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# Linking star-formation and environment in the A901/902 supercluster

## 1 Introduction

At a given epoch, the observed properties of galaxies in dense clusters of galaxies are known to vary from those residing in the more rarefied field. The classic example of such an environmental dependence is the well-known morphology-density relation, $`\mathrm{T}\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ (Dressler, 1980; Dressler et al., 1997; Treu et al., 2003), in which a dramatic increase in the proportion of elliptical galaxies is seen toward the cores of rich clusters. Clusters of galaxies appear to act to accelerate galaxy evolution, possibly through increased galaxy-galaxy interactions and/or interactions between galaxies and the global cluster environment. It is possible to probe the environmental dependence of galaxy evolution by tracing changes in both structural parameters and star-formation activity.

Previous studies have found evidence for gradients in star-formation properties (Abraham et al., 1996; Balogh et al., 1997; Hashimoto et al., 1998) in samples of rich clusters. More recently a relation between star-formation activity and local galaxy density (referred to here as the $`\mathrm{SF}\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ relation, analogous to the $`\mathrm{T}\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ relation) has been observed in several guises: a break in $`VI`$ colour in the outskirts of a $`z=0.4`$ cluster (Kodama et al., 2001, erratum in Kodama et al. 2003) and a decline in star-formation rate toward clusters in the 2dFGRS (Lewis et al., 2002) and with increasing galaxy density in the SDSS (Gómez et al., 2003). Intriguingly, all three of these studies find evidence for threshold local galaxy densities above which star-formation activity is rapidly quenched. The range of densities probed suggests that environmentally driven changes in the star-formation rate occur not only in the cores of rich clusters but also in regions more associated with poorer groups and infall regions. This picture is consistent with hierarchical models of structure formation (e.g. Kauffmann et al., 1993) in which clusters grow by continuous accretion of galaxies or groups of galaxies from the field. Less clear, however, is the mechanism responsible for driving these transformations (Balogh et al., 2000; Diaferio et al., 2001; Okamoto & Nagashima, 2003) and whether the same mechanism orchestrates changes in observed morphological, spectral, and photometric properties on similar timescales.

The combination of wide-field gravitational lensing and multi-band imaging offers a new approach to the study of galaxy evolution. Weak lensing directly probes the underlying density field (which may or may not be well correlated to local galaxy density), and thus offers a different but complementary measure of environment. The key quantity to consider is the total projected surface mass density, $`\kappa `$, expressed in units of the critical density for lensing. The construction of a $`\mathrm{SF}\kappa `$ relation and its comparison with the analogous $`\mathrm{SF}\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ relation may shed new light on the mechanisms responsible for the transformation of galaxies as they are accreted onto a dense environment. In this paper we exploit the unique dataset provided by the COMBO-17 survey and combine photometric redshifts, spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and weak gravitational lensing to investigate correlations between star-formation activity and environment in a supercluster at $`z=0.16`$. Throughout, we assume $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3,\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7,`$ and $`H_0=100h`$ km s-1 Mpc-1.

## 2 Observations and galaxy classifications

The A901/902 supercluster was observed in 17 bands (5 broad-band, 12 medium-band) with the $`0.5^{}\times 0.5^{}`$ ESO/MPG Wide-Field Imager as part of the COMBO-17 spectrophotometric survey (Wolf et al., 2003). The supercluster consists of three main cluster-sized mass concentrations all at $`z=0.16`$ and contained within the field of view of the instrument. Preliminary results from a subset of the full dataset, consisting of the broad-band $`B`$ and $`R`$band data alone, were presented in Gray et al. (2002). These findings included a 2-D map of the dimensionless projected surface mass density, $`\kappa `$, which was the result of a weak gravitational lensing reconstruction based on the deep $`R`$-band image. The complex structure and obvious non-relaxation of the system make it an ideal laboratory for probing a range of environments.

The procedure for classification and redshift estimation has been described in detail several times elsewhere (Wolf et al., 2003; Bell et al., 2003; Wolf et al., 2001). Here, we only stress that on average we expect galaxy redshifts to be accurate to $`\sigma _z0.03`$ for a random sample (with early-types good to around $`0.01`$), while faint starburst galaxies can be worse than $`0.05`$. The 17-band system of ‘fuzzy spectroscopy’ allows for detailed rendering of template fits. With knowledge of the SED shape we can directly reconstruct rest-frame luminosities in Johnson $`U`$\- and $`V`$-bands across a wide redshift range without generic $`k`$-correction.

Armed with both SED classifications and photometric redshifts, it is possible to accurately isolate those galaxies belonging to the foreground lensing structure. Having first selected galaxies with $`R<24`$ and $`0.15<z<0.18`$, we then further subdivide the supercluster population into two classes according to photometric properties. Fig. 1 shows the measured rest-frame $`UV`$ vs. absolute $`V`$band colour-magnitude diagram for the redshift-selected galaxies. As in the study of the evolution of 5000 early-type galaxies in the COMBO-17 survey from $`0.2<z<1.1`$ (Bell et al., 2003), we observe a distinctly bimodal distribution. We fix the slope of the prominent colour-magnitude relation (CMR) as -0.08 (Bower et al., 1992) and fit the intercept for all galaxies with $`M_V<18+5\mathrm{log}h`$. We next define an offset $`\mathrm{\Delta }(UV)_c=0.25`$ to mark the division between our two classes of galaxies. Redward of this limit we have the prominent ridge of red-sequence early-type galaxies, and blueward is the second population of star-forming galaxies. Note that this division between ‘quiescent’ and ‘star-forming’ galaxies is made purely on photometric information with no considerations regarding morphology.

This method of selecting cluster members by photometric redshift is in contrast to the alternative approach of selecting the red sequence along the $`BR`$ colour-magnitude relation (cf. Gray et al., 2002). While in that case blind red-sequence selection alone managed to isolate many of the quiescent galaxies, it was insensitive to the large number of blue star-forming galaxies within the structure, and furthermore suffered from the inclusion of galaxies along the line of sight. The combination of redshifts and photometric classifications offers a much more precise characterization of the luminous properties of the cluster, while simultaneously eliminating confusion from foreground/background contamination. Furthermore, we note that increasing the range for redshift selection to $`0.15<z<0.2`$ makes negligible difference to the following analysis and conclusions. This consistency implies that the photometric redshifts of the quiescent galaxies are indeed accurate to $`\sigma _z0.01`$

## 3 Galaxy properties and environment

Fig. 2 shows the distribution of the redshift-selected galaxies relative to the mass map of Gray et al. (2002). A segregation effect by type is clearly evident, with the quiescent galaxies (Fig. 2b) much more strongly concentrated than the actively star-forming galaxies (Fig. 2c). The mass map (Fig. 2a) was constructed using a sample of quiescent galaxies chosen to have $`BR`$ colours redder than the colour-magnitude sequence, so overlap between the lensing and lensed populations here will be negligible. The map was smoothed with a Gaussian of $`\sigma =60`$ arcsec ($`120h^1`$ kpc). The rms noise in the map was estimated to be $`\sigma _\kappa =0.027`$ by constructing 32 realizations of noise maps made by randomizing the shapes of the galaxies in the background catalogue. Thus, the three cluster peaks are each detected at the $`>3\sigma `$ level, but mass peaks corresponding to additional concentrations of galaxies (i.e. a group in the SW corner of the field) are not significantly detected above the noise.

We find further evidence for the segregation of galaxy populations and a type-dependent correlation with the mass distribution by sampling the lensing mass map at the location of each of the supercluster galaxies. Using the deviation blueward of the cluster CMR sequence as a measure of star-formation activity, Fig. 3 reveals that the highest density regions are populated almost exclusively by those galaxies classified as ‘quiescent’. Furthermore, there appears to exist a critical surface mass density, $`\kappa 0.05`$, above which few star-forming galaxies are seen (although clearly a small number of galaxies would be expected to appear in projection against the mass peaks). We acknowledge that the noise in the mass reconstruction could scatter galaxies from lower to apparently higher densities, so this value may in reality be an upper limit. However, as will be seen later in the paper, obervations of a similar threshold in the galaxy number density (a less noisy quantity) and a correlation between number density and mass density supports the idea that the mass threshold is not drastically lower.

The strikingly different density distributions for each population are shown in Fig. 4. The distribution of pixels in the mass map itself is also shown: the noise inherent in such mass reconstructions is reflected in the number of ‘negative mass’ pixels, but we note the asymmetry of the distribution and the tail at high densities. The fraction of star-forming galaxies found in regions with density above this threshold, $`f(\kappa >0.05)`$, is 0.06, compared to 0.21 for quiescent galaxies. The abrupt transition to a population dominated by passive galaxies at high densities indicates that an environmental effect may be responsible. It is possible that we are observing the truncation of active star formation as galaxies are accreted onto the dense supercluster environment.

When considering the relative abundances of each type of galaxy at a given density, we find that behaviour analogous to the traditional morphology-density relationship (Dressler, 1980) is evident in the $`\mathrm{SF}\kappa `$ diagram in Fig. 5a. The fraction of galaxies that are actively forming stars plummets at high surface mass densities, with a compensating rise in the fraction of quiescent galaxies. For comparison, the relative abundances of each type in the field were determined from identical redshift slices in two blank COMBO-17 fields. Even at low surface mass densities the fraction of galaxies classified as quiescent in the supercluster is in excess of the field value. However, measurements in this regime may suffer from contamination by low-mass groups whose mass peaks are not detected above the noise, but which nonetheless contain a higher-than-field fraction of quiescent galaxies.

