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# Onset of collective and cohesive motion

## Abstract

We study the onset of collective motion, with and without cohesion, of groups of noisy self-propelled particles interacting locally. We find that this phase transition, in two space dimensions, is always discontinuous, including for the minimal model of Vicsek et al. \[Phys. Rev. Lett. 75,1226 (1995)\] for which a non-trivial critical point was previously advocated. We also show that cohesion is always lost near onset, as a result of the interplay of density, velocity, and shape fluctuations.

Collective motion can be observed at almost every scale in nature, from the familiar human crowdsHELBING , bird flocks and fish schools PARRISH , to unicellular organisms like amoebae and bacteria DICTY , individual cells GRULER , and even at microscopic level in the dynamics of actin and tubulin filaments and molecular motors NEDELEC ; YOKOTA . Whereas biologists tend to build detailed representations of a particular case, the ubiquity of the phenomenon suggests underlying universal features and thus gives weight to the bottom-up modeling approach usually favored by physicists MODELS .

In this respect, the simple model introduced by Vicsek and collaborators VICSEK  stands out because of its minimal character and the a priori least-favorable conditions in which it is defined. In the Vicsek model (VM), identical pointwise particles move at constant velocity and interact locally by trying to align their direction with that of neighbors. Remarkably, even in the presence of noise and in the absence of leaders and global forces, orientational long-range order arises, i.e. collective motion emerges, if the density of particles is high enough or, equivalently, if the noise is weak enough. The existence of the ordered phase was later “proved” by a renormalisation-group approach based on a phenomenological mesoscopic equation TT . More recently, this work was extended to the case where the ambient fluid is taken into full account, yielding novel mesoscopic equations for suspensions of self-propelled particles RAMASWAMY .

The nature of the non-equilibrium phase transition to collective motion, however, is not well established. Vicsek et al. concluded from numerical simulations in two and three dimensions that it is continuous (“second-order”) and characterized by a set of critical indices, but these results remain somewhat crude NOTE , even though the undeniably minimal character of the VM makes it a good candidate for representing a universality class.

Moreover, from a modeling point of view, an often desirable ingredient missing in the VM is cohesion: when put together in an infinite space, particles do not stay together and fly apart. In other words, no collective motion is possible in the zero-density limit of the VM. Recently, we have shown how one can ensure cohesion in simple models derived from the VM without resorting to leader particles or long-range or global forces PHYSD .

In this Letter, we study the onset of collective motion with and without cohesion in this very general setting, trying to assess the universality of the results of Vicsek et al. In both cases, we find that the onset of collective motion in the VM and related models is actually discontinuous (“first-order”) and that its apparent continuous character is due to strong finite-size effects. We also show that without cohesion, the transition point is nevertheless accompanied by a non-trivial superdiffusive behavior of particles which, we argue, could be measured experimentally. In the presence of cohesion, our study reveals that the onset of collective motion is the theater of a complex interplay between density, velocity, sound and shape modes, giving rise to fascinating dynamics.

The original VM is defined as follows: identical pointwise particles move synchronously at discrete timesteps $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=1`$ by a fixed distance $`v_0`$. In two space dimensions —to which we restrict ourselves in the following— the direction of motion of particle $`j`$ is just an angle $`\theta _j`$, calculated from the previous directions of all particles $`k`$ within an interaction range $`r_0=1>v_0\mathrm{\Delta }t`$:

$$\theta _j^{t+1}=\mathrm{arg}\left[\underset{kj}{}e^{i\theta _k^t}\right]+\eta \xi _j^t,$$
(1)
where $`\xi _j^t`$ is a delta-correlated white noise ($`\xi [\pi ,\pi ]`$). This introduces a tendency to align with neighboring particles, with two simple limits: in the absence of noise, interacting particles align perfectly, quickly leading to complete orientational order. For maximal noise ($`\eta =1`$), particles follow random walks. The transition that necessarily lies in between these two regimes can be characterized by the following instantaneous order parameter:

$$\phi ^t\frac{1}{N}\left|\underset{j=1}{\overset{N}{}}e^{i\theta _j^t}\right|$$
(2)
where $`N`$ is the total number of particles.

Varying either the noise strength $`\eta `$ or the particle density $`\rho =N/L^2`$ in periodic domains of linear size $`L`$, Vicsek et al. found that $`\phi `$ varies continuously across the transition, suggesting the existence of a critical point VICSEK . Studying finite-size effects, they estimated a set of scaling exponents. Interested in assessing the universality of these results and possibly improving these estimates, we first introduced simple modifications of the original VM such as changing $`v_0`$ or adding a repulsive force between particles to give them a finite extent. Using the finite-size scaling Ansatz appropriate for XY-model like systems, domain sizes, and particle numbers similar to those used in VICSEK , but with much better, well-controlled statistics, we were only able to estimate a roughly coherent set of critical exponents after allowing for rather strong corrections to scaling TBP .

For modeling reasons, we also changed the way noise is incorporated in the system. In (1), particles make an error when trying to take the new direction they have perfectly calculated (“angular noise”). One could argue that, rather, errors are made when estimating the interactions, for example because of a noisy environment. This leads to change Eq.(1) into, e.g.:

$$\theta _j^{t+1}=\mathrm{arg}\left[\underset{kj}{}e^{i\theta _k^t}+\eta n_j^te^{i\xi _j^t}\right]$$
(3)
where $`n_j^t`$ is the current number of neighbors of particle $`j`$. In this case of “vectorial noise”, the onset of collective motion is discontinuous: for large-enough system sizes, $`\phi `$ jumps abruptly to zero as $`\eta `$ is decreased, whereas it varies smoothly in the original VM (Fig. 1a). This is perhaps best seen from the behavior of the so-called Binder cumulant $`G=1\phi ^4/3\phi ^2^2`$ (Fig. 1b). In the case of vectorial noise, $`G`$ falls to negative values near $`\eta _\mathrm{c}`$, the sign of a discontinuous transition, together with the phase coexistence expected then.

Going from angular to vectorial noise is indeed a less innocent modification than those mentioned earlier: in model (3), locally-ordered regions are subjected to weaker noise than disordered ones. However, it was unclear to us what precisely would be the mechanism to change the order of the transition upon introducing this nonlinear term. Considering in addition the strong corrections to scaling found with angular noise, we strived to reach larger system sizes in some of these cases, albeit at the cost of statistical accuracy TBP . The conclusion of these numerical efforts is that the transition is discontinuous in all cases, with finite-size effects being somewhat weaker at low densities. As an example, the behavior of $`G`$ with increasing system size shown in Fig. 2a for the original VM at $`\rho =\frac{1}{8}`$ reveals the characteristic fall to negative values. The distribution function of $`\phi ^t`$ is bimodal around threshold, without any intermediate unimodal regime (Fig. 2c). Thus, the continuous transition reported by Vicsek et al. is only apparent.

In the ordered phase, the particles are organized in density waves moving steadily in a disordered “vapour pressure” background of well-defined asymptotic density (Fig. 2b). These solitary waves become metastable to a long-wavelength longitudinal instability below the density threshold $`\eta _\mathrm{c}`$ (defined to be located at the minimum of $`G`$), leading to an hysteresis loop. At threshold and below, the disordered phase consists of nucleated ordered patches competing in space and time (Fig. 2d).

At threshold, in the disordered phase, a universal non-trivial algebraic scaling law is nevertheless found: the superdiffusive behavior of particles already reported by us in COMMENT  is valid in all cases. Trajectories then consist of “flights”, occuring when a particle is caught in a moving ordered patch, separated by normal diffusion in the disordered regions. The mean square displacement of particles $`\delta r^2`$ varies like $`t^\alpha `$ with $`\alpha =1.65(5)`$.

We now turn to the onset of collective motion in the presence of cohesion. As shown in PHYSD , the cohesion of a population of particles can be maintained without resolving to long-range or global interactions. In the spirit of the VM, and following REYNOLDS , a two-body short-range interaction force competing with the alignment tendency is introduced, leading to the following model:

$$\theta _j^{t+1}=\mathrm{arg}\left[\alpha \underset{kj}{}e^{i\theta _k^t}+\beta \underset{kj}{}f_{jk}^te^{i\theta _{jk}^t}+\eta n_j^te^{i\xi _j^t}\right]$$
(4)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ control the strength of alignment and cohesion, $`\theta _{jk}^t`$ is the direction of the vector linking particle $`j`$ to particle $`k`$. The interaction force between these two particles, of amplitude $`f_{jk}^t`$, is actually repulsive up to an intermediate equilibrium distance $`r_\mathrm{e}`$, with a short-range hard-core at $`r_\mathrm{c}`$ and attractive up to the interaction range $`r_0`$. In the following, as in PHYSD , we used:

$$f_{jk}=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{}\hfill & \mathrm{if}r_{jk}<r_\mathrm{c},\hfill \\ \frac{1}{4}\frac{r_{jk}r_\mathrm{e}}{r_\mathrm{a}r_\mathrm{e}}\hfill & \mathrm{if}r_\mathrm{c}<r_{jk}<r_\mathrm{a},\hfill \\ 1\hfill & \mathrm{if}r_\mathrm{a}<r_{jk}<r_0.\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)
where $`r_{jk}`$ is the distance between $`j`$ and $`k`$, with $`r_\mathrm{c}=0.2`$, $`r_\mathrm{e}=0.5`$, and $`r_\mathrm{a}=0.8`$. Note that vectorial noise was chosen in (4), in the hope of reaching asymptotic properties more easily.

The above model has three main parameters, $`\alpha `$, $`\beta `$, and $`\eta `$, only two of which are independent. The phase diagram in the $`(\alpha ,\beta )`$ plane (with $`\eta =1`$ fixed arbitrarily) was presented in PHYSD , where, moreover, only neighbors in the Voronoi sense are considered in the sums of (4)). For large-enough $`\beta `$, cohesion is maintained, even in the zero-density limit. This “gas/liquid” transition is followed, at larger $`\beta `$ values, by the onset of positional (quasi-) order, i.e. a “liquid/solid” transition. For large $`\alpha `$, these liquid or solid cohesive groups move, whereas they remain static (up to finite-size fluctuations) for small $`\alpha `$.

