n`$, with $`n=\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }h\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}}{\mathrm{\Delta }h+\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}}`$.

This study suggest that, in the low temperature regime, there exists a direct relation between the exponent $`\beta `$ (and $`\alpha `$) of the KWW relaxation, and the power law rheology displayed in steady shear. It establishes a relation between two highly dissimilar experimental situations – linear response in the aging regime, and steady shear deformation – in direct relation to the ratio $`\kappa =\mathrm{\Delta }h/\mathrm{\Delta }h^{}`$ between activation barriers associated respectivelly to shear and energy relaxation processes. $`\kappa `$ is expected to depend solely on geometrical aspect of the material: shape of the molecules or polydispersity of colloidal particles. The existence of such a relation can thus be tested experimentally by considering families of closelly related materials in order to allow some variation of the exponents.

The equations proposed here are exaggeratelly simple. Their interest lies in the possibility to account for a whole set of properties commonly associated with the glass transition, in a over-simplified framework, in comparison to other studies of rheology. sollich97  Various aspects of these questions certainly deserve further studies. In particular, a derivation of the transformation rates would bring out much needed information. One may, however, hope that out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics can be defined for structural glasses in terms of a few rate equations for the appropriate set of thermodynamic quantities.

I thank Jean Carlson and Eric Clément for their support and their interest in my research. I am especially grateful to Christiane Caroli and Jim Langer for their suggestions, and their helpful critiques. This work was sponsored by the W. M. Keck Foundation, and the NSF Grant No. DMR-9813752.


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# Pseudogap and Competing States in Underdoped Cuprates

## Abstract

I shall argue that the high $`T_c`$ problem is the problem of doping into a Mott insulator. Furthermore, the well documented pseudo-gap phenomenon in underdoped cuprates holds the key to understanding this physics. Phase fluctuation alone cannot explain this phenomenon, but there is a clear need to identify a competing state which lives in the vortex core. The staggered flux state is a good candidate for the competing state and experimental tests of these ideas will be discussed.

,

thanks: E-mail: palee@mit.edu

In the past several years, a concensus has begun to emerge that the phenomenon of high temperature superconductivity in cuprates is associated with doping into a Mott insulator. The undoped material is an antiferromagnet with a large exchange energy $`J`$ of order 1500 K. The doped holes hop with a matrix element $`t`$, which is estimated to be approximately $`3J`$. However, the Néel state is not favorable for hole hopping, because after one hop the spin finds itself in a ferromagnetic environment. Thus it is clear that the physics is that of competition between the exchange energy $`J`$ and the hole kinetic energy per hole $`xt`$. Apparently the superconducting state emerges as the best compromise, but how and why this occurs is the central question of the high Tc puzzle. In the underdoped region this competition results in physical properties that are most anomalous. The metallic state above the superconducting Tc behaves in a way unlike anything we have encountered before. Essentially, an energy gap appears in some properties and not others, and this metallic state has been referred to as the pseudogap state. We will focus our attention on this region because the phenomenology is well established and we have the best chance of sorting out the fundamental physics.

The pseudogap phenomenon is most clearly seen in the uniform susceptibility. For example, Knight shift measurement in the YBCO 124 compound shows that while the spin susceptibility $`\chi _s`$ is almost temperature independent between 700 K and 300 K, as in an ordinary metal, it decreases below 300 K and by the time the Tc of 80 K is reached, the system has lost 80% of the spin susceptibility. To emphasize the universality of this phenomenon, I reproduce in Fig. 1 some old data on YBCO and LSCO. Figure 1(a) shows the Knight shft data from Alloul et al. from 1989. I have subtracted the orbital contribution, which is generally agreed to be 150 ppm, and drawn in the zero line to highlight the spin contribution to the Knight shift which is proportional to $`\chi _s`$. The proportionality constant is known which allows us to draw in the Knight shift which corresponds to the 2D square $`S=\frac{1}{2}`$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet with $`J=0.13`$ eV. The point of this exercist is to show that in the underdoped region, the spin susceptibility drops below that of the Heisenberg model at low temperatures before the onset of superconductivity. This trend continues even in the severely underdoped limit (O0.53 to O0.41), showing that the $`\chi _s`$ reduction cannot simply be understood as fluctuations towards the antiferromagnet. Note that the discrepancy is worse if $`J`$ were replaced by a smaller $`J_{eff}`$ due to doping, since $`\chi _sJ_{eff}^1`$. The data seen in this light strongly point to singlet formation as the origin of the pseudogap seen in the uniform spin susceptibility.

It is worth noting that the trend shown in Fig. 1 is not so apparent if one looks at the measured spin susceptibility directly. This is because the van Vleck part of the spin susceptibility is doping dependent, due to the changing chain contribution. This problem does not arise for LSCO, and in Fig. 1(b) we show the uniform susceptibility data. The zero of the spin part is determined by comparing susceptibility measurements to 17O Knight shift data. Nakano et al. find an excellent fit for the $`x=0.15`$ sample (see Fig. 9 of ref. 7) and determine the orbital contribution for this sample to be $`\chi _00.4\times 10^7`$ emu/g. This again allows us to plot the theoretical prediction for the Heisenberg model. Just as for YBCO, $`\chi _s`$ for the underdoped samples ($`x=`$0.1 and 0.08) drops below that of the Heisenberg model. In fact, the behavior of $`\chi _s`$ for the two systems is remarkably similar, especially in the underdoped region.

A second indication of the pseudogap comes from the linear $`T`$ coefficient of the specific heat, which shows a marked decrease below room temperature. It is apparent that the spins are forming into singlets and the spin entropy is gradually lost. On the other hand, the frequency dependent conductivity behaves very differently depending on whether the electric field is in the $`ab`$ plane $`(\sigma _{ab})`$ or perpendicular to it $`(\sigma _c)`$. At low frequencies (below 500 cm-1) $`(\sigma _{ab})`$ shows a typical Drude-like behavior for a metal with a width which decreases with temperature, but an area (spectral weight) which is independent of temperature. Thus there is no sign of the pseudogap in the spectral weight. This is surprising because in other examples where an energy gap appears in a metal, such as the onset of charge or spin density waves, there is a redistribution of the spectral weight from the Drude part to higher frequencies. On the other hand below 300 K $`\sigma _c(\omega )`$ is gradually reduced for frequencies below 500 cm-1 and a deep hole is carved out of $`\sigma _c(\omega )`$ by the time Tc is reached. Finally, angle-resolved photoemission shows that an energy gap (in the form of a pulling back of the leading edge of the electronic spectrum from the Fermi energy) is observed near momentum $`(0,\pi )`$ and the onset of superconductivity is marked by the appearance of a small coherent peak at this gap edge.