Considering the threshold density of $`\kappa =0.05`$, we convert to physical units by assuming that the source galaxies for lensing reside on a plane at $`z=1.0`$ (cf. Gray et al., 2002; Brown et al., 2003). Then the critical density for a lens at $`z=0.16`$ is $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mathrm{crit}}=5.0\times 10^{15}hM_{\mathrm{}}`$ Mpc-2, which yields a projected density of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\kappa =\kappa \mathrm{\Sigma }_{\mathrm{crit}}=2.5\times 10^{14}hM_{\mathrm{}}`$ Mpc-2. The advantage of gravitational lensing is that this measure of total projected mass has the potential to allow direct comparison with dark matter particles in simulations, without assumptions regarding if and how light traces mass. In addition, most of the mass in the inner regions of clusters is thought to be smoothly distributed, with only $`1020\%`$ of the total mass in the core regions associated with individual galaxy haloes (Natarajan et al., 2002). However, in order to compare these results with previous studies of galaxy evolution in dense environments, we then ask: does this total mass density correspond to a counterpart threshold galaxy number density?

Gray et al. (2002) found that the distribution of (colour-selected) early-type galaxies alone relative to the mass distribution did not scale in the same way for each of the three clusters. Indeed, in one case the two distributions showed significant misalignment. However, with the addition of the full redshift-selected sample of supercluster galaxies available for this work we find a qualitative improvement (though still with large scatter) in the relation between surface mass density and local galaxy number density. We define $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{10}`$ as the local density by calculating the area of the circle containing a given galaxy and its ten nearest neighbours within our redshift slice. We exclude all galaxies for which such a circle would extend outside the field boundaries. Fig. 5b shows that the surface mass density $`\kappa 0.05`$ corresponds to a local galaxy density of $`1.8<\mathrm{log}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{10}<2.8`$, though this sampling is restricted to the location of the supercluster galaxies and so cannot probe areas containing dark matter but few galaxies. Therefore, though local number density is not necessarily a direct proxy for mass density, Fig. 5b shows that it serves here as a first approximation.

To compare this galaxy density threshold with previous studies, we note that our limit of $`R<24`$ for photometric redshift determination corresponds to an absolute $`V`$band magnitude of $`M_V=14.3+5\mathrm{log}h`$. Taking $`M_V^{}=20.2+5\mathrm{log}h`$ (Brown et al., 2001), this corresponds to $`M_V^{}+6`$, or $`0.004L^{}`$. While the limiting apparent magnitude is similar to that of Kodama et al. (2001), the lower redshift of the A901 supercluster relative to their cluster at $`z=0.4`$ allows us to probe two magnitudes deeper down the luminosity function. Thus by applying the relevant luminosity limits we can make direct comparisons with the threshold densities quoted by Kodama et al. 2001 (corrected from $``$400$`h^2`$ to $``$120$`h^2`$ Mpc-2, brighter than $`M_V^{}+4`$ in Kodama et al. 2003) and Lewis et al. 2002 and Gómez et al. 2003 ($``$2$`h^2`$ Mpc-2, brighter than $`M^{}+1`$). Gómez et al. noted that even accounting for the change in luminosity limit these two measures appear to differ by an order of magnitude. Even following correction of the Kodama et al. densities in the subsequent erratum, the breaks in galaxy properties still occur at different densities and different clustercentric radii. With the COMBO-17 dataset, we are in a position to resolve this anomaly.

Fig. 5c shows the rest-frame colour trends with local galaxy density for all three magnitude limits under consideration ($`M_V^{}+6,M_V^{}+4,M_V^{}+1`$). In each case the bluest quartile of the galaxy population shows the strongest change with density, in agreement with the previous studies. For the full dataset (top panel), a sharp transition to redder colours is visible at $`\mathrm{log}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{10}2.6`$ or $``$400$`h^2`$ Mpc-2, as anticipated from the $`\kappa \mathrm{log}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{10}`$ relation. If we apply the Kodama et al. $`M^{}+4`$ luminosity limit (middle panel), the break is less abrupt but a change in colour does appear to occur close to their critical density. However, when we restrict ourselves to the brighter limit (and thus lower galaxy densities) of Gómez et al. (2003) and Lewis et al. (2002), the trend with density is smoother.

Nevertheless, for all three magnitude limits the rest-frame colour is still redder than field values at all densities. These field densities and colour quartiles, taken from the same $`0.15<z<0.18`$ redshift slice in the COMBO-17 offset fields, are indicated by the open squares and dashed lines in Fig. 5c. An extrapolation of each curve back to the corresponding density in the field for that limiting magnitude shows good agreement with the measured colours at low densities. Furthermore, we note that the density of field galaxies in COMBO-17 at the bright limit ($`M_V^{}+1`$) is close to the critical densities of Gómez et al. (2003) and Lewis et al. (2002), but that the colour transition for bright galaxies is noticably smoother. Hence, this observed density threshold of $`2h^2\mathrm{Mpc}^2`$ could more appropriately be interpreted as the point at which the abundance ratios begin to depart from those observed in the field. While at fainter limits this departure begins at densities $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{10}10h^2\mathrm{Mpc}^2`$, this is in addition to the secondary and sharper cut-off seen here and in Kodama et al. (2001). This additional threshold occurs at a density which is an order-of-magnitude above the field density, and affects primarily the faint end of the luminosity function.

## 4 Conclusions

In summary, by adjusting the luminosity limits of our sample we observe two distinct effects: a gradual change in the properties of bright galaxies from several virial radii, and an abrupt change in the properties of the faint (starburst) population, occurring at $`r<0.5h^1`$ Mpc from the centre of each cluster. For the first time we are able to measure environmental effects using not only galaxy density but also direct measurements of the projected surface mass density $`\kappa `$ from weak gravitational lensing. The observed galaxy density thresholds and clustercentric distances appear to be in broad agreement with both the low- and high-redshift studies cited above, when the differing luminosity limits are taken into account. We postulate a simple scenario in which we may be observing the effects of multiple mechanisms influencing the transformation of the bright and faint galaxies in the low- and high-density regimes.

In the transitional or infall regions where densities are relatively low, gradual processes over timescales of several Gyr are dominant. The most likely mechanisms for the slow suppression of star formation include galaxy ‘harassment’ in the form of high-speed galaxy-galaxy interactions (Moore et al., 1996), or ‘suffocation’ following the removal of a diffuse hot gaseous reservoir and the subsequent consumption of any remaining gas (Larson et al., 1980). At higher densities (or lower clustercentric radii) the abrupt observed transition may indicate the threshold at which the influence of the cluster potential takes hold. This influence may manifest itself through tidal truncation of galaxy haloes (Merritt, 1983, 1984; Natarajan et al., 2002) or by ram-pressure stripping of galactic gas (Gunn & Gott, 1972). Ram-pressure stripping requires dense gas so for a typical massive cluster becomes ineffective beyond $``$1 Mpc (Treu et al., 2003); likewise, the tidal effects of the cluster are felt over a very narrow range (100-200 kpc) and are most effective at disrupting less dense galaxies (Treu et al., 2003; Moore et al., 1998).

For this particular supercluster field, the COMBO-17 dataset has been further augmented by 2dF spectra and recent deep X-ray observations with XMM-Newton. Both additions will further test the mechanisms responsible for the galaxy transformations within this system. Analysis of the detailed spectroscopy of 300 supercluster galaxies will reveal their star formation histories, in particular signatures of cluster-induced starbursts or recently truncated star formation. Using measurement of emission and absorption features we will trace the distribution of starburst and post-starburst galaxies relative to both dark matter environment and local galaxy density. The X-ray data will probe the hot ICM and the test the effectiveness of ram-pressure stripping in these regimes. In addition, the remaining COMBO-17 fields cover a wider mass spectrum, including multiple cluster systems, an isolated cluster, and blank fields. Applying the joint lensing and multi-colour analysis to all these fields will help to untangle environmental links between dark matter distribution, local galaxy number density, and galaxy evolution.

## Acknowledgments

MEG acknowledges a PPARC Postdoctoral Fellowship and thanks Ian Smail and Eelco van Kampen for useful discussions. CW was supported by the PPARC rolling grant in Observational Cosmology at the University of Oxford. SD was supported by a PPARC rolling grant at Imperial College. We are grateful to the anonymous referee for useful suggestions that improved the paper.


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# Ground state of 1D bosons with delta interaction: link to the BCS model

## Abstract

The Bethe roots describing the ground state energy of the integrable 1D model of interacting bosons with weakly repulsive two-body delta interactions are seen to satisfy the set of Richardson equations appearing in the strong coupling limit of an integrable BCS pairing model. The BCS model describes boson-boson interactions with zero centre of mass momentum of pairs. It follows that the Bethe roots of the weakly interacting boson model are given by the zeros of Laguerre polynomials. The ground state energy and the lowest excitation are obtained explicitly via the Bethe roots. A direct link has thus been established, in the context of integrable 1D models, between bosons interacting via weakly repulsive two-body delta-interactions and strongly interacting Cooper pairs of bosons.

There has been a revival of interest in the exactly solved 1D model of interacting bosons . The conventional description of the model is $`N`$ interacting bosons governed by the Hamiltonan

$$=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{^2}{x_i^2}+2c\underset{1i<jN}{}\delta (x_ix_j)$$
(1)
and constrained by periodic boundary conditions to a line of length $`L`$. Here $`2c`$ is the strength of the two-body delta interaction, with $`\mathrm{}=2m=1`$. The wave functions are given in terms of the Bethe ansatz by

$$\psi (x_1,\mathrm{},x_N)=\underset{p}{}A(p)\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}\underset{j}{}k_{p_j}x_j)$$
(2)
in the region $`x_1<x_2<x_3<\mathrm{}<x_N`$. The summation extends over all permutations $`p`$ of momenta $`\left\{k_j\right\}`$ and $`A(p)`$ are coefficients depending on $`p`$. The eigenvalues are given by $`=_{j=1}^Nk_j^2`$ where $`\left\{k_j\right\}`$ satisfy the Bethe equations

$$\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}k_jL)=\underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{k_jk_{\mathrm{}}+\mathrm{i}c}{k_jk_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{i}c}\text{for}j=1,\mathrm{},N.$$
(3)
The Bethe roots $`k_j`$ are known to be real for repulsive interactions, $`c>0`$, for which the ground state energy and excitation spectrum have been studied extensively.111See, e.g., Refs  and references therein.

