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# Correlation, excitation, and relaxation of the antiferromagnetic nanoparticle

## Abstract

We study the dynamics of spins in the canted antiferromagnetic hematite nanoparticles $`\alpha `$-Fe2O3. The system includes an antiferromagnetic exchange ($`J`$) between two sublattices as well as the potential dominated by a uniaxial anisotropy and dissipates through the thermally triggered spin-phonon mechanism. The exchange $`J`$ is found to reduce the superparamagnetic relaxation and drive the incoherent relaxation of transverse spins in the low temperature. Dynamical properties are semi-quantitatively understood within a role of the exchange interaction $`J`$ and agree well with recent inelastic neutron scattering experiments.

Magnetic properties of the fine particles of a size $`𝒪(10)`$ nm are interesting and currently attracting much attention. In the system, the most relevant energy scale tends to be the magnetic anisotropic energy, easily comparable to the thermal energy $`T`$, so that the magnetization (or superspin) is subject to considerable thermal fluctuation, called the superparamagnetic relaxationNeel . Phenomena of such magnetic fluctuations have the potential importance in the fundamental research as well as the technological applicationDormann .

Hematite, $`\alpha `$-Fe2O3, is a mineral of the corundum (rhombohedral) structure at room temperature, characterized by the rhombohedral axis  and the basal (111) plane. Spins in hematite are sightly canted away from antiferromagnetic (AFM) orientation on the basal plane, giving place to the weakly ferromagnetic (FM) state, between the Morin temperature $`T_M260`$ K and the Néel temperature $`T_N956`$ K, but spins are oriented along the  axis and perfectly antiferromagnetic below $`T_M`$. Magnetic properties are found to depend on the particle size and $`T_M`$ is less than 5 K in typical nanocrystalline hematitesSchroeer , where several kinds of magnetic anisotropy energies, not present or much smaller in the bulk, play important roles. In nanocrystalline hematites, the magnetization oscillates due to superparamagnetic relaxation along the easy axis and collective magnetic excitations in vicinity of the easy axisDormann .

Many studies of the magnetic fluctuations in the nanoparticle hematite are carried out using Mössbauer spectroscopy or measuring the magnetic susceptibility. Morup and his coworkers have used Mössbauer spectroscopy and studied the energy scale of the superparamagnetic relaxation and anisotropic barrierBodker . They have also explored effects of the inter-particle interaction in strongly interacting nanoparticles (e.g., uncoated dry particles or a form of mixture such as $`\alpha `$-Fe2O3+CoO or 57Fe-NiO+CoO) and found the absence of fast superparamagnetic relaxation, i.e. the slowing down of the relaxationHansen00 . By the way, the magnetic relaxations in the system are argued to occur highly fast, being almost the ultrafast process (in the time scale of $`𝒪(10^{12})`$ seconds or in the frequency scale of THz range), and the Mössbauer spectroscopy or susceptibility measurements are then found to be slow probes for the relevant magnetic dynamics. By the same group and coworkers, due to those reasons, the inelastic neutron scattering experiment is suggested as one of valuable complementsHansen97 .

In this paper, we investigate the detailed dynamics of the magnetization in the AFM nanoparticle system. The system incorporates the AFM exchange $`J`$ between two sublattices as well as the potential by the anisotropy and undergoes the spin-relaxation through the spin-phonon mechanism. A main goal of the paper is to understand the respective dynamics and relaxation of both the superparamagnetic fluctuations and the collective magnetic excitations with respect to the temperature $`T`$. Prior to the present work, theoretical studies have analytically shown that the superparamagnetic relaxation follows the simple Arrhenius behavior of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(T)e^{E_B/T}`$ with a certain form of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0(T)`$, where $`E_B`$ the energy barrier, for FM grains (like Mn12O12 molecules)Villain ; Wurger1 ; Wurger2 . At the very low temperatures ($`T2`$ K), however, it is found that the relaxation deviates from the Arrhenius law and is dominated by a resonant tunneling between low-lying statesFort . In the present work, such low temperature regimes are not assumed.

Considering that spins in the bulk hematite are in the slightly canted AFM (or weakly FM) state on the (111) basal plane, where the hexagonal crystal anisotropy is dominated by the uniaxial one, we suggest the Hamiltonian $`_0`$ as

$$_0=K_z(S_{1z}^2+S_{2z}^2)+K_y(S_{1y}^2+S_{2y}^2)+J𝐒_1𝐒_2,$$
(1)
where $`𝐒_1`$ and $`𝐒_2`$ are the magnetization or superspin (or simply spin) of two AFM sublattices, with a size of $`S1`$, and $`K_z`$ and $`K_y`$ are uniaxial anisotropic constants along $`\widehat{z}`$ ( direction) and in the basal plane, respectively, and $`J`$ is the exchange between two sublattice magnetizations. $`K_z`$ is expected to be the largest energy scale, i.e. $`K_zK_y`$, and $`K_zJ`$. $`K_zS^2`$ is noted to be a natural energy unit. $`_0`$ can be easily diagonalized by taking the basis of $`|S_{1z},S_{2z}`$ and performing the calculation of Clebsch-Gordan coefficients for the coupling term. In addition to $`_0`$, we consider the spin-phonon interaction $`𝒱`$ ($`=𝒱_1+𝒱_2`$) raising the spin-relaxation, $`𝒱_i=v_if`$,

$$v_i=g_0(S_{iz}S_{ix}+S_{iy}S_{iz})+g_1S_{ix}S_{iy}+\text{h.c.},$$
(2)
where $`f`$ denotes the lattice deformation. The first term in Eq.(2) gives rise to transitions from $`|m_i`$ to $`|m_i\pm 1`$, while the second term leads to transitions to $`|m_i\pm 2`$.

We have interests in the relaxational dynamics of spins at the AFM Bragg scattering, which is given by the following correlation function, $`S_\mu S_{1\mu }S_{2\mu }`$, $`\mu =x,y,z`$,

$$\varphi _{\mu \mu }(\tau )=S_\mu (\tau )S_\mu =S_\mu e^{i\tau }S_\mu ,$$
(3)
where $``$ is the Liouville operator, $`𝒪=[,𝒪]`$, $`=_0+𝒱`$. It is the spectral function $`J_{\mu \mu }(\omega )=𝑑\tau e^{i\omega \tau }\varphi _{\mu \mu }(\tau )`$ that can be compared directly with the inelastic neutron scattering experiment. Up to the second order of $`𝒱`$, the correlation function $`\varphi _{\mu \mu }(\tau )`$ is written as $`\varphi _{\mu \mu }(\tau )=e^{i_0\tau }S_\mu e^{i_0\tau }e^{i_𝒱\tau }S_\mu `$, which is valid to the lowest order in the memory functionForster . By introducing the relaxation matrix $``$ whose elements consist of the transition probabilities of the Markov equation, we replace $`e^{i_𝒱\tau }`$ by $`e^\tau `$

$$\varphi _{\mu \mu }(\tau )=e^{i_0\tau }S_\mu e^{i_0\tau }e^\tau S_\mu .$$
(4)
With the basis of the eigenstate of $`_0`$, elements of the relaxation matrix $``$ are found as follows; $`_{nn}=_{m=n+1}^𝒩\gamma _{nm}+_{m=0}^ne^{(E_mE_n)/T}\gamma _{mn}`$, and $`_{nm}=\gamma _{mn}`$ for $`n>m`$, and $`_{nm}=e^{(E_nE_m)/T}\gamma _{nm}`$ for $`n<m`$, where $`𝒩(=(2S+1)^2)`$ is the dimension of the matrix and finally $`\gamma _{nm}`$ is defined byVillain ; Wurger1

$$\gamma _{nm}=\alpha \frac{|n|v|m|^2}{1e^{(E_nE_m)/T}}(E_nE_m)^3.$$

We assume $`E_n>E_m`$ for $`n<m`$. $``$ is in fact a generalization of Orbach’s processAbragam  to a spin cascade. For a coupling to elastic waves, $`\gamma _{nm}`$ should be $`(E_nE_m)^3`$ from the line shape function. It should be noted that the eigenstate of the relaxation matrix $``$ does not construct an orthonormal basis set because $``$ is not a (real) symmetric matrixWurger\_comment . We then need an orthogonalization process of nonorthogonal basis, i.e. like the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalizationArfken . Putting the eigenstate of $``$ with the relaxation eigenvalue of $`\lambda _i`$ as $`|p_i`$, the orthogonalized state $`|\phi _j`$ is, $`|\phi _j=C_j^j\left[|p_j_{l=0}^{j1}_{i=0}^lC_l^ip_j|\phi _l|p_i\right]`$ with $`|\phi _0=|p_0`$, $`C_j^j=1/\sqrt{1_{i=0}^{j1}|p_j|\phi _i|^2}`$, and $`C_l^i=0`$ for $`i>l`$, and we find $`C_j^i=C_j^j_{l=i}^{j1}C_l^ip_j|\phi _l`$ for $`i<j`$. Now the correlation function of $`\varphi _{\mu \mu }(\tau )`$ is expressed as

$`\varphi _{\mu \mu }(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{m}{}}e^{\beta E_n}e^{i(E_nE_m)\tau }n|S_\mu |m`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=0}{\overset{j}{}}}C_j^ie^{\lambda _i\tau }m|p_i\phi _j|S_\mu |n.`$
In the left panel of Fig.1, it is shown that $`\widehat{x}`$ should be the direction of the easy axis, while, in the right panel, the temperature variation of AFM correlation strengths are given for $`\xi `$’s and $`\zeta `$’s ($`\xi K_y/K_z`$ and $`\zeta J/K_z`$). Energy quantities including $`T`$ are given by a unit of $`K_zS^2`$, but the excitation energy $`\omega `$ (also $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$ given later) should be scaled by $`2K_zS`$ rather than $`K_zS^2`$ from $`K_zS^2K_z(S1)^22K_zS`$. At low temperatures ($`TK_zS^2`$), there are two distinctly different types of dynamics, namely the superparamagnetic fluctuation $`J_{}(\omega )`$ ($`=J_{xx}(\omega )`$) and the collective magnetic excitation $`J_{}(\omega )`$ ($`=J_{yy}(\omega )+J_{zz}(\omega )`$).

Collective magnetic excitations lead to the inelastic scattering process. The relative intensity of $`J_{yy}(\omega )`$ and $`J_{zz}(\omega )`$ depends on the ratio of two different spin-dissipation channels in Eq.(2). We take the ratio $`g_1/g_0=0.5`$ because transitions of $`\delta m_i=1`$ are considered to occur more probably than $`\delta m_i=2`$ and $`\alpha g_0^2=1\times 10^3`$. Under the ratio, it is found that $`J_{}(\omega )`$ is governed by $`J_{yy}(\omega )`$, $`J_{}(\omega )J_{yy}(\omega )`$. For three sets of parameters, we provide the spectral functions in Fig.2. We note that two important features characteristically develop with respect to $`\xi `$, $`\zeta `$, and $`T`$; one is the collective excitation energy and the other is the relaxation of spins. By comparing panels in Fig.2, it is found that the excitation energies of $`S_y`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_y`$) and $`S_z`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$) behave differently. In Fig.3, the collective excitation energies for $`\xi `$ and $`\zeta `$ are given. We find that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y`$ ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_{}`$) is scaled roughly by $`\sqrt{\xi (\xi +\zeta )}`$, that is, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y\sqrt{\xi \zeta }`$ for $`\xi \zeta `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y\xi `$ for $`\zeta 0`$. This is consistent with the result of inelastic mode energy of a pure antiferromagnetHansen97 ; Lindgard . On the other hand, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$ is by $`\sqrt{\xi +\zeta }`$. Especially, by the symmetry, for a case of $`\xi =1`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y`$ should be same as $`\mathrm{\Delta }_z`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{}=\mathrm{\Delta }_y=\mathrm{\Delta }_z\sqrt{\zeta +1}`$, while, for $`\xi 0`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_y`$ goes to 0 by $`J_{yy}(\omega )=J_{xx}(\omega )`$.

Now, let us consider the relaxation of the longitudinal and transverse components of spins, which is in principle understood from the broadness of curves in Fig.2. Instead of directly measuring the broadness, however, for the systematic investigation of the relaxation, we define and propose a useful renormalized dissipation parameter $`\gamma _{nm}^\mu `$; $`_j_{i=0}^jC_j^ie^{\lambda _i\tau }m|p_i\phi _j|S_\mu |ne^{\gamma _{nm}^\mu \tau }m|S_\mu |n,`$ where $`\gamma _{nm}^\mu `$ is found to describe the relaxation of the system at least in an approximate sense. It is evident that the relaxation of the system is mainly governed by some smallest eigenvalues of $`\lambda _i`$’s and it is then essential to account for the long-time behavior after long enough $`\tau `$ has elapsed. Due to the reason, we obtain $`\gamma _{nm}^\mu `$ by integrating both sides from $`\tau =0`$ to $`\tau =\mathrm{}`$, $`\gamma _{nm}^\mu m|S_\mu |n/\left[_j_{i=0}^j\left\{C_j^im|p_i\phi _j|S_\mu |n/(\lambda _i+\delta )\right\}\right]\delta `$, where the finite dissipation $`\delta =2.5\times 10^4K_zS^2`$ has been added for the stable calculation. $`\delta `$ can be understood corresponding to the finite energy resolution in an actual experimentresolution . With $`\gamma _{nm}^\mu `$, the time-dependent spectral function $`\varphi _{\mu \mu }(\tau )`$ is $`\varphi _{\mu \mu }(\tau )=_n_me^{\beta E_n}e^{i(E_nE_m+i\gamma _{nm}^\mu )\tau }|n|S_\mu |m|^2`$, from which $`\gamma _\mu `$ is further defined as the smallest value of $`\gamma _{nm}^\mu `$ at the peak position of the spectral function of $`S_\mu `$. Behaviors of $`\gamma _\mu (T)`$ have essential importances in that the magnetic relaxation of spins and related dynamics of energy dissipation can be well understood through them. We have two distinguishable kinds of the spin relaxation, as shown in Fig.4; one is the superparamagnetic relaxation along the easy axis ($`\gamma _x(T)`$; Figs.4(a) and (c)) and the other is the relaxation by the collective excitations transverse to the easy axis ($`\gamma _y(T)`$ or $`\gamma _z(T)`$; Figs.4(b) and (d)). Because $`\gamma _z(T)`$ is always larger than $`\gamma _y(T)`$, consistent with $`J_{yy}(\omega )J_{zz}(\omega )`$, it is reasonable to put $`\gamma _{}(T)=\gamma _y(T)`$. Like cases of FM grains, the superparamagnetic relaxation still follows the simple Arrhenius behavior as a first approximation, even if the relaxation has two-dimensional nature. However, the energy barrier depends on $`\xi `$ and $`\zeta `$ and does not have so simple a form. From Fig.4(a), it is evident that the AFM exchange $`J`$ reduces the superparamagnetic relaxation, in other words, the energy barrier increases with $`J`$ as shown in Fig.4(e). This finding is consistent with the claim of the absence of the fast superparamagnetic relaxation in the interacting nanoparticles through the Mösbauer spectroscopy. Without the exchange, the energy barrier approximately follows $`K_yS^2`$, which implies $`\gamma _xe^{\xi /T}`$; $`\gamma _xe^{0.46/T}`$ for $`\xi =0.5`$ and $`\zeta =0`$. Figures 4(b) and (d) give the transverse relaxation, quite different from the superparamagnetic relaxation. In the low temperatures, to increase the temperature reduces $`\gamma _{}(T)`$. $`\gamma _{}(T)`$ has then a minimum and slowly increases with $`T`$. In such a sense, the transverse responses of spins are found incoherent in the low temperatures. We conclude that the incoherence is driven by the AFM spin exchange $`J`$ because $`\gamma _{}(T)`$ is always coherent for $`J=0`$ (a thick line in Fig.4(b)). The incoherent behaviors of $`\gamma _{}(T)`$ in the low temperatures has been actually observed in the inelastic neutron scattering experiment for $`\alpha `$-Fe2O3Hansen97 .

Here we can estimate the system parameters $`K_zS^2`$, $`K_yS^2`$, and $`JS^2`$ from the scaled dynamical quantitiesscaling . Their estimations have been done with appreciable error ranges from temperature fits in various ways by Morup and his coworkersHansen97 . A typical one of them is $`K_yS^2500`$ K (i.e. $`42`$ meV) from Arrhenius behavior of the superparamagnetic relaxation, but it is found from Fig.4(e) that the value may have been overestimated almost by 60 $`\%`$. Thus, we estimate $`K_yS^2300`$ K ($`25`$ meV), while the value of $`K_zS^2`$ is more uncertain because its value is not known for the nanoscopic system, but of a same order of magnitude with the bulk case. So we take $`K_zS^21000`$ K ($`83`$ meV), that is, we have $`\xi =0.3`$. On the other hand, the unit excitation energy $`2K_zS`$ can be found $`0.5`$ meV to be consistent with the experiment. The inelastic energy mode ($`\mathrm{\Delta }_{}`$) is then $`0.3`$ meV at $`T=0.1`$ ($`100`$ K). The value of $`JS^2`$ can be estimated as 300-500 K from the transverse excitation energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{}`$ in Fig.3 and from the relaxational behaviors of spins in Fig.4. Based on the estimations, $`\gamma _x(T)`$ is about $`𝒪(10^3)`$ meV and $`\gamma _{}(T)`$ about $`𝒪(10^1)`$ meV in the temperatures $`T0.2`$ (i.e. $`T200`$ K). We note $`\gamma _{}(T)`$ is larger than $`\gamma _x(T)`$ by $`𝒪(10^2)`$, which is consistent with the actual situation of the experimentHansen97 .

In summary, we have investigated the dynamics of spins in the antiferromagnetic hematite nanoparticle $`\alpha `$-Fe2O3 with the explicit AFM exchange $`J`$. The exchange $`J`$ has been found to reduce the superparamagnetic relaxation and also induce the incoherent oscillation of transverse spins in the low temperature. The spin responses are well understood within the model and a semi-quantitative estimation of the relevant parameters has been done through a comparison with the recent inelastic neutron scattering experiments.

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-FG03-01ER45950.


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# Hedin’s equations and enumeration of Feynman diagrams

## I Introduction

Consider a system of fermions described by the Hamiltonian $`H=_ih(i)+_{i<j}v(i,j)`$, where $`h`$ is a single-particle operator and $`v`$ is the two-particle interaction. In general, to obtain dressed correlators that describe quasi-particles and collective excitations, one must sum over classes of diagrams of all orders of perturbation theory in $`v`$. The random phase approximation for the effective potential or the ladder expansion for the vertex and the T-matrix are two well known examplesMahan . Iterative schemes are used in conserving approximations for the self-energyTakada95 ; Schindlmayr01 . The perturbative treatment of the electron gas requires a mixed approach, with partial resummations; a late step in the long history of the $`r_s`$-expansion of correlation energy is the evaluation of third order diagramsEndo . In these cases, it might be useful, or at least interesting, to know in advance how many diagrams are required at each order of the approximation, and how many are left out. The counting problem is much simpler than the original one, and is obtained by translating the recursive equations at hand to zero dimension. Properties other than loop content or perturbative numbers may also be evaluated: a notable example is diagram enumeration according to their topologies, that can be mapped to models of statistical mechanics on random latticestHooft .

In this report, I show how Feynman diagrams can be enumerated for the exact theory and its GW approximation. A useful starting point is the set of five Hedin’s equationsHedin  for the propagator $`G(1,2)`$, the effective potential $`W(1,2)`$, the proper self-energy $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(1,2)`$, the polarization $`\mathrm{\Pi }(1,2)`$, and the vertex $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(1;2,3)`$:

$`G(1,2)=g(1,2)+g(1,1^{})\mathrm{\Sigma }(1^{},2^{})G(2^{},2)`$ (1)
$`W(1,2)=v(1,2)+v(1,1^{})\mathrm{\Pi }(1^{},2^{})W(2^{},2)`$ (2)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }(1,2)=i\mathrm{\Gamma }(2^{};1,1^{})G(1^{},2)W(2^{},2)`$ (3)
$`\mathrm{\Pi }(1,2)=2i\mathrm{\Gamma }(1;2^{},2^{\prime \prime })G(2,2^{})G(2^{\prime \prime },2)`$ (4)
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }(1;2,3)=\delta (1,2)\delta (1,3)+`$
$`\mathrm{\Gamma }(1;2^{},3^{})G(2^{\prime \prime },2^{})G(3^{},3^{\prime \prime }){\displaystyle \frac{\delta \mathrm{\Sigma }(2,3)}{\delta G(2^{\prime \prime },3^{\prime \prime })}}`$ (5)
Repeated primed space-time and internal variables are hereafter understood to be summed or integrated. $`g(1,2)`$ is the Green function of the interacting system in the Hartree approximation, with exact particle density, so that Hartree-type insertion (tadpoles) are already accounted for. In the vertex equation, the Bethe-Salpeter kernelBD  is specified as a functional derivative in the same quantities involved. Therefore, the five exact Hedin’s equations are formally closed. A different functional closure of Schwinger-Dyson equations, leading to diagrammatic recursion schemes, was developed by Kleinert et al. Pelster02 ; Pelster03 .

It is useful to restate eq.(5) with the Hartree propagator $`g`$ replacing the exact one, $`G`$:

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }(1;2,3)=\delta (1,2)\delta (1,3)+g(1^{},1)g(1,1^{\prime \prime }){\displaystyle \frac{\delta \mathrm{\Sigma }(2,3)}{\delta g(1^{},1^{\prime \prime })}}`$ (6)
It states that vertex diagrams are obtained from self-energy ones through the insertion of a bare vertex in a Hartree propagator line, in all possible ways. A derivation is given in the end. The formula can be advantageous when the self-energy is approximated by some explicit expression of $`g`$ and $`v`$, which are the free functional variables of the many body problem.

To cope with the vertex equation is a formidable taskGod ; Oni . A strong non-trivial simplification is the GW approximation (GWA), where all corrections to the bare vertex $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(0)}(1;2,3)=\delta (1,2)\delta (1,3)`$ are ignored. Eqs. (1-4), with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ replacing $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, then become a closed set of integral equations Aul ; Arya .

The upmost difficulty of the problem of solving Hedin’s or GW equations, vanishes in zero dimension of space-time, where the perturbative solution in the interaction $`v`$ is a mean to count Feynman diagrams. The constraint of no Hartree-type insertions makes this approach much simpler than the usual one, based on the functional integral Cvi ; Argy . Counting numbers are also evaluated in the GWA, and the omission of vertex corrections makes the number of diagrams grow with a power law, instead of factorially.

## II Counting Feynman diagrams

In zero dimension of space-time, the four Hedin’s equations (1-4) become algebraic, with variables $`g`$ and $`v`$, and the functional derivative in the vertex equation (6 ) is an ordinary one. After removing imaginary factors and replacing the factor $`(2)`$, due to the fermionic loop and spin summation, with a parameter $`\mathrm{}`$ that counts the same loops, Hedin’s equations are:

$`G=g+g\mathrm{\Sigma }G,W=v+v\mathrm{\Pi }W,`$ (7)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }=GW\mathrm{\Gamma },\mathrm{\Pi }=\mathrm{}G^2\mathrm{\Gamma },\mathrm{\Gamma }=1+g^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }}{g}}`$ (8)
By searching solutions as series expansions in the variables $`v`$ and $`\mathrm{}`$, one obtains coefficients that count all Feynman graphs, with weight one, that contribute to a perturbative order (specified by the power of $`v`$), with a given number of fermionic loops (the power of $`\mathrm{}`$). I begin by solving for the self-energy. Elimination of $`G`$, $`W`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ gives

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }(1g\mathrm{\Sigma })^2=gv\mathrm{\Gamma }[1(1\mathrm{})g\mathrm{\Sigma }]`$ (9)
It is useful to consider adimensional quantities, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }=gvs(x)`$ and $`x=g^2v`$. After use of the equation for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ one obtains a differential equation for $`s(x)`$

$`s(1xs)^2=(1+xs+2x^2{\displaystyle \frac{s}{x}})[1xs(1\mathrm{})]`$ (10)
There is no standard solution of this (Abel) equation. The perturbative expansion is evaluated

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }/vg=1+(2+\mathrm{})x+(10+9\mathrm{}+\mathrm{}^2)x^2+`$
$`(74+91\mathrm{}+23\mathrm{}^2+\mathrm{}^3)x^3+`$
$`(706+1063\mathrm{}+416\mathrm{}^2+46\mathrm{}^3+\mathrm{}^4)x^4+`$ (11)
$`(8162+14193\mathrm{}+7344\mathrm{}^2+1350\mathrm{}^3+80\mathrm{}^4+\mathrm{}^5)x^5+..`$
$`=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+3x+20x^2+189x^3+2232x^4+`$
$`31130x^5+..`$ (12)
The last line corresponds to $`\mathrm{}=1`$. For example, in eq. (12) we read that at order $`v^3`$ there are 20 self-energy diagrams; eq. (11) gives the more detailed information that 10 graphs come with no fermion loop, 9 with a single loop and 1 with two loops. At each perturbative order there is a single diagram with largest number of loops; the sum of such diagrams yields the ring approximationMahan  $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_r=igW_r`$, where the effective potential $`W_r`$ is evaluated with ring insertions $`\mathrm{\Pi }_r=2ig^2`$.

The expansions for the vertex and the polarization are then obtained (I omit the propagator and the effective potential)

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+x+(6+3\mathrm{})x^2+(50+45\mathrm{}+5\mathrm{}^2)x^3+`$
$`(518+637\mathrm{}+161\mathrm{}^2+7\mathrm{}^3)x^4+`$
$`(6354+9567\mathrm{}+3744\mathrm{}^2+414\mathrm{}^3+9\mathrm{}^4)x^5+..`$ (13)
$`=1+x+9x^2+100x^3+1323x^4+20088x^5+..`$ (14)
$`\mathrm{\Pi }/g^2\mathrm{}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+3x+(15+5\mathrm{})x^2+(105+77\mathrm{}+7\mathrm{}^2)x^3+`$
$`(945+1044\mathrm{}+234\mathrm{}^2+9\mathrm{}^3)x^4+`$
$`(10395+14784\mathrm{}+5390\mathrm{}^2+550\mathrm{}^3+11\mathrm{}^4)x^5+..`$ (15)
$`=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+3x+20x^2+189x^3+2232x^4+31130x^5+..`$ (16)
Note that the counting numbers for the $`\mathrm{}=1`$ expansions (12) and (16) of the self-energy and the polarization are the same. This occurs also in Q.E.D. though with smaller counting numbers, due to the cancellation of pairs of diagrams which differ by orientation of a fermionic loop with an odd number of propagators (Furry’s theorem) IZ .

I now evaluate the counting numbers in the $`GWA`$, which corresponds to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1`$ in eq.(9). The equation for the self-energy becomes algebraic cubic, with solution

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{GW}/vg=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+(1+\mathrm{})x+(2+4\mathrm{}+\mathrm{}^2)x^2+`$
$`(5+15\mathrm{}+9\mathrm{}^2+\mathrm{}^3)x^3+`$
$`(14+56\mathrm{}+56\mathrm{}^2+16\mathrm{}^3+\mathrm{}^4)x^4+`$ (17)
$`(42+210\mathrm{}+300\mathrm{}^2+150\mathrm{}^3+25\mathrm{}^4+\mathrm{}^5)x^5+..`$
$`=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+2x+7x^2+30x^3+143x^4+728x^5+..`$ (18)
For $`\mathrm{}=1`$, the cubic equation is $`s(1sx)^2=1`$. By solving for the inverse function, $`x(s)=s^1s^{3/2}`$, one locates a singular point for $`s^{}(x)`$ in $`x_c=4/27`$. The finite radius of convergence for the perturbative series (18) in GWA, implies that the number of self energy diagrams of order $`n`$ grows with the power law $`(27/4)^n`$. In GWA the vertex function is trivial, and the polarization $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{GW}=2iG_{GW}^2`$ is the GW-dressed ring diagram:

$`\mathrm{\Pi }_{GW}/g^2\mathrm{}=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+2x+(5+2\mathrm{})x^2+`$
$`(14+14\mathrm{}+2\mathrm{}^2)x^3+`$
$`(42+72\mathrm{}+27\mathrm{}^2+2\mathrm{}^3)x^4+`$
$`(132+330\mathrm{}+220\mathrm{}^2+44\mathrm{}^3+2\mathrm{}^4)x^5+..`$ (19)
$`=\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}1}+2x+7x^2+30x^3+143x^4+728x^5+..`$ (20)
The $`\mathrm{}=1`$ expansions for the self-energy and the polarization are again the same, as one can show that $`\mathrm{\Pi }/g^2`$ and $`s`$ solve the same cubic equation.

Conclusion: By translating to zero dimension a closed system of equations for many-body correlators, one may enumerate the Feynman diagrams involved. I have shown this for the full theory of interacting fermions and the GW approximation, with the rule that a line is a Hartree propagator.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was funded in part by the EU’s 6th Framework Programme through the NANOQUANTA Network of Excellence (NMP4-CT-2004-500198)

## Appendix A

I show that the vertex equation (5) can be written in the form (6); the simple proof is a modification of Hedin’s construction, to which I refer. I recall the definition of the vertex function

$`\mathrm{\Gamma }(1;2,3)=\delta (1,2)\delta (1,3)+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta \mathrm{\Sigma }(2,3)}{\delta V(1)}}`$ (21)
The potential $`V`$ is the sum of an external potential (which is turned off at the end) and the Hartree potential $`d2v(1,2)n(2)`$, built with the exact particle density. Hedin’s formula is obtained by writing the functional derivative in $`V`$, through the chain rule, as a derivative in the exact Green function $`G`$. It is admissible to do so in terms of $`g`$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta \mathrm{\Sigma }(2,3)}{\delta V(1)}}={\displaystyle \frac{\delta \mathrm{\Sigma }(2,3)}{\delta g(1^{},1^{\prime \prime })}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta g(1^{},1^{\prime \prime })}{\delta V(1)}}`$
From the Hartree equation $`(i(t_1^{})h(1^{})V(1^{}))g(1^{},1^{\prime \prime })=\delta (1^{},1^{\prime \prime })`$, one evaluates the required functional derivative $`\delta g(1^{},1^{\prime \prime })/\delta V(1)=g(1^{},1)g(1,1^{\prime \prime })`$. This ends the proof.


text:
# PP-waves and softly broken 𝒩=1 SYM

## 1 Motivations

The predictive power of the string/gauge theory duality has long been limited mainly to the supergravity limit of the string theory, because the latter is generically very difficult to be solved on curved RR backgrounds. Apart from relegating the conformal field theories to the strong coupling regime of the planar limit, this limitation has forbidden the study of pure confining theories, which would need a full (in $`\alpha ^{}`$) string theory description. Recently, the situation has been improved by a simple proposal in the papers : apart from the rank $`N`$ of the gauge group and the ’t Hooft coupling $`\lambda `$, the field theories have other quantities, such as the spin or symmetry charge quantum numbers, which allow for a “perturbative expansion”. In the regime where these quantities are very large, the dual string theory relevant objects are semiclassical solitons, thus quite simple to be studied. In the mostly investigated case of the $`AdS/CFT`$ correspondence, for example, long spinning strings in $`AdS`$ describe large bare dimension and large spin operators, while point-like strings rotating on $`S^5`$ correspond to large bare dimension and large R-charge operators. The latter case, for only one R-charge, is equivalent to the study of the string theory on the Penrose limit of $`AdS_5\times S^5`$, which turns out to be solvable.

The natural question is then if we can extend these powerfull techniques to other, more interesting field theories. In this paper, we will in fact review how we can extract non trivial data from the Penrose limit technique111The semiclassical solitonic approach for these backgrounds has been used in . applied to backgrounds which are dual to confining and non supersymmetric theories (see  for recent reviews on these dualities). Thus, the relevant field theory objects under investigation are no more operators, but a particular type of hadrons. These will turn out to be very heavy states with a very large symmetry charge, and, surprisingly, to have the physical shape of strings, with stringy excitations in the special directions .

The paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we will introduce the relevant supergravity background, which is the softly broken version of the Maldacena-Nùñez one222A very similar study can be performed in the softly broken Klebanov-Strassler case , but since the formulae are more complicate, we won’t describe it here. The interested reader can look at the original papers ., and we will perform the Penrose limit in the infrared region. We will then solve the string theory on the resulting pp-wave, working out the spectrum, and we will discuss the stability of the model. Then, in section 3 we will study the main features of these hadrons, identifying the meaning of some stringy modes in the field theory, and we will end with some remarks in section 4.

## 2 String theory model

### 2.1 The supergravity background

The softly broken version of the Maldacena-Nùñez background  has the form

$`ds_{str}^2=e^\mathrm{\Phi }\left[dx_\mu dx^\mu +\alpha ^{}N[d\rho ^2+e^{2g(\rho )}(d\theta _1^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta _1d\varphi _1^2)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}(w^aA^a)^2]\right],`$ (1)
$`G_3=ie^\mathrm{\Phi }F_3=ie^\mathrm{\Phi }\alpha ^{}N\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(w^1A^1)(w^2A^2)(w^3A^3)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}F^a(w^aA^a)\right].`$
The dilaton is $`\rho `$-dependent and its value at the origin is a parameter $`\mathrm{\Phi }_0`$. The gauge field $`A`$ is given by

$$A=\frac{1}{2}\left[\sigma ^1a(\rho )d\theta _1+\sigma ^2a(\rho )\mathrm{sin}\theta _1d\varphi _1+\sigma ^3\mathrm{cos}\theta _1d\varphi _1\right],$$
(2)
while the one-forms $`w^a`$ are

$`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}w^a\sigma ^a`$ $`=`$ $`dgg^1,g=e^{\frac{i\psi \sigma ^3}{2}}e^{\frac{i\theta _2\sigma ^1}{2}}e^{\frac{i\varphi _2\sigma ^3}{2}},`$
$`w^1+iw^2`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\psi }(d\theta _2+i\mathrm{sin}\theta _2d\varphi _2),w^3=d\psi +\mathrm{cos}\theta _2d\varphi _2.`$ (3)
The functions $`g(\rho ),\mathrm{\Phi }(\rho ),a(\rho )`$ are known in analytic form only in the supersymmetric case, but for our purposes their IR behavior, i.e. their $`\rho 0`$ limit

$`a(\rho )1b\rho ^2,e^g(\rho )\rho ({\displaystyle \frac{b^2}{4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{9}})\rho ^3,\mathrm{\Phi }(\rho )\mathrm{\Phi }_0+({\displaystyle \frac{b^2}{4}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}})\rho ^2`$ (4)
is enough. The basic property of this model is that it is completely regular, allowing for an analysis in the deep IR region. In this regime it is dual to the softly broken $`𝒩=1`$ SYM with $`SU(N)`$ gauge group, coupled to a tower of massive KK modes in the adjoint representation. The supersymmetry is broken by a mass term for the gaugino, which is described in the supergravity solution above by the parameter $`b(0,2/3]`$; the value $`b=2/3`$ corresponds to the supersymmetric solution , which will be included in all the following considerations.

### 2.2 The Penrose limit

The Penrose limit consists in a boost of the theory along a null geodesic of the space-time, together with a rescaling of the transverse coordinates which allows to obtain a non singular result. Its striking property is that if the original background is a supergravity solution, also the limiting one is a solution. As the limit generically simplifies the background, the hope is to be able to study the string theory on the resulting space-time.

The null geodesic we will choose is fixed a $`\rho 0`$, since this is the region where the background is dual to the four dimensional field theory, and because the large charge hadrons we will study have wave function peaked at this value of the radius. The geometry of the solution (1) is such that at $`\rho =0`$ there is a vanishing two sphere and a three-sphere with finite volume. Our geodesic will thus be taken to lie along the equator of the three-sphere defined by $`\theta _2=0`$, $`\varphi _2=\psi `$. Doing the limit carefully333We shift the flat coordinates as $`e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0/2}L^1x_\mu x_\mu `$, with L an arbitrary constant. The tension of the confining strings is $`T_s=L^2/(2\pi \alpha ^{})`$, the glueball and KK masses are instead $`M_{KK}^2M_{gl}^2L^2/(e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}N\alpha ^{})`$. Then we take $`L^2N\mathrm{}`$, which sends the string tension to infinity while keeping $`M_{KK},M_{gl}`$ fixed. Note that, thanks to the above rescaling, we avoid sending the dilaton to infinity. gives

$`ds^2=2dx^+dx^{}m_0^2({\displaystyle \frac{b^2}{4}}u_1^2+{\displaystyle \frac{b^2}{4}}u_2^2+v_1^2+v_2^2)(dx^+)^2+d\stackrel{}{x}^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}+dz^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}+du_1^2+du_2^2+`$
$`+dv_1^2+dv_2^2,`$ (5)
$`G_3=2im_0dx^+[dv_1dv_2+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}du_1du_2],\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }_0,`$
where $`m_0=L/\sqrt{e^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\alpha ^{}N}`$ is the mass scale of the glueball and KK fields, which has been kept fixed in the limit. This is an essential feature of the construction, which is meant to study objects of definite four dimensional Minkowski mass, i.e. hadrons. As in the well known BMN case, the Penrose limit selects only those states with very large quantities associated to the null geodesic. In our case these quantities are the mass and a symmetry charge associated to the three-sphere equator, which we call $`J`$.

### 2.3 Spectrum

Now we come to the first surprise of the model: the string theory on the background (2.2) is solvable! Previous attempts to study non conformal backgrounds in the Penrose limit had instead always ended up with theories with time dependent world-sheet masses, a feature that makes the solution quite complicate.

We will skip every detail and just give the spectrum. If we define $`m=m_0\alpha ^{}p^+`$, we have four massless fields ($`x^i,z`$) with frequencies $`\omega _n=n`$, and four massive fields ($`u_1,u_2,v_1,v_2`$) with frequencies

$$\omega _n^u=\sqrt{n^2+\frac{b^2}{4}m^2},\omega _n^v=\sqrt{n^2+m^2}.$$
(6)
The 0-modes of $`u_1,u_2`$, together with the one of $`z`$, come from the mixing of the two-sphere and the radius direction on the original metric (1), while the ones of $`v_1,v_2`$ come from the three-sphere directions orthogonal to the null geodesic. Note that the supersymmetry breaking parameter enters only in the $`u_1,u_2`$ frequencies. Instead, all the frequencies of the worldsheet fermions are $`b`$-dependent

$`\omega _n^I`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{n^2+{\displaystyle \frac{m^2}{4}}\left(1+{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\right)^2},I=1,2,3,4;`$
$`\omega _n^K`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{n^2+{\displaystyle \frac{m^2}{4}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{b}{2}}\right)^2},K=5,6,7,8.`$ (7)
Finally, we can express the Hamiltonian and the light-cone momentum in terms of field theory quantities

$$H=p_+=Em_0J,P^+=\frac{m_0}{L^2}J,$$
(8)
$`E`$ being the hadron mass, and

$$J=U(1)_l\frac{b}{2}U(1)_{J_1}+U(1)_r,$$
(9)
where $`U(1)_{J_1}`$ is the two-sphere isometry and $`U(1)_r,U(1)_l`$ are the two $`U(1)`$ isometries of the three-sphere $`SO(4)`$.

### 2.4 Vacuum energy

The background (2.2) preserves sixteen supersymmetries . These are the ubiquitous, “kinematical” ones and give no linearly realized world-sheet supersymmetry . As a consequence of this fact, the bosonic and fermionic frequencies do not cancel and there is a non trivial vacuum energy. It reads

$$E_0(m)=\frac{m_0}{2m}\underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left[4n+2\omega _n^u+2\omega _n^v4\omega _n^14\omega _n^5\right]$$
(10)
and it is always negative, also in the $`b=2/3`$ case!444This can be explicitly checked by first regularizing the expression above (for example through an Epstein function regularization) and then calculating it. We stress that being our model supersymmetric, there is no need  to renormalize (á la Casimir) the bosonic and fermionic contributions in $`E_0`$: as always happens for supersymmetric models, all the infinities are just naturally canceled by the combination of both the contributions.

This fact raises naturally the problem of the stability of the theory. On the one hand, there are preserved supersymmetries, so that one would think that the background is surely stable. But the ordinary arguments for this to be true rely on flat space (or $`(A)dS`$) constructions, while our metric is not asymptotically flat (or $`(A)dS`$). For the very same reason, we can’t conclude that we have an instability because of the negativity of the energy. While a complete discussion of the stability of the theory at the quantum level is a very hard problem, we can perform a classical analysis in the supergravity limit, i.e. at small $`m`$, where $`E_0`$ is given by the contribution of the zero frequencies $`E_0(m_0/2)[|b|+22|1(b/2)|2|1+(b/2)|]`$. The corresponding supergravity mode, a combination of the trace of the graviton with the three-form, is stable if it has no diverging exponential behavior with time. It can be shown that the ground state of the above string theory, i.e. the supergravity field with light cone energy $`E_0`$ as above, has a dispersion relation which reads $`\sqrt{2}\omega =\sqrt{2}p_y+m_0(b2)`$ where $`p_y`$ is the transverse momentum which combines with $`\omega `$ in the light-cone momenta $`p^\pm `$. We see that we get a real $`\omega `$ for every real $`p_y`$. Being the dangerous part of the supergravity mode of the $`Exp(i\omega t)`$ type, we conclude that the theory is classically stable 555Note that this criterion for the stability rules out the Type 0 string on the maximally supersymmetric pp-wave ..

## 3 Field theory data

In this section we will identify some of the string modes of the previous sections with field theory states . As already stressed, these will be hadrons with very large mass and very large charge $`J`$. Their constituents are the lightest KK fields, since these are the lightest objects with non-trivial $`J`$-charge (the gauge fields are uncharged). In the (b)MN model there are in fact four KK scalars at the lowest level, transforming in the bifundamental of $`SU(2)_l\times SU(2)_r`$ and in the adjoint representation of the gauge group. Their mass scale is $`m_0`$ by construction, and their $`U(1)_{J_1}`$ charges are all zero, since they are all uncharged with respect to the spin connection of the two-sphere666Thus, in this $`𝒩=1`$ dual solution, corresponding to wrapped five-branes, there are no massless scalars, as their $`U(1)_{twist}=U(1)_r`$ is non-zero, while in the $`𝒩=2`$ case there are two massless scalars, since for them the $`U(1)_{twist}=U(1)_r+U(1)_l`$ is zero .. Let’s call them $`A_i,i=1,\mathrm{},4`$. Thus, from (9) we see that their J charges are $`1,0,0,1`$ respectively. It is then natural to identify the string theory vacuum $`|0,p^+`$ with the hadron $`(A_1)^J|0`$, $`|0`$ being the field theory vacuum. In fact, having $`J`$ $`A_1`$ components, the Hamiltonian (8) for this state is $`H=Jm_0m_0J1=0`$, equal to the string ground state value (ignore, for the moment, the vacuum energy contribution), if the mass of the KK scalar is exactly $`m_0`$. The latter can be viewed as the string theory prediction for a quantity which is almost impossible to calculate in the field theory side, as it represents the mass of the scalar in the strong coupling regime and in the mean field of all the other scalars in the hadron.

Let’s come to the excitations of the ground state. The bosonic part of the string Hamiltonian can be written as

$$H=\frac{P_i^2}{2m_0J}+\frac{T_s}{2m_0J}(N_L+N_R)+\frac{T_s}{2m_0J}(H_0+H_L+H_R),$$
(11)
where $`P_i,N_L,N_R`$ are the three special momenta and number operators associated to the massless modes, $`H_0,H_L,H_R`$ are the sub-Hamiltonians of the other five modes, and $`T_s`$ is the gauge theory string tension. Thus, from the first term we immediately read the three dimensional non relativistic motion of our hadrons in the three special directions! A posteriori, this is expected, since we are probing very heavy hadrons at low energy (we are in the IR regime), but nevertheless the appearance of the precise kinetic energy for this configuration is astonishing. The second, even more astonishing feature, comes from the $`N_L,N_R`$ contributions, which account for the string excitations in the three special directions. They tell us that the hadrons have really string-like excitations, i.e. they are physically stringy shaped (hence the name “Annulons”)!.

Unfortunately, the duality is much more complicated than in the BMN case, and little can be said about the remaining part of the string spectrum. We control only two other zero-modes, namely $`v,\overline{v}=v_1\pm iv_2`$, which have exactly the same quantum numbers of the scalars $`A_2,A_3`$. So, their action on the string ground state corresponds to the insertion of the corresponding $`A`$ fields in the string of $`A_1`$ above, and their Hamiltonian is $`H=Em_0J=m_0m_00=m_0`$, the value of the corresponding string oscillators. These modes complete the so-called “universal sector”, which is determined by the symmetry of the original background in the IR. In fact, apart from the flat coordinates, for which we gave the interpretation above, the geodesic direction on the three-sphere is naturally dual to the ground state Annulon (the $`A_1`$ field), while the oscillations transverse to the geodesic, $`v,\overline{v}`$, are identified with $`A_2,A_3`$. The modes corresponding to the remaining part of the geometry, namely the vanishing two-sphere and the radius direction, have not been identified yet.

Finally, the “would be supersymmetric partners” of the scalars $`A_1,A_2`$, i.e. the fermions in the same chiral multiplet in the supersymmetric case, account for four of the string fermionic zero modes, two with mass $`\frac{m}{2}(1+\frac{b}{2})`$ and two with mass $`\frac{m}{2}(1\frac{b}{2})`$ .

## 4 Final remarks

In this paper we have reviewed how we can study features of confining, (non) supersymmetric gauge theories that have a string dual via the Penrose limit technique. This allows to describe some properties of certain large mass, large charge hadrons, called Annulons.

There are a number of interesting points to be clarified in the behavior of these hadrons. Their most striking feature is that they are physically string-like. This unexpected topic surely deserves more investigation, in order to clarify how the Annulons behave in details. Since they are quite unusual object to find in field theory, one of the most obvious question is whether they are present only in the (broken) MN and KS models or not. It has been shown in  that the presence of the Annulons is really a generic feature of the confining field theories which have a critical string dual. In fact, the known string duals of three and four dimensional $`𝒩=1`$ SYM embedded in Type IIA and Type IIB theories have these states in their spectrum.

Finally, let’s comment on the possible perturbative computations one would like to perform for these hadrons. In the large $`m`$ limit the vacuum energy (10) become

$$E_0m_0mA^2,A^2=const.$$
(12)
This takes larger and larger negative values as $`m`$ increases. As such, it represents a huge correction to the energy-charge relation for the Annulons, in a regime where the field theory should be effectively weakly coupled. In fact, $`m`$ is proportional to the ratio of the current $`J`$ and the factor $`Ne^{\mathrm{\Phi }_0}`$, call it $`\lambda `$ (it is large in the Penrose limit), i.e. $`m^2`$ is proportional to the inverse effective coupling constant, $`\lambda ^{}`$ in the standard notation in the BMN case. Thus, the large $`m`$ regime means weak $`\lambda ^{}`$ coupling in the field theory, and the corrections above are of order $`1/\sqrt{\lambda ^{}}`$, very large indeed.

This could be read as a signal of breaking down of the perturbative expansion in our model. On the one hand, we could also read it as a perturbative correction to the predicted value of $`m_0`$. The general expression for the energy-charge relation can in fact be written, in analogy with the AdS/$`𝒩=4`$ case , as

$$E=Jm_0(1\frac{A^2}{\lambda }+𝒪(\frac{1}{\lambda ^2})).$$
(13)
We see that this expansion is a kind of “instanton like” correction to the value of $`m_0`$. Since the latter cannot be computed in the perturbative field theory, the presence of these corrections doesn’t change much the situation. So, in principle, we could just accept the new value of $`m_0`$ as given by this series as a stringy prediction, and go on to calculate, for example, the corrections to the mass of the Annulons with insertions of field corresponding to string oscillators, along the line of BMN.

On the other hand, the presence of these large corrections is somewhat disturbing, and one would eventually avoid them. Moreover, they are the same kind of corrections one gets in the AdS/$`𝒩=4`$ case considering the rotating string corresponding to only one charge . In that case, the corrections become subleading if one considers multi-charge generalizations of that solution . So, the hope is that also for the Annulons, considering multi-charge or charge-spin semiclassical solitons could cure the one loop sigma model corrections, making them subleading. This is an interesting problem for a future investigation.

F. B. is partially supported by INFN.

## References


text: # A remark on the history of Hardy inequalities in domains.


text:
# Simulating the metal enrichment of the intra–cluster medium

## 1 Introduction

Measurements of the content and distribution of metals in the intra–cluster medium (ICM) provides invaluable insights on the interplay between the evolution of diffuse cosmic baryons and the past history of star formation. If supernovae (SN) had played a significant role in altering the thermal status of the ICM, then they should have left their imprint also on its metal content (e.g., Renzini 2003). The increasing capability of X–ray telescopes to perform spatially resolved spectroscopic studies of the ICM have opened in the last years the possibility of quantifying the metal content of clusters. Observations from ASCA (e.g., Baumgartner et al. 2003), Beppo–SAX (e.g., De Grandi et al. 2003), Chandra (e.g., Ettori et al. 2002; Blanton et al. 2003) and XMM–Newton (e.g., Gastaldello & Molendi 2002; Matsushita et al. 2003) have revealed that abundance gradients are quite common in clusters. Besides their distribution, the relative abundance of different metal species gives information on the role played by type-Ia and II SN in the ICM enrichment (e.g., Matteucci & Vettolani 1988; Pipino et al. 2002; Finoguenov et al. 2002; Portinari et al. 2003). Finally, the lack of any significant evolution of the Fe abundance at least out to $`z1`$ (Tozzi et al. 2003) demonstrates that the process of enrichment has been completed already at quite large lookback times. While the production of metals is connected to the activity of star formation, their distribution may be determined by different physical effects, such as ram–pressure stripping of metal-rich gas from merging galaxies or galactic winds powered by SN explosions and AGN activity (e.g., Gnedin 1998). Whatever the mechanism for metal transport and diffusion is, modelling the ICM enrichment requires a careful description of the yields and of the lifetimes of the different stellar populations associated to the different SN types (e.g., Matteucci 2001, and references therein). In this respect N–body simulations provide the ideal tool to describe in detail how metals are produced within galaxies and distributed during the hierarchical assembly of a cluster. Besides semi–analytical approaches (e.g. De Lucia, Kauffman & White 2003), attempts to include, within hydrodynamical simulations, star formation, SN energy feedback and metal enrichment from type–Ia and II SN, have been pursued by different authors (Aguirre et al. 2001; Lia, Portinari & Carraro 2002; Valdarnini 2002; Kawata & Gibson 2003; Kobayashi 2003; Tissera & Scannapieco 2003). It is however clear that such approaches rely on the capability of the numerical codes to provide a physically sound description of the relevant “sub–grid” processes.

In this Letter we present the first results from our hydrodynamical simulations of clusters based on the implementation of chemical enrichment in the GADGET code (Springel, Yoshida & White 2001). Our chemo-dynamical version of GADGET combines the rather advanced treatment of star formation and SN feedback, proposed by Springel & Hernquist (2003a, SH03 hereafter), to a careful description of the role of type–Ia and II SN in releasing metal–enriched gas into the diffuse medium. In the following, when expressing the ICM metal abundances in solar units, we assume the photospheric abundance provided by Grevesse & Sauval (1998).

## 2 The simulation code

Our simulations are based on an evolution of GADGET111http://www.MPA-Garching.MPG.DE/gadget/ (Springel et al. 2001), a parallel Tree+SPH code with fully adaptive time–stepping. As a starting point, we used a version of GADGET, kindly provided by V. Springel, which includes an entropy–conserving integration scheme, radiative cooling, the effect of a uniform and evolving UV background (Haardt & Madau 1999), star formation from a multiphase interstellar medium and a prescription for galactic winds triggered by SN explosions (see SH03 for a detailed description). In the original version of the code, the energy release and a global metallicity was produced only by SNII under the instantanous–recycling approximation (IRA).

The GADGET code has been suitably modified, so as to correctly include the life–times of different stellar populations, to follow metal production from both SNIa and II, while self–consistently introducing the dependence of the cooling function on metallicity. A detailed description of the implementation of these algorithms will be presented in a forthcoming paper (Tornatore et al. 2004, in preparation), while we provide here a short descriptions of the most relevant features of the code.

In order to maintain the general approach of the multiphase model by SH03, we still treat under the IRA stars with masses $`>20M_{}`$, while accounting for the different life-times of stars of smaller mass (Matteucci & Padovani 1993). Within the stochastic approach to star formation (SH03), each star particle is considered as a single stellar population (SSP). For each SSP we compute the number of stars turning into SNII and Ia at each time-step after its creation.

The SNIa are associated to binary systems whose components are in the 0.8–$`8M_{}`$ mass range (Greggio & Renzini 1983), while SNII arise from stars with mass $`>8M_{}`$ (cf. also Lia et al. 2002, who adopt the lower mass threshold of $`6M_{}`$ for SNII). Besides SNe, which release energy and metals, we also account for planetary nebulae (PN). They contribute to metal production, but not to the energy feedback, and are identified with those stars, not turning into SNIa, in the mass range 0.8–8$`M_{}`$. We use the analytical fitting formulas for stellar yields of SNIa, SNII and PNe as provided by Recchi et al. (2001), and based on the original nucleosynthesis computations of Nomoto et al. (1997, using their W7 model), Woosley & Weaver (1995) and Renzini & Voli (1981). The formulation for the SNIa rate has been calculated as in Matteucci & Recchi (2001). Besides H and He, the current version of the code follows the production of Fe, O, C, Si, Mg, S, and can be easily modified to include other metal species. Once produced by a star particle, metals are spread over the same number of neighbours, 32, used for the SPH implementation, also using the same kernel. In this way, we find that 90 per cent of the metals are distributed within a gas mass of $`5.4\times 10^9h^1M_{}`$. We have verified that using a twice as large number of neighbors to spread metals results in a twice as large gas mass for metal mixing, while final results on the amount and distribution of metals (see below) are left almost unchanged. As for the energy release, each SN is assumed to produce $`10^{51}`$ergs. Instead of assuming any specific value for the thermalization efficiency of the energy released by SN, we prefer to dump all the energy to the surrounding gas particles and leave to the simulation the computation of the radiation losses. Since the physical processes determining the actual SN efficiency are below the resolution scale of our simulations, the rationale behind our choice is to leave to the sub–grid multiphase model by SH03 establishing how much of this energy enters in regulating the star formation process. We normalize the IMFs in the mass range 0.1–100 $`M_{}`$. Owing to the uncertainty in modelling yields for very massive stars, we take yields to be independent of mass above $`40M_{}`$. While any uncertainty in the yields of such massive stars has a negligible effect for a Salpeter IMF (Salpeter 1955, S55 hereafter), their accurate description (e.g. Thielemann et al. 1996; Heger & Woosley 2002) is required when using a top–heavier IMF. We note that our scheme to distribute metals in the ICM does not include the effect of diffusion. Lia et al. (2002) included the effect of diffusion driven by SN blast waves (see Thornton et al. 1998) in their SPH simulations with chemical enrichment. Although this effect is quite important to describe the diffusion of metals within the interstellar medium, it is likely to play a minor role on scales above the typical resolution scale, $`10h^1`$kpc, of the cluster simulations that we are discussing here.

Our prescription to account for stellar evolution in the simulations implies a substantial change of the multiphase “effective model” by SH03. In this model, gas particles are assumed to have a cold neutral and a hot ionized phase in pressure equilibrium, the former providing the reservoir for star formation. We have modified the criterion, dependent on local density and temperature, to establish the relative amount of such two phases, so as to account for the gradual SN energy release, which modifies the temperature of the hot phase and the evaporation of the cold one. This means to include new energy terms in Eq.(10) of SH03, which describes the evolution of the internal energy of the hot–phase component, while making the cooling function dependent on local metallicity. The metal–dependence of cooling, that we introduce using the tables from Sutherland & Dopita (1993), also enters in determining the onset of the thermal instability (eq. of SH03) and the value of the density threshold for star formation (eq. of SH03).

SH03 also provided a phenomenological description for galactic winds, which are triggered by SN energy release and whose strength is regulated by two parameters. A first one gives the rate of gas ejection by winds, according to the relation, $`\dot{M}_W=\eta \dot{M}_{}`$, where $`\dot{M}_{}`$ is the star formation rate. The second one, determines the fraction of SN energy that powers the winds, $`\frac{1}{2}\dot{M}_Wv_W^2=\chi ϵ_{SN}\dot{M}_{}`$, where $`ϵ_{SN}`$ is the energy feedback provided by the SN under IRA assumption for each $`M_{}`$ of stars formed. In our implementation of the winds, we also account for the energy contributed from all the SN treated without the IRA, namely SNII in the 8–20$`M_{}`$ mass range and SNIa.

It is worth noticing that the star formation and SN feedback scheme, originally introduced by SH03, has been already demonstrated to provide the correct fraction of baryons locked in stars, the correct cosmic star formation history (Springel & Hernquist 2003b), the correct amount of neutral hydrogen in high column–density absorbing systems at high redshift (Nagamine et al. 2003), and to reproduce the basic X–ray scaling properties of galaxy clusters (Borgani et al. 2003). As such, it represents a good starting point for a simulation study of the ICM chemical enrichment.

## 3 Results and discussion

We use our chemodynamical version of GADGET to run simulations of the Virgo–like cluster, which has been described by Tornatore et al. (2003). This structure is a fairly relaxed halo with a virial mass of $`3.9\times 10^{14}M_{}`$ and emission–weighted temperature of about 3 keV. It has been selected from a cosmological DM-only simulation of a flat $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_m=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{bar}=0.04`$, $`h=0.7`$ and $`\sigma _8=0.8`$, within a box of 100 Mpc a side. Mass and force resolutions are increased in the Lagrangian region surrounding the cluster, so that $`m_{DM}=2.1\times 10^9M_{}`$ and $`m_{gas}=3.2\times 10^8M_{}`$ for the mass of the DM and gas particles, respectively. The Plummer–equivalent gravitational softening is $`ϵ=5h^1`$ kpc fixed in physical units from $`z=0`$ to $`z=2`$, while fixed in comoving units at earlier epochs.

In this Letter we focus on the effect of changing the main ingredients which determine the content and distribution of metals in the ICM, namely the IMF and the feedback strength. The choice of such parameters for the different simulations, along with some results, are summarized in Table 1. Besides the standard IMF Salpeter shape (S55), $`dN/d\mathrm{log}mm^x`$, with $`x=1.35`$, we also consider the flatter IMF by Arimoto & Yoshii (1987, AY hereafter), with $`x=0.95`$, which provides a larger number of massive stars. Different authors (e.g., Finoguenov et al. 2003, FBB hereafter; Baumgartner et al. 2003, B03 hereafter) have suggested that an early population of very massive, metal poor stars should be advocated to account for the pattern of ICM abundances (cf. also Scannapieco, Schneider & Ferrara 2002). Therefore, we also consider an evolving IMF with the shape proposed by Larson (1999), $`dN/d\mathrm{log}m(1+m/m_s)^{1.35}`$. Following FBB, we allow $`\mathrm{log}m_s/M_{}`$ to linearly increase with redshift from $`0.35`$ at $`z=2`$ up to 1 at $`z=10`$, being constant at $`z<2`$.

As a first diagnostic for the ICM metal enrichment, we use the profiles of Fe abundance. We compare in Figure 1 the results of our simulations to those from the Beppo–SAX observations of 12 cool–core clusters by De Grandi et al. (2003). In the left panels of Figure 1 we show the effect of changing the strength of the feedback for the Salpeter IMF. Model A has a wind speed of $`v_W=520`$km s-1. Model B assumes somewhat weaker winds, while Model C assumes that the energy in winds is three times higher than that provided by SN, with the same wind velocity as in Model A once a three times larger amount of gas (i.e., $`\eta =6`$) is ejected. As long as we assume that AGN activity in galaxies follows star formation (e.g., Boyle & Terlevich 1997, cf. also Cristiani et al. 2003), such an extra energy powering the winds can be interpreted as released by nuclear activity. All the models produce $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}`$ profiles (we define $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}`$ as the iron abundance by mass in solar unit, $`X_{\mathrm{Fe}}/X_{\mathrm{Fe}_{}}`$) which are steeper than observed at $`R<\text{ }0.05R_{200}`$. At larger radii simulated profiles for Models A and B have a shape similar to the observed ones, although lower by about a factor two. An inspection of the age of stars associated with the central cD reveals that they are younger than those observed in real clusters, with signatures of significant ongoing star formation down to $`z=0`$. This is also consistent with the large amount of stars found in the simulated cluster (see Col. 6 of Table 1), witnessing that feedback is not strong enough to inhibit recent star formation. The steep profiles of Fe abundance suggest that a significant amount of Fe in central regions has been produced quite recently, within an already formed cluster potential well, thus making difficult for winds to transport metals far from the star forming regions. This fact further confirms that a mechanism is currently missing in simulations to diffuse metals and quench star formation before most of the mass is accreted in the cluster potential well. By increasing the wind efficiency, as in Model C, star formation is heavely suppressed at high redshift. While this turns into a more acceptable value of $`f_{}`$, it has the unwelcome feature of a too low ICM metallicity, with a quite steep gradient.

Using for Model D the AY IMF, with the same choice of feedback parameters as in Model A, provides a much larger energy release from massive stars. Correspondingly, the wind velocity is about twice as large and, probably, unrealistic. The resulting star fraction is acceptable, but with a larger amount of Fe released into the ICM, as a consequence of the higher IMF over most of the mass range relevant for SNIa. Reducing the $`\chi `$ parameter in Model E, to obtain wind velocity comparable to Model A, increases the resulting star fraction and the total amount of produced Fe (see Table 1). However, the weaker winds cause a large Fe fraction to remain in star–forming regions, being locked into stars instead of being diffused. Having a top–heavier IMF at high redshift (Model F) has again the effect of increasing the feedback efficiency. As for the Fe production and diffusion, its behaviour is similar to that of Model D, thought with $`30`$ per cent more Fe due to the higher IMF over the mass range relevant for SNIa.

In the upper panels of Fig.1 we show the profiles of \[O/Fe\]. Since Oxygen is mostly produced by SNII, \[O/Fe\] is usually considered as a diagnostic for the relative role played by the two SN types. So far, robust measurements of the O abundance have been realized with the XMM-NEWTON GRS, and are limited to the very central regions of galaxy clusters. Gastaldello & Molendi (2002) and Matsushita et al. (2003) found \[O/Fe\]$`0.3`$ around M87 out to about 60 kpc, which corresponds to $`0.04R_{200}`$ for our simulated cluster. On larger scales, the difficult detection of the OVIII emission line at 0.67 keV makes the determination of \[O/Fe\] more uncertain, although values in the range between $`0.2`$ and 0.2 seem to be preferred (see Renzini 1997 for a discussion). The negative gradients of our \[O/Fe\] profiles are the signature of recent star formation episodes in the central region. This arises because SNII already had time to explode, while SNIa, which are generated by longer–living stars, still have to release Iron. As a consequence, the ICM for Models A and B turns out to be over–abundant in Oxygen, in the central regions, with respect to what observed for M87, while being consistent with data on larger scales. Assuming an AY IMF provides a relatively larger number of SNII, thus exacerbating the problem of Oxygen overabundance.

As for the overall metallicity, we obtain emission–weighted $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}`$ values in the range 0.25–0.55, with the only exception of Model C, which produces a lower Fe abundance. It is worth noticing that, although Models A and F produces the highest $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}^{ew}`$ values (see Table 1), they have different mass–weighted Fe abundances. In particular, the high $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}^{ew}`$ of Model A corresponds to a fairly small mass–weighted value, the large difference being due to the steep profile of the Fe abundance. In their compilation of ASCA data, B03 find that $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}`$ tends to decrease with cluster temperature, with $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}0.7`$ for $`T3`$ keV, down to $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}0.3`$ at $`T10`$ keV (cf. also Renzini 2003, who claims a roughly constant $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}0.3`$ over the same temperature range). Therefore, for our Virgo–like cluster we should expect a Fe enrichment which is sensibly larger than found in simulations. However, we note that the procedure of stacking X–ray spectra of clusters with similar temperature, as followed by B03, corresponds to assuming that all clusters having the same $`T`$ also have the same metallicity, and, therefore, that the fairly large scatter observed is only due to measurement errors. Since some amount of intrinsic scatter is anyway expected, it is difficult to assess, with only one cluster simulated, how discrepant are our $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}`$ values with respect to the observed ones. Another feature of the simulated Fe production is that the ICM contains between about $`25`$ and 40 per cent of the total amount of produced Fe, at odds with observational indications for $`M_{\mathrm{Fe},\mathrm{ICM}}/M_{\mathrm{Fe},}2`$ (Renzini 2003). This further suggests that a mechanism is still lacking in simulations to transport metals away from star–forming regions.

Unlike Oxygen, which is difficult to detect in the X–ray spectra of the hot ICM, Silicon is now detected for a fair number of clusters. Since a sizeable fraction of Si is produced also by SNIa, depending on the choice for the IMF, it could be a useful tool to investigate the relative contribution to metal enrichment from the two SNe types (e.g. Lowenstein 2003). In Figure 2 we show \[Si/Fe\] vs. \[Fe/H\] for our simulations, compared to the observational values from B03. Several of our runs produce a relative \[Si/Fe\] ratio which falls on the correlation indicated by data, although the observed absolute Fe abundance for $`3`$ keV clusters (marked by the filled circle) is significantly larger than that produced by several of our models. We note that the models better approximating observational data are A and F, which, besides providing a realistic emission–weighted Fe abundance, also produce an acceptable amount of Si.

As a word of caution, we note that the resolution of the simulations presented here could prevent the treatment of some physical effects, which may change final results. For instance, effects of dynamical stripping may play a significant role in removing metal–rich gas from cluster galaxies and, therefore, to enrich the diffuse ICM (e.g., Gnedin 1998; Toniazzo & Schindler 2001). While tidal stripping should be well represented in our simulations, a proper treatment of ram–pressure stripping would require a substantially higher resolution in an SPH simulation. Aguirre et al. (2001) claim that ram–pressure stripping from galaxies of mass $`>3\times 10^{10}M_{}`$ accounts for a small fraction of the ICM metal content. Furthermore, Renzini (2003) argues that, if ram–pressure stripping were efficient, then clusters with larger velocity dispersion should have a relatively higher metallicity, a trend which is not observed.

Furthermore, in order to have reliable estimates of the ICM metal enrichment, we have to make sure that our simulation has high enough resolution to provide a correct representation of the star formation history (see also Tornatore et al. 2003). We postpone a detailed study of numerical convergence of star formation and metal production within clusters in a forthcoming paper.

## 4 Conclusions

We have presented results from hydrodynamical simulations of the ICM, realized with a chemodynamical version of the GADGET code. We used a version of this code that, besides a fairly advanced treatment of star formation and feedback from galactic winds (Springel & Hernquist 2003a, SH03), also correctly accounts for life–times of different stellar populations, as well as for metal and energy release from SNIa and II (Tornatore et al. 2004, in preparation). By simulating one single cluster, having temperature of about 3 keV, we looked at the effect of feedback strength and IMF on the resulting metal production. Our main results can be summarized as follows.

(a) Among the considered models, using a variable IMF (Model F) provides an acceptable amount of Fe mass, as well as \[Si/Fe\] and \[O/Fe\] ratios, in fair agreement with observations. Using a Salpeter (1955) IMF turns into a lower amount of Fe mass and to supersolar values of \[O/Fe\] in the central cluster region, at variance with observations. An Arimoto–Yoshii (1987) IMF provides an even larger Oxygen abundance, as a consequence of the larger number of SNII.

(b) Gradients of the Fe abundance are always steeper than observed in central cluster regions, $`R<\text{ }0.1R_{200}`$, while the $`Z_{\mathrm{Fe}}`$ profiles on larger scales fall below the observed ones, by an amount which depends on the feedback strength and on the assumed IMF.

(c) Besides the effect of the IMF, the oversolar value of the \[O/Fe\] ratio found in central regions for several models could be due to the presence of a significant recent star formation in central cluster regions. Because of such an excess of recent star formation, not shown by observational data, the stars in our simulations lock a large fraction of metals (see Table 1).

Our analysis confirms that the observed pattern of metal enrichment of the ICM is deeply connected to the past history of star formation in clusters and to the feedback scheme that should release energy and heavy elements into the diffuse medium. The fairly steep gradients of the Fe abundance and the signature of recent star formation consistently indicate that our simulations are missing a feedback mechanism, which should quench star formation and spread metals at an early enough epoch, when the proto–cluster potential well is still shallow enough not to retain the produced heavy elements. We verified that this feedback cannot be easily implemented by resorting to SNII and Ia. Neither increasing the strength of the feedback nor changing the IMF helps in restoring a better agreement with the observed profile of the Fe abundance. In our opinion this is a non–trivial result, since it has been obtained in the framework a rather advanced scheme for star formation and SN feedback (SH03), which is otherwise quite successful at accounting for the pattern of cosmic star formation (Springel & Herquist 2003b). In turn, this suggests that other energy sources, such as AGN, should be called into play to regulate the cooling structure of the ICM and determine its chemical composition.

## Acknowledgments.

We are greatly indebted to Volker Springel for having provided us with the non–public version of GADGET, and for his continuous advices on the code whereabouts. We acknowledge useful discussions with Francesco Calura, Cristina Chiappini, Sabrina De Grandi, Alexis Finoguenov and Laura Portinari. We thank the referee Frazer Pearce for his useful and clever comments. The simulations have been realized using the IBM-SP4 machine at the “Centro Interuniversitario del Nord-Est per il Calcolo Elettronico” (CINECA, Bologna), with CPU time assigned thanks to an INAF–CINECA grant.


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# PRECISION ELECTRO-WEAK AND HADRONIC LUMINOSITY CALCULATIONS

## 1 Introduction

Following the discovery of the $`W`$ and $`Z`$ bosons, rapid progress was made in precision measurements of electro-weak physics. By the end of LEP’s run, high precision $`Z`$ data reached the $`0.1\%`$ level, creating pressure for the theoretical calculation of all relevant processes to reach the same level.

The beam luminosity enters into all quantities requiring a normalized cross section, so its precise measurement and calculation are crucial. In $`e^+e^{}`$ scattering, the luminosity is calibrated using small-angle Bhabha scattering, $`e^+e^{}e^+e^{}+n\gamma `$. This process has both experimental and theoretical advantages: it has a large, clean signal and is almost pure QED, with only a $`3\%`$ contribution from $`Z`$ exchange at LEP energies.

The matrix element for small-angle Bhabha scattering was computed by adding the required radiative corrections to reach the desired precision level, and incorporating the resulting matrix element into a Monte Carlo (MC) generator, BHLUMI. The MC algorithm was designed to implement Yennie-Frautschi-Suura (YFS) exponentiation, which rigorously cancels infrared divergences to all orders.

We will review the precision of BHLUMI, and describe the additions to BHLUMI that will be required to go beyond current technology in the event of the construction of proposed $`e^+e^{}`$ linear colliders, which will have larger-angle acceptance for the luminosity monitor. We also describe a proposal for extending the methods developed for precision electro-weak measurements for use in the luminosity monitor for the LHC or other advanced hadron colliders, where $`W`$ production is a leading candidate for the luminosity process.

## 2 Two Photon Contributions to the Bhabha Luminosity Process

It was recognized that to reduce the error estimate of BHLUMI to the per-mil level or better, it would be necessary to compute the exact two-photon radiative corrections, which previously had been incorporated in a “leading log” (LL) approximation. The first step was to calculate exactly the cross section for emitting two hard photons. The LL and exact results are compared in Fig. 1(a) for LEP1 parameters (beam energy 91 GeV, angles between $`1^{}`$ and $`3^{}`$) and LEP2 parameters (beam energy 176 GeV, angles between $`3^{}`$ and $`6^{}`$). It is seen that the leading log result was accurate to within $`0.013\%`$ in both cases.

Subsequently, mixed hard and virtual photon correction to Bhabha scattering were calculated exactly in the small-angle regime. All relevant diagrams were included except for the “box diagrams” shown in Fig. 2, which become significant only at larger angles. The difference between the exact result and the leading log result implemented in BHLUMI is shown in Fig. 1(b) for both LEP1 and LEP2 parameters. In the experimentally interesting range $`0.21z_{\mathrm{min}}1.0`$, BHLUMI is within $`0.02\%`$ of the exact result for both LEP1 and LEP2.

The second-order photonic corrections were completed by adding the two-loop virtual photon correction to Bhabha scattering from Ref. 7, which yielded a $`0.014\%`$ contribution to the cross section. The combined contribution of the missing order $`\alpha ^2`$ photonic radiative corrections in BHLUMI turned out to be $`0.027\%`$. The final BHLUMI precision tag was reduced to $`0.061\%`$ for LEP1 parameters, and to $`0.122\%`$ for LEP2 parameters.

## 3 Bhabha Luminosity for Linear Colliders

The luminosity monitors for proposed linear $`e^+e^{}`$ colliders will have larger angle acceptances, which requires extending the exact low-angle second order photonic corrections beyond the small-angle regime. The box diagrams in Fig. 2 that were neglected in the previous calculation must be added in this case.

Calculating the box diagrams requires one new ingredient not needed for the previous calculations: a five-point off-shell box diagram. An algorithm for this diagram is currently under construction. When complete, the addition of these box diagrams will complete the exact order $`\alpha ^2`$ photonic contribution to Bhabha scattering.

## 4 Hadronic Luminosity Monitor

The proposed $`W`$-production luminosity process at the LHC will require at least a $`1\%`$ precision level for the theoretical contribution to the data analysis. Reducing the theoretical uncertainty to this level will require all first and second order QCD radiative corrections, as well as first-order electro-weak radiative corrections, and mixed QCD – electro-weak corrections. Due to the large number of graphs, automated techniques are essential. Those displayed in this paper were are excerpted from the output of GRACE.

The first-order electro-weak radiative corrections to $`u\overline{d}W`$ consist of three real photon emission graphs and 19 graphs including a virtual photon or $`Z`$. These can be computed with well-known methods. The first order gluonic corrections are likewise known, or can be calculated using well-known techniques.

The two-gluon radiative corrections are the closest analog to the calculations that were needed in the $`e^+e^{}`$ luminosity case. These are complicated by the triple-gluon coupling in the QCD case, however. Fig. 3 shows some representative examples of the relevant graphs. There are eight graphs for emitting two real gluons, 13 mixed real + virtual gluon (one loop) graphs, and 22 graphs with two virtual gluons (two loop) graphs. The latter clearly present the greatest technical challenges. All of these results will be needed to NLL order to reach the $`1\%`$ precision level. Thus, they will contribute an $`O(\alpha _s^2L)`$ term to the cross section, with $`L`$ a typical “big logarithm” for the calculation.

The next corrections will be mixed strong and electro-weak radiative corrections, including the representative graphs shown in Fig. 4. There are 10 graphs with a virtual gluon and real photon emission, 86 graphs with a virtual photon or $`Z`$ and real gluon emission, and 293 two-loop graphs with a virtual gluon and electro-weak loop.

Pure second-order electro-weak radiative corrections will be needed as well, but only to leading log order, adding a $`O(\alpha ^2L^2)`$ contribution. The matrix elements will be combined with DGLAP evolved structure functions and incorporated into a MC program. Progress on a precision calculation ($`0.1\%`$) of the structure function evolution has recently been reported using MC methods.

An important aspect of BHLUMI’s success was the YFS exponentiation, which permitted an exact cancelation of all infrared singularities to all orders. We expect YFS exponentiation to play an important role in the hadronic MC as well. Some relevant techniques have already been developed for QCD processes, originally motivated by anticipation of the SSC.

## 5 Conclusions

We have reviewed the progress which led the electro-weak Bhabha luminosity process to the per-mil precision level and beyond. Verifying this precision required exact calcluations of all second-order photonic radiative corrections to small angle Bhabha scattering. A few “box diagrams,” which become important at larger-angle scattering, are still in the process of being calculated. Adding these box diagrams will bring to completion a 12-year project to compute all of these processes.

The construction of the LHC and other next-generation colliders will soon place unprecedented precision requirements on the calculations of the hadronic and electro-weak processes measured at those colliders. A luminosity process calculation on the order of $`1\%`$ will be needed to fully test the validity of the Standard Model, and to search effectively for hints of new physics.

## Acknowledgments

S.Y. thanks the conference organizers for an invitation to present this paper, and Baylor University for providing funding to attend the conference. This work was supported in part by by the US Department of Energy contract DE-FG05-91ER40627 and by NATO Grant PST.CLG.977751.


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# Brane World Confronts Holography 1footnote 11footnote 1Talk delivered by DKH for the International conference on Flavour physics (ICFP-II) in KIAS, Seoul, Korea, Oct. 6-11, 2003.

## I Introduction

The idea that our universe might have extra dimensions beyond four space-time dimensions dates long back to early last century. In 1921 Kaluza Kaluza:tu  and later Klein Klein:tv  introduced extra dimensions to unify all forces in nature. The metric for higher dimensions was postulated to be

$`\widehat{g}_{\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}g_{\mu \nu }\phi A_\mu A_\nu \phi A_\mu & \\ \phi A_\nu \phi & \end{array}\right),`$ (3)
where $`g_{\mu \nu }`$ is the ordinary 4d metric and $`A_\mu `$ is interpreted as the photon field. After the dimensional reduction to $`M^4\times S^1`$, the general coordinate transformation induces the $`U(1)`$ gauge transformation in $`M^4`$.

String theory proposed as the theory of everything is consistent only in 10 dimensions, where 6 extra dimensions are compactified to be a Calabi-Yau manifold Gross:1984dd ; Candelas:en .

Soon after Horava-Witten Horava:1995qa  pointed out that our world may be confined on a brane embedded in eleven dimensional spacetime, a low-scale gravity or a brane-world scenario Arkani-Hamed:1998rs ; Randall:1999ee  is proposed as a solution to the gauge hierarchy problem. Letting gravity propagate in extra dimensions while all standard model particles are confined on a brane, the scale of gravity can be made arbitrary.

In the brane world the Einstein action has the form

$$S=d^4xM_{}^2\left(d^{D4}xM_{}^{D4}\right)\sqrt{g}.$$
(4)
The relation between the fundamental Planck scale $`M_{}`$ and the apparent one $`M_P`$, the four-dimensional Planck scale, is given by

$$V_wM_{}^{D2}=M_P^2,V_wd^{D4}x\sqrt{g_{(D4)}}.$$
(5)
By adjusting $`V_w`$, the volume of the extra dimensions, we may take $`M_{}=O(1)\mathrm{TeV}`$ to solve the hierarchy problem. Since this low-scale gravity will be different from the usual gravity at short scales, Newton’s law deviates at sub millimeter. The model is soon to be tested. However, in this talk we will argue that the holography bound requires the fundamental Planck scale can not be too small Hong:2003xd . To reproduce the successful nucleosynthesis in Big Bang cosmology and to account for the supernova explosion, $`M_{}>10^{46}\mathrm{TeV}`$ and the brane-world solution thus has a little hierarchy problem, even if it is operating.

## II What is Holography Bound

Bekenstein Bekenstein:ur ; Bekenstein:ax  conjectured that for a system of energy $`M`$ in a radius $`R`$, its entropy is bounded from above

$$S<\frac{2\pi MR}{\mathrm{}}.$$
(6)
For weak gravity, the size of the system is much larger than its Schwarzschild radius, $`R_s(=2GM)<R`$. Therefore we get

$$S<\frac{2\pi MR}{\mathrm{}}<\frac{A}{4G\mathrm{}},A=4\pi R^2.$$
(7)
The entropy of a system is less than one quarter of its area in the unit of Planck area, $`l_p^2=G\mathrm{}/c^3`$.

The Bekenstein bound for entropy lead ’t Hooft 'tHooft:gx  and Susskind Susskind:1994vu  to formulate the holography principle, which states that the entropy in a spatial volume $`V`$ enclosed by a surface area $`A`$ cannot exceed $`A/4`$ in Planck units. Consider a system in a box. In quantum field theory, a state in a box can have arbitrarily large energy. However, if its compton length is smaller than its Schwarzschild radius, an observer outside the box can not access such a state. Therefore, the energy of states in the box is limited to outside observers. Such states do not contribute to entropy of the system measured by outside observers. For outside observers, the number of accessible states of the system is much less than that of the states allowed by a local quantum field theory.

In $`D`$ dimensions, the Schwarzschild radius $`R_s`$ of a system with energy $`E`$ is determined roughly by the condition that the gravitational potential energy is of order one at $`R=R_s`$. If $`R_s`$ is smaller than the radius of the extra dimensions,

$$\mathrm{\Phi }\frac{E}{M_{}^{D2}R^{D3}}R_s(M_{}^{2D}E)^{1/(D3)}.$$
(8)
Therefore, the energy of a system of size $`R`$ must have a upper bound not to collapse into a black hole. If $`E_{\mathrm{max}}`$ is the maximum energy of the system, then $`E_{\mathrm{max}}<a^DR^{D1}`$, where $`a^1`$ is the ultraviolet (UV) cutoff. Not to collapse into a black hole, the size of the system has to be bigger than its Schwarzschild radius

$`(M_{}^{2D}E_{\mathrm{max}})^{1/(D3)}<(M_{}^{2D}a^DR^{D1})^{1/(D3)}<R.`$ (9)
We find that the UV cutoff is related to the infrared cutoff of the system,

$$a>M_{}^1\left(RM_{}\right)^{2/D}.$$
(10)
The entropy of the system Cohen:1998zx  is given as ($`k_B=1`$), neglecting all quantum numbers except positions,

$$S=\mathrm{ln}2^{(R/a)^{D1}}<\left(RM_{}\right)^{D3+2/D}\mathrm{ln}2.$$
(11)
For $`D=4`$, this bound gives $`S<CA^{3/4}`$, which is smaller than the area $`A`$.

## III Covariant Entropy Bound

The Bekenstein bound for entropy applies to a static system only. For instance one can easily see that a closed universe or a collapsing star, where the system evolves in time, violates the Bekenstein bound (See Fig. 2).

For a closed universe, near the big crunch, the area of the closed universe can be made arbitrarily small while its entropy never decreases. Similarly in the evolution of a collapsing star the spatial area of the collapsing star becomes arbitrarily small, violating the Bekenstein bound.

Since the spacelike volume does not have an intrinsic meaning in general relativity, one may introduce an intrinsic entropy bound Fischler:1998st . In 1999 Bousso Bousso:1999xy ; Bousso:2002ju  introduced a covariant entropy bound, which states that the entropy on any light-sheet of a surface $`B`$ will not exceed the area of $`B`$:

$$S_L\frac{A(B)}{4}.$$
(12)
The null geodesics extended from the surface will merge at a focal point in the future direction foot1  (See Fig. 3), defining a null hypersurface $`L`$.

As time evolves, all matter inside $`B`$ of spatial volume $`V`$ will pass through the null hypersurface, $`L`$. By the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy in the null hypersurface is not less than the entropy inside $`B`$. Therefore, the covariant entropy bound gives the Bekenstein bound,

$$S_V<S_L<\frac{A}{4}.$$
(13)
Furthermore it does remain valid in the case of dynamical systems like collapsing universe or collapsing stars.

## IV Black Hole Thermodynamics

Original Bekenstein conjecture on entropy bound was motivated by black hole thermodynamics, where the entropy of black hole is found to be proportional to the area of the black hole horizon.

Here, we review the derivation of the black hole entropy by ’t Hooft 'tHooft:1984re , which is based on two distinct properties of black holes. The first property is that black holes radiate as black bodies with a certain temperature, called Hawking temperature,

$$T_\mathrm{H}=\frac{1}{8\pi M},$$
(14)
where $`M`$ is the mass of the black hole. The second property is that black holes have an event horizon. If one drops an object with energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ into a black hole with mass $`E`$. ($`\mathrm{\Delta }E1E`$ in Planck units.) Then, the absorption cross section is then

$$\sigma =\pi R^2,R2E.$$
(15)
From the Hawking’s result, the emission probability is

$$W\pi R^2\rho _{\mathrm{\Delta }E}e^{\beta _\mathrm{H}\mathrm{\Delta }E},$$
(16)
where $`\rho _{\mathrm{\Delta }E}`$ is the density of states for a particle with energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$. Now, if we suppose the processes are described by a Hamiltonian acting in Hilbert space. Then,

$`\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`\left|E+\mathrm{\Delta }E\left|T\right|E,\mathrm{\Delta }E\right|^2\rho (E+\mathrm{\Delta }E)`$
$`W`$ $`=`$ $`\left|E,\mathrm{\Delta }E\left|T\right|E+\mathrm{\Delta }E\right|^2\rho (E)\rho _{\mathrm{\Delta }E}.`$ (17)
By $`PCT`$ invariance, the matrix elements have to be same and we get

$$\frac{\sigma }{W}=\frac{e^{\mathrm{\Delta }E/T_\mathrm{H}}}{\rho _{\mathrm{\Delta }E}}=\frac{\rho (E+\mathrm{\Delta }E)}{\rho (E)\rho _{\mathrm{\Delta }E}}$$
(18)
Therefore, we find the density of states of the black hole $`\rho (E)=\mathrm{exp}(4\pi E^2)`$ and the black hole entropy becomes

$$S=\mathrm{ln}\rho (E)=4\pi E^2+S_0\mathrm{or}S=\frac{A}{4}+S_0.$$
(19)
where $`S_0`$ is the subleading term.

In the next section, we will apply the holography bound and the black hole entropy bound to the brane world scenarios, both ADD Arkani-Hamed:1998rs  and RS models Randall:1999ee .

## V Holography Bounds on Brane World Scenario

Consider an ADD/RS world in which the standard model degrees of freedom are confined to a 3-brane while the gravitational degrees of freedom propagate in D dimensions. The large effective volume $`V_w`$ of the bulk allows the apparent Planck scale $`M_P`$ to be much larger than the true dynamical scale of gravity $`M_{}\mathrm{TeV}`$.

(1) The holographic bound is violated during the big bang.

Consider a spacelike region V of extent $`r_h`$ on the 3-brane, and compare the apparent (3+1) entropy with the holographic bound applied to a hypersurface B which is the boundary of V. Let V have the same shape as the brane, with thickness of order $`M_{}^1`$, so that its surface area is of order $`r_h^2`$ in units of $`M_{}`$. (It is possible that the brane is thicker than $`M_{}^1`$, forcing us to use a larger hypersurface with more entropy density, however it is hard to imagine that the brane thickness is parametrically larger than the fundamental length scale.) Impose that this region saturate the holographic bound, so $`r_h`$ satisfies foot2  (See Fig. 4)

$$T^3r_h^3M_{}^2r_h^2,$$
(20)
or

$$r_hT^1\left(\frac{M_{}}{T}\right)^2.$$
(21)
Now consider a cosmological horizon volume of size $`d_HM_P/T^2`$ (assuming radiation domination). The ratio of $`r_h`$ to $`d_H`$ is

$$\frac{d_H}{r_h}\frac{T}{M_{}}\frac{M_P}{M_{}}\frac{T}{10^4\mathrm{eV}}.$$
(22)
For the matter-dominant epoch, the horizon distance is given as $`d_H\left(M_P/T_d^2\right)\left(T_d/T\right)^{3/2}`$, where $`T_d10\mathrm{eV}`$ is the onset temperature of matter domination. The ratio then becomes

$$\frac{d_H}{r_h}\frac{M_P}{M_{}}\left(\frac{T^3}{M_{}^2T_d}\right)^{1/2}\left(\frac{T}{10^2\mathrm{eV}}\right)^{3/2}.$$
(23)
We find that for any temperature higher than $`10^2\mathrm{eV}`$ the causal horizon contains more degrees of freedom than are allowed according to the HB applied to the fundamental theory.

Our understanding of thermodynamics and statistical physics is based on counting states. If the HB is correct, the early universe in the brane worlds under consideration will likely not obey the usual laws of thermal physics at temperatures $`>10^2\mathrm{eV}`$. This makes our understanding of nucleosynthesis and the microwave background problematic.

In order that our thermodynamic description of nucleosynthesis (at $`T10`$ MeV) not be invalidated by holography, we find that $`M_{}>10^4`$ TeV. (This bound is reduced slightly from (22) when prefactors in the expressions for the entropy density and horizon size are included.)

(2) The holographic bound is violated by supernova cores.

Consider the supernova of a star of mass $`M>8M_{}`$, which is powered by the collapse of an iron core and leads to neutron star or black hole formation. In this process the entropy of the collapsed neutron star is of order one per nucleon, so the total entropy is roughly $`10^{57}`$. The radius of the core is a few to ten kilometers, so that its area ($`10^{12}\mathrm{cm}^2`$) in $`M_{}`$ units is only $`10^{46}`$, where again we take a fiducial volume of thickness just greater than that of the brane. (As in the cosmological case the degrees of freedom we are counting are all confined to the brane.) Unless $`M_{}>10^6`$ TeV there is a conflict between the usual thermodynamic description of supernova collapse and the holographic entropy bound.

(3) Black hole entropy bound vs. covariant bound

Susskind Susskind:1994vu  imagines a process in which a thermodynamic system is converted into a black hole by collapsing a spherical shell around it. Using the GSL, one obtains a bound on the entropy of the system: $`S_{matter}A/4`$, where $`A`$ is the area of the black hole formed. This is a weaker conjecture than the covariant bound, and has considerable theoretical support Susskind:1994vu ; Bousso:2002ju ; Bekenstein:ur ; Bekenstein:ax . In the application of the CB we are free to choose the hypersurface B, as long as its lightsheet intersects all of the matter whose entropy we wish to bound, whereas in the black hole bound the area which appears is that of the black hole which is formed. The black hole entropy bound is sensitive to the dynamics of horizon formation.

In TeV gravity scenarios, the black hole size on the 3-brane is controlled by the apparent Planck scale $`M_P=10^{19}`$ GeV. The extent of the horizon in the perpendicular directions off the brane depends on the model, unless the hole is very small.

In ADD worlds, the horizon of an astrophysical black hole likely extends to the boundary of the compact extra dimensions. As discussed in Argyres:1998qn , large black holes have geometry $`S^2\times T^{D4}`$, and the horizon includes all of the extra volume $`V_w`$. Due to this additional extra-dimensional volume, the resulting entropy density is the same as in 3+1 dimensions and there is no obvious violation of any bounds.

In RS scenarios, however, black holes are confined to the brane and have a pancake-like geometry Giddings:2000mu ; Casadio:2002uv . (See Fig. 5.)

The black hole size in the direction transverse to the brane grows only logarithmically with the mass $`M`$. Thus far, no one has computed the Hawking temperature or entropy of a pancake black hole. In fact, exact solutions describing this objects have yet to be obtained. Let us assume, motivated by holography, that the entropy of a pancake black hole continues to be of order its surface area in units of $`M_{}`$. The surface area of a large hole is dominated by the $`r^3l^{D5}`$ component, so the black hole entropy bound arising from the Susskind construction in RS worlds is of the form

$$S<(rM_{})^3.$$
(24)
That is, the upper bound on the entropy grows with the apparent 3-volume of the region. In this case the black hole bound is clearly weaker than the covariant bound, because the surface B used in the application of the latter is much smaller than the area of the pancake hole. Interestingly, (24) is the same result one would have obtained naively from $`D=3+1`$ quantum field theory in the absence of gravity, with ultraviolet cutoff $`M_{}`$!

## VI Discussion

Our results can be interpreted in two ways, depending on how one views holography and related entropy bounds.

It seems likely that holography is a deep result of quantum gravity, relating geometry and information in a new way Bousso:2002ju . If so, it provides important constraints on extra dimensional models. Our analysis shows that the ordinary thermodynamic treatment of nucleosynthesis and supernovae are in conflict with the covariant bound. In other words, brane worlds obeying holography do not reproduce the observed big bang thermal evolution or stellar collapse. Exactly what replaces the usual behavior is unclear - presumably it is highly non-local - but the number of degrees of freedom is drastically less than in the thermodynamic description.

An alternative point of view is to regard brane worlds as a challenge to holography. If such worlds exist they have the potential to violate the entropic bounds by arbitrarily large factors. However, it must be noted that the basic dynamical assumptions underlying the scenarios (that the 3-brane and bulk geometry arise as a ground state of quantum gravity) have never been justified. All violations discussed here require a hierarchy between $`M_P`$ and $`M_{}`$, or equivalently that the extra-dimensional volume factor $`V_w=d^{D4}x\sqrt{g_{(D4)}}`$ exceed its “natural” size $`M_{}^{(D4)}`$.

Finally, we note that the brane, or whatever confines matter to 3 spatial dimensions, is absolutely necessary for these entropy violations. Without the brane, matter initially in a region with small extent in the extra $`(D4)`$ dimensions will inevitably spread out due to the uncertainty principle. For ordinary matter in classical general relativity, in the absence of branes, Wald and collaborators Flanagan:1999jp  have proven the covariant entropy bound subject to some technical assumptions.

## Acknowledgements

The work of D.K.H. is supported by KRF PBRG 2002-070-C00022. The work of S.H. was supported in part under DOE contract DE-FG06-85ER40224 and by the NSF through through the USA-Korea Cooperative Science Program, 9982164.