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# Resonant radiation pressure on neutral particles in a waveguide

## Abstract

A theoretical analysis of electromagnetic forces on neutral particles in an hollow waveguide is presented. We show that the effective scattering cross section of a very small (Rayleigh) particle can be strongly modified inside a waveguide. The coupling of the scattered dipolar field with the waveguide modes induce a resonant enhanced backscattering state of the scatterer-guide system close to the onset of new modes. The particle effective cross section can then be as large as the wavelength even far from any transition resonance. As we will show, a small particle can be strongly accelerated along the guide axis while being highly confined in a narrow zone of the cross section of the guide.

Demonstration of levitation and trapping of micron-sized particles by radiation pressure dates back to 1970 and the experiments reported by Ashkin and co-workers . Since then, manipulation and trapping of neutral particles by optical forces has had a revolutionary impact on a variety of fundamental and applied studies in physics, chemistry and biology . These ideas were extended to atoms and molecules where radiation pressure can be very large due to the large effective cross section (of the order of the optical wavelength) at specific resonances. When light is tuned close to a particular transition, optical forces involves (quantum) absorption and reradiation by spontaneous emission as well as coherent (classical) scattering of the incoming field with the induced dipole . Selective control of the strong interplay between these two phenomena is the basis of laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms .

However, far from resonance, light forces on atoms, molecules and nanometer sized particles are, in general, very small. Here we show that the scattering cross section of a very small (Rayleigh) particle can be strongly modified inside a waveguide. The coupling of the scattered dipolar field with the waveguide modes induce a resonant enhanced backscattering state of the scatterer-guide system close to the onset of new modes. Just at the resonance, the effective cross section becomes of the order of the wavelength leading to an enhanced resonant radiation pressure which does not involve any photon absorption phenomena. As we will show, a small particle not only can be strongly accelerated along the guide axis but it can also be highly confined in a narrow zone of the cross section of the guide.

For the sake of simplicity we consider a two-dimensional $`xz`$ waveguide with perfectly conducting walls and cross section $`D`$. The particle is then represented by a cylinder located at $`\stackrel{}{r_0}=(x_0,z_0)`$ with its axis along $`oy`$ and radius much smaller than the wavelength (see top of Fig.1). However, apart from some depolarization effects, the analysis contain the same phenomena as the full three-dimensional problem  and hence it permits an understanding of the basic physical processes involved in the optical forces without loss of generality.

An s-polarized electromagnetic wave is assumed (the electric field parallel to the cylinder axis), $`\stackrel{}{E}(\stackrel{}{r})=\mathrm{exp}(i\omega t)E^0(\stackrel{}{r})\stackrel{}{y}`$ with wavevector $`k=\omega /c=2\pi /\lambda `$. For a single-mode waveguide ($`D/2<\lambda D`$), the incoming electric field can be written as the sum of two interfering plane waves: $`E^0(\stackrel{}{r})=E_0\left(\mathrm{exp}(ik_zz+ik_xx)\mathrm{exp}(ik_zzik_xx)\right)`$ where $`k_z=k\mathrm{cos}(\theta )`$, $`k_x=k\mathrm{sin}(\theta )=\pi /D`$. The scatterer can be characterized by the scattering phase shift $`\delta _0`$ or by its polarizability $`\alpha `$ and Rayleigh scattering cross section $`\sigma `$ . The time average force $`\stackrel{}{F}`$ can be written as the sum of an optical gradient force and a scattering force: :

$$\stackrel{}{F}=\left\{\frac{1}{4}\alpha \stackrel{}{}|E^{inc}|^2+\frac{\stackrel{}{S}}{c}\sigma \right\}_{\stackrel{}{r}=\stackrel{}{r}_0}$$
(1)
where $`E^{inc}`$ is the total incident field on the particle and $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ is the time average Poynting vector.

If we neglect the multiple scattering effects between the scatterer and the waveguide walls, the interaction would be equivalent to that of a particle placed in the interference pattern of two crossed plane wave beams. In this case $`E^{inc}=E^0`$ and the theory of radiation pressure in a waveguide is straightforward. The longitudinal force $`F_z^0`$ (per unit length) can be written in terms of the average power density of the incident beams, $`S=ϵ_0c|E_0|^2`$, as

$$F_z^0=2\sigma ϵ_0|E_0|^2\mathrm{cos}(\theta )\mathrm{sin}^2(\frac{\pi x_0}{D})$$
(2)
which is maximum ($`F_{z_{max}}^0=2\sigma ϵ_0|E_0|^2\mathrm{cos}(\theta )`$) just in middle of the waveguide. The transversal force induces an optical potential along $`x`$ given by:

$$U_x^0=\alpha |E_0|^2\mathrm{sin}^2(\pi x_0/D).$$
(3)
which, for $`\alpha >0`$, confines the particle near the center of the waveguide. This is the two-dimensional analogue of previous approaches on laser-guiding of atoms and particles in hollow-core optical fibers  where the interaction of the dipole field with the guide walls was neglected.

The scattering with the waveguide walls may induce however a dramatic effect on the optical forces on the particle. The scatterer radiates first a dipole field generated by the field of the incoming mode $`E^0`$. Then, the scattered field, perfectly reflected by the waveguide walls, goes back to the scatterer changing the field inciding on the scatterer and so on. This multiple scattering process can be regarded as produced by a set of infinite image dipoles . From the exact solution for the total field together with equation (1), we found that, for a single mode waveguide, the forward component of the force $`F_z`$ can be written in terms of the waveguide transmittance $`T`$ (defined as the ratio between the outgoing and incoming energy flux; $`0T1`$) as:

$$F_z=2Dϵ_0|E_0|^2\mathrm{cos}^2(\theta )(1T(x_0))$$
(4)
where $`T`$ depends on the transversal position of the particle $`x_0`$.

The transmission coefficient $`T`$ had been discussed before in the context of electronic conductance of quasi-one-dimensional conductors with point-like attractive impurities . $`T`$ presents two peculliar properties: i) when $`D/\lambda `$ is just at the onset of a new propagating mode, the scatterer becomes transparent; ii) interestingly, when $`D/\lambda `$ is close but still below a mode threshold, the transmittance of a single mode waveguide presents a dip down to exactly $`T=0`$. This backscattering resonance, that was associated to the existence of a quasi-bound state induced by the attractive impurity , can be achieved for any attractive scattering potential of arbitrarily small strength , i.e. for arbitrarily small polarizability $`\alpha `$ and cross section $`\sigma `$ . This resonance has a pronounced effect on the radiation forces.

In Fig. 2 we plot the transmission coefficient as a function of both the waveguide width, $`D/\lambda `$, and the scatterer position $`x_0`$ for $`\delta _0=10^o`$. Near the threshold of the second mode ($`D/\lambda 1`$), $`T`$ presents sharp dips (down to $`T=0`$) at some particular positions of the scatterer. Just at the enhanced backscattering resonances, the longitudinal force present strong maxima $`F_{z_{max}}`$ which can be compared with $`F_{z_{max}}^0`$ (the maximum force obtained neglecting the interactions with the walls) $`F_{z_{max}}/F_{z_{max}}^0=\mathrm{cos}(\theta )D/\sigma `$ (see Fig. 3), i.e. at resonance the interaction cross section of the particle in the waveguide can be as large as the total cross section of the waveguide independently of its value $`\sigma `$ in the unbounded space. The force enhancement factor can be huge: for $`\delta _0=10^o`$ ($`\sigma 20nm`$ ) and at micron wavelengths, it is of the order of 50, while for a nanometer scale particle ($`\delta _02^o`$) this enhancement would be $`10^3`$ for two-dimensions, but $`10^6`$ in true three-dimensional systems! This result is rigurously true for perfect walls. In actual waveguides however, the radiation losses through the walls and the scattering with surface defects  may modify the resonace behaviour for $`\sigma `$ values comparable to the surface roughness.

The resonance is related to the strong coupling between the incoming mode and the first evanescent mode in the waveguide. This can be seen by plotting the field intensity inside the waveguide for different particle positions (Fig. 1). At the resonance, the field around the particle corresponds to that of the second mode in the waveguide (with a node in the waveguide axis) which decay far from the defect. When the particle is located at the middle of the waveguide, there is no coupling of the scattered field with the first evanescent mode and $`F_z`$ presents a minimum.

Transversal forces are also strongly affected by the resonances. Although the main contribution to these forces come from polarization effects (i.e. proportional to $`|E^{inc}|^2`$), in contrast with the free space case, the lateral forces have also a contribution of pure scattering origin due to the reflections of the flux from the walls. The induced transversal confining potential far from the mode threshold presents a single well similar to that discussed for the unbound system. However, near the resonance condition it presents two strong minima reflecting the excitation of the evanescent mode. In Fig. 3 we plot the normalized longitudinal force $`F_z`$ and transverse confining potential $`U_x`$. The particle will be strongly confined in a small region inside the waveguide where the forward longitudinal force is maximum. For example, for $`\delta _0=10^o`$ and at micron wavelengths, the potential well is more than one order of magnitude deeper than that obtained for the unbound system.

In summary, we have discussed the electromagnetic forces on small neutral particles in a hollow waveguide. In contrast with standard resonance radiation forces, the waveguide-particle backscattering resonances discussed here do not involve photon absorption processes and, we believe, open intriguing posibilities of atom and molecule manipulation. Specifically, the depth of the potential wells for the particle in resonant conditions and its remarkably large cross section suggest stable guiding of the particle along the waveguide with extremely large accelerations.

We thank R. Arias, P. C. Chaumet, L. Froufe, F. J. García-Vidal, R. Kaiser, T. López-Ciudad and L. Martín-Moreno for discussions. Work of M.L. was supported by a postdoctoral grant of the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid. This work has been supported by the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid and the DGICyT through Grants 07T/0024/1998 and No. PB98-0464.


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# Response time of internauts

## 1 Introduction

There can be little doubt that the World-Wide-Web (WWW) provides one of the most efficient methods for retrieving and distributing information. As such, it is believed to carry an enormous potential with respect to sale and marketing of all kinds of products and is thus of great economic interest to most companies.

A very different aspect of the WWW is that it constitutes a quite unique example of a fast evolving social ecology which can be studied in real time. There are many examples of self-organising systems in society and Nature, where “less intelligent” individuals interact creating a “more intelligent” whole. Examples are ant hills, flashing colonies of fire-flies, fish schools, the stock market, cities, … A rather troublesome feature with all these systems is that they are in general difficult to probe. This is not so with the WWW. The fact that it is computer-based and access is unrestricted provides a rather unique opportunity to study in real time a fast evolving ecology of heterogeneous intelligent agents.

Most studies of the WWW have until now focused on the more easily accessed statistical properties, such as the connectivity of the WWW, e.g., the distributions of outgoing and incoming links . However, little is known about the internaut population’s response to some external or internal event. With respect to commercial exploitation of the WWW, as well as other applications, it is obviously the response of the internaut population to some new piece of information which is of interest and not the topology or connectivity of the underlying network itself. A rather unique experiment has previously been reported in this journal , which studies exactly this response. The purpose of the present paper to present the results of a similar experiment thus increasing the evidence for a self-similar relaxation rate .

The paper proceeds as follows. In the next section, we briefly review the previous experiment. In section 3, the nature of the present experiment is presented and the results compared with those of the previous experiment. In section 4, a physical setting for the observations is presented. Last section concludes.

## 2 A previous experiment

An interview with the author and co-worker Didier Sornette on a subject of broad public interest, namely stock market crashes, was published on the 14th of April 1999 in the leading Danish newspaper JyllandsPosten . The text included the URL’s to the author’s papers  and was published both in the paper version and the electronic version on the WWW of the newspaper, the latter restricted to subscribers. The URL to the search engine of the Los Alamos preprint server, which also contains the author’s paper on the subject, was included as well.

Subsequently, the cumulative number of downloads $`N\left(t\right)`$ of papers from  was recorded, see figure 1. It was found that $`N\left(t\right)`$ obeyed a relation

$`N\left(t\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{1b}}\left(t/t_0\right)^{1b}+ct,`$ (1)
over a time period of one hundred days corresponding to a download rate

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dN\left(t\right)}{dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{t_0^{b1}}{t^b}}+c.`$ (2)
The last term accounts for a constant background taking into account features unrelated to the perturbation caused by the interview. From a fit with eq. (1) to the data, see figure 1, it was found that $`b0.6`$, $`t_00.8`$ minutes and $`c0.8`$ days-1.

## 3 The present experiment

The Nasdaq crash culminating on Friday the 14th of April 2000 caught many people with surprise and shook the stock market quite forcefully. As always, many different reasons for the crash were given ranging from the anti-trust case against MicroSoft to an “irrational exuberance” of the participants on the stock market. The author and co-worker Didier Sornette had also bid for the cause , which was made public on Monday the 17th of April 2000 on the Los Alamos preprint server. As a result, a forty minute interview with the author called “The World (Not) According to GARCH” was published on Friday the 26th of May 2000 on a “radio website” . As in the experiment presented in section 2, the URL to the author’s papers  was announced making it clear that work on stock market crashes in general and the recent Nasdaq crash in particular could be found using the posted URL. The URL of the Los Alamos preprint server was not included on this occasion. As in the previous experiment, the the number of downloads of papers as a function of time from the appearance of the interview was recorded.

A few a priori important differences between the two experiments should be held forward. The web-interview appeared on a single web-site and only a single source was provided for the download of the author’s papers. In the experiment described in the previous section, the interview was published in the electronic as well as the paper version of the newspaper JyllandsPosten. Hence, it was initially not freely available, since you either had to buy the newspaper or be a subscriber. A stronger response to the web-interview should be expected due to an audience which is much more oriented towards the subject than the average Danish newspaper reader. Furthermore, since the web-interview was in English it had potentially a larger audience than its Danish counter-part.

In figures 3 and 3, the cumulative number of downloads $`N\left(t\right)`$ as a function of time $`t`$ after the appearance of the interview are shown on a linear and semi-logarithmic scale. The error-bars are simply taken as the square-root of $`N\left(t\right)`$. The data is over $`60`$ days surprisingly well-captured by the relation

$$N\left(t\right)=a\mathrm{ln}\left(t/t_0\right)+ct,$$
(3)
with $`a583`$, $`t_00.80`$ days and $`c2.2`$ days-1, corresponding to a download rate

$$\frac{dN\left(t\right)}{dt}=\frac{a}{t}+c.$$
(4)
Thus, we again obtain a power law relaxation of the download rate, however, with a different exponent.

After $`60`$ days, we see how the data breaks away from the fitted line. The reason is the appearance of  on the Social Science Research Network server (http://WWW.SSRN.COM) causing a second perturbation*** That a second advertisement of  had appeared on SSRN became quite evident when the author started receiving e-mail requests for preprints citing SSRN as information source.. Hence, the experiment became influenced by a second perturbation of non-negligible impact and was consequently halted after 69 days.

## 4 Interpretation of results

The results shown in figures 1, 3 and 3 suggests that the rate of downloads is that of a power law with a constant background

$`{\displaystyle \frac{dN\left(t\right)}{dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{a}{t^b}}+c.`$ (5)
where $`b`$ is not universalIn the present context, $`b`$ varies with e.g., the subject and the language of the interview. Such power law dependence of the rate of “events” are found in other areas of Physics. Two well-known examples are Omori’s law for the rate of aftershocks as a function of time elapsed since the main event  and relaxation of spin glasses subjected to a magnetic field .

At time $`t`$ after the appearance of the interview, the internaut community consists of two populations, namely those who have not downloaded a paper from  and those who have. The transition from the first state to the second demands the crossing of some threshold specific to each internaut. We thus imagine that the announcement of the URL plays the role a “field” to which the internaut population is subjected and study the relaxation process by monitoring the number of downloads as a function of time since the field was applied. Within this frame-work , we may view the process as a diffusion process in a random potential, where the act of downloading is similar to that of a barrier-crossing in the Trap model  of spin glasses. In this model, the distribution of trapping times $`\tau _i`$ is a power law

$$P\left(\tau \right)\tau ^{\left(1+x\right)},$$
(6)
where $`x`$ depends of the experimental conditions, e.g., $`x=T/T_g`$ for a spin glass where $`T_g`$ is the temperature of the glass transition. For $`x<1`$, the mean trapping time $`\tau _0^{\mathrm{}}\tau P\left(\tau \right)𝑑\tau `$ diverges and, as a consequence, the time needed for the system to relax is infinite. This is known as “weak breaking of ergodicity” in terms of spin glasses and is the hallmark of “aging” in anomalous relaxation processes.

For finite times we may proceed as follow. The parameter $`x`$ is determined by

$$\tau =_{t_{min}}^{\tau _{max}}\frac{\tau }{\tau ^{1+x}}𝑑\tau \mathrm{\Delta }t_{max}^{1x},x<1.$$

The maximum $`\tau _{max}`$ is typically given by

$$N_{\tau _{max}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{d\tau }{\tau ^{1+x}}1,$$

where N is the number of barrier crossings, i.e., the number of downloads. Hence,

$$\tau _{max}N^{\frac{1}{x}},0<x<1$$

Thus $`t=N\mathrm{\Delta }tN^{\frac{1}{x}}`$, which finally gives

$$Nt^x\frac{dN\left(t\right)}{dt}t^{x1}$$
(7)
In the case of the second experiment, the logarithmic growth of $`N(t)`$ formally corresponds to the case $`x=0`$. However, in the present framework this case correspond to $`x1`$, which gives the same behaviour up to first order. Comparing relation (7) with (2) and (4), we find $`1b=x<1`$ in both experiments. This means that the longer since the last download, the longer the expected time till the next one . In other words, any expectation of a download that is estimated today depends on the past in a manner which does not decay. That the relaxation exponent $`b`$ is less than one has an important consequence, namely non-stationarity and “aging” in the technical sense of a breaking of ergodicity .

Within the proposed framework, one may speculate on the nature of the “field” created by the interview and its effect on the internaut population. Obviously, the act of downloading is a consequence of a) that the information of the URL is available to the internaut and b) that the knowledge of the URL results in a download by the internaut. The first contribution relates to how information spreads through the internaut population, the second to a “response-time” specific to each individual internaut. However, these two contributions are consequences of the same underlying processes, since the spread of information on the WWW is a consequence of the individual internaut’s decision to post a link, send e-mails, … which again is governed by the internauts’ response-times. In fact, no download would take place if

1. nobody decided to visited the site where the URL was posted.
2. nobody decided to read/listen to the interviews.
3. nobody decided to use the URL after understanding the subject.
4. nobody decided to download after using the URL.
5. nobody decided to to tell others about the interview and URL.
6. nobody decided to use the URL after being told about it and the interview.
7.

These considerations strongly suggest that eq. (6), and consequently eq. (7), reflects the variation in response-time of internauts when confronted with a new piece of information. Furthermore, if the contributions of 5) and 6) are negligible this suggest that in the absence of deadlines internauts (humans) have a power law distribution of waiting times before deciding to act on a new piece of information. Each individual thus has a “psychological barrier” which must be crossed in order for the individual to act and the time needed to cross this barrier is power law distributed throughout the internaut (human) population.

## 5 Concluding remarks

The two rather unique experiments presented here in both cases shows a self-similar dynamical response of the internaut population to a perturbation, even though a priori the nature of the perturbations were quite different. Specifically, we have presented two experiments where the rate of downloads $`N\left(t\right)`$ from a site obeys a power law

$$\frac{dN\left(t\right)}{dt}t^b.$$

as a function of time $`t`$ after an advertisement on the WWW of that site’s URL.

In Physics, the fundamental approach for studying a given system is to introduce a well-controlled perturbation on the system and then study e.g., its response function, its susceptibility and its relaxation dynamics. In the social fields, it is generally impossible to control the effective perturbation, since it has its origin in a variety of complex sources with unknown internal interactions as well as with the system itself. It is therefore very difficult to study the response of a social system in a controlled manner. Here, we have discussed two quite unique cases of a perturbation of a social self-organising system, which is controlled enough to allow the use of a Physics methodology. It uses a point-like perturbation and then measures the relaxation of the system as a function of time by monitoring a single site. This as well as the fact that the announcements (perturbations) were focused on a quite visible problem (financial crashes) of interest to a broad class of people produces a large impact compared to the background and makes the two experiments very “clean”.

In summary, we have reported two unique experiments in real time where the dynamical relaxation of the internaut population on the WWW in response to a point-like perturbation exhibits a slow power law decay similar to what have been observed for earthquake aftershocks and relaxation of spin glasses in the glass phase. In both experiments, a power law relaxation was obtained thus quantifying the internaut population response to a “perturbation”, i.e., the impact of an advertisement on the internaut population. With respect to applications, it is obviously the impact of some new piece of information on the internaut population which is of interest and not the topology and connectivity of the network as such. By heuristic arguments, it was argued that the power law response of the internaut population is a fingerprint of the psychological processes initiated by the reception of new information and ending with the triggering of some action based on this new information. Specifically, the two experiments suggest that in the absence of deadlines the response-time of internauts (humans) to new information have a power law distribution throughout the population. The existence of such a fat-tailed distribution of response-times of “agents” has quite important implications for the modelling of social systems such as the financial markets.

Acknowledgement: The author thanks Didier Sornette for stimulating discussions.


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# Collaborating with David Gross; Descendants of the Chiral Anomaly

## 1 Collaborating with David

I am pleased to be the first celebrant of David Gross’s significant birthday, because among his colleagues and contemporaries in physics, I have known David the longest – since the time we both left our graduate schools to become Junior Fellows at Harvard in 1966. There our situation was not easy. Harvard physics was experiencing a downturn – physics prominence at an institution undergoes cyclic variation, like the economy. David was coming from Chew’s S-matrix theory at Berkeley, I from Wilson’s field theory at Cornell. Both Chew and Wilson were prophets, but neither was recognized then at Harvard, except perhaps by Schwinger, who was channeling their two streams into his source theory, with the motto “If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em.” Boston’s Joint Theory Seminar had lapsed; Weinberg had not yet arrived to invigorate the department. A few miles away, MIT was bustling – the S-matrix was in vogue and string theory in its first incarnation was being developed by Veneziano and Fubini. I recall that David tried to connect with that activity, but I guess it proved to be just too wearisome to travel even the small distance from Harvard to MIT. Therefore the two of us were thrown together onto our own resources, and if we were to collaborate with anyone, it had to be with each other.

So we did, and I learned that David is smarter than I. This is because our collaboration could happen in only one of two ways: either I would learn S-matrix theory, or David would learn field theory. Now there was no way that I could learn S-matrix theory at that time – I still can’t – therefore David had to learn field theory. As all of us know, he learned it quickly, he learned it well, he contributed to it enormously, and then he left it – again returning to the S-matrix in its M-theory–evolved form.

Our collaboration produced seven papers, and here they are:

1. “Derivation of the SU(3) x SU(3) space-time local current commutators”, Phys. Rev. 163, 1688 (1967)
2. “Low energy theorem for graviton scattering”, Phys. Rev. 166, 1287 (1968)
3. “Fermion avatars of the Sugawara model” (with S. Coleman), Phys. Rev. 180, 1359 (1969)
4. “Construction of covariant and gauge invariant T\* products”, Nucl. Phys. B14, 269 (1969)
5. “Dimensions of currents and current commutators” (with M. Beg, J. Bernstein, and A. Sirlin), Phys. Rev. Lett. 25, 1231 (1970)
6. “Effects of anomalies on quasi-renormalizable theories”, Phys. Rev. D 6, 477 (1972)
7. “Constraints on anomalies” (with S. Adler and C. Callan), Phys. Rev. D 6, 2982 (1972)

Although Weinberg was not physically present, his influence is evident in that all the papers deal in one way or another with currents and current algebra, subjects emphasized by Weinberg, whom David already knew at Berkeley. But looking at these papers again, I now see that the topics researched by us belong to the late, baroque period of current algebra, when the formalism became encrusted by various commutator and current conservation anomalies. Thus papers (1) and (4) deal with commutator anomalies: Schwinger terms and seagull terms, as does paper (3) where we use the Schwinger term in fermionic current commutators to fit a theory with Dirac fields into the Sugawara form  – a construction that years later became popular and was repeated many times. In paper (5) we use the Schwinger term to describe the total electroproduction cross section, while paper (7) relies on the Adler-Bardeen anomaly non-renormalization theorem  to show that the Gell-Mann–Low function of quantum electrodynamics  has no zeroes. Our most famous paper – SPIRES calls it a “renowned paper” – concerns anomalies in the standard model. In fact, the collaboration was a long-distance one; we had left Harvard, David for Princeton and I for MIT. The paper began as a separate, independent effort. I was finishing my manuscript while visiting the newly constituted theory group at Fermilab, and Treiman, its temporary leader, informed me that David was completing similar research. Joining our efforts turned out to be a great benefit for me, because again I profited from David’s positive approach: I had put forward the negative result that owing to the chiral anomaly the Weinberg-Salam model was not renormalizable, contrary to ’t Hooft’s and Veltman’s claims; while concurring, David put forward the principle of anomaly cancellation to save renormalizability . Thus our work provides one of two examples that not only theoretical physicists but also Nature makes use of the chiral anomaly (the other example being neutral pion decay ).

My favorite paper is our second, which is not “renowned”; according to SPIRES it is less than “unknown” – it is unlisted. Here we are recalling the famous Compton scattering low-energy theorems due to Thirring, Gell-Mann, Goldberger, and Low , which are consequences of gauge invariance, and are derived with the help of Ward identities. It seemed to us that diffeomorphism invariance should entail similar low-energy theorems for graviton scattering, but we did not know at that time how to construct the analogous Ward identities . David’s S-matrix expertise again made progress possible. It happened that just in those days Abarbanel and Goldberger rederived the Compton scattering results using S-matrix dispersive methods . David suggested that we adopt that approach for our graviton problem, and we succeeded in doing the impossible: we derived an exact result for quantum gravity, even though quantum gravity theory did not then exist, and perhaps still doesn’t!

Even after our physical collaboration ended, we continued to work together unconsciously, in spirit, because four years after our last joint paper, David (together with Callan and Dashen ) and I (together with Rebbi ) produced identical analyses of the Yang-Mills vacuum and its angle.

Probably David would prefer hearing about new results, while I have been reminiscing about old ones. So let me conclude with something that he, and all of you, may find surprising.

## 2 Descendants of the Chiral Anomaly

By now we appreciate that anomalous divergences of chiral fermionic currents involve topological Chern-Pontryagin densities. In four dimensions we have the Abelian and non-Abelian formulas:

anomaly $`={}_{}{}^{}F_{}^{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{2}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }F_{\mu \nu }F_{\alpha \beta }`$ (Abelian) (1)
anomaly $`={}_{}{}^{}F_{}^{\mu \nu a}F_{\mu \nu }^a=\frac{1}{2}\epsilon ^{\mu \nu \alpha \beta }F_{\mu \nu }^aF_{\alpha \beta }^a`$ (non-Abelian); (2)
in two dimensions there is the Abelian expression:
anomaly $`={}_{}{}^{}F=\frac{1}{2}\epsilon _{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }`$ (Abelian). (3)
Analogous formulas hold in all other even dimensions .

These quantities are topologically interesting and their volume integrals are topological invariants, measuring various topological characteristics of gauge fields. Consequently one expects that all these quantities can be presented as total derivatives, so that the volume integral becomes converted by Gauss’s law into a surface integral, sensitive only to long-distance, global properties of the gauge fields, as befits a topological entity. This is indeed the case, but the possibility of expressing the Chern-Pontryagin densities as total derivatives emerges only when the field strengths are presented in terms of potentials. In four dimensions:

$`F_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=_\mu A_\nu _\mu A_\nu `$
$`\frac{1}{2}{}_{}{}^{}F_{}^{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=_\mu \left(\epsilon ^{\mu \alpha \beta \gamma }A_\alpha _\beta A_\gamma \right)`$ (Abelian) (4)
$`F_{\mu \nu }^a`$ $`=_\mu A_\nu ^a_\mu A_\mu ^a+f^{abc}A_\mu ^bA_\nu ^c`$
$`\frac{1}{2}{}_{}{}^{}F_{}^{\mu \nu a}F_{\mu \nu }^a`$ $`=_\mu \epsilon ^{\mu \alpha \beta \gamma }\left(A_\alpha ^a_\beta A_\gamma ^a+\frac{1}{3}f^{abc}A_\alpha ^aA_\beta ^bA_\gamma ^c\right)`$ (non-Abelian); (5)
in two dimensions:
$`F_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=_\mu A_\nu _\nu A_\mu `$
$`{}_{}{}^{}F`$ $`=_\mu (\epsilon ^{\mu \nu }A_\nu )`$ (Abelian). (6)
The quantities whose divergences give the even-dimensional Chern-Pontryagin densities are called Chern-Simons terms. By suppressing one dimension, they become naturally defined on an odd-dimensional manifold, in one lower dimension, and we are thus led to consider the Chern-Simons terms in their own right . In three dimensions:

$`\mathrm{CS}(A)`$ $`=\epsilon ^{ijk}A_i_jA_k`$ (Abelian) (7)
$`\mathrm{CS}(A)`$ $`=\epsilon ^{ijk}\left(A_i^a_jA_k^a+\frac{1}{3}f^{abc}A_i^aA_j^bA_k^c\right)`$ (non-Abelian); (8)
in one dimension:
$`\mathrm{CS}(A)`$ $`=A_1`$ (Abelian). (9)
The (3 and 1)-dimensional volume integrals of these quantities are again topological invariants, with interesting physical information. The three-dimensional integral in the Abelian case – the case of electrodynamics – is called the magnetic helicity: $`\mathrm{d}^3r𝑨\mathbf{}\times 𝑨=\mathrm{d}^3r𝑨𝑩`$ and measures the linkage of magnetic flux lines. An analogous quantity arises in fluid mechanics with the local fluid velocity $`𝒗`$ replacing $`𝑨`$ and vorticity $`𝝎=\mathbf{}\times 𝒗`$ replacing $`𝑩`$. Then the integral $`\mathrm{d}^3r𝒗\mathbf{}\times 𝒗=\mathrm{d}^3r𝒗𝝎`$ is called kinetic vorticity . A nonvanishing kinetic vorticity presents an obstacle to a canonical formulation for the Euler equations of fluid mechanics . Yet another property of the volume integral of the Chern-Simons term is that when its vector potential evaluated on a pure gauge configuration, the integral measures the windings of the gauge function .

I shall not review here the many uses that arose after my collaborators and I introduced the Abelian and non-Abelian Chern-Simons terms . The applications range from the mathematical characterization of knots to the physical description of electrons in the quantum Hall effect , vivid evidence for the deep significance of the Chern-Simons structure and of its antecedent, the chiral anomaly.

Instead I pose the following question: Can one write the Chern-Simons term as a total derivative, so that (as befits a topological quantity) the spatial volume integral becomes a surface integral. An argument that this should be possible is the following: The Chern-Simons terms that we have considered are a 3-form on 3-space and a 1-form on the line; hence they are maximal forms, and their exterior derivatives vanish because there are no 4-forms on 3-space nor 2-forms on a line. This establishes that the Chern-Simons terms are closed, so one can expect that they are also exact, at least locally; that is, they can be written as a total derivative. But on their respective manifolds, such derivative representations for the Chern-Simons terms require expressing the potentials in terms of “pre-potentials”, since the above Chern-Simons formulas show no evidence of derivative structure. \[Recall that the total derivative formulas for the axial anomaly also require using potentials to express $`F`$.\]

There is a physical, practical reason for wanting the three-dimensional, Abelian Chern-Simons term to be a total derivative. It is known in fluid mechanics that there exists an obstruction to constructing a Lagrangian for Euler’s fluid equations, and this obstruction is just the kinetic helicity $`\mathrm{d}^3r𝒗𝝎`$, that is, the volume integral of the Abelian Chern-Simons term, constructed from the velocity 3-vector $`𝒗`$. This obstruction is removed when the integrand is a total derivative, because then the kinetic helicity volume integral is converted to a surface integral by Gauss’ theorem. When the integral obtains contributions only from a surface, the obstruction disappears from the 3-volume, where the fluid equation acts .

It is easy to show that the Abelian Chern-Simons term can be presented as a total derivative. In one dimension the result is trivial: any function can be written as a derivative of another function:

$$A_1=_1\theta .$$

In three dimensions, we use the Clebsch parameterization for a 3-vector

$$𝑨=\mathbf{}\theta +\alpha \mathbf{}\beta .$$
(10)
This nineteenth-century parameterization of the a 3-vector $`𝑨`$ in terms of the pre-potentials ($`\theta `$, $`\alpha `$, $`\beta `$) is an alternative to the usual transverse/longitudinal parameterization. In modern language it is a statement of Darboux’s theorem that the 1-form $`A_i\mathrm{d}x^i`$ can be written as $`\mathrm{d}\theta +\alpha \mathrm{d}\beta `$ . With this parameterization for $`𝑨`$, one sees that the Abelian Chern-Simons term is indeed a total derivative:

$`\mathrm{CS}(A)`$ $`=\epsilon ^{ijk}A_i_jA_k`$ (11)
$`=\epsilon ^{ijk}_i\theta _j\alpha _k\beta `$
$`=_i\left(\epsilon ^{ijk}\theta _j\alpha _k\beta \right).`$
When the Clebsch parameterization is employed for $`𝒗`$ in the fluid dynamical context, the obstruction to a canonical formulation is removed, and the situation is analogous to the force law in electrodynamics. While the Lorentz equation is written in terms of field strengths, a Lagrangian formulation needs potentials from which the field strengths are reconstructed. Similarly, Euler’s equation involves the velocity vector $`𝒗`$, but in a Lagrangian for this equation the velocity must be parameterized in terms of the prepotentials $`\theta `$, $`\alpha `$, and $`\beta `$.

When the Clebsch parameterization is employed for the electromagnetic vector potential $`𝑨`$, magnetic helicity acquires an appealing form:

$$\mathrm{d}^3r𝑨(\mathbf{}\times 𝑨)=\mathrm{d}^3r\mathbf{}(\theta 𝑩)=\mathrm{d}𝑺\theta 𝑩.$$
(12)
The magnetic helicity is the flux of the magnetic field through the surface bounding the volume, with $`\theta `$ acting as a modulating factor.

In a natural generalization of the above, one asks whether a non-Abelian vector potential can also be parameterized in such a way that the non-Abelian Chern-Simons term (8) becomes a total derivative. We have answered this question affirmatively and we have found appropriate prepotentials that do the job , but the details of the construction are too technical to be presented here. We hope that our non-Abelian generalization of the Clebsch parameterization will be as interesting and useful as the Abelian one, perhaps for a non-Abelian version of fluid mechanics.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

It has been suggested that occurrence of nonequilibrium chiral phase transition in hadronic collisions would lead to the formation of disoriented chiral condensate (DCC), domains of coherent pion fields . It then may offer a viable explanation of the Centauro events found in cosmic ray experiments which have anomalously large fluctuations of neutral to charged pion ratio .

By a numerical simulation using the linear sigma model, Rajagopal and Wilczek  demonstrated that low-momentum components of pion fields are greatly amplified, indicating the formation of large coherent domains of pions. A key ingredient in their simulation is the “quench” initial condition which models a hypothesized rapid cooling of hot debris formed during the hadronic reactions. The formation of large domains of pion fields was confirmed by more realistic but still the sigma model simulation by Asakawa, Huang, and Wang  in which the longitudinal expansion of hadronic blob is taken into account.

There remain, however, questions regarding the interpretation of the simulations. Among other things, the amplification of the low-momentum modes in the Rajagopal-Wilczek simulation lasts so long, much longer than $`1/m_\sigma `$, the time scale of rolling down from the top of the Mexican hat potential. In previous works , we have conjectured that the parametric resonance mechanism might be relevant for the DCC formation. In simple physical terms, the parametric resonance mechanism stands for a mechanism of amplification of pion field fluctuations due to cooperative effects coupled with oscillations of background sigma model fields.

It has been known since long time ago that the parametric resonance mechanism can be relevant for cosmology by providing reheating mechanism during inflation . It has been received renewed interests recently in relationship with various issues, such as the gravitino problem, in inflationary cosmology -. The parametric resonance mechanism for pion production was first discussed by Mrówczyński and Müller in close analogy to the out-of-equilibrium phase transition in cosmology . We have stressed in our previous paper  that it may offer an efficient mechanism of pion production with potential possibility of explaining long-lasting amplification of low momentum modes. We also noted that it would give an alternative picture of large isospin fluctuations, the picture quite different from the conventional one based on rolling down into the “wrong” direction in isospin space and the subsequent relaxation to the true vacuum. We have discussed that the discriminative signature can be provided by the two pion correlations in back-to-back momentum configurations .

In this paper, we investigate the effect of quantum back reactions onto the parametric resonance mechanism. Particle creation, when it occurs due to strong coupling with background field oscillations, affects the motion of the background fields by acting as dissipation. The back reaction, in turn, affects the particle production itself because of the damping of background oscillations. We aim at taking account of the interplay between particle production, its back reactions to the background fields, and reaction back to the particle production in a self consistent manner. Unfortunately, the effect was completely ignored in our previous treatment, but evaluation of its effects is indispensable for the correct understanding of a role played by the parametric resonance mechanism on DCC formation. This is our first trial toward the goal and we explore in this paper the effect of back reactions on single particle momentum distributions of pions, with primary concern on its effect on resonance peaks. We will also calculate correlation length of pions, one of the key issues in DCC.

In our previous works, our formulation relied on the approximation of small background sigma oscillations. It may correspond to the final stage of nonequilibrium chiral phase transition and we discussed the quantum particle creation under the background. We have argued that in this setting we may ignore higher order terms in the quantum pion and sigma fluctuations. Due to a series of approximations, we are able to write down explicit quantum states of pions and sigmas in the form of the squeezed states . It enables us to compute explicitly two pion correlations, and the BCS type back-to-back momentum pairing is obtained. It would give a characteristic signature of the parametric resonance mechanism.

In this paper, we calculate the effect of quantum back reactions but still within the framework of small amplitude background sigma oscillations. Our restriction to the small-amplitude region is not only due to technical reasons, but also is physically motivated. To understand the effects of quantum back reactions, it is desirable to compare the results with and without back reactions at the same initial amplitude of background $`\sigma `$ oscillation. Of course, the limitation clearly implies that the meaning of our results must be carefully interpreted, in particular with regard to possible implications to experiments.

We use the formulation by Boyanovsky et al.  which incorporates the quantum back reactions via the Hartree-Fock approximation. In our previous computation ignoring back reactions, the pion momentum distributions have resonance peaks at the momenta which are characteristic to the parametric resonance mechanism. If observed, it would give an unambiguous confirmation of the mechanism. However, it is possible that it can be wiped out when the effect of quantum back reaction is taken into account. For related works which address DCC by the similar formalism, see e.g., Refs. .

We will observe that the quantum back reactions drastically affect low momentum components of the pion field fluctuations but not on the resonance peaks. The peak hight is barely changed but the peak position is moved to lower momentum. We believe that the fact that the resonance peak survives even if the quantum back reactions are taken into account gives us some positive hints about experimental detectability of the parametric resonance mechanism.

Our calculation of two pion correlations results in a short correlation length of order 1-2 fm which is much shorter compared to the one expected in DCC scenario. We will briefly address its possible interpretation, in particular in the relationship with the different result obtained by Kaiser .

In section 2, we review the Boyanovsky et al.’s formalism. In section 3, we calculate the single pion momentum distributions and two pion correlations. In the last section, we give concluding remarks.

## 2 Quantum Back Reactions in the Hartree-Fock Approximation

We start with the following linear sigma model Lagrangian

$$=\frac{1}{2}_\mu \varphi _a^\mu \varphi _aV(\varphi ),$$
(1)
where

$$V(\varphi )=\frac{\lambda }{4}(\varphi _a\varphi _av_0^2)^2+h\sigma ,\varphi _a=(\sigma ,\stackrel{}{\pi }).$$
(2)
Typical values of the parameters

$$\lambda =20,v_0=90\text{MeV},m_\pi =\sqrt{\frac{h}{v_0}}=140\text{MeV},$$
(3)
are employed throughout this paper, the same ones as used in our previous analysis. . We rely on the formalism based on the Schrödinger picture formulation of quantum field theory .

In the following calculations, we consider the pion production in a background sigma field which is oscillating along the sigma direction in isospin space. Decomposing sigma model fields into the background and fluctuations, $`\sigma =\phi _0+\phi `$ and $`\stackrel{}{\pi }=\stackrel{}{\pi }`$, we substitute them into the Lagrangian (1). We employ the Hartree-Fock approximation to take account of the back reaction. Then, the quartic terms in the Lagrangian can be replaced by quadratic terms, e.g., $`\phi ^46\phi ^2\phi ^23\phi ^2^2`$. The Hamiltonian is expressed as

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill =& \frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Pi }_\phi ^2+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Pi }_\pi ^2+\frac{1}{2}(\phi )^2+\frac{1}{2}(\pi )^2+\frac{1}{2}_\phi ^2(t)\phi ^2+\frac{1}{2}_\pi ^2(t)\pi ^2\hfill \\ & +\left(\lambda (3\phi ^2+\pi ^2)\phi _0+\frac{V(\sigma ,0)}{\sigma }|_{\sigma =\phi _0}\right)\phi \frac{3}{4}\lambda \left(\phi ^2^2+\pi ^2^2\right)+V(\phi _0,0),\hfill \end{array}$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$’s stand for the conjugate momenta of fields indicated as indices. The time dependent effective masses for sigma and pion are written, respectively, as

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill _\sigma ^2=& \lambda (3\phi _0^2v_0^2)+3\lambda \phi ^2,\hfill \\ \hfill _\pi ^2=& \lambda (\phi _0^2v_0^2)+3\lambda \pi ^2.\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)
The expectation value is evaluated by

$$\phi ^2=\text{Tr}\left(\phi ^2\rho \right),$$
(6)
where $`\rho `$ is a functional density matrix written in terms of $`\phi `$. In a self-consistent Hartree approximation, the density matrix in sigma sector takes the Gaussian form

$$\rho _\sigma [\sigma ,\stackrel{~}{\sigma }]=\underset{k}{}𝒩_\phi \mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{𝒜_\phi }{2}\phi _k\phi _k\frac{𝒜_\phi ^{}}{2}\stackrel{~}{\phi }_k\stackrel{~}{\phi }_k_\phi \phi _k\stackrel{~}{\phi }_k+i\mathrm{\Pi }_{\phi k}(\phi _k\stackrel{~}{\phi }_k)\right],$$
(7)
where $`𝒩_\phi `$, $`𝒜_\phi `$, $`𝒜_\phi ^{}`$, and $`_\phi `$ are determined so that the density matrix obeys the functional Liouville equation

$$i\frac{\rho }{t}=[,\rho ].$$
(8)
For instance, we have

$$i\dot{𝒩}_\phi =\frac{1}{2}𝒩_\phi (𝒜_\phi 𝒜_\phi ^{}),$$
(9)
$$\dot{\mathrm{\Pi }}_{\phi k}=\left((3\lambda \phi ^2+3\lambda \pi ^2)\phi _0+\frac{V(\sigma ,0)}{\sigma }|_{\sigma =\phi _0}\right)\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }}\delta _{k0},$$
(10)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a finite volume of the system. Actually, the equation (10) leads to the following equation of motion of $`\phi _0`$

$$\ddot{\phi }_0+\lambda (\phi _0^2v_0^2)\phi _0+(3\lambda \phi ^2+3\lambda \stackrel{}{\pi }^2)\phi _0h=0.$$
(11)
As was done in the analysis by Boyanovsky et al. , the assumption of no cross correlations between sigma and pion fields is adopted in the derivation of the above effective Hamiltonian (4). Thanks to this assumption, the density matrices of sigma and pion sectors are factorized, allowing their separate treatment. Yet, the interaction between sigma and pion fields influences the dynamics through motion of $`\phi _0`$, whose behavior is strongly affected by quantum back reactions due to particle productions. Among other things, it ensures the conservation of total energy despite the factorization of sigma and pion sectors. To briefly summarize, the effects of higher order terms of fields are included under the Hartree-Fock approximation, and the back reaction due to particle production is taken into account through the mean field values evaluated with use of the density matrix.

The expectation value of sigma fluctuation is expressed as

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \phi ^2& =\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\underset{k}{}\phi _k\phi _k\hfill \\ & =\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\underset{k}{}\mathrm{Tr}\left(\phi _k\phi _k\rho _\sigma \right).\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
After a short calculation, which is straightforward with the Gaussian density matrix, we find

$$\phi _k\phi _k=\frac{1}{2}\left|\psi _\phi \right|^2\mathrm{coth}\left(\frac{\beta _0\omega _\phi (k,0)}{2}\right)$$
(13)
under the assumption that the initial state is in thermal equilibrium with a temperature $`T_0=1/\beta _0`$. This assumption can be expressed in terms of coefficients of the density matrix as follows:

$`𝒜_\phi (k,0)`$ $`=`$ $`𝒜_\phi ^{}(k,0)=\omega _\phi (k,0)\mathrm{coth}\beta _0\omega _\phi (k,0),`$ (14)
$`_\phi (k,0)`$ $`=`$ $`\omega _\phi (k,0)\text{cosech}\beta _0\omega _\phi (k,0),`$ (15)
$`𝒩_\phi (k,0)`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{\omega _\phi (k,0)}{\pi }}\mathrm{tanh}{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _0\omega _\phi (k,0)}{2}}\right)^{1/2}.`$ (16)
The function $`\psi _\phi `$ defined by

$$i\frac{\dot{\psi }_\phi }{\psi _\phi }=\text{Re}𝒜_\phi \mathrm{tanh}\beta _0\omega _\phi (k,0)+i\text{Im}𝒜_\phi $$
(17)
obeys the equation of motion of $`\phi `$,

$$\ddot{\psi }_\phi (k,t)+\omega _\phi ^2(k,t)\psi _\phi (k,t)=0,$$
(18)
with

$$\omega _\phi ^2(k,t)=k^2+_\phi ^2(t).$$
(19)
The initial condition for $`\psi _\phi `$ is given by

$$\psi _\phi (k,0)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\omega _\phi (k,0)}},\dot{\psi }_\phi (k,0)=i\sqrt{\omega _\phi (k,0)},$$
(20)
through the initial conditions for the density matrix under the assumption of thermal equilibrium. The point is that the function $`\psi `$ satisfies the classical equation thanks to the transformation (17), despite that it describes the quantum system. As one can see, the right hand side of the equation (13) contains the expectation value of $`\phi ^2`$ at $`t=0`$ through the effective mass dependence in the frequency (19). Hence, the initial value of $`\phi ^2`$ must be determined self-consistently.

Let us consider an expectation value of the pion number $`n_\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)`$. A particle picture in a time dependent background, which corresponds to the time-dependent mass (5), has the similar feature as those in theories in curved space-time. The effective mass has the similar form as the coefficient of the quadratic term of scalar fields coupled with the Ricci scalar . In this case, the Fock spaces chosen in both of the asymptotic regions ($`t\pm \mathrm{}`$) belong to different Hilbert spaces. A vacuum in one of the Fock spaces is a condensed state of particles defined in the other Fock vacuum. The creation and annihilation operators in each Fock space are related via the Bogoliubov transformation. Two different definitions of this transformation are employed in several literatures so far -.

In general, the Bogoliubov transformation between operators in two Fock spaces is written as

$$a_k(t)=\alpha _k(t)a_{0k}+\beta _k^{}(t)a_{0k}^{},a_k^{}(t)=\beta _k(t)a_{0k}+\alpha _k^{}(t)a_{0k}^{},$$
(21)
where each of $`a_k`$ and $`a_{0k}`$ belongs to a different Fock space and the coefficients obey $`|\alpha _k(t)|^2|\beta _k(t)|^2=1`$. From the transformation (21), the number operator $`a_k^{}(t)a_k(t)`$ is of the form

$$a_k^{}(t)a_k(t)=\left(|\alpha _k(t)|^2+|\beta _k(t)|^2\right)a_k^{}a_k+|\beta _k(t)|^2.$$
(22)
A possible choice of coefficients of the Bogoliubov transformation is given by

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \alpha _k(t)& =\frac{1}{2\sqrt{\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,0)}}(i\dot{\psi }_\stackrel{}{\pi }^{}+\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,0)\psi _\stackrel{}{\pi }^{}),\hfill \\ \hfill \beta _k(t)& =\frac{1}{2\sqrt{\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,0)}}(i\dot{\psi }_\stackrel{}{\pi }+\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,0)\psi _\stackrel{}{\pi }),\hfill \end{array}$$
(23)
and the other possibility is as follows

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \alpha _k(t)& =\frac{1}{2\sqrt{\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)}}(i\dot{\psi }_\stackrel{}{\pi }^{}+\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)\psi _\stackrel{}{\pi }^{})e^{i^t𝑑t^{}\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t^{})},\hfill \\ \hfill \beta _k(t)& =\frac{1}{2\sqrt{\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)}}(i\dot{\psi }_\stackrel{}{\pi }+\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)\psi _\stackrel{}{\pi })e^{i^t𝑑t^{}\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t^{})}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(24)
The former definition (23) relies on time evolutions of canonical fields, e.g., $`\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)=U(t)\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,0)U^1(t),`$ and Boyanovsky et al. utilizes this type of the number operator for the numerical analysis. Here $`U(t)`$ is a time evolution operator. In the latter definition, the creation and annihilation operators diagonalize the Hamiltonian at any time $`t`$ , and $`a^{}a`$ defined by these coefficients is often referred to as adiabatic number operator. We will choose the second option, the transformation coefficients (24) as we did in our previous papers. By definition, both number operators coincide at $`t=0`$.

A subtle problem, however, arises in the latter definition. As noticed in the previous papers , there exists a possibility that $`\omega (k,t)`$ becomes imaginary when the amplitude of the background sigma oscillation exceeds a limit, $`(1\phi _0/v)^2>(m_\pi /m_\sigma )^2`$. It is highly plausible that the ill-defined imaginary frequency is an artifact of the wrong choice of variables, but we do not enter into the problem in this paper.

## 3 Single Pion Momentum Distributions and Two Pion Correlations

The expectation value of the pion number operator is defined by

$$n_\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)=\text{Tr}(a_k^{}(t)a_k(t)\rho (0)),$$
(25)
where $`\rho (0)`$ stands for the functional density matrix at $`t=0`$. At $`t=0`$, the initial occupation number is given by

$$n_\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,0)=\frac{1}{e^{\beta _0\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,0)}1},$$
(26)
at finite temperature via the first term of right-hand-side in (22), an expected result. It is easy to obtain the energy in pion sector in terms of a function $`\psi _\stackrel{}{\pi }`$, which is defined similarly as $`\psi _\phi `$ in (17), and it is given by

$$E_\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)=\left(\frac{1}{2}\left|\dot{\psi }_\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)\right|^2+\frac{1}{2}\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }^2(k,t)\left|\psi _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)\right|^2\right)/\left(e^{\beta _0\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,0)}1\right).$$
(27)
We now proceed to the numerical analysis. We restrict ourselves into small initial background oscillation of the sigma field. We parametrize it, throughout the remaining sections, by the parameters

$$\frac{\chi _0(0)}{v}\frac{\phi _0v}{v},$$
(28)
which implies a departure from the bottom of the potential minimum measured in units of $`v`$, the vacuum expectation value of $`\phi `$. By solving the coupled differential equations (11) and (18), we compute $`n_\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)`$. In Fig. 1, we present snapshots of the single pion momentum distributions at time $`t=0`$, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 fm with the initial amplitude of a background oscillation $`\chi _0(0)/v=0.05`$. This is the same initial condition as in the previous analysis ignoring the back reaction  and the snapshots obtained there at $`t=4`$, 7, and 10 fm are presented in Fig. 2 for comparison. (At $`t=0`$, $`n_\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,t)`$ trivially vanishes because of the initial condition chosen in .) From Fig. 1, one observes the three significant characteristics of the time evolution of the pion momentum distribution:

(1) At momenta lower than $`100`$ MeV, the number density grows first and then decreases, and seems to undergo damped oscillations. The suppression of number density at low momenta seems to indicate that the back reaction due to particle creations are efficient at low momenta. It may be a bad news for DCC because it may suppress the formation of large coherent domains. We will make some comments later.

(2) At around the resonance energy $`200`$ MeV, a peak starts to develop at $`t4`$ fm and continues to grow as time goes by. The series of snapshots in Fig. 1 looks like a process that the peak grows by absorbing the ambient pions in low momentum region which was originally provided, as seen by comparing with Fig. 2, by the background oscillation in an early stage of evolution.

(3) At momenta larger than $`300`$ MeV, there is virtually no change in the initial thermal distribution.

The peak height of pion number distribution at resonance without the back reaction reaches 0.28 at $`t=10`$ fm in Fig. 2. The corresponding peak height with back reaction is 0.38 at $`t=10`$ fm as shown in Fig. 1. The peak height with the back reaction is higher but it is mainly due to the fact that the initial occupation number (26) is nonzero. If we estimate the net increase of height due to evolution just by subtracting the initial thermal distribution, we obtain 0.25. It amounts to about 90% of the peak height without the back reaction.

We also note, by comparing Fig. 1 with Fig. 2, that the peak position moves to lower momentum region when the back reaction is taken into account. It can be understood by the following consideration.

If we ignore back reactions, the equation of motion of pion fields reduces to the Mathieu equation

$$\left(\frac{d^2}{dz^2}+A2q\mathrm{cos}(2z)\right)\pi _k=0,$$
(29)
where $`A=4(k^2+m_\pi ^2)/m_\sigma ^2`$ and $`q=4\lambda v\chi _0(0)/m_\sigma ^2`$ . Here we used a dimensionless time variable defined by $`z=m_\sigma t/2`$. It is well known that the equation admits unstable solutions in a wide range of parameters, in particular at $`A=n^2`$ for small $`q`$ which is relevant to our case, where $`n`$ denotes an arbitrary integer . Using the effective pion mass corrected by back reactions (5) the peak position is roughly estimated as

$$k_{peak}\sqrt{\frac{m_\sigma ^2}{4}m_\pi ^2\frac{v_0}{v}\lambda \chi _0^23\lambda \pi ^2},$$
(30)
for the first resonance band $`A=1`$.

The back reaction affects $`k_{peak}`$ in two opposite ways. The amplitude of the oscillation obviously damps by back reactions and it makes the third term in the square root smaller in magnitude at $`t`$ 0, and hence $`k_{peak}`$ larger. On the other hand, the last term, which was absent in a case of no back reaction, tends to let $`k_{peak}`$ be smaller. A simple estimate shows that the latter effect wins.

To confirm this interpretation, we run the computations with four different initial conditions in the region $`\chi _0/v[0.04,0.10]`$. In Fig. 3, we plot the pion distributions at $`t=20`$ fm. One notices that the peak position moves toward a lower momentum region by increasing the amplitudes of background sigma oscillation in consistent with our interpretation. It is also notable that the peak height rapidly increases as $`\chi _0/v`$ gets larger. It clearly shows a hint for experiments.

The behavior of damping of the background oscillation is shown in Fig. 4. This and the resultant increase of the effective mass cause a shift of the peak position to a lower momentum, as we just argued. In Fig. 5, we plot the time evolution of the energy of pion sector, $`E_\pi `$. It is defined as the summation over $`k`$ in (27). It increases while the background sigma oscillation damps with characteristic time scale of $`10`$ fm, and becomes stationary at about $`t15`$ fm when the background sigma oscillations die away. The pion production effectively terminates at this point.

The momentum distribution for sigma fluctuations is shown in Fig. 6. It represents a sharp contrast with the behavior of pion distributions, having no evolution until $`t=30`$ fm. The first resonance is expected at zero momentum, but it is not visible. It may be due to cancellation between the resonance enhancement and the damping due to back reactions at low momenta.

We have observed that the time scale of the energy dissipation is $`10`$ fm. The time scale can roughly be understood by the following arguments. For simplicity, we consider a system with pion and background fields only. Suppose that the background fields oscillate harmonically. Using the virial theorem, the energy conservation reads

$$m_\sigma ^2\stackrel{~}{\chi }_0(0)^2+ϵ_\pi (0)=m_\sigma ^2\stackrel{~}{\chi }_0(z)^2+ϵ_\pi (0)e^{2\mu z},$$
(31)
since the pion field $`\pi _k(z)`$ is expressed by using the critical exponent as $`\pi _k(0)e^{\mu z}`$ in a resonance band. The pion energy density $`ϵ_\pi `$ is proportional to the square of the pion field $`\pi _k(z)`$. $`\stackrel{~}{\chi }_0`$ implies the amplitude of background oscillation, and $`\mu `$ is the critical exponent of the Mathieu function . As mentioned above, the equation of motion of pion is described by the Mathieu equation in this simple system and the energy of pion is dominated by the modes in the resonance band in a good approximation.

In our analysis, a parametric resonance occurs in a narrow resonance band and $`\mu `$ is given by $`\mu =q/2`$ , that is

$$\mu =\frac{2\lambda v\stackrel{~}{\chi }}{m_\sigma ^2}=\frac{2\lambda v\sqrt{ϵ_0ϵ_\pi (z)}}{m_\sigma ^3},$$
(32)
where $`ϵ_0`$ is the initial total energy density of the system considered. Because the time dependence of pion energy at any time $`z`$ is expressed by $`ϵ_\pi (z)=ϵ_\pi (0)e^{2\mu z}`$, one obtain the following equation

$$\frac{dϵ_\pi (z)}{dz}=2\mu ϵ_\pi (z)$$
(33)
in the region where the time derivative of $`\mu `$ can be neglected. Practically, it means the narrow resonance region. The solution is given by

$$ϵ_\pi (z)=ϵ_0\left(1\mathrm{tanh}^2\left[\frac{2\lambda v\sqrt{ϵ_0}}{m_\sigma ^3}z+\mathrm{tanh}^1\sqrt{1\frac{ϵ_\pi (0)}{ϵ_0}}\right]\right),$$
(34)
where $`z[0,z_{end}]`$. The time $`z_{end}`$ is a dimensionless cut off time beyond which the equation (33) is no longer valid. One can see that almost all energy of background field is transferred to pions by the time given by

$$z_{end}=\frac{m_\sigma ^3}{2\lambda v\sqrt{ϵ_0}}\mathrm{tanh}^1\sqrt{1\frac{ϵ_\pi (0)}{ϵ_0}}.$$
(35)
The energy density $`ϵ_0`$ is determined, once the initial amplitude of sigma oscillation is given. With parameters used in our numerical calculation, $`\chi _0/v=0.05`$, $`ϵ_08.67\times 10^6`$ MeV<sup>4</sup>. Using the parameters given in (3), $`t_{end}`$ is estimated to be $`8`$ fm. Note that this value is under-estimated because $`\mu `$ is treated as a constant in the method we used. Since $`\mu `$ decreases with time, the energy transfer needs longer time to be completed. Nevertheless, it is notable that the treatment gives a correct order of magnitude estimation of $`z_{end}`$.

Two point correlation function $`C(t,r)`$ is similarly obtained by means of the density matrix, i.e.,

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill C(t,r)& =\stackrel{}{\pi }(t,0)\stackrel{}{\pi }(t,r)Tr(\stackrel{}{\pi }(t,0)\stackrel{}{\pi }(t,r)\rho (0))\hfill \\ & =\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }^{1/3}}\underset{k}{}\frac{k^2}{2\pi }j_0(kr)\left|\psi _\pi \right|^2\mathrm{coth}\left(\frac{\beta _0\omega _\stackrel{}{\pi }(k,0)}{2}\right),\hfill \end{array}$$
(36)
where $`j_0(x)=\mathrm{sin}x/x`$ denotes the spherical Bessel function of order 0. In Fig. 7, we plot two point pion correlation functions at $`t=5`$, 10, and 20 fm. At $`t=10`$ when the evolution effectively ends, the correlation length $`\xi `$ is given by $`\xi 1.3`$ fm.

In search for the possibility of correlation length growth, we run the computations with varying initial conditions. The correlation length increases for larger initial background oscillations, but not so much, as we observe in Table.1.

Apparently, this result is in disagreement with the conclusion reached by Kaiser who found the large domain formation due to the parametric resonance mechanism . Our simulation indicates that the back reaction primarily affects low momentum components and it is unlikely that the mechanism itself leads to large domain formation.

We note, however, that there are two significant differences between our and his calculations:

(i) The initial amplitude of background sigma oscillation is large, $`\chi _0/v`$ 1 in Kaiser’s calculations, whereas it is only up to 0.1 in our present analysis.

(ii) The quantum back reaction is fully taken into account in each step of evolution of the system under the Hartree-Fock approximation in our calculation. But it is ignored in Kaiser’s analysis apart from that the effect is evaluated to determine the time at which the simulation has to stop.

At this stage, we feel it difficult to judge whether or not large coherent domains are expected to form by the parametric resonance mechanism. It may well be the case that it depends upon the initial conditions. To really address the issue, we have to run a simulation with large initial amplitudes with full taking account of quantum back reactions. To carry it out, we need a formulation which is free from the instability problem as we mentioned at the end of Sec. 2.

## 4 Concluding Remarks

In this paper we have investigated features of quantum back reactions due to particle production by the parametric resonance mechanism in an environment of nonequilibrium chiral phase transition. We have calculated the single pion momentum distributions and two pion correlations under the initial small amplitude sigma oscillation around a potential minimum and with initial thermal equilibrium assumption. We relied on the formalism developed by Boyanovsky et al. to take account of back reactions under the Hartree-Fock approximation based on the Schrödinger picture formulation of quantum field theory. Remarkably, we observed that the resonance peak survives under the back reaction even in such a strongly coupled linear sigma model.

If the setting of small initial background oscillation is relevant in physical situation in high-energy hadronic collisions, a sharp peak in pion momentum distributions can be a clear signal for the parametric resonance mechanism, one of the candidate mechanism for DCC.

The potential possibility of large domain formation, the key issue in DCC, is not fully explored and hence unanswered in the present analysis. We hope that we can return to this problem by having a formalism without instability problem in the near future.

## 5 Acknowledgment

We thank Robert Brandenberger for bringing  to our attention. This work was supported in part by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research No. 12640285, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. The research of H.H. was partly supported by Kitasato University Research Grant for Young Researchers.


text:
# The Early Formation, Evolution and Age of the Neutron-Capture Elements in the Early GalaxyTo appear in the Proceedings of the 20th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, J. C. Wheeler & H. Martel (eds.)

## INTRODUCTION

In this paper we briefly review some of the important abundance trends for the slow- or rapid-neutron capture elements. We focus on how these neutron-capture elements can be employed to (1) study the nature of the progenitors and the nucleosynthesis history in the early Galaxy, (2) explore the chemical evolution of the Galaxy, and (3) obtain radioactive age estimates for the oldest stars, which in turn puts limits on the age of the Galaxy and the universe.

## Neutron-Capture Abundances

Extensive abundance studies have been made of the ultra-metal-poor ($``$ UMP, \[Fe/H\] = –3.1) but neutron-capture rich halo star CS 22892–052 cow95 ; sne96 ; sne00 . In Figure 1 we show the n-capture abundances as determined by Sneden et al.sne00  compared to a scaled solar system r-process abundance distribution. As has been noted previously, the upper end of the stellar abundance distribution (i.e., Ba and above) is in very close agreement with the solar system r-process curve. It has been seen only recently, and so far only in this star, that the lighter n-capture abundances between Zr and Ba (e.g., Nb, Pd, and Ag) do not lie on the same solar curve. This lends support to previous suggestions that there may be two sites for the r-process, one for the heavier and one for the lighter n-capture elements was96 . It is unclear whether both of those sites might be supernovae occurring at different frequencies was00  or neutron star binaries ros99  or some combination of those. Alternatively, it has been proposed that both ends of the abundance distribution could be synthesized in different regions of the same neutron-rich jet of a core-collapse supernova cam01 .

## Abundance Trends in the Galaxy

Observations of n-capture abundances in a wide range of Galactic, including metal-poor halo and disk, stars have now been made over a range of metallicities. These data demonstrate several interesting abundance trends in the Galaxy.

### Scatter in the Early Galaxy

Earlier work by Gilroy et al.gil88  first demonstrated that the stellar abundances of r-process elements with respect to iron, particularly Eu/Fe, showed a large scatter at low metallicities. This scatter appeared to diminish with increasing metallicity. A more extensive study by Burris et al.bur00  confirmed the very large star-to-star scatter in the early Galaxy, while studies of stars with higher metallicities – mostly disk stars – edv93 ; wol95  show little scatter. In Figure 2 we plot the data from a number of surveys bur00 ; edv93 ; wol95 ; mcw95 ; jeh99 , along with detailed abundance determinations from several single stars sne00 ; wes00 . These studies, which cover a metallicity range –3.5$``$\[Fe/H\]$``$+0.5 and include large numbers of stars, had attempted to minimize observational errors. The star-to-star scatter illustrated in this figure can be explained as the result of individual nucleosynthetic events (e.g., supernovae) gil88 ; bur00  and strongly suggests an early, unmixed, chemically inhomogeneous Galaxy. (See also sne01  for further discussion.) It should be noted that while the absolute levels of n-capture/Fe abundances vary widely, the relative abundances are similar in all of the very metal-poor halo stars.

One other important trend is notable in Figure 2. At higher metallicities, particularly for \[Fe/H\] $``$ –1, the values of \[Eu/Fe\] tend downward. This demonstrates clearly the effect of increasing iron production, presumably from Type Ia supernovae, at higher Galactic metallicities bur00 . At very low metallicities high mass (and rapidly evolving) Type II supernovae contribute to Galactic iron production. The onset of the bulk of iron production from Type Ia supernovae (with longer evolutionary timescales due to lower mass progenitors) occurs only at higher \[Fe/H\] and later Galactic times.

### Chemical Evolution of the r\- and s-Process

The abundances observed for the elements in CS 22892–052 and other UMP halo stars demonstrate the early onset of the r-process in the Galaxy. These results (see Figure 1) also confirm earlier predictions tru81  that elements synthesized by the s-process in the solar system (e.g., Ba) were formed solely in the r-process early in the history of the Galaxy. Further confirmation of this early Galactic dominance of the r-process is seen in Figure 3, where we plot \[Ba/Eu\] as a function of \[Fe/H\]. We have utilized a combination of data setsbur00 ; edv93 ; wol95 ; gra94 ; mcw98 ; zha90 , including some shown in Figure 2, to produce this new figure.

It is clearly seen in Figure 3 that at the lowest metallicities the stellar Ba/Eu ratios cluster around the solar system (pure) r-process value. Eu is almost exclusively an r-process element, but Ba is produced predominantly in solar system material by the s-process in low mass (1-3 M) AGB starsbur00 . At the lowest metallicities early in the history of the Galaxy, the halo stars show the products only of r-process nucleosynthesis from rapidly evolving (with short stellar evolutionary timescale) progenitors typical of, for example, Type II supernovae. As the metallicity grows larger, the ratio of Ba/Eu rises due to the increased production of Ba (in the s-process) but not the r-process element Eu. The transition between a pure r-process production of Ba and production dominated by the main s-process occurs between –3 $`<`$ \[Fe/H\] $`<`$ –2, with most stars consistent with the (total) solar value of \[Ba/Eu\] for metallicities \[Fe/H\] $``$ –2. The delay in the onset of the s-process with respect to the r-process is consistent with the longer stellar evolutionary timescales typical of low-mass (1–3 M) stars thought to be the site for s-process synthesis. It is interesting to note that the onset of the bulk of the main s-process in the Galaxy at \[Fe/H\] $``$ –2 occurs at a lower metallicity, and likely an earlier time, than the bulk of the iron production from Type Ia supernovae at \[Fe/H\] $``$ –1, as discussed above. We note further that while Ba has been commonly used for these abundance studies, in the future La may prove to be a more reliable indicator of the Galactic evolution of the s-process sne01 .

## Chronometric Ages

The detection of the radioactive element thorium in halo stars such as CS 22892–052 (see Figure 1) has provided the exciting opportunity of directly determining stellar ages. This technique relies upon comparing the observed stellar abundances with estimates of the initial abundance of the radioactive element. To minimize systematic errors, ratios of Th to Eu (produced almost exclusively in the r-process) are usually employed for these age determinations. Cowan et al.cow99  and Westin et al.wes00  obtained an average (minimum) age of 13.8 Gyr for the UMP stars CS 22892–052 and HD 115444 by comparing their observed Th/Eu abundances with the solar system ratio. This value represents a lower limit on their ages since Th has partially decayed over the last 4.5 Gyr. Improvements in these age estimates were then made by determining the initial (zero-decay) values of Th/Eu in the same calculations that reproduced the observed stable n-capture abundance distributions for both of these stars. The stable lead and bismuth solar system isotopic abundances were then employed to determine the most reliable mass formulae for predicting the properties of nuclei far from stability, critical for the theoretical r-process abundance calculations. Utilizing these constraints to obtain zero-decay Th/Eu abundances, an average age for CS 22892–052 and HD 115444 of 15.6 Gyr, with an estimated uncertainty of $``$ 4 Gyr, was obtained cow99 ; wes00 .

In addition to studies of halo stars there have been recent observations of the globular cluster M 15 sne0b . Detailed abundance determinations confirm that the heavier n-capture abundances are consistent with the scaled solar system r-process curve. Further, the detection of thorium in several of the globular stars has allowed a chronometric age estimate of 14 Gyr to be determined for this system sne0b .

Uranium, another long-lived radioactive element, can also serve as a chronometer. This element has not been detected to date in CS 22892–052 or in HD 115444, but has been found for the first time in the star CS 31082–001 cay01 . Combining both chronometers Th and U, in conjunction with several stable heavy elements, an age of 12.5 $`\pm `$ 3 Gyr has been estimated for this star. While this technique still has some observational and theoretical uncertainties associated with it cow01 , it offers great promise. In particular such chronometric age estimates of UMP stars are independent of, and consequently avoid the large uncertainties in, Galactic chemical evolution models. Finally, we note that the radioactive age determinations of these oldest halo stars put meaningful constraints on both Galactic and cosmological age estimates.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank all of our colleagues who have collaborated with us on various studies of $`n`$-capture elements in halo stars. This research has received support from NSF grants AST-9986974 to J.J.C., AST-9987162 to C.S. and from DOE contract B341495 to J.W.T., and from the Space Telescope Science Institute grant GO-8342.


text:
# Measurements of the complex conductivity of NbxSi1-x alloys on the insulating side of the metal-insulator transition

\[

## Abstract

We have conducted temperature and frequency dependent transport measurements in amorphous NbxSi1-x samples in the insulating regime. We find a temperature dependent dc conductivity consistent with variable range hopping in a Coulomb glass. The frequency dependent response in the millimeter-wave frequency range can be described by the expression $`\sigma (\omega )(ı\omega )^\alpha `$ with the exponent somewhat smaller than one. Our ac results are not consistent with extant theories for the hopping transport.

\] The study of conducting processes in disordered insulators has played an important role in the history of the physics of disordered materials yet retains considerable intrinsic interest. These materials are sometimes called “Coulomb glasses” for the presumed complexity of the interactions between localized electrons. Efforts to understand the conducting mechanisms in the insulating phase continue as a variety of mechanisms are possible—including thermal activation to a mobility edge, thermal activation to a neighboring localized state, and variable range hopping. For materials well within the insulating phase, variable range hopping is likely to dominate the transport; when a delocalization transition is approached, however, it is not obvious which process will dominate . In addition, the role of strong electron-electron interactions, which is known to be important in the vicinity of the metal-insulator transition , has not been fully explored in the insulating state.

Theories based on the variable range hopping mechanism either without strong effects due to electron-electron interactions (Mott hopping ) or with them (Efros-Shklovskii (E-S) hopping ) are well established in explaining various aspects of the dc and low frequency dielectric response of lightly doped semiconductors and very disordered alloys. They each produce characteristic temperature dependences:

$`\mathrm{Mott}:\sigma _{dc}`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{exp}[(T_0/T)^{1/(d+1)}]`$ (1)
$`\mathrm{E}\mathrm{S}:\sigma _{dc}`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{exp}[(T_0/T)^{1/2}].`$ (2)
Here $`d`$ is the effective spatial dimension for the hopping electrons and $`T_0`$ is a characteristic temperature scale that is related to the level spacing in a volume $`\xi ^d`$ (where $`\xi `$ is the localization length) in the Mott theory and to the Coulomb interaction energy scale in the Efros-Shklovskii theory: $`k_BT_0=e^2/\kappa \xi `$ (where $`\kappa `$ is the dielectric constant). Note that these expressions are valid for $`TT_0`$.

Frequency dependent conductivity experiments are particularly useful in distinguishing between different conducting mechanisms since they directly probe the quantum state of the electrons (especially in the high frequency limit where $`\mathrm{}\omega >k_BT`$). The frequency-dependent conductivity has been measured in the disordered insulating state from audio to microwave frequencies , far-infrared frequencies, and beyond . For investigating the quantum behavior of the hopping conductivity, however, measurements at frequencies lower than far-infrared (below the frequency $`k_BT_0/\mathrm{}`$ or the range where other excitations such as phonons are important) but still high enough to be in the quantum limit $`\mathrm{}\omega >k_BT`$, i.e., low temperature microwave and millimeter-wave conductivity experiments, are most relevant. Here we report results for the complex conductivity in this frequency range at low temperatures for an amorphous metal-nonmetal alloy system, a-NbxSi1-x, which exhibits a disorder-induced metal-insulator transition .

Amorphous niobium-silicon alloy samples are deposited on sapphire substrates by cosputtering from separate Nb and Si sources onto rotating substrates to produce large (19 mm diameter), thick (1 $`\mu `$m) homogeneous samples suitable for millimeter wave transmission experiments. The sapphire substrates have their c-axis oriented perpendicular to the plane, and are polished so that the faces are parallel. At the same time other samples were deposited in a Hall-bar configuration for dc experiments. Electron microprobe analysis verifies the lateral homogeneity produced by this process and was also used to estimate the niobium concentration (values are listed in Table I).

The dc conductivity was measured for each sample in a standard pumped He-4 cryostat over the temperature range 1.4–300 K. The frequency dependent conductivity is determined from millimeter-wave transmission experiments in the frequency range 100–900 GHz and temperature range 2.8–300 K. As previously described , the transmission through the sample on the substrate oscillates as a function of frequency because of standing waves in the substrate, which acts as a Fabry-Perot resonator . We first measure the peak frequencies for each substrate alone as a function of temperature, then remeasure after sample deposition. The complex conductivity $`\sigma _1+ı\sigma _2`$ can be determined from the changes in peak heights and shifts in the peak frequencies .

Figure 1 shows the dc conductivity for five NbxSi1-x alloy samples plotted on a logarithmic scale versus $`T^{1/2}`$. For temperatures below 10 K, the data falls on a straight line, in agreement with Eq. 2. The slopes in the low temperature limit give the $`T_0`$ values, which are summarized in Table I. Note that in the Efros-Shklovskii theory, the value of $`T_0`$ becomes larger as the localization length decreases; in Ref. , the delocalization transition occurred for NbxSi1-x samples with $`\sigma (77\mathrm{K})>5800(\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{m})^1`$. Our data are not consistent with the Mott variable range hopping theory unless the effective dimension for the hopping electrons is $`d=1`$ (which could occur if the hopping occurred preferentially along percolating paths).

Figures 2 and 3 show the real and imaginary parts of the complex conductivity respectively, for three samples as a function of frequency at 2.8 K. For all three samples, the imaginary part of the conductivity is negative (capacitive) with a magnitude that is considerably larger than the real part. Also for all three, both real and imaginary parts follow a power law frequency dependence with a similar exponent $`\alpha `$ for both parts. This behavior implies that for each sample the complex conductivity can be described by:

$$\sigma (\omega )=\sigma _1(\omega )+ı\sigma _2(\omega )=A\left(ı\frac{\omega }{\omega _o}\right)^\alpha ,$$
(3)
The fact that both the real and imaginary parts individually follow the same power law over a broad frequency range is compatible with the Kramers-Kronig relations. We have three techniques for determining $`\alpha `$ from the data: (1) fitting $`\sigma _1(\omega )`$, (2) fitting $`\sigma _2(\omega )`$, and (3) fitting $`\sigma _2`$ versus $`\sigma _1`$ (with frequency as an implicit variable) to obtain the phase angle of the complex conductivity:

$$\alpha =\frac{2}{\pi }\mathrm{tan}^1\left(\frac{|\sigma _2|}{\sigma _1}\right).$$
(4)
The three techniques give values for $`\alpha `$ that agree within experimental error, as shown in Table I. The value of $`\alpha `$ is less than unity for all three (that is, the frequency dependence is sublinear), and the value of $`\alpha `$ increases as the samples become more insulating.

The relatively large values for the imaginary part of the conductivity for all three samples also implies relatively large values of the real part of the dielectric function

$$ϵ_1=\frac{\sigma _2}{\omega ϵ_o}$$
(5)
as shown in the inset to Figure 3. For all three samples, the dielectric function increases slowly as frequency decreases, and its zero frequency limit is not attained in our frequency range for Samples 1 and 2. The samples with higher conductivities exhibit the larger values of $`ϵ_1`$, which is consistent with the behavior in an insulating phase as a delocalization transition is approached—electrons in states with longer localization lengths become highly polarizable—as has been previously observed at radio frequencies in doped crystalline semiconductors .

We conclude that the electrons in these samples are in highly polarizable, strongly interacting, yet localized states. The frequency dependence of the complex conductivity possesses a nontrivial power law frequency dependence (at least in a limited frequency range that reaches the quantum limit). The dc conductivity follows a temperature dependence consistent with variable range hopping models, so we now turn to the predictions of those models for the high frequency conductivity. The models can be considered to be “two site” models in that hopping occurs between two sites either without considering interactions at all (the Mott model) or without considering screening effects produced by virtual hops of other electrons (the E-S model).

The two variable range hopping models produce different predictions for $`\sigma _1`$ in the quantum regime (but not too high in frequency): $`k_BT<\mathrm{}\omega <k_BT_0`$ :

$`\mathrm{Mott}:\sigma _1(\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`\pi ^2e^2g_o^2\mathrm{}\omega ^2\xi ^5\mathrm{ln}^4(2I_o/(\mathrm{}\omega ))`$ (6)
$`\mathrm{E}\mathrm{S}:\sigma _1(\omega )`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi ϵ_o\omega \kappa }{5\mathrm{ln}(2I_o/(\mathrm{}\omega ))}}.`$ (7)
Here $`g_o`$ is the impurity band density of levels and $`I_o`$ is a microscopic energy overlap. The E-S expression assumes a broad Coulomb gap (which would be the case for a metal-nonmetal alloy, since the level density is quite high). Besides the different prediction for the frequency dependence (quadratic for Mott versus slightly superlinear for Efros-Shklovskii), the difference in form between the two formulas is striking and results from the universal shape of the density of levels in the Coulomb gap (which determines the absorbing transitions) in the Efros and Shklovskii theory. The Mott expression also has a much stronger dependence on the localization length. Note that the Efros-Shklovskii expression would be expected to depend rather weakly on the niobium concentration (through the logarithmic term containing the overlap integral value) especially since the value of $`\kappa `$ is assumed to be determined by the host material (amorphous silicon here), which does not include the contribution of the hopping electrons.

For $`\sigma _2`$, Efros  has produced a similar expression to Eq. 7 but without the logarithmic factor, so that $`\sigma _2`$ should have a purely linear frequency dependence. This would give a frequency independent value for $`ϵ_1`$.

Our data for $`\sigma _1`$ shows neither the quadratic frequency dependence nor the strong dependence of the magnitude of $`\sigma _1`$ on the localization length predicted by the Mott theory ($`\xi `$ is inversely proportional to $`T_0`$ in the Mott theory for $`d=1`$), which rules out attempts to explain the dc conductivity data as one-dimensional hopping of weakly interacting electrons.

The data are not fully described by the Efros-Shklovskii model. We observe a sublinear frequency dependence for the complex conductivity (as opposed to the superlinear and linear dependences predicted for $`\sigma _1`$ and $`\sigma _2`$, respectively). Also, the measured magnitudes of $`\sigma _1`$ are significantly greater than the prediction of Eq. 7 if $`\kappa `$ is taken to be the dielectric constant of amorphous silicon (the dashed line in Figure 2 indicates the magnitude of the numerator for $`\kappa =12`$; the logarithmic factor in the denominator is difficult to estimate but is greater than one in the theory). There are two caveats to consider in these comparisons, however: (1) the data may not be fully in the $`T=0`$ limit (since $`\mathrm{}\omega `$ is only somewhat greater than $`k_BT`$ for our lowest frequencies and the theory is for $`T=0`$) and (2) for Sample 1, the value of $`T_0`$ is low enough that the experiment does not remain below the upper frequency limit on the range of validity for Eq. 7 over our entire frequency range.

It may be interesting to consider the effects on the electrodynamics of a hopping electron in a model where screening effects of other hopping electrons are taken into account. The host material dielectric constant $`\kappa `$ used in the E-S model is much smaller than the contribution to $`ϵ_1`$ from the hopping electrons themselves in our frequency range for all of our samples. Thus it is conceivable that the full dielectric response must be taken into account when screening in a Coulomb glass is considered. Recent tunneling experiments in doped semiconductors have been interpreted as supporting the importance of many-electron composite excitations .

To conclude, we observe a power law dependence for the complex conductivity in the low temperature limit, implying that the hopping conductivity in our samples exhibits a richer range of behavior than can be described by the existing theories of variable range hopping. The development of theories that account for the full dielectric response of the system and additional experiments at lower frequencies and temperatures would appear to be required to fully understand the thermal and quantum processes that control the conductivity of the Coulomb glass.

Acknowlegements—We wish to thank B. Shklovskii for useful discussions. Research at UCLA was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant DMR-9801816.