The revival of interest in this model has been inspired by recent experimental and theoretical work on low-dimensional trapped boson gases at ultracold temperatures , particularly with regard to highly elongated traps which give possible realizations of a 1D quantum gas as well as Bose-Einstein condensates. In a remarkable recent experiment, a 1D quantum gas was created in an optical lattice in which the interactions between trapped ultracold Rb atoms were modified to bring about a continuous passage from the weakly interacting regime to the strongly correlated Tonks-Girardeau gas (Ref.  and refs therein). The key parameter is essentially the ratio $`\gamma `$ of interaction to kinetic energy. In this way the pronounced fermionic behaviour of the Tonks-Girardeau gas was observed in the strong coupling regime .

Here we consider asymptotic solutions to the Bethe equations of the interacting boson model in the strong and weak coupling limits. We see that the momentum density distribution agrees with the observed profiles of the 1D interacting quantum gas . Moreover, we find a link between the Bethe equations (3) in the weak coupling regime and the Richardson equations  for the BCS boson pairing model in the strong coupling regime . The BCS model describes boson-boson interactions with zero centre of mass momentum of pairs. In this way the Bethe roots for the ground state energy of the weakly interacting Bose gas are characterized by either the roots of Hermite polynomials or appropriate Laguerre polynomials. In the other direction, we thus see an explicit connection between strongly interacting Cooper pairs described by the BCS boson model and bosons interacting through weakly repulsive two-body delta interactions. We begin by looking at the strong coupling limit.

Strong coupling limit

In the $`Lc=\mathrm{}`$ limit, for the dilute gas ($`L>N`$) there is a well known connection to non-interacting fermions, known as the Tonks-Giradeau gas . The Bethe equations (3) reduce to $`\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{i}k_jL)=(1)^{N1}`$, with solutions $`2\mathrm{}\pi /L`$ with $`\mathrm{}`$ integer for odd $`N`$ and half-odd-integer for even $`N`$. Corrections to order $`1/c`$ can be readily obtained from the asymptotic solutions of the Bethe equations (3). Define $`\lambda =Lc/N`$. The roots are real and symmetric about the origin, with $`\left\{\pm k_{2m1},m=1,\mathrm{},\frac{N}{2}\right\}`$ for even $`N`$, where $`k_{\mathrm{}}=\frac{\mathrm{}\pi }{L}\left(1\frac{2}{\lambda }\right)`$. For odd $`N`$, the roots are zero and $`\left\{\pm k_{2m},m=1,\mathrm{},\frac{N1}{2}\right\}`$. The ground state energy follows directly from these asymptotic solutions, with

$$\frac{_0}{N}=\frac{1}{3}(N^21)\frac{\pi ^2}{L^2}\left(1\frac{2N}{Lc}\right)^2\frac{\pi ^2\rho ^2}{3}\left(1\frac{4}{\lambda }\right),$$
(4)
where $`\rho =N/L`$. This result coincides with that of the perturbation theory approach (see, e.g. Ref ). At zero temperature, the chemical potential is given by $`\mu =\pi ^2\rho ^216\pi ^2\rho ^3/3c`$. The two-body correlation function $`g_2=4\pi ^2\rho _0^2/\gamma ^2`$ follows from the ground state energy and the Hellmann-Feynman theorem, with $`g_2`$ giving the rates of two-body inelastic processes in 1D trapped boson gases . Moreover, we see that the momentum density distribution for the 1D $`N`$-body interacting bosons is flat due to the symmetric equal-spacing distribution in momentum space. This qualitatively coincides with the experimental momentum profile of the Tonks-Girardeau gas in the strong coupling limit, for example, $`\gamma 204.5`$ . In this regime, the strong repulsive delta potential prevents the bosons from occupying the same position. Therefore, they are spread out and extend to a larger region in momentum space than in the case of weakly interacting bosons.

Weak coupling limit

The situation in the weak coupling limit is far more interesting. The ground state is an analytic function for $`c>0`$. Considering the limit $`Lc<<1`$ and after some tedious case by case calculations for $`N=2,3,\mathrm{},12`$, we find that the Bethe roots satisfy the set

$$k_j=\frac{2\pi d_j}{L}+\frac{2c}{L}\underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{N}{}}^{}\frac{1}{k_jk_{\mathrm{}}},j=1,\mathrm{}N,$$
(5)
of nonlinear algebraic equations. Here the summation excludes $`j=\mathrm{}`$ and $`d_j=0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\mathrm{}`$ denotes excited states for fixed $`N`$. The ground state has zero total momentum, with $`d_j=0`$ for $`j=1,\mathrm{},N`$. These equations are closely related to Stieltjes problems . The ground state energy per particle

$$\frac{_0}{N}=\frac{c(N1)}{L},$$
(6)
follows directly from (5). The nonlinear algebraic equations (5) for the ground state were found by Gaudin , who showed that the $`k_j`$ are roots of Hermite polynomials of degree $`N`$, namely $`H_N(k)=0`$.

We are also interested in the lowest excited state, which has total momentum $`k=\frac{2\pi }{L}`$. Without loss of generality, we may take $`d_1=1,d_2=\mathrm{}=d_N=0`$. The lowest excitation energy per particle

$$\frac{_1}{N}\frac{c(N1)}{L}+\frac{2\pi }{LN}\left(\frac{2\pi }{L}+\frac{2c(N1)}{L}+\frac{c^2(N2)^2}{L2\pi }\right).$$
(7)
follows from solving equations (5). Correspondingly, the largest Bethe root is $`k_1=\frac{2\pi }{L}+\frac{2c(N1)}{L}+\frac{c^2(N2)^2}{L2\pi }`$. It is clearly seen that the energy gap vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. Some numerical exploration reveals that the excitation energy per particle (7) is very accurate for arbitrary number of bosons. Other excitation energies depend on the assignments of $`d_j`$, with total momentum $`k=_j^N2d_j\pi /L`$.

The connection between the Bethe roots for the ground state energy and the roots of $`H_N(k)`$ provides a systematic way for studying quantities such as correlations and the momentum distribution function. The normalized momentum density distribution is given by the semi-circle law

$$n(k)=\frac{L}{2N\pi c}\left(4c\rho k^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}.$$
(8)
We show the momentum density distribution in Figure 1 obtained by numerically solving the Hermite polynomials of degree $`N=60`$ and $`100`$ for different values of $`c`$. The results fit very well the analytical expression (8). A similar semi-circular momentum density distribution has been found in the ferromagnetic Heisenberg chain . We see that the distribution at small momentum is rather flat, with an almost linearly decreasing region at large momentum. The stronger the interaction strength, the larger the momentum distribution region. This reveals a significant signature of the 1D boson gas in the weakly repulsive limit $`Lc<<1`$. Remarkably, this behaviour was recently observed in the experiment for weakly interacting bosons with $`\gamma 0.5`$ . If $`c=0`$ all the particles condense in the ground state at zero temperture.

In order to link the 1D boson gas with two-body delta interactions to the BCS type of pairing models, we consider first an even number of bosons, with $`N=2M`$. We also find, to first order in $`c`$, that the Bethe roots for the ground state are of the form

$$k_{1,2}=\pm \sqrt{E_1},k_{3,4}=\pm \sqrt{E_2},\mathrm{},k_{2M1,2M}=\pm \sqrt{E_M},$$
(9)
where the $`E_i`$ satisfy the equations

$$\frac{L}{2c}+\underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}^{}\frac{2}{E_iE_j}=\frac{1}{2E_i},$$
(10)
for $`i=1,\mathrm{},M`$, where the summation excludes $`j=i`$.

Now similar equations have arisen in a number of contexts . Of particular interest here is the connection between Eq. (10) and Richardson’s equations for the BCS pairing model  in the strong coupling limit . However, the precise link between the integrable boson model with weakly repulsive delta interaction and the standard BCS model with strong attractive pairing interaction is quite subtle. In terms of the Cooper pair energies $`E_i`$ participating in the scattering process, these latter equations are

$$\frac{1}{\lambda _{\mathrm{BCS}}d}+\underset{j=1}{\overset{r}{}}^{}\frac{2}{E_iE_j}=\frac{n^{}}{E_i},$$
(11)
for $`i=1,\mathrm{},r`$. Here $`n^{}=n2(mr)`$, where $`n`$ is the number of unblocked energy levels, $`m`$ is the number of Cooper pairs and $`r`$ is the number of nonvanishing roots to order $`\lambda _{\mathrm{BCS}}`$, where $`\lambda _{\mathrm{BCS}}`$ is the superconducting coupling constant, with $`d`$ the mean level spacing.

In the BCS model, the parameters $`\{E_i\}`$ in Eq. (11) represent the energies of $`r`$ Cooper pairs participating in the scattering. Now the ground state of the BCS model in the strong coupling limit has $`r=m`$ ($`n^{}=n`$), the first degenerate group of excited states corresponds to $`r=m1`$, etc . Direct comparison between Eqs. (10) and (11) gives $`r=M`$ and $`n^{}=\frac{1}{2}`$, leading to the ground state where total Cooper pairs is $`m=r=M`$. However, in the strong coupling limit, all of the energy levels collapse into one multiply-degenerate level, namely $`n=1`$.