In the “liquid case” (intermediate $`\beta `$ values), the onset of motion is accompanied by a loss of cohesion: while small groups set in motion smoothly without breaking up (Fig. 3a, dashed lines), larger groups gradually subdivide into several parts of roughly equivalent size linked by filamentary structures, in contrast with their more compact shapes before and after onset (Fig. 4). The filaments themselves are quite static (Fig. 4d) but are displaced by the subgroups which move coherently so that they eventually break up, as indicated by the dip in the normalized largest connected cluster size $`n/N`$ in Fig. 3a. Increasing $`\alpha `$, large groups follow the same precursor of the transition as smaller groups, but when their fragmentation occurs the order parameter falls back, leaving an intermediate peak (around $`\alpha =1.7`$ in Fig. 3a). Increasing $`\alpha `$ further, $`\phi `$ rises again and finally jumps to $`\phi =1`$ when full cohesion is recovered (for $`\alpha =1.88`$ in Fig. 3a). This discontinuous jump is the true location of the transition: For an infinite group, the onset of motion must occur abruptly near this value, as the precursory features described above disappear because the population divides into infinitely-many subgroups whose influences average themselves out. Meanwhile, cohesion is only lost at the transition point in this asymptotic picture.

The breakup of large cohesive groups around threshold is probably closely related to what happens in the case without cohesion: the subgroups connected by filaments may correspond to the ordered patches seen in the disordered phase near threshold in Fig. 2d. The breakup itself can be seen as resulting from the maximal effect of acoustic modes on the shape of the group TBP . Also affecting the shape dynamics are rotational modes: the subgroups seen in Fig. 4a not only move but they also rotate slowly MOVIE . Rotation is not steady, but intermittent. We recorded the rotation times and their corresponding angles. Extremal statistics analysis reveal that the tendency to rotate is maximal at the onset of motion (Fig. 3b). Moreover, at threshold, the distribution of rotation times is algebraic with a decay exponent such that it has no finite mean (inset of Fig. 3b).

The onset of motion of the “solid” groups (large $`\beta `$ values) is accompanied by a loss of positional order: these crystals melt near the transition (inset of Fig. 3a). Given the above results in the liquid case, one can expect very large solid groups to melt and then subdivide and lose cohesion in the transition region, making the onset of motion asymptotically discontinuous.

To summarize, the onset of collective motion in the VM as well as in related models with and without cohesion is always discontinuous, and the critical behavior reported in VICSEK  is only apparent and due to (strong) finite-size effects. Without cohesion, the ordered phase consists in density waves propagating steadily in a disordered background. With a short-range repulsion/attraction interaction, the cohesion ensured both in the disordered and ordered phases is broken at the onset of motion under the competing influence of sound, density, and shape modes. The resulting mesoscopic subgroups are linked by filaments which, however, we believe to be probably non-universal, model-dependent structures.

At the theoretical level, ongoing work is directed towards the understanding of the complex interplay between shape (surface tension) and acoustic modes, and of the stability properties of the density waves. At the experimental level, it remains difficult to study quantitatively bird flocks and fish schools, and moreover we have no specific prediction as to the onset of motion of these cohesive groups NOTE3 . Without cohesion, however, the universal superdiffusive behavior observed in the disordered phase near threshold could be observed experimentally. As already suggested in COMMENT , bacteria such as E. Coli might be good self-propelled particles. Human melanocytes also look promising in this respect as shown remarkably by the group of Gruler GRULER . Finally, “motility assays” consisting of grafted molecular motors such as kinesin (resp. myosin) moving filaments made of tubulin (resp. actin) might provide the simplest setting in which to investigate superdiffusion at onset, given the available observation techniques NEDELEC ; YOKOTA .


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# H2 Emission Nebulosity Associated with KH 15DBased on data collected at Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

## 1 Introduction

KH 15D is an eclipsing weak-lined T Tauri star with remarkable properties: (1) the eclipse has a 48 or 96 day period with a depth of 3.5 mag; (2) the eclipses have been lengthening (16 days in 1995 to about 24 days currently), thus requiring obscuring matter to extend at least one-third of the circumference of the orbit (Hamilton et al. 2001; Herbst et al. 2002; Winn et al. 2003); (3) polarization measurements suggest that only scattered light is observed during the eclipse (Agol et al. 2003); (4) broad emission lines during the eclipse show that it is driving an outflow (Hamilton et al. 2003); and (5) extended H2 emission is observed during its eclipse (Deming, Charbonneau, & Harrington 2004). Herbst et al. (2002) find that the light curve indicates that the edge of the obscuring matter could be modeled as a knife edge. The photometric colors do not change as the eclipse progresses, and this indicates that the obscuring matter is opaque or the particles are large. The latter is supported by the polarization measurements.

The spectral type of KH 15D is K6V (Algol et al. 2003) or K7V (Hamilton et al. 2001). The observations to date suggest that K star is the primary object in the KH 15D system and that the obscuring matter is extended and may be a protoplanetary system. Barge & Viton (2003) suggest that the obscuring matter may be a dusty anticyclonic vortex in a gaseous disk surrounding the star with large particles, 1–10 cm in size, trapped within the vortex. On the other hand, Agol et al. (2003) suggest that the obscuring matter is a warped disk. Hamilton et al. (2003) emphasize that the geometry of the system is unknown, and it has not been established whether the period of the eclipse is 48 days or twice this.

In this brief report we show that an H2 emission filament is associated with KH 15D, and it appears to show an outflow from KH 15D.

## 2 Observations

Broadband and narrowband infrared images of KH 15D were obtained with the Subaru Telescope using the Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (IRCS; Tokunaga et al. 1998; Kobayashi et al. 2000) during UT 2003 February 18–19. The Subaru Telescope adaptive optics system (Takami et al. 2003) was used for these observations. We used HD 47887 as a reference star for the adaptive optics system, since it was located 37′′ south of KH 15D and within the working field-of-view of the instrument. The pixel scale was 58.00 $`\pm `$0.02 mas pixel-1.

On February 18 $`K`$-band imaging showed a hint of a filamentary nebulosity that appeared to be associated with KH 15D (see Fig. 1a). The exposure time was 90 s per exposure, and five dithered exposures were taken. However the first exposure was noisy and not included. Thus the coadded image shown in Fig. 1a was obtained from four exposures with a total integration time of 360 s. The seeing was good on this night, and the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the image of KH 15D after coadding was 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$28. The image was smoothed by 5 pixels (0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$30) to enhance the signal to noise of the filament. Figures 1a and b show two knots of emission. The center of these knots and their surface brightness are given in Table 1.

Follow-up imaging in the narrowband H2 $`\nu `$=1–0 filter (2.122 $`\mu `$m) and the narrowband $`K`$ continuum filter (2.269 $`\mu `$m) on February 19 showed conclusively that the filamentary emission is due to H2 emission, as shown in Fig. 1c and d. Both filters have a FWHM of 0.032 $`\mu `$m. As on the previous night, five dithered images were taken and coadded. The total exposure time was 900 s for the images shown in Figures 1c and d. The seeing was worse on February 19 and the FWHM of the H2 image of KH 15D after coadding was 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$54. The images were smoothed by 6 pixels (0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$35) to enhance the signal to noise of the filament.

Additional observations in the $`K`$ band were made by S. Dahm using the QUIRC 1–2.5 $`\mu `$m camera on the University of Hawaii 2.2 m telescope. This camera utilizes a 1024$`\times `$1024 HgCdTe array with a pixel scale of 0.189 arcsec pixel-1. The $`K`$ filter used here, as well as the one used for the Subaru observations, is part of the Mauna Kea Observatories near-infrared filter set defined by Simons & Tokunaga (2002) and Tokunaga, Simons, & Vacca (2002). The filter used had a center wavelength of 2.20 $`\mu `$m and a width of 0.34 $`\mu `$m. A coadded image was obtained from a set of nine dithered images with a total integration time of 540 s and is shown in Fig. 2. The filament can be seen in the highly stretched image. There is no evidence for any other nebulosity that might be related to the filament seen near KH 15D.

## 3 Discussion

There is no evidence from the point-spread function that KH 15D is elongated or has a jet structure near it. Although the filamentary emission appears to originate from KH 15D, there is a possibility that this is a chance superposition of a Herbig-Haro (HH) object with KH 15D. There are nearby embedded sources that could produce HH objects. Embedded submillimeter and VLA sources discovered by Ward-Thompson et al. (2000) and Reipurth et al. (2003) are shown in Fig. 3. The radio source VLA 5 is a candidate for the source of filament. In this case the filament has just by coincidence reached the vicinity of KH 15D (in projection) with the tip of the filament aimed at KH 15D.

While we cannot absolutely rule out this possibility, we believe that the filament is associated with KH 15D for the following reasons:

1. Spectroscopy by Deming et al. (2004) shows that KH 15D exhibits strong H2 emission while in eclipse. Furthermore, the emission is extended and is centered on KH 15D. Since the slit was not aligned with the filament we cannot say for certain that the filament is connected to KH 15D, but the fact that the extended H2 emission is centered on KH 15D is a very strong indication that the filament is associated with KH 15D.
2. Spectroscopy by Hamilton et al. (2003) suggested that KH 15D has bipolar outflow. The H2 filament may be associated with the bipolar outflow detected by these authors. If this is a correct assumption, our observations show the position angle in the sky of the outflow. From Fig. 1 we find that the position angle from KH 15D to knot B is 8$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$4. Although we do not see any clear indication of the counterjet, there is a hint of nebulosity to the south in rough alignment with the filament and KH 15D (see Fig. 1a; the nebulosity is indicated by “N”). This requires confirmation.
3. The region around KH 15D has a number of HH objects, some of which can be seen in Fig. 2. However, we do not see any indication of additional nebulosity near KH 15D, and so there is no evidence that the filament is part of a larger shock front as the curvature in the filament might otherwise suggest.

We therefore consider the possibility that the filament is a result of outflowing gas from KH 15D. Although weak-lined T Tauri stars are generally thought to be largely stripped of gas and to have very little or no accretion occurring, KH 15D is an exception. Hamilton et al. (2003) found that it has characteristics of a classical T Tauri star including weak accretion. In addition, Bary, Weintraub, & Kastner (2003) find H2 emission in some weak-lined T Tauri stars, from which they conclude that not all weak-lined T Tauri stars have lost all of their gas. Hence outflowing gas and shocked H2 emission in an outflow from KH 15D, while unexpected, is not surprising in this object.