The pseudogap phenomenology is well explained by a cartoon picture which emerges from the RVB (resonating valence band) theory of Anderson. The spins are paired into singlet pairs. However, the pairs are not static but are fluctuating due to quantum mechanical superposition, hence the term quantum spin liquid. The singlet formation explains the appearance of the spin gap and the reduction of spin entropy. The doped holes appear as vacancies in the background of singlet pair liquid and can carry a current without any energy gap. However in $`c`$-axis conductivity and electron is removed from one plane and placed on the next. The intermediate state is an electron which carries spin 1/2 and therefore it is necessary to break a singlet pair and pay the spin-gap energy. The same consideration applies to the photoemission experiment. Finally, according to RVB theory, superconductivity emerges when the holes become phase coherent. The spin singlet familiar in the BCS theory has already been formed.

While the above picture is appealing, there has been another popular explanation. The idea is that the pseudogap phenomenology can be understood as a superconductor with robust amplitude but strong phase fluctuation. The superfluid density $`\rho _s`$ which controls the phase stiffness is proportional to the doping concentration $`x`$ and becomes small in the underdoped region. As emphasized by Uemura and by Emery and Kivelson, Tc is controlled by $`\rho _s`$ and is much lower than the energy gap. We shall now argue that phase fluctuations cannot be the whole story. Setting aside the question of where the strong pairing amplitude comes from in the first place, that the phase fluctuation scenairo is incomplete can be seen from the following argument. In two dimensions the destruction of superconducting order is via the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) theory of vortex unbinding. Above Tc the number of vortices proliferate and the normal metallic state is reached only when the vortex density is so high that the cores overlap. At lower vortex density, transport properties will resemble a superconductor in the flux flow regime. In ordinary superconductors, the BKT temperature is close to the mean field temperature, and the core energy rapidly becomes small. However, in the present case, it is postulated that the mean field temperature is high, so that a large core energy is expected. Indeed, in a conventional core the order parameter and energy gap vanish, costing $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0^2/E_F`$ per unit area of energy. Using a core radius of $`\xi =V_F/\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$, the core energy of a conventional superconductor is $`E_F`$. In our case, we may replace $`E_F`$ by $`J`$. If this were the case, the proliferation of vortices would not happen until a high temperature $`J`$ independent of $`x`$ is reached. Thus for the phase fluctuation scenario to to work, it is essential to have “cheap” vortices, with energy cost of order Tc. Then the essential problem is to understand what the vortex core is made of. Put another way, there has to be a competing state with energy very close to the $`d`$-wave superconductors which constitute the core. The vortex core indeed offers a glimpse of the normal state reached when $`H`$ exceeds $`H_{c2}`$, and is an important constituent of the pseudogap state above Tc.

What are the candidates for the competing order? A candidate which has attracted a lot of attention is the stripe phase. In the LSCO familty, dynamical stripes (spin density waves) are clearly important, especially near $`x=\frac{1}{8}`$. There are recent report of incommensurate SDW nucleating around vortices. However, until now there has been little evidence for stripes outside of the LSCO family. On the theoretical side, as a competing state it is not clear how the stripes are connected to $`d`$-wave superconductivity and it is hard to understand how the nodal quasiparticles turn out to be most sharply defined on the Fermi surface, since these have to transverse the stripes at a $`45^{}`$ angle.

A second candidate for the vortex core is the antiferromagnetic state. This possibility was first proposed several years ago in the context of the SO(5) theory. This theory is phenomenological in that it involves only bosonic degrees of freedom (the SDW and pairing order parameters). The quasiparticles are out of the picture. Thus the fundamental question of how the holes are accommodated has not really been addressed. There are reports of enhanced antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations, and perhaps even static order, using NMR. I shall argue next that other considerations also lead to antiferromagnetic fluctuations and possibly static orders inside the vortex core, so that the observation of antiferromagnetic cores does not necessarily imply the existence of SO(5) symmetry.

Finally, I come to the candidate which we favor — the staggered flux state with orbital currents. Indeed, using the staggered flux state as the core, Lee and Wen have successfully constructed a “cheap” vortex state. The staggered flux phase has an advantage over other possibilities in that its excitation spectrum is similar to the $`d`$-wave superconductor and the SU(2) theory allows us to smoothly connect it to the superconductivity. We also regard the staggered flux phase as the precursor to Néel order, so that antiferromagnetic fluctuations or even SDW order are accommodated naturally. Of course, it is experiments which have the final say as to which candidate turns out to be realized. Our strategy is to work out as many experimental consequences as we can and propose experiments to confirm or falsify our theory.

The staggered flux state was first introduced as a mean field solution at half-filling and later was extended to include finite doping. At half-filling, due to the constraint of no double occupation, the staggered flux state corresponds to an insulating state with power law decay in the spin correlation function. It is known that upon including gauge fluctuations which enforce the constraint, the phenomenon of confinement and chiral symmetry breaking occurs, which directly corresponds to Néel ordering. The idea is that with doping, confinement is suppressed at some intermediate energy scale, due to screening by holes and to dissipation. As the temperature is lowered, the pseudogap state emerges which can be understood as fluctuating between the staggered flux state and the $`d`$-wave superconducting state. As still lower tamperature, the staggered flux states become dilute and form the core of fluctuating $`hc/2e`$ vortices. Finally, the vortices bind via the BKT transition and the $`d`$-wave superconducting state is the stable ground state. Thus the staggered flux state may be regarded as the “mother state” which is an unstable fixed point due to gauge fluctuations. It flows to Néel ordering at half-filling and to the $`d`$-wave superconductor for sufficiently large $`x`$. Thus the staggered flux state plays a central role in this kind of theory. This picture is depicted schematically in Fig. 2. We should point out that the staggered flux state (called the $`D`$-density wave state) has recently been proposed as the ordered state in the pseudogap region. As explained elsewhere, we think that this view is not supported by experiment and we continue to favor the fluctuation picture.