Obviously, this state appears to lie outside the physical regime of the BCS model  due to the presence of the negative fractional quantum number $`n^{}=\frac{1}{2}`$. The main reason for this is that in the standard BCS pairing interaction, the electrons are paired into singlets rather than into triplets with zero centre of mass momentum of pairs. Therefore the pairing interaction term contains only a pair of attractive electrons with opposite spin and momenta so that the degeneracy at each energy state is a doublet, with level degeneracy $`\mathrm{\Omega }=2`$ . In addition, the commutation relation between BCS pairs (hard core bosons) is not the same as that for bosons.

Before addressing the correspondence, we can nevertheless make use of the observation  that the nonvanishing roots of the BCS Eq. (11) are given by the zeros of an associated Laguerre polynomial. It follows that the Bethe roots of the weakly interacting boson gas in Eq. (10) are given in terms of the associated Laguerre polynomial $`L_n^k(x)`$ by

$$L_M^{\frac{1}{2}}\left(\frac{LE_i}{2c}\right)=0,$$
(12)
for $`i=1,\mathrm{},M`$, where

$$L_n^k(x)=\underset{m=0}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{(n+k)!}{(nm)!(k+m)!m!}x^m.$$
(13)
Explicitly, for $`M=1`$ ($`N=2`$), $`E_1=c/L`$ and for $`M=2`$ ($`N=4`$), $`E_1=c(3\sqrt{6})/L,E_2=c(3+\sqrt{6})/L`$.

For an odd number of bosons, $`N=2M+1`$, we find the ground state Bethe roots to be given by

$$k_1=0,k_{2,3}=\pm \sqrt{E_1},k_{4,5}=\pm \sqrt{E_2},\mathrm{},k_{2M,2M+1}=\pm \sqrt{E_M},$$
(14)
where the $`E_i`$ satisfy the equations

$$\underset{j=1}{\overset{M}{}}^{}\frac{2}{E_iE_j}\frac{L}{2c}=\frac{3}{2E_i},$$
(15)
for $`i=1,\mathrm{},M`$. Comparing again with Eq. (11), $`n^{}=\frac{3}{2}`$ with again $`r=m=M`$. In this case the Bethe roots are given by

$$L_M^{\frac{1}{2}}\left(\frac{LE_i}{2c}\right)=0,$$
(16)
for $`i=1,\mathrm{},M`$. The first few cases are $`E_1=3c/L`$ for $`M=1`$ ($`N=3`$) with $`E_1=3c/L`$ and $`E_1=c(5\sqrt{10})/L,E_2=c(5+\sqrt{10})/L`$ for $`M=2`$ ($`N=5`$).

For both the even and odd cases our results indicate that the Bethe roots approach the origin proportional to $`\sqrt{c}`$ as $`c0`$ for fixed $`N`$ and $`L`$. We have checked this directly via numerical solution of the Bethe equations (3).

We now address the precise correspondence between the boson and BCS models. In view of the ground state energy $`_0=_{j=1}^Nk_j^2`$ of the boson model, we can map two bosons with opposite momenta $`\pm k_j`$ onto one Cooper pair of bosons with energy $`E_j=2k_j^2`$. In such a way, we can show that the ground state of the boson model with weakly repulsive delta interactions can be described by the BCS boson pairing model with strong pairing interaction. In particular, we need to consider the boson pairing model

$$=\underset{\mathrm{}}{}ϵ_{\mathrm{}}\widehat{n}_{\mathrm{}}+2g\underset{j,j^{}=1}{\overset{n}{}}A_j^{}A_j^{},$$
(17)
based on the $`su(1,1)`$ algebra. Here $`\widehat{n}_{\mathrm{}}=\frac{1}{2}a_{\mathrm{}}^{}a_{\mathrm{}}+\frac{1}{4}`$ denotes the particle number operator at level $`\mathrm{}`$ and $`A_j^{}=\frac{1}{2}a_j^{}a_j^{}`$ creates a boson pair with zero angular momenta at the level $`j`$. The single-particle operators $`a^{}`$ and $`a`$ satisfy Bose commutation relations. Essentially, the single-particle state can be its own time reversal state for bosons at same levels. Therefore at every energy level there is a single pair with degeneracy $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ . For the boson pairing model, the pair energies are real. In the above equation, $`n`$ is the number of unblocked energy levels and $`g`$ is the pairing interaction. The energy of the pairing model (17) is given by

$$_{\mathrm{BCS}}=\underset{\mathrm{}}{}ϵ_{\mathrm{}}\nu _{\mathrm{}}+\underset{j=1}{\overset{m}{}}E_j,$$
(18)
where the pair energies $`E_j`$ satisfy Richardson equations of the form

$$\frac{1}{2g}\underset{\mathrm{}=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{2d_{\mathrm{}}}{2ϵ_{\mathrm{}}E_k}+\underset{i=1}{\overset{m}{}}^{}\frac{2}{E_kE_i}=0.$$
(19)
Here $`m`$ denotes the total number of boson pairs and $`d_{\mathrm{}}=\frac{\nu _{\mathrm{}}}{2}+\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{}}}{4}`$ is the effective pair degeneracy of single-particle level $`\mathrm{}`$, where $`\nu _{\mathrm{}}`$ denotes the number of unpaired particles in level $`\mathrm{}`$. Linking to the boson pairing model , here the degeneracy $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{}}=1`$ and $`\nu _{\mathrm{}}=0`$.

In terms of the Cooper pair energies $`E_i`$ participating in the scattering process, the equations (19) are

$$\frac{1}{2g}+\underset{j=1}{\overset{r}{}}^{}\frac{2}{E_iE_j}=\frac{n^{}}{E_i},$$
(20)
for $`i=1,\mathrm{},r`$. Here $`n^{}=\frac{n}{2}+2(mr)`$, where $`n`$ is the number of unblocked energy levels, $`m`$ is the number of Cooper pairs and $`r`$ is the number of nonvanishing roots to order $`g`$. Direct comparison between Eqs. (10) and (20) gives $`g=\frac{c}{L}`$, $`r=m=M`$ and $`n=1`$, leading to a ground state of the BCS boson pairing model (17) with energy

$$_{\mathrm{BCS}}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{r}{}}E_i=2gr(n^{}+r1).$$
(21)
In the strong coupling limit, all energy levels can collapse into one multiply-degenerate level. It is thus reasonable that $`n=1`$. Indeed, this state appears to lie in the physical regime of the boson pairing model (17). The ground state of the weakly interacting boson model thus corresponds to the ground state of the strongly coupled BCS boson pairing model. From equations (10) and (15), the ground state energy per particle of the weakly interacting Bose gas follows as

$$\frac{_0}{N}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{k_i^2}{N}=\frac{2_{\mathrm{BCS}}}{N}=\frac{c(N1)}{L}.$$
(22)
This agrees with Eq. (6) and the results of  (see also Refs. ). We see that it also coincides with the ground state energy per particle of the strongly coupled BCS boson pairing model (17).

Further, if the Cooper pair is defined  as $`b_{\mathrm{𝐤𝐊}}=c_{k_2}c_{k_1},b_{\mathrm{𝐤𝐊}}^{}=c_{k_1}^{}c_{k_2}^{}`$ where $`𝐤\frac{1}{2}(k_1K_2)`$ and $`𝐊(k_1+K_2)`$, it is shown that $`[b_{\mathrm{𝐤𝐊}},b_{𝐤^{}𝐊}^{}]=0`$ for $`𝐤𝐤^{}`$, while $`[b_{\mathrm{𝐤𝐊}},b_{𝐤^{}𝐊}]=[b_{\mathrm{𝐤𝐊}}^{},b_{𝐤^{}𝐊}^{}]=0`$ always hold. The single operators $`c^{}`$ and $`c`$ satisfy Fermi anticommutation relations. If the relative momentum vector of paired electrons lies inside the overlap of the two spherical shells in momentum space, the Cooper pair with nonzero centre of mass momentum, i.e. $`𝐊(k_1+K_2)`$, is possible and physical . This means that the Cooper pairs can occupy a state of energy $`ϵ_𝐊`$ with same $`𝐊`$ but different values of $`𝐤`$. Thus such Cooper pairs act as bosons and can collapse into a Bose condensate. In this BCS pairing model, the degeneracy of single-particle level $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{}}`$ would not be restricted to be even such that the quantum number $`n^{}`$ in the equation (11) can be fractional and negative. In this case, the single-particle states for a Cooper pair are not time-reversal eigenstates. For the standard BCS model, $`𝐊=0`$, such that the state $`𝐤`$ is occupied so is the state $`𝐤`$. Therefore we can expect that the BCS model of fermion pairs with nonzero centre-mass momentum would exhibit some of the behaviour of the 1D boson gas with two-body delta interactions.

In conclusion we have looked in detail at the many-body solution of the Bethe equations for the interacting boson model in the strongly and weakly repulsive coupling regimes. We found a remarkable connection with the Richardson equations for the strong coupling limit of the boson pairing model, suggesting a direct link between strongly interacting Cooper pairs and weakly repulsive bosons. This link deserves further investigation, particularly in light of the revival of interest in the interacting Bose gas and the BEC/BCS crossover .

Acknowledgments. MTB thanks the Physics Department at FAU, where this work was begun, for their kind hospitality. In turn JBM acknowledges the hospitality of the CMA and the Theoretical Physics Department at ANU. We thank G. Sierra, Angela Foerster, Norman Oelkers, Rudolf A. Römer and Huan-Qiang Zhou for some helpful discussions. This work has been supported by the Australian Research Council and the Florida Atlantic University Foundation.


text:
# Quasiperiodic localized oscillating solutions in the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation with alternating on-site potential

\]http://www.ifm.liu.se/ majoh

## Abstract

We present what we believe to be the first known example of an exact quasiperiodic localized stable solution with spatially symmetric large-amplitude oscillations in a non-integrable Hamiltonian lattice model. The model is a one-dimensional discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation with alternating on-site energies, modelling e.g. an array of optical waveguides with alternating widths. The solution bifurcates from a stationary discrete gap soliton, and in a regime of large oscillations its intensity oscillates periodically between having one peak at the central site, and two symmetric peaks at the neighboring sites with a dip in the middle. Such solutions, termed ’pulsons’, are found to exist in continuous families ranging arbitrarily close both to the anticontinuous and continuous limits. Furthermore, it is shown that they may be linearly stable also in a regime of large oscillations.

