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# Small-World File-Sharing Communities

## I Introduction

Large-scale, Internet-connected distributed systems are notoriously difficult to manage. In a resource-sharing environment such as a peer-to-peer system that connects hundreds of thousands of computers in an ad-hoc network, intermittent resource participation, large and variable scale, and high failure rates are challenges that often impose performance tradeoffs. Thus, existing P2P file-location mechanisms favor specific requirements: in Gnutella, the emphasis is on accommodating highly volatile peers and on fast file retrieval, with no guarantees that files will always be located. In Freenet , the emphasis is on ensuring anonymity. In contrast, distributed hash tables such as CAN , Chord , Pastry , and Tapestry  guarantee that files will always be located, but do not support wildcard searches.

One way to optimize these tradeoffs is to understand user behavior. In this paper we analyze user behavior in three file-sharing communities in an attempt to get inspiration for designing efficient mechanisms for large-scale, dynamic, self-organizing resource-sharing communities.

We look at these communities in a novel way: we study the relationships that form among users based on the data in which they are interested. We capture and quantify these relationships by modeling the community as a data-sharing graph. To this end, we propose a new structure that captures common user interests in data (Section III) and justify its utility with studies on three data-distribution systems (Section IV): a high-energy physics collaboration, the Web, and the Kazaa peer-to-peer network. We find small-world patterns in the data-sharing graphs of all three communities (SectionV). We discuss the causes of these emergent small-world patterns in Section VI. The significance of these newly uncovered patterns is twofold (Section VII): First, it explains previous results  and confirms (with formal support) the intuition behind them. Second, it suggests ways to design mechanisms that exploit these naturally emerging patterns.

## II Intuition

It is not news that understanding the system properties can help guide efficient solution design. A well known example is the relationship between file popularity in the Web and cache size. The popularity of web pages has been shown to follow a Zipf distribution : few pages are highly popular and many pages are requested few times. As a result, the efficiency of increasing cache size is not linear: caching is useful for the popular items, but there is little gain from increasing the cache to provision for unpopular items.

As a second example, many real networks are power law. That is, their node degrees are distributed according to a power law, such that a small number of nodes have large degrees, while most nodes have small degrees. Adamic et al.  propose a mechanism for probabilistic search in power-law networks that exploits exactly this characteristic: the search is guided first to nodes with high degree and their many neighbors. This way, a large percentage of the network is covered fast.

This type of observations inspired us to look for patterns in user resources requests. But what patterns?

### II-A Patterns, Patterns Everywhere

It is believed that the study of networks started with Euler’s solution of the Königsberg bridge problem in 1735. The field has since extended from theoretical results to the analysis of patterns in real networks. Social sciences have apparently the longest history in the study of real networks , with significant quantitative results dating from the 1920s .

The development of the Internet added significant momentum to the study of networks: by both facilitating access to collections of data and by introducing new networks to study, such as the Web graph, whose nodes are web pages and edges are hyperlinks , the Internet at the router and the AS level  and the email graph .

The study of large real networks led to fascinating results: recurring patterns emerge in real networks (see  for good surveys). For example, a frequent pattern is the power-law distribution of node degree, that is, a small number of nodes act as hubs (having a large degree), while most nodes have a small degree. Examples of power-law networks are numerous and from many domains: the phone-call network (long distance phone calls made during a single day) , the citation network , and the linguistics network  (pairs of words in English texts that appear at most one word apart). In computer science, perhaps the first and most surprising result at its time was the proof that the random graph-based models of the Internet (with their Poisson degree distribution) were inaccurate: the Internet topology had a power-law degree distribution . Other results followed: the web graph  and the Gnutella overlay (as of year 2000)  are also power-law networks.

Another class of networks are the “small worlds”. Two characteristics distinguish small-world networks: first, a small average path length, typical of random graphs (here ‘path’ means shortest node-to-node path); second, a large clustering coefficient that is independent of network size. The clustering coefficient captures how many of a node’s neighbors are connected to each other. This set of characteristics is identified in systems as diverse as social networks, in which nodes are people and edges are relationships; the power grid system of western USA, in which nodes are generators, transformers, substations, etc. and edges are transmission lines; and neural networks, in which nodes are neurons and edges are synapses or gap junctions .

### II-B Research Questions

Newman shows that scientific collaboration networks in different domains (physics, biomedical research, neuroscience, and computer science) have the characteristics of small worlds . Collaboration networks connect scientists who have written articles together.

Moreover, Girvan and Newman  show that well-defined groups (such as a research group in a specific field) can be identified in (small-world) scientific collaboration networks. In parallel, a theoretical model for small-world networks by Watts and Strogatz  pictures a small world as a loosely connected set of highly connected subgraphs.

From here, the step is natural: since scientists tend to collaborate on publications, they most likely use the same resources (share them) during their collaboration: for example, they might use the same instruments to observe physics phenomena, or they might analyze the same data, using perhaps the same software tools or even a common set of computers. This means that if we connect scientists who use the same files, we might get a small world. Even more, we might be able to identify groups that share the same resources. Notice that the notion of “collaboration” transformed into “resource sharing”: the social relationships do not matter anymore, scientists who use the same resources within some time interval may never hear of each other.

Resource sharing in a (predominantly) scientific community is the driving force of computational Grids. If we indeed see these naturally occurring sharing patterns and we find ways to exploit them (e.g., by identifying users grouped around common sets of resources), then we can build mechanisms that can tame the challenges typical of large-scale, dynamic, heterogeneous, latency-affected distributed systems.

The research question now become clear:

* Are there any patterns in the way scientists share resources that could be exploited for designing mechanisms?

But resource sharing also exists outside scientific communities: peer-to-peer systems or even the Web facilitate the sharing of data. Another question arises:

* Are these characteristics typical of scientific communities or are they more general?

This article answers these two questions: it shows that small-world patterns exist in diverse file-sharing communities.

## III The Data-Sharing Graph

To answer question Q1, we define a new graph that captures the virtual relationship between users who request the same data at about the same time.

Definition: The data-sharing graph is a graph in which nodes are users and an edge connects two users with similar interests in data.

We consider one similarity criterion in this article: the number of shared requests within a specified time interval.

To answer question Q2, we analyze the data-sharing graphs of three different file-sharing communities. Section IV presents briefly these systems and the traces we used. We discover that in all cases, for different similarity criteria, these data-sharing graphs are small worlds. The next sections show that using the data-sharing graph for system characterization has potential both for basic science, because we can identify new structures emerging in real, dynamic networks (Section V); and for system design, because we can exploit these structures when designing data location and delivery mechanisms (Section VII).

## IV Three Data-Sharing Communities

We study the characteristics of the data-sharing graph corresponding to three file-sharing communities: a high-energy physics collaboration (Section IV-A), the Web as seen from the Boeing traces (Section IV-B), and the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing system seen from a large ISP in Israel (Section IV-C).

This section gives a brief description of each community and its traces (duration of each trace, number of users and files requested, etc.) In addition, we present the file popularity and user activity distributions for each of these traces as these have a high impact on the characteristics of the data-sharing graph: intuitively, a user with high activity is likely to map onto a highly connected node in the data sharing graph. Similarly, highly popular files are likely to produce dense clusters.

### IV-A The D0 Experiment: a High-Energy Physics Collaboration

The D0 experiment  is a virtual organization comprising hundreds of physicists from more than 70 institutions in 18 countries. Its purpose is to provide a worldwide system of shareable computing and storage resources that can together solve the common problem of extracting physics results from about a Petabyte (c.2003) of measured and simulated data. In this system, data files are read-only and typical jobs analyze and produce new, processed data files. The tracing of system utilization is possible via a software layer (SAM ) that provides centralized file-based data management.

We analyzed logs over the first six months of 2002, amounting to about 23,000 jobs submitted by more than 300 users and involving more than 2.5 million requests for about 200,000 distinct files. A data analysis job typically runs on multiple files (117 on average). Figure 1 left shows the distribution of the number of files per job.

Figure 2 shows the daily activity (in number of requests per day) and user activity (in number of requests submitted by each user during the 6-month interval). The daily activity is relatively constant, with a few significant peaks—corresponding perhaps to approaching paper submission deadlines in high-energy physics?. User activity is highly variable, with scientists who scan from tens of thousands of distinct data files to just a couple.

In D0 file popularity does not follow the Zipf’s law typical of Web requests. (Figure 1, right). The reason we believe is that data in this scientific application is more uniformly interesting: a typical job swipes a significant part of the data space (and hence file set) in search of particular physics events.

### IV-B The Web

We use the Boeing proxy traces  as a representative sample for Web data access patterns. These traces represent a five-day record from May 1999 of all HTTP requests (more than 20M requests per day) from a large organization (Boeing) to the Web. Because traces are anonymized and IDs are not preserved from day to day, our study was limited to one-day intervals. However, given the intense activity recorded (Figure 4 left shows the number of requests per second), this limitation does not affect the accuracy of our results. Here we study a representative 10-hour interval.

For the study of Web traces, we consider a user as an IP address. During the 10-hour interval, 60,826 users sent 16.5 million web requests, of which 4.7 million requests were distinct. It is possible that the same IP address corresponded in fact to multiple users (for example, for DHCP addresses or shared workstations). We do not have any additional information to help us identify these cases or evaluate their impact. However, given the relatively short intervals we consider in our studies—from 2 minutes to a couple of hours—the chances of multiple users using the same IP are small.

### IV-C The KaZaA Peer-to-Peer Network

Kazaa is a popular peer-to-peer file-sharing system with an estimated number of more than 4 million concurrent users as of June 2003 .

Few details are publicly available about the Kazaa protocol. Apparently, Kazaa nodes dynamically elect “supernodes” that form an unstructured overlay network and use query flooding to locate content. Regular nodes connect to one or more super-nodes and act as querying clients to super-nodes. Control information, such as queries, membership, and software version. is encrypted. Once content has been located, data is transfered (unencrypted) directly from provider to requester using the HTTP protocol. In order to improve transfer speed, multiple file fragments are downloaded in parallel from multiple providers.

Since control information is encrypted, the only accessible traffic information can be obtained from the download channel. As a result we can only gather information about the files requested for download and not about files searched for (therefore, typos are naturally filtered). Details on how Kazaa traces were recorded as well as a thorough analysis of the Kazaa traffic are presented in .

We had access to five days of Kazaa traffic, during which 14,404 users downloaded 976,184 files, of which 116,509 were distinct. Users are identified based on their (anonymized) user ID that appears in the HTTP download request. The user population is formed of Kazaa users who are clients of the ISP: similar to the Boeing traces, these traces give information about only a limited set of Kazaa users.

## V Small-World Data-Sharing Graphs

Data-sharing graphs are built using the definition in Section III: users are nodes in the graph and two users are connected if they have similar interests in data during some interval. For the rest of this paper we consider one class of similarity criteria: we say that two users have similar data interests if the size of the intersection of their request sets is larger than some threshold. This section presents the properties of data-sharing graphs for the three communities introduced previously.

The similarity criterion has two degrees of freedom: the length of the time interval and the threshold on the number of common requests. Section V-A studies the dependence between these parameters for each of the three data-sharing communities.

Sections V-B and V-C present the properties of the data-sharing graphs. We shall see that not all data-sharing graphs are power law. However, they all exhibit small-world characteristics, a result that we support with more rigorous analysis in Section VI-A.

### V-A Distribution of Weights

We can think of data-sharing graphs as weighted graphs: two users are connected by an edge labeled with the number of shared requests during a specified time period. Remove 0-weight edges, as well as isolated nodes (those that have no edges). We obtain a weighted data-sharing graph (Figures 6 and 7). The distribution of weights highlights differences among the sharing communities: the sharing in D0 is significantly more pronounced than in Kazaa, with weights in the order of hundreds or thousands in D0 compared to 5 in Kazaa.

### V-B Degree Distribution

The node degree distribution of the data-sharing graph is particularly interesting for designing distributed applications. Figures 8, 9, and 10 present the degree distributions for the three systems: note that the Kazaa data-sharing graph is the closest to a power-law, while D0 graphs clearly are not power-law.

### V-C Small-World Characteristics: Clustering Coefficient and Average Path Length

We wanted to test our intuition that, similar to scientific collaboration networks, we find small-world patterns at the resource sharing level. We consider the Watts-Strogatz definition : a graph $`G(V,E)`$ is a small world if it has small average path length and large clustering coefficient, much larger than that of a random graph with the same number of nodes and edges.

The clustering coefficient is a measure of how well connected a node’s neighbors are with each other. According to one commonly used formula for computing the clustering coefficient of a graph (Eq. 1), the clustering coefficient of a node is the ratio of the number of existing edges and the maximum number of possible edges connecting its neighbors. The average over all $`|V|`$ nodes gives the clustering coefficient of a graph (Eq. 2).

$$CC_u=\frac{\text{\# edges between }\text{u}\text{’s neighbors}}{\text{Maximum \# edges between }\text{u}\text{’s neighbors}}$$
(1)
$$CC_1=\frac{1}{|V|}\underset{u}{}CC_u$$
(2)
Another definition (Eq. 3) directly calculates the clustering coefficient of a graph as a ratio of the number of triangles and the number of triples of connected nodes, where connected triples of vertices are trios of nodes in which at least one is connected to the other two.

$$CC_2=\frac{3\times \text{Number of triangles on the graph}}{\text{Number of connected triples of vertices}}$$
(3)
The two definitions of the clustering coefficient simply reverse the operations—one takes the mean of the ratios, while the other takes the ratio of the means. The former definition tends therefore to weight the low-degree vertices more heavily, since they have a small denominator in Eq. 1.

According to the definition of clustering from Eq. 1, the clustering coefficient of a random graph is:

$$CC_r=\frac{2\times |E|}{|V|\times (|V|1)}$$
(4)
The average path length of a graph is the average of all distances. For large graphs, measuring all-pair distances is computationally expensive, so an accepted procedure  is to measure it over a random sample of nodes. The average path length for the larger Web data-sharing graphs in Table II was approximated using a random sample of 5% of the graph nodes. The average path length of a random graph is given by Eq. 5.

$$l_r=\frac{log(|V|)}{log(|E|/|V|)}$$
(5)
We discover that data-sharing graphs for the three systems all display small-world properties. Figures 11, 12, and 13 show the small-world patterns—large clustering coefficient and small average path length—remain constant over time, for the entire period of our studies. Figure 14 summarizes the small-world result: it compares some instances of data-sharing graphs with small-world networks already documented in the literature. The axes represent the ratios of the data-sharing graphs metrics and the same metrics of random graphs of same size. Notice that most datapoints are concentrated around $`y=1`$ (“same average path length”) and $`x>10`$ (“much larger clustering coefficient”).

We clearly see that data-sharing graphs of various durations and similarity criteria are small worlds. From the Watts-Strogatz model of small worlds—as loosely connected collections of highly connected subgraphs—two significant observations can be drawn. First, well connected clusters exist; due to the data-sharing graph definition, these clusters map onto groups of users with shared interests in files. Second, there is, on average, a small path between any two nodes in the data-sharing graph: therefore, for example, flooding with relatively small time-to-live would cover most of the graph.

## VI Human Nature or Zipf’s Law?

We observed small-world patterns in three different file-sharing communities: a scientific collaboration, the Web, and the Kazaa peer-to-peer system. Given the variety of our study sample, we could perhaps generalize this observation to any file-sharing user community. Thus, we seek to understand what causes these characteristics in data-sharing graphs and to answer the question:

* Are the small-world characteristics consequences of previously documented patterns or do they reflect a new observation concerning user’s preferences in data?

We explore two directions that help us answer the causality question. In Section VI-A we focus on the definition of the data-sharing graph and question the large clustering coefficient as a natural consequence of the graph definition. In Section VI-B we analyze the influence of well-known patterns in file access, such as time locality and file popularity distribution.

### VI-A Affiliation Networks

An affiliation network (also called “a preference network”) is a social network in which the participants (actors in sociology terminology) are linked by common membership in groups or clubs of some kind. Examples include scientific collaboration networks (in which actors belong to the group of authors of a scientific paper), movie actors (in which actors belong to the cast of a certain movie), and board directors (in which actors belong to the same board).

Affiliation networks are therefore bipartite graphs: there are two types of vertices, for actors and respectively groups, and edges link nodes of different types only (Figure 15, left). Affiliation networks are often represented as unipartite graphs of actors joined by undirected edges that connect actors in the same group. One observes now that the data-sharing graph with one-shared file threshold for the similarity criterion is such a one-mode projection of a bipartite affiliation network (Figure 15, right).

These one-mode projections of bipartite graphs have particular characteristics. Most relevant to this discussion is the clustering coefficient: inherently, the clustering coefficient is larger in these graphs than in random graphs of the same size, since the members of a group will form a complete subgraph in the one-mode projection. Consequently, our comparison with random graphs, although faithful to the Watts-Strogatz definition of small worlds, is misleading.

We therefore identified two possible sources of bias in our analysis: one is the implicitly large clustering coefficient of the unimodal affiliation networks, as just shown. Another is the degree distribution of the data-sharing graphs which, as in many other real networks, is far from the Poisson distribution of a random graph (Figures 8, 9, and 10).

Newman et al.  propose a model for random graphs with given degree distributions. These graphs, therefore, will not be random in the Erdős-Rényi sense, but will be random members of a class of graphs with a fixed degree distribution. The authors also adapt their model to affiliation networks and deduce a set of parameters of their unimodal projection. We use their theoretical model to estimate the clustering coefficient of unimodal projections of random affiliation networks of the size and degree distributions as given by traces and compare it with the actual values.

In a bipartite affiliation network, there are two degree distributions: of actors (to how many groups does an actor belong) and of groups (how many actors does a group contain). Let us consider a bipartite affiliation graph of $`N`$ actors and $`M`$ groups. Let us name $`p_j`$ the probability that an actor is part of exactly $`j`$ groups and $`q_k`$ the probability that a group consists of exactly $`k`$ members. In order to easily compute the average node degree and the clustering coefficient of the unipartite affiliation network, Newman et al. use three functions $`f_0`$, $`g_0`$, and $`G_0`$ defined as follows:

$$f_0(x)=\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}p_jx^j$$
(6)
$$g_0(x)=\underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}q_kx^k$$
(7)
$$G_0(x)=f_0(g_0^{}(x)/g_0^{}(1))$$
(8)
The average degree for the actors’ one-mode projection of the affiliation network is:

$$AvgDegree=G_0^{}(1)$$
(9)
And the clustering coefficient is:

$$C=\frac{M}{N}\frac{g_0^{\prime \prime \prime }(1)}{G_0^{\prime \prime }(1)}$$
(10)
The definition of the clustering coefficient is that of Eq. 3.

It is therefore relevant to compare the clustering coefficient of data-sharing graphs with that given by Equation 10.

Figure 16 shows the corresponding values for the degree distribution $`p`$ and $`q`$ (but not normalized: i.e., it shows the number rather than the percentage of users that requested exactly $`k`$ files) in a Web data-sharing graph with a similarity criterion of one shared request within a half-hour interval.

Table III shows that our intuition was correct: there is a significant difference between the values of measured and modeled parameters. Thus, the large clustering coefficient is not due to the definition of the data-sharing graph as a one-mode projection of an affiliation network with non-Poisson degree distributions.

Table III leads to two observations. First, the actual clustering coefficient in the data-sharing graphs is always larger than predicted and the average degree is always smaller than predicted. An interesting new question emerges: what is the explanation for these (sometimes significant) differences? One possible explanation is that user requests for files are not random: their preferences are limited to a set of files, which explains the actual average degree being smaller than predicted. A rigorous understanding of this problem is left for future work.

A second observation is that we can perhaps compare the file sharing in the three communities by comparing their distance from the theoretical model. We see that the Kazaa data-sharing graphs are the closest to the theoretical model and the D0 graphs are very different from their corresponding model. This is different from the comparison with the Erdős-Rényi random graphs (Table II). The cause of this difference and the significance of this observation remain to be studied in the future.

### VI-B Influences of Zipf’s Law and Time and Space Locality

Event frequency has been shown to follow a Zipf distribution in many systems, from word occurrences in English and in monkey-typing texts to city population. It is also present in two of the three cases we analyze: the Web and Kazaa. Other patterns characteristic to data access systems include time locality, in which an item is more popular (and possibly requested by multiple users) during a limited interval and temporal user activity, meaning that users are not uniformly active during a period, but follow some patterns (for example, downloading more music files during weekends or holidays ). Thus, we ask:

* Are the patterns we identified in the data-sharing graph, especially the large clustering coefficient, an inherent consequence of these well-known behaviors?

To answer this question, we generate random traces that preserve the documented characteristics but break the user-request association. From these synthetic traces, we build the resulting data-sharing graphs, and analyze and compare their properties with those resulting from the real traces.

#### VI-B1 Synthetic Traces

The core of our traces is a triplet of user ID, item requested and request time. Figure 17 identifies the following correlations in traces, some of which we want to preserve in the synthetic traces:

1. User–Time: User’s activity varies over time: for example, in the D0 traces, some users accessed data only in May.
2. Request–Time: Items may be more popular during some intervals: for example, news sites are more popular in the morning.
3. User–Request: This is the key to user’s preferences. By breaking this relationship and randomly recreating it, we can analyze the effect of user preferences on the properties of the data-sharing graph.
4. User: The number of items requested per user over the entire interval studied may be relevant, as some users are more active than others (see Figures 4 left for the Web traces).
5. Time: The time of the day (or in our case, of the periods studied) is relevant, as the Web traces show (the peak in Figure 4 right).
6. Request: This is item popularity: number of requests for the same item.

Our aim is to break the relationship (3), which implicitly requires the break of (1), (2), or both. We also want to preserve relationships (4), (5), and (6).

One can picture the traces as a $`R\times 3`$ matrix, in which $`R`$ is the number of requests in that trace and the three columns correspond to users, files requested, and request times, respectively. Now imagine the we shuffle the users column while the other two are kept unchanged: this breaks relations (3) and (1). If the requests column is shuffled, relations (3) and (2) are broken. If both user and request columns are shuffled, then relations (1), (2), and (3) are broken. In all cases, (4), (5), and (6) are maintained faithful to the real behavior: that is, users ask the same number of requests (4); the times when requests are sent are the same (5); and the same requests are asked and repeated the same number of times (6).

We generated synthetic traces in three ways, as presented above:

1. No correlation related to time is maintained: break relations (1), (2), and (3).
2. Maintain the request times as in the real traces: break relations (1) and (3).
3. Maintain the user’s activity over time as in the real traces: break (2) and (3).

#### VI-B2 Properties of Synthetic Data-Sharing Graphs

Three characteristics of the synthetic data-sharing graphs are relevant to our study. First, the number of nodes in synthetic graphs is significantly different than in their corresponding real graphs (“corresponding” in terms of similarity criterion and time). On the one hand, the synthetic data-sharing graphs for which user activity in time (relation (1)) is not preserved have a significantly larger number of nodes. Even when the user activity in time is preserved (as in the ST3 case), the number of nodes is larger: this is because in the real data-sharing graphs, we ignored the isolated nodes and in the synthetic graphs there are no isolated nodes. On the other hand, when the similarity criterion varies to a large number of common requests (say, 100 in the D0 case, Figure 19), the synthetic graphs are much smaller or even disappear. This behavior is explained by the distribution of weights in the synthetic graphs (Figure 18): compared to the real graphs (Figure 6), there are many more edges with small weights. The median weight in the real D0 data-sharing graphs is 356 and the average is 657.9, while for synthetic graphs the median is 137 (185 for ST3) and the average is 13.8 (75.6 for ST3).

Second, the synthetic data-sharing graphs are always connected (unlike real graphs, that always have multiple connected components, as shown in Table II). Even for similarity criteria with large number of common requests the synthetic graphs remain connected. This behavior is due to the uniform distribution of requests per user in the case of synthetic traces, which is obviously not true in the real case.

Third, the synthetic data-sharing graphs are “less” small worlds than their corresponding real graphs: the ratio between the clustering coefficients is smaller and the ratio between average path lengths is larger than in real data-sharing graph (Figure 20). However, these differences are not major: the synthetic data-sharing graphs would perhaps pass as small worlds.

These results show that user preferences for files have significant influence on the data-sharing graphs: their properties are not induced (solely) by user-independent trace characteristics, but human nature has some impact. So perhaps the answer to this section title (“Human nature or Zipf’s law?”) is “Both”. However, it seems that identifying small-world properties is not a sufficient metric to characterize the natural interest-based clustering of users: we might need a metric of how small world a small-world data-sharing graph is. This problem remains to be studied further in the future.

## VII Small-World Data-Sharing Graph: Significance for Mechanism Design

It is interesting to notice that the structure we call the data-sharing graph can be applied at various levels and granularities in a computing system. We looked at relationships that form at the file access level, but intuitively similar patterns could be found at finer granularity, such as access to same memory locations or access to same items in a database. For example, a recent article  investigates the correlation of program addresses that reference the same data and shows that these correlations can be used to eliminate load misses and partial hits.

At a higher level, the data-sharing graph can identify the structure of an organization—based on the applications its members use, for example—by identifying interest-based clusters of users and then use this information to optimize an organization’s infrastructure, such as servers or network topology.

In this section we focus on implications for mechanism design of the data-sharing graph from two perspective: its structure (definition) and its small-world properties. We stress that these are untested but promising ideas for future work.

### VII-A Relevance of the Data-Sharing Graph Structure

Some recommender systems have a similar flavor to the data-sharing graph. ReferralWeb  attempts to uncover existing social networks to create a referral chain of named individuals. It does this by inferring social relationships from web pages, such as co-authorship, research groups and interests, co-participation in discussion panels, etc. This social network is then used to identify experts and to guide searches around them.

Sripanidkulchai et. al came close to the intuition of the data-sharing graph in their Infocom 2003 article : they improve Gnutella’s flooding-based mechanism by inserting and exploiting interest-based shortcuts between peers. Interest-based shortcuts connect a peer to peers who provided data in the past. This is slightly different from our case, where an edge in the data-sharing graph connects peers that requested the same data. However, the two graphs are likely to overlap significantly if peers store data of their own interest. Our study distinguishes by its independence from any underlying infrastructure (in this case, the distribution of data on peers and the location mechanism) and gives a theoretical explanation of the performance improvements in .

The data-sharing graph can be exploited for a variety of decentralized file management mechanisms in resource-sharing systems (such as peer-to-peer or Grids).