Unlike the weak-lined T Tauri stars observed by Bary, Weintraub, & Kastner (2003) that exhibit X-ray emission and fluorescent H2 emission, KH 15D does not exhibit X-ray emission. T. Simon (2003, private communication) finds that the X-ray luminosity is less than 5 $`\times `$ 1029 ergs s-1 at the 3 $`\sigma `$ level using archived data taken with XMM-Newton on 2002 March 17. The H2 emission associated with KH 15D is likely to be shocked H2 rather than fluorescence because of the morphology of the filament and because Deming et al. (2004) find that the H2 emission is consistent with thermal excitation.

The outflow velocity is very high; Hamilton et al. (2003) observe velocities as high as $`\pm `$200 km s-1 in the wings of the H$`\alpha `$ emission line and $``$60 to $`+`$50 km s-1 in the wings of the \[O I\] $`\lambda `$6300 emission line. Deming et al. (2004) find that the H2 emission is as high as $``$63 km s-1. Since H2 dissociates in shocks at such high velocities, it is likely that the H2 emission arises as a result of the outflowing gas impacting co-moving gas that is at a slightly slower velocity (i.e., see the case discussed by Micono et al. 1998 and the discussion by Eislöffel et al. 2000).

The filament extends out to about 15′′ from KH 15D. Given the distance to KH 15D, 760 pc (Park et al. 2000), and assuming an average outflow speed of 100 km s-1 (Hirth, Mundt, & Solf 1977), then the time to form the filament is 540 yr. This is not unusual for an HH outflow (Eislöffel et al. 2000; Reipurth & Bally 2001 ). What is somewhat unusual is the filamentary nature of the outflow and that there is no evidence for a counterjet. H2 emission in outflows are typically observed as tight knots of emission or bow shock structures rather than in a filamentary structure.

The picture that emerges from the images we have obtained and the spectroscopic results of Hamilton et al. (2003) and Deming et al. (2004) is that KH 15D has an outflow that is marked by H2 emission. Extinction to KH 15D is small (Hamilton et al. 2001), so the counterjet is not obscured by high extinction as is often the case in embedded young stars. The presence of an H2 filament only to the north may be a result of a higher gas density to the north or a case where KH 15D is just outside of a molecular cloud and the outflow is impacting it only toward the north. The curved filamentary structure could result from a cavitylike structure caused by the outflow with only one side exhibiting H2 emission, or it could result from a slight deflection of the outflow by a molecular cloud. A more extreme case of the latter is discussed by Reipurth, Raga, & Heathcote (1996).

## 4 Summary

A filamentary nebula extending from KH 15D was discovered and shown to be an H2 emission nebula. The very close proximity and orientation toward KH 15D, coupled with the discovery of extended H2 emission surrounding KH 15D (Deming et al. 2004), indicate that the nebula is likely to be associated with KH 15D. This is consistent with the discovery of spectroscopic signatures of an outflow in high-resolution spectra obtained by Hamilton et al. (2003).

It is apparent that KH 15D has an active accretion disk. Coupled with the possibility that the obscuring matter causing the eclipse may be a forming planetary system, we conclude that both disk dissipation and planet formation may be occurring in the KH 15D system.

We thank the staff and crew of the Subaru Telescope for their invaluable assistance in obtaining the observations reported here. We thank B. Reipurth, D. Deming, and T. Simon for helpful discussions. ATT was supported by NASA Cooperative Agreement no. NCC 5-538. This research has made use of Aladin.


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# On the P-representable subset of all bipartite Gaussian separable states

## I Introduction

In the recent years the question to whether a given quantum state is separable or entangled has become central to the quantum information and to the quantum optics communities. Mostly because fault-tolerant quantum information protocols, such as quantum computation and quantum teleportation are completely dependent on the ability to prepare pure (or close to pure) entangled states . Recent attention however has been centered on continuous variable versions of quantum communication protocols, such as the unconditional quantum teleportation , whose efficiency rests on the ability to generate entangled states of systems with infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces. Bipartite systems with finite Hilbert space have been exhaustively investigated in order to achieve a precise quantification of entanglement. Peres  and Horodecki  demonstrated that a necessary and sufficient condition for separability of bipartite systems with Hilbert spaces of dimension $`23`$ is the positivity of the partial transpose of the system density matrix. On the other hand, algebraic similarities between bipartite states with Hilbert space of dimension $`22`$ and bipartite Gaussian states (described by $`4\times 4`$ covariance matrices) allows the extension of the positivity criterion to those special continuous variable states as firstly developed in Refs. , and considered afterwards in discussions on entanglement of Gaussian bipartite states (e.g. ).

Of particular importance is the connection between Glauber P-representability of a bipartite quantum state and separability . A P-representable state is the one that is represented by a positive Glauber P distribution function $`P(\alpha ,\beta )`$, which is less(or equally)-singular than the delta distribution, such as

$$\rho =𝑑\alpha ^2𝑑\beta ^2P(\alpha ,\beta )|\alpha ,\beta \alpha ,\beta |.$$
(1)
Under this condition $`P(\alpha ,\beta )`$ assumes the structure of a legitimate probability distribution function over an ensemble of states, allowing the connection between separability and classicality. However, although any P-representable bipartite state is separable, as can be immediately seen by the P representation definition, the inverse is not necessarily true. P-representability and separability are completely equivalent only for Gaussian states with locally $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ invariant covariance matrices. Since any covariance matrix can be brought to this invariant form under appropriate $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ transform, P-representability and separability have been misleadingly accepted as one-to-one equivalent properties of bipartite Gaussian states. The purpose of the present paper is to give a complete classification of the set of all bipartite Gaussian separable states (BGSS). Particularly we show that P-representable Gaussian bipartite states form a subset of BGSS with locally $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ invariant form. In Section II we begin by a revision of some necessary properties of bipartite Gaussian states and in Sec. III we give the necessary and sufficient conditions for the state to be separable. In Sec. IV we discuss the P-representability of those states and show that they actually form a subset of the separable states. In Sec. V we describe the the unitary $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ map that connects the two sets and finally in Sec. VI a conclusion encloses the paper.

## II Bipartite Gaussian States

Any bipartite quantum state $`\rho `$ is Gaussian (see e.g. ) if its symmetric characteristic function is given by

$$C(𝜼)=Tr[D(𝜼)\rho ]=e^{\frac{1}{2}𝜼^{}𝐕𝜼},$$
(2)
where $`D(𝜼)=e^{𝜼^{}\mathrm{𝐄𝐯}}`$ is a displacement operator in the parameter four-vector $`𝜼`$-space, with

$$𝜼^{}=(\eta _1^{},\eta _1,\eta _2^{},\eta _2),𝐯^{}=(a_1^{},a_1,a_2^{},a_2),$$
(3)
and

$$𝐄=\left(\begin{array}{cc}𝒁& \mathrm{𝟎}\\ \mathrm{𝟎}& 𝒁\end{array}\right),𝒁=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right),$$
(4)
where $`a_1`$ ($`a_1^{}`$) and $`a_2`$ ($`a_2^{}`$) are annihilation (creation) operators for party 1 and 2, respectively. $`𝐕`$ is the Hermitian $`4\times 4`$ covariance matrix with elements $`V_{ij}=(1)^{i+j}\{v_i,v_j^{}\}/2`$, which can be decomposed in four block $`2\times 2`$ matrices,

$$𝐕=\left(\begin{array}{cc}𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}& 𝐂\\ 𝐂^{}& 𝐕_\mathrm{𝟐}\end{array}\right),$$
(5)
where $`𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}`$ and $`𝐕_\mathrm{𝟐}`$ are Hermitian matrices containing only local elements while $`𝐂`$ is the correlation between the two parties. Any covariance matrix must be positive semidefinite ($`𝐕0`$), furthermore the generalized uncertainty principle

$$𝐕+\frac{1}{2}𝐄0,$$
(6)
must also be applied. Those general positivity criteria can be decomposed into block using matrix positivity properties. There are many ways to check a matrix positivity, such as the positivity of the matrix determinant. However this is not a necessary condition. A reliable and convenient way to check the covariance matrix positivity is through the following block Schur decomposition : Any Hermitian matrix is positive if and only if any principal block matrix is also positive, or, if its upper left block and the block’s Schur complement are also positive. So that for the covariance matrix (5), $`𝐕0`$ only if

$$𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}0,$$
(7)
and the Schur complement of $`𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}`$

$$S(𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏})𝐕_\mathrm{𝟐}𝐂^{}(𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏})^1𝐂0.$$
(8)
It is interesting to observe that Schur complements of block matrices representing Gaussian states covariances, such as above, embodies a manifestation of a physical operation when considering partial projections onto Gaussian states .

Through the Schur decomposition the physical positivity criterion (6) applies only if

$$𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}+\frac{1}{2}𝐙0,$$
(9)
and

$$\left(𝐕_\mathrm{𝟐}+\frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{\mathrm{𝟐}}𝐙\right)𝐂^{}\left(𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}+\frac{1}{2}𝐙\right)^1𝐂0.$$
(10)
By explicitly writing

$`𝐕=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}n_1& m_1& m_s& m_c\\ m_1^{}& n_1& m_c^{}& m_s^{}\\ m_s^{}& m_c& n_2& m_2\\ m_c^{}& m_s& m_2^{}& n_2\end{array}\right),`$ (15)
we can further simplify the generalized uncertainty (9) and (10) to

$`n_1`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{|m_1|^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}},`$ (16)
and (17)
$`n_2`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{s}{d}}+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\left||m_c|^2|m_s|^2\right|}{d}}1\right]^2+|m_2c|^2},`$ (18)
respectively, with

$`s`$ $`=`$ $`n_1\left(|m_c|^2+|m_s|^2\right)m_cm_sm_1^{}m_c^{}m_s^{}m_1,`$ (19)
$`c`$ $`=`$ $`2n_1m_s^{}m_cm_c^2m_1^{}(m_s^{})^2m_1,`$ (20)
$`d`$ $`=`$ $`n_1^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}|m_1|^2.`$ (21)
## III Separability Bounds

By mapping the positivity necessary and sufficient condition for dimension $`22`$ to bipartite systems of infinite dimension, Simon  has discovered an elegant geometrical interpretation of separability in terms of the Wigner distribution function for the density operator. The Peres-Horodecki separability criterion in the Simon framework reads: if a bipartite density operator is separable, then its Wigner distribution necessarily goes over into a Wigner distribution under a phase space mirror reflection. The separability criterion can be understood as a valid Wigner-class-conservative quantum map under local time reversal. Following  a necessary and sufficient condition for a Gaussian quantum state to be separable,

$$\rho =\underset{k}{}p_k\rho _k^A\rho _k^B$$
(22)
is that its covariance matrix must satisfy

$$\stackrel{~}{𝐕}+\frac{1}{2}𝐄0,$$
(23)
under a partial phase space mirror reflection (partial Hermitian conjugation) $`\stackrel{~}{𝐕}=\mathrm{𝐓𝐕𝐓}:`$

$$\mathrm{𝐓𝐯}=𝐯_T=\left(\begin{array}{c}a_1\\ a_1^{}\\ a_2^{}\\ a_2\end{array}\right),$$
(24)
with

$$𝐓=\left(\begin{array}{cc}𝐈& \mathrm{𝟎}\\ \mathrm{𝟎}& 𝐗\end{array}\right),𝐗=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 1\\ 1& 0\end{array}\right),$$
(25)
otherwise the state is entangled. Similarly to the generalized uncertainty (6) decomposition, the separability condition (23) is satisfied if and only if (9) and

$$\left(\mathrm{𝐗𝐕}_\mathrm{𝟐}𝐗+\frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{\mathrm{𝟐}}𝐙\right)\mathrm{𝐗𝐂}^{}\left(𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}+\frac{1}{2}𝐙\right)^1\mathrm{𝐂𝐗}0,$$
(26)
are both satisfied, which explicitly implies in (16) and

$`n_2`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{s}{d}}+\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\left||m_c|^2|m_s|^2\right|}{d}}+1\right]^2+|m_2c|^2},`$ (27)
respectively. We call the set of states $`\rho `$ that fall inside (16) and (27) the set BGSS of all bipartite Gaussian separable states $`𝕊`$. Any state that does not follow those inequalities is entangled, being it pure or not. Remark also that purity is only reached when the equalities in (16) and (18) hold.

## IV P-representability of Gaussian states

The very definition of a separable state (22) can be written in a coherent state representation through the Glauber P-function (1), but it is not obvious that $`P(\alpha ,\beta )`$ is a legitimate probability distribution function. That is only reached if the state is P-representable, i.e., if the P-function is non-negative and less (or equal) singular than the delta distribution. In terms of the covariance matrix, a quantum state is P-representable  if

$$𝐕\frac{1}{2}𝐈0,$$
(28)
which in terms of the upper left block matrix and its Schur complement writes as

$$𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}\frac{1}{2}𝐈0,$$
(29)
and

$$\left(𝐕_\mathrm{𝟐}\frac{\mathrm{𝟏}}{\mathrm{𝟐}}𝐈\right)𝐂^{}\left(𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}\frac{1}{2}𝐈\right)^1𝐂0.$$
(30)
Thus

$$n_1|m_1|+\frac{1}{2},$$
(31)
and

$$n_2\frac{s^{}}{d^{}}+\frac{|m_2c^{}|}{d^{}}+\frac{1}{2},$$
(32)
with

$`s^{}`$ $`=`$ $`(n_1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}})\left(|m_c|^2+|m_s|^2\right)m_cm_sm_1^{}`$ (34)
$`m_c^{}m_s^{}m_1,`$
$`c^{}`$ $`=`$ $`2(n_1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}})m_s^{}m_cm_c^2m_1^{}(m_s^{})^2m_1,`$ (35)
$`d^{}`$ $`=`$ $`(n_1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}})^2|m_1|^2.`$ (36)
States that follow (31) and (32) form the set of all bipartite P-representable Gaussian states $``$.

From an operator formalism for the density matrix, Englert and Wódkiewicz  have recently stated that P-representability is equivalent to the separability condition, for the specific symmetric situation where $`m_1=m_2=m_s=0`$, $`n_1=n_2=n`$, and $`m_c=m`$, which indeed set $`𝕊`$ as we see bellow. The generality of their statement is justified only if $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ local operations are used to bring those parameters to the special symmetric class described above (see also ). However, this particular situation does not represents a total equivalence between $`𝕊`$ and the set of all P-representable states. In general the P-representability conditions, (31) and (32), are more restrictive than the separability ones, (16) and (27), respectively, as we now investigate.

Firstly observe that (16) is less restrictive than (31), equaling only for $`|m_1|=0`$ or $`|m_1|\mathrm{}`$, being enough to check if (32) dominates over (27) for the simplest $`|m_1|=0`$ situation. For that we make use of the knowledge that (18) is always stronger than (32), including the situation where $`d=0`$, i.e., $`n_1=1/2`$. In such a case, the comparisons of the (32) lower bound to (27) and to (18) are equivalent and thus if (27) is violated so is (18). These inequalities must satisfy

$$(|m_2|+|m_c|^2)(|m_2|+|m_s|^2)0,$$
(37)
and since the quantities involved are always strictly positive the criterion (37) is always satisfied. The equality however occurs only if $`|m_2|=|m_c|^2=0`$ or $`|m_2|=|m_s|^2=0`$, which then set the equivalence $`𝕊`$ for the two following special $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ invariant forms for $`𝐕`$:
Invariant form 1:

$$\left(\begin{array}{cccc}n_1& 0& 0& m_c\\ 0& n_1& m_c^{}& 0\\ 0& m_c& n_2& 0\\ m_c^{}& 0& 0& n_2\end{array}\right),$$
(38)
Invariant form 2:

$$\left(\begin{array}{cccc}n_1& 0& m_s& 0\\ 0& n_1& 0& m_s^{}\\ m_s^{}& 0& n_2& 0\\ 0& m_s& 0& n_2\end{array}\right).$$
(39)
Special forms 1 and 2 are locally $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ invariant covariance matrices that form the $`𝕊`$ subset. The separability and thus P-representability criterion is then reduced to

$$\left(n_1\frac{1}{2}\right)\left(n_2\frac{1}{2}\right)|m_c|^2,$$
(40)
for the special form 1, and to

$$\left(n_1\frac{1}{2}\right)\left(n_2\frac{1}{2}\right)|m_s|^2,$$
(41)
for the special form 2. The physical condition of existence of a general bipartite Gaussian state of the form 1 or 2 writes

$$\left(n_1\frac{1}{2}\right)\left(n_2+\frac{1}{2}\right)|m_c|^2,$$
(42)
or

$$\left(n_1\frac{1}{2}\right)\left(n_2+\frac{1}{2}\right)|m_s|^2,$$
(43)
respectively.

Remark 1: There are P-representable Gaussian operators that violate (18), which however do not represent any valid positive definite quantum state. As an example in Fig. 1 through comparison of the limiting bounds (27) and (32), assuming all real coefficients and setting $`m_1=0.5`$, and $`m_2=1`$. Only those states that lay in or above the separable class are valid P-representable separable states.

Remark 2: The special symmetric situation depicted in Ref. for the two-mode thermal squeezed state, where $`m_1=m_2=m_s=0`$, $`n_1=n_2=n`$, and $`m_c=m`$, is a particular example of the specific form 1, and thus a separable state in this case is always P-representable.

## V $`𝕊`$ Mapping

Any general covariance matrix can be mapped into one of those invariant forms under appropriate $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ transform. In other words, it is possible to map $`𝕊`$ into $``$ such that

$$\rho _{Sp}=U_L\rho _GU_L^1,$$
(44)
be the state obtained by the local unitary transform $`U_L=U_1U_2`$ over a general bipartite Gaussian density operator $`\rho _G`$ assuming

$$U_L𝐯U_L^1=𝐒_𝐋𝐯,𝐒_𝐋=\left(\begin{array}{cc}𝐒_\mathrm{𝟏}& \mathrm{𝟎}\\ \mathrm{𝟎}& 𝐒_\mathrm{𝟐}\end{array}\right),$$
(45)
with the condition $`𝐒_{𝐋}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}=\mathrm{𝐄𝐒}_{𝐋}^{}{}_{}{}^{}𝐄`$. The new symmetric characteristic function writes

$`C_{Sp}(𝜼)`$ $`=`$ $`Tr[D(𝜼)\rho _{Sp}]=Tr[U_L^1D(𝜼)U_L\rho _G]`$ (46)
$`=`$ $`e^{\frac{1}{2}𝜼^{}𝐕_{Sp}𝜼},`$ (47)
with

$$𝐕_{Sp}=𝐒_{𝐋}^{}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{𝐕𝐒}_𝐋.$$
(48)
The transformed covariance matrix writes as (5), but with new block elements

$`𝐕_𝐢^{}`$ $`=`$ $`𝐒_{𝐢}^{}{}_{}{}^{}𝐕_𝐢𝐒_𝐢,𝐂^{}=𝐒_{\mathrm{𝟏}}^{}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{𝐂𝐒}_\mathrm{𝟐}.`$ (49)
Assuming a local $`Sp(2,R)`$ transform as

$`𝐒_𝐢`$ $``$ $`\left(\begin{array}{cc}e^{i\varphi _i}\mathrm{cosh}\theta _i& e^{i\phi _i}\mathrm{sinh}\theta _i\\ e^{i\phi _i}\mathrm{sinh}\theta _i& e^{i\varphi _i}\mathrm{cosh}\theta _i\end{array}\right),`$ (52)
the condition to bring $`𝐕`$ to the invariant form 1:

$$\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\nu _1& 0& 0& \mu _c\\ 0& \nu _1& \mu _c^{}& 0\\ 0& \mu _c& \nu _2& 0\\ \mu _c^{}& 0& 0& \nu _2\end{array}\right),$$
(53)
is obtained by setting $`\varphi _i+\phi _i=\mu _i+\pi `$ and $`\mathrm{tanh}2\theta _i=|m_i|/n_i=|m_c|/|m_s|`$, for $`i=1,2`$, respectively, where $`e^{i\mu _i}=m_i/|m_i|`$, and assuming (for $`|m_c||m_s|`$).