The discrete nonlinear Schrödinger (DNLS) equation is one of the most studied examples of a non-integrable Hamiltonian lattice model. It is of great interest as well from a general nonlinear dynamics point of view, where it provides a particularly simple system to analyze fundamental phenomena arising from competition of nonlinearity and discreteness such as energy localization, wave instabilities etc., as from a more applied viewpoint describing e.g. arrays of nonlinear optical waveguides waveguides  or Bose-Einstein condensates in external periodic potentials BEC . For recent reviews of the history, properties and applications of DNLS-like models, see Refs. KRB01 ; EJ .

Recent attention has been given to DNLS-like models having, in addition to the fundamental periodicity given by the lattice constant, also a superlattice modulation creating a second period. In particular, the DNLS equation with an additional term corresponding to alternating on-site energies has been proposed to model an optical waveguide array where the individual waveguides have alternating widths SK . Creating a two-branch linear dispersion relation, the superperiodicity thus provides a possibility for existence of a new type of nonlinear localized modes, discrete gap solitons (or discrete gap breathers), with frequencies in the gap between the upper and lower branches. These modes appear as stationary solutions to the DNLS equation (i.e., with constant intensity and a purely harmonic time-dependence which can be removed by transforming into a rotating frame), and their properties were recently analyzed in detail in Ref. GJ03 , to which we also refer for further references on the topic. Very recently, they have also been experimentally observed gapexp .

However, it is known that as the DNLS equation in one aspect is non-generic among nonlinear Hamiltonian lattice models, with a second conserved quantity being the total norm of the excitation, there exist also localized quasiperiodic solutions which may have two (generally) incommensurate frequencies. Here the first frequency corresponds to harmonic oscillations at constant intensity as for stationary solutions, while the second frequency corresponds to time-periodic oscillations of the intensity in the frame rotating with the first frequency. The existence of such solutions was proposed in Ref. MacKay , and later explicit examples were constructed and analyzed by continuation of multi-site breathers from the ’anticontinuous’ limit of zero intersite coupling JA97  (note that similar ideas were used already in Ref. Nussbaum  for finite systems). A rigorous approach to the connection between existence of quasiperiodic solutions and additional conserved quantities was given in Ref. BV02 . A slightly different approach was taken in Ref. KW03  (see also KRB01 ), where the existence of exact quasiperiodic solutions bifurcating from localized eigenmodes of the linearized equations of motion around some particular stationary solutions was shown. In all cases, to guarantee localization it is necessary that a non-resonance condition is fulfilled, so that no higher harmonics enter the continuous linear spectrum.

However, all known examples of stable localized exact quasiperiodic solutions to the ordinary DNLS equation could be considered as rather special, since (i) they only exist in bounded parameter intervals at weak inter-site coupling, and (ii) the intensity oscillations are typically quite small compared to their average values. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge no explicit example of a stable quasiperiodic breather with spatial symmetry has been given (although one of the modes presented in Ref. KW03  possibly could yield such a solution). On the other hand, it was shown already in Ref. Mez  that for the two-dimensional DNLS model a state with large-amplitude symmetric intensity oscillations, with the intensity maximum periodically oscillating between the central site and four surrounding sites, was created in an intermediate stage in the process of ’quasicollapse’ of a broad excitation to a highly localized breather. This entity, termed ’pulson’, typically disappeared after 3-4 oscillations, transforming into an on-site localized stationary breather with slowly decaying small-amplitude internal mode oscillations (the decay of which can be calculated similarly as for the one-dimensional case in Ref. growth ).

It is the purpose of the present Brief Report to provide the first example of an exact stable solution with such pulson properties, which we have found to exist in the one-dimensional binary modulated DNLS equation. In fact, we remarked already in Ref. GJ03  that similar arguments as in Ref. KW03  prove the existence of exact quasiperiodic solutions bifurcating from certain internal modes of the stationary gap breathers; here the crucial property (which is not fulfilled e.g. for single-site breathers in the nonmodulated DNLS model growth ) is, that these internal modes have frequencies above the continuous spectrum, and consequently also all higher harmonics will lie outside the continuous spectrum. Referring to the notation in Fig. 3 of Ref. GJ03 , we here concentrate on the spatially symmetric mode denoted as ’P1’, which may exist arbitrarily close to as well the anticontinuous as the continuous limit, and show that the families of quasiperiodic solutions bifurcating from this mode indeed exhibit pulson properties as the oscillation amplitude increases.

Using for convenience a slightly different notation than in Ref. GJ03 , we consider the DNLS equation in the form:

$$i\dot{\psi }_nV_0(1)^n\psi _n+C(\psi _{n+1}+\psi _{n1})+|\psi _n|^2\psi _n=0,$$
(1)
with the two conserved quantities Hamiltonian $`H=_n\left[V_0(1)^n|\psi _n|^2C(\psi _n\psi _{n+1}^{}+\psi _n^{}\psi _{n+1})\frac{1}{2}|\psi _n|^4\right],`$ and norm $`𝒩=_n|\psi _n|^2`$. Writing a stationary solution as $`\psi _n(t)=\varphi _n^{(\mathrm{\Lambda })}e^{i\mathrm{\Lambda }t}`$ with time-independent $`\varphi _n^{(\mathrm{\Lambda })}`$, the linear dispersion relation becomes $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=\pm \sqrt{V_0^2+4C^2\mathrm{cos}^2q}`$ with gap $`\mathrm{\Lambda }[|V_0|,|V_0|]`$. Assuming $`V_0>0`$, a discrete gap soliton then bifurcates from the lower gap edge $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=V_0`$, and corresponds in the limit $`C0`$ to a single excited even site with intensity $`|\psi _n|^2=\mathrm{\Lambda }+V_0`$.

Exact quasiperiodic solutions with two independent frequencies, $`\omega _0`$ and $`\omega _b`$, can then be found numerically to computer precision by using essentially the same method as in Ref. JA97 . First, we transform into a frame rotating with the frequency $`\omega _0`$, $`\psi _n(t)=\varphi _n(t)e^{i\omega _0t}`$, yielding

$$i\dot{\varphi }_n\left[\omega _0+V_0(1)^n\right]\varphi _n+C(\varphi _{n+1}+\varphi _{n1})+|\varphi _n|^2\varphi _n=0,$$
(2)
whereupon standard Newton-type schemes are used to find time-periodic solutions to Eq. (2) fulfilling $`\varphi _n(t+2\pi /\omega _b)=\varphi _n(t)`$, where $`\omega _b`$ is the second frequency. In addition, linear stability is simply investigated numerically by standard Floquet analysis as described in Ref. JA97 .

When a stationary gap breather of frequency $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ has an internal linear eigenmode of frequency $`\omega _l`$ (in the frame rotating with frequency $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$), the family of quasiperiodic solutions bifurcating from it at this point has $`\omega _b=\omega _l`$ and $`\omega _0=\mathrm{\Lambda }\omega _l`$. Thus, by using as initial trial solution the stationary gap breather perturbed with the relevant linear eigenmode, the two-parameter family of solutions (for given $`V_0`$ and $`C`$) can then be followed through parameter space by standard continuation techniques. (Note that, in contrast to Ref. JA97 , once the stationary gap breather is known we here obtain directly quasiperiodic solutions at finite $`C`$, without invoking the anticontinuous limit $`C0`$.) For a small enough continuation step ($`10^3`$), we typically with standard double precision fortran routines for numerical integration and matrix inversion obtain convergence to solutions with $`\varphi _n(t+2\pi /\omega _b)\varphi _n(t)<10^{12}`$ in five or less Newton iterations. In fact, since norm is a conserved quantity, it is generally more instructive to use $`𝒩`$ and $`\omega _b`$ as independent parameters, and practically continuations versus $`\omega _b`$ at constant norm may be performed by varying $`\omega _0`$ to keep $`𝒩`$ constant. It is also convenient to work with rescaled quantities amounting to setting $`C=1`$ in Eqs. (1), (2); consequently the three relevant independent parameters for the two-frequency solutions can be chosen as $`V_0/C`$, $`𝒩/C`$ (or, alternatively, $`\omega _0/C`$), and $`\omega _b/C`$.

Fig. 1 illustrates the dynamics of a typical exact exponentially localized pulson solution, obtained by continuation (versus $`\omega _b/C`$ at constant $`\omega _0/C`$ and $`V_0/C`$) of the linear ’P1’ mode of a stationary gap breather with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.5V_0`$ (i.e., with stationary frequency in the middle of the lower half of the gap). The intensity oscillates periodically, from having a minimum at the central (even) site and two symmetric maxima at the neighboring (odd) sites at $`t=0`$, to having one single maximum at the central site at $`t=\pi /\omega _b`$. The solution is linearly stable, as is seen from the numerically calculated Floquet eigenvalues (Fig. 1(b)), which are all on the unit circle. The main effect of a small but non-negligible perturbation is illustrated by Fig. 1 (c): the solution almost perfectly retains its pulson character over very large time scales but with a slight shift in frequency (a consequence of the four-fold degenerate Floquet eigenvalue at $`+1`$ corresponding to drifts of the two arbitrary phases JA97 ), yielding visible the pulson oscillations also in the stroboscopic plot.