* In a writable file-sharing system, keeping track of which peers recently requested a file facilitates the efficient propagation of updates in a fully decentralized, self-organizing fashion (a similar idea is explored in ).
* In large-scale, unreliable, dynamic peer-to-peer systems file replication may be used to insure data availability  and transfer performance. The data-sharing graph may suggest where to place replicas closer to the nodes that access them. Similarly, it may be useful for dynamic distributed storage: if files cannot be stored entirely on a node, then they can be partitioned among the nodes that are interested in that file.
* In a peer-to-peer computing scenario, the relationships between users who requested the same files can be exploited for job management. If nodes store and share recently downloaded files, they become good candidates for running jobs that take those files as input. This can be used for scheduling, migrating or replicating data-intensive jobs.

### VII-B Relevance of Small-World Characteristics

The idea underlying the data-sharing graph was first presented in  as a challenge to design a file-location mechanism that exploits the small-world characteristics of a file-sharing community. Meanwhile we completed the design and evaluation of a mechanism that dynamically identifies interest-based clusters, disseminates location information in groups of interested users, and propagates requests among clusters . Its strengths come from mirroring and adapting to changes in user’s behavior. File insertion and deletion are low cost, which makes it a good candidate for scientific collaborations, where use of files leads to creation of new files.

## VIII Summary

This article reveals a predominant pattern in diverse file-sharing communities, from scientific communities to the Web and file-swapping peer-to-peer systems. This pattern is brought to light by a structure we propose and that we call “data-sharing graph”. This structure captures the relationships that form between users who are interested in the same files. We present properties of data-sharing graphs from three communities. These properties are relevant to and might inspire the design of a new style of mechanisms in peer-to-peer systems, mechanisms that take into account, adapt to, and exploit user’s behavior. We also sketch some mechanisms that could benefit from the data-sharing graph and its small-world properties.


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# A possible demonstration of cooperative dynamical Jahn-Teller effect in Raman scattering spectrum of rhombohedral 𝐿𝑎𝑀𝑛𝑂₃

## I Introduction

The colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) is the main feature of lanthanum manganites Urushibara et al. (1995). Because of metal to insulator transition, the doped rhombohedral manganites are of grate interest. The nature of ground state in manganites is still under the question. There are strong coupling between orbital (electronic) and lattice degrees of freedom in manganites due to Jahn-Teller (JT) effect on $`Mn^{3+}`$ ions. Such coupling gives rise to the formation of vibronic ground state Bersuker and Polinger (1989). The vibronic ground state fundamentally transforms magnetic and transport properties of manganites Millis et al. (1995); Satpathy (1998); Zhou and Goodenough (1998).

The pure $`LaMnO_3`$ is the model compound for investigating cooperative JT effect. Undoped $`LaMnO_3`$ crystallizes in two phases: orthorhombic and rhombohedral Norby et al. (1995); Huang et al. (1997). The orthorhombic one features by the static cooperative JT effect. The static cooperative JT effect and $`R\overline{3}c`$ space symmetry of rhombohedral phase are incompatible because the JT distortions break this symmetry. The only way to conserve the $`R\overline{3}c`$ space symmetry in rhombohedral phase is dynamical JT effect. The possibility of dynamical JT effect in manganites is widely discussed Millis et al. (1995); Goodenough et al. (1961); Zhou and Goodenough (1998). The dynamical JT effect manifests in two basic forms: uncorrelated local dynamical JT distortions of $`[MnO_6]`$ complexes and cooperative dynamical JT distortions, which can be called cooperative dynamical JT effect Sobolewski (1997). The most powerful tool that could determine presence of low symmetry structure is Raman scattering (RS). We suppose that rhombohedral $`LaMnO_3`$ exhibits cooperative dynamical JT effect. We show that anomalous intensity of RS lines observed in rhombohedral $`LaMnO_3`$ Abrashev et al. (1999); Martín-Carrón et al. (2002) could be explained in terms of cooperative dynamical JT effect. For the lattice dynamics calculation the interionic pair potential shell model approximation with electron-phonon (JT) term, which explicitly allows for the dynamical effect, is used Nikiforov and Shashkin (1997); Nikiforov and Popov (2001).

## II Symmetry and Qualitative Analysis of rhombohedral $`LaMnO_3`$

As was mentioned by Iliev and coworkers Abrashev et al. (1999); Iliev and Abrashev (2001) the Raman spectra of rhombohedral $`LaMnO_3`$ differs strongly from RS of non JT $`LaAlO_3`$

From the symmetry analysis we know that in the $`R\overline{3}c`$ space group only five modes are active in RS ($`A_{1g}+4E_g`$). The experiment on $`LaAlO_3`$ Abrashev et al. (1999) clearly shows 4 Raman active mode and one, that has very low frequency of $`33cm^1`$ was also observed Scott (1969). Comparing the RS of rhombohedral $`LaMnO_3`$ one should note strong distinction to RS of $`LaAlO_3`$. The main difference is appearance of new intensive high-frequency line near $`640cm^1`$ and relative increase of intensities of high frequency lines. The appearance of new RS line is clear evidence for lowering symmetry, i.e. that the real space symmetry of rhombohedral $`LaMnO_3`$ is lower than $`R\overline{3}c`$. The symmetry lowering could be due to cooperative JT effect. The only JT active mode in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ point of Brillouin zone (BZ) of $`R\overline{3}c`$ space group is double degenerate $`E_g`$ mode, which corresponds to the $`\{\stackrel{}{k}_{13}\}\tau _5`$ mode of ideal perovskite (in Kovalev notation Kovalev (1986)) or $`R_{12}`$ (in BSW notation). Two components of $`E_g`$ mode could be indexed as $`q_\theta `$ and $`q_\epsilon `$ (Fig. 1). The symmetry group of new phase depends on the ratio of $`q_\theta `$ to $`q_\epsilon `$. This ratio is convenient to describe by an $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ angle, defined as $`q_\theta =\stackrel{~}{\rho }\mathrm{cos}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ and $`q_\epsilon =\stackrel{~}{\rho }\mathrm{sin}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$. If $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}=\frac{\pi }{2},\frac{\pi }{2}\pm \frac{2\pi }{3}`$ the structure will be with $`P2_1/b`$ space symmetry. In other case space symmetry will be $`P\overline{1}`$.

The JT distortions in $`P2_1/b`$ space group differs strongly from that in orthorhombic phase with $`Pnma`$ space group: in orthorhombic phase the $`Q_\epsilon `$ distortions correspond to the $`M`$ point of ideal perovskite BZ ($`\{\stackrel{}{k}_{11}\}\tau _5`$ in Kovalev notation Kovalev (1986)).  On other hand, in experimentally observed monoclinic phase structure Huang et al. (1997) JT distortions correspond to the $`R_{12}`$ mode of ideal perovskite.

$`P2_1/b`$ and $`P\overline{1}`$ groups both have all 12 gerade modes active in RS. These modes correspond to the following $`R\overline{3}c`$ vibrations: split four $`E_g`$ double degenerate mode; one $`A_{1g}`$ mode, and three $`A_{2g}`$ modes. The symmetry breaking would give rise to the appearance of a new line. It corresponds to the $`A_{2g}`$ vibration. The intensities calculation revealed the remaining two $`A_{2g}`$ modes to be low RS active. For the investigation of such phase transition we use lattice structure and dynamics calculations.

## III Lattice Structure and Dynamics Calculations

### III.1 Energy calculation model

In lattice structure calculation the crystal lattice parameters are obtained by the optimization of crystal energy with respect to displacements of ions that do not change crystal lattice symmetry. The crystal energy is calculated in the framework of ionic pair potential shell model explicitly allowing for the JT term, which is simulated as the sum of lower branches of adiabatic potentials of single $`[MnO_6]`$ complexes Nikiforov and Shashkin (1997); Nikiforov and Popov (2001)

$$E=E_{Lat}+E_{JT}$$
(1)
In the pairwise-potential approximation and the shell model, the lattice energy can be written as

$$E_{Lat}=E_{Coul}+\frac{1}{2}\underset{i}{}\underset{ki}{}V_{ik}+\frac{1}{2}\underset{i}{}k_i\stackrel{}{\delta }_i^2$$
(2)
where $`E_{Coul}`$ describes Coulomb interaction in crystal and the index $`i`$ specifies ions in the primitive cell, the index $`k`$ enumerates all ions of the crystal. The term $`k_i\delta _i^2`$ describes the interaction energy between the core of the ith ion and its shell shifted relative to the core by an amount of $`\stackrel{}{\delta }_i`$. Short range potential is represented by the Born-Mayer, screening and Van-der-Waals terms

$`V_{ik}=C_{ik}\mathrm{exp}(D_{ik}|\stackrel{}{r}_{ik}\stackrel{}{\delta }_i+\stackrel{}{\delta }_k|)`$ (3)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{A_{ik}}{r_{ik}}}\mathrm{exp}(B_{ik}r_{ik}){\displaystyle \frac{\lambda _{ik}}{r_{ik}^6}}`$
The screening term describes the screening of Coulomb potential due to overlap of electronic densities of ion. Parameters of pair potential model are listed in table 1. The many-particle JT contribution to the crystal energy is approximated by the sum of expressions for the lower branches of adiabatic potentials of the $`[MnO_6]`$ clusters

$$E_{JT}=|V_e|\underset{n}{}\sqrt{Q_\theta ^2(n)+Q_\epsilon ^2(n)}$$
(4)
where $`V_e`$ is the linear JT interaction constant ($`|V_e|=1.3\text{eV/Å}`$ Nikiforov and Popov (2001)), and $`Q_\theta (n)`$, $`Q_\epsilon (n)`$ are projection of displacements of oxygen ions onto local JT distortions. Actually, these local distortions are projection of positions of all ions onto $`[MnO_6]`$ cluster local normal JT active modes. The operation of projection can be performed using Van-Fleck coefficients

$`Q_\theta (n)={\displaystyle \underset{\stackrel{}{k}\gamma }{}}C_{n\theta ,\stackrel{}{k}\gamma }q_{\stackrel{}{k}\gamma }`$ (5)
$`Q_\epsilon (n)={\displaystyle \underset{\stackrel{}{k}\gamma }{}}C_{n\epsilon ,\stackrel{}{k}\gamma }q_{\stackrel{}{k}\gamma }`$
where $`n`$ \- indexes JT clusters, $`C_{(\theta ,\epsilon )n\stackrel{}{k}\gamma }`$ \- is the projection of displacements caused by crystal vibration with wave vector $`\stackrel{}{k}`$ and number $`\gamma `$ onto local $`Q_{(\theta ,\epsilon )}`$ distortion.

### III.2 Raman scattering spectrum calculation model

To calculate the phonon frequencies, one should diagonalize the dynamic matrix of the crystal.

$$D=M\left(F^{CC}F^{CS}\left[F^{SS}\right]^1F^{SC}+F^{JT}\right)_0$$
(6)
where $`M_{k\alpha ,n\beta }=\delta _{\alpha \beta }[m_km_n]^{1/2}`$; $`F^{CC}`$ and $`F^{SS}`$ are the matrices of the second derivatives of the crystal energy (without the JT contribution) with respect to the displacements of the cores and shells of ions, respectively; $`F^{CS}`$ and $`F^{SC}`$ are the matrices of the mixed derivatives of the crystal energy (without the JT contribution) with respect to the displacements of the cores and shells of ions; and $`F^{JT}`$ is the matrix of the second derivatives of the JT contribution in Eq. 4 with respect to the ion core displacements.

The ions shells simulate the polarizability of ions, which arises due to transitions to the excited states with different parity. The RS process involves virtual transitions to these states. That is why the RS intensities could be estimated in shell model. Hence, the intensity can be approximated concerning the crystal like classical media.

$$I_q\left(\frac{\alpha _{\mathrm{}}}{q}\right)^2$$
(7)
where $`I_q`$ is the intensity of mode $`q`$, $`\alpha _{\mathrm{}}`$ is the high frequency polarizability. The derivative is taken with respect to the amplitude of vibration $`q`$. In the shell model approximation the derivative could be calculated as follows:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _{\mathrm{}\alpha \beta }}{q_i}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}Y_k\left[U^{}[F^{SS}]^1F^{SCS}[F^{SS}]^1\right]_{k\alpha ,i,m\beta }Y_m`$ (8)
$`U_{i,n\gamma }^{}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{m_n}}}U_{i,n\gamma }`$
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the volume of primitive cell, $`U`$ is the matrix which diagonalizes dynamical matrix of the crystal (Eq. 6), $`i`$ \- indexes vibrational modes, $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ index Cartesian coordinates, $`k`$ and $`m`$ index ions in the primitive cell, $`Y_k`$ \- is the charge of the shell with number $`k`$, $`m_k`$ is the mass of the ion with number $`k`$. $`F^{SCS}`$ is the matrix of third derivatives taken with respect to the shell ($`S`$) and core ($`C`$) displacements.

Using the same approximation for calculation of frequencies and RS lines intensities we can perform the assignment of RS peaks to the calculated phonons. Moreover, this approximation allows investigating the RS lines intensities dependence on the values model parameters like pair potentials or JT term parameters as well as crystal lattice distortions.

### III.3 Results and discussion

If the JT contribution from lattice energy (Eq. 1) will be removed ($`|V_e|=0`$ in Eq. (4)), the structure, obtained via minimization of energy, would have space group $`R\overline{3}c`$ (tabl. 2). Adding JT term to the crystal energy we will get monoclinic phase with $`P2_1/b`$ symmetry. Structural phase transition from $`R\overline{3}c`$ to $`P2_1/b`$ structure in rhombohedral $`LaMnO_3`$ was observed Huang et al. (1997). We suppose that in the high temperature rhombohedral phase JT effect remains, but it is of cooperative dynamical type. We performed the calculation of energy dependence on the values of $`E_g`$ vibrational mode components $`q_\theta `$ and $`q_\epsilon `$. For each fixed values of these parameters the crystal energy was optimized with respect to the all lattice parameters which do not breaks new, $`P\overline{1}`$, symmetry. Because of fixed values of $`q_\theta `$ and $`q_\epsilon `$ parameters there was some constrains on the optimization parameters: a) the projection of ions coordinates onto $`q_\theta `$, $`q_\epsilon `$ displacements were constant; b) the lattice constants were constrained to be like in $`R\overline{3}c`$ lattice, i.e. the lattice was allowed only to change its volume and elongate along cubic  direction (such constrains do not allow for the uniform JT distortion)

The calculated dependence could be described well with following relationship (energy per primitive cell)

$$E=\frac{k}{2}\left(q_\theta ^2+q_\epsilon ^2\right)2|V_e|\sqrt{q_\theta ^2+q_\epsilon ^2}+A\left(3q_\theta ^2q_\epsilon q_\epsilon ^3\right)$$
(9)
Where $`k=12\text{eV/Å}^2`$, $`|V_e|=1.3\text{eV/Å}`$ and $`A=0.005\text{eV/Å}^3`$ Because of small value of $`A`$ system will perform ”slow rotation” at the bottom of adiabatical potential. The trajectory of motion will be approximately described by the equation $`\sqrt{(q_\theta ^2+q_\epsilon ^2)}=\stackrel{~}{\rho }=2|V_e|/k`$. The value of $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ is much more grater then the oxygen ions vibrational motions amplitude. We suppose that the frequency of motion at the bottom of adiabatic potential is slower then frequencies of optical phonons. We have to average over the trajectory of ”motion” in the $`q_\theta `$, $`q_\epsilon `$ space to get observable physical values. The RS process is ”fast” process, but the total time of observation is much grater than process itself. That is why RS process ”feels” each low symmetry structure that corresponds to different values of $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$, but the total picture is averaged on the whole trajectory of motion. In such case we have to average phonon frequencies and their RS intensities over the different $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ values. The dynamic matrix is calculated and diagonalized for each value of $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$. As the result the averaged phonon frequencies can be got by the averaging over the $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ dependence (table 3). The dynamic breaking of symmetry could give rise to the appearance of new RS lines. For verification of such assumption we calculated the dependence of intensity of highest $`A_{2g}`$ vibration (the symmetry in $`R\overline{3}c`$ structure) on the value of $`|V_e|`$. For each value of $`|V_e|`$ we calculated the $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ which corresponds to the energy minimum (the bottom of adiabatic potential). For this value of $`\stackrel{~}{\rho }`$ the phonon frequencies and RS lines intensities were averaged over all values of $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ (Fig. 2).

Because of low symmetry at each point of trajectory of averaging the phonon frequencies of $`E_g`$ symmetry are split (Tab. 3). However, the value of gap is rather small to see distinct lines and to give rise for observed in experiment Abrashev et al. (1999); Iliev and Abrashev (2001); Martín-Carrón et al. (2002) broadening. The broadening of lines could have the vibronic origin, which is integral feature of systems with dynamical JT effect Bersuker and Polinger (1989).

###### Acknowledgements.

This study was supported in part by the grant of RFBR R2002 U02-02-96412 and CRDF Grant REC 005.


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# Experimental investigation of cut-off phenomena in non-linear photonic crystal fibers

## Abstract

The modal cut-off is investigated experimentally in a series of high quality non-linear photonic crystal fibers. We demonstrate a suitable measurement technique to determine the cut-off wavelength and verify it by inspecting the near field of the modes that may be excited below and above the cut-off. We observe a double peak structure in the cut-off spectra, which is attributed to a splitting of the higher order modes. The cut-off is measured for seven different fiber geometries with different pitches and relative hole size, and a very good agreement with recent theoretical work is found.

Since the invention of the photonic crystal fibersknight1996  several new fiber applications have emerged (for a recent review we refer to Ref. russell2003,  and references therein). Especially, the use of small-core non-linear photonic crystal fibers (NL-PCFs) for super continuum generationranka2000  and other non-linear processes has attracted much attention, both scientifically but also from an application point of view. Most of the pioneering experiments have been carried out on fibers with a small silica core surrounded by one or a few periods of large holes, and issues such as the regularity of the hole structure and the number of guided modes have not been considered in detail. However, with recent improvements in the production of NL-PCFs very large and regular holey structures are routinely achieved, and a comparison between theory and experiment is facilitated. One of the most important properties of fundamental nature is the modal cut-off of NL-PCFs, and its dependence on the pitch and hole size of the structure. In the present Letter we report on what we believe to be the first systematic experimental investigation of the modal cut-off in a series of NL-PCFs, and discuss the results in relation to recent theoretical work.mortensen2002a ; kuhlmey2002 ; mortensen2003c

The fibers under investigation are fabricated using the typical PCF design with a triangular arrangement of air holes in the cladding and one missing hole that forms the core. All fibers have been drawn from the same preform having nine full rings of air holes and a tenth incomplete ring, see Fig. 1 (right). The air-hole diameter $`d`$ and air-hole pitch $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ have been determined using a calibrated high-resolution optical microscope and commercially available image analysis software. Also shown in Fig. 1 (left) is a histogram of the distribution of the relative hole sizes, $`d/\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, for the four inner and nine rings in the cladding. The four inner rings show a narrow size distribution with an average relative hole size of 0.659 and a standard deviation of 0.024, whereas for the nine full rings, the distribution is broadened toward smaller holes, yielding an average of 0.627 and a standard deviation of 0.070. In the following, we will use the size distribution of the inner four rings to characterize the fiber geometry, since it was theoretically found, that the cut-off does not change when the number of rings is increased from four to nine.kuhlmey2002  In Table 1, the pitch and relative hole size are listed for all the seven fibers reported on here.

For the experimental determination of the cut-off in the NL-PCFs, we have recorded the transmitted intensity in the fiber as a function of wavelength. The transmission shows a significant increase below the cut-off wavelength since more modes are available to carry power. This measurement principle is also used in standard fiber technology (see e.g. Ref. ghatak1998, ), however due to the small cores and high index steps in the NL-PCFs special care must be taken to launch and collect light with sufficiently high NA to measure the contributions from all modes. In the set-up used here, white light from a Tungsten Halogen lamp is coupled into the fiber using a microscope objective (MO) with an NA of 0.9. At the output, the emerging light is collimated using an identical MO and focused into a multi-mode fiber with an MO having an NA of 0.16. The multi-mode fiber is connected to an optical spectrum analyzer. The chromatic aberrations of the lens pair at the output as well as the white light source itself give rise to a strongly wavelength dependent power spectrum. In order to obtain a reference spectrum, the measurements have been performed starting with 3.0 meters of fiber, which is then cut back to 0.5 meters keeping the output coupling constant.

In Fig. 2 the transmission spectra are shown for the two lengths of fiber #1, as well as the difference of the spectra. Since the higher order modes are very lossy close to cut-off, a significant difference is expected between the transmission on the long length and the short length of fiber,argyros2001  which is clearly seen in the spectral range between 925 nm and 1025 nm. As an alternative to using the cutback technique, we also tried keeping the length constant, recording the transmission spectra for different bending radii of the fiber, as prescribed in several standard fiber measurement procedures.CEI/IEC  However, no measurable difference between the spectra were observed for radii down to less than 5 mm. Most likely this is due to the high NA of the higher-order modes that makes them much less sensitive to bending compared to higher-order modes in standard fibers.

The double peak structure of the subtracted spectra was observed in all the fibers investigated here. In order to clarify the nature of the double peak we investigated the spatial structure of the modes propagating in 2 meters of fiber at 635 nm, 780 nm, and 987 nm. These results are summarized in Fig. 3. Both at 635 nm and 780 nm it is possible to excite a fundamental mode with a maximum in the middle of the core \[panels (a) and (d)\], as well as two spatially orthogonal double-peaked intensity profiles having a minimum in the middle of the core \[panels (b), (c), (e), and (f)\]. However, at 987 nm only one of the double-peaked intensity profiles could be excited \[panel (h)\], which was observed independent of the orientation of the polarization of the launched light.

The source at 987 nm is located in the minimum between the two peaks in Fig. 2 and hence each of the peaks are attributed to higher-order modes \[with the profiles in e.g. panels (e) and (f)\] having different cut-off wavelengths, in this case at 1012 nm and at 970 nm. In the ideal NL-PCF structure the first four higher order modes are in fact not four-fold degenerate,steel2001  as they are in the weakly guiding approximation for circular step index fibers.snyder  In the presence of weak asymmetry, plane wave simulations show that the mode-indices of the four high-order modes group two by two. In the first group the modes have a spatial structure similar to panels (b,e,h) and the two modes in the other group have a structure corresponding to panels (c,f). Within each group we find that the two modes are orthogonally polarized, in agreement with the experimental findings. The presence of a small asymmetry in Fiber #1, is supported by measurements of the group birefringence of the fundamental mode at 1050 nm, yielding a value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }n=1.3\times 10^4`$ (note that $`\mathrm{\Delta }n=0`$ for the ideal structuresteel2001 ). With the small pitches in the fibers investigated here, only a very small variation of the pitch or hole size around the core may give rise to a birefringence on this order of magnitude.nielsen2001

All the cut-offs of the fibers measured here are plotted in Fig. 4 as a function of relative hole size in units of the normalized wavelength, $`\lambda /\mathrm{\Lambda }`$. The solid line shows the phenomenological relation

$$\lambda _{\mathrm{cut}\mathrm{off}}/\mathrm{\Lambda }\alpha (d/\mathrm{\Lambda }0.406)^\gamma $$
(1)
where $`\alpha 2.80\pm 0.12`$ and $`\gamma 0.89\pm 0.02`$. This relation was found to account well for numerical cut-off simulationskuhlmey2002  and recently we have shown that it can also be derived from $`V`$-parameter considerations.mortensen2003c  These predictions are in very good agreement with observed cut-off dependence, although the experimental data generally yield a slightly lower cut-off wavelength. It should be noted that the experimental criteria for cut-off is different than the criteria used in the simulations. The measurements described here defines the cut-off as the wavelength at which the attenuation of the higher order modes is on the order of 1 dB/m, whereas the simulations use the peak of the second derivative of the attenuation to define the cut-off.

In conclusion, we have demonstrated a measurement procedure for determining the modal cut-off in NL-PCF, which takes into account the high NA of the modes as well as the weak sensitivity to bends. The method is validated by inspecting the near field of the modes that may be excited in the fiber above and below cut-off. The cut-off spectra show a double-peak structure, which is attributed to a splitting of the higher order modes induced by asymmetry in the structure, in agreement with a high birefringence observed for the fundamental mode. Seven different NL-PCF designs with varying pitches and relative hole sizes have been investigated, and very good agreement is found with recent theoretical work on the modal cut-off.

N. A. Mortensen thanks B. T. Kuhlmey for discussions important to this work and K. P. Hansen and T. P. Hansen acknowledge financial support by the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences. J. R. Folkenberg’s e-mail address is jrf@crystal-fibre.com.


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# Meson Structure Functions in Valon Model

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Unlike the structure function of proton, there are relatively fewer information on the structure of meson and in particular pion. The parton distributions in proton have been studied extensively, both theoretically and experimentally, in a wide range of $`Q^2=[0.45,10000]`$ $`GeV^2`$ and $`x=[10^5,1]`$. Yet, pion plays an important role in QCD and its presence is felt everywhere in hadron physics: pion cloud of nucleon, baryon-meson fluctuation, and decay of quark to pion-quark which can explain certain aspects of flavor symmetry breaking in the nucleon sea, are just a few to name . As a result it is important to determine and understand its internal structure, which also renders useful information about nonperturbative QCD. However, at present, the parton distribution functions of pion are far from being satisfactory.
The meson structure is measured in a number of Drell-Yan processes  . Such measurements are concentrated in the intermediate and large $`x`$ region, mostly above $`0.2`$, and hence, pertinent to the valence quark distribution. Recently, ZEUS Collaboration have published pion structure function data at very low $`x`$ values from the leading neutron production in $`e^+p`$ collision  which provides some details about the sea quark distribution in pion. Unfortunately, there exists ambiguity in the normalization of ZEUS data. ZEUS collaboration have used two different methods to normalize the data. The results differ by a factor of two. In a recent paper  attempts are made to clarify the normalization ambiguity in the ZEUS data and independently calculate the pion structure function based on the valon model. The valon model essentially treats the hadron as the bound state of its valons. Each valon has its own partonic structure calculated in QCD. Measurements of Natchmann moments of proton structure function at Jefferson Laboratory  makes the valon model more credible. The findings of Ref. points to a new type of scaling which can be interpreted as a constituent form factor, consistent with the elastic nucleon data. This, in turn, suggests that the proton structure originates form the elastic coupling with the extended objects inside the proton . If confirmed, such an extended object can be identified as valon.
Of course, the notion of structureful objects in hadrons is not new. Altarelli and Cabibo  have used the concept in the context of $`SU(3)\times O(3)`$ and R.C. Hwa has termed them as valons and further developed the concept and showed its application to many physical processes . It is now well established that one can perturbatively dress a QCD Lagrangian field to all orders and construct a structureful object (valon) in conformity with the color confinement  . More recently, the partonic content of a valon is calculated in the Next-to-Leading Order (NLO)  and shown that if convoluted with the valon distribution in proton, it gives a fairly accurate description of the proton structure function data in the entire kinematical range of measured values.
The underlying assumption of the valon model is that the structure of a valon is independent of valon type and the hosting hadron. Therefore, it should provide insight into the structure of hadrons other than proton, for which the experimental information are either a rarity or less accurate. In fact, in Ref.  the method described in Ref.  is used to calculate the pion structure function. However, the focus was on the low $`x`$ region and the knowledge gained was pertinent to the sea quark distribution in the pion; and to provide a resolution of the normalization ambiguity. Thus, the aim of this paper is three-fold: (a) to extend the analysis to include the intermediate and large $`x`$ region; (b) To test the validity of the valon model and extract the valon distribution of mesons, and (c) to elaborate on the kaon structure.

## 2 The Valon Model

In the valon model, we assume that baryons and mesons consist of three, and two valons, respectively. Each valon contains a valence quark of the same flavor as the valon itself and a sea of partons (quarks, antiquarks, and gluons). At low enough $`Q^2`$ the structure of a valon cannot be resolved and the hadron is viewed as the bound state of its valons. At high $`Q^2`$ the structure of a valon is described in terms of its partonic content. For a U-type valon, say, we may write its structure function as

$$F_2^U(z,Q^2)=\frac{4}{9}z(G_{\frac{u}{U}}+G_{\frac{\overline{u}}{U}})+\frac{1}{9}z(G_{\frac{d}{U}}+G_{\frac{\overline{d}}{U}}+G_{\frac{s}{U}}+G_{\frac{\overline{s}}{U}})+\mathrm{}$$
(1)
where all the functions on the right-hand side are the probability functions for quarks having momentum fraction $`z`$ of a U-type valon at $`Q^2`$. A similar expression can be written for other types. In Ref.  the probability functions, or parton distributions in the valon are calculated in QCD to the NLO at the scales of $`Q_0^2=0.283`$ $`GeV^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.22`$ GeV. Without going into the details, it suffices here to give the functional forms of them as follows,

$$zq_{valence}^{valon}(z,Q^2)=az^b(1z)^c,$$
(2)
$$zq_{sea}^{valon}(z,Q^2)=\alpha z^\beta (1z)^\gamma [1+\eta z+\xi z^{0.5}].$$
(3)
The parameters $`a`$, $`b`$, $`c`$, $`\alpha `$, $`\beta `$, $`\gamma `$, $`\eta `$, and $`\xi `$ are functions of $`Q^2`$ and are given in the appendix of Ref. . Gluon distribution in a valon has an identical form as in Eq. (3) but with different parameter values. Eqs. (1)-(3) completely determine the partonic structure of the valon without any new parameter. We note that the sum rule reflecting the fact that each valon contains only one valence quark is satisfied for all $`Q^2`$:

$$_0^1q_{valence}^{vaon}(z,Q^2)𝑑z=1.$$
(4)
## 3 The Meson Structure Functions

### 3.1 A. Pion

The determination of parton content of hadron requires the knowledge of the valon distribution in that hadron. Let us denote the probability of finding a valon carrying momentum fraction $`y`$ of the hadron by $`G_{\frac{valon}{h}}(y)`$, which describes the wave function of hadron in the valon representation, containing all the complications due to confinement. Following  and , we write the valon distribution in a meson as:

$$G_{\frac{valon}{meson}}(y)=\frac{1}{\beta [\mu _m+1,\nu _m+1]}y^{\mu _m}(1y)^{\nu _m}.$$
(5)
with the requirements that the above form satisfies the number and momentum sum rules:

$$_0^1G_{\frac{valon}{meson}}𝑑y=1\underset{valon}{}_0^1yG_{\frac{valon}{meson}}𝑑y=1$$
(6)
where, $`\beta [i,j]`$ is the Euler beta function and $`G_{\frac{valon}{h}}(y)`$ stands for the distribution of a U-valon in $`\pi ^+`$ or a D-valon in $`\pi ^{}`$. By interchange of $`\mu \nu `$ the anti-valon distribution in the same meson is obtained.
An essential property of the valon model is that the structure of hadron in the valon representation is independent of the probe. This means that the parton distribution in a hadron can be written as the convolution of the partons in the valon and the valon distribution in the hadron. For the case of pion, this translates into:

$$xu_{valence}^{\pi ^+}(x,Q^2)=_x^1𝑑y\frac{x}{y}G_{\frac{U}{\pi ^+}}(y)u_{\frac{valence}{U}}(\frac{x}{y},Q^2)$$
(7)
$$x\overline{d}_{valence}^{\pi ^+}(x,Q^2)=_x^1𝑑y\frac{x}{y}G_{\frac{\overline{D}}{\pi ^+}}(y)\overline{d}_{\frac{valence}{\overline{D}}}(\frac{x}{y},Q^2)$$
(8)
$$xd_{valence}^\pi ^{}(x,Q^2)=_x^1𝑑y\frac{x}{y}G_{\frac{D}{\pi ^{}}}(y)d_{\frac{valence}{D}}(\frac{x}{y},Q^2)$$
(9)
$$x\overline{u}_{valence}^\pi ^{}(x,Q^2)=_x^1𝑑y\frac{x}{y}G_{\frac{\overline{U}}{\pi ^{}}}(y)\overline{u}_{\frac{valence}{\overline{U}}}(\frac{x}{y},Q^2)$$
(10)
As for the sea quark distribution , we will take the example of $`\pi ^+`$. $`\pi ^+`$ has two valons, $`U`$ and $`\overline{D}`$ and each contributes to the sea and gluon content of pion as:

$$xq_{sea}^{\pi ^+}(x,Q^2)=_x^1𝑑y\frac{x}{y}G_{\frac{U}{\pi ^+}}(y)q_{\frac{sea}{U}}(\frac{x}{y},Q^2)+_x^1𝑑y\frac{x}{y}G_{\frac{\overline{D}}{\pi ^+}}(y)q_{\frac{sea}{\overline{D}}}(\frac{x}{y},Q^2)$$
(11)
Evaluation of these convoluted integrals requires us to determine $`G_{\frac{valon}{\pi }}(y)`$ or, alternatively, finding $`\mu _m`$ and $`\nu _m`$. Since the two valons in the pion, apart from flavor, cannot be distinguished and since the masses of the $`U`$ and $`\overline{D}`$ valons are the same, therefore their average momentum also must be the same. This can be achieved only if $`\mu _m=\nu _m`$, leaving us with only one parameter. We use the valence distribution data in $`\pi ^{}`$ at $`Q^2=25`$ $`GeV^2`$ from the Drell-Yan experiment of E615 collaboration  to find this parameter. The fit to the data of Ref.  is shown in Fig. (1), which is obtained by taking the starting scale,$`Q_0^2=0.47`$ $`GeV^2`$ with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}=0.22`$ GeV.

The goodness of the fit is checked by $`\chi ^2`$ minimization procedure. We find that the $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom is $`1.2`$ and that $`\mu _m=\nu _m=0.01`$. As a comparison, in Fig.(1) we have also shown the results from the determination of  as dashed line and those of  as dotted line, both at $`Q^2=25`$ $`GeV^2`$. In fitting the data we have also allowed both $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$ and $`Q_0^2`$ to be free parameters and obtained an equally good description of the data with $`Q_0^2=0.35`$ $`GeV^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}=0.175`$ GeV resulting in $`\mu _m=\nu _m=0.03`$. However, it seems that $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}=0.175`$ is too low for four active flavor. As such, we choose the former against the latter. With the Determination of these parameters, it is important to check the valence quark sum rule in pion. Using the explicit form of Eq. (2), i.e. $`zq_{valence}^{valon}(z=x/y,Q^2)`$, from the appendix of Ref. , we find that each of the integrals in Eqs. (7-10) gives $`0.9994`$, $`1.002`$, and $`1.008`$ at $`Q^2=3,10,20`$ $`GeV^2`$, respectively; an excellent confirmation of the valence quark sum rule. The first two moments of pion valence quark distribution is also calculated at $`Q^2=49`$ $`GeV^2`$ for the purpose of comparison with the findings of Ref. . We find that $`2<xq_{\frac{valence}{\pi }}>=0.378`$ and $`2<x^2q_{\frac{valence}{\pi }}>=0.151`$. This is to be compared with $`0.40\pm 02`$ and $`0.16\pm 0.01`$ of Ref. , respectively.

From Eq. (5) we can infer some knowledge about the charge and matter distributions of the pion . The longitudinal momentum space is related to the coordinate space by a Fourier Transform and a boost to infinite-momentum frame. Since the valon structure originates from QCD virtual processes, which are flavor independent, the matter and the charge densities in the valon ought to be flavor independent. Hence, the charge density in, say, $`\pi ^+`$ is

$$\rho _q(y)=\frac{2}{3}G_{\frac{U}{\pi ^+}}(y)+\frac{1}{3}G_{\frac{\overline{D}}{\pi ^+}}(y),$$
(12)
whereas for the matter density distribution we assume that it is proportional to the total valon distribution, i.e. ,

$$\rho _m(y)=\frac{1}{2}(G_{\frac{U}{\pi ^+}}(y)+G_{\frac{\overline{D}}{\pi ^+}}(y)).$$
(13)
The integral of both quantities in Eqs.(12) and (13) are equal to one.
Let us write the explicit form of $`G_{\frac{valon}{\pi ^+}}`$:

$$G_{\frac{U}{\pi ^+}}=G_{\frac{\overline{D}}{\pi ^+}}=1.020(1y)^{0.01}y^{0.01}.$$
(14)
It is evident that this function is very broad in momentum space. This feature is expected, for, it indicates that the valons are tightly bound. This is also a reflection that the pion is much lighter than the mass of its constituent quarks. The parameters, $`\mu _m`$ and $`\nu _m`$ obtained here are slightly different from those used in Ref.  and are significantly different from those quoted in . In  the values $`\mu _m=0.01`$ and $`\nu _m=0.06`$ were used, while the determination of Ref.  is $`\mu _m=\nu _m=0`$, thus, there is no significant differences among this work and those of Ref.. In Ref.  the pion cloud model in conjunction with the valon model is used to calculate the pion structure. They find that $`\mu _m=0.044`$ and $`\nu _m=0.372`$. In this work and in Ref.  the parton distribution in a valon is derived from QCD alone, with no phenomenological assumption. However, in Ref. , the focus was on the low $`x`$ behavior of the pion structure function, whereas here we have used data at rather large $`x`$ ($`x>0.2`$) region to determine the valon distribution in the pion. In Fig. (2) we present the full pion structure function at $`Q^2=7`$ and $`Q^2=15`$ $`GeV^2`$ at small $`x`$, ($`x=[10^4,10^2]`$), region and compared the results with those obtained from Sutton,et al.  and Gluck, Reya, and Schienbein  parameterizations. In Fig. (2) two sets of data points are shown, which correspond to the two different methods of normalization used by ZEUS collaboration.While the results from Ref.  agrees with the additive quark model normalization, the parameterization of Ref.  is qualitatively closer to the effective one-pion-exchange model normalization. Note that although the parameterization of Ref. provides a good description of the additive quark model normalization of the data, it fails to describe the large $`x`$ data of Ref.  as is apparent from Fig. (1). As can be seen from the figure, the valon model results are in good agreement with the pion flux normalization of the data. It is also interesting to note that in the valon model a simple relationship holds rather well between proton and pion structure functions, namely, $`F_2^\pi =kF_2^p`$, with $`k0.37`$ . This observation has also been made by the ZEUS Collaboration . The ZEUS group will soon release two new measurement: one is photoproduction study from which the pion trajectory can be determined; and the second is a measure of the exponential $`P_t`$ slopes in deep inelastic scattering that can be used to limit the choice for the form factor $`F(t)`$ . These measurements should help to resolve the normalization issue.

### 3.2 B. Kaon

The treatment of the kaon structure function is similar to that of pion, except that we need to determine valon distribution in the kaon. We will concentrate on $`K^{}`$, since there are some data  which provide information about the valence distribution in $`K^{}`$. In Refs.  it is stated that the general form of the exclusive valon distribution in a meson is as follows

$$G_{V_1V_2}(y_1,y_2)=[\beta (\mu _k+1,\nu _k+1)]^1y_1^{\mu _k}y_2^{\nu _k}\delta (y_1+y_21)$$
(15)
Integrating over either of $`y_i`$ will give the individual valon distribution in the meson, as in Eq. (5). So, we can write a similar equation for the valon distributions in $`K^{}`$, except that $`\mu _m`$ and $`\nu _m`$ are different and we label them as $`\mu _k`$ and $`\nu _k`$, respectively. One way to determine these parameters is fitting $`G_{\frac{valon}{hadron}}(y)`$ to some experimental data. Unfortunately, there is no experimental data on the valon distribution of any hadron, and from the theoretical point of view, the function $`G_{\frac{valon}{hadron}}(y)`$ cannot be evaluated accurately. However, there are some limited data on the ratio

$$R=\frac{x\overline{u}_k^{}}{x\overline{u}_\pi ^{}}$$
(16)
at large $`x`$ values , and can be used to fit equations of the form (7-10) to get $`\mu _k`$ and $`\nu _k`$. Maintaining the same values for $`Q_0^2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ as in the case of pion, we have fit the data of Ref.  and obtained $`\mu _k=0.13`$ and $`\nu _k=0.28`$ with a $`\chi ^2=0.646`$ per degrees of freedom. The fit is shown in Fig. (3). In our fit to this data set, both valence and sea $`\overline{u}`$ are included, although the data points are at rather large $`x`$ and hence, the sea quark contribution to $`R`$ is marginal.

In the alternative, we can be guided by making a simple phenomenological assumption as follows . Since $`K^{}`$ consists of two valons with different masses. It is obvious from Eq. (15) that the average momentum fractions of the light valon, $`\overline{y_1}`$ and the heavy valon, $`\overline{y_2}`$, are $`\overline{y_1}=(\mu _k+1)/(\mu _k+\nu _k)`$ and $`\overline{y_2}=(\nu _k+1)/(\mu _k+\nu _k)`$, respectively. Thus, letting the ratio of the momenta be equal to ratios of their masses, we get

$$\frac{\overline{y_1}}{\overline{y_2}}=\frac{m_U}{m_S}\frac{300}{500}=\frac{\mu _k+1}{\nu _k+1}=0.6$$
(17)
In this way $`\nu _k`$ is restricted by

$$\nu _k=(\mu _k+0.4)/0.6,$$
(18)
hence, leaving us with only one parameter, $`\mu _k`$, to be determined. A one parameter fit to the data of Ref.  is highly unsatisfactory, with $`\mu _k=0.35`$ as can be seen in Fig. (4). Authors of Ref.  have used inclusive distribution of $`K^+\pi ^+`$ and $`K^+\pi ^{}`$ and found $`\mu _k=1`$ and $`\nu _k=2`$ which also do not support the data of Ref. . An earlier QCD calculation  of the ratio, which takes into account the difference in quark mass, however agrees with the data. Nevertheless, it seems that $`R`$ being around 0.5 at $`x=0.95`$ is too high. Considering the large error bars in the data, the accuracy of the data, at least, at large $`x`$ is suspect. One possible way of determining the valence quark density in kaon would be the difference of two cross sections in $`K^+p\mu ^+\mu ^{}+X`$ and $`K^{}p\mu ^+\mu ^{}+X`$ processes.

While the determination of the valon distribution in kaon remains uncertain, we will proceed with the values obtained for $`\mu _k`$ and $`\mu _k`$ without the restriction of Eq. (18), namely, $`\mu _k=0.13`$ and $`\nu _k=0.28`$ and arrive at the following valon distributions in $`K^{}`$;

$$G_{\overline{U}}^k^{}(y)=1.4768y^{0.13}(1y)^{0.28},G_S^k^{}(y)=1.4768y^{0.28}(1y)^{0.13}$$
(19)
With these relations the average momentum fraction carried by $`\overline{U}`$ and $`S`$ valons are 0.469 and 0.531, respectively. Using these valon distributions along with Eqs. (7-10) for $`K^{}`$, the valence quark distributions for $`\pi ^{}`$ and $`k^{}`$ are calculated at $`Q^2=25GeV^2`$ and shown in Fig.(5).

It should be noted that in Drell-Yan processes, obtaining experimental information on the strange valence and sea quark distribution in kaon is not practical. Because those components in kaon only contribute to the total cross section of the Drell-Yan processes through valence-sea and $`s\overline{s}`$ annihilation and these contributions being small makes it difficult to separate them. The valon model, on the other hand, provides valuable information about these components. Figures (6) shows the strange valence and sea quark distributions in $`K^{}`$. Both are calculated at $`Q^2=25`$ $`GeV^2`$ from the model. For the purpose of comparison, in Figure (7) we show sea quark distributions in a valon. The sea quark distribution is calculated originally for $`u`$ and $`d`$ type partons. The strange sea quark distributions are generally smaller than the light sea quark distributions so that in proton $`2\overline{s}/(\overline{u}+\overline{d})0.5`$ Nevertheless, by the time $`x10^4`$ $`\overline{s}\overline{u}`$.

## 4 Conclusion

We have used the notion of the valon model to determine the structure of mesons. Since the partonic structure of a valon is already known, the structure function of any meson needs only two parameters to be completely determined. The valon model provides information about the sea quark distribution of mesons that are out of reach experimentally. While the pion structure is determined fairly accurately, the structure of kaon remains uncertain, due to the lack of accurate data or incompatibility of data sets from different experiments.