The above picture finds support from studies of projected wavefunctions, where the no-double-occupation constraint is enforced by hand on a computer. With doping the best state is a projected $`d`$-wave state. This state can explain many of the properties of the superconductor, as recently discussed by Paramekanti et al. It is natural to consider the projected staggered flux state (at finite doping) as a trial wavefunction for the “normal state” which exists inside the vortex core. The energy difference between this and the projected $`d`$-wave superconductor may be considered the condensation energy. The condensation energy per site computed this way is shown in Fig. 3. Note the dome shape which is reminiscent of the $`T_c`$ curve and the rather small value for the condensation energy, consistent with our expectation based on the SU(2) idea. Another interesting quantity we calculated is the current-current correlation function for the projected $`d`$-wave BCS wavefunction: $`c_j(k,\mathrm{})=<j(k)j(\mathrm{})>`$ where $`j(k)`$ is the physical electron current on the bond $`k`$. The average current $`<j(k)>`$ is obviously zero, but the correlator exhibits a staggered circulating pattern. Such a pattern is absent in the $`d`$-wave BCS state before projection, and is a result of the Gutzwiller projection. Our result for $`c_j`$ is consistent with exact diagonalization of two holes in 32 sites.

The staggered current generates a staggered physical magnetic field (estimated to be 10–40 gauss) which may be detected, in principle, by neutron scattering. In practice the small signal makes this a difficult, though not impossible experiment and we are motivated to look for situations where the orbital current may become static or quasi-static. Recently, we analyzed the structure of the $`hc/2e`$ vortex in the superconducting state within the SU(2) theory and concluded that in the vicinity of the vortex core, the orbital current becomes quasi-static, with a time scale determined by the tunnelling between two degenerate staggered flux states. It is very likely that this time is long on the neutron time scale. Thus we propose that a quasi-static peak centered around $`(\pi ,\pi )`$ will appear in neutron scattering in a magnetic field, with intensity proportional to the number of vortices. The time scale may actually be long enough for the small magnetic fields generated by the orbital currents to be detectable by $`\mu `$-SR or Yttrium NMR. Again, the signal should be proportional to the external fields. (The NMR experiment must be carried out in 2–4–7 or 3 layer samples to avoid the cancellation between bi-layers.) We have also computed the tunnelling density of states in the vicinity of the vortex core, and predicted a rather specific kind of period doubling which should be detectable by atomic resolution STM. The recent report of a static field of $`\pm 18`$ gauss in underdoped YBCO which appears in the vortex state is promising, even though muon cannot distinguish between orbital current or spin as the origin of the magnetic field. We remark that in the underdoped antiferromagnet, the local moment gives rise to a field of 340 gauss at the muon site. Thus if the 18 gauss signal is due to spin, it will correspond to roughly $`1/20`$th of the full moment.

We remark that our analytic model of the vortex core is in full agreement with the numerical solution of unrestricted mean field $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{ij}`$ and $`\chi _{ij}`$ by Wang, Han and Lee and Ogata and collaborators. Recently we found that for small doping in the $`t`$-$`J`$ model a small moment SDW co-exists with orbital currents in the vortex core. More generally, we expect $`(\pi ,\pi )`$ spin fluctuations to be enhanced so that the tendency to antiferromagnetism is fully compatible with the staggered flux picture. This vortex solution is also interesting in that the tunnelling density of states show a gap, with no sign of the large resonance associated with Caroli-deGennes-type core levels found in the standard BCS model of the vortex. The low density of states inside the vortex core has an important implication. In the standard Bardeen-Stephen model of flux-flow resistivity, the friction coefficient of a moving vortex is due to dissipation associated with the vortex core states. Now that the core states are absent, we can expect anomalously small friction coefficients for underdoped cuprates. The vortex moves fast transverse to the current and gives rise to large flux-flow resistivity. Since the total conductivity is the sum of the flux-flow conductivity and the quasiparticle conductivity, it is possible to get into a situation where the quasiparticle conductivity dominates even for H $``$ Hc2. Thus the “cheap” and “fast” vortex opens the possibility of having vortex states above the nominal Tc and Hc2, when the resistivity looks like that of a metal, with little sign of flux-flow contribution. From this point of view, the large Nerst effect observed by Ong and co-workers  over a large region in the H-T plane above the nominal Tc and Hc2 (as determined by resistivity) may be qualitatively explained. The schematic phase diagram is shown in Fig. 2.

I thank X.-G. Wen, N. Nagaosa, D. Ivanov, J. Kishine and Y. Morita for their collaboration on the work reviewed here. I acknowledge the support of NSF through the MRSEC program with grant number DMR 02–13282.


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# Quantum teleportation with a quantum dot single photon source

Also with: \]NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Atsugishi, Kanagawa, Japan.

Also with: \]NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Atsugishi, Kanagawa, Japan.

## Abstract

We report the experimental demonstration of a quantum teleportation protocol with a semiconductor single photon source. Two qubits, a target and an ancilla, each defined by a single photon occupying two optical modes (dual-rail qubit), were generated independently by the single photon source. Upon measurement of two modes from different qubits and postselection, the state of the two remaining modes was found to reproduce the state of the target qubit. In particular, the coherence between the target qubit modes was transferred to the output modes to a large extent. The observed fidelity is 80 %, a figure which can be explained quantitatively by the residual distinguishability between consecutive photons from the source. An improved version of this teleportation scheme using more ancillas is the building block of the recent KLM proposal for efficient linear-optics quantum computation E.Knill et al. (2000).

Photons are almost ideal carriers of quantum information, since they have little interaction with their environment, and are easy to manipulate individually with linear-optics. The main challenge of optical quantum information processing is the design of controlled interactions between photons, necessary for the realization of non-linear quantum gates. Photons do not naturally ”feel” the presence of other photons, unless they propagate in a medium with high optical non-linearity. The amount of optical non-linearity required to perform controlled operations between single photons is however prohibitively large.

Probabilistic gates can be implemented with linear-optics only Ralph et al. (2002); E.Knill et al. (2000); Pitman et al. (2003), but as such, they are not suitable for scalable quantum computation. In a seminal paper D.Gottesman and I.L.Chuang (1999), Gottesman and Chuang suggested that quantum gates could be applied to photonic qubits through a generalization of quantum teleportation Bennett et al. (1993). In such a scheme, the information about the gate is contained in the state of ancilla qubits. The implementation of a certain class of gates can then be reduced to the problem of preparing the ancilla qubits in some wisely chosen entangled state. Such a problem can be solved ”off-line” with linear-optics elements only, provided the photons used are quantum mechanically indistinguishable particles Bouwmeester et al. (1997). Following this idea, Knill, Laflamme and Milburn (KLM) E.Knill et al. (2000) proposed a scheme for efficient linear-optics quantum computation (LOQC) based on the implementation of the controlled-sign gate (C-z gate) through teleportation. Since the C-z gate acts effectively on only one of the two modes composing the target qubit, a simplified procedure can be used where a single optical mode is teleported, instead of the two modes composing the qubit.