The results of more systematic investigations of the properties of such families of solutions are summarized in Figs. 2-4. For convenience, we now choose a ’moderate’ constant value of the norm, $`𝒩/C=2`$, and discuss the behaviour for various values of $`V_0/C`$. In particular, this value is large enough for the stationary gap breather frequency $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ to be sufficiently far away from the lower gap boundary so to always have a localized ’P1’ mode, but small enough for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ to be in the lower half of the gap, thus avoiding additional complications such as oscillatory instabilities and nonmonotonous continuation which may appear for stationary breathers in the upper gap half GJ03 .

Fig. 2, for $`V_0/C=2`$, shows the typical behaviour for larger values of $`V_0/C`$. The continuation of the two-frequency solution is monotonous, and ends in a bifurcation with another (unstable) stationary solution with frequency $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=2\omega _b+\omega _0`$. With the notation of Ref. GJ03 , this solution is denoted as $`\{𝕆(𝕆0)\}_S^O`$, meaning that, in the anticontinuous limit $`C0`$, it corresponds to symmetric in-phase oscillations only for the two (odd) sites $`n_0\pm 1`$, with frequency above the upper linear band. The pulson character of the two-frequency solution appears when the absolute value of the minimum (negative) value of $`\varphi _{n_0\pm 1}`$ (lower part of dashed curve in Fig. 2) exceeds the minimum value of $`\varphi _{n_0}`$ (lower part of solid curve), which for the case in Fig. 2 happens for $`\omega _b4.43`$. However, a stable pulson solution appears in this case only in a small frequency interval, since for $`\omega _b4.47`$ the solution is unstable through a symmetry-breaking instability (with real Floquet eigenvalue). For larger values of $`V_0/C`$, when the solution becomes more discrete, the solution becomes unstable before it attains its pulson character, and thus in the strongly discrete case the stable two-frequency solutions only correspond to relatively small oscillations of the central-site intensity for the stationary gap breather.

For smaller values of $`V_0/C`$, the continuation versus $`\omega _b`$ of the two-frequency solutions at fixed norm $`𝒩/C=2`$ still starts and ends in the same stationary solutions as before, but becomes nonmonotonous as shown for $`V_0/C=1`$ in Fig. 3 (for clarity only minimum amplitudes $`\varphi _n(0)`$ are shown). The solution now attains its pulson character on the intermediate branch, where it is always stable, and becomes unstable only on the lower branch.

For even smaller values of $`V_0/C`$, the stationary gap breathers broaden and assume a more ’continuous-like’ shape, which in particular implies that the odd sites with largest $`|\varphi _n^{(\mathrm{\Lambda })}|`$ will change from $`n_0\pm 1`$ to $`n_0\pm 3`$, and further to $`n_0\pm 5`$, etc. GJ03 . For $`V_0/C=0.5`$ (Fig. 4), the largest ’odd’ $`|\varphi _n^{(\mathrm{\Lambda })}|`$ for the stationary breather is at $`n_0\pm 5`$; however already for rather small intensity oscillations ($`\omega _b2.5856`$ on the upper branch of Fig. 4(a)) of the corresponding ’P1’ family of two-frequency solutions, the maximum ’odd’ intensity is again at $`n_0\pm 1`$. The solution now attains its pulson character already on the upper branch ($`\omega _b2.5926`$), and the pulson remains stable until it reaches $`\omega _b2.5862`$ on the middle branch (Fig. 4(b)).

Another very interesting effect regarding stability is seen in Fig. 4(b). It is known GJ03  that as $`V_0/C`$ decreases, there are certain intervals of ’inversion of stability’ for stationary gap breathers, where the symmetric stationary breather discussed here becomes unstable (through a translational ’depinning’ instability), and instead the otherwise unstable antisymmetric gap breather gains stability. $`V_0/C=0.5`$ belongs to such an interval for $`𝒩/C=2`$, and thus the stationary gap breather from which the two-frequency family in Fig. 4 bifurcates is itself unstable. However, as seen from the inset in Fig. 4(b), already at $`\omega _b2.5856`$ the unstable eigenvalue returns to the unit circle, and thus even rather small symmetric intensity oscillations may stabilize the stationary solution with respect to its antisymmetric instability. We are not aware of any reported similar scenario.

To conclude, we have presented explicit examples of exact stable quasiperiodic pulson solutions with large-amplitude intensity oscillations, in the binary modulated DNLS equation describing e.g. coupled waveguides of alternating widths. Thus, there should be good possibilities for experimental observation of such states in this context. Although we here focused on one particular family of symmetric solutions bifurcating from the symmetric stationary gap breather, the analysis illustrated by Fig. 3 in Ref. GJ03  suggests that solutions with similar properties may bifurcate from other, symmetric or antisymmetric, internal modes with frequencies above the continuous spectrum (’P2’, ’P3’, ’P4’, ’P5’, etc.), existing for the symmetric as well as the antisymmetric gap breathers. It seems likely, that such solutions also should exist for other types of multicomponent lattices with (at least) two conserved quantities; one interesting candidate being second-harmonic-generating lattices of the type considered e.g. in Ref. MKFNY02 , where also the fundamental discrete soliton was found to exhibit an internal mode with frequency above the linear spectrum. A challenge for future research is to obtain analytical expressions for the pulson solutions in the continuum limit. This is a nontrivial task, since although the relevant linear eigenmodes of the stationary gap breather apparently persist arbitrarily close to the continuum limit (cf. Fig. 3 of Ref. GJ03 ), they cannot exist in the standard continuous two-field model for gap solitons (which is the same for DNLS as for diatomic Klein-Gordon lattices, see e.g. Refs. KF92 ; KUG99 ), since the continuous spectrum of such models extends to infinity leaving no room for localized modes above it. A more sophisticated continuous approximation would therefore appear necessary to this end.

Financial support from the Swedish Research Council is gratefully acknowledged.


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# Frustrated antiferromagnets at high fields: the Bose-Einstein condensation in degenerate spectra

(December 2, 2003)

## Abstract

Quantum phase transition at the saturation field is studied for a class of frustrated quantum antiferromagnets. The considered models include (i) the $`J_1`$-$`J_2`$ frustrated square-lattice antiferromagnet with $`J_2=\frac{1}{2}J_1`$ and (ii) the nearest-neighbor Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a face centered cubic lattice. In the fully saturated phase the magnon spectra for the two models have lines of degenerate minima. Transition into partially magnetized state is treated via a mapping to a dilute gas of hard core bosons and by complementary spin-wave calculations. Momentum dependence of the exact four-point boson vertex removes the degeneracy of the single-particle excitation spectra and selects the ordering wave-vectors at $`(\pi ,\pi )`$ and $`(\pi ,0,0)`$ for the two models. The asymptotic behavior of the magnetization curve differs significantly from that of conventional antiferromagnet in $`d`$-spatial dimensions. We predict a unique form for the magnetization curve $`\mathrm{\Delta }M=SM\mu ^{(d1)/2}(\mathrm{log}\mu )^{(d1)}`$, where $`\mu `$ is a distance from the quantum critical point.

Heisenberg antiferromagnets exhibit a quantum phase transition between a fully polarized state and a state with partial magnetization at the saturation field $`H_c`$. A partially magnetized state typically breaks spin-rotational symmetry about the field direction and has a long-range order of transverse spin components. Such a zero temperature transition belongs to the $`XY`$ universality class. Various properties of quantum antiferromagnets in the vicinity of this quantum critical point are well understood in terms of the Bose condensation of magnons below $`H_c`$ bb ; sach . The antiferromagnetic wave-vector corresponds to the minimum in the magnon spectrum, whereas an arbitrary phase of the condensate describes sublattice orientation in the plane perpendicular to the field.

The above simple picture fails, however, for so-called frustrated antiferromagnets, which have degenerate classical ground states between zero and saturation fields frust\_theory ; frust\_exp . The excitation spectra of frustrated antiferromagnets above $`H_c`$ are quite unusual. The magnon dispersion $`ϵ_𝐪`$ has a continuous set of energy minima given by a $`d^{}`$-dimensional hypersurface embedded in the $`d`$-dimensional reciprocal space. The problem of the Bose condensation of particles with such degenerate spectra remains unexploited to a large extent. Numerical investigations Muetter ; Honecker  of a specific model (model $`A`$ below) show a strong singularity of the magnetization near the saturation field, which has not been interpreted so far. In the present work we investigate two problems: (i) how the quantum fluctuations remove degeneracy of the excitation spectra and select a certain ordering wave-vector and (ii) how the asymptotic behavior of the magnetization curve close to the quantum critical point is modified by a presence of large phase space of soft-mode fluctuations. Specifically, we consider two models with $`d^{}=1`$ in $`d=2`$ and $`d=3`$ spatial dimensions: (model $`A`$) the $`J_1`$-$`J_2`$ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a square lattice at its critical point $`J_2=\frac{1}{2}J_1`$, which has lines of minima at $`(\pi ,q)`$ and $`(q,\pi )`$ and (model $`B`$) the nearest-neighbor Heisenberg model on a face centered cubic lattice (fcc) with minima at $`(\pi ,q,0)`$ and equivalent lines.

