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# Ricci flow on Kähler manifolds

## 1 Introduction and main theorems

In the last two decades, the Ricci flow, introduced by R. Hamilton in , has been a subject of intense study. The Ricci flow provides an indispensable tool of deforming Riemannian metrics towards canonical metrics, such as Einstein ones. It is hoped that by deforming a metric to a canonical metric, one can further understand geometric and topological structures of underlying manifolds. For instance, it was proved  that any closed 3-manifold of positive Ricci curvature is diffeomorphic to a spherical space form. We refer the readers to  for more information.

If the underlying manifold is a Kähler manifold, the normalized Ricci flow in a canonical Kähler class 111A Kähler class is canonical if the first Chern class is proportional to this Kähler class.  preserves the Kähler class. It follows that the Ricci flow can be reduced to a fully nonlinear parabolic equation on almost pluri-subharmonic functions:

$$\frac{\phi }{t}=\mathrm{log}det\left(\frac{\left(\omega +\overline{}\phi \right)^n}{\omega ^n}\right)+\phi h_\omega ,$$

where $`\phi `$ is the evolved Kähler potential; and $`\omega `$ is the fixed Kähler metric in the canonical Kähler class, while $`Ric(\omega )`$ is the corresponding Ricci form and

$$Ric(\omega )\omega =\overline{}h_\omega ,\mathrm{and}_M(e^{h_\omega }1)\omega ^n=0.$$

Usually, this reduced flow is called the Kähler Ricci flow. H.D. Cao  proved that the Kähler Ricci flow always has a global solution. He also proved that the solution converges to a Kähler-Einstein metric if the first Chern class of the underlying Kähler manifold is zero or negative. Consequently, he reproved the famous Calabi-Yau theorem . On the other hand, if the first Chern class of the underlying Kähler manifold is positive, the solution of a Kähler Ricci flow may not converge to any Kähler-Einstein metric. This is because there are compact Kähler manifolds with positive first Chern class which do not admit any Kähler-Einstein metrics (cf. , ). A natural and challenging problem is whether or not the Kähler Ricci flow on a compact Kähler-Einstein manifold converges to a Kähler-Einstein metric. It was proved by S. Bando  for 3-dimensional Kähler manifolds and by N. Mok  for higher dimensional Kähler manifolds that the positivity of bisectional curvature is preserved under the Kähler Ricci flow. A long standing problem in the study of the Ricci flow is whether or not the Kähler Ricci flow converges to a Kähler-Einstein metric if the initial metric has positive bisectional curvature? In view of the solution of the Frankel conjecture by S. Mori  and Siu-Yau , we suffice to study this problem on a Kähler manifold which is biholomorphic to $`P^n`$. Since $`\text{C}P^n`$ admits a Kähler-Einstein metric, the above problem can be restated as follows: On a compact Kähler-Einstein manifold, does the Kähler Ricci flow converge to a Kähler-Einstein metric? In this note, we announce an affirmative solution to this problem.

###### Theorem 1.1.

 Let $`M`$ be a Kähler-Einstein manifold with positive scalar curvature. If the initial metric has nonnegative bisectional curvature and positive at least at one point, then the Kähler Ricci flow will converge exponentially fast to a Kähler-Einstein metric with constant bisectional curvature.

###### Remark 1.2.

The above theorem in complex dimension $`1`$ was proved first by Hamilton . B. Chow  later showed that the assumption that the initial metric has positive curvature in $`S^2`$ can be removed since the scalar curvature will become positive after finite time anyway.

###### Corollary 1.3.

The space of Kähler metrics with non-negative bisectional curvature is path-connected. Moreover, the space of metrics with non-negative curvature operator222In , Hamilton proved that the positivity of the curvature operator is preserved under Ricci flow in any compact manifold. is also path-connected.

###### Remark 1.4.

Using the same arguments, we can also prove the version of our main theorem for Kähler orbifolds.

###### Remark 1.5.

What we really need is that the Ricci curvature is positive. Since the condition on Ricci may not be preserved under the Ricci flow, in order to have the positivity of the Ricci curvature, we will use the fact that the positivity of the bisectional curvature is preserved.

###### Remark 1.6.

We need to assume the existence of Kähler-Einstein metric because we will use a nonlinear inequality from . Such an inequality is nothing but the Moser-Trudinger-Onofri type inequality if the Kähler-Einstein manifold is the Riemann sphere.

## 2 Outline of Proof

The standard methods in the Ricci flow involve the pointwise estimate of curvature by using its evolution equation, the blow-up analysis and the classification of possible singularity type. Unfortunately, there are only a few examples of proving convergence of the Ricci flow to a canonical one (cf.   and  et al). One of the main reasons is that it is very hard to detect geometric information from a singular model arisen from a blow-up analysis.

In order to overcome this difficulty, we define a set of new functionals $`E_k(\phi )(k=0,1,2,\mathrm{}n).`$ The leading term of $`E_k`$ ($`k=0,1\mathrm{}n`$) is

$$_M\left(\mathrm{ln}det\left(\frac{\omega _{\phi }^{}{}_{}{}^{n}}{\omega ^n}\right)h_\omega \right)\underset{i=0}{\overset{k}{}}Ric(\omega _\phi )^i\omega ^{ki}\omega _{\phi }^{}{}_{}{}^{nk}.$$

Here $`\omega _\phi =\omega +\overline{}\phi `$ is the Kähler metric determined by the Kähler potential $`\phi .`$ The Euler-Lagrange equation for the functional $`E_k`$($`k=0,1\mathrm{}n`$) is

$$\mathrm{}_{\omega _\phi }\left(\frac{Ric(\omega _\phi )^k\omega _{\phi }^{}{}_{}{}^{nk}}{\omega _{\phi }^{}{}_{}{}^{n}}\right)\frac{nk}{k+1}\left(\frac{Ric(\omega _\phi )^{k+1}\omega _{\phi }^{}{}_{}{}^{nk1}}{\omega _{\phi }^{}{}_{}{}^{n}}\right)=\frac{nk}{k+1}_M\omega _{\phi }^{}{}_{}{}^{n}.$$

If $`k=0,`$ this leads to the usual constant scalar curvature metric equation. In general, critical metrics may not have constant scalar curvature.

The derivative of the functional $`E_k`$ over a one parameter family of automorphisms gives rise to a holomorphic invariant $`_k(k=0,1,2,\mathrm{}n).`$ One shall note that these functionals $`E_k`$ and holomorphic invariants $`_k`$ are defined in any Kähler class of any Kähler manifold. However, if the Kähler class is canonical on a Kähler-Einstein manifold, then these invariants vanish simultaneously. It follows that on a Kähler-Einstein manifold, these functionals are invariant under action of automorphisms. This important property enables us to modify the flow by automorphisms so that we can apply the fully nonlinear inequality of Tian . In fact, this inequality is a generalized version of the Moser-Trudinger-Onfri inequality333In $`S^2`$, we need to require a function to be perpendicular to the first eigenspace of the standard metric in $`S^2`$ in order to get better estimates. We need to do exactly the same here: we need to adjust the Kähler Ricci flow by automorphisms so that the evolved Kähler potential is always perpendicular to the first eigenspace of a fixed Kähler-Einstein metric.. Using the inequality, we can derive a uniform low bound of the evolved volume form along the modified Kähler Ricci flow; Consequently, we can derive a uniform lower bound of these functionals along the Kähler Ricci flow.

Furthermore, these functionals essentially decrease along the Kähler Ricci flow. Since the functional $`E_k`$ has a uniform lower bound over the entire Kähler Ricci flow, by computing its derivative, we have

$$_{t=0}^{\mathrm{}}_MR(\omega _\phi )(Ric(\omega _\phi )^k\omega ^k)\omega ^{nk}dt<C$$

for some uniform constant $`C.`$ In particular when $`k=1,`$ we obtain

$$_{t=0}^{\mathrm{}}_M(R(\omega _\phi )r)^2\omega _{\phi }^{}{}_{}{}^{n}𝑑t<C,$$

where $`r`$ is the average of the scalar curvature — a constant depending only on the Kähler class.

This means that $`_M(R(\omega _\phi )r)^2\omega _{\phi }^{}{}_{}{}^{n}`$ is small for almost all the time. In complex dimension 2, combining this integral estimate with Cao’s Harnack inequality for the scalar curvature and a generalized version of Klingenberg estimate on injective radius, we can prove that the scalar curvature is uniformly bounded from above over the entire Kähler Ricci flow. Once the scalar curvature is uniformly bounded, we then follow the standard arguments in the theory of parabolic equations to deduce the exponential convergence to a Kähler-Einstein metric for this flow. Therefore, we prove Theorem 1 in complex dimension 2. For high dimensional Kähler manifolds, it is more complicated to control the scalar curvature and we need to use some new ingredients from the theory of pluri-subharmonic functions.

The detailed proof of these results will appear elsewhere.

Department of mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA;
xiu@math.princeton.edu

Department of mathematics, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA;
tian@math.mit.edu


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# Short-range correlations in low-lying nuclear excited states

## Abstract

The electromagnetic transitions to various low-lying excited states of 16O, 48Ca and 208Pb are calculated within a model which considers the short-range correlations. In general the effects of the correlations are small and do not explain the required quenching to describe the data.

PACS number(s): 21.60.-n, 25.30.Dh

The description of the electron scattering form factors of low-lying excited states is still an unsolved problem. The disagreement between theory and experiment is particularly annoying for the high angular momentum stretched states which are composed by few particle-hole (p-h) configurations. Because of this relatively simple structure one expects that the independent particle model (IPM) should be able to reproduce the data. This is not far to be true for what concerns the shape of the form factors, but the theoretical results usually overestimate the data. The disagreement between theory and experiment is commonly summarized by a single number: the quenching factor Q, necessary to reproduce the data.

There have been various attempts to identify the sources of this disagreement, but the situation has not yet been clarified. The quenching produced by first order core polarization mechanism has been proposed in Ref.  but other studies  found this effect to be small. The quenchings of the 12- and 14- form factors in 208Pb have been explained by a Random Phase Approximation (RPA) plus particle vibration coupling model in Ref.  but these results have not been confirmed by a self consistent first- and second- RPA calculation .

In Ref.  a mechanism related to the presence of short-range correlations has been proposed. These correlations modify the occupation probability of the single particle levels, reducing the occupation of the hole states and producing a finite probability of occupying the particle states even when the nucleus is in its ground state. This idea is supported by the fact that elastic electron scattering data  and (e,e’p) data  in 208Pb can be explained assuming partial occupation probability of the single particle levels closed the Fermi surface .