Now the condition to bring $`𝐕`$ to the invariant form 2:

$$\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\nu _1& 0& \mu _s& 0\\ 0& \nu _1& 0& \mu _s^{}\\ \mu _s^{}& 0& \nu _2& 0\\ 0& \mu _s& 0& \nu _2\end{array}\right),$$
(54)
is immediately attained if $`\varphi _i+\phi _i=\mu _i+\pi `$ also, but now with $`\mathrm{tanh}2\theta _i=|m_i|/n_i=|m_s|/|m_c|`$ (assuming $`|m_c||m_s|`$). Since both $`𝐕_{\mathrm{𝟏}}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ and $`𝐕_{\mathrm{𝟏}}^{}{}_{}{}^{}`$ are proportional to the identity, they do not change under unitary local rotations and the two invariant forms are then connected through those operations. As such, the last two conditions on $`|m_c|`$ and $`|m_s|`$ can be waved by appropriate rotations.

The new transformed elements are

$`\nu _i`$ <sup>=</sup> $`\sqrt{n_i^2|m_i|^2},`$ (55)
$`\mu _s`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i(\varphi _1\varphi _2)}{\displaystyle \frac{m_s}{|m_s|}}\sqrt{|m_s|^2|m_c|^2},`$ (56)
(for $`|m_c||m_s|`$), and

$$\mu _c=e^{i(\varphi _1+\varphi _2)}\frac{m_c}{|m_c|}\sqrt{|m_c|^2|m_s|^2},$$
(57)
(for $`|m_c||m_s|`$), which then turn explicit the four invariants of the $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ group: $`I_1=det𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}^{}`$, $`I_2=det𝐕_\mathrm{𝟐}^{}`$, $`I_3=det𝐂^{}`$, and $`I_4=Tr\left[𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}^{}𝒁𝐂^{}𝒁𝐕_\mathrm{𝟐}^{}𝒁(𝐂^{})^{}𝒁\right]`$.

The general $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ transformation (48) of the (52) form is reached through the squeezing operation $`U_L=U_1U_2:`$

$$U_i=e^{i\frac{\mathrm{}t}{2}\left(\kappa _ia_{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}e^{i\phi _i}\kappa _i^{}a_{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}e^{i\phi _i}\right)},$$
(58)
over the bipartite Gaussian state $`\rho _G`$, with $`|\kappa _i|t=\theta _i2r_i`$, the squeezing parameter associated with the transformation on the mode $`i`$ and $`e^{i\varphi _i}=\kappa _i/|\kappa _i|`$. An important result is that while all the BGSS set can be mapped into the P-representable set by suitable $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ transforms, it is not possible to restitute the original matrices $`𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}`$ and $`𝐕_\mathrm{𝟐}`$ with unitary rotations. That is only reached applying over the squeezing operation. This is immediate from the two invariant forms. Since both covariances reduced matrices $`𝐕_\mathrm{𝟏}^{}`$ and $`𝐕_\mathrm{𝟐}^{}`$ are proportional to the identity, unitary rotations transform the invariant forms among themselves.

Remark 3: Through the $`𝕊`$ mapping, we have reached the special subset of locally $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ invariant forms. However the general separability condition can possibly be set equivalent to the special P-representable subset under an appropriate nonlocal operation forming the mapping $`𝕊`$. Let us consider again the condition for separability (23). It can be equivalently written as

$$𝐕+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{𝐓𝐄𝐓}0.$$
(59)
Now let $`U_{NL}`$ be a nonlocal operation:

$`U_{NL}𝐯U_{NL}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{𝐌𝐯},`$ (60)
where $`𝐌`$ is a general transformation matrix: $`𝐌`$ Sp(4,R). Such a general $`𝐌`$, when acting on (59) must leave V invariant in form ($`𝐕^{}`$), while $`𝐌^{}\mathrm{𝐓𝐄𝐓𝐌}`$ must go necessarily to $`𝐈`$, such that (59) writes as

$$𝐕^{}\frac{1}{2}𝐈0,$$
(61)
which is the transformed P-representable subset condition. The Stone - von Neumann theorem provides that if $`𝐌`$ exists it must be unitarily implementable . Nonetheless, finding the corresponding $`U_{NL}`$ operator may not be a simple exercise and we leave this point for future research.

## VI Conclusion

In conclusion, we have derived a complete description of bipartite Gaussian separable states, and have proved that P-representable states form a subset of the set of all bipartite Gaussian separable states, existent only under special symmetry of the covariance matrix. We can state that for positive definite bipartite Gaussian operators, which describe physical quantum states, P-representability is a necessary and sufficient condition for separability only for the subset of locally $`Sp(2,R)Sp(2,R)`$ invariant Gaussian states. In General $`𝕊`$.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to P. Marian and E. Santos to bring Refs.  and , respectively, to my knowledge. I want to thank A.Z. Khoury, K. Dechoum, M.K. Olsen, D. Jonathan, P.H. Souto Ribeiro and V.V. Dodonov for many interesting discussions. This work is partially supported by FAPESP and Instituto do Milênio de Informação Quântica (CNPq).


text:
# Two photon absorption and coherent control with broadband down-converted light

\]www.weizmann.ac.il/home/feyaron/

## Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate two-photon absorption (TPA) with broadband down-converted light (squeezed vacuum). Although incoherent and exhibiting the statistics of a thermal noise, broadband down-converted light can induce TPA with the same sharp temporal behavior as femtosecond pulses, while exhibiting the high spectral resolution of the narrowband pump laser. Using pulse-shaping methods, we coherently control TPA in Rubidium, demonstrating spectral and temporal resolutions that are 3-5 orders of magnitude below the actual bandwidth and temporal duration of the light itself. Such properties can be exploited in various applications such as spread-spectrum optical communications, tomography and nonlinear microscopy.

In two-photon absorption (TPA), two photons whose sum energy equals that of an atomic transition, must arrive at the atom together. The two, seemingly contradicting, demands of a narrow temporal and a narrow spectral behavior of the inducing light are typically maximized by transform-limited pulses, which exhibit the highest peak intensity possible for a given spectral bandwidth. Nonetheless, it was shown Nature396 ; PRA60 ; Weiner&Zheng2 ; PRL1  that pulses can be shaped in a way that will stretch them temporally yet will not affect the transition probability, and even increase it in certain cases. Other experiments have exploited coherent control Tannor&Rice ; Shapiro&Brumer ; Warren&Rabitz ; Rice&Zhao  to increase the spectral selectivity of nonlinear interactions induced by ultrashort pulses Lang&Mutzkus ; Nirit&Dan ; Gershgoren&Bartles ; however, the spectral resolution demonstrated by these methods remains considerably inferior to that obtained by narrowband, continuous lasers. Few experiments Georgiades&Kimble ; Georgiades&Polzik  have performed TPA with coherent, narrowband down-converted light, demonstrating nonclassical features which appear at very low powers Lin\_S\_89 ; Lin\_E\_90 ; Lin\_E\_97 , and result from the time and energy correlations (entanglement) between the down-converted photon-pairs Mandel&Wolf ; Burnham&Weinberg ; Hong&Ou . At high power levels (as those discussed in this work) these correlations vanish, yet similarly nonclassical phase and amplitude correlations Mollow&Glauber ; McNeil&Gardiner  appear between the signal and idler beams. Unlike the time and energy correlations at low powers, these phase and amplitude correlations cannot be described in the usual form of second-order coherence. At sufficiently high powers, which greatly exceed the single-photons regime, broadband down-converted light that is pumped by a narrowband laser is inherently incoherent, and exhibits the properties of a broadband thermal noise Mandel&Wolf ; Scully&Zubairy ; consequently, it is not expected to be effective at inducing TPA. Nevertheless, it was shown that at the appropriate conditions, the quantum correlations within the down-converted spectrum can give rise to efficient sum-frequency generation Abram&Raj ; QSFG .

In this work we show that down-converted light beams with a spectral bandwidth that exceeds a certain limit can induce TPA just like transform-limited pulses with the same bandwidth. Consequently, the interaction exhibits a sharp, pulse-like temporal behavior, and can be coherently controlled by pulse-shaping techniques, even though the down-converted light is neither coherent nor pulsed. This effect occurs as long as the transition energy lies within the spectrum of the pump laser that generated the light; thus, the spectral selectivity of the interaction is dictated by the narrowband pump laser and not by the orders of magnitude wider bandwidth of down-converted light itself. We demonstrate these principles experimentally by inducing and coherently controlling TPA in atomic Rubidium with down-converted light, and obtaining results that are practically identical to those obtained with coherent ultrashort pulses.

The underlying principle that enables coherent TPA with broadband down-converted light is based on the fact that the quantum interference that governs TPA involves pairs of electromagnetic modes. Since the excitation of an atomic level with frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ may be induced by any two photons with frequencies $`\omega `$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }\omega `$ , regardless of the exact value of $`\omega `$, the final population $`p_f`$ is proportional to PRA60 :

$`p_f\left|{\displaystyle E(\omega )E(\mathrm{\Omega }\omega )𝑑\omega }\right|^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.25em}2}},`$ (1)
where $`E(\omega )`$ is the spectral amplitude of the light. As is obvious from Eq. (1), it does not matter whether $`E(\omega )`$ has a defined phase for every $`\omega `$, but rather whether the product $`E(\omega )E(\mathrm{\Omega }\omega )`$ has a defined phase for every $`\omega `$. Despite the incoherence of each of the down-converted signal and idler beams, they exhibit exactly this mutually-coherent phase behavior at frequency-pairs, due to the inherent phase and amplitude quantum correlations within the down-converted spectrum Mollow&Glauber :

$`\frac{1}{\sqrt{\omega }}E_s(\omega )`$ $``$ $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{\omega _p\omega }}E_i^{}(\omega _p\omega ),`$ (2)
where $`\omega _p`$ is the pump frequency, and $`E_s(\omega ),E_i(\omega )`$ denote the spectral amplitudes of the signal and the idler beams, respectively. In the case of TPA induced by the combined signal and idler beams from the same source, these correlations have a drastic effect when the pump frequency is equal to the total transition frequency. Combining Equations (1) and (2), letting $`\omega _p=\mathrm{\Omega }`$, reveals that the random phase of $`E_s(\omega )`$ is always compensated by the opposite phase of $`E_i(\omega _p\omega )`$. Thus, the integrand in Eq. (1) has a constant phase, leading to a full constructive interference of all the spectral combinations, exactly as if the interaction was induced by a pair of transform-limited pulses with the same spectra as the signal and idler beams. Moreover, this TPA process will be sensitive to minute delays between the signal and idler beams, to dispersion and even to pulse shaping, exactly as if it was induced by a pair of ultrashort pulses. Since this constructive interference occurs only when the final state energy falls within the spectrum of the pump laser, the spectral resolution of the TPA process will be equal to the spectral bandwidth of the pump laser, regardless of the actual bandwidth of the down-converted light itself. Note that in the case of a continuous pump laser, this implies a possible spectral resolution of a few $`MHz`$ or even less, which is phenomenally high for an interaction that is induced by light with a spectral bandwidth that may be 5-7 orders of magnitude broader.

A complete quantum-mechanical analytic calculation Calculations , which takes into account the spectral bandwidths of the pump laser and of the atomic level, shows that the TPA signal is composed of two parts, which may be referred to as the ’coherent TPA’ and the ’incoherent TPA’. The coherent TPA results from the summation of conjugated spectral components, and indeed can be coherently controlled. The incoherent TPA, however, results from the summation of all other random spectral combinations and is a direct result of the incoherence of the down-converted light; therefore it is unaffected by spectral-phase manipulations and may be regarded as a background noise, which limits the equivalence of the down-converted light to a coherent pulse. The ratio between the coherent term $`I^c`$ and the incoherent term $`I^{ic}`$ can be approximated by :

$`{\displaystyle \frac{I^c}{I^{ic}}}{\displaystyle \frac{B}{(\gamma _p+\gamma _f)}}{\displaystyle \frac{n^2+\frac{1}{2\pi }n}{n^2}},`$ (3)
where $`n`$ is the spectral average of the mean photon flux, and $`B,\gamma _p,\gamma _f`$ are the bandwidths of the down-converted light, the pump laser and the final state, respectively. This expression reveals the importance of using spectrally broad down-converted light. The coherent term becomes dominant only when the down-converted bandwidth exceeds both the pump bandwidth and the final level width: $`B>(\gamma _p+\gamma _f)(\frac{n^2}{n^2+\frac{1}{2\pi }n})`$. Equation (3) shows that the coherent term exhibits a linear intensity dependence at low powers, as was previously shown Lin\_S\_89 ; Lin\_E\_90  and experimentally observed Georgiades&Kimble .

Our experimental layout is described in Fig. 1. The pump laser (Spectra-Physics MOPO-SL laser) was tuned to emit 3 $`ns`$ pulses with a bandwidth of 0.04 $`nm`$ around 516.65 $`nm`$, which corresponds to the $`5S4D`$ transition in Rb (Fig. 1a). These pulses pumped a BBO crystal that was located inside a low-finesse resonator, with the phase-matching conditions chosen to obtain broadband ($``$ 100 $`nm`$ each), non-collinear signal and idler beams. The signal beam was directed through a computer-controlled pulse-shaper, which is normally used to temporally shape femtosecond pulses and performs as a spectral-phase filter Weiner\_Shaping . From the pulse-shaper the signal beam continued to a computer-controlled delay line, and then was combined with the idler beam by a dichroic mirror. The combined beams entered the Rb cell, and the induced TPA was measured through the resulting fluorescence at 780 $`nm`$. Our analysis predicts that the down-converted beams, each 3 $`ns`$ long with a peak power of about 1 $`MW`$ and a spectral bandwidth of about 100 $`nm`$, should induce TPA with the same efficiency and temporal resolution as 23 $`fs`$ pulses with a peak power of about 150 $`GW`$, while exhibiting a spectral resolution of 0.04 $`nm`$.

To verify these predictions experimentally, we scanned both the pump wavelength and the relative delay between the signal and idler beams. Fig. 2 shows the TPA signal versus the signal-idler relative delay and the pump-wavelength. As is evident, for off-resonance pump or for large signal-idler delays, only low efficiency TPA signal is observed, which is insensitive to either pump wavelength or signal-idler delay. This signal corresponds to the classical, incoherent TPA background signal. However, when the pump wavelength was set to the $`5S4D`$ transition resonance, an additional, high efficiency, TPA signal appeared. The sharp response of this coherent TPA signal to a few femtoseconds delay between the beams is practically identical to the case of TPA induced by two coherent, 23 $`fs`$ pulses. This temporal resolution is 5 orders of magnitude better than the actual 3 $`ns`$ temporal duration of the down-converted light.

Since the peak power of the equivalent transform-limited pulses is extremely high (150 $`GW`$), the signal and idler beams had to be expanded and attenuated in order to avoid complete saturation of the transition. Unfortunately, we could not attenuate the beams enough to avoid saturation completely, due to high levels of noise in our system. As a result, our measurements had to be performed in a partially saturated regime, where the measured intensity dependence of the TPA process was less than quadratic, and the $`4D`$ level was power-broadened. Thus, the observed 0.12 $`nm`$ spectral width of the coherent TPA is dictated by the bandwidth of the pump laser (0.04 $`nm`$) and the width of the (power-broadened) $`4D`$ level ($``$ 0.08 $`nm`$). This spectral resolution is 2000 times narrower than the total bandwidth of the down-converted light.

Finally, we demonstrated coherent quantum control over the coherent TPA process, in a similar way to coherent control of TPA with ultrashort pulses Nature396 . For that we used the pulse shaper to apply a square-wave phase filter on the signal spectrum (Fig. 3a). With ultrashort pulses this has the effect of splitting the pulse temporally to a train of several smaller pulses. Fig. 3b shows precisely this behavior of the coherent TPA signal as a function of the signal-idler delay. Fig. 3c depicts the experimental and theoretical TPA signal at zero delay as a function of the magnitude of the square wave phase filter. The results, which are identical to those obtained in coherent control experiments with femtosecond pulses, show the cyclic transition between complete constructive and destructive quantum interference of the different spectral sections, and demonstrate the ability to fully control the coherent TPA process.

Broadband down-conversion of a narrowband pump can be considered as an optical spread-spectrum source Viterbi , which generates both a broadband white noise key and its conjugate key simultaneously. A spread-spectrum communication channel can therefore be established by modulating the phase of one of the keys at the transmitter and using TPA or sum-frequency generation to reveal the resulting modulations of the coherent signal at the receiver. Note that any phase modulations performed on the incoherent signal beam (or even the mere presence of the signal beam, in the existence of background noise) cannot be detected without the idler beam. Furthermore, many such communication channels can share the same signal and idler beams by assigning a unique signal-idler delay for each channel, thus creating an optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) network Communication . Other applications may include nonlinear microscopy and tomography, where the high efficiency and spatial resolution of ultrashort pulses can be obtained with continuous, non-damaging intensities.

We wish to thank professor Daniel Zajfman for the loan of the laser system, Adi Diner for advise and assistance, and professor Nir Davidson for many helpful discussions.


text:
# Achievement of 35 MV/m in the Superconducting Nine-Cell Cavities for TESLA

## 1 Introduction

Electron-positron colliders have played a central role in the discovery of new quarks and leptons and the formulation and detailed verification of the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. Circular colliders beyond LEP are ruled out by the huge synchrotron radiation losses, increasing with the fourth power of energy. Hence a linear collider is the only viable approach to center-of-mass energies in the TeV regime. Such a linear lepton collider would be complementary to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and allow detailed studies of the properties of the Higgs particle(s). In the baseline design of the superconducting TESLA collider  the center-of-mass energy is 500 GeV (TESLA-500), well above the threshold for the production of the Standard-Model Higgs particle. The possibility for a later upgrade to 800 GeV (TESLA-800) is considered an essential feature to increase the research potential of the facility for the study of supersymmetry and physics beyond the Standard Model.

The design gradient of the TESLA-500 niobium cavities (23.4 MV/m) was chosen at a time when the typical accelerating fields in superconducting cavities were in the order of 3–5 MV/m. The factor of five increase presented an ambitious goal which, however, has been reached owing to the concentrated R$`\&`$D efforts of the TESLA collaboration and of other institutions. A detailed description of the nine-cell cavities for the TESLA Test Facility (TTF) linac can be found in . In the most recent series of 24 industrially produced TTF cavities the average gradient was measured to be $`25\pm 2.6`$MV/m at a quality factor $`Q_0=10^{10}`$. After the fabrication process these resonators were cleaned at DESY by chemical etching (“buffered chemical polishing BCP”, see below) and subjected to a $`1400^{}`$C heat treatment to enhance the low-temperature thermal conductivity of the niobium.

After many years of intensive R$`\&`$D there exists now compelling evidence that the BCP process limits the attainable field in multi-cell niobium cavities to about 30 MV/m, significantly below the physical limit of about 45 MV/m which is given by the condition that the rf magnetic field has to stay below the critical field of the superconductor. For the type II superconductor niobium the maximum tolerable rf field appears to be close to the thermodynamic critical field (190 mT at 2 Kelvin).

Since a number of years, an improved preparation technique of the inner cavity surface by electrolytic polishing (or “electropolishing” for short) has opened the way to gradients of 35 - 43 MV/m in 1.3 GHz single-cell cavities . This development motivated a thorough R&D program on the electropolishing (EP) of single-cell test cavities. The results have been published recently . In the present paper we report on the successful transfer of the EP technology to the nine-cell TESLA cavities.

## 2 Preparation of the inner cavity surface

### 2.1 Chemical etching and electrolytic polishing

Here we give a short outline of the chemical and electro-chemical methods which are applied to clean and prepare the inner cavity surface after the fabrication process. More details are found in . Niobium metal has a natural Nb2O5 layer with a thickness of about 5 nm which is chemically rather inert and can be dissolved only with hydrofluoric acid (HF). The sheet rolling of niobium produces a damage layer of about 100 $`\mu `$m thickness that has to be removed in order to obtain a surface with excellent superconducting properties. One possibility is chemical etching which consists of two alternating processes: dissolution of the Nb2O5 layer by HF and re-oxidation of the niobium by a strongly oxidizing acid such as nitric acid (HNO3) . To reduce the etching speed a buffer substance is added, for example phosphoric acid H3PO4 , and the mixture is cooled below 15C. The standard procedure with a removal rate of about 1 $`\mu `$m per minute is called buffered chemical polishing (BCP) with an acid mixture containing 1 part HF (40%), 1 part HNO3 (65%) and 2 parts H3PO4 (85%) in volume. At TTF, a closed-circuit chemistry system is used in which the acid is pumped from a storage tank through a cooling system and a filter into the cavity and then back to the storage.

A gentler preparation method is provided by electrolytic polishing (EP). The material is removed in an acid mixture under the flow of an electric current. Sharp edges are smoothed out and a very glossy surface can be obtained. The electric field is high at protrusions so these will be dissolved readily while the field is low in the boundaries between grains and little material will be removed here. This is an essential difference to the BCP process which tends to enhance the steps at grain boundaries.

The electro-chemical processes are as follows :

$`2\text{Nb}+5\text{SO}_4^{}+5\text{H}_2\text{O}`$ $``$ $`\text{Nb}_2\text{O}_5+10\text{H}^++5\text{SO}_4^{}+10\text{e}^{}`$
$`\text{Nb}_2\text{O}_5+6\text{HF}`$ $``$ $`\text{H}_2\text{NbOF}_5+\text{NbOF}_20.5\text{H}_2\text{O}+1.5\text{H}_2\text{O}`$
$`\text{NbOF}_20.5\text{H}_2\text{O}+4\text{HF}`$ $``$ $`\text{H}_2\text{NbF}_5+1.5\text{H}_2\text{O}`$
The roughness of electropolished niobium surfaces is less than $`0.1\mu `$m  while chemically etched surfaces are at least an order of magnitude rougher. The main advantage of EP is the far better smoothening of the ridges at grain boundaries. An electropolishing of at least 100 $`\mu `$m is needed both for surface smoothening and damage layer removal.

### 2.2 Electropolishing of nine-cell cavities

At the KEK laboratory a long-term experience exists with the electropolishing of multi-cell cavities. The five-cell 508 MHz cavities of the TRISTAN electron-positron storage ring  were electropolished by an industrial company (Nomura Plating). Within a joint KEK-DESY program 9 TESLA nine-cell resonators of the most recent industrial production have been electropolished at Nomura Plating. The EP parameters are summarized in table 1.

The cavity is installed horizontally (see figure 1) together with the aluminum cathode. The lower half of the cavity is filled with the electrolyte which reacts with the the niobium surface only very slowly when no voltage is applied (etch rate less than 1 nm per hour). After the equilibrium filling level has been reached, the cavity is put into rotation and the voltage is applied between cavity and cathode while the current-voltage relationship is monitored. At a voltage of 15 - 20 V, the current through the electrolyte starts to oscillate indicating that the following two processes are taking place in alternating order: dissolution of the Nb2O5 by HF and re-oxidation of the Nb by H2SO4. The best polishing results are obtained for a current oscillation of 10 - 15% about the mean value. The temperature of the acid mixture is kept in the range 30 - 35C. Temperatures above $`40^{}`$C must be avoided as they result in etching pits on the surface. When the desired amount of material has been removed, the current is switched off. The rotation is stopped and the cavity is put into vertical position to drain the acid mixture. After rinsing with pure water the electrode is dismounted while keeping the cavity filled with water, thus avoiding drying stains from acid residues. The cavity is then transported into a clean room for high-pressure water rinsing.

An electropolishing facility for nine-cell cavities has recently been commissioned at DESY. The electrolyte is circulated in a closed loop. The cathode is made from pure aluminum and is surrounded with a tube made from a porous PTFE111Polytetrafluoroethylene, for example Teflon® cloth to prevent the electrolytically produced hydrogen from reaching the niobium surface. Except for the cathode all components of the EP system are made from chemically inert plastic materials, e.g. Polyperfluoro Alkoxyethylene (PFA), Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) or PTFE. The acid mixture is stored in a Teflon-cladded container and water cooled via a Teflon-covered heat exchanger. The electrolyte is pumped with a membrane pump through a cooler and a filter with 1 $`\mu `$m pore size into the hollow cathode which has openings at the centers of the cavity cells. Inside the cavity the volume above the electrolyte is filled with dry nitrogen to prevent water vapour absorption by the strongly hygroscopic H2SO4. The exhaust gases are pumped through a neutralization system to avoid environmental hazards.

## 3 Performance measurements on electropolished nine-cell cavities

### 3.1 Low-power tests in the accelerating mode

All nine electropolished cavities were cleaned at DESY by rinsing with ultrapure water at high pressure. After the drying in a class-100 clean room, a low-power input coupler and a pickup antenna were mounted and the cavity was closed with UHV vacuum flanges. A first performance test was carried out in a vertical bath cryostat filled with superfluid helium at 2 Kelvin. In this cryostat, the rf power of a few 100 watts is transmitted into the cavity through a movable antenna in the beam pipe section of the cavity. The external quality factor $`Q_{ext}`$ is adjusted to be close to the intrinsic quality factor $`Q_010^{10}`$. The time constant of the cavity is determined by the “loaded quality factor”

$$\tau =\frac{Q_L}{\omega _0}\mathrm{with}Q_L=(\frac{1}{Q_0}+\frac{1}{Q_{ext}})^1\frac{Q_0}{2}.$$

A typical value is $`\tau 1`$s. When the cavity is operated in the pulsed mode the intrinsic quality factor can be easily computed from the time decay of the stored energy. The coupling strength of the pickup antenna to the electric field inside the cavity is determined by pulsed measurements at low gradient. Once this calibration is known the excitation curve $`Q_0(E_{acc})`$ can be measured in the continuous wave (cw) mode.

In the low-power test, two cavities showed strong field emission at 15-17 MV/m. These were sorted out for a second EP which is planned to take place in the recently commissioned EP facility at DESY (see below).

The remaining seven cavities without strong field emission, having passed the low-power test successfully, were then evacuated to a pressure of $`10^7`$ mbar and subjected to a 48-hour bake-out at $`120^{}`$C. According to the experience with the single-cell cavities  this bakeout is an essential prerequiste for achieving high gradients in electropolished cavities. After the bakeout the performance tests in the vertical bath cryostat were repeated. The results of these second tests are discussed in the following.

The excitation curves of the four best cavities after EP at KEK are shown in figure 2. In November 2003 one of the field-emission loaded cavities has been repolished in the new EP facility at DESY. The test results of this cavity at helium temperatures between 1.6 and 2.0 K are shown in Fig. 3 . Accelerating fields of up to 40 MV/m have been reached which is a record for multicell niobium cavities. The maximum accelerating fields achieved in all eight TTF cavities after bakeout are shown in figure 4. These results prove that the TESLA-800 gradient of 35 MV/m is indeed within reach.

### 3.2 Performance of single cells in the nine-cell cavities

In an $`N`$-cell cavity, each single-cell eigenmode splits up into $`N`$ coupled modes which are characterized by an rf phase advance of $`m\pi /N`$ between neighbouring cells ($`m=1,\mathrm{}N`$). For a perfectly tuned cavity the normalized amplitudes ($`A_{m,j}`$) in the individual cells are

$$A_{m,j}=\sqrt{\frac{2\delta _{mN}}{N}}\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{m\pi }{2N}(2j1)\right)$$
(1)
where $`m`$ is the mode index, $`j`$ the cell number and $`\delta _{mN}`$ is the Kronecker symbol ($`\delta _{mN}=1`$ for $`m=N`$ and 0 otherwise). Only in the $`\pi `$ mode with $`m=N`$ (the accelerating mode) the electric field has the same magnitude in each cell. By measuring the excitation curves for all coupled modes it is possible to determine the maximum attainable field in each cell, apart from a left-right ambiguity: in a nine-cell structure the cells 1 and 9, 2 and 8, 3 and 7, 4 and 6 are indistuinguishable in this analysis. The mode analysis is therefore a useful tool to identify cells of lower performance and to enhance the statistical basis for comparing the relative benefits of various chemical or electro-chemical treatments. It should be noted, though, that the electric field amplitudes in the cells depend critically on slight frequency detunings from cell to cell. Therefore the accelerating gradients derived from the mode analysis have a larger systematic uncertainty ($`15\%`$) than the gradient in the accelerating $`\pi `$ mode which is determined with an accuracy of 8%.

The single-cell performance of etched and electropolished cavities is compared in figure 5. In the BCP-treated nine-cell TTF cavities of the third production series, the average maximum gradient amounts to 28.9 MV/m. The electrolytically polished cavities, on the other hand, achieve an average single-cell gradient of 35.6 MV/m. (As mentioned above, one cavity with heavy field-emission loading has been left out). This is clear evidence that electropolishing is far superior to chemical etching in the preparation of the rf surface of the cavities.

The superiority of electropolishing was convincingly demonstrated in an earlier experiment at KEK, see figure 6 . A single-cell (S-3) cavity reached 38 MV/m after an EP $`120\mu `$m. A subsequent chemical etching of 60 resp. 130 $`\mu `$m reduced the gradient to 29 resp. 24 MV/m. A new electropolishing ($`150\mu `$m) recovered the initial high performance. Studies at DESY on electropolished single-cell and multi-cell cavities confirmed the performance degradation due to a subsequent etching, see figure 7. An etching of just 20 $`\mu `$m reduced the maximum accelerating gradient by 5 MV/m.

### 3.3 Long-term stability of the electropolished surface

The remarkable improvement of niobium cavities gained by electropolishing will of course only be useful for the accelerator if the EP surface preserves its good properties over a long time period. In a first endurance test at Saclay an EP-treated 1-cell cavity was exposed to clean air for 2 months without a significant change in performance. This was verified in experiments at DESY (see figure 8) for a period of 6 months. One single-cell cavity was filled with nitrogen and kept for more than 18 months. In this case a reduction of the initial, very high gradient was observed but the usable gradient was still above 35 MV/m, see Fig. 9.

### 3.4 High temperature heat treatments

#### 3.4.1 Heat treatments of chemically etched cavities

The TTF cavities are made from niobium sheets by deep drawing and electron-beam welding. Two high-temperature heat treatments are applied. The first step is a two-hour annealing at 800C in an Ultra High Vacuum (UHV) furnace which serves two purposes: removal of dissolved hydrogen from the bulk niobium and mechanical stress release from the deep drawn and welded multicell structure. The second step is a four-hour treatment at very high temperature ($`1400^{}`$C) such that oxygen, nitrogen and carbon can diffuse out of the niobium. A titanium layer is evaporated onto the niobium surface to getter the foreign atoms and to protect the niobium against oxidation by the residual gas in the UHV furnace. The residual resistivity ratio $`RRR`$ and the low-temperature heat conductivity of the bulk niobium increase by a factor of two, and the average gradient in BCP-treated cavities grows by about 5 MV/m. The experience at TTF has shown that the $`1400^{}`$C heat treatment is an indispensible prerequiste for achieving gradients above 25 MV/m with a surface preparation by chemical etching (BCP).

It must be noted, however, that the $`1400^{}`$C annealing is accompanied with a number of undesirable effects: large grain growth, softening of the material, necessity of an additional etching to remove the titanium getter layer. To obtain good deep drawing properties the grain size of the niobium sheets is in the order of 50 $`\mu `$m. There is little grain growth at $`800^{}`$C but during the $`1400^{}`$C annealing the grain size grows up to several millimeters. The resulting tensile strength is very low, about 5 MPa, hence the cavities are quite vulnerable to plastic deformation and frequency detuning after the high-temperature treatment. Another problem are the boundaries between the large grains. The titanium getter penetrates deep into these boundaries, a depth of 60 $`\mu `$m has been measured in samples. The titanium must be completely removed since otherwise a drastically reduced performance is observed, see Fig. 10. For this reason the TTF cavities are subjected to an 80 $`\mu `$m BCP after the $`1400^{}`$C annealing.

#### 3.4.2 Heat treatments of electropolished cavities

The moderate annealing at around $`800^{}`$C is an important cavity preparation step which should be retained to avoid the danger of niobium hydride formation (”Q-disease”), see . On the other hand, the experience gained at KEK and DESY with the single-cell program justifies the expectation that the $`1400^{}`$C annealing can be safely discarded for electropolished cavities. The Japanese 1-cell cavities  were heat treated at $`T=760^{}`$C only, and in spite of a comparatively low residual resistivity ratio of $`RRR300`$, achieved gradients of 35 to 40 MV/m. In the CEA-CERN-DESY single-cell program  seven cavities were tested after the $`800^{}`$C annealing with an average gradient of 35.4$`\pm `$5.3 MV/m and three cavities were heat-treated at $`1400^{}`$C yielding 34.7$`\pm `$2.5 MV/m (see table 2).

The nine multicell TTF cavities sent to Japan for electrolytic polishing had previously undergone the standard BCP treatment at TTF. Five cavities had been annealed at $`800^{}`$C while four cavities were had been subjected to an additional $`1400^{}`$C annealing. The field-emission loaded cavity which was sorted out belonged to the first category. The maximum gradients achieved in the eight remaining 9-cell resonators have already been shown in Fig. 4, the average value is $`<E_{acc}>=34.0\pm 3.9`$MV/m for the $`800^{}`$C-annealed cavities and $`<E_{acc}>=33.0\pm 3.3`$MV/m for the $`1400^{}`$C-annealed cavities. Two $`800^{}`$C-annealed cavities belongs to the five excellent nine-cell cavities shown in figures 2 and 3. From the single-cell analysis of the eight cavities the following numbers are obtained: $`<E_{acc}>=35.6\pm 2.8`$MV/m for $`800^{}`$C-annealing and $`<E_{acc}>=35.6\pm 1.7`$MV/m for $`1400^{}`$C-annealing (see table 2). These results, combined with with the data from the single-cell R$`\&`$D programs, provide convincing evidence that the $`800^{}`$C annealing alone is sufficient to achieve excellent performance in electropolished nine-cell cavities.

In early 2004 a new series of nine-cell cavities will be delivered to DESY. It is foreseen to prepare these cavities by electropolishing and test them after the $`800^{}`$C annealing. If the same promising results should be obtained than found here, the $`1400^{}`$C annealing can certainly be avoided for the cavities of the proposed X ray Free Electron Laser at DESY since this machine requires only moderate acceleration fields. Further investigations will be needed to decide whether the $`1400^{}`$C annealing would provide a larger safety margin for the 800 GeV option of the TESLA collider.

### 3.5 High-power pulsed operation of electropolished cavities

#### 3.5.1 Excitation curves

In the TESLA collider the cavities have to be operated in the pulsed mode to keep the heat load on the superfluid helium system within acceptable limits. The rf power of about 210 kW per nine-cell cavity (for TESLA-500) is transmitted through a coaxial power coupler. The external quality factor amounts to $`Q_{ext}=2.510^6`$ at an accelerating field of 23.4 MV/m and an average beam current of 9 mA (during the rf pulse). The cavity has a filling time of 500 $`\mu `$s and a “flat-top” duration of 800 $`\mu `$s during which the bunched beam is accelerated. The nominal pulse repetition rate is 5 Hz. The time constant of the cavity equipped with a high-power coupler is dominated by the external quality factor and practically insensitive to the intrinsic quality factor $`Q_0`$ since

$$Q_L=(1/Q_0+1/Q_{ext})^1Q_{ext}\mathrm{for}Q_{ext}Q_0.$$

Therefore, $`Q_0`$ cannot be derived from the time decay of the stored energy but instead has to be calculated from the heat transfer to the helium bath which can be measured only with large errors at low fields.

So far, two cavities (AC72, AC73) were prepared for a high power test without electron beam. The cavities were welded into a liquid helium tank and equipped with a high power coupler and a frequency tuning mechanism. The tests have been carried out in a horizontal cryostat at the TESLA Test Facility. Figure 11 shows the test results at a repetition rate of 5 Hz for AC73 and of 1 Hz for AC72 in comparison with the excitation curves measured in the low-power tests. It is very encouraging that both cavities achieve the same maximum gradient as in the low-power test. Within the large errors also the quality factors are in agreement. Another very important result is that cavity AC73 could be operated at 35 MV/m for more than 1100 hours and at 36 MV/m for 57 hours without any degradation.

Cavity AC73 was tested three times at a repetition rate of 10 Hz. Between the first two tests the cavity was warmed up to room temperature, between tests 2 and 3 it was kept for several hours at 150 K to check for a possible $`Q`$ degradation through the formation of niobium hydrides. No indication of the “Q-disease” was seen. In all three 10 Hz tests the same high performance as at 5 Hz was achieved. In cavity AC72 a lower quality factor was seen at repetition frequencies above 1 Hz. This could be traced back to excessive heating at a damaged cable connector of a higher-order mode coupler.

#### 3.5.2 Frequency stabilization in pulsed operation

The Lorentz force between the rf magnetic field and the induced currents in a thin surface layer causes a slight deformation of the cells in the order of micrometers and a shift in resonance frequency which is proportional to $`E_{acc}^2`$. In the pulsed operation of the 9-cell cavities this results in a time dependent frequency shift during the rf pulse. The TESLA cavities are reinforced by stiffening rings which are welded between neighbouring cells and reduce the detuning by a factor of two. Experimental data on the detuning are shown in Fig. 12. The “Lorentz force detuning” can be handled adequately by the rf system up to the nominal TESLA-500 gradient of 23.4 MV/m.

To allow for higher gradients the stiffening must be improved, or alternatively, the cavity detuning must be compensated. The latter approach has been successfully demonstrated using a piezoelectric tuner, see Fig. 13. The piezo-actuator changes the cavity length dynamically by a few $`\mu `$m and stabilizes the resonance frequency to better than 100 Hz during the flat-top time. The data in Fig. 13 prove that the stiffening rings augmented by a piezoelectric tuning system will permit to operate the electropolished cavities at fixed resonance frequency up to the TESLA-800 gradient of 35 MV/m. In addition, the piezoelectric actuator may be used to cancel microphonic noise between the rf pulses.

## 4 Discussion of the results and conclusions

A comprehensive understanding why electropolishing is so much superior to chemical etching is still missing, however a few explanations exist. The sharp ridges at the grain boundaries of an etched niobium surface may lead to local enhancements of the rf magnetic field and thereby cause a premature breakdown of superconductivity at these localized spots. A model based on this idea was developed by Knobloch et al.  and can account for the reduction of the quality factor $`Q_0`$ at high field. Magnetic field enhancements will be much smaller on the smooth EP surface. Another advantage of a mirror-like surface is that a surface barrier of the Bean-Livingston type  may exist. The surface barrier prevents the penetration of magnetic flux into the bulk niobium in a certain range beyond the lower critical field $`B_{c1}`$ ($`160`$mT for niobium at 2 K). The “penetrating field” $`B_{pen}`$ exceeds $`B_{c1}`$ considerably for a perfectly smooth surface. Magnetic fluxoids will enter and leave the material only above this penetrating field, hence the power dissipation associated with fluxoid motion will start only at $`B_{rf}>B_{pen}`$. The delayed flux penetration was experimentally verified in electropolished samples of the type II superconductors Pb-Tl and Nb0.993O0.007 . The experiments showed also that roughening of the surface by scratching and chemical etching destroyed the barrier and reduced the penetrating field to $`B_{pen}=B_{c1}`$. From these results we may conclude that an EP-treated superconducting cavity is likely to remain in the Meissner phase up to an rf magnetic field exceeding $`B_{c1}`$ by a significant amount whereas a BCP-treated cavity will go into the mixed phase at $`B_{c1}`$ and then suffer from enhanced power dissipation.

The two arguments for the superiority of electropolished cavities refer to the topological structure of the surface: it is smooth for EP and rough for BCP. However, the positive influence of the 120C bakeout on the high-field performance of EP-cavities cannot be explained that way because the surface topology will not be changed by the bakeout. For a discussion of conceivable physico-chemical processes occuring during the bakeout we refer to the review talk by B. Visentin at the recent SRF2003 workshop .

In summary we can say that electropolished bulk niobium cavities offer the high accelerating gradients which are required for the upgrade of the TESLA collider to 800 GeV. For the first time, accelerating fields of 35 MV/m have been achieved in nine-cell cavities. One cavity could be excited to 39 MV/m even without the 1400C heat treatment, which is an indispensible prerequisite for the BCP-treated TTF cavities to reach 25 MV/m. In two high-power tests it could be verified that EP-cavities preserve their excellent performance after welding into the helium cryostat and assembly of the high-power coupler. One cavity has been operated for 1100 hours at the TESLA-800 gradient of 35 MV/m and 57 hours at 36 MV/m without loss in performance.

## 5 Acknowledgments

We thank P. Kneisel and B. Visentin for stimulating discussions on the bakeout effect.

We would like to thank the following people for their help with the high power rf tests and piezo operation: C. Albrecht, V. Ayvazyan, A. Bosotti, J. Eschke, A. Goessel, R. Lange, R. Paparella, H.-B. Peters, P. Sekalski and the DESY groups MKS3, MVP, MHF-P, MHF-SL and MKS1.