Convenient approach to deal with quantum antiferromagnets near the saturation field is to employ a hard-core boson representation of spin-1/2 operators: $`S_i^z=\frac{1}{2}b_i^{}b_i`$, $`S_i^+=b_i`$, and $`S_i^{}=b_i^{}`$ with $`b_i^{}b_i=0`$ or 1 mm . The hard-core constraint is imposed by an on-site repulsion $`U\mathrm{}`$. The Heisenberg spin Hamiltonian $`\widehat{}=_{i,j}J_{ij}𝐒_i𝐒_jH_iS_i^z`$ is, then, transformed to

$`\widehat{}={\displaystyle \underset{𝐪}{}}[ϵ_𝐪\mu ]b_𝐪^{}b_𝐪+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2N}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐪,𝐤,𝐤^{}}{}}V_𝐪b_𝐤^{}b_𝐤^{}^{}b_{𝐤^{}𝐪}b_{𝐤+𝐪},`$ (1)
where $`ϵ_𝐪=\frac{1}{2}(\gamma _𝐪\gamma _{\mathrm{min}})`$, $`\gamma _𝐪=_jJ_{ij}e^{i\mathrm{𝐪𝐫}_{ij}}`$ is the Fourier transform of the exchange interaction $`J_{ij}`$, $`\mu =H_cH`$ is a boson chemical potential, and $`H_c=\frac{1}{2}(\gamma _0\gamma _{\mathrm{min}})`$ is the saturation field. A bare four-point boson vertex is given by $`V_𝐪=U+\gamma _𝐪`$. The exact ground state of the Hamiltonian (1) is the boson vacuum for $`\mu <0`$ ($`H>H_c`$), it corresponds to a ferromagnetic alignment of spins. In $`d2`$ the ground state with finite boson density $`b_i^{}b_i0`$ at $`\mu >0`$ should be, generally, a superfluid state: $`b_𝐪0`$ for a particular wave-vector $`𝐪=𝐐`$, such that $`ϵ_𝐐\mu `$ vanishes at the saturation field.

In the above two models the bare spectrum $`ϵ_𝐪`$ has lines of degenerate minima (see below) and the condensate wave-vector remains undetermined. The degeneracy cannot be lifted by the bare interaction $`V_𝐪`$ as it depends on momentum transfer only. This is a manifestation of an infinite classical degeneracy of the ground state of the original spin problem below the saturation field. Such an ‘accidental’ degeneracy can be removed by quantum fluctuations obdo . The number of bosons vanishes at the quantum critical point and hence the system becomes dilute in the limit $`\mu 0^+`$. In this case the leading order corrections to the scattering vertex are generated by the processes in the particle-particle channel. According to the standard procedure the bare interaction is, then, replaced by a solution of the integral equation for the scattering amplitude $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ bel . We show that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ does depend on the incoming momenta and thus lifts the degeneracy of the original problem. The ordering wave-vector corresponds to the smallest $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, i.e., condensate occurs at the momentum at which bosons less interact with each other in order to minimize their repulsion.

The Bethe-Salpeter equation for the scattering function with zero total frequency reads as

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝐪(𝐤,𝐤^{})=V_𝐪\frac{1}{N}\underset{𝐩}{}V_{𝐪𝐩}\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝐩(𝐤,𝐤^{})}{ϵ_{𝐤+𝐩}+ϵ_{𝐤^{}𝐩}}$$
(2)
and is graphically represented in Fig. 1. In the limit $`U\mathrm{}`$, Eq. (2) is reduced to a system

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝐪(𝐤,𝐤^{})=\gamma _𝐪+\mathrm{\Gamma }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐩}{}}\gamma _{𝐪𝐩}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝐩(𝐤,𝐤^{})}{ϵ_{𝐤+𝐩}+ϵ_{𝐤^{}𝐩}}},`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐩}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝐩(𝐤,𝐤^{})}{ϵ_{𝐤+𝐩}+ϵ_{𝐤^{}𝐩}}}=1,`$ (3)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=(1/N)_𝐪\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝐪(𝐤,𝐤^{})`$ and the identity $`\gamma =J_{ii}=0`$ has been used. By expanding $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝐪(𝐤,𝐤^{})`$ in lattice harmonics of the wave-vector $`𝐪`$, the integral equations (3) are transformed to a system of algebraic equations. Since, only a few harmonics appear in such an expansion of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_𝐪(𝐤,𝐤^{})`$, essentially those which are present in $`\gamma _𝐪`$, the resulting algebraic system can be easily solved analytically. We shall now describe further details for the two models separately.

Model A: Frustrated antiferromagnet on a square lattice with the nearest-neighbor exchange constant $`J_11`$ and the diagonal coupling of strength $`J_2=\frac{1}{2}J_1`$ has infinitely many classical ground states for $`0<H<H_c`$ Chandra ; mzh00 . The magnon spectrum in the ferromagnetic phase at $`H=H_c`$ is $`ϵ_𝐪=(1+\mathrm{cos}q_x)(1+\mathrm{cos}q_y)`$. The magnon energy has lines of minima spanned by wave-vectors $`\{𝐪^{}\}`$: $`(\pi ,q)`$ and $`(q,\pi )`$. Besides the well-known singularity related to vanishing of a scattering amplitude for two quantum particles in two dimensions (2d) sh , the present 1d type degeneracy leads to an extra infrared divergence in the kernel of the integral equation when the external momenta are fixed to $`𝐤,𝐤^{}=𝐪^{}`$. Away from the critical point $`\mu >0`$ the singularity can be cured by introducing an infrared cut-off for single-particle energies defined by $`ϵ_{𝐤,𝐤^{}}\mu `$ sh . The physics behind this regularization procedure is as follows: at the energy scale of the order of $`\mu `$ the interaction effects become important and modify the form of the bare spectrum. As it follows, an infrared behavior of the excitation spectrum is sound-like and, hence, removes in a self-consistent way the divergence of the kernel below $`H_c`$.

The condensate wave-vector is chosen by considering the scattering amplitude at zero momentum transfer and external momenta set to $`𝐪^{}`$. The two main candidate states are the Néel state with $`𝐐=(\pi ,\pi )`$, which is stable for a frustrated square lattice antiferromagnet with weaker diagonal bonds $`J_2<\frac{1}{2}J_1`$, and the columnar state ordered on $`(\pi ,0)`$ \[$`(0,\pi )`$\], which is stable for stronger diagonal bonds $`J_2>\frac{1}{2}J_1`$ Chandra . Instead of presenting a rather lengthy solution of the algebraic system we obtain an approximate but physically transparent solution by neglecting the momentum-transfer dependence of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_p(𝐪^{},𝐪^{})\mathrm{\Gamma }_p(𝐪^{})`$ near $`p=0`$ under the integral in equation (3). The result is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐪^{})1/\tau (𝐪^{})`$ with $`\tau (𝐪^{})=1/N_𝐩ϵ_𝐩/[ϵ_{𝐪^{}+𝐩}+ϵ_{𝐪^{}𝐩}].`$ It is evident that $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐪^{})`$ is smallest for a $`𝐪^{}`$ at which the kernel $`\tau (𝐪^{})`$ has the strongest divergence. This singles out the Néel wave-vector $`𝐐=(\pi ,\pi )`$, which has the softest excitations $`\epsilon _{𝐐+𝐤}k_x^2k_y^2`$. Hence, for $`\mu >0`$ magnons condense at $`𝐪^{}=𝐐`$ and a transverse antiferromagnetic order should be formed below the saturation field. Direct estimation of the integral in the kernel $`\tau (𝐪^{})`$ yields $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐐)\mu ^{1/2}/|\mathrm{log}\mu |`$, whereas away from ordering wave-vector $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐪^{})\mu ^{1/2}`$. The square root behavior of the four-point vertex is intrinsic to 1d systems. This is a consequence of the quasi 1d low-energy part of the bare spectrum of the frustrated model. In addition, there is an extra logarithmic correction to the 1d behavior at the ordering wave-vector $`𝐐`$ related to vanishing stiffness in both directions leading to a Van Hove type singularity in the kernel.

In the ordered state below $`H_c`$, the condensate density $`n_0=b_𝐐^2`$ is found from minimization of the ground state energy density $`e_{\text{g.s.}}=\mu n_0+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐐)n_0^2`$: $`n_0=\mu /\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐐)\mu ^{1/2}|\mathrm{log}\mu |`$, where we have neglected the noncondensate contribution. The excitation spectrum can be obtained following the standard Bogoliubov scheme and replacing the bare vertex $`V_𝐪`$ with the full scattering amplitude:

$`\omega _𝐪^2=\left(ϵ_𝐪\mu +\mathrm{\Sigma }_𝐪^{11}\right)^2\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }_𝐪^{12}\right)^2,`$ (4)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_𝐪^{11}=n_0[\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐪,𝐐)+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐪𝐐}(𝐪,𝐐)],\mathrm{\Sigma }_𝐪^{12}=n_0\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐪𝐐}(𝐐).`$
As it is seen from Eq.(4) the self-energy acquires an additional momentum dependence thanks to the dependence of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ on the incoming momenta. The magnon spectrum (4) is no longer degenerate and has the unique zero-energy mode at $`𝐪=𝐐`$. For $`𝐪𝐐`$ the magnon energy becomes $`\omega _𝐪\sqrt{4\mu [n_0\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐪,𝐐)\mu ]}`$. Expanding the vertex in small $`|𝐤|=|𝐪𝐐|`$ we obtain an acoustic mode $`\omega _𝐤sk`$ with the velocity $`s^2\mu /|\mathrm{log}\mu |`$, which is smaller than the velocity $`s^2\mu `$ in nonfrustrated 2d and 3d antiferromagnets near the saturation. Away from the ordering wave-vector, along the degeneracy lines, magnons acquire a dynamically generated gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mu |\mathrm{log}\mu |`$.

The magnetization of the spin system is related to the total density of particles $`M(H)=\frac{1}{2}(n_0+n^{})`$, which includes both the condensate $`n_0`$ and noncondensate $`n^{}`$ parts. The noncondensate density of bosons is given by $`n^{}=1/N_𝐪[ϵ_𝐪\mu +\mathrm{\Sigma }_𝐪^{11}\omega _𝐪]/[2\omega _𝐪]`$. The largest contribution to $`n^{}`$ is determined by wave-vectors away from $`𝐐`$, along the degeneracy lines $`𝐪\{𝐪^{}\}`$. The ratio of the two densities is estimated as $`n^{}/n_01/|\mathrm{log}\mu |^{1/2}`$ and is logarithmically small, though it exceeds the condensate depletion found for a nondegenerate 2d Bose gas ($`n^{}/n_01/|\mathrm{log}\mu |`$) sh . Near $`H_c`$, the magnetization curve exhibits a strong singularity

$$M(H)\mu ^{1/2}|\mathrm{log}\mu |\sqrt{H_cH}|\mathrm{log}(H_cH)|,$$
(5)
which fits well to the available numerical data Muetter ; Honecker .

