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# Identification of the companion stars of Type Ia supernovae

## 1 Introduction

Type Ia supernovae (SNeIa) are unanimously attributed, nowadays, to the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf (WD) due to accretion of matter from a companion in a close binary system. The mass–accreting WD is also generally thought to be made of carbon and oxygen (CO WD). There the agreement stops, and different kinds of systems are proposed as candidates to SNeIa progenitors (see Iben 1997, for a review).

The nature of the WD companion, the mass–donor, is unclear: it could either be another WD (double–degenerate or DD systems) or a still thermonuclearly evolving star (single–degenerate or SD systems). The evolutionary stage of the companion in the SD systems could be anything from a main–sequence star to a supergiant, and mass accretion proceed via Roche–lobe overflow (driven by thermonuclear evolution of the companion, magnetic braking, or gravitational wave radiation) or by capture of matter from stellar wind. All that also bears on the explosion mechanism: on how the explosion is triggered and how it develops. Those uncertainties still raise doubts as to the use of SNeIa as calibrated candles to probe the dynamics of the Universe, the calibration being purely empirical and based on the nearby SNeIa sample (see Drell, Loredo, & Wasserman 2000, for instance).

Recently, evidence has been gathered against the merging of WDs giving rise to SNeIa, from the high efficiencies found in producing SNeIa out of star formation. These efficiencies have now been measured at several redshifts and appear to be similar, every $`700M_{}`$ going into star formation giving rise to 1 SNeIa (Ruiz–Lapuente & Canal 2000).

No previously observed system has ever been identified as the progenitor of any SNeIa. The historical SNeIa took place at a time when astronomical instrumentation was rudimentary. They can still give us, nonetheless, important and maybe decisive clues on the nature of the long–sought SNeIa progenitor systems (Ruiz–Lapuente 1997). If they were DD systems, there should be no companion left since it is destroyed in the accretion process already. On the contrary, in SD systems the companion can survive the explosion in most cases and show characteristics allowing its identification.

Of the historical SN, from the records on lights curves only two have been identified as SNeIa: SN 1006 and Tycho’s SN (SN 1572). From their X–ray morphology (spherically–symmetric shell), X–ray spectra (showing high abundances of Fe, Ni, Si, Ca, Ar), Fe enrichment in their optical filaments, and lack of any central X–ray source, a number of nearby, young Galactic supernova remnants (SNR) can be attributed to SNeIa (Ruiz–Lapuente et al. 2000). As we will see, precise enough astrometric and radial–velocity measurements of the central regions of such SNR should allow detection of the SNeIa companions from either their large proper motions or high radial velocities, due to disruption of the binary orbit plus kick from the impact of the SN ejecta on them. For SNR ages $`\stackrel{<}{}10^4yr`$, the companions should still exhibit in their outer layers the consequences of the strong perturbation of thermal equilibrium from partial stripping of the envelopes and deposition of energy from the ejecta into the layers that remain bound, and they may also show chemical contamination from the SNeIa ejecta.

## 2 Modeling, Results, and Discussion

The SD scenarios thus far proposed to explain the origin of SNeIa involve different kinds of systems. We will only consider Ch–mass explosions, which are generally thought to produce the bulk of SNeIa, so the SN ejecta impinging on the companion will always be identical (differences due to the explosion mechanism should be minor and will be left aside). Depending on the kind of system, however, the mass and evolutionary stage of the companion, as well as the separation between the two stars at the time of explosion, will be different and that will determine the space velocity and the mass, luminosity, surface temperature, and surface abundances of the surviving star.

We will consider the cases of a main–sequence companion filling its Roche lobe due to angular–momentum loss via magnetic braking (cataclysmic variable or CV system), and that of a subgiant or red-giant companion filling its Roche lobe due to thermonuclear evolution (cataclysmic–like or CLS system). The latter are thought to show up as luminous supersoft X–ray sources before exploding as SNeIa. In the modeling of the CLS systems, the stabilizing effects on mass transfer of the strong wind generated in the WD surface have been taken into account as in Hachisu, Kato, and Nomoto (1996). The cosmic SNeIa rates thus predicted give the best agreement with the observations (Ruiz–Lapuente & Canal 2000).

Our purpose here is to derive the statistical distribution of velocities, masses, and luminosities of the companions after explosion. We first run and updated version of the Monte Carlo scenario code we used to model SNeIa rates in previous work (Ruiz–Lapuente, Burkert, & Canal 1995; Canal, Ruiz–Lapuente, & Burkert 1996; Ruiz–Lapuente & Canal 1998), to obtain the distributions of companion masses and orbital separations at the time of explosion, for the systems considered. Those are displayed in Figure 1 for the CV systems (main–sequence, MS companion) and the CLS systems (distinguishing between subgiant SG, and red–giant RG companions). Note, in the upper panel, that the mass distributions of the SG and RG stars in the CLS scenario are the same, the SG case corresponding to the narrow range of final separations shown in the lower panel whilst the RG case covers a much broader range, with an almost flat distribution (same panel). In the CV scenario, the much narrower distribution of final masses, peaking at $`0.6M_{}`$, means an also narrow distribution of final radii, the companion being still in the MS. Making contact with the Roche lobe while having a companion (the WD) that has always the Ch–mass produces the sharp peak in the distribution of final separations that we see in the lower panel.

From the initial conditions above, the effects of the impact on the companion are calculated in a semianalytical approximation equivalent to that used by Wheeler, Lecar, & McKee (1975), based on previous work by Colgate (1970). The companion star is divided into concentric cylinders and the ejecta are treated as a plane slab. If the momemtum incident on a cylinder can accelerate it to the scape velocity, the corresponding mass is directly stripped. A strong shock wave is driven into the rest of the star: that will impart momentum to it (kick) and the heating will make the internal energy to exceed the gravitational potential energy in extra layers which will thus be expelled. The approximation is made that the fluid velocity just behind the shock is equal to the mean velocity of all the shocked stellar material. The energy per unit mass rapidly increases as the mass per unit area in the cylindrical shells decreases: energy deposition is thus concentrated in the outer layers, which ensures that the companion is never entirely disrupted. The results have been compared with the two–dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of Marietta, Burrows, & Fryxell (2000). Especifically, this has been done for the cases of a $`1M_{}`$ MS companion at separation $`a=3R_{}`$, a $`1.1M_{}`$ SG at $`a=4.9R_{}`$, a $`2.1M_{}`$ SG at $`a=6.5R_{}`$, and a $`1M_{}`$ RG at $`a=430R_{}`$. The agrement (maximum discrepancy below 20%) is good enough to confirm our approximation as a reliable tool for the statistical evaluation of the characteristics of the SNeIa companions after explosion, which would be hard to do by means of detailed hydrodynamic calculations. Note that the combinations of companion masses and separations at the time of explosion in Marietta, Burrows, & Fryxell (2000) (see their Table 4) are just adapted from examples proposed by Livio & Truran (1992) (CV system) and Li & van den Heuvel (1997) (CLS system), whereas in the present work the actual distributions of those parameters have been calculated for each scenario. That is why the cases above (with the exception of the $`1.1M_{}`$ SG companion at $`a=4.9R_{}`$) are not typical of the predicted distributions. However, Marietta, Burrows, & Fryxell (2000) have compared they results with an aproximation similar to ours and find best agreement for binaries near Roche lobe overflow, which is always our case. That reinforces the significance of our comparisons.

The structures of the MS and SG companions prior to explosion have been obtained by homologous transformations of a $`1M_{}`$ model in the corresponding stages. Typically, 10–20 % of the companion mass is lost. The RG companions are modelled as a compact He core surrounded by an extended H–rich envelope, the latter having the structure of a $`n=1.5`$ polytrope. The relationship between RG mass, radius at the time of explosion, and core mass, has been taken from the stellar evolution calculations by Politano (1988), which cover the initial mass range $`0.1M_{}M10M_{}`$. We find that in all cases the RG envelope is completely stripped off, as in the 2D simulations of Livne, Tuchman, & Wheeler (1992). Marietta, Burrows, & Fryxell (2000), in their recent 2D hydrodynamic modeling find, however, that a small fraction of the envelope is retained, which would greatly help in the identification of possible SNeIa companions when exploring the central regions of young, nearby SNR, as discussed below.

The kick velocities imparted to the companions by collision wih the SNeIa debris are also calculated, but they are always much smaller than the typical orbital velocities at the time of explosion, for the three types of companions (MS, SG, RG). The predicted distributions of total velocities (orbital plus kick) are shown in Figure 2.

The results corresponding to the most typical combinations of mass and orbital separation, for each type of companion, are shown in Table 1. In column 2 we give the apparent visual magnitude $`m_V`$ expected (for distances of 1 kpc and 5 kpc). In column 4, the average radial velocities $`v_r`$ (equal to the average transversal velocities $`v_t`$, since the total velocities should be distributed at random with respect to the observer’s line of sight). In column 2 is the proper motion $`\mu `$ (in arcsec yr-1), and in column 5 the maximum angular distance $`\theta `$ (in arcmin) from the explosion site that would be reached $`10^3yr`$ after the SN event. Given in the footnotes to Table 1 are the pre–explosion and post–explosion masses for the three cases. We must stress here that the apparent visual magnitudes given in Table 1 are calculated from the luminosities that the companions would reach after relaxing to thermal equilibrium, and thus are lower limits to the actual brightnesses to be expected up to a few thousand years after explosion. It is clear that the strong shock wave will not only unbind a fraction of the outer layers and give a global kick to the companion but it will also strongly perturb the hydrostatic and thermal equilibrium of the fraction that remains bound. Mechanical equilibrium should be restored on a hydrodynamic time scale and thermal equilibrium on a longer, Kelvin–Helmholtz time scale. Indeed, Marietta, Burrows, & Fryxell (2000) find in their 2D numerical simulations that after impact the MS and SG companions would swell up, their luminosities rapidly increasing by factors of up to a few thousand, to relax back to luminosities of the order shown in Table 1 in $`10^4yr`$. The RG companions would retain a residual H–rich envelope, still able to feed the H–burning shell and would evolve away from the RG branch at constant luminosity and increasing effective temperature, on a time scale of $`10^410^5yr`$. Therefore, SNeIa companions left by recent, nearby explosions, should in fact be detectable at magnitudes significantly brighter than those shown in Table 1. To illustrate this we also give, within parentheses, the magnitudes expected for the MS companions (the less luminous ones) at $`t10^3yr`$ after explosion. The peculiar velocities predicted are one order of magnitude larger that the systemic velocities of field stars at the corresponding distances. The angular sizes of the regions to be explored (given by $`\theta `$ in Table 1) ensure that the number of stars bright enough to be candidates to SNeIa companions, contained within their boundaries, is quite small. Detection of proper motion at the level of 0.01 – 0.005 arcsec yr-1, even at the magnitudes estimated in Table 1, is within the reach of the instruments FGS1R(brighter targets) and WFPC2 (fainter targets) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (Ruiz–Lapuente et al. 2000). Failure to detect any candidates would be strong evidence that none is left after the SNeIa explosions and almost completely discard the SD system hypothesis.

The possible candidates selected from their high proper (or radial) motion should then be spectroscopically analyzed. As we have seen, MS and SG candidates should be swollen and overluminous and RG candidates would have high effective temperatures. Moreover, Marietta, Burrows, & Fryxell (2000) find that whereas no material from the ejecta should be accreted during impact, there is a possibility of later accretion of material enriched in Fe and intermediate–mass elements from the low–velocity tail of the ejecta, long after impact.

There are still many uncertainties concerning close binary evolution, binary mass transfer, and the process of mass growth of a WD from accretion until it reaches the Ch–mass. To which extent could those uncertainties affect our result that any SNeIa companion should be moving at high velocities after the explosion and be luminous enough to be detected in the central regions of young, nearby SNR?

In the case of the CV systems, the companions are MS stars that continuosly fill their Roche lobes due to angular momentum loss by magnetic braking (plus emission of gravitational waves when the orbits become very close). The WD mass being equal to the Ch–mass, separation is only a function of companion mass, which in turn is just the initial mass of the star minus the fraction transferred to the WD and the (minor) fraction lost to stellar wind. The efficiency of magnetic braking is here the main unknown, but it hardly affects the distribution of final masses (and thus separations) shown in Figure 1 nor the values predicted in Table 1.

Although the CLS systems involve companions in a more advanced evolutionary stage than the CV systems, our main conclusions are equally robust. When the companion is a SG, the case is as clear–cut as for the CV systems. For the RG companions, the only worrying possibility, that the companion velocities actually were much lower than in our modeling, can be reliably excluded: since $`v_{orb}a_f^{1/2}(M_1+M_2)^{1/2}`$ and the WD mass is always equal to the Ch-mass, we approximately have $`v_{orb}a_f^{1/2}(M_1+1.4)^{1/2}`$, $`M_1`$ being the companion’s mass. Increasing $`a_f`$ (and, less efficiently, lowering $`M_1`$) would thus decrease $`v_{orb}`$. But the companion must be filling its Roche lobe $`R_L`$, and we also have (Paczyński 1971) that $`R_La_f(0.351+logM_1)`$ (where in the numerical constant we have again taken $`M_2M_{Ch}`$). Increasing $`a_f`$ should, therefore, increase $`R_L`$ faster than it would decrease $`v_{orb}`$ (decreasing $`M_1`$ cannot go very far, since the companion’s initial mass must be $`M_1\stackrel{>}{}0.8M_{}`$ in order to have evolved from the MS in less than a Hubble time), and substantial increase postpones Roche–lobe overflow to the red supergiant (RSG) stage, when a common envelope would form and be ejected, that suppressing mass transfer to the WD altogether and leaving a DD system, no longer a SD one.

A class of SD system that we have not considered here is the one in which the WD accretes H–rich material from the wind of a RG or RSG that is not filling its Roche lobe, a symbiotic system (SS). There the orbital separation could be larger and the orbital velocities smaller. However, the difficulty in making the WD grow to the Ch–mass through such a low–efficiency accretion process, avoiding explosive ignition of either H or He in the outer layers (which requires high accretion rates), has discarded SS systems as possible progenitors of the bulk of the SNeIa at least (Kenyon et al. 1993).

Finally, that the RG companions do lose their envelopes at most, and that the SG and MS companions typically just lose a minor fraction of their masses upon being hit by the SNeIa ejecta, is consistently found in all hydrodynamic simulations and semianalytical approximations. That upon impact and stripping of the outer layers the new surface layers of the companions will be out of thermal equilibrium, and that the objects should thus initially appear overluminous as compared with the equilibrium state they will approach on a thermal time scale, seems hardly disputable as well.

## 3 Conclusions

We have added to the results from existing hydrodynamical studies of the impact of SNeIa into their companion stars the statistical evaluation of the distribution of velocities to be expected for different kinds of companions. We have shown that they should be moving at velocities much higher than those of the surrounding stars: for RG companions there is a probability $`P>90\%`$ that the velocities are higher than $`100kms^1`$; for SG $`P>99\%`$ that $`v>200kms^1`$, and for MS $`P>99\%`$ that $`v>450kms^1`$. Such velocities make their identification possible in the central regions of young, nearby SNR of SNeIa origin. For distances $`d\stackrel{<}{}58kpc`$ and SNR ages $`\stackrel{<}{}10^310^4yr`$, detection of proper motion is within the reach of instruments on board the HST, and that of radial motions can be made with 2.5–4m class telescopes from the ground. The angular sizes of the regions to be surveyed are small enough that the numbers of stars within them, bright enough to be candidates to SNeIa companions, remains low. There are 8 Galactic SNR (including those of SN 1006 and SN 1572) that most likely formed from SNeIa explosions and whose distances and ages allow thorough searches (Ruiz–Lapuente et al. 2000).

Candidates selected from their peculiar velocities and positions close to the centers of the SNR could be confirmed by spectroscopic characteristics arising from their being out of thermal equilibrium due to heating by the impact of the SN debris, according to recent hydrodynamic simulations (Marietta, Burrows, & Fryxell 2000). Contamination by material accreted from the low–velocity tail of the ejecta is also possible.

Our conclusions are largely independent from the unknowns still affecting close binary evolution, mass transfer, and growth of WDs up to the Ch–mass.

Therefore, it now appears feasible to test the SD system hypothesis for the origin of SNeIa by means of observations of Galactic SNR. Detection of confirmed companions would not only validate the SD system hypothesis, but it would also allow physical modeling of SNeIa on a firmer basis and, through that, make much more reliable than at present the use of SNeIa in Cosmology.


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# Quark Loop Effects with an Improved Staggered Fermion Action Presented by C. DeTar.

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Recent proposals for Symanzik improvement of the staggered fermion action have produced encouraging results, particularly in an improved flavor and rotational symmetry . Adding a few terms to the conventional Kogut-Susskind action, namely three-link, five-link and seven-link staples and a third-neighbor coupling, removes all tree-level $`𝒪(a^2)`$ errors . The computational price for using this action is quark mass dependent, and is roughly a factor of 2.5 for the lightest masses we are using. Here we extend previous work with our preferred “Asqtad” action, studying scaling in the quenched approximation, and exploring the effects of dynamical quarks on the light hadron spectrum and the heavy-quark potential.

We have accumulated a library of gauge configurations, both quenched (one-loop Symanzik improved gauge action) and dynamical.111The MILC code, including the improved KS action code, is publicly available. Gauge configurations are also available. Please contact doug@physics.arizona.edu or detar@physics.utah.edu for details Our

| $`m_{u,d}`$ / $`m_s`$ | $`10/g^2`$ | size | lats. | $`a/r_1`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  | 8.40 | $`28^3\times 96`$ | 101 | 0.2683(9) |
|  | 8.00 | $`20^3\times 64`$ | 408 | 0.3753(8) |
| quenched | 7.75 | $`16^3\times 32`$ | 206 |  |
|  | 7.60 |  | 100 |  |
|  | 7.40 |  | 191 |  |
| 0.40 / 0.40 | 7.35 | $`20^3\times 64`$ | 335 | 0.3757(10) |
| 0.20 / 0.20 | 7.15 |  | 349 | 0.3700(10) |
| 0.10 / 0.10 | 6.96 |  | 344 | 0.3721(13) |
| 0.05 / 0.05 | 6.85 |  | 421 | 0.3732(15) |
| 0.04 / 0.05 | 6.83 |  | 208 | 0.3751(19) |
| 0.03 / 0.05 | 6.81 |  | 474 | 0.3749(14) |
| 0.02 / 0.05 | 6.79 |  | 368 | 0.3762(13) |
| 0.01 / 0.05 | 6.76 |  | 128 | 0.3848(25) |

sample is currently being enlarged.

dynamical fermion lattices are generated in the presence of two lighter flavors ($`u`$, $`d`$) and one heavier flavor ($`s`$). For the dynamical fermion sample the gauge coupling is tuned so that the lattice spacing remains the same as the quark mass is varied, allowing an exploration of quark mass effects independent of scale. The current parameter set is shown in the table above.

## 2 SCALING TESTS

To measure the degree of residual flavor symmetry breaking, we compute the mass of the local non-Goldstone pion ($`\pi _{05}`$) as a function of lattice spacing at a fixed value of the Goldstone pion mass ($`m_G`$) on a series of quenched lattices . In particular, we fix $`m_Gr_1=0.807(3)`$ (Goldstone $`\pi `$) with the scale $`r_1`$ set by the force $`F_{\mathrm{Q}\overline{\mathrm{Q}}\mathrm{static}}`$ between static quarks $`r_1^2F_{\mathrm{Q}\overline{\mathrm{Q}}\mathrm{static}}(r_1)=1`$, a variant of Sommer’s scale. The value of $`r_0/r_1`$ depends on the quark masses, varying from 1.376(2) for the quenched theory to 1.44(1) for physical quark masses. The effect of improving the fermion action is shown in Fig. 1. It is expected that the curves for all actions extrapolate to the Goldstone pion mass.

Scaling of the $`\rho `$ and nucleon masses is shown in Figs. 2 and 3. Results for variants of the Wilson-clover action are also shown . For these masses, the Asqtad action gives the best result. Nonetheless, it is encouraging that staggered fermion and Wilson-clover simulations agree in the continuum limit.

## 3 DYNAMICAL QUARK EFFECTS: EDINBURGH PLOT

To determine the effect of dynamical quarks on the light hadron spectrum, we ran a series of quenched and $`2+1`$ dynamical fermion simulations with gauge couplings tuned to fix the lattice spacing $`a=0.14`$ fm, using $`20^3\times 64`$ lattices for both the quenched and dynamical runs. The plotted points are from the runs described in Table I with light quark masses down to $`0.02a^1`$ and from the quenched run at $`10/g^2=8.0`$. The resulting Edinburgh plot in Fig. 4 shows no discernible change when dynamical quarks are introduced. This $`2+1`$ flavor $`a=0.14`$ fm result appears to be in conflict with our previous claims, based on the conventional action with two sea quark flavors in the $`a0`$ limit . We are currently investigating whether the difference comes from the number of flavors, the continuum extrapolation, or some other source of systematic error.

## 4 DYNAMICAL QUARK EFFECTS: HEAVY QUARK POTENTIAL

Dynamical quark loops modify the heavy quark potential , e.g., by opening the two-meson decay channel and by altering the running of the Coulomb coupling. In Fig. 6 we plot the heavy quark potential with and without $`3`$ flavors of sea quarks of mass $`am_q=0.05`$. The vertical scale is adjusted to give agreement at $`r_1`$, and since the force at $`r_1`$ is used to set the scale, the two potentials have the same slope there.

To the extent the potential changes shape under the influence of sea quarks, setting the lattice scale from the heavy quark potential clearly has limitations. This point is illustrated in Fig. 5, where we plot the ratio of two possible heavy-quark-potential-inspired scales as a function of the ratio of the pion to rho mass.

## 5 DYNAMICAL QUARK EFFECTS: MESON DECAY

As the pion mass drops to zero with decreasing quark mass, one expects to see evidence for the decay of heavier mesons, such as $`\rho 2\pi `$ and $`a_0\eta \pi `$. The mixing between a resonant state and a two-meson decay state should result in avoided level crossing in the spectrum of the resonant state. While such decays are natural when dynamical quarks are present, quenched simulations may also show hints of decay in some cases, through “hairpin” diagrams, although at different rates.

Previous attempts to observe effects of meson decay in the $`\rho `$ spectrum were unsuccessful . Here we report results of a preliminary attempt to observe effects of the decay $`a_0\eta \pi `$. This threshold is easier to approach than the $`\rho \pi +\pi `$ threshold because the final pseudoscalars don’t have to carry away angular momentum, so they can both be at zero momentum. However, it is difficult, because with staggered quarks the $`a_0`$ appears in the same propagators as the pions, so we must extract the alternating exponential from a propagator containing a much larger simple exponential. We measure the $`a_0`$ mass (i.e. lowest energy in the $`a_0`$ ($`0^{++}`$) channel) as a function of quark mass. This is done on quenched and dynamical fermion configurations. Preliminary results, shown in Fig. 7, suggest that the lowest $`0^{++}`$ mass drops more rapidly with decreasing quark mass in the dynamical fermion simulation. The drop appears to follow the threshold energy of the decay channel, also shown. Such a result would be expected from avoided level crossing. In fact, for the lighter quark masses it is very difficult to extract masses for the quenched $`a_0`$. This may be a signal of the non-unitarized (because of the quenching) couplings to two particle states.

## 6 SUMMARY

We continue studies using a recently proposed improved staggered fermion action. We find that the light hadron spectrum in our currently preferred Asqtad action scales very well. We have begun a systematic study of quark loop effects with $`2+1`$ flavors. Our present sample of gauge configurations has been constructed so that the lattice spacing is kept constant as the quark masses are varied. We see no quark loop effects in the light hadron spectrum with $`2+1`$ flavors at a lattice spacing of $`a=0.14`$ fm. However, sea quarks evidently modify the heavy quark potential both at short and long distance, suggesting caution in using this potential to set a precision lattice scale at unphysical quark masses. Preliminary determinations of the mass of the $`a_0`$ as a function of quark mass suggest evidence for the decay to $`\eta +\pi `$.

This work is supported by the US National Science Foundation and Department of Energy and used computer resources at Los Alamos National Lab, NERSC, NCSA, NPACI and the University of Utah (CHPC).


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# Quantum gambling using two nonorthogonal states

## Abstract

We give a (remote) quantum gambling scheme that makes use of the fact that quantum nonorthogonal states cannot be distinguished with certainty. In the proposed scheme, two participants Alice and Bob can be regarded as playing a game of making guesses on identities of quantum states that are in one of two given nonorthogonal states: if Bob makes a correct (an incorrect) guess on the identity of a quantum state that Alice has sent, he wins (loses). It is shown that the proposed scheme is secure against the nonentanglement attack. It can also be shown heuristically that the scheme is secure in the case of the entanglement attack.

A fundamental property of quantum bits (qubits) that differs from those of classical bits is that unknown qubits cannot be copied with unit efficiency  (the no-cloning theorem). Another related property of qubits is that nonorthogonal qubits cannot be distinguished with certainty . The no-cloning theorem is the basis for the success of the Bennett-Brassard 1984 quantum-key-distribution scheme . Therefore, it is interesting to search for quantum protocols utilizing the property that nonorthogonal qubits cannot be distinguished with certainty. Bennett’s other quantum-key-distribution scheme  indeed utilizes this property. On the other hand, a (remote) quantum gambling scheme has been found by Goldenberg et al. recently .

In this paper we propose another (remote) quantum gambling scheme that makes use of the fact that two nonorthogonal qubits cannot be distinguished with certainty. In the proposed scheme, two participants Alice and Bob can be regarded as playing a game of making guesses on identities of quantum states that are in one of two given nonorthogonal states; Alice randomly sends one of two nonorthogonal qubits, say, $`|0`$ and $`|\overline{0}`$. \[In this paper, $`|\overline{0}(1/\sqrt{2})(|0+|1)`$ and $`|\overline{1}(1/\sqrt{2})(|0|1).`$\] If Bob makes a correct guess, he wins. If not, he loses. Due to the fact that two nonorthogonal qubits cannot be distinguished with certainty, it is easy to see that there is no way for Bob to cheat. Alice might try to increase her gain by sending some qubits other than $`|0`$ and $`|\overline{0}`$. There are two kinds of attacks. In nonentanglement attacks, qubits sent to Bob are not entangled with Alice’s. In entanglement attacks  (or EPR attack), qubits sent to Bob are highly entangled with hers. We show that the scheme is secure in the case of nonentanglement attacks. In the case of entanglement attacks, however, we heuristically show the security of the scheme. It is true that a quantum cryptographic scheme is of little use without security proof against all attacks including entanglement attacks. And what makes it complicated to prove security of a quantum cryptographic scheme is the entanglement attack . Our security proof of the scheme against the entanglement attack is heuristic. However, since the idea behind the proof is simple, we believe that a rigorous one will be found, like in the case of the quantum key distributions .

The difference between our scheme and the original one  is that the former relies on the fact that two nonorthogonal states cannot be distinguished with certainty while the latter relies on gerneral quantum mechanical laws.d Another difference is that no quantum system needs to be additionally sent in checking steps in our scheme while it needs to be in the original scheme.

Now, let us describe the scheme more precisely.
(1) Alice randomly chooses one between two nonorthogonal qubits $`|0`$ and $`|\overline{0}`$, and sends it to Bob .
(2) On the qubit he receives, Bob performs a measurement by which he can obtain maximal probability $`p`$ of correctly guessing the identity of the qubit.
(3) On basis of the measurement’s results, he makes a guess on which one the qubit is and announces it to Alice.
(4) If he made a correct (an incorrect) guess, Alice announces he has won (lost).
(5) When Bob has won, Alice gives him one coin. When he has lost, Bob gives her $`p/(1p)`$ coins.
However, after the first step, Bob follows the following ones instead of steps $`(2)(5)`$, at randomly chosen instances with a rate $`r`$ ($`0<r1`$).
(These checking steps are similar to those of the original work of Goldenberg et al. .)
($`2^{}`$) Bob performs no measurement on the qubit and stores it.
($`3^{}`$) He announces his randomly chosen guess on identity of the qubit.
($`4^{}`$) Do the same thing as step (4).
($`5^{}`$) In the previous step, Alice has actually revealed which one she chose to tell him the qubit is (regardless of her honesty). When it is $`|0`$, Bob performs $`\widehat{S}_z`$ ($`\widehat{S}_z`$ an orthogonal measurement that composes of two projection operators $`|00|`$ and $`|11|`$ or $`\{|00|,|11|\}`$.) If the outcome is $`|1`$, Bob announces that he performed $`\widehat{S}_z`$ and got $`|1`$ as an outcome. Then Alice must give him $`R`$ ($`1`$) coins. If the outcome is $`|0`$, Bob says nothing about which measurement he performed and follows step (5). In the case of $`|\overline{0}`$, similar things are done with $`\widehat{S}_x`$ ($`=\{|\overline{0}\overline{0}|,|\overline{1}\overline{1}|\}`$).
In step (2), it is important for Bob to perform the optimal measurement that assures maximal probability $`p`$ of correctly guessing the identity of the qubit in order to assure his maximal gain. Although it is known that average information gain is constrained by the Levitin-Holevo bound , to find the optimal one is not an easy task. Fortunately, however, in the case of two nonorthogonal qubits, the measurement giving maximal information gain is well known : a measurement $`\{|\stackrel{~}{0}\stackrel{~}{0}|,|\stackrel{~}{1}\stackrel{~}{1}|\}`$, where $`|\stackrel{~}{0}`$ and $`|\stackrel{~}{1}`$ are qubits corresponding to a vector $`(1/\sqrt{2})(\widehat{z}\widehat{x})`$ and $`(1/\sqrt{2})(\widehat{z}+\widehat{x})`$, respectively, in the Bloch sphere representation, where a single qubit density operator $`\rho _B=(1/2)(\mathrm{𝟏}+\widehat{r}\stackrel{}{\sigma })`$. Here $`\mathrm{𝟏}`$ is the identity operator, $`\widehat{r}`$ is a Bloch vector, $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }=(\sigma _x,\sigma _y,\sigma _z)`$, and $`\sigma _x,\sigma _y,\sigma _z`$ are the Pauli operators. (See Fig. 1 of Ref.  or Fig. 2 of Ref. .) Since information gain is maximal if and only if $`p`$ is maximal, a measurement with maximal information gain is what maximizes $`p`$. Thus the measurement $`\{|\stackrel{~}{0}\stackrel{~}{0}|,|\stackrel{~}{1}\stackrel{~}{1}|\}`$ is the optimal one. For maximal $`p`$, Bob does as the following. When the outcome is $`|\stackrel{~}{0}`$ ($`|\stackrel{~}{1}`$), he makes a guess that the qubit is $`|0`$ ($`|\overline{0}`$). Then the probability $`p`$ of correctly guessing the qubit is given by $`p=|\stackrel{~}{0}|0|^2=|\stackrel{~}{1}|1|^2=\mathrm{cos}^2(\pi /8)`$.

Now let us show how each player’s average gain is assured. First it is clear by definition that Bob can do nothing better than performing the optimal measurement, as long as Alice prepares the specified qubits. In the scheme, the numbers of coins that Alice and Bob pay are adjusted so that no one gains when Bob’s win probability is $`p`$. Thus Bob’s gain $`G_B`$ cannot be greater than zero, that is, $`G_B0`$. Next let us consider Alice’s strategy. As noted above, we first show the security against nonentanglement attacks. In the most general nonentanglement attacks, Alice randomly generates each qubit in state $`|i`$ with a probability $`p_i`$. Here $`|i`$’s are arbitrarily specified states of qubits, $`i=1,2,\mathrm{},N`$ and $`_i^Np_i=1`$. However, since Bob has no knowledge about which $`|i`$ Alice selected at each instance, his treatments on qubits become equal for all qubits. Thus it is sufficient to show the security for a qubit in an arbitrary state $`|j=a|0+b|1`$. ($`a`$ and $`b`$ are some complex numbers with a constraint $`|a|^2+|b|^2=1`$.) First we do it for states within the $`z`$-$`x`$ plane, $`|j=\mathrm{cos}(\theta /2)|0+\mathrm{sin}(\theta /2)|1`$. Later we will generalize the argument to the former case. Let us consider the following. In steps $`(2^{})(5^{})`$, Bob checks at randomly chosen instances whether Alice has really sent $`|0`$ or $`|\overline{0}`$ by performing measurements $`\widehat{S}_z`$ or $`\widehat{S}_z`$, respectively. If the measurement’s outcomes are $`|0`$ or $`|\overline{0}`$ ($`|1`$ or $`|\overline{1}`$), Alice has passed (not passed) the test. When not passed, Alice must give him $`R(1)`$ coins .

Roughly speaking, Alice can do nothing but preparing either $`|0`$ or $`|\overline{0}`$ and honestly tell the identity of the state to him later. Otherwise she sometimes must pay $`R`$ coins to him, decreasing her gain. Let us consider this point more precisely. First we estimate the upper bound of Alice’s gain $`G_A`$. It is clear that

$$G_A\text{max}\{G_A^0,G_A^{\overline{0}}\},$$
(1)
where max$`\{x,y\}`$ denotes the maximal one between $`x`$ and $`y`$, and $`G_A^0`$ ($`G_A^{\overline{0}}`$) is Alice’s gain when she insists that $`|j`$ is $`|0`$ ($`|\overline{0}`$). When he has performed the measurements already, he has no way of detecting Alice’s cheating. So, Alice’s maximal gain in this case is $`p/(1p)`$. However, it is clear that $`G_A`$ is bounded by $`p/(1p)`$ in any case. When he has preserved the qubits following the checking steps, Alice’s cheating can be statistically detected. This case contributes to Alice’s gain by a largely negative term whose modulus is proportional to the product of the rate $`r`$ of checking steps, the probability that $`|1`$ or $`|\overline{1}`$ is detected, and the number of coins $`R`$ she must pay when it is detected, namely $`r|1|j|^2R`$ or $`r|\overline{1}|j|^2R`$. However, here we should take into account the fact that Alice obtains partial information about whether Bob has performed the measurement: let $`f_u`$ be Alice’s estimation of the probability that Bob did not perform the measurement. With no information, $`f_u`$ is $`r`$. However, Bob’s announced guess gives her partial information on his measurement’s result if he did. This information can be used to make a better estimate of $`f_u`$. For example, in the case where Alice sends $`|j`$ and Bob performs the optimal measurement $`\{|\stackrel{~}{0}\stackrel{~}{0}|,|\stackrel{~}{1}\stackrel{~}{1}|\}`$, we obtain using the Bayes’s rule that $`f_u=(r/2)/[(r/2)+(1r)|\stackrel{~}{0}|j|^2]`$ when his guess is $`|0`$. However, it is clear that $`f_ur/2`$: when Bob did not perform the measurement, he simply guesses it with equal probabilities regardless of what he received. Thus by the Bayes’s rule, Alice can see that there remains a probability greater than $`r/2`$ that Bob did not perform the measurement. The relation $`f_ur/2`$ also holds for the entanglement attacks, since it is satisfied for any $`|j`$ as shown above (refer to the related discussion on entanglement-attack later). Combining above facts, we obtain

$$G_A^0\frac{p}{1p}\frac{r}{2}|1|j|^2R$$
(2)
and

$$G_A^{\overline{0}}\frac{p}{1p}\frac{r}{2}|\overline{1}|j|^2R.$$
(3)
From Eqs. (1)-(3), we can see, in order that $`G_A`$ be non-negative the following two conditions must be satisfied. (1) Either $`|1|j|^2(1/rR)1`$ (that is, $`|j|0`$) or $`|\overline{1}|j|^2(1/rR)1`$ (that is, $`|j|\overline{0}`$); (2) Between $`|0`$ and $`|\overline{0}`$, Alice chooses what is nearer to $`|j`$. Then she pretends in the step (4)’s that it is the qubit sent to Bob. Otherwise, $`G_A`$ will be dominated by the negative second term in the right-hand sides of Eqs. (2) and (3).

Alice might increase her gain by sending a qubit that slightly differs from either $`|0`$ or $`|\overline{0}`$. However, the gain can be made negligible by making $`R`$ large, as we show in the following. Let us consider the case where Alice prepares $`|j`$ ($`|0`$) and later tells him that it is $`|0`$, for example. In this case, $`G_A`$ for a given $`r`$ and $`R`$ is given by

$`G_A`$ $`=`$ $`(1r)\{|\stackrel{~}{0}|j|^2(1)+|\stackrel{~}{1}|j|^2{\displaystyle \frac{p}{1p}}\}`$ (5)
$`r|1|j|^2R+r|0|j|^2\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{p}{1p}}\}`$
$`<`$ $`(1r)\{[\mathrm{cos}({\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{8}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}})]^2(1)+[\mathrm{sin}({\displaystyle \frac{\pi }{8}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}})]^2{\displaystyle \frac{p}{1p}}\}`$ (7)
$`r(\mathrm{sin}{\displaystyle \frac{\theta }{2}})^2R+3r.`$
Here the first (second and third) term in the right-hand sides is due to normal steps $`(1)(5)`$ \[checking steps $`(2^{})(5^{})`$\]. We can check Eq. (5) by verifying that $`G_A<3r0`$ when $`|j`$ equals $`|0`$. By the two conditions, we might only consider the case where $`\theta 0`$, and thus we can neglect higher-order terms in Eq. (5),

$$G_A<\frac{\alpha }{1p}\theta \frac{rR}{4}\theta ^2+3r,$$
(8)
where $`\alpha =\mathrm{cos}(\pi /8)\mathrm{sin}(\pi /8)`$ and a small term of order $`\theta ^2`$ is also neglected. Alice would maximize her gain for given $`r`$ and $`R`$. Maximal value of $`G_A`$ is obtained when $`\theta =(2\alpha /[1p])(1/rR)`$.

$$G_A^{max}=\frac{\alpha ^2}{(1p)^2}\frac{1}{rR}+3r.$$
(9)
Bob would minimize $`G_A^{max}`$ for a given $`R`$. $`G_A^{max}`$ has its minimal value $`2\sqrt{3}\alpha /[(1p)\sqrt{R}]`$ when $`r=\alpha /[(1p)\sqrt{3R}]`$. Therefore, if Bob chooses $`r=\alpha /[(1p)\sqrt{3R}]`$ then $`G_A`$ is bounded by the positive term $`2\sqrt{3}\alpha /[(1p)\sqrt{R}]1/\sqrt{R}`$ that approaches to zero as $`R`$ become large, similarly to the case of the scheme of Goldenberg et al. .

Now we argue that using a qubit outside the $`z`$-$`x`$ plane does not increase Alice’s gain: we can see in Eq. (5) that $`G_A`$ can only be increased by making the ratio $`|\stackrel{~}{1}|j|^2/|\stackrel{~}{0}|j|^2`$ large while keeping $`|1|j|^2`$ a very small constant. Let us consider some set of $`|j`$’s (not confined in the $`z`$-$`x`$ plane) that give the same value of $`|1|j|^2`$. Bloch vectors of this set make a circle around that of $`|1`$. We can see by inspection that what gives the maximal value of the ratio $`|\stackrel{~}{1}|j|^2/|\stackrel{~}{0}|j|^2`$ lies within the $`z`$-$`x`$ plane.

Now, let us heuristically argue that the entanglement attacks  do not work in the proposed scheme. Let us consider the case where Alice prepares pairs of qubits in an entangled state,

$$|\psi =\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|0_A|0_B+|1_A|\overline{0}_B),$$
(10)
where $`A`$ and $`B`$ denote Alice and Bob, respectively. Alice sends qubits with label $`B`$ to Bob while storing those with label $`A`$. If she performs $`\widehat{S}_z`$, Bob is given a mixture of $`|0`$ and $`|\overline{0}`$ with equal frequency. Thus if Alice always performs $`\widehat{S}_z`$, the attack reduces to a nonentanglement attack where she randomly sends either $`|0`$ or $`|\overline{0}`$. Let us consider an example illustrating how performing measurements much different from $`\widehat{S}_z`$ is not of benefit for Alice; we can rewrite Eq. (10) as

$$|\psi =\frac{\sqrt{2+\sqrt{2}}}{2}|\overline{0}_A|\alpha _B+\frac{\sqrt{2\sqrt{2}}}{2}|\overline{1}_A|\beta _B,$$
(11)
where $`|\alpha `$ and $`|\beta `$ are normalized ones of $`(|0+|\overline{0})`$ and $`(|0|\overline{0})`$, respectively. Thus if Alice performs $`\widehat{S}_x`$, either $`|\alpha `$ or $`|\beta `$ is generated at Bob’s site with probabilities given by Eq. (11). However, since all of $`|1|\alpha |^2`$, $`|\overline{1}|\alpha |^2`$, $`|1|\beta |^2`$, and $`|\overline{1}|\beta |^2`$ are of order of one, $`G_A`$ becomes much negative in any case. So Alice would not perform $`\widehat{S}_x`$. In fact, if Alice is able to change the qubits between $`|0`$ and $`|\overline{0}`$ as she likes, her cheating will always be successful. However, she is not allowed to do so, since $`|00||\overline{0}\overline{0}|`$ and Bob’s reduced density operator $`\rho _B(=\text{Tr}_A[\rho _{AB}])`$ cannot be changed even with entanglement attacks.

By appropriately choosing her measurement, Alice can generate at Bob’s site any $`\{p_i,|ii|\}`$ satisfying $`_ip_i|ii|=\rho _B`$, where $`\{p_i,|ii|\}`$ denotes a mixture of pure states $`|ii|`$ with relative frequency $`p_i`$ (the theorem of Houghston, Jozsa, and Wootters) . Let $`\rho _B=(1/2)(\mathrm{𝟏}+\widehat{r}\stackrel{}{\sigma })`$. Since $`\rho _B=_ip_i|ii|`$ and $`|ii|=(1/2)(\mathrm{𝟏}+\widehat{r}_i\stackrel{}{\sigma })`$ where $`\widehat{r}_i`$ is the corresponding Bloch vector, we have $`(1/2)(\mathrm{𝟏}+\widehat{r}\stackrel{}{\sigma })=(1/2)(\mathrm{𝟏}+[_ip_i\widehat{r}_i]\stackrel{}{\sigma })`$ and thus

$$\widehat{r}=\underset{i}{}p_i\widehat{r}_i.$$
(12)
Therefore, for a given $`\rho _B`$ whose Bloch vector is $`\widehat{r}`$, Alice can prepare at Bob’s site any mixture $`\{p_i,|ii|\}`$ as long as its Bloch vectors $`\widehat{r}_i`$ satisfy the Eq. (12). However, if Alice always performs a given measurement, the entanglement attacks reduce to the nonentanglement attacks: outcomes of measurements on entangled pairs do not depend on temporal order of the two participants’ measurements. So we can confine ourselves to the case where Alice measures first. Then the attack reduces to a nonentanglement attack where Alice generates $`|i`$ with probability $`p_i`$. Alice can only utilize the entanglement by choosing her measurements according to Bob’s announced guesses. However, the checking steps also prevent Alice from increasing her gain: she must choose the measurement that gives some mixture $`\{p_i,|ii|\}`$ at Bob’s site where each $`\widehat{r}_i`$ is nearly the same as either $`z`$ or $`x`$. Otherwise $`G_A`$ becomes dominated by a much negative term involving $`rR`$. Therefore, Alice’s freedom in the choice of measurements is negligible and thus she can increase her gain by negligible amounts even with the entanglement attacks.

Although the proposed scheme can be implemented with currently available technologies, it is very sensitive to errors. So before methods for reducing decoherence, e.g., quantum error correcting codes  or decoherence-free subspaces  are realized with high performance, the proposed scheme seems to be impractical. And even if such methods are available, errors will remain to be generated with a small rate. Alice might insist that all errors are the residual ones and would not give him the $`R`$ coins. Bob’s practical solution to this problem is that he aborts the whole protocol if the error rate is greater than the expected residual error rate, as suggested in the original work . Despite these difficulties, however, it is worthwhile to have another application of the fundamental property that nonorthogonal qubits cannot be distinguished with certainty .

In conclusion, we have given another (remote) quantum gambling scheme that makes use of the fact that nonorthogonal states cannot be distinguished with certainty. In the proposed scheme, two participants Alice and Bob can be regarded as playing a game of making guesses on identities of quantum states that are in one of two given nonorthogonal states: if Bob makes a correct (an incorrect) guess on the identity of a quantum state that Alice has sent, he wins (loses). It was shown that the proposed scheme is secure against the nonentanglement attack. It could also be shown heuristically that the scheme is secure in the case of the entanglement attack.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology through the Creative Research Initiatives Program under Contract No. 99-C-CT-01-C-35.


text:
# The Chemical Evolution of Galaxy Disks

## 1. Introduction

In order to predict the chemical evolution of galaxy disks one needs to know several fundamental quantities. In particular, to build a model which predicts the evolution of the abundances of the most common chemical elements in the gas as functions of space and time, some assumptions on the following physical processes are required: i) the star formation, ii) the stellar nucleosynthesis, iii) the possible gas flows entering and/or leaving the system. Unfortunately, point i) is still very uncertain since we do not know the physics of star formation and we have to adopt simplifying assumptions about the star formation law. Generally we divide the stellar birthrate into two independent functions, one is the so-called star formation rate (SFR) and is only a function of time, the other is the initial mass function (IMF) and is only a function of the stellar mass. Concerning point ii), the knowledge of stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis is more advanced than that of the star formation process although large uncertainties still exist also in the calculation of the stellar yields; among these there are the treatment of convection, the rates of nuclear reactions and the explosive nucleosythesis. In particular, the yield of iron from massive stars ($`M>10M_{}`$) seems to be particularly uncertain owing to the poorly known “mass-cut”, namely how much mass stays in the collapsed remnant and how much is ejected in the supernova event. Finally, point iii) is also highly uncertain since the gas dynamics is a very complex phenomenon and pure chemical evolution models take into account dynamics only in a very simplified manner.

In past years a great deal of theoretical work has appeared concerning the chemical evolution of the disk of the Milky Way and other spirals (Matteucci and François 1989; Yoshii and Sommer-Larsen, 1990; Burkert et al. 1992; Carigi 1994; Timmes et al. 1995; Tsujimoto et al. 1995; Chiappini et al. 1997, 1999,2000a,b; Chang et al. 1999; Portinari & Chiosi 1999, 2000, Boissier & Prantzos 1999; Goswami & Prantzos 2000;Prantzos and Boissier, 2000; Romano et al. 2000). Most of the more recent models agree that is important to assume an “inside-out” formation for disks. This implies that the inner parts of galaxy disks should form on relatively fast timescales whereas the outermost regions might be still forming now.

In this paper we focuse on one particular model for the chemical evolution of the Galactic disk, the model of Chiappini et al. (1997, hereafter CMG97) and its more recent development (Chiappini et al. 2000b). This model assumes two main episodes of gas infall of primordial chemical composition. The first episode occurs on a short timescale ($`0.8`$ Gyr) and contributes to the formation of the halo, the second takes much longer (several Gyrs) and gives rise to the disk. In this picture the formation of most of the disk is disentangled from that of the halo which is assumed to have lost part of its gas to form the bulge. Therefore, the bulge formed on a timescale similar to that of the halo. The formation of the innermost disk regions also occurs on a short timescale whereas the outermost regions form on much longer timescales. ¿From the observational point of view, the distributions of abundances, stars and gas in the disk of our Galaxy are the best studied. In particular, the presence of abundance gradients along the Galactic disk is now well established. Abundance gradients represent an important constraint on the history of the formation of the disk especially if considered together with the distribution of gas, stars and star formation as functions of the Galactocentric distance. Abundance gradients are also measured in other spirals and in some cases the gas distribution is also available. Finally, in the local disk (solar neighbourhood) the abundances in stars of different ages are very well studied. Very good constraints are represented by the G-dwarf metallicity distribution which imposes constraints on the birthrate history of the local disk and the \[el/Fe\] versus \[Fe/H\] relations which help us in understanding the stellar nucleosynthesis and supernova (SN) progenitors.

## 2. Observational constraints for the Milky Way Disk

### 2.1. The Local Disk

* The G-dwarf metallicity distribution (Wyse and Gilmore 1995; Rocha-Pinto and Maciel, 1996), represents the history of the stellar birthrate in the local disk and it can impose strong constraints on the mechanisms of disk formation. In particular, the fit of the G-dwarf \[Fe/H\] distribution requires that the local disk formed by infall of gas on a time scale of the order of $`\tau _d68`$ Gyr, (CMG97; Romano et al. 2000; Boissier and Prantzos 1999).
* The relative abundance ratios as functions of the relative metallicity (relative to the Sun) \[X/Fe\] vs. \[Fe/H\] are generally interpreted to be due to the time-delay between Type Ia and II SNe. From these abundance patterns one can infer the timescale for the halo-thick disk formation ($`\tau _h`$ 1.5-2.0 Gyr, Matteucci and François, 1989; CMG97).
* Evidence for a hiatus (no longer than 1 Gyr) in the SFR before the formation of the thin disk is suggested by the increase of the \[Fe/$`\alpha `$\] (with $`\alpha `$=Mg and O) ratio at a constant \[$`\alpha `$/H\] value, (Gratton et al., 2000; Furhmann, 1998).
* The age-metallicity relation (Edvardsson et al. 1993). This relation is not a strong constraint since it can be fitted by a variety of model assumptions and it shows a very large spread. Part of this spread can be due to the fact that in the local disk we observe also stars which are born elsewhere in the disk and later migrated into the solar vicinity because of orbital diffusion (e.g Wielen et al. 1996).

### 2.2. The Whole Disk

The main observational constraints for the whole disk are:

* Abundance Gradients: data from various sources (HII regions, PNe, B stars) suggest a standard value for the gradient for oxygen, $`0.07`$ dex/kpc in the galoctocentric distance range 4-14 kpc (Maciel and Quireza 1999 and references therein). However, it is not yet clear if the slope is unique or bimodal. Similar gradients are found for N and Fe.
* Gas Distribution :HI is roughly constant over a range of 4-10 kpc whereas $`H_2`$ follows the light. The total gas increases towards the center with a peak at 4-6 kpc.
* SFR Distribution: from various tracers (Lyman-$`\alpha `$ continuum, pulsars, SN remnants, molecular clouds) one finds that the SFR increases towards the inner disk regions with a peak at 4-6 kpc similar to that of the gas.

It is worth noting that most of the galactic chemical evolution models suggest, in agreement with Larson (1976), that in order to fit abundance gradients, SFR and gas distribution along the Galactic disk, an inside-out formation of the disk is required, with the timescale for the formation of the disk being a linearly increasing function of the Galactocentric distance, and that the SFR should be a strongly varying function of the Galactocentric distance.

## 3. Observational constraints on disks of other spirals

* Abundance gradients: if measured in dex/kpc are steeper in smaller disks but the correlation disappears if dex/$`R_d`$ is used, namely there is a universal slope per unit scale length (Garnett, 1998). Another important characteristic is that the gradients seem to be flatter in galaxies with central bars (Zaritsky et al. 1994).
* The SFR: is measured mainly from $`H_\alpha `$ emission (Kennicutt, 1989; 1998) and shows a well defined correlation with the total surface gas density (HI+$`H_2`$).
* Gas distribution: there are differences between field and cluster spirals indicating that these latter have suffered environmental effects (Skillman et al., 1996).
* Integrated colors show that a formation inside-out is required (Jimenez et al. 1998; Prantzos and Boissier 2000), in agreement with what is inferred for the Milky Way disk.

## 4. Different approaches to the chemical evolution of the Galactic disk

The most common approaches to the formation of the Galactic disk and disks in general, from a chemical evolution point of view, are:

* Serial Formation: in this scenario halo, thick and thin disk form in sequence (e.g. Matteucci & François 1989; Burkert et al. 1992). No overlapping in metallicities between the different stellar populations, at variance with observational evidence (Beers and Sommar-Larsen 1995) is predicted.
* Parallel Formation: the various Galactic components start at the same time and from the same gas but evolve at different rates. Within this scenario one predicts overlapping of stars belonging to the different components (e.g. Pardi et al. 1995). However, a problem of this approach, common also to the previous one, is that it is difficult to disentangle the evolution of the halo from that of the disk, at variance with suggestions from the distribution of the angular momentum of stars in the different components (Wyse and Gilmore, 1992), indicating that the gas which formed the stellar halo did not participate in the formation of the disk.
* Two-infall Formation: the evolution of the halo and thin disk are independent and they form out of two separate infall episodes (overlapping in metallicity of different stellar populations is also predicted) (e.g. CMG97; Chang et al. 1999).

## 5. Basic Ingredients for Galaxy Evolution

### 5.1. The Star Formation Rate

Given the poor knowledge of the physical processes determining star formation we are forced to parametrize the SFR. Various parametrizations have been proposed, in particular:

* Exponentially decreasing with time: $`SFR=\nu e^{t/\tau _{}}`$, with $`\tau _{}=515`$ Gyr (Tosi, 1988) in order to give good agreement with the present time gas and SFR in the solar neighbourhood.
* The Schmidt law, namely depending on a power between 1 and 2 of the volume or surface gas density: $`SFR=\nu \rho _{gas}^k`$ or $`SFR=\nu \sigma _{gas}^k`$.
* A law which includes the total surface mass density: $`SFR=\nu \sigma _{tot}^{k_1}\sigma _{gas}^{k_2}`$, where $`\sigma _{tot}`$ is the total surface mass density and accounts for the feedback mechanism between star formation and heating of the interstellar medium (ISM), due to supernovae and stellar winds. Observational evidence for such a law is provided by Dopita and Ryder (1994).
* A function of the surface gas density and the angular rotation speed of the gas: $`SFR=0.017\mathrm{\Omega }_{gas}\sigma _{gas}R^1\sigma _{gas}`$, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{gas}`$ being the angular rotation speed of the gas. This law was suggested by Kennicutt (1998) as a good fit of the SFR measured from the $`H_\alpha `$ emission in spirals and starburst galaxies. Kennicutt has also suggested the existence of a threshold gas density for star formation of few $`M_{}pc^2`$, below which the star formation cannot occur. CMG97 have adopted such a thrshold in their model and have shown that this naturally produces a hiatus in the star formation rate between the thick and thin disk formation as observed in the plots \[Fe/Mg\] vs. \[Mg/H\] and \[Fe/O\] vs. \[O/H\] (Fuhrmann 1998; Gratton et al. 2000).

All of these SFRs have to be calibrated in order to reproduce the present time SFR in the solar vicinity and this is done by means of the parameter $`\nu `$ which is the efficiency of star formation and is a free parameter.

The local disk SFR, measured from the tracers mentioned above and by assuming a specific IMF, is in the range SFR=2-10$`M_{}pc^2Gyr^1`$ (Timmes et al. 1995).

### 5.2. The Initial Mass Function

The IMF is normally parametrized as a power law of the type: $`\phi (m)m^{(x+1)}`$, defined over a mass range of 0.1-100$`M_{}`$. There is a general agreement that the Salpeter IMF with $`x=1.35`$ does not work well for the disk of the Galaxy and that IMFs with steeper slopes in the range of massive stars have to be preferred (e.g. Scalo, 1986). On the other hand, it seems that in elliptical galaxies a Salpeter or even flatter IMF gives better results elaborating the evolution of these galaxies and the intra-cluster medium (see Matteucci 1996).

### 5.3. The Infall Rate

The importance of the gas infall in the formation of the Galactic disk is originally due to the best fit that it provides for the G-dwarf metallicity distribution in the solar neighbourhood. A biased gas infall (inside-out formation) also provides a very good explanation for the main properties of the disk (abundance gradients, gas and star formation) as functions of the Galactocentric distance.

There are various parametrizations of the infall rate:

* Constant in space and time.
* Variable in space and time: $`IR=A(R)e^{t/\tau (R)}`$, with $`\tau (R)`$ constant or varying along the disk. The quantity $`A(R)`$ is derived by fitting the actual surface mass density distribution along the disk: $`\sigma _{tot}(R)=\sigma _oe^{R/R_d}`$.
* CMG97 adopted a double law for the halo-thick disk and thin-disk: $`IR=A(R)e^{t/\tau _H}+B(R)e^{(tt_{max})/\tau _D(R)}`$, where $`\tau _H`$ and $`\tau _D(R)`$ are the timescales for the halo-thick and thin-disk formation, respectively. The dependence of $`\tau _D`$ on the Galactocentric distance is a linear function (see CMG97).

### 5.4. Radial Flows

Observationally, it is not clear whether radial flows along the Galactic disk and disks in general really exist. In a recent study, Portinari and Chiosi (2000) analysed in detail the effects of radial flows and concluded that they are important in connection with the peak observed in the gas in the Galactic disk at 4-6 kpc.

### 5.5. Stellar Nucleosynthesis

We briefly recall here the element production by stars of all masses, as suggested by the most recent nucleosynthesis calculations. In particular these calculations are: Woosley and Weaver (1995) and Thielemann et al. (1996) for massive stars, Marigo et al. (1996) and van den Hoeck and Groenewegen (1997) for low and intermediate mass stars.

* Massive stars: $`M>10M_{}`$: produce the bulk of O and $`\alpha `$-elements (Mg, Si, Ca, Ti) and some Fe (very uncertain). They die as Type II SNe.
* Low and Intermediate Mass Stars ($`0.8M/M_{}68`$): i) single stars produce C, N and some s-process elements, they die as C-O white dwarfs (WDs). ii) Carbon-oxygen white dwarfs in binary systems give origin to Type Ia SNe when they accrete enough matter from the companion to reach the Chandrasekhar mass limit. At this point a C-deflagration is initiated with a consequent explosion (Type Ia SN), and the WD is transformed into Fe and traces of elements from C to Si. They are responsible for the production of the bulk of Fe in galaxies, unless a very unusual IMF is adopted.

## 6. Model Results

As an example of a model which can satisfactorily fit the properties of the Galactic disk we show the results of Chiappini et al. (2000b) and Chiappini et al. (this conference). The model is basically that of CMG97 except that here we considered a more realistic density profile decreasing outwards for the stellar halo rather than constant as in CMG97. The nucleosynthesis prescriptions are the most recent ones and the nucleosynthesis of novae is also included. In figure 1 we show the predicted oxygen abundance gradient at the present time, the distribution of the $`SFR`$/$`SFR_{}`$ ratio, the total surface gas density and the stellar density distributions.

The model reproduces all the four constraints except for the peak of the gas and SFR at 4-6 kpc which is probably the result of the dynamical effects of the central bar, as discussed in Portinari and Chiosi (2000).

## 7. Conclusions

The comparison between observations and models suggests that:

* The disk of the Galaxy formed mostly by infall of primordial or very metal poor gas accumulating faster in the inner than in the outer regions (inside-out scenario).
* In the framework of the inside-out scenario the SFR should be a strongly varying function of the galactocentric distance. This can be achieved by assuming a dependence of the SFR either on the total surface mass density (feed-back mechanism) or on the angular circular velocity of gas (both are supported by observations), besides the dependence upon the surface gas density.
* Radial flows probably are not the main cause of gradients but can help in reproducing the gas profile.
* An IMF constant in space and time should be preferred, as shown by several numerical experiments (e.g. Chiappini et al. 2000a).
* The disks of other spirals also indicate an inside-out formation, as shown by Prantzos and Boissier (2000) who described the galaxy disks by means of scaling laws, taken from semy-analytical models of galaxy formation (Mo et al. 1998), calibrated on the Galaxy.
* Dynamical processes such as the formation of a central bar can influence the evolution of disks and deserve more attention in the future.
* Abundance ratios (e.g. \[$`\alpha `$/Fe\]) in stars at large galactocentric distances can provide clues for understanding the formation of the disk and the halo (inside-out or outside-in) (see Chiappini et al., 2000b).
* The predictions of chemical evolution models can be tested in a cosmological context by studying galaxy surface brightness and size evolution as a function of redshift. Roche et al. (1998) concluded that a size-luminosity evolution, as predicted by the inside-out model of CMG97, represents a good fit to the observations.

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text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Instantons are finite action solutions to the Euclidean equations of motion in a given field theory, and describe tunnelling processes between different vacua. When the model possesses rigid symmetries, one can act with the transformation rules on a solution to generate new solutions, and so the instanton depends on a number of collective coordinates. The instanton action is typically inversely proportional to the coupling constant and does not depend on the collective coordinates generated by the rigid symmetries. Examples are the instanton in pure Yang-Mills theories , or the instanton in the quantum-mechanical double-well potential (see e.g. ).

In supersymmetric theories, or more generally in a theory containing fermions and bosons, the equations of motion become more complicated because the fermions can couple non-trivially to the bosonic fields. An obvious solution is to set all fermions to zero, and to take for the bosonic fields the usual instanton. When rigid supersymmetry is present, one can use the supersymmetry transformation rules to obtain other exact solutions of the equations of motion with the fermions non-zero and containing fermionic collective coordinates. Because this configuration is related to the purely bosonic one by supersymmetry, the instanton action is still the same and does not depend on the fermionic collective coordinates.

However, the most general solution to the equations of motion can often not be obtained by acting on the purely bosonic configuration with symmetries. As an example consider a chiral spinor, say in the adjoint representation of an $`SU(N)`$ gauge theory with $`N3`$, satisfying the Dirac equation in the presence of a single instanton. The number of solutions is given by $`2N`$, so there are $`2N`$ Grassmannian collective coordinates (GCC). Such a spinor field is present in $`𝒩=1`$ $`SU(N)`$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. Using ordinary and conformal supersymmetry, one can generate four GCC, but the remaining solutions of the Dirac equation are not directly obtained by symmetry222However, these other fermionic solutions have also been given a geometrical interpretation, related to the orientation of the $`SU(2)`$ subgroup in $`SU(N)`$ .. Nevertheless, because the fermions are just minimally coupled to the gauge fields, the instanton action is still the same as without the fermions (and hence independent of the GCC), because the fermion kinetic term vanishes upon using the Dirac equation.

The question we want to address in this paper is whether the instanton action can depend on collective coordinates which are not produced by any rigid symmetry. Contrary to what is commonly believed, we will show in an explicit example that the instanton action can indeed depend on the collective coordinates of the exact instanton solution. In the discussion we shall comment on whether this solution can be interpreted as an instanton, and whether it is related to other work in the literature. If we denote a collective coordinate by $`\gamma `$ and the fields by $`\varphi `$, the dependence of the action on $`\gamma `$ can be computed from

$$\frac{S}{\gamma }=dx\frac{S}{\varphi (x)}|_{\varphi _{\mathrm{cl}}}\frac{\varphi _{\mathrm{cl}}}{\gamma },$$
(1.1)
with $`\varphi _{\mathrm{cl}}`$ the exact instanton solution. It is then sometimes argued that because $`S/\varphi =0`$ is the field equation, which is satisfied by $`\varphi _{\mathrm{cl}}`$, the action cannot depend on $`\gamma `$. A closer inspection of (1.1) however shows that this argument is not correct. The reason is that to obtain the field equation, one has to do a partial integration. The flaw in the argument is then that one has neglected the surface term that appears when doing the partial integration: in the instanton background it can yield a non-zero and finite contribution. We will show this explicitly in a quantum-mechanical model.

In theories where the fermions are not minimally coupled, like the model we will consider in this paper, or when other fields are present which couple non-trivially, the equations of motion are much harder to solve. Another interesting example is the $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, which contains, besides the gauge fields, four Weyl spinors and six scalar fields, all in the adjoint representation. The equation of motion for the fermions is not the Dirac equation, but contains inhomogeneous terms due to the presence of Yukawa interactions. Again, the instanton solution of  with all scalars and fermions vanishing is an exact solution of this model, but one can also include the fermionic zero modes and try to obtain another exact solution. Even when the scalar fields have no vacuum expectation value333If there is a vacuum expectation value for the scalars, one can use Derrick’s theorem to prove there are no exact solutions to the equations of motion . In such cases, one works with approximate solutions, called constrained instantons . The instanton action then depends on the collective coordinates because the field equations are not satisfied., it is difficult to solve the equations of motion with all fermionic collective coordinates present. The strategy one follows is to solve the equations of motion iteratively in the number of GCC. Because of the Grassmannian nature, this is a finite procedure. For $`𝒩=4`$ super Yang-Mills theory, this procedure was initiated in , and continued in more detail in , to lowest order in the GCC. It was also shown that after one iteration the instanton action contains a term proportional to four GCC, see also . But because of the complicated structure of the model (the number of iterations grows with the $`N`$ of $`SU(N)`$), an exact solution was not obtained. It is important to find the complete GCC dependence of the instanton action, since these terms are needed for computing correlation functions beyond the leading order in the coupling constant. Specifically, we have in mind the instanton calculations which are used to check the AdS/CFT correspondence in $`𝒩=4`$ super Yang-Mills theory. It is unknown whether a complete solution exists in this model, whether it has finite action, and whether the winding number is modified.

The purpose of this letter is to use a toy model where this iteration procedure can be demonstrated explicitly. It is a deformation of the instanton in a supersymmetric version of the quantum-mechanical model with a double-well potential. As we will see, the iteration will only take two steps, and hence our construction leads to a new instanton solution with non-vanishing fermions. We compute the instanton action, show that it is finite and contains terms proportional to four fermionic collective coordinates.

## 2 The model

We start by considering the following quantum mechanical model, formulated in Euclidean space,

$$S_{\mathrm{bos}}=\frac{1}{2}d\tau \{\dot{x}(\tau )^2+U^2(x)\},$$
(2.1)
where the dot stands for the $`\tau `$-derivative, and the integration is over the infinite $`\tau `$-line. The potential has a double-well shape,

$$\frac{1}{2}U^2=\frac{1}{4}\lambda \left(x^2\frac{\mu ^2}{\lambda }\right)^2.$$
(2.2)
The field equation, $`\ddot{x}UU^{}=0`$, where the prime stands for the $`x`$ derivative, has the usual kink-instanton solution,

$$x_K(\tau )=\frac{\mu }{\sqrt{\lambda }}\mathrm{tanh}\left[\frac{\mu }{\sqrt{2}}(\tau X)\right],$$
(2.3)
where $`X`$ is a collective coordinate associated with time translations. In fact, the instanton satisfies the first-order BPS equation $`\dot{x}_K+U(x_K)=0`$.

In the spectrum of fluctuations around the kink-instanton, one finds a zero mode associated with translational symmetry,

$$Z_0(\tau )=\sqrt{\frac{3m}{8}}\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}^2\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]},$$
(2.4)
where we have introduced the variable $`m=\mu \sqrt{2}`$. This zero mode is obtained by differentiation of the kink-instanton with respect to the collective coordinate. The normalization is chosen such that $`d\tau Z_0(\tau )Z_0(\tau )=1`$. Evaluating the action on the kink-instanton yields

$$S_{\mathrm{inst}}^{(0)}=\frac{2\sqrt{2}\mu ^3}{3\lambda }=\frac{m^3}{3\lambda }.$$
(2.5)
Tunnelling phenomena, including two-loop effects, in this model were analyzed in .

We are interested in models with fermions, so we add the following terms

$$S_{2\mathrm{ferm}}=\frac{1}{2}d\tau \{\psi _i^T\dot{\psi }_i+(\psi _i^T\sigma _2\psi _i)U^{}\}.$$
(2.6)
Here $`i`$ is a flavor index, and the fermions are two-component spinors. For one fermion, there is a supersymmetry, given by

$$\delta x=\epsilon ^T\sigma ^2\psi ;\delta \psi =\sigma ^2\dot{x}\epsilon U\epsilon ,$$
(2.7)
but we are interested in the case $`i=1,\mathrm{},4`$. The field equations read

$`\ddot{x}UU^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\frac{1}{2}(\psi _i^T\sigma ^2\psi _i)U^{\prime \prime },`$
$`\dot{\psi }_i+\sigma ^2\psi _iU^{}`$ $`=`$ $`0.`$ (2.8)
The usual instanton solution to this set of equations is obtained by setting all fermions to zero and taking for $`x`$ the kink-instanton, $`x_K`$. In the supersymmetric case this solution is invariant under SUSY transformations with parameter $`\epsilon =\frac{1\sigma ^2}{2}\epsilon `$, while the parameter $`\epsilon =\frac{1+\sigma ^2}{2}\epsilon `$ breaks SUSY and generates a fermionic zero mode.

There is another solution, for which the fermions are not zero. It contains $`x=x_K(\tau )`$ and the fermion zero modes

$$\psi _i^{(1)}(\tau )=\xi _iZ_0(\tau )\psi _+,$$
(2.9)
where we have introduced the spinor

$$\psi _+=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{c}1\\ i\end{array}\right).$$
(2.10)
The $`\xi _i`$ are Grasmannian collective coordinates and $`Z_0(\tau )`$ is the bosonic zero mode in (2.4).

The fermionic field equation is satisfied because $`\sigma ^2\psi _+=\psi _+`$ and $`\dot{Z}_0\ddot{x}_K`$ while $`\dot{x}_K+U(x_K)=0`$ according to the BPS equation. For the bosonic field equation one notices that the inhomogeneous term on the right hand side is zero for two reasons: the product $`\xi _i\xi _i`$ vanishes but also $`\psi _+^T\sigma ^2\psi _+=0`$. The instanton action for this solution is still given by (2.5), because the fermion terms vanish upon using the field equations. For $`i=1`$ the solution in (2.9) is generated by using the broken SUSY in $`\delta \psi `$ from (2.7). The normalization is chosen such that the zero modes

$$Z_{[i]}^j\frac{\psi _i^{(1)}}{\xi _j},$$
(2.11)
are orthonormal,

$$Z^i|Z^j\underset{k}{}d\tau (Z_{[k]}^i)_\alpha ^{}(Z_{[k]}^j)^\alpha =\delta ^{ij}.$$
(2.12)
To make the model more interesting, we deform it by adding a four-fermi term to the action,

$$S_{4\mathrm{fermi}}=\frac{g}{4}d\tau ϵ^{ijkl}(\psi _i^T\sigma ^1\psi _j)(\psi _k^T\sigma ^1\psi _l),$$
(2.13)
where $`g`$ is a dimensionful coupling constant. There are actually two terms which are Lorentz invariant in Minkowski spacetime: a product of pseudo-scalars (with a $`\sigma ^3`$ inserted), or an inner product of vector terms, with $`\sigma ^\mu `$ inserted. One can eliminate the vector terms in favor of the pseudo-scalar term.

The field equations now take the form

$`\ddot{x}UU^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\frac{1}{2}(\psi _i^T\sigma ^2\psi _i)U^{\prime \prime };U^{}=m\mathrm{tanh}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{m}{2}}(\tau X)\right],U^{\prime \prime }=\sqrt{2\lambda }`$
$`\dot{\psi }_i+\sigma ^2\psi _iU^{}`$ $`=`$ $`gϵ_{ijkl}\sigma ^1\psi _j(\psi _k^T\sigma ^1\psi _l).`$ (2.14)
We want to find an exact solution to these equations by iterating in the number of GCC. Substituting the fermionic zero mode solution into the right hand side of the fermionic field equation, one determines the part of $`\psi _i`$ which is cubic in the GCC,

$$\dot{\psi }_i^{(3)}+\sigma ^2\psi _i^{(3)}U^{}=g\left(\frac{3m}{8}\right)^{3/2}(ϵ_{ijkl}\xi _j\xi _k\xi _l)\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}^6\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]}\psi _{}.$$
(2.15)
We used $`\psi _+\sigma ^1\psi _+=2i`$ and introduced the spinor $`\psi _{}=i\sigma ^1\psi _+`$,

$$\psi _{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{c}1\\ i\end{array}\right),$$
(2.16)
which is annihilated by $`(1+\sigma ^2)`$.

Making the ansatz

$$\psi _i^{(3)}=\alpha (\tau )(ϵ_{ijkl}\xi _j\xi _k\xi _l)\psi _{},$$
(2.17)
$`\alpha `$ is determined by

$$\dot{\alpha }\alpha m\mathrm{tanh}\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]=g\left(\frac{3m}{8}\right)^{3/2}\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}^6\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]}.$$
(2.18)
Since $`\mathrm{cosh}^2\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]`$ is a solution of the homogeneous equation, we set

$$\alpha (\tau )=\mathrm{cosh}^2\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]y(\tau ).$$
(2.19)
The differential equation then reduces to

$$\dot{y}=g\left(\frac{3m}{8}\right)^{3/2}\frac{1}{\mathrm{cosh}^8\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]}.$$
(2.20)
Changing variables to $`z=\mathrm{tanh}\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]`$, we obtain, with $`c=g\frac{2}{m}\left(\frac{3m}{8}\right)^{3/2}`$,

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}y}{\mathrm{d}z}=c(1z^2)^3,$$
(2.21)
which is solved by

$$y=c\left(a+zz^3+\frac{3}{5}z^5\frac{1}{7}z^7\right),$$
(2.22)
where $`a`$ is an integration constant.

Looking at the behaviour at $`\tau =\pm \mathrm{}`$, which corresponds to $`z=\pm 1`$, we see that $`\alpha (\tau =\pm \mathrm{})`$ diverges for generic values of $`a`$. Even if we choose $`a`$ such that $`y(z)`$ vanishes at $`z=1`$ (namely $`a=\frac{3}{5}\frac{1}{7}=\frac{16}{35}`$), $`\alpha (\tau )`$ still diverges at $`\tau =\mathrm{}`$,

$$\alpha (\tau +\mathrm{})\frac{8c}{35}\mathrm{e}^{m\tau }.$$
(2.23)
The solution for $`\psi _i^{(3)}`$ in the fermionic background now acts as a source term for the bosonic field equation. Denoting the new term in $`x`$ proportional to $`ϵ\xi ^4ϵ^{ijkl}\xi _i\xi _j\xi _k\xi _l`$ by $`x^{(4)}`$, one must solve $`x^{(4)}`$ from the equation of motion for $`x=x_K+x^{(4)}`$,

$$\ddot{x}^{(4)}x^{(4)}(UU^{\prime \prime }+U^{}U^{})(x_K)=(\psi _i^{(1)T}\sigma ^2\psi _i^{(3)})U^{\prime \prime }.$$
(2.24)
Substituting (2.9), (2.17) and (2.19) leads to

$$\ddot{x}^{(4)}\frac{m^2}{2}x^{(4)}\left(3\mathrm{tanh}^2\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]1\right)=\sqrt{2\lambda }\sqrt{\frac{3m}{8}}(ϵ\xi ^4)y(\tau ),$$
(2.25)
with $`y(\tau )`$ given in (2.22).

The homogeneous equation is of course solved by the bosonic zero mode $`Z_0(\tau )`$, so we make the ansatz

$$x^{(4)}(\tau )=\frac{\beta (\tau )}{\mathrm{cosh}^2\left[\frac{m}{2}(\tau X)\right]}.$$
(2.26)
In the same $`z`$ variable as before, we find the following differential equation for $`\beta `$,

$$(1z^2)\frac{\mathrm{d}^2\beta }{\mathrm{d}z^2}6z\frac{\mathrm{d}\beta }{\mathrm{d}z}=\frac{1}{(1z^2)^2}\sqrt{2\lambda }(ϵ\xi ^4)g\frac{9}{8m}\left(a+zz^3+\frac{3}{5}z^5\frac{1}{7}z^7\right).$$
(2.27)
The homogeneous equation is solved by $`\mathrm{d}\beta /\mathrm{d}z=A/(1z^2)^3`$, with $`A`$ an integration constant, which, as we mentioned above, we take proportional to $`ϵ\xi ^4`$. So we write $`A(ϵ\xi ^4)`$ instead. The general solution is then written as

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}\beta }{\mathrm{d}z}=\frac{A(ϵ\xi ^4)}{(1z^2)^3}+\frac{\gamma (z)}{(1z^2)^3}.$$
(2.28)
This yields a first order differential equation for $`\gamma `$,

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}\gamma }{\mathrm{d}z}=\sqrt{2\lambda }(ϵ\xi ^4)g\frac{9}{8m}\left(a+zz^3+\frac{3}{5}z^5\frac{1}{7}z^7\right),$$
(2.29)
which can easily be integrated to give

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}\beta }{\mathrm{d}z}=\frac{(ϵ\xi ^4)}{(1z^2)^3}\left[A+\sqrt{2\lambda }g\frac{9}{8m}\left(az+\frac{1}{2}z^2\frac{1}{4}z^4+\frac{1}{10}z^6\frac{1}{56}z^8\right)\right].$$
(2.30)
One can integrate again,

$`\beta (z)`$ $`=`$ $`(ϵ\xi ^4)\left(A\sqrt{2\lambda }g{\displaystyle \frac{9}{64m}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{3}{16}}\mathrm{ln}{\displaystyle \frac{1+z}{1z}}+{\displaystyle \frac{A(ϵ\xi ^4)}{8}}{\displaystyle \frac{5z3z^3}{(1z^2)^2}}`$ (2.31)
$`+\sqrt{2\lambda }(ϵ\xi ^4)g{\displaystyle \frac{9}{8m}}\left[B+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1z^2)^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{a}{4}}+\frac{1}{24}(\frac{9}{8}z+\frac{17}{8}z^3\frac{7}{5}z^5+\frac{1}{7}z^7)\right)\right],`$
where $`B`$ is another integration constant.

It is clear that also $`x^{(4)}`$ diverges in general at $`\tau =\pm \mathrm{}`$ ($`z=\pm 1`$), but by choosing $`A`$ and $`a`$ appropriately, $`x^{(4)}`$ is bounded at infinity, see the discussion in the next section.

Notice that we have now obtained an exact solution to the full equations of motion. Indeed, the iteration in GCC stops at fourth order in the $`\xi _i;i=1,\mathrm{},4`$, so there is no further contribution to either $`\psi _i`$ or $`x`$. The solution is given by

$$x=x_K+x^{(4)},\psi _i=\psi _i^{(1)}+\psi _i^{(3)},$$
(2.32)
with $`x^{(4)}`$ given in (2.26) and (2.31), $`\psi _i^{(1)}`$ given in (2.9) and $`\psi _i^{(3)}`$ in (2.17), (2.19) and (2.22).

We now compute the instanton action. First of all, the four-fermi term gives a contribution

$$S_{4\mathrm{fermi}}=g\frac{9m}{128}(ϵ\xi ^4)_1^1(1z^2)^3dz=g\frac{9m}{140}(ϵ\xi ^4).$$
(2.33)
Next we evaluate the two-fermi terms. Using the field equation for $`\psi _i^{(1)}+\psi _i^{(3)}`$, we find that their contribution to the action has opposite sign and is twice as large as the one from the four-fermi term,

$$S_{2\mathrm{fermi}}=g\frac{9m}{70}(ϵ\xi ^4).$$
(2.34)
Finally, we consider the bosonic sector, for which the relevant contribution to the action can be written as

$$S_{\mathrm{bos}}=d\tau \left[\dot{x}_K\dot{x}^{(4)}+x^{(4)}U^{}(x_K)U(x_K)\right].$$
(2.35)
Partially integrating and using the field equations for $`x_K`$ we obtain

$$S_{\mathrm{bos}}=d\tau \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}\tau }\left(\dot{x}_Kx^{(4)}\right)=\frac{m^2}{2\sqrt{2\lambda }}\left[(1z^2)^2\beta (z)\right]_1^1,$$
(2.36)
where $`\beta (z)`$ is as in (2.31). This is precisely the surface term mentioned in the introduction. So we find

$$S_{\mathrm{bos}}=(ϵ\xi ^4)\left(\frac{m^2A}{4\sqrt{2\lambda }}+g\frac{9m}{16}\frac{93}{560}\right).$$
(2.37)
It is clear that $`S_{\mathrm{bos}}`$ depends on the collective coordinate $`A`$ but not on $`a`$ and $`B`$. The term in $`x`$ proportional to $`A`$ is the zero-frequency fluctuation which is not normalizable444The other zero-frequency solution is $`Z_0`$ which is, of course, normalizable.. It blows up at $`\tau =\pm \mathrm{}`$, but it contributes a finite amount to the action because $`\dot{x}_K`$ vanishes rapidly at $`\tau =\pm \mathrm{}`$.

Collecting the bosonic and fermionic contributions from (2.5), (2.37), (2.34) and (2.33), we obtain the final result for the instanton action

$$S=\frac{m^3}{3\lambda }\left(\frac{m^2A}{4\sqrt{2\lambda }}+g\frac{261m}{8960}\right)ϵ^{ijkl}\xi _i\xi _j\xi _k\xi _l.$$
(2.38)
Hence although $`x`$ and $`\psi _i`$ blow up at $`\tau =\pm \mathrm{}`$, they are regular at all finite $`\tau `$ and have finite action.

We are currently studying the relation between this solution and the original, purely bosonic one. It may be that one can obtain (2.38) by computing the finite number of tree graphs with four fermionic zero modes on the external legs. The propagator for scalars in the background of $`x_K`$ has been worked out in  and for fermions in .

## 3 Discussion

We have obtained a new solution of the Euclidean coupled field equations of the double well potential in quantum mechanics with a particular four-fermion interaction. The solution depends on four fermionic collective coordinates $`\xi _i;i=1,\mathrm{},4`$ and contains further three integration constants $`A,B,a`$, but the action is independent of $`B`$ and $`a`$. By requiring that the bosonic field $`x(\tau )`$ remains bounded as $`\tau \pm \mathrm{}`$, we find that $`a=0`$ but $`A`$ gets fixed to $`A=\sqrt{2\lambda }\frac{g}{m}\frac{993}{16140}`$. For this value of $`A`$, the contribution (2.37) from the boson vanishes and the instanton action becomes

$$S=\frac{m^3}{3\lambda }+\frac{9}{140}gmϵ^{ijkl}\xi _i\xi _j\xi _k\xi _l.$$
(3.39)
We have called the result of this paper a new instanton, but is our solution an instanton ? Instantons are usually defined as solutions of the Euclidean equations of motion with finite action. However, one can also define them as configurations describing tunnelling processes between different vacua in Minkowski space. The usual instanton solutions  satisfy both definitions. Our solution clearly satisfies the first definition. Concerning tunnelling, the interpretation of our solution is less clear. There are vacua with non-vanishing values for the fermions, but they are of a different nature from the usual vacua. Our solution with $`a=0`$ and $`A`$ given above, interpolates between two configurations with the same energy, but this energy is non-vanishing and proportional to $`ϵ^{ijkl}\xi _i\xi _j\xi _k\xi _l`$. We intend to study the interpretation of our solution and whether it describes tunnelling between two such vacua.

Is our solution new ? We have had detailed discussions with A. Vainshtein concerning the relation between our construction and the work of V.A. Novikov, M.A. Shifman, A.I. Vainshtein, and V.I. Zakharov (NSVZ) on supersymmmetry transformations of collective coordinates . Our approach is dynamical; it uses field equations and holds for both non-supersymmetric and supersymmetric models. Moreover, we do not use spontaneous symmetry breaking and constrained instantons at intermediate levels. On the other hand, the work of NSVZ starts from symmetry considerations, in particular supersymmetry and superconformal supersymmetry. Dynamics enters only in sofar as spontaneous symmetry breaking produces a vacuum expectation value $`v`$. The supersymmetry transformations act between both the (bosonic and fermionic) collective coordinates and $`v`$. Although constrained instantons are needed in this approach with $`v0`$, one can afterwards take the limit $`v0`$ and regain results which should555The limit $`v0`$ must be taken with care, and might not always be the same as starting with $`v=0`$ . correspond to the results for unbroken ($`v=0`$) $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric gauge theories , as was demonstrated in . We intend to work out the relation between both approaches in the future. In the work of NSVZ, supersymmetric gauge theories with $`SU(2)`$ were considered. The case of higher $`SU(N)`$ was treated in .


text:
# Vacuum Selection by Collapsing

## Introduction

Our motivation of this work is to understand the elementary particle physics, especially beyond the standard model. Usually elementary particle physicists expect to know the physics beyond the standard model by the experiments on particle physics (or for some people, by mathematical consistency). However, it may happen that the past of our universe gives some clues to explain some features of the rule of the nature(physics) as the past of human beings plays important roles in their behaviors. In this talk, we examine the possibility that the cosmology selects theories of elementary particle physics. Of course, it has been argued that the cosmology gives some constraints to the theory of the elementary particle physics in order not to break the success of the standard cosmology. For examples, the number of massless neutrinos must be around three in order to realize the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. But such usual requirements are only constraints. Such an argument never explain why the number of neutrinos is three. We discuss the possibility that the cosmology explains something on the elementary particle physics. The point is following. The elementary particle theories determine the evolution of the universe. Some universes are expanding and other universes are shrinking. As the result, there are universes with various lifetimes. It is natural to expect that our universe has a tendency to have the features which the universes with longer life have.

But as you know the universe is only one. What does many universes mean? The answer in this talk is following. In the phase transition, generally there are several local or global minima. At that time, the many bubbles with different vacua can exist. Different vacua mean different physics, and different physics leads to different evolution of the universe. As the result, selection of the vacua occurs. Some bubbles may expand rapidly and dominate the universe, and other bubbles may shrink and disappear or become black holes.

There are lots of papers on the selection of the vacua linde ; izawa ; banks  in the context of the inflation after the work on the chaotic inflation by Linde, but as long as I know, there are only a few papers on the selection of the vacua by recollapsing banks . Banks et al discussed the selection only in the special case in the context of the string moduli problem.

Here we discuss the more general cases, in which the vacuum selection by recollapsing happens, because it is more important in the context of the selection of the theory. And we examine the features of the black holes which may appear as the Fossils. In the last of this talk we try to apply this argument to the elementary particle physics, especially to SUSY model.

## Vacuum selection

In this section we argue on the possibility that collapsing bubbles and expanding bubbles exist simultaneously, namely vacuum selection by recollapsing happens.

It is not easy to understand the evolution of the universe in phase transition, because the universe is essentially not homogeneous nor isotropic. Therefore we adopt the following simplifications.

The first assumption is that we use the Friedmann equation for the evolution of the bubble universes. We expect that the size of the bubbles is so large, maybe the Hubble scale, that the space in the bubble is almost homogeneous and isotropic.

The second assumption is that the phase transition does not change the energy density. This is only for the simplicity.

Under the first assumptions, we obtain the typical time scale of recollapsing for various cases in table 1.

|  | $`\mathrm{\Omega }_I>1`$ | $`\mathrm{\Omega }_I=1`$ | $`\mathrm{\Omega }_I<1`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$ | inflation | inflation | inflation |
| $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ (radiation dominated) | $`O(t_I)(\mathrm{\Omega }_I1)^{3/2}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ |
| $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ (matter dominated) | $`O(t_I)(\mathrm{\Omega }_I1)^1`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ | $`\mathrm{}`$ |
| $`\mathrm{\Lambda }<0`$ | $`(O(t_I))`$ | $`(O(t_I))`$ | $`O(t_I)`$ |

table 1. The lifetime for recollapsing

Here $`\mathrm{\Omega }_I`$ is the ratio of the density to the critical density at the initial time $`t_I`$. We can easily find several examples in which some of bubbles are recollapsing and others are expanding. For example, consider the following situation. The universe has the larger energy density than the critical density at the time $`t_{PT}`$ when the phase transition occurs. Before the phase transition, the potential has only one minimum, but after the phase transition, the potential has one global minimum with vanishing cosmological constant and the other minimum which is local. The bubble universe with the true vacuum recollapses because the energy density is larger than the critical density. The time scale for the recollapsing is $`O(t_I)`$ unless the energy density is tuned to the critical density. On the other hand, the bubble universe with the false vacuum inflates if the cosmological constant dominates the energy density before reaching the time when the bubble begins to shrink.

In order to regard the inflating universe as our universe, the inflation must stop some time because our universe does not inflate at present, namely cosmological constant must vanish till now. Here we expect that there is an unknown mechanism which realizes the vanishing cosmological constant. And such a mechanism automatically stop the inflation and the vacuum energy is released in the universe(reheating). Of course we have no reliable mechanism for the vanishing cosmological constant, so we do not discuss more on how to stop the inflation here.

It is interesting that the evolution of the universe prefers local minima in many cases, in contrat with the common sense that the physics prefers less energy state like the global minimum. Actually the local minimum is unstable in the context of the ordinary field theory. The lifetime of the unstable vacuum is estimated by using instanton calculation which was discussed by Coleman coleman . The condition for longer lifetime than the age of our universe ($`10^{20}`$ seconds) gives $`10^{200}\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }^4}{(GeV)^4}e^{S(\overline{\varphi })}`$, where $`S(\varphi )`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ are the action of the scalar $`\varphi `$ and the typical scale of the potential, respectively. Here $`\overline{\varphi }`$ is an instanton solution. When the difference of the potential energy between the two minima $`\mathrm{\Delta }V`$ is much smaller than the typical scale $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^4`$, then we get $`S(\overline{\varphi })2\pi ^2O(1)/ϵ^3`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }Vϵ\mathrm{\Lambda }^4`$. Therefore $`ϵ1/10`$ is small enough to satisfy the above condition. This situation seems not to require strong fine tuning, or rather it is not natural that a scalar potential has no local minimum with the above feature. Therefore we think that it is not unnatural that we are living in a false vacuum.

## Primordial Black Holes

If the recollapsing bubbles exist in our present horizon, these may become black holes. Here we make a simple argument for the bubbles with horizon size radius at the phase transition, because this is a typical scale in the context of cosmology.

The total mass of the bubble can be estimated from the size of the bubbles and the energy density. We have already taken the horizon length as the size of the bubbles. Since the bubble is recollapsing soon after the phase transition, the density is simply estimated by the phase transition temperature. Therefore in such case, the mass of the bubble becomes horizon mass at the phase transition; $`M_{Bubble}d_H^3\rho M_P^3/T_{PT}^2`$. The Schwarzschild radius for the mass can be estimated as $`R_S1/H`$. It is surprising that the Schwarzschild radius is the same order of the magnitude of the horizon length. Therefore we can expect that the bubbles will become black holes. Notice that the density outside the bubbles becomes smaller than the inside density in contrast with the usual situation in which the density of the universe is totally homogeneous and there is no special region like black holes.

The black holes evaporate by the Hawking radiation. The lifetime is estimated as $`\tau _{BH}2560\pi G^2M_{BH}^3/g_{}2560\pi M_P^5/(g_{}T_{PT}^6)`$. Here $`g_{}`$ is the number of freedom at the temperature. As the summary, see table 2.

| $`T_{PT}`$ (GeV) | 1 | 100 | $`10^9`$ | $`10^{12}`$ | $`10^{19}`$ |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| $`M_{BH}`$ (g) | $`O(10^{33})O(M_{Solar})`$ | $`O(10^{29})`$ | $`O(10^{15})`$ | $`O(10^9)`$ | $`O(10^5)`$ |
| $`T_H(\mathrm{GeV})`$ | $`O(10^{21})`$ | $`O(10^{17})`$ | $`O(10^3)`$ | $`O(10^3)`$ | $`O(10^{17})`$ |
| $`\tau _{BH}`$ (s) | $`O(10^{74})`$ | $`O(10^{62})`$ | $`O(10^{20})\tau _0`$ | $`O(1)`$ | $`O(10^{42})`$ |

table 2. Here $`M_{Solar}`$ is the solar mass and $`\tau _0`$ is the age of our universe.

When the temperature of the phase transition is smaller than $`10^9`$ GeV, we may find the small black holes in our universe. Actually Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Object(MACHO)s with the solar mass were discovered by gravity lensing effect MACHO . It is interesting that the mass scale is related with the QCD phase transition. When the temperature of the phase transition is larger than $`10^9`$ GeV, the black holes evaporate until now. Global minima disappear in the history and only the universe with the local minima is realized.

## Cosmological SUSY Breaking

If SUSY exists, the scalar potential also exists. Generally the scalar potential has local minima with longer life than the age of our universe. Since the cosmology prefers the local minima, it seems to be natural that the SUSY is spontaneously broken cosmologically even if the scalar potential has SUSY vacua. We call this phenomenon cosmological SUSY breaking.

The natural scale will be the scale of the typical scale of the potential. If SUSY exists at the Planck scale, the Planck scale is the natural scale for the SUSY breaking. Of course our argument is strongly dependent on the initial conditions, so we can consider the case of lower SUSY breaking scale. By using cosmological SUSY breaking, we can make a simpler model maekawa  in which SUSY is cosmologically broken and the SUSY breaking is mediated by the standard gauge interactions. The point is that these models are allowed to have SUSY vacua.