In this work we have studied the electron excitation of some non collective low-lying states of doubly closed shell nuclei with a model that takes into account the short-range correlations. The starting point of our model is the CBF ansatz for the description of the nuclear ground state:

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_0=G|\mathrm{\Phi }_0,$$
(1)
where $`G`$ is a correlation function and $`|\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is a Slater determinant of single particle wave functions. The many-body responses induced by an operator $`O(𝐪)`$ can be written as:

$`S(𝐪,\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Im}{\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Psi }_0|O^+(𝐪)(HE_0\omega +i\eta )^1O(𝐪)|\mathrm{\Psi }_0}{\mathrm{\Psi }_0|\mathrm{\Psi }_0}}`$ (2)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Im}{\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}\xi _n^+(𝐪)(E_nE_0\omega +i\eta )^1\xi _n(𝐪),`$ (3)
where:

$$\xi _n(𝐪)=\frac{\mathrm{\Psi }_n|O(𝐪)|\mathrm{\Psi }_0}{\mathrm{\Psi }_n|\mathrm{\Psi }_n^{\frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Psi }_0|\mathrm{\Psi }_0^{\frac{1}{2}}}.$$
(4)
In the above equations $`H`$ indicates the hamiltonian, $`𝐪`$ and $`\omega `$ the momentum and energy transfer respectively and $`E`$ the energies of the nuclear system.

In our model the excited states are defined in analogy with Eq. (1): $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_n=G|\mathrm{\Phi }_n`$. The correlation $`G`$ is the same used to describe the ground state. With this ansatz we rewrite Eq. (4) as:

$$\xi _n(𝐪)=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_n|G^+O(𝐪)G|\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{\mathrm{\Phi }_0|G^+G|\mathrm{\Phi }_0}\left[\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_0|G^+G|\mathrm{\Phi }_0}{\mathrm{\Phi }_n|G^+G|\mathrm{\Phi }_n}\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}.$$
(5)
In principle the correlation function $`G`$ has a complicated operatorial structure, analogous to that of the nuclear hamiltonian. In the present work we have considered a purely scalar correlation function which is therefore commuting with the excitation operator $`O(𝐪)`$. The functional dependence of the correlation function is the Jastrow ansatz :

$$G(1,2\mathrm{}A)=\underset{i<j}{}f(r_{ij}),$$
(6)
where $`f`$ is a two-body correlation function and $`r_{ij}`$ is the distance between two nucleons. We introduce a function $`h_{ij}=f_{ij}^21`$ and we perform a cluster expansion  retaining only those terms where the function $`h_{ij}`$ appears only once. We have tested the model by comparing its results with those of the full calculations. A first comparison has been done for the nuclear matter quasi-elastic charge responses  and has shown the validity of our approximation. The model has also been used to evaluate the ground state charge density distributions  of various doubly closed shell nuclei. Even in this case the agreement with the results of the full calculations is very good.

In the present work we apply our model to describe the excitation of low-lying states induced by electron scattering. A detailed description of the model can be found in Ref.  where the explicit expressions of the transition matrix elements are given. We should remark however that while in the calculations of Ref.  the convection current was considered only at the mean-field level, in the present calculations, we have also evaluated all the correlated terms related to this current.

Our model requires two inputs, the set of single particle wave functions and the correlation function. They are not independent since, for a given hamiltonian, they are fixed through the variational principle by minimizing the energy expectation value. The single particle wave functions and the correlations we have used have been taken from Ref.  where energy minima of several doubly magic nuclei for the semi-realistic S3 interaction of Afnan and Tang have been found.

With this input we have calculated the electron excitations of various low-lying states in 16O, 48Ca and 208Pb nuclei and we have compared our results with the experimental data of Refs. -.

For magnetic excitations the comparison is done with the transverse form factor which can be unambiguously obtained for each cross section value. In the electric excitations, both longitudinal and transverse form factors contribute. Their extraction from the cross section data requires at least two measurements done at same value of the momentum transfer $`𝐪`$. Because of the difficulties related to this procedure , for the electric states we preferred to compare our calculations directly to the cross sections.

Since our model cannot describe collective effects, we have considered only those states characterized by one or at most two p-h excitations. We have estimated the degree of collectivity of the various excited states by making discrete RPA calculations with both a density dependent Landau-Migdal interaction  and the Jülich-Stony Brook interaction . We have selected those states having at least one p-h transition with $`X`$ amplitude value larger than 0.9 in both calculations.

From this analysis we found three states dominated by two p-h pairs. For these cases we have supposed that the wave function of the excited uncorrelated state could be described as a linear combination of the two p-h pairs:

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }_n=X_{ph}|\mathrm{\Phi }_{ph}+X_{p^{}h^{}}|\mathrm{\Phi }_{p^{}h^{}},$$
(7)
where the $`X_{ph}`$ amplitudes have been taken from the RPA solution and the other one have been fixed such that $`X_{ph}^2+X_{p^{}h^{}}^2=1`$.

The results of our calculations are summarized in Table I. The quenching factors $`Q`$ for the uncorrelated (IPM) and correlated calculations and the $`\chi ^2`$ per datum are compared. The values of the $`\chi ^2`$ have been evaluated after the application of the quenching factors to the original results.

The short-range correlations do not substantially change the IPM results. In some cases, the correlations reduce the cross section values, therefore the quenching factors increase. There are, however, various situations where the correlations effects go in the opposite direction.

We show in Figs. 1 and 2 the results obtained for the 4- state in 16O and for the 12+ in 208Pb to make more explicit some of the features of the results. The linear scale used in some panel of the two figures allows for a better identification of the correlations effects consisting in a more or less pronounced modification of the maximum of the distribution. The results are also plotted in a logarithmic scale since they are commonly presented in this way. In the 4- case the correlations enhance the value of the maximum. This implies a smaller $`Q`$ for the correlated calculation, as it is shown in the table. Even after the $`Q`$ factor has been applied the agreement with the data is rather poor, as the high values of the $`\chi ^2`$ indicate.

In Fig. 2 the 12+ cross sections calculated for two different values of the scattering angle are presented and compared with the data of Ref. . In this case the correlation lowers the maximum of the distribution. The 12+ excitation has been calculated as a pure neutron 1i11/2 1i$`{}_{}{}^{1}{}_{13/2}{}^{}`$ transition. The difference in the lowering produced by the correlation in panels $`a`$ and $`b`$ of the figure, i.e. the ratio between full and dashed lines, is within the 1%. This small difference is produced by the presence of the longitudinal response generated by the electric neutron form factor of Ref.  which we use in our calculations.

One can notice that the quenching factors required to reproduce the data are different for the two different scattering angles. However these two values are statistically compatible once the experimental uncertainties are considered.

From what we have presented it appears evident that the correlation effects are very small and cannot be considered relevant for the description of the experimental data. The size of these effects is in agreement with the results of microscopic nuclear matter calculations done within the Correlated Basis Function theory and using the Fermi Hypernetted Chain resummation techniques  which find occupation numbers very close to those of the IPM.

It is possible that some of the correlation components we have neglected, especially the tensor terms, could produce noticeable effects, as indicated in Ref. . On the other hand, microscopic calculations in both infinite systems  and finite nuclei , show that the scalar term is by far the largest one in the correlation. Furthermore, a study of the ground state charge and momentum distributions of doubly closed shell nuclei  indicate the small influence of these state dependent terms.

Our experience in RPA calculations  has shown that the presence of small amplitude p-h pairs can heavily modify the size, and sometime even the shape, of the form factor. For this reason we think that the origin of the quenching factor should be searched by looking with more detail at the coupling of the single particle excitations with the collective modes of the nucleus.

This work has been partially supported by the CICYT-INFN agreement and by the DGES (PB98-1367) and the Junta de Andalucía (FQM225).


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# Complex Phase Lag Behaviors of the 0.5 – 10 Hz QPOs in GRS 1915+105

## 1 Introduction

The superluminal source GRS 1915+105 displays a rich diversity of lightcurve morphology, power density spectrum (PDS), quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs), phase lags, and coherence. The lightcurve morphology varies from out-burst to intermittent out-burst, to quiescence (e.g. Belloni et al. 1997, 2000). The PDS shape can be either a broken power law with a flat top or a simple power law (Morgan, Remillard, & Greiner 1997). The QPO fundamental frequency ranges from mHz to 67 Hz (e.g. Morgan, Remillard, & Greiner 1997), and some QPOs were detected up to the third harmonic (Cui 1999).

Several studies have related the temporal behaviors with the spectral properties. For example, using the standard disk blackbody and power law model, Muno, Morgan, & Remillard (1999) found that the 0.5 – 10 Hz QPO frequency increases as the inner-disk color temperature increases from 0.7 to 1.5 keV. Chen, Swank, & Taam (1997) showed that the hardness ratio between the energy bands 11 – 30.5 keV and 2 – 11 keV is a good indicator for the presence of two types of QPOs. When this hardness ratio is above 0.1, GRS 1915+105 exhibited narrow 0.5 - 6 Hz QPOs. Broad QPOs or no QPO were observed when this hardness ratio is below 0.1. According to Markwardt, Swank, & Taam (1999), the 1 – 15 Hz QPOs were present when the power-law component became hard and intense, but the QPO frequency is correlated with the parameters of the thermal component. In these studies, the 0.5 – 10 Hz QPOs were treated as a single type of QPOs. However, our studies of the phase lag behaviors of the 0.5 – 10 Hz QPOs indicate that there are three types of 0.5 – 10 Hz QPO behaviors which can be classified according to the QPO frequency: 0.5 – 2.0 Hz, 2.0 – 4.5 Hz, and 4.5 – 10 Hz.

Complex phase lag (or hard lag) behaviors have been observed in the 3 – 12 Hz QPOs of XTE J1550–564 (Wijnands, Homan, & van der Klis 1999) and in the 66.8 mHz QPO of GRS 1915+105 (Cui 1999). Wijnands, Homan, & van der Klis (1999) found two types of 3 – 12 Hz QPOs in XTE J1550–564. The first type of QPOs have a broad QPO peak with a QPO frequency of 6 Hz. The hard lags of this type of QPOs are negative at both the fundamental and first harmonic frequencies. The second type of QPOs, which have narrow peaks and a fundamental peak frequency of 3 Hz, switch signs for the hard lags at the different harmonic frequencies. Similarly, Cui (1999) found that the hard lags of the 66.8 mHz QPO in GRS 1915+105 alternate from negative to positive values as the frequency increases from the fundamental to higher harmonic frequencies.

In this letter, we show the different phase lag behaviors of 0.5 – 10 Hz QPOs in 20 Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) observations of GRS 1915+105. We find that the phase lag behaviors are closely related to the QPO fundamental frequency and the spectral states. In section 2, we describe how the data were analyzed. In section 3, the analysis results are presented. In the last section, we discuss the implications of these results.

## 2 Data Reduction

To examine the phase lag behaviors, we selected the $`RXTE`$ observations published in Morgan, Remillard, & Greiner (1997) that showed QPOs in the frequency range of 0.5 – 10 Hz. We also picked several other observations in late 1996 and 1997 which cover a big dip in the $`RXTE`$ All Sky Monitor (ASM) light curve of GRS 1915+105. A full list of the observations is given in Table 1. The radio fluxes at the times of some of these observations are given in Pooley & Fender (1997) and Fender et al. (1999).

We extracted light curves using three energy bands, 3.3 – 5.8 keV, 5.8 – 13.1 keV, and 13.1 – 41.0 keV. The channels in the energy range of 2.5 – 3.3 keV were not used, because they have been binned together with the channels below 2.5 keV in the archival high time resolution data. The counts were summed into time bins of 7.8125 ms, and timing analyses were performed on intervals of 256 seconds.

The timing analyses included calculations of power density spectra and cross-spectra. In order to attenuate noise, we averaged the power spectra and cross-spectra over all observation intervals. In displaying the power density spectra, we used the Leahy normalization (Leahy et al. 1983) without subtracting white noise. Phase lags and coherence between signals at two different energy channels were obtained from the cross-spectra. We used Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the phase lag errors from the cross spectra. In the simulations, we assumed that the values of the real and imaginary parts had normal distributions, and used the fact that the cross-spectrum is a linear function of detector count rates.

We classified the GRS 1915+105 lightcurve profiles into two general states. One is the “quiescent” state in which the count rates on the 1-s time resolution lightcurves vary by less than 20% of the average count rates and there are no spikes wider than 10 seconds. The other is the “out-burst” or “flaring” state which has spikes wider than 10 seconds and count rates varying by more than 20% of the average value, but does not have large scale structures in the light curves. Belloni et al. (2000) classified the observations of GRS1915+105 into 12 classes (hereafter Belloni classes), based on their count rate and hardness characteristicsi. Our “quiescent” state corresponds to Belloni classes $`\varphi `$ and $`\chi `$, and the “flaring” state includes classes $`\gamma `$, $`\mu `$, $`\delta `$ and $`\beta `$.

We used a simple power law model plus interstellar absorption to fit the photon spectra in the energy range of 2.5 – 40 keV. Though this simple model does not give good fits to the data, the photon power-law index $`\alpha `$ is a good indicator of the spectral hardness. We defined three spectral states: soft state ($`\alpha `$ = 2.0 – 3.0), medium soft state ($`\alpha `$ = 3.0 – 4.0), and very soft state ($`\alpha >4.0`$).

## 3 Analysis Results

The results are summarized in Table 1. The observations are listed in the increasing order of the QPO fundamental frequency. Three types of hard lag behaviors were found in the observations. The hard lags at the fundamental and first harmonic frequencies are both positive when the fundamental frequency is low. When the fundamental frequency increases above 2 Hz but below 4.5 Hz, the hard lags become negative at the fundamental frequency but stay positive at the first harmonic frequency. When the fundamental frequency moves to even higher values, no significant first harmonic peak can be detected. While there is a smooth transition between these behaviors, to highlight their differences we describe the three types separately in the following sub-sections.

### 3.1 0.5 – 2 Hz QPOs

Figure 1 shows an example of the 0.5 – 2 Hz QPOs and the hard lags between the two energy bands (3.3 – 5.8 keV and 13.1 – 41.0 keV). Both the fundamental and first harmonic peaks are significantly detected. The hard lags at both peaks are positive and consistent with the values at the surrounding continuum frequencies. Among the four observations that detected the 0.5 - 2 Hz QPOs, the coherence between the two energy bands at the QPO fundamental frequency is 0.95 or 0.96, which is also consistent with the overall distribution of the coherence. The photon spectrum power-law index is in the range of 2.6 – 2.7, which indicates that GRS 1915+105 was in the soft state. As the QPO fundamental frequency increases, the hard lag at the fundamental frequency decreases while the the hard lag at the first harmonic frequency increases. The X-ray flux in the range of 3.3 – 13.1 keV was essentially the same among the four observations, and the source was in the “quiescent” state.

### 3.2 2.0 – 4.5 Hz QPOs

The 2.0 – 4.5 Hz QPOs have very peculiar phase lag behaviors (for example, see Figure 2). The hard lags are negative at the QPO fundamental frequency but turn positive at the first harmonic frequency. They significantly deviate from the overall trend in the hard lag distribution over frequencies. The photon power-law index is in the range of 2.5 – 3.0. Thus GRS 1915+105 was in the soft and quiescent state. Though the hard lags at the fundamental frequency appear to generally become more negative at higher fundamental frequencies, this trend is not as well defined as that for the 0.5 – 2.0 Hz QPOs. Among the nine observations that detected the 2 - 4.5 Hz QPOs, the total 3.3 – 13.1 keV X-ray flux varied by a factor of more than three, and had no apparent correlations with the QPO fundamental frequency. However, spectral analyses by Trudolyubov, Churazov, & Gilfanov (1999) showed that the fundamental frequency positively correlates with the flux of the soft blackbody component that was obtained by fitting the spectrum with the standard disk backbody plus an exponentially cutoff power law.

The coherence is generally high at the fundamental frequency (above 0.85) except for the observation on July 5th, 1997, which may be treated as a special case because the analysis was done on the quiescent segments of an intermittent out-burst state. The coherences in the intermittent out-burst state were significantly lower than the coherences in both the quiescent and flaring states. The implications of this need to be further investigated.

### 3.3 4.5 – 10.0 Hz QPOs

When the QPO frequency is above 4.5 Hz, the first harmonic QPO peak can not be significantly detected, and we do not see a change in the sign of the hard lags between the fundamental and where the first harmonic frequencies would be (for example, see Figure 3). The hard lags at both frequencies are negative. The coherence at the fundamental frequency between the two energy bands (3.3 – 5.8 keV and 13.1 – 41.0 keV) is lower than for the previous two types of QPOs. The source was in the medium soft state with a photon spectrum power law index of 3.1 – 3.4. Unlike the previous two types of QPO, 4.5 – 10 Hz QPOs can be present in both quiescent and out-bursting states. The 3.3 – 13.1 keV X-ray flux is also very diverse.

### 3.4 Epochs without 0.5 – 10.0 Hz QPOs

We have three observations that did not detect 0.5 – 10.0 Hz QPOs. One common feature among these observations is that the source was in the very soft state with a photon power-law index above 4.0 (Table 1). Similar results were also reported by Muno, Morgan, & Remillard (1999). Among the three observations, one has a PCA 3.3 – 13.1 keV count rate of 6889 counts/s, compared to 16800 and 24005 counts/s in the other two observations. Therefore, the source was not necessarily in the very high state even though the spectra were very soft.

## 4 Discussion

Through studying the hard lag behaviors of the 0.5 – 10 Hz QPOs, we have highlighted them into three types that are closely related to different temporal and spectral properties. The first type of QPOs (0.5 – 2 Hz) have positive hard lags at the fundamental and first harmonic frequencies and were observed in the quiescent soft state. The second type of QPOs (2 – 4.5 Hz) were also detected in the quiescent soft state but have opposite signs for the hard lags at the fundamental and first harmonic frequencies. The third type (4.5 - 10 Hz), which showed up in medium soft quiescent/out-burst states, do not have significant harmonic peaks. There is a general trend that the hard lags at the QPO fundamental frequency decrease from positive to negative values as the fundamental frequency moves from 0.66 Hz to higher values. We also found that the photon spectra become softer as the QPO fundamental frequency increases. After we presented this work to the 195th AAS meeting in Atlanta on January 14th, 2000, it was brought to our attention that a recent paper by Reig et al. (2000) also reported such trends in GRS 1915+105.

The opposite signs of the hard lags at the QPO fundamental and first harmonic frequencies do not necessarily mean that the photon arrival times are different at different QPO harmonic frequencies. For example, the Fourier transform of a decaying oscillating signal $`f(t)=e^{\lambda t}(cos(\omega _0t)+cos(2\omega _0t))`$ is:

$`F(\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\lambda i(\omega \omega _0)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\lambda i(\omega +\omega _0)}}`$ (1)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\lambda i(\omega 2\omega _0)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\lambda i(\omega +2\omega _0)}}`$
The power density has two QPO peaks at $`\omega _0`$ and $`2\omega _0`$ respectively. For $`\omega >0`$, the two dominant terms are:

$$F(\omega )\frac{1}{\lambda i(\omega \omega _0)}+\frac{1}{\lambda i(\omega 2\omega _0)}$$
(2)
So we have $`F(\omega =\omega _0)\frac{1}{\lambda }+\frac{1}{\lambda +i(\omega _0)}`$ and $`F(\omega =2\omega _0)\frac{1}{\lambda }+\frac{1}{\lambda i(\omega _0)}`$. Therefore, $`F(\omega =\omega _0)F(\omega =2\omega _0)^{}`$, i.e. they have opposite signs for the phase term even though the oscillations have no time delays from each other. The two additional minor terms make the conclusion less obvious, but we still can find appropriate $`\lambda _0`$ and $`\omega _0`$ to make the phase lags have opposite signs. Therefore, it may be misleading to interpret the phase lag at a particular QPO frequency as simply the time delay between two oscillating signals.

In the classic multi-color thermal disk models, the negative hard lags can be explained by assuming that perturbations propagate from the inner disk to the outer disk. The perturbations on the inner edge may come from the central object or from the magnetic fields that are being sucked into the central object. Zhang, Cui, & Chen (1997) and Cui, Zhang, & Chen (1998) suggested that GRS 1915+105 contains a black hole rapidly spinning in the same direction as the accretion disk. In such a prograde system, the last stable orbit is much smaller than the non-spinning system. Therefore, strong perturbations on the inner edge of the accretion disk are very likely. There may also be perturbations propagating inwards from the outer edge of the disk, which generate positive hard lags. When the disk inner edge is farther away from the central object and thus the QPO frequency is smaller, it is natural to assume that the perturbations on the inner edge is weaker. Therefore, the inward perturbations would dominate over the outward perturbations, and the hard lags are expected to be positive. This could explain why the lowest 0.5 – 2 Hz QPOs have positive hard lags while the faster ones have negative hard lags.

Taam, Chen, & Swank (1997) proposed that the out-bursts in GRS 1915+105 are due to the ejection of the inner disk. A direct prediction of this model is that the inner disk edge is farther away from the central object in the out-burst state than in the quiescent state. Our results may pose problems to this prediction. The observation made on July 5th, 1997, for example, had long out-burst and quiescent segments. We therefore performed separate timing analyses on the out-burst and quiescent segments. We found that the quiescent state has a lower QPO fundamental frequency than the out-burst state, and thus the disk inner edge should be closer to the central object in the out-burst state than in the quiescent state if we assume the QPO fundamental frequency is somehow related to the sound crossing time across the disk inner edge.

We thank S. Nan Zhang for his helpful comments. This work was partially supported by NASA grant NAG 5-3824, and made use of the RXTE ASM data products provided by the ASM/RXTE teams at MIT and by the RXTE SOF and GOF at the NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The work of MB is supported by NASA through Chandra Postdoctoral Fellowship grant PF 9-10007 awarded by the Chandra X-ray Center, which is operated by Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA under contract NAS 8-39073.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1  Introduction

In recent years clusters of galaxies have been shown to be excellent diagnostic tools for cosmological research. They provide a variety of different ways to determine cosmological parameters like the mean density $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of the universe, the baryon density $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{baryon}`$, the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ or the Hubble constant $`H_0`$. Galaxy clusters are special for several reasons. (1) They are the largest bound structures in the universe. With sizes of a few Mpc and masses around $`10^{15}M_{}`$ they constitute already a considerable fraction of the universe. (2) They are closed systems. As no matter can leave the cluster potential well the mix of baryons and non-baryons should be representative for the universe as a whole. (3) The crossing time – the time it takes a galaxy to move from one end of the cluster to the other – is of the order of a Hubble time. Therefore the information of the formation process is not completely wiped out, but there are still traces left, which provide insights into the early universe. (4) Clusters are observable out to large redshifts. Comparison of properties of distant and nearby clusters therefore yields information about evolutionary effects, which are predicted to be different in different cosmological scenarios. (5) They can be used as tracers for the mass distribution in the universe, which is another quantity to constrain cosmological models.

## 2 Cluster components

Clusters of galaxies consist of various components. Clusters were first discovered as associations of hundreds to thousands of galaxies. These galaxies are not at rest in the potential well, but move around with velocities of the order of 1000 km/s. The galactic mix of morphological types of galaxies in clusters differs from the mix in the field (Dressler 1980): in clusters an excess of elliptical galaxies is visible, which is an indication of interaction. This interaction can be between galaxies or between galaxies and another component: the intra-cluster gas.

This gas fills all the space between the galaxies. The density of the gas is relatively low with $`10^210^4`$ particles per cm<sup>-3</sup>, but the temperature is high at $`10^710^8`$ K. Such high temperatures are in good agreement with the depth of the potential wells of clusters. Gas with these specifications emits thermal bremsstrahlung in the X-ray range, which makes it a particularly interesting cluster component because we can observe it with X-ray satellites. These observations provide spatial information about the morphology of the clusters as well as spectral information which can be used to determine gas temperatures. The X-ray spectra also show lines which correspond to metallicities of about one third of the solar value (Fukazawa et al. 1998). This is an indication that the gas cannot be only of primordial origin, but at least part of it must have been processed in cluster galaxies and expelled later from the galaxy potential wells.

Another interesting component is relativistic particles. Their presence can be inferred from radio observations of their synchrotron emission.

These different components can be used to determine cosmological parameters in different ways. In the following I present a selection of particularly interesting methods.

## 3 Cluster masses, baryon fraction and dark matter

The mass fraction of the intra-cluster gas is not negligible. It makes up about 10 - 30 % of the total cluster mass. Compared to that the mass in the galaxies is much smaller, about 3 - 5 %. The major fraction of the mass is not visible and is therefore called dark matter. Hence measurements of the total mass of the clusters indirectly yield information on the amount and the distribution of the dark matter (for an example see the mass profile of the Virgo cluster in Fig. 1).

The total mass of clusters can be measured in different ways.

* The X-ray emitting gas can be used as a tracer of the cluster potential. The depth and the shape of the potential well can be determined from X-ray observations alone via the temperature and density gradient of the intra-cluster gas with the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium.
* A second method is based on the gravitational lensing effect: light from galaxies behind clusters is deflected by the large mass of the cluster, so that we see distorted images of these galaxies. The giant arcs (strong lensing) as well as the statistical distortion of all background objects (weak lensing) can be used for the mass determination (Wambsganss 1998; Hattori et al. 1999; Mellier 1999).
* The third and oldest method uses optical spectroscopic observations and determines the mass from the velocity distribution of cluster galaxies with the assumption of virial equilibrium.

Many cluster masses have been determined in the three ways. In some clusters there is agreement between the mass derived with the different methods, in other clusters there are discrepancies typically with the following relation

$$M_{Xray}M_{velocitydispersion}\stackrel{<}{}M_{weaklensing}\stackrel{<}{}M_{stronglensing}$$
(1)
with differences sometimes as high as a factor of 2-3 between X-ray and strong lensing mass. These discrepancies have studied extensively and several possible explanations for them have been suggested:

* Observational uncertainties in the X-ray observations by ROSAT and ASCA have been found by numerical simulations to be the main error source in the X-ray mass so far (Evrard et al. 1996; Schindler 1996).
* Non-equilibrium configurations, as are the case in merging clusters, can lead to severe under- as well as overestimation of X-ray masses.
* Projection effects: lensing is sensitive to all the mass along the line-of-sight, i.e. if there are mass concentrations in the back- or foreground they are included in the lensing mass. The X-ray mass determination is only sensitive to the potential well filled with hot gas and measures therefore only the cluster mass.
* Multi-phase medium (gas of different temperatures and densities in pressure equilibrium), as is assumed to be present in cooling flows, can lead to underestimation of the mass if only a single temperature is used for the mass determination (Allen 1998).
* Magnetic fields have also been suggested to be the reason for the discrepancy. In the X-ray mass determination only thermal pressure is taken into account. If there were in addition considerable magnetic pressure this would lead to an underestimation of the mass. With magneto-hydrodynamic simulations, though, we have shown that the effect of magnetic fields on the mass determination is essentially negligible (Dolag & Schindler 2000; Fig. 2).

The ratio of visible to total mass is a measure for the baryon fraction $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{baryon}`$. Current measurements are in contradiction with primordial nucleosynthesis for $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ (White et al. 1993), which is therefore one of the important hints for a low $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ universe.

The relative distribution of gas and dark matter within a cluster gives also useful information on physical processes occuring in clusters. The fact that the gas is more extended than the dark matter – an effect which is stronger for the less massive clusters (see Fig. 3) – can be explained by additional (non-gravitational) heating processes, which are more efficient in less massive clusters (Schindler 1999; Ponman et al. 1999). This gives in principle hints on when and how the heat is produced and hence information about cluster formation. But for stringent conclusions better data are required (see Fig. 3).

The relatively large range found for the gas mass fraction does not only reflect the large observational uncertainties, but there are really large variations in the gas mass fraction of individual clusters (Ettori & Fabian 1999; Schindler 1999; see Fig. 4). These large variations, which span an order of magnitude in extreme cases, have some implications for cluster formation. If all the clusters had originally the same small gas mass fraction and all the differences came later by different amounts of gas released by the cluster galaxies, larger metallicities in clusters with high gas mass fraction would be expected. But this is not observed. Therefore the difference must be caused at least partially by the primordial distribution of baryonic and non-baryonic matter.

The new X-ray and optical facilities will certainly soon clarify many of these questions. Chandra and XMM with their improved spatial and spectral resolution will provide very accurate measurements of cluster masses and hence the amount and the distribution of dark matter.

## 4 Metal enrichment and the origin of the intra-cluster gas

Spectroscopic X-ray observations of clusters show metal lines which correspond to metallicities around 0.3 in solar units (Fukazawa et al. 1998). This indicates that the gas cannot be purely of primordial origin. Instead it must have been processed in the cluster galaxies, at least partially, and then have been expelled from the galaxies’ potential wells into the intra-cluster gas. The amount of this processed intra-cluster material is not negligible, but equals or even exceeds (Mushotzky 1999) the amount of metals in the galaxies themselves. There has been much speculation about the processes responsible for the transport of gas from within the galaxies into the intra-cluster gas and two mechanisms emerged as probable: galactic winds (De Young 1978) and ram-pressure stripping (Gunn & Gott 1972). Light can be shed on which mechanisms operate by measuring metallicity gradients and metallicity evolution.

Metallicity gradients can indicate what mechanism prevails, because the different mechanisms expel the gas with different radial distribution. Differences in the distribution of iron and $`\alpha `$-elements give information on the type of supernovae the metals origin from and hence on different enrichment time scales. So far, in several clusters hints for radial metallicity gradients have been detected (e.g. Finoguenov et al. 1999; De Grandi & Molendi 1999a; Irwin & Bregman 2000) from observations with ASCA and BeppoSAX, but again for more detailed results we have to wait for XMM and Chandra.

The time evolution of cluster metallicities is another obvious way to investigate different processes, because they are expected to have different time dependencies. Observations of clusters out to $`z0.5`$ did not show any significant evolutionary effects (Mushotzky & Loewenstein 1997). Observations of high redshift clusters out to $`z1`$ (Schindler 1999) are consistent with this result, but are very restricted due to large errors. In particular XMM with its high sensitivity will provide exact metallicity measurements for many distant clusters, which will give important clues on cluster formation and galaxy formation.

## 5 Dynamical state

The dynamical state of clusters, whether already relaxed or still consisting of merging subclusters, offers another way to measure $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ as different scenarios predict different evolution times (Richstone et al. 1992). While in some clusters the unrelaxed state is already obvious in the X-ray images (e.g. in Abell 1437, see Fig. 5), for most clusters the dynamical state is not so easy to determine. It has been shown in numerical hydrodynamic simulations, that the dynamical state can be characterised best by taking into account not only the distribution of the X-ray emission but by comparing it also with the temperature distribution (Schindler & Müller 1993). Inhomogeneities in the temperature distribution arise in clusters during mergers: shock fronts emerge before and after the collision, which show up as temperature gradients. Also heated gas between two subclusters can be observed before the core passage. From ASCA and BeppoSAX observations coarse temperature maps have been produced (Markevitch et al. 1998; De Grandi & Molendi 1999a,b; Irwin et al. 1999), but the capabilities for spatially resolved spectroscopy of the new X-ray instruments on XMM and Chandra promise well resolved temperature maps.

Of particular interest for the determination of the dynamical state is the comparison of X-ray observations with observations in other wavelengths. The spatial distribution as well as the velocity distribution of the galaxies obtained from optical observations yield complementary information about the morphology and kinematics. Radio emission can provide additional hints in two different ways. (1) The relative velocity between radio galaxies and the intra-cluster gas can be inferred from the orientation and the shape of radio tails, so that the kinematics perpendicular to the line of sight can be estimated. (2) Diffuse, extended radio emission, which is not associated with a particular galaxy – radio halos and relics – can be an indication of a recent merging process (Giovannini et al. 1999; Feretti et al. 2000), because the shock waves emerging during the collision of subclusters can reaccelerate particles to relativistic energies, so that they emit synchrotron radiation.

## 6 Conclusions

Clusters of galaxies can be used for very different types of cosmological tests. In particular observations with the new X-ray satellites launched recently, XMM and Chandra, will provide a large step forward in several respects. The unprecedentedly high spatial resolution of Chandra (1”) provides detailed X-ray images to investigate cluster morphology and derive very accurate profiles. The high sensitivity of XMM makes it the ideal instrument to find and study distant galaxy clusters in order to investigate evolutionary effects. Improved spectral resolution allows for much better temperature and metallicity measurement. And – very importantly – XMM and Chandra are capable of performing spatially resolved spectroscopy with high accuracy, which is necessary for temperature maps, mass determination and metallicity distributions. The combination of these data with observations in other wavelengths will open new horizons in cosmology.

## 7  References

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De Grandi S., Molendi S., 1999a, A&A 351, L45

De Grandi S., Molendi S., 1999b, ApJ 527, L25

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Dolag K., Bartelmann M., Lesch H., 1999, A&A 348, 351

Dolag K., Schindler S., 2000, A&A in press

Dressler A., 1980, ApJ 236, 351

Ettori S., Fabian A.C., 1999, MNRAS 305, 834

Evrard, A.E., Metzler, C.A., Navarro, J.N. 1996, ApJ, 469, 494

Feretti L., Brunetti G., Giovannini G., Govoni F., Setti G., 2000, astro-ph/0009346

Finoguenov A., et al., 1999, astro-ph/9908150

Fukazawa Y., Makishima K., Tamura T., et al., 1998, PASJ 50, 187

Giovannini G., Tordi M., Feretti L., 1999, New Astronomy 4, 141

Gunn J.E., Gott J.R. III, 1972, ApJ 176, 1

Hattori M., Kneib J.-P., Makino N., 1999, Prog. Theor. Phys., Supplement 133, 1

Irwin J.A., Bregman J.N., 2000, astro-ph/0009237

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Markevitch M.L., Forman W.R., Sarazin C.L. and Vikhlinin A., 1998, ApJ 503, 77

Mellier Y., 1999, ARA&A 37, 127

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Ponman T.J., Cannon D.B., Navarro J.F., 1999, Nature 397, 135

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text:
# Semiclassical theory of cavity-assisted atom cooling

## I Introduction

The center-of-mass motion of atoms strongly coupled to the electromagnetic field in a microresonator has become a central problem in current research in cavity quantum electrodynaqmics (QED) . Very recently trapping of a single atom by a single photon in a high-Q optical cavity has been predicted and demonstrated . These pioneering experiments open exciting new avenues for manipulating the motion of neutral atoms, with the prospects for effective sub-Doppler cooling schemes , for controlled cavity-mediated long-range interactions between atoms , or for quantum information processing .

The motion of a two–level atom in a free laser field is quite well understood by now . In a high–Q cavity, the confined radiation field has additional mechanical effects on the atomic center-of-mass (CM) dynamics. The reason for this is the back-action of the atom on the field, which becomes important in the regime of strong coupling between the atomic dipole and the field. Depending on its momentary position the atomic dipole can drastically modify the radiation field which, in turn, exerts forces on the moving atom. This results in a complex coupled dynamics of the atomic CM and the field.

There is a fully quantum theory describing the cavity-induced mechanical effects for intensities well below the single-photon level . Analytical expressions have been derived for the linear friction force and for momentum diffusion. For a large range of parameters one finds strongly enhanced diffusion compared to free space, which could be partly attributed to the quantum nature of the cavity field. Simulations based on these expressions are in good agreement with experimental observations .

However, this theory is difficult to extend to higher intensities, where one could expect better cooling and trapping due to reduced quantum diffusion. A possible extension to higher photon numbers based on the standard approach for laser cooling  adapted to treat the situation in cavities was recently presented by Doherty et al. . The computational effort, however, explodes with increasing photon numbers and the approach is limited to calculate the dynamics in few photon fields. Hence there is a high demand for a model that allows for exploring the intermediate regime between the quantum domain of subphotonic fields and classical laser fields with large intensity. The interest is at least twofold. Firstly, trapping and cooling of atoms in fields with intensities higher than the single-photon level can lead to new phenomena. The forces get larger, hence the potential wells involved are deeper, which is certainly interesting for further applications. The ability of modeling and efficently simulating such systems is one essential goal. Secondly, a simple model is needed for elucidating fundamental features of the cavity-induced forces such as the enhanced or suppressed momentum diffusion in comparison to free space.

In Sec. II we develop a semiclassical model based on the Wigner representation of both the motional atomic degrees of freedom and the cavity photon field, including spontaneous atomic and cavity decay. Systematic truncation of the corresponding time evolution equation at second order derivatives yields a Fokker-Planck type equation which can be simulated by classical stochastic differential equations. The essential feature of this approach is the consistent treatment of the quantum noise of the atom and cavity dynamics. The atomic momentum noise and the cavity phase noise turn out to be correlated, which is the specific ingredient of the atomic diffusion in a strongly coupled cavity. In Sec. III we use our simulation method to study the effects of atomic localisation on the steady state properties of the system. We also check the validity of our model by comparing the results with the analytic ones in the weak excitation limit. In Sec. IV we address the question of the atomic trapping in the potential wells. We calculate the characteristic trapping time, an important quantity in experimental realisations. Finally, we summarise our results in Sec. V.

## II Semiclassical model

Let us consider a two–level atom interacting with a single mode of the electromagnetic field in a weakly driven cavity. The driving field is supposed to be monochromatic with frequency $`\omega _p`$ with a given detuning from the mode frequency $`\omega _C`$ and with fixed effective amplitude $`\eta `$. Dissipation in the system is due to cavity decay ($`\kappa `$) and spontaneous emission from the atom into other than the cavity mode ($`\gamma `$). The atomic dipole is strongly coupled to the field mode, i.e., the coupling constant $`g`$ is at least of the same order of magnitude as the relaxation rates $`\kappa `$ and $`\gamma `$. The atom is allowed to move in the cavity under the effect of field forces. The intracavity field is given by the mode function $`f(x)`$. For the sake of simplicity this study will be restricted to one dimension but the generalization of the model to three dimensions is straightforward.

We derive the semiclassical model by systematic approximations from the full quantum master equation

$$\dot{\rho }=\frac{i}{\mathrm{}}[H,\rho ]+\rho .$$
(1)
The coherent atom–field dynamics is considered in the electric dipole and in the rotating wave approximation. In a frame rotating with the pump frequency $`\omega _p`$, the Hamiltonian $`H`$ reads

$$H=\frac{p^2}{2M}\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Delta }_Ca^{}a\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Delta }_A\sigma ^+\sigma ^{}i\mathrm{}gf(x)(\sigma ^+aa^{}\sigma ^{})i\mathrm{}\eta (aa^{}),$$
(2)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_C=\omega _p\omega _C`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A=\omega _p\omega _A`$. The operators $`p`$ and $`x`$ are associated with the atomic momentum and position. The field and the atomic dipole are described by the annihilation and creation operators $`a`$, $`a^{}`$, respectively by the lowering and raising operators $`\sigma ^{}`$, $`\sigma ^+`$. The damping terms are given by

$$\rho =\kappa \left(a^{}a\rho +\rho a^{}a2a\rho a^{}\right)\gamma \left(\sigma ^+\sigma ^{}\rho +\rho \sigma ^+\sigma ^{}2_1^1N(u)\sigma ^{}e^{iux}\rho e^{iux}\sigma ^+𝑑u\right),$$
(3)
where the last term includes the momentum recoil due to spontaneous emission.

It is possible to introduce an effective Hamiltonian of much simpler form when the internal atomic dynamics can be adiabatically eliminated. This is the case if the internal atomic variables $`\sigma ^\pm `$ evolve on a much more rapid time scale than the other variables due to the large detuning $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A`$ or due to the large damping rate $`\gamma `$. In either case the population in the excited atomic state is negligible (low saturation regime), and the atomic dipole moment $`\sigma ^{}`$ can formally be replaced by

$$\sigma ^{}\frac{i\mathrm{\Delta }_A+\gamma }{\mathrm{\Delta }_A^2+\gamma ^2}gf(x)a.$$
(4)
The dispersive and absorptive effect of the atom can be described by the parameters

$$U_0=\frac{g^2\mathrm{\Delta }_A}{\mathrm{\Delta }_A^2+\gamma ^2},\mathrm{\Gamma }_0=\frac{g^2\gamma }{\mathrm{\Delta }_A^2+\gamma ^2},$$
(5)
respectively. The remaining atomic CM and field dynamics is governed by the adiabatic Hamiltonian

$$H_{\text{eff}}=\frac{p^2}{2M}\mathrm{}\left(\mathrm{\Delta }_CU_0f^2(x)\right)a^{}ai\mathrm{}\eta (aa^{}),$$
(6)
and the damping terms

$$_{\text{eff}}\rho =\kappa \left(a^{}a\rho +\rho a^{}a2a\rho a^{}\right)\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\left(a^{}af^2(x)\rho +\rho a^{}af^2(x)2_1^1N(u)af(x)e^{iux}\rho e^{iux}f(x)a^{}𝑑u\right).$$
(7)
Eqs. (6) and (7) define an effective quantum master equation that accounts for the coupled atomic CM motion and field dynamics, and also for the environment induced losses. The usual phase space method can be invoked to derive semiclassical equations of motion , a technique which has been successfully used for the study of laser cooling in free space, see e.g. Refs. . We will omit the presentation of the detailed calculation here and will concentrate on the main concepts only. The key for deriving semiclassical equations from the quantum model is the use of the combined Wigner function $`W(x,p,\alpha ,\alpha ^{})`$ that represents the atomic motion and the state of the cavity light field in the total phase space. The Wigner transform of the quantum master equation leads to a partial differential equation which is truncated at second-order derivatives to obtain a Fokker–Planck-type equation (FPE). The validity of this approach relies on two conditions. First, the photon momentum $`\mathrm{}k`$ must be small compared to the momentum width $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ of the Wigner distribution, i.e., a single-photon absorption or emission will not change the momentum distribution considerably. Accordingly, the powers of the small parameter $`\mathrm{}k/\mathrm{\Delta }p1`$ introduce a hierarchy in the different orders, which justifies the truncation procedure. Besides this condition which is well known from semiclassical treatments of free-space laser cooling, there is a second one concerning the quantized field state. That is, the second-order derivative $`\frac{^2}{\alpha \alpha ^{}}`$ must be neglected compared to $`|\alpha |^2`$, in order to drop a term containing third-order derivatives in momentum and field variables. A sufficient condition is to consider fields close to coherent states with mean photon numbers higher than one. This step makes the model “semiclassical” in the description of the cavity field as well.

The FPE for the combined atom-field Wigner function reads

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dt}}W`$ $`=`$ $`\left[i\left(U_0f^2(x)\mathrm{\Delta }_C\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{}{\alpha }}\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{}{\alpha ^{}}}\alpha ^{}\right)\eta \left({\displaystyle \frac{}{\alpha }}+{\displaystyle \frac{}{\alpha ^{}}}\right)\right]W`$ (12)
$`+\left[\left(\kappa +\mathrm{\Gamma }_0f^2(x)\right)\left({\displaystyle \frac{}{\alpha }}\alpha +{\displaystyle \frac{}{\alpha ^{}}}\alpha ^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{^2}{\alpha \alpha ^{}}}\right)\right]W`$
$`+\left[{\displaystyle \frac{p}{M}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{x}}+U_0\left(|\alpha |^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)\mathrm{}f^2(x){\displaystyle \frac{}{p}}\right]W`$
$`+\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\left(|\alpha |^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)\left((\mathrm{}f(x))^2+\mathrm{}^2k^2\overline{u^2}f^2(x)\right){\displaystyle \frac{^2}{p^2}}W`$
$`+i\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\mathrm{}f(x)f(x)\left({\displaystyle \frac{}{\alpha }}\alpha {\displaystyle \frac{}{\alpha ^{}}}\alpha ^{}\right){\displaystyle \frac{}{p}}W,`$
where the first term is the coherent evolution of the cavity field, the second term is the decay and diffusion of the cavity field due to cavity decay and scattering of photons out of the cavity by the atom, the third term is the conservative atomic motion, and the forth term is the momentum diffusion due to scattering of photons by the atom. Note that this latter term can become negative, which reflects the break-down of the semiclassical model at very weak intracavity field intensities. Additionally, we find a rather unintuitive fifth term which gives rise to correlated momentum and cavity field noise. We will discuss this in more detail later. In (12) we introduced the abbreviation $`\overline{u^2}=N(u)u^2𝑑u`$, which we will set to $`0.4`$ in the following, valid for circularly polarised light.

In the case of positive Wigner functions $`W`$, the FPE can be solved by Monte-Carlo simulations of the corresponding stochastic differential equations (SDE)

$`dx`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{p}{M}}dt,`$ (13)
$`dp`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}U_0\left(\alpha _r^2+\alpha _i^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)f^2(x)dt+dP,`$ (14)
$`d\alpha _r`$ $`=`$ $`\eta dt+\left(U_0f^2(x)\mathrm{\Delta }_C\right)\alpha _idt\left(\kappa +\mathrm{\Gamma }_0f^2(x)\right)\alpha _rdt+dA_r,`$ (15)
$`d\alpha _i`$ $`=`$ $`\left(U_0f^2(x)\mathrm{\Delta }_C\right)\alpha _rdt\left(\kappa +\mathrm{\Gamma }_0f^2(x)\right)\alpha _idt+dA_i,`$ (16)
where we decomposed the cavity field into its real and imaginary parts, $`\alpha =\alpha _r+i\alpha _i`$. We thus have reduced the solution of the FPE to a set of four SDE which is easily tractable by numerical integration. Another major advantage of this approach as compared to previously used methods  is that the numerical effort is independent of the photon number. Thus our method is suitable for exploring the transition from the quantum fields with very low photon numbers all the way to the high-intensity classical regime . Note however that due to the adiabatic elimination of the atomic excited state the method presented here only works for small atomic saturation, which is not guaranteed for some experiments even in the low photon regime.

The most intricate part in a numerical simulation of the SDE is the correct treatment of the noise terms $`dP`$, $`dA_r`$, and $`dA_i`$ since these are correlated, as already mentioned above. For a discussion of the correlated diffusion, it is convenient to introduce the field amplitude noise $`dA_{}`$ and the field phase noise $`dA_{}`$ by a rotation of $`dA_r`$ and $`dA_i`$,

$`dA_{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _r}{|\alpha |}}dA_r+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _i}{|\alpha |}}dA_i,`$ (17)
$`dA_{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _i}{|\alpha |}}dA_r+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha _r}{|\alpha |}}dA_i.`$ (18)
The diffusion matrix $`𝐃`$ in this basis then reads

$$𝐃dt=\left(\begin{array}{c}dA_{}\\ dA_{}\\ dP\end{array}\right)(dA_{},dA_{},dP)=\left(\begin{array}{ccc}d_1& 0& 0\\ 0& d_1& d_3\\ 0& d_3& d_2\end{array}\right)dt$$
(19)
where

$`d_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(\kappa +\mathrm{\Gamma }_0f^2(x)\right),`$ (20)
$`d_2`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{\Gamma }_0\left(|\alpha |^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\right)\left((\mathrm{}f(x))^2+\mathrm{}^2k^2\overline{u^2}f^2(x)\right),`$ (21)
$`d_3`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0|\alpha |\mathrm{}f(x)f(x).`$ (22)
From this we see that the amplitude noise is in fact independent, but the phase noise and the momentum noise are correlated. We interpret this in the following way. In a free space description it is well-known  that a two-level atom gives rise to photon redistribution between the two counterpropagating travelling waves which form the standing wave.***Note that, strictly speaking, the decomposition of a single standing wave mode of a resonator into two travelling waves does not make sense. However, this provides an intuitive picture of the physical processes and is only used here in this sense. The incoherent part of this redistribution is proportional to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_0`$ and accounts for one part of the atomic momentum diffusion. In standard weak-field Doppler cooling , the backaction of this scattering process on the light field is neglected as this is assumed to be fixed by the driving laser. However, in the strong coupling limit of an optical cavity this backaction must be taken into account. Since such a spontaneous backscattering process does not change the photon number in the standing wave mode, there is no corresponding intensity fluctuation but, depending on the atomic position, the phase of the cavity field is changed. This leads to the correlated momentum and phase noise represented by the nondiagonal elements of the diffusion matrix $`𝐃`$.

Note that the cavity field noise $`d_1`$, Eqs. (19) and (22) is independent of the field amplitude $`\alpha `$. Hence, the noise terms $`dA_{r,i}`$ in the SDE (16) play an important role in the system dynamics for small $`\alpha `$. For large field amplitudes, $`d_1`$ is small compared to the diffusion matrix elements $`d_2`$ and $`d_3`$ and can be neglected. In this limit we recover the limit of atomic motion in a dynamically varying classical light field. If additionally the atomic saturation is reduced by increasing the detuning $`\mathrm{\Delta }_a`$, also the atomic momentum diffusion $`dP`$ becomes negligible compared to the coherent dynamics. We then obtain the classical equations of motion of a cassical dipole in a high-finesse cavity . This limit has been recently suggested as a possible scheme for laser cooling of molecules, where one tries to avoid spontaneous atomic transitions to uncoupled molecular states .

Let us now compare our method with previous semiclassical simulations used e.g. by Doherty et al. . In that approach, the full master equation is numerically solved up to first order in velocity for any position in space, which gives the local dipole and friction forces. Additionally, the momentum diffusion coefficient is obtained by calculating the force autocorrelation function using the quantum regression theorem. Hence, no semiclassical assumption for the cavity field is imposed, and arbitrary atomic saturation is taken into account. In this treatment the numerical effort increases drastically with increasing photon number and becomes exceedingly high in the case of several atoms or cavity modes, as for instance in a ring cavity. In contrast, our semiclassical method is easy to implement also in these more complex situations. In addition, the explicit dynamical evolution of the cavity field in our case allows for arbitrary atomic velocities and provides new insight into the coupled atom-cavity dynamics, such as the correlated noise sources discussed above.

## III Temperatures and localisation effects

We will now turn to the discussion of some specific numerical examples and compare these with previous analytic expressions in the weak excitation limit . The validity of the latter is restricted to parameter regimes with mean intensity well below the single-photon level. Nevertheless, the analytic solution is expected to be a good approximation for higher photon numbers as long as the atomic saturation is very low. As an example, we will consider a standing wave with mode function $`f(x)=\mathrm{cos}(kx)`$. First, we will study the cavity-induced effects on the “temperature” (the time-averaged kinetic energy) of a single atom in the one-dimensional optical lattice. Next, the spatial distribution of the atomic position is considered, and the effect of localisation on the temperature will be demonstrated.

The steady-state temperature as a function of the cavity decay rate is plotted for the two parameter regimes where the cavity-mediated force on the atom is known to give rise to cooling, that is, for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A>0`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_C=0`$ in Fig. 1(a) and for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A<0`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_C=U_0`$ in Fig. 1(b). For the numerical simulations we keep the ratio of pump strength to cavity decay rate constant, $`\eta /\kappa =3`$, such that the cavity contains on average approximately nine photons for all parameter configurations. The variation of the temperature can then be associated with the effect of the cavity. The cavity-induced forces are expected to be important in the range $`\kappa U_0=0.312\gamma `$, while the limit of $`\kappa ,\eta \mathrm{}`$ corresponds to a free-space radiation field. For reference, the analytical results of Ref.  have been used to obtain two curves for the temperature, based on the total friction force and, respectively, on the cavity-induced friction force only. The difference between these analytic results is thus due to the standard Doppler force which is heating for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A>0`$ and cooling for $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A<0`$. As expected, the numerical results are closer to the analytic curves without the Doppler force, because the adiabatic elimination of the atomic excited state excludes the Doppler force from our semiclassical model. This is a good approximation since the Doppler shift $`kv`$ is much smaller than the atomic detuning $`\mathrm{\Delta }_A`$. However, for increasing cavity linewidth, $`\kappa U_0`$, the cavity-induced friction force as well as the diffusion vanish. It is no longer justified to neglect the Doppler force in this limit, indicated by the bifurcation point of the two analytic curves. Nevertheless, even within the limit of validity we find a systematic deviation of the numerical and the analytic results: the simulated temperatures are always higher. In the following we show that the difference can be attributed to atomic localisation in the potential wells, which is treated correctly within the semiclassical model but not contained in the weak-driving limit of the analytic formulas.

In order to study the effects of localisation in more detail, we show in Fig. 2(a) the dependence of the steady-state temperature on the pump strength when all other parameters are kept constant. We see that for decreasing pump strength (decreasing photon number) the temperature approaches the analytic result of the weak-excitation limit. Note that for very small photon numbers of 1 or 2 our semiclassical model is no longer valid and the numerical results exhibit a residual deviation from the analytical ones. (One of the numerical signatures of the limited validity of our model in this parameter regime is the occurence of a negative eigenvalue of the diffusion matrix $`𝐃`$, Eq. (19), in single particle trajectories.)

Figure 2(a) also shows the ratio of the steady-state temperature and the time-averaged optical potantial depth given by the optical potential times the average photon number $`U_0n`$, with $`n=a^{}a`$. In the weak driving limit, this ratio is much larger than one, indicating a nearly flat atomic distribution in position space. For stronger pumping, the ratio is continuously decreasing and drops well below unity corresponding to strong localisation. This indicates a strong local cooling force, that is, even a particle which is trapped within a single potential well experiences a friction force. Hence, in order to achieve good trapping of particles in the cavity QED domain, one should go to higher photon numbers than those which are currently used in experiments, despite the corresponding higher steady-state temperatures. We will return to the discussion of trapping times in the following section.

Finally, we show in Fig. 2(b) the averaged spatial distribution of a particle for two different values of the pump strength. This again shows the stronger localisation for increasing $`\eta `$. Moreover, the dashed lines give the spatial distribution of a particle obtained from a thermal distribution with the same mean temperature and a sinusoidal potential of the same mean depth, that is,

$$P_{\text{therm}}(x)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{U_0n\mathrm{cos}^2(kx)}{k_BT}\right).$$
(23)
Note that the numerically obtained distribution strongly deviates from a thermal one due to dynamical effects and the corresponding correlations between atomic degrees of freedom and the cavity field.

## IV Trapping times

For cavity QED experiments, especially in view of potential applications in quantum information processing, it is an important issue how long the particles can be trapped in the potential wells. Depending on the initial condition, there are different ways to discuss the trapping time of an atom in a well.

At time $`t=0`$ the atom can be assumed in the ground state of the potential well. The potential is approximately harmonic so the Wigner function of the ground state of a harmonic oscillator can be used as initial distribution in the semiclassical Monte-Carlo simulations. For a large statistical ensemble we then record the times $`\tau `$ when the atoms leave the initial potential well. A typical example for the resulting distribution $`P(\tau )`$ is presented in figure 3. We find a low probability that an atom leaves the potential well at short times since it takes a while until the particle is sufficiently heated by momentum diffusion. For larger times the distribution becomes exponentially decaying $`P(\tau )\mathrm{exp}(\tau /T_{\text{trap}})`$, e.g., for the given parameters and $`\tau >100\mu s`$ a fit yields the trapping time $`T_{\text{trap}}=88.3\mu s`$. Note that this initial state is in fact realised in recent experiments  where atoms from a magneto-optical trap are velocity selected through the narrow cavity entrance slits before they interact with the optical field, and thus the atoms are effectively prepared in their motional ground state as an initial condition.

Alternatively one could consider a thermalised atom as initial condition. In this case we simulate a single atom trajectory for a very long period and record the times $`\tau `$ which the atom spends within a potential well. In the following we will call $`\tau `$ a “flight time” in order to distinguish it from the trapping time $`T_{\text{trap}}`$ as defined before. We then obtain a distribution for short and long flight times as presented in Figure 4.

As a help for the interpretation of this curve, let us first discuss the corresponding distribution obtained for a thermal ensemble with the same temperature and in a static (conservative) potential of the same depth $`nU_0`$. In this case there is no momentum diffusion and hence an atom which is trapped initially will stay within the same potential well for arbitrarily long times. Therefore only hot atoms with a total energy larger than the optical potential depth will contribute to the distribution function of flight times which is shown by the dashed curve in Fig. 4. This distribution function shows no flight times $`\tau <1\mu s`$ that would correspond to very fast atoms, a single maximum at $`\tau 2.3\mu s`$, and a continuously decreasing probability for longer flight times.

Taking the full cavity dynamics into account has two main effects. First, because of momentum diffusion every atom undergoes a random walk in momentum space and thus will leave a given potential well after a finite time. Second, if an atom enters a potential well with a not too high velocity, it will be slowed down due to the cavity-mediated friction force and thus can be trapped for a longer time. This effect manifests itself in the decrease of the distribution function for times $`2\mu s<\tau <6\mu s`$ compared to the conservative motion limit. However, in general a particle which just has been trapped will have an energy only slightly below the potential maximum and therefore a relatively high probability of being ejected from the well within a short time. This leads to the second maximum of the distribution function at $`\tau 7\mu s`$.

Finally, for long times the exponential distribution of the trapping times is detected again, with $`T_{\text{trap}}=80.5\mu s`$, in reasonable agreement with the previous result in Fig. 3. Note, however, that the two definitions for the trapping time $`T_{\text{trap}}`$ are qualitatively different: in Fig. 3 the distribution is obtained from an ensemble of statistically independent atoms, whereas in Fig. 4 only a single atom is followed. Hence in the latter case the distribution exhibits a certain memory of the particle history. For example, a very fast atom will travel over many potential wells and thus will produce many entries in the distribution at short flight times until it gets slowed down and trapped. Because of this the large maximum at times $`1\mu s<\tau <5\mu s`$ in Fig. 4 only corresponds to about 22% of the total time for which the atom was observed. This also agrees well with the fraction of 20.4% of atoms with energies above the potential barrier obtained from a thermal ensemble, which further supports our interpretation of the distribution function $`P(\tau )`$ in terms of trapped and untrapped atoms.

The above outlined method for calculating the characteristic trapping time $`T_{\text{trap}}`$ has been carried out for different parameter settings. The trapping time as a function of $`\kappa `$ and of the pump strength $`\eta `$ is shown in Figures 5 and 6, respectively.

Figure 5 is similar to the analysis of Fig. 1(a), where the photon number is kept approximately constant by a fixed ratio of $`\eta /\kappa =3`$, and the cavity-induced effects are modified by varying the cavity decay rate $`\kappa `$. Depending on the value of $`\kappa `$ we find three very distinct regimes for the behaviour of the trapping time. First, there is a strong increase of the trapping time for very small decay rates. This is due to the strong coupling of the photon number to the atomic position in this limit: already a small elongation of an atom from the field node is sufficient to shift the cavity out of resonance and to drastically reduce the photon number. Thus, the atom dynamically reduces the trapping potential and subsequently can easily leave the potential well. Hence the trapping times are short in this limit. For $`\kappa >U_0`$ the photon number can at most be changed by a factor of two by the atom and the behaviour of the trapping time is no longer dominated by this dynamical effect. In this regime the photon number and consequently the potential depth are approximately constant, but the temperature of the atom increases with increasing $`\kappa `$ as we have seen in Fig. 1(a). Thus the atomic localisation decreases, which in turn gives rise to a decrease of the trapping time. Finally, we find again a slight increase of the trapping time when $`\kappa `$ is so large that the temperature is of the order of or larger than the optical potential depth. An increase of $`\kappa `$ then still increases the temperature and thus the fraction of untrapped particles. However, our definition of the trapping time as the exponential decay of the flight time distribution for very long times (Fig. 4) relies on the trapped particles only and does not depend on the fraction of untrapped atoms. The trapping time is then dominated by the time scale of the friction force and of the momentum diffusion, which becomes longer for large increasing $`\kappa `$. This is due to approaching the classical potential limit for $`\kappa \mathrm{}`$ with a fixed ratio $`\eta /\kappa `$. This explains the final increase of the trapping time in Fig. 5.

In Figure 6 the photon number is varied by $`\eta `$, while the other parameters are kept constant. Though the temperature gets higher with increasing photon numbers (see Fig. 2), the resulting trapping times exhibit a considerable increase owing to the strong deepening of the potential wells. This result suggests clearly the benefit of working in an intermediate photon number regime for implementing coherent manipulation with neutral atoms in optical lattices.

## V Conclusions

We have derived semiclassical stochastic differential equations to simulate the coupled dynamics of an atom moving in a single cavity mode in the limit of strong nonresonant interaction between the field and the atomic dipole. Starting from the basic quantum equations we performed systematic approximations such that the model accounts consistently for the quantum noise properties of the system. A nontrivial correlation between the field phase noise and the momentum noise has been revealed and can be interpreted in terms of simple physical processes.

As an example for our method we have studied the atomic motion in a one dimensional optical lattice sustained by the strongly coupled cavity field. In the appropriate limits the calculated steady-state temperatures are in good agreement with the results of previous calculations. Deviations can be attributed to atomic localisation within the potential wells, which is consistently described in our semiclassical simulation. We found that for higher intracavity photon numbers the characteristic trapping times can be significantly increased up to milliseconds. In this case the potential wells get deeper and diffusion and friction are enhanced in a way that the temperature only slowly increases. Hence the steady state temperature can get significantly smaller than the well depth. Alternatively by simultaneously increasing the atom-field detuning, we can keep the effective potential the same but reduce diffusion to achieve longer storage times. As the calculational effort only weakly depends on the photon number we can nicely study the transition from a quantum to a classical field.

Let us mention here that the model can easily be generalised to 3D, more cavity modes and several atoms simultaneously in the cavity. Hence, this semiclassical approach offers a tool for a tractable numerical simulation of the dynamics of these complex systems. These simulations could then be used to check the performance of atom cavity systems for quantum computing and quantum information processing.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank P. W. H. Pinkse, T. Fischer, P. Maunz, and G. Rempe for stimulating discussions. This work was supported by the Austrian Science Foundation FWF (Project P13435). P. D. acknowledges the financial support by the National Scientific Fund of Hungary under contracts No. T023777 and F032341.


text:
# Phonons and Solitons in 1D Mott Insulators

\[

## Abstract

We study the problem of one-dimensional (1D) Luttinger liquids in the insulating Mott-Hubbard phase in the presence of acoustic phonons in the semiclassical limit. We show that solitonic excitations can propagate freely in the system and the energy required to produce a soliton is reduced by a polaronic effect. We find a critical value of the electron-phonon coupling constant for which this energy vanishes.

\]

It is well-known that phonons can have a major impact in the phase diagram of 1D interacting electron systems, driving these systems from charge density waves (CDW) to superconductors due to retardation effects . In fact, the problem of phonons in 1D has been studied to a great level of detail in the phase where the linear electronic charge density is incommensurate with the lattice leading to renormalizations of the various Luttinger liquid parameters and therefore to no dramatic effect in the charge propagation . In this note we study the problem of the effect of acoustic phonons in the commensurate phase of Luttinger liquids when the 1D system has an instability to the opening of a gap (Mott gap) in the charge spectrum and therefore to insulating behavior. In the absence of phonons it can be shown that the lowest energy excitation is associated with the creation of a soliton (or anti-soliton) which can propagate freely in the system. This excitation, however, requires a finite amount of energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ which is directly related to the Mott gap. As it is well-known the origin of the soliton is associated with the Umklapp scattering of electrons in the presence of the lattice . In a bosonized description of this process one can show that the bosonic charge fields (associated with electronic charge excitations) are described by a sine-Gordon theory which has as semi-classical solutions traveling kinks and anti-kinks. Much less is known about effects of phonons on the soliton propagation in the insulating phase. We show that while the electron-phonon coupling allows for coherent soliton propagation in the Mott phase it can also lead to strong non-perturbative renormalization effects. We show here by a non-perturbative semiclassical calculation that the soliton excitation energy is reduced in the presence of acoustic phonons and that there is a critical value of the electron-phonon coupling for which the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, the gap for the soliton creation in the presence of phonons, vanishes. Physically, the electron-electron coupling is suppressed by a polaronic effect.

The basic electronic Hamiltonian we consider can be written in a very general form:

$`H_{el}`$ $`=`$ $`t{\displaystyle \underset{i,\sigma ,\alpha }{}}c_{i,\sigma }^+c_{i+1,\sigma }+{\displaystyle \underset{i,\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}{}}V_{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}(i,j)n_{i,\sigma }n_{j,\sigma ^{}},`$ (1)
where $`c_{i,\sigma }`$ ($`c_{i,\sigma }^{}`$) is the annihilation (creation) electron operator at lattice site $`i`$, with spin projection $`\sigma =,`$ and $`n_{i,\sigma }=c_{i,\sigma }^{}c_{i,\sigma }`$ is the electron number operator. Here $`t`$ is the kinetic energy and $`V_{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}(i,j)`$ is the interaction energy between electrons on different sites. In what follows we assume short range interactions only. If, for instance, we keep only the on-site Coulomb repulsion $`V_,(i,i)=U`$ and the nearest neighbor Coulomb term $`V_{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}(i,i+1)=V`$ this Hamiltonian describes the extended Hubbard Model. The many-body techniques we will apply here are actually valid for a very generic class of Hamiltonians . As described elsewhere,  the fermionic degrees of freedom can be written in terms of bosonic charge, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho \left(x\right)`$, and spin,, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\sigma \left(x\right)`$, fields. The bosonic version of the fermionic Hamiltonian (1) reads:

$`H_{el}`$ $`=`$ $`H_\rho +H_\sigma +{\displaystyle \frac{2g_1}{\left(2\pi a\right)^2}}{\displaystyle 𝑑x\mathrm{cos}\left[\sqrt{8}\mathrm{\Phi }_\sigma \left(x\right)\right]}`$ (2)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2g_3}{\left(2\pi a\right)^2}}{\displaystyle 𝑑x\mathrm{cos}\left[\sqrt{8}\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho \left(x\right)+4k_Fx\right]},`$ (3)
where

$`H_v={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle 𝑑x\left[\left(u_vK_v\right)\pi ^2\mathrm{\Pi }_v^2\left(x\right)+\frac{u_v}{K_v}\left(_x\mathrm{\Phi }_v\left(x\right)\right)^2\right]},`$ (4)
where $`v=\rho ,c`$ refers to the free bosonic Hamiltonian ($`\mathrm{\Pi }_v`$ is the momentum field operator, that is, $`[\mathrm{\Pi }_v(x),\mathrm{\Phi }_u(y)]=i\delta (xy)\delta _{u,v}`$) for charge and spin, respectively, with Luttinger liquid parameters $`K_v`$, velocities $`u_v`$, and coupling constants $`g_1`$ and $`g_3`$ that are directly related to the backscattering and Umklapp processes, respectively. Here $`k_F=\pi n/2`$ is the Fermi momentum where $`n`$ is the linear density of electrons. All these parameters can be written in terms of the bare parameters of the original Hamiltonian (1). In this representation the electronic charge density can be written as:

$`\rho \left(x\right)={\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}}{\pi }}_x\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho \left(x\right).`$ (5)
Observe that in (4) the charge and spin degrees of freedom do not interact with each other. This is a generic property of 1D quantum fluids (spin-charge separation). Many important results can be understood from the perturbative renormalization group (RG) studies of (3). In the presence of attractive electron-electron interactions the backscattering term, $`g_1`$, is a relevant perturbation which leads to the opening of a gap in the spin spectrum which is associated with the dominance of superconducting fluctuations. In this case the charge excitations are gapless. In the presence of repulsive interactions backscattering is irrelevant and the Umklapp term, $`g_3`$, is the most important one. When the electronic density, $`n`$, is commensurate with the lattice (that is, $`n=1/a`$, where $`a`$ is the lattice spacing) the $`4k_Fx`$ term in (3) can be dropped and the Umklapp term becomes a relevant perturbation which leads to the opening of a gap in the charge spectrum. In this case the spin spectrum remains gapless. When $`n`$ is incommensurate with the lattice both $`g_1`$ and $`g_3`$ are irrelevant and spin and charge both have gapless spectra.

Let us now consider the effect of an acoustic phonon field, $`\varphi (x)`$, described by the Hamiltonian:

$`H_{ph}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle 𝑑x\left[P^2\left(x\right)/\rho _s+c_s^2\rho _s\left(_x\varphi \left(x\right)\right)^2\right]},`$ (6)
where $`P(x)`$ is the phonon momentum operator canonically conjugated to $`\varphi (x)`$, ($`[P(x),\varphi (y)]=i\delta (xy)`$), $`\rho _s=M/a`$ is the lattice mass density and $`c_s`$ is the speed of sound. As is well-known,  acoustic phonons couple to electrons via a deformation potential term which can be written as:

$`H_{elph}`$ $`=`$ $`\gamma {\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle 𝑑x\rho \left(x\right)_x\varphi \left(x\right)}`$ (7)
$`=`$ $`\gamma {\displaystyle 𝑑x_x\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho \left(x\right)_x\varphi \left(x\right)},`$ (8)
where we have used (5). Here $`\gamma `$ is the electron-phonon coupling constant. Naively a perturbative RG analysis of (8) would indicate that the coupling is irrelevant since it has two derivatives. In fact, as we are going to show the electron-phonon coupling does not affect the soliton propagation (and therefore it is irrelevant from this perspective) but we are also going to show that the soliton energies are strongly renormalized by the polaronic effect generated by this operator and can even vanish in the strong coupling regime. Thus, the irrelevancy of the operator in the weak couplig regime does not imply that this operator is not important in the strong coupling limit.

Notice that the spin part of the Hamiltonian (4) does not couple to the phonons we consider and can be dropped. We focus now entirely on the charge degrees of freedom. When a charge is injected into the the Mott insulator it creates a soliton excitation which can be described in terms of the equation of motion for the bosonic fields. Indeed, consider the equations of motion which are obtained from the Hamiltonian in the Heisenberg representation. It is very easy to show that the fields obey the following equations:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{u_\rho \pi K_\rho }}{\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho }{t^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{u_\rho }{\pi K_\rho }}{\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho }{x^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}g_3}{\left(\pi a\right)^2}}\mathrm{sin}\left(\sqrt{8}\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho \right)+\gamma {\displaystyle \frac{^2\varphi }{x^2}}`$ (9)
$`\rho _s{\displaystyle \frac{^2\varphi }{t^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`c_s^2\rho _s{\displaystyle \frac{^2\varphi }{x^2}}+\gamma {\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho }{x^2}}.`$ (10)
We now take advantage of the Lorentz invariance of these equations and make a change of variables $`\lambda =x\pm \upsilon t`$ where $`\upsilon `$ is the soliton velocity, in order to write:

$`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\upsilon ^2}{u_\rho \pi K_\rho }}{\displaystyle \frac{u_\rho }{\pi K_\rho }}\right){\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho }{\lambda ^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}g_3}{\left(\pi a\right)^2}}\mathrm{sin}\left(\sqrt{8}\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho \right)+\gamma {\displaystyle \frac{^2\varphi }{\lambda ^2}}`$ (11)
$`\rho _s\left(\upsilon ^2c_s^2\right){\displaystyle \frac{^2\varphi }{\lambda ^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`\gamma {\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho }{\lambda ^2}}.`$ (12)
Combining both equations and replacing $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho `$ with $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\sqrt{8}\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho `$ , the equation of motion for the charge field is given by:

$$\mu \frac{^2\mathrm{\Phi }}{\lambda ^2}+\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Phi }=0,$$
(13)
which is a sine-Gordon equation with

$`\mu ={\displaystyle \frac{\left(\pi a\right)^2}{4g_3}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma ^2}{\rho _s\left(c_s^2\upsilon ^2\right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\left(u_\rho ^2\upsilon ^2\right)}{u_\rho \pi K_\rho }}\right].`$ (14)
As is well-known this equation has single soliton solutions:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\rho (x,t)`$ $`=`$ $`\pm \sqrt{2}\mathrm{tan}^1\left(e^{\frac{1}{\sqrt{\left|\mu \right|}}\left(x\pm \upsilon t\right)}\right),\text{ for }\mu >0`$ (15)
$`=`$ $`\pm \sqrt{2}\mathrm{tan}^1\left(e^{\frac{1}{\sqrt{\left|\mu \right|}}\left(x\pm \upsilon t\right)}\right)+\pi ,\text{ for }\mu <0.`$ (16)
Moreover, from (12), we find that the lattice deformation also propagates coherently and has a profile given by

$`\varphi (x,t)=\pm {\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}\gamma }{\rho _s\left(\upsilon ^2c_s^2\right)}}\mathrm{tan}^1\left(e^{\frac{1}{\sqrt{\left|\mu \right|}}\left(x\pm \upsilon t\right)}\right).`$ (17)
These equations show that coherent charge propagation is possible in the form of a soliton (or kink dressed with a correlated lattice deformation). The minimum energy required to create such an excitation can be obtained by substituting the above solutions for the boson and phonon field directly into the Hamiltonian. After straightforward algebra we find that the energy required for soliton creation is given by:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi a}}\sqrt{\left|g_3\left({\displaystyle \frac{u_\rho }{\pi K_\rho }}{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma ^2}{\rho _sc_s^2}}\right)\right|},`$
which is reduced from its bare value $`\mathrm{\Delta }_0=\frac{2}{\pi a}\sqrt{g_3u_\rho /(\pi K_\rho )}`$ by an amount which depends on the electron-phonon coupling constant. So far this calculation is semiclassical in nature since it does not consider quantum corrections which will discussed elsewhere . This result predicts, however, that $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ vanish when $`\gamma `$ attains a critical value

$`\gamma _c=c_s\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{u_\rho \rho _s}{\pi K_\rho }}}.`$ (18)
We thus predict that in systems with strong electron-phonon coupling the energy required to create a soliton vanishes due to the polaronic effect described here. Note that in the absence of the Umklapp term arising from the discrete lattice the effects described here are not possible.

This effect might explain the recently observed long range charge transport in DNA (which we claim is a Mott insulator ) where injected charge carriers travel long distances along the DNA double helix .

We thank illuminating discussions with J. Barton, W. Beyermann, D. Cox, G. Gruner,and S. Kivelson. We especially thank M. Pollak for estimulating our interest in this problem. We acknowledge partial support provided by the Collaborative University of California - Los Alamos (CULAR) research grant under the auspices of the US Department of Energy.