The above results obtained in the hard-core boson picture are valid in the vicinity of $`H_c`$ and should be compared with the standard linear spin-wave theory (LSWT), which applies for all fields $`0<H<H_c`$. In the LSWT approach one selects a few classical ground states and calculates energies of zero-point oscillations $`E_0=\frac{1}{2}_𝐤\omega _𝐤`$, which are different for each state. In this way we have found that the Néel state has lower energy than a collinear (stripe) state in the whole range of fields. Another candidate state for $`\frac{1}{2}H_c<H<H_c`$ is a four-sublattice state, which has identical polarization in three sublattices with the fourth sublattice compensating the net transverse magnetization. Such a partially collinear state is a natural favorite if quantum effects are taken into account via effective biquadratic exchange interaction derived in a second-order real-space perturbation theory perturb . LSWT shows instead that the Néel state has again a lower energy for a frustrated square-lattice antiferromagnet. This discrepancy is explained by a nonanalytic dependence of the ground state energy on applied magnetic field determined by a large number of soft (zero) modes, whereas the real-space perturbation approach captures only analytic contributions. Furthermore, the Néel antiferromagnetic order is stable even at $`H=\frac{1}{2}H_c`$, where it has a lower energy of zero-point oscillations $`E_0=0.694S`$ than a fully collinear up-up-up-down ($`uuud`$) state with $`E_0=0.703S`$. This result corrects the previous spin-wave calculation mzh00  and is in a good agreement with the exact diagonalization studies mzh00 ; Honecker , which show that the 1/2-magnetization plateau appears in the present model for $`0.5<J_2/J_10.65`$. In the vicinity of $`H_c`$, the LSWT magnetization curve for the Néel state shows the same type of singularity (5) with $`M=Sh\{1+\sqrt{2(1h)}\mathrm{ln}[128(1h)/\pi ^4e^2]/\pi ^2S\}`$, where $`h=H/H_c`$.

Model B: A nearest-neighbor antiferromagnet ($`J1`$) on an fcc lattice is another frustrated model with degenerate ground states at $`0<H<H_c`$. The spectrum of magnon excitation at the saturation field is $`ϵ_𝐪=2[1+\mathrm{cos}q_x\mathrm{cos}q_y+\mathrm{cos}q_x\mathrm{cos}q_z+\mathrm{cos}q_y\mathrm{cos}q_z]`$ and has lines of zeros at $`(\pi ,q,0)`$ and the cubic symmetry related lines. We then follow the same scheme as for the previous model and examine the kernel for the scattering amplitude with the new spectrum. The lowest value of renormalized four-point boson vertex corresponds to the three wave-vectors $`𝐐_i=(\pi ,0,0)`$, $`(0,\pi ,0)`$, and $`(0,0,\pi )`$. The corresponding vertex is estimated as $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐐_i,𝐐_i)1/|\mathrm{log}\mu |^2`$. It has a 2d logarithmic behavior due to a quasi-2d form of the spectrum in the vicinity of $`(\pi ,q,0)`$ line with an extra logarithmic singularity related again to a vanishing stiffness for $`k=0`$: $`ϵ_{𝐐_1+𝐤}k_x^2+\frac{1}{4}k_y^2k_z^2`$. Due to a presence of three equally singular wave-vectors one must check now whether the ground state of the systems is characterized by a Bose condensation at a single $`𝐐_i`$ wave-vector or at all three wave-vectors simultaneously nikuni . For this we write the ground state energy in the Landau form:

$`E`$ $`=`$ $`\mu {\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}|\psi _i|^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}|\psi _i|^4`$
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}\left[\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}|\psi _i|^2|\psi _j|^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}(\psi _i^2\psi _j^2+\psi _j^2\psi _i^2)\right],`$
where $`\psi _i=b_{𝐐_i}`$ is a complex order parameter, $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(𝐐_i,𝐐_j)+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐐_i𝐐_j}(𝐐_i,𝐐_j)`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{𝐐_i𝐐_j}(𝐐_i,𝐐_i)`$. A single component phase is stabilized for a sufficiently strong repulsion between components $`\mathrm{\Gamma }<\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}|\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}|`$, whereas in the opposite case all three components of the Bose condensate appear with equal weights. Direct calculations show that $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}1/|\mathrm{log}\mu |`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}1/|\mathrm{log}\mu |^2`$. Hence, in the vicinity of the saturation field dominated by the logarithmic behavior $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ and the single-$`𝐤`$ state is energetically favorable. The boson density and asymptotic behavior of the magnetization curve is given by $`n=1/2M(H)\mu |\mathrm{log}\mu |^2`$. We again find a $`d1`$ like form for the magnetization with a logarithmic correction.

Corrections beyond the leading logarithms can, however, change the energy balance. From explicit estimate of the prefactors, one finds that $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ only in an extremely narrow interval near the saturation field for $`\mu \pi ^2e^{20}`$. Beyond this interval $`\overline{\mathrm{\Gamma }}<\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and a multi-$`𝐤`$ state with a real ($`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}<0`$) superposition of all three modes with equal amplitudes is stabilized as the ground state. Such a spin structure corresponds to a partially collinear spin configuration described above in our discussion of the model A. The LSWT calculations confirm the above conclusion showing that for magnetic fields as close to the saturation field as $`\mathrm{\Delta }H/H_c=10^3`$ the partially collinear state is energetically more favorable than a single-$`𝐤`$ state. In contrast to the behavior of a frustrated square-lattice antiferromagnet we have also found an $`uuud`$ configuration for the ground state at $`H=\frac{1}{2}H_c`$. This state has the zero-point oscillation energy of $`E_0=1.66S`$, while a single-$`𝐤`$ state has $`E_0=1.74S`$. Thus, a 1/2-magnetization plateau should appear on the magnetization curve of an fcc antiferromagnet.

Finally, we make a few remarks on finite temperature behavior. The models $`A`$ and $`B`$ are magnetic analogs of the weak-crystallization model brazovskii . In this model the phonon spectrum softens for wave-vectors lying on a sphere. The phase transition to a crystal state appears to be of the first order even if a mean-field theory would predict a continuous transition. Such a fluctuation driven first-order transition is explained by a singular Hartree correction generated by thermal fluctuations, which have a large phase space brazovskii .

For a 3d quantum fcc antiferromagnet a finite temperature transition to the ordered state is expected for all $`H<H_c`$. In zero magnetic field neglecting quantum fluctuations the Hartree correction is estimated as $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_\text{H}_𝐪T/[ϵ_𝐪+\tau ]CT|\mathrm{log}\tau |^2`$, where $`\tau =[TT_{\text{MF}}]/T_{\text{MF}}`$ is a distance from a mean-field critical point $`T_{\text{MF}}`$. The self-consistent equation for the excitation gap becomes $`\mathrm{\Delta }=\tau +CT|\mathrm{log}\mathrm{\Delta }|^2`$. The point of absolute instability $`\mathrm{\Delta }=0`$ cannot be reached at any finite $`T`$ indicating a first-order transition. For classical Heisenberg and $`XY`$ model on an fcc lattice the first-order transition at $`H=0`$ has been confirmed by the Monte Carlo simulations diep . The transition between paramagnetic and antiferromagnetic states is, therefore, of the first order at low $`H`$ and at high $`T`$. The zero temperature phase transition at $`H_c`$ is instead of the second order. This opens two possible scenarios for the $`H`$$`T`$ phase diagram (a) a finite temperature tricritical point separates low-field (high-$`T`$) first-order transition line from the $`XY`$ transition at high-fields; or (b) fluctuation induced first-order transition survives down to zero temperature and terminates at the quantum critical end point. For the two-dimensional model $`A`$, similar questions can be raised on the interplay between a Berezinski-Kosterlitz-Thoulees (BKT) transition and a fluctuation induced first-order transition. At high temperatures (low fields) high degree of degeneracy of the spectra may induce the first-order transition and make the BKT instability inaccessible. Such a scenario is, for example, realized in the theory of weak crystallization of films andrei . While at low temperatures (high fields) a usual BKT transition may take place. These interesting issues require further investigations.

Summary: We have studied a quantum phase transition at high magnetic fields for a class of frustrated antiferromagnets in $`d=2`$ and $`d=3`$, which have degenerate excitation spectra with lines of minima. Momentum dependence of the exact four-point boson vertex removes the degeneracy and selects the ordering wave-vector $`𝐐`$. The new spectra are sound-like near $`𝐐`$ and acquire dynamically generated gaps away from it. The asymptotic behavior of the magnetization curve shows the same singularity as a nonfrustrated model in $`d1`$ dimension with an additional logarithmic correction. The developed scheme can be applied to other frustrated antiferromagnets near the saturation and to singlet ground state systems with degenerate gapped triplet excitations, as, e.g., SrCu<sub>2</sub>(BO<sub>3</sub>)<sub>2</sub> srcubo  or Cs<sub>3</sub>Cr<sub>2</sub>Br<sub>9</sub> cscrbr , near the triplet condensation field $`H_{c1}`$. In addition, recent experimental progress on the Bose condensation of alkali atoms on optical lattices greiner  opens a new possibility for experimental study of condensate phenomena on frustrated lattices, the systems to which our results also apply.

We would like to thank A. Honecker and E. I. Kats for interesting discussions. MEZ acknowledges financial support from the 21st Century COE program of Kyoto University during his stay at the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics.