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# Faster-than-light effects and negative group delays in optics and electronics, and their applications

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Recent optical experiments at Princeton NEC  have verified the prediction by the one of the authors and his co-workers that superluminal pulse propagation can occur in transparent media with optical gain . These experiments have shown that a laser pulse can propagate with little distortion in an optically pumped cesium vapor cell with a group velocity greatly exceeding the vacuum speed of light $`c`$. In fact, the group velocity for the laser pulse in this experiment was observed to be $`negative`$: The peak of the output laser pulse left the output face of the cell $`before`$ the peak of the input laser pulse entered the input face of the cell. This pulse sequence is counter-intuitive.

We also performed some earlier experiments on the speed of the quantum tunneling process . We found that a photon tunneled through a barrier at an effective group velocity which was faster than $`c`$, i.e., at a “superluminal” velocity. In these experiments, spontaneous parametric down-conversion was used as a light source which emitted randomly, but simultaneously, two photons at a time, i.e., photon “twins.” These photons were detected by means of two Geiger counters (silicon avalanche photodiodes), so that the time at which a “click” was registered is interpreted as the time of arrival of the photon. Coincidence detection was used to detect these photon twins. One photon twin traverses a tunnel barrier, whilst the other traverses an equal distance in the vacuum.

The idea of the experiment was to measure the time of arrival of the tunneling photon with respect to its twin, by measuring the time difference between the two “clicks” of their respective Geiger counters. (We employed a two-photon interference effect in order to achieve sufficient time resolution.) The net result was surprising: On the average, the Geiger counter registering the arrival of the photon which tunneled through the barrier clicked $`earlier`$ than the Geiger counter registering the arrival of the photon which traversed the vacuum. This indicates that the process of tunneling in quantum physics is superluminal.

The earliest experiment to demonstrate the existence of faster-than-$`c`$ group velocities was performed by Chu and Wong at Bell Labs. They showed that picosecond laser pulses propagated superluminally through an absorbing medium in the region of anomalous dispersion inside the optical absorption line . This experiment was reproduced in the millimeter range of the electromagnetic spectrum by Segard and Macke . These experiments verified the prediction of Garrett and McCumber  that Gaussian-shaped pulses of electromagnetic radiation could propagate with faster-than-$`c`$ group velocities in regions of anomalous dispersion associated with an absorption line. Negative group velocities were also observed to occur in these early experiments.

These counter-intuitive pulse sequences were also seen to occur in experiments on electronic circuits . In the first of these experiments, we used an electronic circuit which consisted of an operational amplifier with a negative feedback circuit containing a passive RLC network. This circuit produced a negative group delay similar to that observed in the optical experiment performed at Princeton NEC: The peak of the output voltage pulse left the output port of the circuit $`before`$ the peak of the input voltage pulse entered the input port of the circuit. Such a seemingly anti-causal phenomenon does not in fact violate the principle of causality, since there is sufficient information in the early portion of any analytic voltage waveform to reproduce the entire waveform earlier in time. We showed that causality is solely connected with the occurrence of discontinuities, such as “fronts” and “backs” of signals, and not with the peaks in the voltage waveform, and, therefore, that causal loop paradoxes could never arise .

We propose to apply these counter-intuitive ideas to the design of microelectronic devices . This is timely, since it is widely believed that Moore’s law for microprocessor performance will fail to hold in the next decade due to a “brick wall” arising from fundamental physical limitations . Therefore, there have been many proposals for new transistor technologies to try to solve this problem . At the present time, the “transistor latency” problem is one of the main factors limiting computer performance, although the “propagation delays” due to the RC time constants in the interconnects between individual transistors on a computer chip are beginning to be another serious limiting factor. As the scale of microprocessor circuits fabricated on a silicon wafer is reduced to become ever smaller in size, the transistor switching time becomes increasingly faster, but the propagation delay from transistor to neighboring transistor becomes increasingly longer . This will still be true even after new technologies to replace MOSFETS with faster devices is implemented.

The propagation delays of interconnects arise from a combination of the resistivity of the evaporated metal wire connecting two nearby transistors, and the dielectric constant of the insulator which supports the interconnecting wire. The solution to this problem being currently implemented in industry is to use copper interconnects instead of aluminum (which has traditionally been used). Another solution is to use insulators with a lower dielectric constant to support the interconnecting wires. These solutions reduce propagation delays, but do not eliminate them altogether.

Here we suggest a radically different approach which in principle can eliminate all kinds of delays by implementing the concept of negative group delay in conjunction with negative feedback. For example, this will allow us to eliminate the positive propagation delay from an interconnect by exactly compensating for this delay with an equal, but opposite, negative group delay. We therefore suggest that the architecture of microprocessors should be changed to incorporate negative feedback elements between logic gates.

The compensation of propagation delays, if implemented properly, would also lead to a path independence for the routing time of logic pulses throughout the computer system. This leads to a novel solution of the “clock skew” or “clock synchronization” problem, in which there arises a skewed distribution of arrival times of logic pulses at a final logic gate, due to the fact that these pulses are routed through different paths on a computer chip. The phenomenon of clock skew prevents the use of higher clock rates, because the current solution to this problem is to deliberately add an extra delay to an early-arriving pulse, such that it arrives simultaneously with a late-arriving pulse at the final gate . Thus, existing computer clock speeds are determined in practice by the propagation delay of the $`longest`$ routing path.

We believe that the clock skew problem can be eliminated by eliminating propagation delays altogether. Since there would no longer be any appreciable delays for a pulse to propagate from logic gate to logic gate, the routing time of a logic pulse to a final logic gate could become largely independent of the path taken by this pulse inside the computer. Much faster computer systems should result.

## 2 GENERAL PRINCIPLES FOR GENERATING NEGATIVE GROUP DELAYS

### 2.1 Negative group delays necessitated by the golden rule for operational amplifier circuits with negative feedback

In Figure 1, we show an operational amplifier with a signal entering the noninverting (+) port of the amplifier. The output port of the amplifier is connected back to the inverting ($``$) port of the amplifier by means of a black box, which represents a passive linear circuit with an arbitrary complex transfer function $`\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)`$ for a signal at frequency $`\omega `$. We thus have a linear amplifier circuit with a negative feedback loop containing a passive filter. In general, the transfer function of any passive linear circuit, such as a RC low-pass filter, will always lead to a $`positive`$ propagation delay through the circuit.

However, for operational amplifiers with a sufficiently high gain-feedback product, the voltage difference between the two input signals arriving at the inverting and noninverting inputs of the amplifier must remain small at all times. The operational amplifier must therefore supply a signal with a $`negative`$ group delay at its output, such that the $`positive`$ delay from the passive filter is exactly canceled out by this negative delay at the inverting ($``$) input port. The signal at the inverting ($``$) input port will then be nearly identical to that at the noninverting (+) port, thus satisfying the golden rule for the voltage difference at all times. The net result is that this negative feedback circuit will produce an output pulse whose peak leaves the output port of the circuit $`before`$ the peak of the input pulse arrives at the input port of this circuit.

In Figure 2, we show experimental evidence for this counter-intuitive behavior for the special case of an RLC tuned bandpass circuit in the negative feedback loop . The peak of an output pulse is $`advanced`$ by 12.1 milliseconds relative to the input pulse. The output pulse has obviously not been significantly distorted with respect to the input pulse by this linear circuit. Also, note that the size of the advance of the output pulse is comparable in magnitude to the width of the input pulse.

That causality is not violated is demonstrated in a second experiment, in which the input signal voltage is very suddenly shorted to zero the moment it reaches its maximum. The result is shown in Figure 3. By inspection, we see that the output signal is also very suddenly reduced to zero voltage at essentially the same instant in time that the input signal has been shorted to zero. This demonstrates that the circuit cannot advance in time truly $`discontinuous`$ changes in voltages, the only points on the signal waveform which are connected by causality . However, for the $`analytic`$ changes of the input signal waveform, such as those in the early part of the Gaussian input pulse which we used, the circuit evidently has the ability to extrapolate the input waveform into the future, in such a way as to reproduce the output Gaussian pulse peak $`before`$ the input pulse peak has arrived. In this sense, the circuit $`anticipates`$ the arrival of the Gaussian pulse.

### 2.2 The golden rule and the inversion of the transfer function of any passive linear circuit

Now we shall analyze under what conditions the golden rule holds and negative group delays are produced. In Figure 1, $`\stackrel{~}{A}\left(\omega \right)`$ denotes the complex amplitude of an input signal of frequency $`\omega `$ into the noninverting (+) port and $`\stackrel{~}{B}\left(\omega \right)`$ refers to that of the feedback signal into the inverting ($``$) port of the amplifier. The output signal $`\stackrel{~}{C}\left(\omega \right)`$ is then related to the feedback signal $`\stackrel{~}{B}\left(\omega \right)`$ by means of the complex linear feedback transfer function $`\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)`$ (the black box) as follows:

$$\stackrel{~}{B}\left(\omega \right)=\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)\stackrel{~}{C}\left(\omega \right).$$
(1)
The voltage gain of the operational amplifier is characterized by the active complex linear transfer function $`\stackrel{~}{G}\left(\omega \right)`$, which amplifies the difference of the voltage signals at the (+) and ($``$) inputs to produce an output signal as follows:

$$\stackrel{~}{C}\left(\omega \right)=\stackrel{~}{G}\left(\omega \right)\left(\stackrel{~}{A}\left(\omega \right)\stackrel{~}{B}\left(\omega \right)\right).$$
(2)
Defining the total complex transfer function $`\stackrel{~}{T}\left(\omega \right)\stackrel{~}{C}\left(\omega \right)/\stackrel{~}{A}\left(\omega \right)`$ as the ratio of the output signal $`\stackrel{~}{C}\left(\omega \right)`$ to input signal $`\stackrel{~}{A}\left(\omega \right)`$, we obtain for the total transfer function,

$$\stackrel{~}{T}\left(\omega \right)=\frac{\stackrel{~}{G}\left(\omega \right)}{1+\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)\stackrel{~}{G}\left(\omega \right)}.$$
(3)
If the gain-feedback product is very large compared to unity, i.e.,

$$\left|\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)\stackrel{~}{G}\left(\omega \right)\right|>>1,$$
(4)
we see that to a good approximation this leads to the inversion of the transfer function of any passive linear circuit by the negative feedback circuit, i.e.,

$$\stackrel{~}{T}\left(\omega \right)1/\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)=\left(\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)\right)^1.$$
(5)
This also implies through Eq. (2), that the golden rule,

$$\stackrel{~}{A}\left(\omega \right)\stackrel{~}{B}\left(\omega \right),$$
(6)
holds under these $`same`$ conditions. Equation (5) also implies that the negative feedback circuit shown in Figure 1 can completely undo any deleterious effects, such as propagation delays, produced by a linear passive circuit (whose transfer function is identical to $`\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)`$) when it is placed before this active device.

In Figure 4 we show one example, where an RC low-pass filter is placed before the negative feedback circuit. The positive propagation delay $`\tau _{\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)}`$ due to this RC low-pass circuit, can in principle be completely canceled out by the negative group delay produced by the active circuit with the same RC circuit in its feedback loop. This will be true in general for any linear passive circuit, if an identical copy of the circuit is placed inside the negative feedback loop of the active device. The group delay of the negative feedback circuit in the high gain-feedback limit is then be given by

$$\tau _{\stackrel{~}{T}\left(\omega \right)}=\frac{d\mathrm{arg}\stackrel{~}{T}\left(\omega \right)}{d\omega }\frac{d\mathrm{arg}\left(1/\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)\right)}{d\omega }=\frac{d\mathrm{arg}\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)}{d\omega }=\tau _{\stackrel{~}{F}\left(\omega \right)}.$$
(7)
This shows that the positive group delay from any linear passive circuit can in principle be completely canceled out by the negative group delay from a negative feedback circuit.

It is important to note that this negative feedback scheme places a requirement on the gain-bandwidth product of the amplifier. For this active circuit to advance the waveform, it must have a large gain at all of the frequency components present in the signal. In particular, if we want to counteract a particular $`RC`$ time delay, the amplifier must have a large gain at frequencies greater than $`1/RC`$.

### 2.3 Kramers-Kronig relations necessitate superluminal group velocities, and Bode relations necessitate negative group delays

These counter-intuitive results also follow quite generally from the Kramers-Kronig relations in the optical domain , and the Bode relations in the electronic domain . In the optical domain, we have proved two theorems starting from the principle of causality, along with the additional assumption of linearity, that superluminal group velocities in any medium must generally exist in some spectral region, and that for an amplifying medium, this spectral region must exist away from the regions with gain, i.e., in the transparent regions outside of the gain lines . Negative group delays in the electronic domain similarly follow generally from the Bode relations. Thus, causality itself $`necessitates`$ the existence of these counter-intuitive phenomena.

### 2.4 Energy transport by pulses in the optical and electronic domains

In the optical domain, there has been a debate concerning whether or not the velocity of energy transport by the wave packet can exceed $`c`$ when the group velocity of a wave packet exceeds $`c`$. In the case of anomalous dispersion inside an absorption line, Sommerfeld and Brillouin showed that the energy velocity defined as,

$$v_{energy}\frac{S}{u},$$
(8)
where $`S`$ is the time-averaged Poynting vector and $`u`$ is the time-averaged energy density of the electromagnetic wave, is $`different`$ from the group velocity . Whereas the group velocity in the region of absorptive anomalous dispersion exceeds $`c`$, they found that the energy velocity is less than $`c`$. Experiments on picosecond laser pulse propagation in absorptive anomalous dispersive media, however, show that these laser pulses travel with a superluminal group velocity, and not with the subluminal energy velocity of Sommerfeld and Brillouin . Hence the physical meaning of this energy velocity is unclear.

When the optical medium possesses gain, as in the case of laser-like medium with inverted atomic populations, the question arises as to whether or not to include the energy stored in the inverted atoms in the definition of $`u`$ . In regions of anomalous dispersion outside of the gain line, and, in particular, in a spectral region where the group-velocity dispersion vanishes, a straightforward application of the Sommerfeld and Brillouin definition of the energy velocity would imply that the group and energy velocities both exceed $`c`$. The equality of these two kinds of wave velocities arises because the pulses of light are propagating inside a transparent medium with little dispersion. In particular, in the case when the energy velocity is negative, the maximum in the pulse of energy leaves the exit face of the optical sample $`before`$ the maximum in the pulse of energy enters the entrance face, just like in the case of negative group velocities.

In the case of the electronic circuit with negative feedback which produces negative group delays, the question of when the peak of the energy arrives, can be answered by terminating the output port of Figure 1 by a load resistor, which connects the output to ground. The load resistor (not shown) will be heated up by the energy in the output pulse. It is obvious that the load resistor will then experience the maximum amount of heating when the peak of the Gaussian output pulse arrives at this resistor, and that this happens when the peak of the output voltage waveform arrives. For negative group delays, the load resistor will then heat up earlier than expected. There is no mystery here: The operational amplifier can supply the necessary energy to heat up the load resistor ahead of time. Hence the negative group and the negative energy delays are identical in this case.

### 2.5 Preliminary data demonstrating the elimination of propagation delays from RC time constants

In a recent experiment with the circuit shown in Figure 4, we obtained the data in shown Figure 5 of the outputs from a square wave input into an RC low-pass circuit, with (in the upper trace), and without (in the lower trace) the negative feedback circuit inserted after it. It is clear by inspection of the data in Figure 5 that the propagation delays due to the RC time constant on both the rising and falling edges of the square wave have been almost completely eliminated by the negative feedback circuit. However, there is a ringing or overshoot phenomenon accompanying the restoration of the rising and falling edges. Since the CMOS switching levels between logic states occur within 10% of zero volts for LO signals, and within 90% of volt-level HI signals , the observed ringing or overshoot phenomenon is not deleterious for the purposes of computer speedup.

It is clear from these data that not only the RC time constants associated with transistor gates (the “latency” problem), but also the RC propagation delays from the wire interconnects between transistors on a computer chip, can in principle be eliminated by means of the insertion of negative feedback elements. In particular, the finite rise time of a MOSFET arising from its intrinsic gate capacitance can be eliminated.

## 3 CONCLUSIONS

There is a widespread view among electrical engineers and physicists that although the phase velocity can exceed the vacuum speed of light, the group velocity can never do so. Otherwise, signals would be able to propagate faster than light, since conventional wisdom equates the group velocity with the signal velocity. Several generations of students have been taught this. Many of the standard textbooks also teach this, but with some qualifications, which unfortunately are not strong enough, so that the net result is still quite misleading. For example, Born and Wolf in Principles of Optics in their discussion concerning the group velocity state the following :

> If the medium is not strongly dispersive, a wave group will travel a considerable distance without appreciable “diffusion” \[i.e., dispersion\]. In such circumstances, the group velocity, which may be considered as the velocity of propagation of the group as a whole, will also represent the velocity at which the energy is propagated. This, however, is not true in general. In particular, in regions of anomalous dispersion the group velocity may exceed the velocity of light or become negative, and in such cases it no longer has any appreciable physical significance. \[Emphasis added\]

This statement is misleading. As a result, we have been blinded by our misconceptions, and thereby been prevented from exploring and discovering many new, interesting, and possibly important, phenomena, which should have been discovered long ago. Some of these are only now being uncovered, and some of these phenomena may in fact lead to important applications, such as the speedup of computers.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Mohammad Mohajedi for helpful discussions. Some of this work was supported by the ONR and by NASA.


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# The radio-luminosity – black hole mass correlation for quasars from the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey, and a “unification scheme” for radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars.

## 1 Introduction

Evidence for a link between black hole mass and radio-loudness in quasars has been accumulating for the past decade (see Laor 2000), but recently several new pieces of evidence have come to light. The host galaxy properties suggest a link; nearly all radio-loud quasars and radio galaxies are hosted by giant ellipticals, whereas radio-quiet quasars can exist in spirals (Bahcall et al. 1997; McLure et al. 1999). Coupled with the correlation of black hole mass and bulge mass seen in nearby galaxies (e.g. Magorrian et al. 1997), this implies that the radio-loud quasars and radio galaxies are likely to be hosted by objects with the most massive black holes (McLure et al. 1999). Although controversial, it seems that the fraction of radio-loud quasars does increase with optical luminosity \[Hooper et al. 1995; Goldschmidt et al. (1999); Impey & Petry (2000); but see Stern (2000) for a dissenting view\], again consistent with the idea that the most massive black holes are more likely to produce powerful radio sources (Lacy, Ridgway & Trentham 2000). The energy stored in giant radio lobes is $`\stackrel{>}{_{}}5\times 10^5M_{}c^2`$; assuming a plausible efficiency of conversion, this implies a black hole mass $`\stackrel{>}{_{}}10^7M_{}`$ (Rawlings & Saunders 1991). Most recently, Laor (2000) estimated black hole masses for $`z<0.5`$ quasars in the optically-selected Palomar-Green (PG) Survey of Green, Schmidt & Liebert (1986), using black hole masses derived from the linewidths of broad H$`\beta `$ and an estimate of the size of the broad-line region. He found a significant difference in the distributions of black hole masses for radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars, with radio-loud quasars generally having more massive black holes. A correlation between radio luminosity and black hole masses also estimated from linewidths, but using the narrow \[Oiii\]5007 line, was found by Nelson (2000). His correlation only worked for radio-quiet quasars, however, perhaps because radio-loud quasars tend to have a larger amount of very extended ($`30`$ kpc scale) \[Oiii\] emission (Stockton & MacKenty 1987).

In this paper we discuss the black hole mass – radio-luminosity correlation with particular reference to quasars in the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey (FBQS; Gregg et al. 1996; White et al. 2000). The unique radio-optical selection criteria of this survey make it particularly sensitive to quasars with radio luminosities between the traditional radio-loud and radio-quiet classes. It is thus ideal for a quantitative investigation of the correlation of black hole mass and radio-loudness. We follow Laor (2000) in using estimates of black hole masses based on H$`\beta `$ linewidths. McLure & Dunlop (2000) show that black holes masses derived in this way follow the same correlation of black hole mass with host bulge luminosity as those derived from stellar dynamics, so are probably reasonably accurate.

We assume a cosmology with $`H_0=50\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ throughout.

## 2 The FBQS sample

The FBQS consists of optically unresolved, bright ($`R`$17.8 mag), blue ($`BR`$2.0) quasars selected from the FIRST radio survey (Becker, White & Helfand 1995). At the time of the radio observations used herein, the survey consisted of 607 quasars, 80% of which were previously unknown. The sample used here is over 90% complete and differs from the full FBQS sample in two ways: we limited the range of redshifts to be $`0.3<z<0.5`$ and also only used sources with $`M_B<23`$. The upper redshift limit ensures that H$`\beta `$ is present in the spectrum. The absolute magnitude limit ensures that contamination of the image by host galaxy light is small \[the host galaxies observed by Bahcall et al. (1997) all have $`M_B\stackrel{>}{_{}}22.5`$\]. $`M_B23`$ corresponds to our optical selection limit at $`z0.3`$, so we have excluded lower redshift objects from the sample to minimize the number of objects where host galaxy light can contribute significantly to $`M_B`$. The absolute magnitude limit also ensures that our sample should be free of any significant biases due to exclusion of objects through the FBQS selection criteria, which requires the image to be stellar on at least one of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey plates. This selection results in a sample of 60 FBQS objects.

The sources were observed at 20 and 3.6 cm (to obtain simultaneous radio spectral indices, although see below) on 1999 April 12, 16, 18 and 23, with the VLA in D-array. Data were reduced in the standard manner using the AIPS package. The resolution and baseline coverage of the VLA in D-array at 3.6 cm is close to that of the 20 cm FIRST data; thus extended emission might be detectable in the D-array 20cm maps that was missing in the 3.6cm maps. For sources with significant extended emission evident from the FIRST maps or from the D-array fluxes we assumed the extended emission had a radio spectral index $`\alpha _\mathrm{r}=0.75`$ (defined such that flux density $`S_\nu \nu ^{\alpha _\mathrm{r}}`$). We then calculated the integrated spectral index using the total (D-array) flux at 20cm and the sum of the peak and estimated extended flux at 3.6cm.

Fig. 1 shows the optical-luminosity – radio-luminosity plane for the FBQS quasars, together with $`z<0.5`$ quasars from the PG sample \[whose H$`\beta `$ FWHM were measured by Boroson & Green (1992)\]. The PG quasars are selected at a brighter optical flux limit than the FBQS quasars ($`B\stackrel{<}{_{}}16`$), but as many of them are at $`z<0.3`$ there is a reasonable overlap in optical luminosity between the two samples. As expected, the FBQS objects fill in the region between the radio-loud PG quasars (with radio luminosities at 5GHz, $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}\stackrel{>}{_{}}10^{24.5}\mathrm{WHz}^1\mathrm{sr}^1`$) and the radio-quiet PG quasars (with $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}\stackrel{<}{_{}}10^{23}\mathrm{WHz}^1\mathrm{sr}^1`$) 111These divisions between radio-loud, radio-quiet and radio intermediate quasars are used throughout this paper..

The samples have been divided into steep spectrum ($`\alpha _\mathrm{r}0.5`$) and flat spectrum ($`\alpha _\mathrm{r}<0.5`$) subsamples (for some radio-faint PG quasars no radio spectral index information was available; they have been assumed to have $`\alpha _\mathrm{r}=0.6`$).

To measure the FWHM of H$`\beta `$ we first subtracted the continuum and, where necessary, an Feii profile (Boroson & Green 1992) and \[Oiii\]4959+5007 emission. As the quality of the spectra varied widely, FWHM were estimated by averaging those obtained from fits of Gaussian and Lorentzian profiles. This procedure was adopted as, where the signal-to-noise was high enough to make direct measurements of the FWHM, they typically lay between the values from Gaussian and Lorentzian fits. The error in a typical measurement is $`10\%`$, which translates to an $`20\%`$ error in black hole mass. We made a small correction to allow for the orientation dependence of FWHM H$`\beta `$ (e.g. Brotherton 1996) by a factor of $`R_\mathrm{c}^{0.1}`$, where $`R_\mathrm{c}`$ is the ratio of core to extended radio fluxes (where $`R_\mathrm{c}`$ could not be measured we assumed $`R_\mathrm{c}=0.1`$ for steep-spectrum sources and $`R_\mathrm{c}=10`$ for flat-spectrum ones).

## 3 Results

We derive black hole masses ($`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$) following the prescription of Laor (1998), but use the recent empirical determination of the broad-line region radius from Kaspi et al. (2000). We plot them against radio luminosity in Fig. 2. The correlation of black hole mass with radio luminosity suggested by the work of Franceschini, Vercellone & Fabian (1998) and Laor (2000) is clearly present in the data. For the FBQS objects alone the Spearman rank correlation coefficient is 0.52 for the 60 objects in the sample, with a probability that no correlation is present of 0.01%, taking the 34 steep spectrum objects only this is 0.48 with a probability of no correlation of 0.6%. When the PG quasars are included the correlation becomes stronger still.

The FBQS objects fill in the gap between the radio-loud and radio-quiet objects in Fig. 1 of Laor (2000), providing evidence of a continuous dependence of radio luminosity on black hole mass. This suggests that selection effects, rather than underlying physics, could be responsible for producing the radio-quiet – radio-loud quasar dichotomy seen in some optically-selected samples (e.g. the PG sample). We speculate that the selection methods used for the FBQS have highlighted the radio-intermediate population, which for some reason is not so common in samples selected purely on the basis of radiative luminosity from the accretion disk. These issues will be discussed further in a future paper (Brotherton et al. 2001). We merely comment here that the FBQS is complete for radio-loud and radio-intermediate quasars, thus the ratio of radio-loud to radio-intermediate quasars in the FBQS should be representative of that of the quasar population as a whole.

We also plot some galaxies with independent black hole mass estimates: three FRI galaxies with detected optical nuclei, M 84, M 87 and NGC 6251, whose black hole masses have been measured through the kinematics of their nuclear gas disks (e.g. Ferrarase & Ford 1999), three objects with low-mass black holes from the sample of Ho (1996) (including NGC 4258, whose black hole mass has been accurately measured using maser emission), and Sgr A\*, the source at the Galactic Center \[using data from Falcke & Biermann (1999)\]. The slope of the correlation of $`\mathrm{lg}L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}`$ against $`\mathrm{lg}M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$ measured for the steep spectrum quasars only using the emmethod task in iraf (Isobe, Feigelson & Nelson 1986), which takes into account limits in some of the data, is $`1.4\pm 0.2`$. As expected, the flat-spectrum objects in each sample generally plot above the steep spectrum objects, but the mean enhancement due to Doppler boosting is, on average, not large (only $`60`$% in the FBQS sample). It is possible that radio emission from star-formation processes could add significantly to the radio luminosities, particularly for the low radio-luminosity objects, which would tend to make our estimate of the slope low. However, Miller, Rawlings & Saunders (1993) argue that most of the radio emission in most PG quasars is related to the AGN.

Fig. 3 shows the correlation of the radio-loudness parameter, $`R^{}`$, the ratio of rest-frame radio and optical luminosities as defined by Sramek & Weedman (1980), with $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$. A Spearman correlation analysis \[modified for use with data containing limits (Isobe et al. 1986)\] using the steep spectrum objects only shows that the probability of this correlation arising by chance is $`10^4`$.

## 4 Interpretation

Laor (2000) has suggested that quasars can be characterised by three parameters, namely black hole mass, the ratio of bolometric luminosity to the Eddington luminosity $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$, and orientation. By excluding the flat-spectrum quasars from our analysis and utilising the $`R_\mathrm{c}`$ – FWHM H$`\beta `$ correlation we have eliminated orientation as a significant variable, leaving just $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$ and $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$.

To disentangle these dependences, we fitted an equation of the form:

$$\mathrm{lg}L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}=a\mathrm{lg}w+b\mathrm{lg}L_B+c$$

to the data for the steep-spectrum PG and FBQS quasars using least-squares, where $`w`$ is the velocity FWHM of H$`\beta `$. (For objects with only limits on their radio luminosity we set the radio luminosity equal to the limit.) By writing the derived quantities $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$ and $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ in terms of the observables $`w`$ and $`L_\mathrm{B}`$ and the best-fit values of $`a`$ and $`b`$ we obtained the following empirical relation for the radio luminosity:

$$\mathrm{lg}L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}=1.9\mathrm{lg}M_{\mathrm{bh}}+1.0\mathrm{lg}(L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}})+7.9.$$

Corroborating evidence for an accretion rate dependence comes from studies of the correlation of radio and optical (continuum and/or emission line) luminosity for radio-selected AGN. As Fig. 2 shows, the range in black hole masses for radio-loud objects is very small. Thus the correlation of quasar optical luminosity with radio luminosity for quasars selected on the basis of bright radio emission (e.g. Serjeant et al. 1998), must be predominately a correlation of $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ with radio luminosity (Willott et al. 1999). Zirbel & Baum (1995) measure the logarithmic slope of this correlation to be 0.28 for FRI sources and 0.75 for FRII sources, and Jarvis et al. (2000) measure an even steeper slope for luminous high redshift FRII radio sources, close to our estimate of 1.0.

In Fig. 4 we plot $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}/(L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}})`$ versus $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$. The correlation is indeed marginally tighter than that in Fig. 2; the Spearman rank correlation coefficient for the steep spectrum objects in Fig. 4 is 0.74, compared to 0.59 in Fig. 2. The slope of the correlation, as measured using emmethod, is $`1.9\pm 0.2`$ (although the slope appears to steepen towards higher $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$, we have not attempted a more complicated fit due to the large scatter and uncertainty over starburst contributions at low $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}`$). The fact that the FRI sources and SgrA\* plot above the correlation in Fig. 4 suggests that the accretion rate dependence of radio luminosity may weaken at the $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}10^5`$ accretion rates typical of FRI radio sources, consistent with the smaller logarithmic slope of the radio-optical correlation seen for FRI sources. Instead of reflecting a change in accretion-rate dependence, however, this weakening may alternatively be explained by a decrease in radiative efficiency of these systems at low accretion rates, as predicted by models of advection-dominated accretion flows (e.g. Narayan 1996), which would lead us to underestimate the true accretion rate. The $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$ dependence is similar to that found by Franceschini et al. (1998) for the much less luminous radio sources in nearby galaxy nuclei ($`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}M_{\mathrm{bh}}^{2.5}`$). The difference in slope and normalisation to the quasar $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}`$$`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$ relation noted by Laor (2000) is probably explicable in terms of lower accretion rates, and a different dependence of $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ on $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$ in these objects.

## 5 Comparison with models

Energy in the form of magnetohydrodynamic winds and/or a Poynting flux can, in principle, be extracted from either spinning black holes (Blandford & Znajek 1977) or accretion disks (e.g. Blandford & Payne 1982). Both the black hole and disk model predictions for the power output, $`L_\mathrm{w}`$, take a similar form, scaling with the square of the black hole radius (i.e. with $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}^2`$, for a Schwartzschild black hole), multiplied by the poloidal magnetic field in the inner disk/black hole region, $`B_p`$, squared (e.g. Livio, Ogilvie & Pringle 1999).

A full model for $`B_p`$ does not currently exist, though equipartition assumptions suggest $`B_p^2\stackrel{}{_{}}1/M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$ (e.g. Ghosh & Abramowitz 1997), implying $`L_\mathrm{w}M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$. The accretion rate dependence probably arises through its influence on $`B_p`$. The models of Ghosh & Abramowitz (1997) do not predict a strong accretion-rate dependence at $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}0.1`$, typical for our quasars, but those of Meier (2001) do.

Another possible source of non-linearity in the $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$ relation arises from the conversion of radio jet power, $`Q`$ (assumed $`L_\mathrm{w}`$) to radio luminosity in the extended lobes of the radio source. If the minimum energy assumption is valid, $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}Q^x`$, where $`1.2<x<1.75`$, depending on the radio source model (Miller et al. 1993). The case of $`x=1.75`$ corresponds to a radio source in pressure balance with its external medium, whereas a purely ram-pressure confined, supersonically-expanding FRII radio source has $`x1.2`$. Models appropriate to the low-luminosity radio sources of radio-quiet and radio-intermediate quasars have yet to be published, but even so it seems hard to reproduce the observed $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$ dependence solely by this mechanism.

Are other conditions required to produce powerful radio jets? The standard deviation in $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}/(L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}})`$ about the best-fit line in Fig. 4 is 1.1 dex, about what one would expect given the $`0.5`$ dex accuracy of black hole mass estimates from H$`\beta `$ widths (Laor 1998), and the value of the slope. Therefore from our study alone there is no compelling statistical evidence for an additional factor being necessary to produce radio jets. However, the large scatter may well be hiding contributions from physically important effects, such as black hole spin and radio source environment. A related question is whether there are any actively accreting high mass black holes with very low radio luminosities in Fig. 4. This is best addressed using the PG quasars, whose selection criteria are radio-independent. There does indeed appear to be a genuine deficiency (Laor 2000), suggesting that the other variables affect radio luminosity by a factor of $`\stackrel{<}{_{}}1000`$.

## 6 Summary

A plot of black hole mass versus radio luminosity for quasars from the FBQS and PG sample shows a continuous variation of radio luminosity with black hole mass for radio luminosities ranging from the traditional radio-quiet to radio-loud. Fitting the data for both a black hole mass and accretion-rate dependence, we find that radio luminosity scales approximately as:

$$L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}M_{\mathrm{bh}}^{1.9\pm 0.2}(L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}})^{1.0}$$

at accretion rates of $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}0.1`$. At lower accretion rates, we suggest an apparent weakening of the accretion rate dependence, to $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}(L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}})^{0.3}`$ at $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}10^5`$ (or a corresponding decrease in the radiative efficiency). The radio and optical luminosity of quasars have quite different dependences on $`M_{\mathrm{bh}}`$, which may explain why the radio luminosity distribution of quasar surveys differ so dramatically depending on whether or not selection is based on detection in the radio.

We thank Mike Brotherton and Julian Krolik for helpful discussions, Ari Laor for a helpful referee’s report, and the many contributors of spectra to the FBQS database. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48, with support from NSF grants AST-98-02791 and AST-98-02732.


text:
# I Introduction

## I Introduction

Fat link actions, actions where the thin link fermionic gauge connection is replaced by a combination of extended but local gauge paths in a gauge invariant manner, have been used in a variety of quenched and dynamical simulations. Since the gauge paths of fat link actions combine only a finite number of gauge links in the local environment of the original link, fat link actions are in the same universality class as their thin link counterpart. For many physical observables fat link actions show reduced scaling violations. Staggered fat link fermions have improved flavor symmetry, both in quenched Blum et al. (1997); Lagae and Sinclair (1999); Orginos et al. (1999) and dynamical simulations Orginos and Toussaint (1999); Karsch et al. (2000); Knechtli and Hasenfratz (2000). Wilson-type clover fat link fermions have been studied only in quenched simulations where they show improved chiral behavior resulting in better scaling of the hadron spectrum and fewer exceptional configurations DeGrand et al. (1999); Stephenson et al. (2001). Fat links have been used in overlap simulations as a starting action for evaluating Neuberger’s formula Bietenholz (2000); DeGrand (2001a); DeGrand and Hasenfratz (2000). The improved chiral properties of fat links result over an order of magnitude improvement in convergence.

It is quite intuitive to see why fat link staggered fermions show improved flavor behavior. Flavor symmetry breaking of staggered fermions is the consequence of distributing the components of the Dirac spinors to different lattice sites within a hypercube. Since each lattice site couples to different gauge fields, the different flavor and Dirac components feel different gauge environments. The original $`SU(n_f)\times SU(n_f)`$ symmetry is explicitly broken to a remnant $`U(1)`$ symmetry. Unifying the gauge fields within the hypercube would solve this problem. Smearing, while does not unify the gauge fields, can remove some of the local fluctuations thus improving flavor symmetry. The most effective smearing is one that maximally smoothes the gauge fields within the hypercube but does not extend much beyond it.

The situation is similar for Wilson fermions that break chiral symmetry explicitly. The Wilson Dirac operator is not anti-Hermitian, its eigenvalues are not constrained to the imaginary axis. The real eigenvalues spread around $`\kappa _{cr}`$ causing spurious poles in the quenched quark propagator in the positive pion mass region Bardeen et al. (1998a, b); DeGrand et al. (1999); Stephenson et al. (2001). Since the real eigenvalue modes of the Dirac operator are instanton related, one can study the spread of the real eigenvalues on smooth instanton backgrounds. The real eigenmodes of the Wilson Dirac operator move farther from $`\kappa _{cr}`$ into the positive mass region on small instantons DeGrand et al. (1999). The Dirac operator has real modes even on configurations where the “instanton”, obtained by repeated renormalization group blocking from a large classical solution, is small with respect to the lattice spacing. These objects do not have topological interpretation, they are only dislocations, yet they are responsible for the worst spurious poles of the Dirac propagator. On ordinary Monte Carlo gauge configurations dislocations arise from large fluctuations of the plaquette. Just as dislocations distort the topological charge measurements they also distort the low lying Dirac spectrum and any physical observable related to it. Smearing removes some of the fluctuations and their corresponding spurious eigenmodes. This reduces the occurence of exceptional configurations, improves scaling DeGrand et al. (1999); Stephenson et al. (2001) and makes topological charge measurement on pure gauge configurations possible DeGrand et al. (1998); Hasenfratz and Nieter (1998). Again, the most effective smearing is one that maximally smoothes the gauge fields within a small, hypercube sized volume, but does not extend much beyond it.

There are observables where some fat link actions have unacceptably large scaling violations. Fattening changes the local, short distance properties of the gauge configurations. On lattices with large lattice spacing too much fattening can destroy short distance physical properties. This is most evident in the Coulomb sector of the static potential DeGrand et al. (1998). Increased levels of smearing destroy more and more of the short distance potential though it does not change the long distance string tension. The heavy-light decay constants are also very sensitive to smearing. Even low levels of smearing of the heavy fermions change the value of $`f_B`$ significantly Bernard (2001); Bernard et al. (2001). Heavy fermions feel the short distance structure of the vacuum and that gets distorted by the fattening. If only the light quark action is based on fat links, this problem is avoided while the chiral properties of the light quarks are improved. These expectations are supported by preliminary results DeGrand (2001b). The fact that certain observables show large scaling violations with fat link actions does not mean that fat link actions are incorrect, they are just not effective in every situation.

It would be desirable to construct fat links that are local enough not to destroy short distance quantities yet smooth enough to show the desired improved chiral or flavor behavior of fat link actions. In this paper we describe a smearing transformation, hypercubic blocking, along these lines. This transformation improves flavor symmetry as much as three levels of APE blocking but mixes links from hypercubes attached to the original link only. The static potential changes only at small distances $`r/a<2`$ where lattice artifacts are anyhow large. This paper deals with the definition and quenched properties of the hypercubic fat link action. In a recent paper Knechtli and Hasenfratz (2000) we showed how to simulate fat link dynamical systems. We were able to simplify and modify this algorithm in such a way that dynamical simulations with the hypercubic action are possible and efficient. We used the dynamical hypercubic action to study finite temperature QCD with four flavors of staggered quarks Hasenfratz and Knechtli (2001).

This paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2 we define the hypercubic blocking. The transformation has three tunable parameters. We describe how the parameters are optimized and show that as the lattice spacing decreases the transformation gets more effective, i.e. the number of smearing levels can be kept fixed and small even as one approaches the continuum limit. We show that the hypercubic action considerably improves the flavor symmetry of staggered quarks in quenched simulations. The relative improvement with respect to the standard action is about an order of magnitude and increases as the lattice spacing decreases. In Sect. 3 we present quenched results for the static potential. We show that the hypercubic action allows the determination of the Sommer scale $`r_0`$ and the string tension $`\sigma `$ with better accuracy compared to calculations done with the thin link standard action. The distortion of the potential at small distances due to the hypercubic blocking is limited to distances $`r/a<2`$ independent of the lattice spacing and rotational symmetry is also improved. In Sect. 4 we summarize our results.

## II The Hypercubic Blocking

### II.1 Definition and Optimization of the Hypercubic blocking

The fat links of the hypercubic blocking (HYP) are constructed in three steps. At the final level the blocked link $`V_{i,\mu }`$ is constructed via projected APE blocking Albanese et al. (1987) from a set of decorated links $`\stackrel{~}{V}_{i,\mu ;\nu }`$ as

$$V_{i,\mu }=Proj_{SU(3)}[(1\alpha _1)U_{i,\mu }+\frac{\alpha _1}{6}\underset{\pm \nu \mu }{}\stackrel{~}{V}_{i,\nu ;\mu }\stackrel{~}{V}_{i+\widehat{\nu },\mu ;\nu }\stackrel{~}{V}_{i+\widehat{\mu },\nu ;\mu }^{}],$$
(1)
where $`U_{i,\mu }`$ is the original thin link and the index $`\nu `$ in $`\stackrel{~}{V}_{i,\mu ;\nu }`$ indicates that the fat link at location $`i`$ and direction $`\mu `$ is not decorated with staples extending in direction $`\nu .`$ The decorated links $`\stackrel{~}{V}_{i,\mu ;\nu }`$ are constructed with a modified projected APE blocking from an other set of decorated links, $`\overline{V}_{i,\mu ;\rho \nu }`$ as

$$\stackrel{~}{V}_{i,\mu ;\nu }=Proj_{SU(3)}[(1\alpha _2)U_{i,\mu }+\frac{\alpha _2}{4}\underset{\pm \rho \nu ,\mu }{}\overline{V}_{i,\rho ;\nu \mu }\overline{V}_{i+\widehat{\rho },\mu ;\rho \nu }\overline{V}_{i+\widehat{\mu },\rho ;\nu \mu }^{}],$$
(2)
where the indices $`\rho \nu `$ indicate that the fat link $`\overline{V}_{i,\mu ;\rho \nu }`$ in direction $`\mu `$ is not decorated with staples extending in the $`\rho `$ or $`\nu `$ directions. The decorated links $`\overline{V}_{i,\mu ;\rho \nu }`$ are constructed from the original thin links with a modified projected APE blocking step

$$\overline{V}_{i,\mu ;\nu \rho }=Proj_{SU(3)}[(1\alpha _3)U_{i,\mu }+\frac{\alpha _3}{2}\underset{\pm \eta \rho ,\nu ,\mu }{}U_{i,\eta }U_{i+\widehat{\eta },\mu }U_{i+\widehat{\mu },\eta }^{}].$$
(3)
Here only the two staples orthogonal to $`\mu ,\nu `$ and $`\rho `$ are used. With the construction eqs. (1)-(3) the fat link $`V_{i,\mu }`$ mixes thin links only from hypercubes attached to the original link. The hypercubic blocking is schematically represented in figure 1. The parameters $`\alpha _1`$, $`\alpha _2`$ and $`\alpha _3`$ can be optimized to achieve the smoothest blocked link configuration. The construction eqs. (1)-(3) can be iterated.

We could use a physical quantity like the level of flavor symmetry restoration to optimize the parameters of the blocking, but in a three dimensional parameter space that approach is very computer intensive. Instead we have decided to look at the underlying reason of flavor and chiral symmetry violation. As we explained in the introduction, both the staggered fermions’ flavor symmetry violation and Wilson fermions’ exceptional configurations can be understood as fluctuations in the local plaquette. It is not the average, not even the average fluctuation of the plaquette that causes the problems but the few largest plaquette fluctuations that create dislocations. To minimize the largest fluctuations we have to maximize the smallest plaquettes of the system. We do this by considering the distribution of the smallest plaquette in a finite, fixed volume lattice. The optimized hypercubic blocking parameters will give the largest expectation value for the smallest plaquette in this finite volume ensemble. We have optimized the $`\alpha `$ parameters using a set of 500 $`4^4`$ lattices created at $`\beta =5.7`$ with the Wilson plaquette action.

Figure 2/a shows the histogram of the smallest plaquette on each of the 500 original configurations (dashed lines) and after hypercubic blocking (solid lines) with parameters

$$\alpha _1=0.75,\alpha _2=0.6,\alpha _3=0.3.$$
(4)
The average of the smallest plaquette jumps from -0.75 to 1.95. This is about the best that can be achieved with the hypercubic blocking. It is important to remember that we are maximizing the smallest plaquette values on the lattice, not the average plaquettes, which on these lattices are 1.67 and 2.82, respectively. The minimum plaquette is not a well defined physical quantity, it strongly depends on the lattice size, but as long as we compare different actions on the same set of configurations, the minimum plaquette shows how the most severe vacuum fluctuations change during smoothing. In figure 2/b we compare the minimum plaquette distribution of the thin link action to a one-level APE smeared action with $`\alpha =0.7`$ on the same configurations that were used to obtain figure 2/a. Here the minimum plaquette average increases only to 0.45 after smearing. Note that it is very important to project to SU(3) the intermediate decorated links in eqs. (1)-(3). Without the projection the resulting hypercubic smearing is not better than a one-level APE transformation.

### II.2 Flavor symmetry Restoration with Fat Link Actions

In the previous section we described an intuitive and fast way to optimize fat link actions by maximizing the minimum plaquette average in finite volume lattices. In this section we show that, as expected, this method optimizes flavor symmetry as well. We compare the level of flavor symmetry restoration of a few fat link actions with their respective minimum plaquette average computed on $`4^4`$ configurations at $`\beta =5.7`$. We use the parameter Orginos and Toussaint (1999)

$$\delta _2=\frac{m_\pi ^2m_G^2}{m_\rho ^2m_G^2}$$
(5)
extrapolated to $`m_G/m_\rho =0.55`$ to quantify the difference between the mass of the true Goldstone pion $`m_G`$ and the mass of the pseudoscalar particles or pions $`m_\pi `$. For a flavor symmetric action $`\delta _2=0`$ for all the pions $`\pi `$. We calculated the meson spectrum on an ensemble of $`8^3\times 24`$, $`\beta =5.7`$ quenched configurations using the thin link, the N=1, 2, and 3 levels probabilistic APE blocked actions with $`\alpha =0.7`$ and projection parameter $`\lambda =500`$ (for the definition of probabilistic blocking and the projection parameter see Ref. Knechtli and Hasenfratz (2000)), the N=1 deterministic ($`\lambda =\mathrm{}`$) APE blocked action and the hypercubic blocked action. Our results are summarized in figure 3 where we plot $`\delta _2`$ for the two lightest non-Goldstone pions, $`\pi _{i,5}`$ with flavor structure $`\gamma _i\gamma _5`$ (lower points) and $`\pi _{i,j}`$ with flavor structure $`\gamma _i\gamma _j`$ (higher points) as the function of the minimum plaquette of the fat link actions. $`\delta _2`$ seems to depend on the minimum plaquette linearly approaching the flavor symmetric limit $`\delta _2=0`$ as the dotted ($`\pi _{i,5}`$) and dashed ($`\pi _{i,j}`$) lines in figure 3 indicate, though we do not have a theoretical explanation why this dependence should be linear. The HYP action has about the same flavor symmetry violation than the N=3 APE action that we studied in Ref. Knechtli and Hasenfratz (2000) reducing $`\delta _2`$ by about a factor of six relative to the thin link action.

The data in figure 3 are extrapolated to $`m_G/m_\rho =0.55`$, a value considerably higher than the physical value 0.175 of this ratio. Since flavor symmetry violation increases as the the quark mass decreases, it is important to see how far one can lower the quark mass before flavor symmetry is ruined. In figure 4/a we plot the relative mass splitting

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_\pi =\frac{m_\pi m_G}{m_G}$$
(6)
between the lightest non-Goldstone pion $`\pi _{i,5}`$ and the Goldstone pion $`G`$ as the function of $`(r_0m_G)^2`$ on $`\beta =5.7`$ quenched configurations both for the thin and HYP actions. The first three points at the lowest $`r_0m_G`$ values for the thin link action are from Ref. Gupta et al. (1991). The ratio $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\pi `$ diverges as the quark mass approaches zero but this divergence is much slower for the HYP action. The relative mass splitting for the HYP action grows to about 30% at $`r_0m_G=0.70`$ where the ratio $`m_G/m_\rho `$ of the Goldstone pion to the rho mass is 0.23(8). At similar values of the $`m_G/m_\rho `$ ratio the mass splitting with the thin link action is between 130% and 190%.

### II.3 Hypercubic blocking on Finer Lattices

We have demonstrated that the minimum plaquette value strongly correlates with the level of flavor symmetry restoration at the same lattice spacing. The question naturally arises: if we decrease the lattice spacing, will the smearing be effective or do we have to increase the number of smearing iterations? In figure 5 we show the minimum plaquette value calculated with the thin and hypercubic actions with the optimized parameters of eqn. (4) at $`\beta =5.7,6.0`$ and 6.2. These calculations were done on $`8^4`$ lattices, that is why the $`\beta =5.7`$ result looks significantly worse than before: on a larger lattice the probability of finding a large plaquette fluctuation is higher. The difference between the three $`\beta `$ values is striking. One certainly does not need more smearing at a higher coupling. As $`\beta `$ increases, the fat link minimum plaquette value increases faster than the corresponding thin link minimum plaquette. That implies that one level of hypercubic blocking will be effective for all coupling values. To verify this expectation we calculated the HYP staggered meson spectrum on a set of $`16^3\times 32`$, $`\beta =6.0`$ configurations. The configurations were downloaded from the NERSC archive Kilcup et al. (1997). The mass splitting $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\pi `$ for the lightest non-Goldstone pion $`\pi _{i,5}`$ is plotted as the function of $`(r_0m_G)^2`$ in figure 4/b. The thin link data are from Ref. Gupta et al. (1991). The vertical scale of figure 4/b is one forth of the vertical scale of 4/a but the qualitative features of the two plots are very similar. $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\pi `$ decreases by an order of magnitude from thin to HYP action, fairly independent of the lattice spacing or quark masses.

## III The Static Potential of Fat link Actions

In the following we consider the static potential, an observable that is quite sensitive to the smearing of the gauge links. We analyzed two sets of lattices. The first set consists 240 $`8^3\times 24`$ configurations generated with the Wilson plaquette action at $`\beta =5.7`$. The second set is an ensemble of 220 $`16^3\times 32`$ lattices from the NERSC archive generated also with Wilson plaquette action at $`\beta =6.0`$ Kilcup et al. (1997). We calculate the static quark potential on both sets using thin links and hypercubic smeared links.

The static potential on pure gauge lattices has been measured and analyzed by several groups on larger lattices with orders of magnitude higher statistics. Our goal here is not the improvement of existing potential measurements, rather we want to demonstrate that the HYP action changes the potential only at small distances, $`r/a<2`$ and, due to the smoothness of the gauge configuration, provides an improved signal both for the Sommer parameter $`r_0`$ Sommer (1994) and even more for the string tension. The HYP potential also shows reduced rotational symmetry violation. Our fitted values for $`r_0/a`$ and $`a\sqrt{\sigma }`$ are consistent with previously published results.

We extracted the potential by fitting the time dependence of the different Wilson loops to a single exponential. We have measured the on-axis (m,0,0), $`mn_x/2`$ and three different off-axis sets: (m,m,0), $`mn_x/2`$, (m,m,m), $`mn_x/2`$ and (m,2m,0), $`mn_x/4`$ ($`n_x`$ is the number of lattice points in the spatial directions). To reduce statistical errors we used several (20-30) levels of transversal APE smearing on the thin link lattices. After hypercubic blocking the configurations are so smooth that transversal smearing is not important anymore. We used only 5-10 levels of transversal smearing. The statistical errors are from standard jackknife analysis.

In figures 6 and 7 we plot both the thin link and HYP potentials for the $`\beta =5.7`$ and $`\beta =6.0`$ data sets. The thin link potentials are shifted by a constant value to match the HYP potentials in the $`2.5<r/a<5.5`$ ($`\beta =5.7`$ ) and $`2.5<r/a<8`$ ($`\beta =6.0`$) range. Even though the first 5 $`r/a`$ values were not used for the matching in either coupling, the potentials match closely for $`r/a>\sqrt{2}`$. The distortion effects in the potential due to smearing are observable only in the first two $`r/a`$ values, independent of the lattice spacing. Moreover, the HYP potentials have significantly reduced statistical errors, about a factor of 4-7 at $`\beta =5.7`$, 10-15 at $`\beta =6.0`$. This is most obvious at large distances. For example the $`\beta =6.0`$ thin link potential signal becomes extremely noisy for $`r/a>7`$ with our statistics while the HYP potential can be easily measured even at the largest distance, $`r/a=11.31`$ .

To extract $`r_0`$ and $`\sqrt{\sigma }`$ from our data we fit the potential in the form

$$V(r)=\frac{c_0}{r}+c_1+c_2r$$
(7)
in a range $`r_{min}<r<r_{max}.`$ $`r_{max}`$ is limited by the accuracy of our data, $`r_{max}/a=67`$ for the thin link, $`1012`$ for the HYP potential at $`\beta =6.0`$. We choose $`r_{min}`$ to exclude the region where the potential is changed by the smearing or where short distance lattice artifacts are large, typically $`r_{min}/a=13`$. We do not include any lattice correction in the fit. For one, we do not know the perturbative potential for the HYP action, though it can be calculated. On the other hand we do not seem to need it as the HYP potential data shows only minimal lattice artifacts.

Our results obtained with the HYP potentials are summarized in Table 1. Fits to our thin link potentials gave consistent results but with much higher statistical errors and are not listed. In Table 1 we also include results from a few large scale potential simulations with thin links Guagnelli et al. (1998); Edwards et al. (1998). We considered several $`r_{max}`$ and $`r_{min}`$ values and included all on- and off-axis data points in the given range in a global fit to eq. (7). The errors in Table 1 represent the average jackknife error of the different fits. Our values for $`r_0/a`$ and $`a\sqrt{\sigma }`$ from the HYP potential are consistent with the results from large scale computations.

We would like to emphasize that the HYP potential has about an order of magnitude smaller statistical errors than the thin link potential on the same set of configurations. This allowed us to extract the parameters of the potential with precision comparable to the large scale simulations even though our analysis is not as refined. In particular we did not use the one-link integral or multi-hit procedure Parisi et al. (1983) for the timelike links in the Wilson loops as has been done in Guagnelli et al. (1998).

In addition to the reduced statistical errors the HYP potential shows better rotational invariance as well. We use the same quenched configurations both for the thin and HYP potentials, but rotational symmetry violations can come not only from the configurations but also from the operator used to measure the potential. As an example we mention the potential for a perfect action DeGrand et al. (1995a). A perfect action has no scaling violations, yet the perturbatively calculated potential is not rotational invariant unless one uses a perfect potential operator. The HYP operator is of course not perfect, but it appears to be better than the thin link Wilson loop operator. To illustrate rotational symmetry restoration, we separated the on-axis and the three off-axis directions of the $`\beta =6.0`$ potential and fitted them independently with the form of eq. (7). The fits for the thin link potential were very poor but for the HYP potential all four fits gave consistent results. We fitted the HYP potential in the range $`r/a(2.5,12)`$. The fitted values for $`r_0/a`$ were all within one standard deviation, for $`a\sqrt{\sigma }`$ within two standard deviations. The fit results are shown in figure 8. The four fitted lines agree very well in the range $`r/a(2.5,6.5)`$, they deviate at larger $`r/a`$ due to the slightly different $`a\sqrt{\sigma }`$ values. The uncertainty of the fitted lines is comparable to their spread in figure 8. Closer inspection of the data points reveals some rotational symmetry violation even with the HYP potential. It should be possible to correct for some of these effects perturbatively thereby increasing the accuracy of the scale determination.

The improved rotational symmetry of the HYP potential is not the main motivation for using the HYP operator to measure the potential. Improved gauge actions can be even more effective in restoring rotational invariance of the static potential DeGrand et al. (1995b); Lepage (1996); Iwasaki et al. (1997). The improvement of statistical accuracy by an order of magnitude of the HYP potential as compared to the thin link potential is a more important feature.

## IV Summary

In this paper we introduced a new kind of fat link, the hypercubic (HYP) fat link. The HYP fat link is constructed to be localized, it does not extend beyond hypercubes attached to the original link. The construction has three free parameters that are optimized to reduce large plaquette fluctuations.

Using quenched configurations at $`\beta =5.7`$ and $`\beta =6.0`$ we calculated the staggered spectrum of the HYP action. We showed that at both coupling values flavor symmetry is greatly improved. The relative mass splitting, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\pi =(m_Gm_\pi )/m_G`$ is reduced by an order of magnitude at fixed $`r_0m_G`$, independent of the coupling and the quark mass as well.

We have also considered the static potential calculated on HYP smeared $`\beta =5.7`$ and $`\beta =6.0`$ configurations. We showed that smearing changes the potential only at distances $`r/a<2`$ yet reduces statistical errors by about an order of magnitude. Even with the very limited statistics of 220-240 lattices we could extract both the Sommer parameter $`r_0/a`$ and the string tension $`a\sqrt{\sigma }`$. Our results for both of these quantities are consistent with large scale simulation results with errors that are better than our statistics would indicate from the thin link potential.

We have undertaken this quenched study on the properties of the hypercubic blocking because we want to do dynamical simulations with the HYP action. Such simulations are feasible using combined over-relaxation and heat-bath updates. In a forthcoming publication Hasenfratz and Knechtli (2001) we use the dynamical HYP action in a finite temperature simulation to show how improved flavor symmetry changes the phase diagram of four-flavor dynamical staggered fermions.

## V Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Prof. T. DeGrand for many useful discussions during the course of this work. This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. We thank the MILC collaboration for the use of their computer code.