This procedure will be referred to as single mode teleportation to distinguish it from the usual teleportation scheme. In its basic version using one ancilla qubit (ie two ancilla modes), this procedure succeeds half of the time. In its improved version using an arbitrarily high number of ancillas, it can succeed with a probability arbitrarily close to one E.Knill et al. (2000); Franson et al. (2002).

In this paper, we report an experimental demonstration of the basic version of the single mode teleportation. We use quantum mechanically indistinguishable photons from a quantum dot single photon source C.Santori et al. (2001), featuring high suppression of two-photon pulses. The fidelity of the teleportation depends critically on the quantum indistinguishability of two photons emitted independently by the single photon source, a feature that was experimentally verified in C.Santori et al. (2002). A similar experiment was done in the past using two photons emitted spontaneously by parametric down conversion (PDC) E.Lombardi et al. (2002). However, the efficiency of such a process is intrinsically limited by the presence of two-photon pulses, which makes it unsuitable when more identical photons are needed, e.g. to implement the improved teleportation scheme. To date, the demonstration of the single mode teleportation with a single photon source remained a capital step to be achieved towards scalable LOQC.

The single mode teleportation in its simplest form involves two qubits, a target and an ancilla, each defined by a single photon occupying two optical modes (see fig 1). The target qubit can a priori be in an arbitrary state $`\alpha |0_L+\beta |1_L`$ where the logical $`|0_L`$ and $`|1_L`$ states correspond to the physical states $`|1_1|0_2`$ and $`|0_1|1_2`$ respectively in a dual rail representation. The ancilla qubit is prepared with a beam-splitter (BS a) in the coherent superposition $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0_L+|1_L)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|1_3|0_4+|0_3|1_4)`$. One rail of the target (mode 2) is mixed with one rail of the ancilla (mode 3) with a beam-splitter (BS 1), for subsequent detection in photon counters C and D. For a given realization of the procedure, if only one photon is detected at detector C, and none at detector D, then we can infer the resulting state for the output qubit - composed of mode (1) and (4) :

$$\psi _C=\alpha |0_L+\beta |1_L=\alpha |1_1|0_4+\beta |0_1|1_4$$

which is the initial target qubit state. Similarly, if D clicks and C does not, then the output state is inferred to be:

$$\psi _D=\alpha |0_L\beta |1_L=\alpha |1_1|0_4\beta |0_1|1_4$$

which again is the target state up to an additional phase shift of $`\pi `$, which can be actively corrected for Giacomini et al. (2002). We did not implement this active feedforward here. Half of the time, either zero or two photons are present at counters C or D, and the teleportation procedure fails. It is interesting and somewhat enlightening to describe the same procedure in the framework of single rail logic. In this framework, each optical mode supports a whole qubit, encoded in the presence or absence of a photon, and the single mode teleportation can be viewed as entanglement swapping. Indeed, for the particular values $`\alpha =\beta =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$ modes 1 and 2 find themselves initially in the Bell state $`|\psi ^+_{12}`$, while modes 3 and 4 are in a similar state $`|\psi ^+_{34}`$. A partial Bell measurement takes place using BS 1 and counters C/D, which if it succeeds leaves the system in the entangled state $`|\psi ^+_{14}`$, so that entanglement swapping occurs. In the rest of the paper, we choose to consider the scheme in the dual rail picture, since it is a more robust, hence realistic way of storing quantum information (at the expense of using two modes per qubit).

The success of the teleportation depends mainly on the transfer of coherence between the two modes of the target qubit. If the target qubit is initially in state $`|0_L=|1_1|02`$, then the ancilla photon cannot end up in mode (4) because of the postselection condition, so that the output state is always $`|1_1|04`$ as wanted. The same argument applies when the target qubit is in state $`|1_L`$. However, when the target qubit is in a coherent superposition of $`|0_L`$ and $`|1_L`$, the output state might not retrieve the full initial coherence. We can test the transfer of coherence by preparing the target in a maximal superposition state:

$$\psi _{tar}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|0_L+e^{i\varphi }|1_L\right)$$

where $`\varphi `$ is a phase that we can vary. If the initial coherence of the target qubit is not transferred to the output qubit, a change in $`\varphi `$ will not induce any measurable change in the output qubit. However, if changing $`\varphi `$ induces some measurable change in the output qubit, then we can prove that the initial coherence was indeed transferred, at least to some extent.

The experimental setup is shown in fig. 2. Two photons emitted consecutively by the single quantum dot photon source C.Santori et al. (2001, 2002) are captured in a single mode fiber. In the dual rail representation, we refer to the first photon as the ancilla, and to the second photon as the target (see fig 1). The ancilla qubit, initially in state $`|0_L`$, is delayed in free space to match the target qubit temporally at BS 1. The delay must be adjusted to within a fraction of the photons temporal width ($``$ 200 ps or 6 cm in space). Note that the mode matching is significantly easier here than in similar experiments using photons from PDC, where the optical path length have to be adjusted with a tolerance of only a few microns E.Lombardi et al. (2002).

The ancilla is prepared in the superposition state $`\psi _{anc}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|0_L+|1_L\right)`$ with a beam-splitter ’BS a’. The target qubit is prepared in a similar superposition state, with in addition a variable phase between the two modes, so that $`\psi _{tar}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|0_L+e^{i\varphi }|1_L\right)`$. The phase shift is applied by changing the path length on mode (1) with a piezo-actuated miror. The ”partial Bell measurement” responsible for the teleportation is done at BS 1 by mixing the optical modes (2) of the target qubit and (3) of the ancilla qubit, with subsequent detection in counter C. A Mach-Zehnder type setup is used to measure the coherence between the two modes (1) and (4) of the output qubit. It is composed of a 50-50 beam-splitter BS 2 mixing modes (1) and (4), with subsequent detection in counters A and/or B. Modulating the phase $`\varphi `$ of the target qubit should result in the modulation of the count rate in detector A and B (conditioned on a click at detector C), with a contrast related to the degree of coherence between the output modes (1) and (4).

Coincidences between counters A-C and B-C were simultaneously recorded, by using a start-stop configuration (each electronic ”start” pulse generated by counter C was doubled for this purpose). This detection method naturally post-selects events where one photon went through BS 1, and the other went through BS 2, as required by the teleportation scheme. Since no more than one photon is emitted by the single photon source, no photon can reach detector D. Typical correlation histograms are shown in fig 3. The integration time was 2 min, short enough to keep the relative optical path length between different arms (1-4) of the interferometer stable. The whole setup was made compact for that purpose, and stability over time periods as long as 10 min was observed. A second post-selection was made, depending on the timing between target and ancilla photons, which is adequate only one time out of four - the ancilla taking the long path and the target the short path. The resulting coincidence counts were recorded for different phases $`\varphi `$ of the target qubit. The result of the experiment is shown in fig. 4. The number of counts recorded in the post-selected window (-1 ns $`<\tau <`$ 1 ns) was normalized by the total number of counts recorded in detectors A and B in the broader window -5 ns $`<\tau <`$ 5 ns, corresponding to all events where one photon went through BS 1 and the other through BS 2 (but only one quarter of the time with right timing). Complementary oscillations are clearly observed at counter A and at counter B, indicating that the initial coherence was indeed transferred to the output qubit. In other words, mode (2) of the target qubit was ”replaced” by mode (4) of the ancilla without a major loss of coherence.

If the initial coherence was fully conserved during the single mode transfer, the state of the output qubit would truly be $`\alpha |0_L+\beta e^{i\varphi }|1_L`$, and the single count rate at detector A (resp. B) would be proportional to $`cos^2(\frac{\varphi }{2})`$ (resp. $`sin^2(\frac{\varphi }{2})`$), giving a perfect contrast as the target phase $`\varphi `$ is varied. More realistically, part of the coherence can be lost in the transfer, resulting in a degradation of the contrast. Such a degradation is visible on fig. 4. It arises mainly due to a residual distinguishability between ancilla and target photons. Slight misalignments and imperfections in the optics also result in an imperfect mode matching at BS 1 and BS 2, reducing the contrast further. Finally, the residual presence of two-photon among pulses can reduce the contrast even more, although this effect is negligible here. The overlap V = $`\psi _{tar}\psi _{anc}`$ between target and ancilla wave-packets C.Santori et al. (2002), the two-photon pulses suppression factor $`g^{(2)}`$ C.Santori et al. (2001), as well as the non-ideal mode matching at BS 1 and BS 2 - characterized by the first-order interference visibilities $`V_1`$, $`V_2`$ \- were all measured independently. The results are $`V0.75`$ (measured with the setup described in C.Santori et al. (2002)), $`g^{(2)}(0)2\%`$, $`V_10.92`$ and $`V_20.91`$. The contrast $`C`$ in counts at detector A or B when we vary the phase $`\varphi `$ should be:

$$C=\frac{VV_1V_2}{1+g^{(2)}/2}0.62$$

This predicted value compares well with the experimental value of $`C_{exp}0.60`$.

The fidelity of teleportation is $`F=\frac{1+C}{2}0.8`$. This high value is still not enough to meet the requirements of efficient LOQC E.Knill et al. (2000). In particular, the quantum indistinguishability of the photons must be increased further to meet these requirements. In our single photon source, a dephasing mechanism acting on a time scale of a few nanoseconds Fattal et al. (2003) is responsible for the loss of indistinguishability. Using the Purcell effect Vučković et al. (2002), one can reduce the quantum dot radiative lifetime well below this dephasing time. However, current jitter in the photon emission time will eventually prevent any further reduction of the quantum dot lifetime. Time jitter happens as a consequence of the incoherent character of our method to excite the quantum dot C.Santori et al. (2001). It is currently of order 10 ps. Time jitter can be completely suppressed using a coherent excitation technique (see e.g. A.Kuhn et al. (2002) for such a scheme with single atoms). It therefore seems important to develop such techniques on single quantum dots.

Using more ancillas in a scheme first proposed in E.Knill et al. (2000) and significantly improved in Franson et al. (2002), the single mode teleportation can be made nearly deterministic. This would allow the replacement of deterministic non-linear gates necessary for scalable quantum computation with probabilistic ones, recently demonstrated experimentally with linear optics Pitman et al. (2003). This generalized teleportation procedure requires more indistinguishable ancilla photons, produced no more than one at a time, a feature absent in E.Lombardi et al. (2002) but present in our implementation of the teleportation. We also point out that the generalized scheme requires the discrimination of different photon numbers. Progress in this direction were reported in Waks et al. (2003), in which photon numbers up to six could be discriminated. This would in principle allow the implementation of a linear-optics C-z gate with a success probability of $`\left(\frac{6}{7}\right)^20.73`$ Franson et al. (2002).

In conclusion, we have demonstrated the basic version of the single mode teleportation procedure described in the KLM scheme with independent single photons and linear-optics. LOQC has emerged in recent years as an appealing alternative to previous quantum computation schemes, and to date there had been no experimental proof of principle except for those based on parametric down conversion, a technique that sets limits to the scalability of the system. Our experiment suggests that it is possible to build an efficient QIP unit using single photon sources and linear-optics, provided the photons generated are indistinguishable.


text:
# Capturing a star formation burst in galaxies infalling onto the cluster Abell 1367

## 1 Introduction

As part of an $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ survey of nearby clusters of galaxies (Iglesias-Paramo et al. 2002) we observed the field centered on NGC3860, projected near the X-ray center of the cluster Abell 1367 (Donnely et al. 1998). Observations taken in the H$`\alpha `$ line provide the most direct probe of the current ($`t`$ $`<`$ 20 Myr) formation of massive ($`m`$ $`>`$ 10 M) stars (Kennicutt 1989). These observations provided us with a dozen star-forming galaxies around NGC3860, an exceedingly high density of such objects.
Meanwhile Sakai et al. (2001, 2002) independently observed the region with a similar observational setup, pointing out the uniqueness of the star forming properties in this particular area of the sky.
Redshift measurements obtained by the two groups independently revealed that the star forming galaxies belong to a compact group with a recessional velocity exceeding that of the cluster by $`1800\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Sakai et al. (2002) speculate that the enhanced star formation was triggered internally to the group itself, by tidal interaction among its galaxies, independently from the presence of A1367.
Here we report111Based on observations taken at the INT, SPM, Loiano, and Calar Alto observatories. The INT is part of the of the Isaac Newton group of telescopes (ING) located at the Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, Spain. The SPM observatory belongs to O.A.N de Mexico. The Loiano observatory belongs to the University of Bologna. The Calar Alto observatory is operated by the Centro Astronomico Hispano Aleman. on our $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ observations and on spectroscopy of the star forming galaxies.
The paper is arranged as follows. The observations and the data reduction procedures are described in Section 2. In Section 3 we try to characterize the nature of the group by sketching a possible 3-D picture. In Section 4 we discuss the interpretation proposed by Sakai et al. (2002) and we sketch an alternative scenario for this unusual star formation event based on the interaction between the group and the cluster. A Hubble constant of $`H_o`$ = 75 km s-1 Mpc-1 is used throughout this paper.

## 2 Observations

### 2.1 Imaging

As part of the $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ survey of A1367 (Iglesias-Paramo et al. 2002) we obtained one hour integration of the cluster central region using the Wide Field Camera (WFC) attached to the 2.5 m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) through a narrow band filter centered at $``$ 6725 Å, covering the redshifted $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ and \[NII\] lines. The underlying continuum was taken through the (Sloan-Gunn) $`r^{}`$ broad band red filter with an exposure of 15 min. Since the region of interest around NGC3860 was partly hidden by the gap between two chips of the camera, in march 2002 we obtained one additional 2 hours $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ exposure (20 min in the continuum) with the 2.1m telescope at San Pedro Martir (Mexico), with a similar experimental setup. All images were obtained in photometric conditions with a seeing of $``$ 1.8 arcsec. The photometric calibration was obtained exposing the star Feige 34. The individual images were bias subtracted and flat-fielded using combinations of exposures of empty fields taken at twiglight and re-binned to a common pixel size. After background subtraction the intensity in the combined OFF-band frames was normalized to that of the combined ON-band one using the flux ratio of several field stars. The combined NET frame was obtained by subtraction of the OFF from the ON frame. The resulting stacked frames, corresponding to 3 hours (ON-band) and 35 min (OFF-band) of integration time are shown in Figs. 1, 2 and 3. Fig. 1 is a synthesized-color image whose Red, Green and Blue channels were given to the $`r^{}`$, ON-band and NET $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ frames respectively. Fig. 2 shows the red continuum frame. Fig. 3 shows the NET (ON - OFF-band) frame. The sky noise in all frames increases noticeably western of $`\mathrm{RA}=11^\mathrm{h}44^\mathrm{m}48^\mathrm{s}`$, the edge of the WFC image, where the exposures consist only of the 2 hours taken at SPM.

### 2.2 Spectroscopy

The redshift of 5 dwarf systems in the region were obtained in February 2002 and in January 2003 using the BFOSC spectrograph attached to the Cassini 1.5m telescope of the University of Bologna located at Loiano. Spectra of another 4 dwarf systems were obtained in April 2002 using the CAFOS spectrograph attached to the 2.2m telescope at Calar Alto (Spain). Both spectrographs were equipped with low dispersion ($`R500800`$) grisms. In spite of the small telescopes used, the strong H$`\alpha `$ line prompted us with the redshift of these faint objects in short (15-20 min) exposures. Objects Dw1, Dw2, K5 and 97-114b show \[OIII\] ($`\lambda 4959,5007`$ Å) lines in addition to H$`\alpha `$, but, unlike those obtained by Sakai et al. (2002) with the refurbished MMT, our 1.5m spectra are of insufficient quality for measuring abundances.
Higher resolution spectroscopy was also acquired with BFOSC using a $`R2300`$ grism for two giant galaxies: CGCG97-125, CGCG97-114 and for the dwarfs Dw1 and Dw2 (see Fig. 5). The slit was positioned in the E-W direction except for Dw2 which was observed along the major axis (P.A. 127 degrees). The velocity of $`380\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$, measured along the major axis of CGCG97-125, likely corresponds to its total (corrected) rotational velocity. Conversely the $`90\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ found for CGCG97-114 does not represent the maximum rotational velocity since it was not taken along the galaxy major axis. The 2 dwarfs have observed total velocity widths of $`45`$ and $`100\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ respectively, along the major axis. The edge-on corrections are however very uncertain for these objects.
The resulting rotation curves are shown in Fig. 5 (filled dots for the giants, triangles for the dwarfs). The optical velocity curve of CGCG97-125 is in excellent agreement with the HI position-velocity map of Sakai et al. (2002) (see their Fig. 8). Fig. 5 also reports all other known redshifts (crosses) in the observed region (in the range $`8000<Vel<8600`$ $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$). The spatial axis corresponds to the projected distance (in arcsec) from the center of 97-125 along R.A. Notice the monotonic velocity decrease with increasing projected separation from CGCG97-114 (see Section 4).
The results of the observations are summarized in Table 1 as follow:
Column 1: objects designations as given by Sakai et al. (2002).
Column 2, 3: celestial coordinates (with typical uncertainties of 2 arcsec).
Column 4: $`r^{}`$ band magnitudes.
Column 5: recessional velocities (with uncertainties). The 4 redshifts in common with Sakai et al. (2002) are consistent with their measurements. Five redshifts, namely of K1, 97-114a and Dw2, K5 and 97-125a are given for the first time here.
Column 6, 7: $`H\alpha +[NII]`$ flux and E.W. obtained in this work. Our $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ line photometry of five galaxies (CGCG97-125, CGCG97-114, Dw1, Dw2 and Dw3) in common with Sakai et al. (2002) is in full agreement with their measurements.
Column 8: star formation rate (SFR) derived from $`\mathrm{H}\alpha `$ flux (corrected for \[NII\] contamination and for extinction) as in Kennicutt (1998).
Column 9: galaxy mass derived from $`r^{}`$ luminosity, transformed to H band, applying the $`M/L_H`$ conversion of Gavazzi et al. (1996).

## 3 Results

The high sensitivity of the present H$`\alpha `$ observations (all galaxies with H$`\alpha `$ luminosity in excess of $`10^{38.5}`$ erg s-1 were detected), allowed us to confirm the exceptional over-density of star forming galaxies projected near the X-ray center of the cluster of galaxies Abell 1367 (see Fig.1) independently reported by Sakai et al. (2001, 2002) and by Iglesias-Paramo et al. (2002). Ten out of twelve star forming regions are associated with dwarf systems (or extragalactic HII regions) with H$`\alpha `$ equivalent widths often exceeding 100 Å (see Tab. 1). These galaxies, in spite of being $`1000`$ times smaller than typical giant galaxies, are currently forming stars at 10 times higher rate (per unit mass) than normal galaxies of similar luminosity, as derived from their $`L(H\alpha )`$ (Kennicutt 1998). As remarked by Sakai et al. (2002), it is the first time that such high density of star forming galaxies has been seen in a nearby cluster, in spite of having collected data over an area of A1367, Coma and the Virgo cluster approximately 500 times larger than the one shown in Fig.1.
The H$`\alpha `$ dwarfs are found at the redshift of 8200$`\pm `$150 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (see Table 1), consistent with the redshift of two bright galaxies (97-114 and 97-125) that was known from previous optical/radio spectroscopy. This velocity exceeds significantly the mean cluster velocity of $`<V>=6420`$ ($`\sigma _V=822`$) $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ (Struble & Rood 1991). In addition to 12 galaxies in Fig.1, redshifts in excess of 7700 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ are found for another 8 galaxies in A1367. They are all spatially segregated near the cluster center, and form a secondary peak in the cluster velocity distribution of Fig. 4. We consider unlikely that the group sits in the background of Abell 1367, in free Hubble flow for two reasons. Firstly, at 30 arcmin projected angular separation from the cluster center (see Fig. 4) the group velocity of 8200 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ falls within the caustics associated with the density enhancement of A1367 (see Fig. 7 of Gavazzi, Randone & Branchini 1995). In other words the group is well within the turn-around radius of the cluster. This points out the existence of a separate dynamical unit falling into the cluster from the near side. The compact part of this group, comprising 12 central group members, will be referred to as the ”blue infalling group” (BIG) hereafter. Three objects are not associated with BIG (see Table 1): CGCG97-113 is the only galaxy in the region with a velocity within the velocity dispersion of A1367; BO lies in the background; the third massive galaxy NGC 3860 (marked 97-120 in Fig. 1) ($`\mathrm{V}_{\mathrm{hel}}=5635`$ $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$) is blueshifted with respect to A1367 by approximately 800 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$. Observations of the neutral hydrogen (HI) line (Chincarini et al. 1983) show that NGC 3860 has lost approximately 90 % of its original hydrogen content ($`\mathrm{HI}_{\mathrm{def}}`$=0.9), indicating that the galaxy has crossed the cluster core, and that the ram-pressure (Gunn & Gott 1972) exerted by the dense intergalactic medium (IGM) (with a central density $`\rho _{IGM}`$ = 1.25 10-3 atoms cm-3) (Mohr et al. 1999) has caused its hydrogen deficiency.
Conversely 97-125, the brightest member of BIG, has a normal hydrogen content ($`\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{HI}}=3.9\times 10^9\mathrm{M}_{}`$ (Sakai et al. 2002), implying $`\mathrm{HI}_{\mathrm{def}}`$=-0.21), pointing out that this galaxy has not yet crossed the dense cluster medium. However its HI column density distribution appears asymmetric, with the highest signal in the western side of the galaxy, as seen in HI map obtained by Sakai et al. (2002) (see their Fig. 7). Although the asymmetry is interpreted by Sakai et al. (2002) as due to a tidal interaction among BIG members, it is also consistent with the hypothesis that the galaxy is entering the cluster IGM and its HI content is being removed from the eastern side and accumulated in the western side, possibly due to ram-pressure, as found in other infalling galaxies discussed by Gavazzi (1989). Furthermore the HI map of Sakai et al. (2002) reveals a marginal detection associated with GCGC97-114, with a resulting HI deficiency of 0.7. This high value suggests that this galaxy is currently undergoing gas erosion by ram-pressure, thus it has already encountered the cluster IGM. We conclude that the BIG galaxies are plausibly at the front-edge of A1367, beginning their journey through the cluster IGM.
Unfortunately the Tully-Fisher (1977) distance estimator is not accurate enough to confirm this 3-D picture. With this method we obtain a distance of 88 $`\pm 25`$ and 82 $`\pm 25`$ Mpc for GCGC97-125 and GCGC97-114 respectively, consistent with the distance of 85 Mpc of A1367, but not sufficiently accurate to exclude that BIG is in Hubble flow at 110 Mpc.
All star-forming galaxies in BIG have detectable continuum emission in the red-band image shown in Fig. 2. This demonstrates that they all contain a significant ($`10^710^9`$ M$``$, as estimated from their $`r^{}`$ luminosity using the M/L conversion of Gavazzi et al. 1996) population of old ($`t>3`$ Gyr) stars, in addition to their young ($`t<20`$ Myr) stars revealed in H$`\alpha `$. The $`r^{}`$ band luminosity function of BIG in the interval -19.2 $`<M_r^{}<`$ -12.2 has a slope of only $`\alpha _r^{}`$ = -1, shallower than $`\alpha _r`$ = -1.20 found in the deepest cluster surveys (Trentham & Tully 2002). It is consistent with the $`r^{}`$ band luminosity function of Hickson compact groups (Hunsberger et al. 1998), suggesting that originally BIG was a normal compact group. On the opposite, BIG represents a true exception as far as its young stars content. How this translates in the slope of the H$`\alpha `$ luminosity function? The existing H$`\alpha `$ observations of compact groups (Iglesias-Paramo & Vilchez 1999; Vilchez & Iglesias-Paramo 1998) are unfortunately 10 times shallower than the present ones, making their $`\alpha _{H\alpha }`$ undetermined at the faint levels of the present survey. Thus we derived the H$`\alpha `$ luminosity function of BIG and compared it with the one of the cluster Abell 1367 (Iglesias-Paramo et al. 2002). The faint end of BIG has a slope $`\alpha _{H\alpha }`$ = -1.25, significantly steeper than $`\alpha _{H\alpha }`$ = -0.8 found in the cluster. In other words the ratio of faint-to-bright galaxies is 5 times larger in this group than in the cluster.

## 4 Discussion

We have shown that the H$`\alpha `$ glowing galaxies projected near the center of A1367 are relatively ”old” galaxies that would have escaped attention when observed in broad-band images. Similar overdensities of star forming objects have never been observed neither in nearby clusters nor in compact groups. What is the mechanism that triggers the burst of star formation, for the first time seen here, in an otherwise normal group falling into a rich cluster of galaxies? Is the perturbation locally excited, or induced by an external agent?

### 4.1 Tidal Interaction among group galaxies

Sakai et al. (2002) favour the internal interpretation. They argue that the burst of star formation is caused by tidal encounters between the group members. They proposed that the dwarf systems in BIG formed from enriched material stripped from one of the larger galaxies due to a recent tidal interaction. Their argument is supported by three evidences: i) The stellar-shells surrounding the galaxy 97-125 at approximately 30, 45 and 60 arcsec from its center (see Fig. 2), indicate that it has merged with another group galaxy, as shells around galaxies result either from minor (Thomson & Wright 1990) or major (Schweizer 1980) merging events. The H$`\alpha `$ filament observed within the stellar envelope of 97-125 might be the remnant of a recently swallowed galaxy. ii) The metallicity of one of the faint knots (K2) is similar to the one of 97-125, i.e. approximately solar. This rules out the evolutionary scenario in which the intergalactic knots K2 are isolated normal dwarf galaxies evolving as closed systems, because such faint objects are expected to have metallicities in the range 1/20 - 1/40 solar. iii) The presence of an HI bridge extending through many of the emission-line regions, argues in favour of the tidal interpretation.

There are arguments against this interpretation: i) Although there is clear evidence of merging in CGCG97-125 (shells), we argue that the overall morphology of BIG does not fully support the tidal interaction picture because no evidence of large-scale tidal tails is found here, providing the clear signature of a merging event (see the Antennae in Hibbard et al. 2001 and the simulations of Barnes & Hernquist 1992). ii) Should the abnormal star formation in BIG be triggered by tidal interactions among its galaxies, similar phenomena would be frequently observed in other compact groups, contrary to the observations of Vilchez & Iglesias-Paramo (1998). Among BIG dwarfs, only Dw1, Dw2 and Dw3 have broad-band colors (B-R) available from Sakai et al. (2002) (0.05, 0.53 and 0.2 respectively). These colors are marginally bluer than the average $`<BR>=0.75\pm 0.4`$ found among 143 tidal dwarf candidates in 10 interacting systems studied by Weilbacher et al. (2000). This blue excess confirms the exceptional nature of BIG among other compact groups even those containing tidal interacting systems. iii) While the faint knots (K2) show a high metallicity, similar to the one of 97-125, the metal abundances of the two other dwarf systems Dw1 and Dw3 (Sakai et al. 2002) are consistent with their being irregular galaxies evolved independently.

### 4.2 Ram-pressure interaction with A1367

We offer an alternative interpretation emphasizing that BIG is likely infalling onto A1367 at high speed.
Galaxy infall occours elsewhere onto this cluster. Gavazzi et al. (2002) found evidence for enhanced current star formation activity associated with faint ($`17<\mathrm{M}_\mathrm{p}<19\mathrm{mag}`$) galaxies, consistent with these being objects recently ”captured” by the cluster. Similarly Bravo-Alfaro et al. (2000, 2001) found that several spiral galaxies in the Coma cluster have their neutral hydrogen content significantly displaced from their optical centroids, consistent with their recent arrival into the cluster hostile environment. Among galaxies in A1367, CGCG97-073 and CGCG97-079 were studied in some detail by Gavazzi et al. (1995; 2001) who found that both galaxies have their present star formation enhanced along peripheral HII regions which developped at the side facing the direction of motion through the dense cluster IGM. There are indications that their neutral hydrogen is displaced in the opposite side (Dickey & Gavazzi 1991). Trails of 50 kpc length are detected both in the light of the synchrotron radiation (Gavazzi et al. 1995) and in H$`\alpha `$ (Gavazzi et al. 2001) supporting the idea that ram-pressure (Gunn & Gott 1972) is for a limited amount of time enhancing the star formation of galaxies that are for the first time entering the cluster medium.
During their travel at 1800 $`\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ through the IGM, whose density gradually increases from $`\rho _{IGM}`$ $``$ 10-4 atoms cm-3 at their present peripheral location, to $`\rho _{IGM}`$ = 1.25 10-3 atoms cm-3 near the center of A1367, the external ram-pressure experienced by the galaxies of BIG will increase from:

$$P=\rho v^2510^{12}[\mathrm{dyn}\mathrm{cm}^2]$$

to an order of magnitude higher.
The galaxies in BIG have low stellar surface densities ($`\sigma _S`$ $``$ 5 10-3 g cm-2) and interstellar gas surface densities ($`\sigma _g`$ $``$ $`10^3`$ g cm-2) typical of dwarfs galaxies. Thus the restoring gravitational force (pressure) at their interior:

$$F=2\pi G\sigma _S\sigma _g210^{12}[\mathrm{dyn}\mathrm{cm}^2]$$

results significantly smaller than the ram-pressure. In conclusion the external pressure is sufficient to compress and shock their interstellar gas, thereby triggering a star formation burst, as suggested by Fujita & Nagashima (1999). In the long run the increasing ram-pressure will fully strip their gaseous material leading to the complete ablation of their interstellar gas, thus suppressing the star formation due to fuel exhaustion. The stripped blobs of typical radius $`R`$ of 5 kpc and mass $`M`$ = $`10^8M_{}`$ might even experience a deceleration:

$$a=\frac{(PF)\pi R^2}{M}=1.510^8[\mathrm{cm}\mathrm{s}^2]$$

with a consequent measurable velocity decrease of $`\mathrm{\Delta }V=300\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1`$ in a time as short as $`10^8`$ yrs. Such an acceleration could explain the monotonic velocity decrease observed in Fig. 5 in blobs (97-114a, 97-114b, Dw3, K1) of increasing projected distance from CGCG97-114.
The weaknesses of this second hypothesis, as pointed out by Sakai et al. (2002) are: i) none of the galaxies in BIG show evidence of the bow-shock structure in the H$`\alpha `$ or broad-band images that is characteristic of the other objects of this type in A1367. ii) Chandra observations (Sun & Murray 2002) do not show soft X-ray extended emission, contrary to the expectations. However we argue that the region in Fig.1 was not fully covered by Chandra, lying near the edge of chip ”S3”. CGCG97-125 and Dw1 were out of the observed field while CGCG97-114 and Dw3 were in fact detected as extended and point-like sources respectively.
In conclusion, we agree with Sakai et al. (2002) that tidal interactions among members of the BIG compact group must have had a role in triggering the burst of star formation seen in this group for the first time. The stellar shells around its brightest galaxy (CGCG97-125) clearly testify such an event and the quasi solar metallicity of knots K2 argues in favour of this object being composed of evolved material stripped from CGCG97-125.
We remark that the high velocity infall of the group onto A1367 might have enhanced the star-bursting transient phase making BIG unique among other isolated compact groups of galaxies.

We wish to thank G. Chincarini, M. Colpi, L. Mayer and B. Poggianti for stimulating discussions. L. Carrasco research is supported by CONACYT research grant G28586-E. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) and of the GOLDmine database. NED is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. GOLDmine is operated by the Universita’ degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca.