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# On a functional–difference equation of Runyon, Morrison, Carlitz, and Riordan

## 1. The equation

The functional–difference equation in the title is

$$(x\alpha )(\alpha \beta )^{n1}g_n(x)=\alpha (x\beta )^ng_{n1}(\alpha )x(\alpha \beta )^ng_{n1}(x),n1,g_0(x)=1.$$
(1)
The aim of this note is to present a (possibly) simpler solution than the (combined) solution by Morrison, Carlitz, and Riordan .

We introduce the generating function

$$G(t):=\underset{n0}{}(\alpha \beta )^{n1}g_n(x)t^n.$$

Multiplying (1) by $`t^n`$ and summing we get

$$G(t)=\frac{\alpha _{n1}(x\beta )^nt^ng_{n1}(\alpha )+\frac{x\alpha }{\alpha \beta }}{x\alpha +xt(\alpha \beta )^2}.$$
(2)
Now for

$$x=\overline{x}=\frac{\alpha }{1+t(\alpha \beta )^2}$$

the denominator of (2) vanishes. Consequently, the numerator must also vanish. (A more elaborate argument would be that the power series expansion must exist for that combination of values.) This is reminiscent of Knuth’s trick \[3, page 537\], which is called kernel method by some french authors. It leads to

$$\underset{n1}{}(\overline{x}\beta )^nt^ng_{n1}(\alpha )=\frac{\overline{x}\alpha }{(\beta \alpha )\alpha }.$$

Now we set $`T=(\overline{x}\beta )t`$, i. e.

$$t=\frac{1T(\alpha \beta )\sqrt{12T(\alpha +\beta )+T^2(\alpha \beta )^2}}{2\beta (\alpha \beta )}.$$

So

$$\underset{n0}{}T^ng_n(\alpha )=\frac{1+T(\alpha \beta )\sqrt{12T(\alpha +\beta )+T^2(\alpha \beta )^2}}{2T\alpha }.$$

The expansion of this generating function is well known, from the context of the Narayana (Runyon!) numbers  or elsewhere. In any instance, the coefficients could be easily detected by the Lagrange inversion formula, with the result

$$g_n(\alpha )=\frac{1}{n}\underset{k=0}{\overset{n1}{}}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{k}\right)\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{k+1}\right)\beta ^{nk}\alpha ^k,n1,g_0(\alpha )=1.$$

In the next section, we will see a more impressive occurrence of the Lagrange inversion formula.

## 2. The general case

In this section we move from the particular case of $`g_n(\alpha )`$ to the general case of $`g_n(x)`$.

Now that the series in the numerator of (2) is established, the generating function $`G(t)`$ is fully explicit:

$$G(t)=\frac{1+t(x\beta )(\alpha \beta )\sqrt{12t(x\beta )(\alpha +\beta )+t^2(x\beta )^2(\alpha \beta )^2}+\frac{2(x\alpha )}{\alpha \beta }}{2\left(x\alpha +xt(\alpha \beta )^2\right)},$$
(3)
and one could work out some clumsy expressions for the coefficients, e. g. (for $`x\alpha `$)

$$g_n(x)=\frac{(\alpha \beta )^nx^n}{(\alpha x)^n}\alpha \underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}x^{nk}(\alpha x)^{k1n}(\alpha \beta )^{n+12k}(x\beta )^kg_{k1}(\alpha ).$$

This was obtained by Morrison without using the generating function. Carlitz  set

$$g_n(x)=\underset{k=0}{\overset{n1}{}}A_k^{(n)}(\alpha \beta )^k(x\beta )^k$$
(4)
and managed to express the coefficients as follows:

$$A_r^{(n)}=\beta \varphi _{r,n1}\alpha \underset{s=1}{\overset{r1}{}}g_{rs}(\alpha )\varphi _{s1,nr+s1}\beta \varphi _{r1,n1},$$

with

$$\varphi _{r,k}=\underset{j=0}{\overset{\mathrm{min}\{r,k\}}{}}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{r}{j}\right)\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k}{j}\right)\alpha ^j\beta ^{kj},k0,\varphi _{r,k}=0,k<0.$$

He asked whether the expressions

$$𝒞_{r,n}:=\underset{s=1}{\overset{r1}{}}g_{rs}(\alpha )\varphi _{s1,nr+s1}$$

can be simplified. Now Riordan  proved that

$$A_k^{(n)}=(nk)\underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}\frac{1}{j}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n1}{j1}\right)\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k1}{j1}\right)\alpha ^j\beta ^{nj},1k<n,$$

and $`A_0^{(n)}=\beta ^n`$. (This was then generalized by Carlitz  who produced a $`q`$–version of that.) Riordan’s answer translates as

$$𝒞_{r,n}=\underset{j=1}{\overset{\mathrm{min}\{r,n\}}{}}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\mathrm{min}\{r,n\}}{j}\right)\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\mathrm{max}\{r,n\}1}{j1}\right)\alpha ^{j1}\beta ^{nj}.$$

Plugging Riordan’s formula into the defining relation (4) we get (setting $`w=\frac{\beta x}{\beta \alpha }`$)

$`g_n(x)`$ $`=\beta ^n+{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{n1}{}}}A_k^{(n)}w^k`$
$`=\beta ^n+{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{n}{}}}(nk){\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{k}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{j}}\left({\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n1}{j1}}\right)\left({\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k1}{j1}}\right)\alpha ^j\beta ^{nj}w^k`$
$`=\beta ^n+{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{n}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{j}}\left({\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n1}{j1}}\right)\alpha ^j\beta ^{nj}{\displaystyle \underset{k=j}{\overset{n}{}}}(nk)\left({\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{k1}{j1}}\right)w^k`$
$`=\beta ^n+{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{n}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{j}}\left({\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n1}{j1}}\right)\alpha ^j\beta ^{nj}[z^{n1}]{\displaystyle \frac{(zw)^j}{(1z)^2(1zw)^j}}`$
$`=\beta ^n+[z^{n1}]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1z)^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{n}{}}}\left({\displaystyle \genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{j}}\right)\alpha ^j\beta ^{nj}{\displaystyle \frac{(zw)^j}{(1zw)^j}}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{n}}[z^{n1}]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1z)^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{(\alpha \beta )zw+\beta }{1zw}}\right)^n.`$
This form was not observed before111Maple V. 4 computed the inner sum in the third line incorrectly, which cost me several hours!. It reminds one of the Lagrange inversion formula! Consequently (see e. g.  for the Lagrange inversion formula)

$$g_n(x)=[t^n]\frac{1}{1y},\text{where}y=t\mathrm{\Phi }(y),\text{with}\mathrm{\Phi }(y)=\frac{(\alpha \beta )yw+\beta }{1yw}.$$
(5)
This can be made explicit, since

$$y=\frac{\alpha \beta +t\left(\beta \alpha \right)\left(\beta x\right)\sqrt{\left(\beta \alpha \right)^22\left(\beta \alpha \right)\left(\alpha +\beta \right)\left(\beta x\right)t+\left(\beta \alpha \right)^2\left(\beta x\right)^2t^2}}{2(x\beta )}.$$

Although in general, (5) holds only for $`n1`$, it is valid here for $`n=0`$ as well. Therefore we get the generating function

$$\underset{t0}{}t^ng_n(x)=\frac{1}{1y}.$$

This matches with the previous expression for $`G(t)`$ in (3). Reading all the steps of this section backwards, we obtain a proof of Riordan’s result, purely by the use of generating functions, avoiding any recursions and any guesswork (as in ).


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# Local quantum coherence and superfluidity

## Abstract

We consider a model of bosons on a regular lattice with a kinetic energy due to hopping among sites and a potential energy due to strong on site interaction. A superfluid phase is expected when the ground state of the local energy is doubly degenerate. We consider a new scheme of simmetry breaking associated to the superfluid phase in which the order parameter is the statistical average of the quantum coherence operator associated to the superposition of the degenerate local ground states. In the strong coupling limit a systematic expansion of the free energy can be performed in terms of the hopping amplitude at constant order parameter. Within such an expansion we obtain a self-consistent equation for the order parameter. The first order approximation gives, in the case of degeneracy between single occupied and empty state, the same result of the standard mean field approximation for the “hard core bosons”. This new approach to the superfluid phase is shown to have a natural application to the implementation of quantum computation on a superfluid.

The achievement of Bose Einstein Condensation experiments , and the interest to the quantum computing lead naturally to the proposal of using superfluid macroscopic states as qubits. On the other hand trapping of bosons in optical lattices, opens the possibility of new gating procedures. It is therefore of interest to improve the theory of bosonic particles with strong repulsive interaction and hopping among sites of a regular lattice and to investigate local excitations as possible qubits.

It is well known that at zero temperature the transition from a superfluid to a Mott insulator phase is expected at a critical value of the ratio between the interaction strength and hopping amplitude except for integer values of the ratio between the chemical potential and the interaction strength $`\mu =Un^{}`$ . These values correspond in the atomic limit, i.e. for vanishing hopping amplitude, to a degeneracy of the ground state which corresponds to the same statistical weight of states involving $`n^{}`$ and $`n^{}+1`$ particles. The associated energy can be assumed to vanish for a suitable choice of the zero energy level. A strong coupling expansion around the atomic limit has been proposed in . This approach depends however on a “factorization” assumption. We show that an alternative approach can be introduced which avoids any factorization, and gives, to the first order in the hopping amplitude, the classical mean field result. The key point is a new definition of the superfluid phase in which the order parameter is associated to the statistical average of suitably defined local quantum coherence operator.

We define the coherence of a system with respect to a particular state as the probability of finding the system, or part of it, in that state in the ensemble of all possible states. If the system is defined on a lattice, as in our case, and the ensemble is that of the statistical equilibrium, it is possible to define a local quantum coherence probability ( LQCP ) as the average of the projection operator $`\pi _i=|A_i><A_i|`$ associated to the local state.

$$\rho (\pi _i)=\frac{tr\left(e^{\beta H}\pi _i\right)}{tr\left(e^{\beta H}\right)}$$
(1)
H is the energy operator in the grand canonical ensemble. It is the sum of a local repulsive term $`H_0=\frac{U}{2}_in_i(n_i1)\mu _in_i`$ ( $`U>0`$ ) and a kinetic one $`H_1=J_{ik}ϵ_{ik}b_i^+b_k`$ where $`J>0`$ and $`ϵ_{ij}`$ is equal to $`0`$ if site i is not next neighbour of site j and 1 otherwise. We consider here $`|A_i>`$ as a superposition of the two degenerate groundstates of the local energy operator. In the subspace of two degenerate groundstates it is useful to define a Pauli vector operator whose components are

$`\sigma _{i1}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(|n^{}+1><n^{}|+|n^{}><n^{}+1|\right)`$ (2)
$`\sigma _{i2}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{i}}\left(|n^{}+1><n^{}||n^{}><n^{}+1|\right)`$ (3)
$`\sigma _{i3}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(|n^{}+1><n^{}+1||n^{}><n^{}|\right)`$ (4)
The identity restricted to this subspace is defined as

$$\sigma _{i0}=\left(|n^{}+1><n^{}+1|+|n^{}><n^{}|\right)$$
(5)
Analogously to the spin case the LQC operator can be expressed in terms of the restricted identity and the scalar product of a Pauli operator with the unitary vector ( $`\nu _i`$ ).

$$\pi _i=\frac{1}{2}\sigma _{i0}+\sigma _i\nu _i$$
(6)
We show that superfluidity can be associated to a non trivial LQCP ( $`\rho (\pi _i)\frac{1}{2}`$ ). Differently from the classical approach the gauge symmetry breaking is achieved introducing a field defined in the degenerate groundstate subspace in the 1-direction. It is then natural to assume this direction as polar axis and thus $`\pi _i`$ becomes

$$\pi _i=\frac{1}{2}\left[\sigma _{i0}+\mathrm{cos}\theta _i\sigma _{i1}+\mathrm{sin}\theta _i\left(e^{i\varphi _i}\sigma _i^{}+e^{i\varphi _i}\sigma _i^+\right)\right]$$
(7)
Raising and lowering operators $`\sigma _i^\pm =\sigma _{i2}\pm i\sigma _{i3}`$ appear in (7). Spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking is studied in terms of the generating function associated to the 1-direction in the degenerate groundstates subspace.

$$G=tr\left[e^{\beta H}exp\left(\underset{i}{}\lambda _i\sigma _{1i}\right)\right]$$
(8)
The local order parameter m is defined as $`m_i=\frac{}{\lambda _i}\mathrm{ln}G`$. Symmetry breakdown occurs if the order parameter does not vanish in the limit of $`\lambda _i\lambda 0`$. The next step is to introduce the free energy as Legendre transform of $`\mathrm{ln}G`$

$$A=\mathrm{ln}G\underset{i}{}\lambda _im_i$$
(9)
The free energy A depends on $`m_i`$ instead of the symmetry breaking amplitude $`\lambda _i`$, and $`\lambda `$ becomes a function of $`J`$ determined by the condition

$$\lambda _i(J)=\frac{A}{m_i}$$
(10)
Note that now the order parameter $`m_i`$ does not depend on the hopping amplitude $`J`$ and thus can be fixed from the relation with $`\lambda `$ valid at $`J=0`$

$$m_i=\frac{tr\left\{e^{\beta H}exp\left[_i\lambda _i(0)\sigma _{1i}\right]\sigma _{1i}\right\}}{tr\left\{e^{\beta H}exp\left[_i\lambda _i(0)\sigma _{1i}\right]\right\}}=<\sigma _{1i}>$$
(11)
Following the work of  we introduce an expansion in the reduced hopping amplitude $`\beta J`$. The difficulty is due to the presence, unlike the Ising case, of an atomic Hamiltonian which does not commute with the hopping one. Standard formalism of field theory is not suitable for the expansion of the generating function of (8). It is worth to note that if the trace is performed on the eigenstates of the atomic Hamiltonian, only the degenerate groundstates are affected by the symmetry breaking operator. The expansion in power of $`\beta J`$ around the value $`\beta J=0`$ of free energy A can be expressed as follows

$$A=A_0+A_1$$
(12)
Where $`A_0`$ is defined as

$$A_0=\mathrm{ln}tr\left\{e^{\beta H_0}exp\left[\underset{i}{}\lambda _i(0)\left(\sigma _{1i}m_i\right)\right]\right\}$$
(13)
It is immediately shown that

$$A_0=\underset{i}{}\mathrm{ln}\left\{2\left[\mathrm{cosh}\left(\lambda _i(0)\right)\gamma (\beta U)\right]\right\}m_i\lambda _i(0)$$
(14)
where $`\gamma (\beta U)=1\frac{1}{2}_ke^{\beta E_k}`$. It is important to note that in the strong coupling limit ( $`\beta U1`$ ) $`\gamma (\beta U)`$ vanishes. In this limit the result valid for the hard core boson model is recovered. $`A_1`$ can be calculated as power expansion in the reduced hopping amplitude $`\beta J`$

$$A_1=A^{}(\beta J)+A^{\prime \prime }\frac{(\beta J)^2}{2}+\mathrm{}$$
(15)
where

$$A^{}=\underset{ik}{}ϵ_{ij}m_im_k(n^{}+1)$$
(16)
while $`A^{\prime \prime }`$ has been calculated up to the first order in $`\frac{1}{\beta U}`$

$$A^{\prime \prime }=\frac{(n^{}+1)^2}{\beta U}\underset{ikl}{}ϵ_{ik}ϵ_{il}m_km_l+\underset{ik}{}ϵ_{ik}\left\{\frac{(n^{}+1)^2}{4}\left[\left(1m_i\right)\left(1m_k\right)+1\right]+\frac{2}{\beta U}\right\}$$
(17)
The local order parameter $`m_i`$ can be evaluated by the extremum condition for free energy $`\frac{A}{m_i}=0`$. Taking into account the equation (10) for $`\beta J=0`$

$$\lambda _i(0)=\frac{A_1}{m_i}$$
(18)
Since $`m_i`$ is fixed equal to $`<\sigma _{1i}>`$ for any reduced hopping amplitude $`\beta J`$, it is in particular equal to $`<\sigma _{1i}>`$ when $`\beta J=0`$, which gives us the important relation

$$m_i=\frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(\lambda _i(0)\right)}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(\lambda _i(0)\right)+\gamma (\beta U)}$$
(19)
From (18) and (19) and from the homogeneity hypothesis on the interaction metrix ( $`ϵ_{ij}=1`$ or $`0`$ ) we obtain a self-consistent equation for the order parameter $`m_i=m`$. Taking into account in $`A_1`$ only the first order we obtain

$$m=\frac{\mathrm{sinh}\left(2JD\beta m(n^{}+1)\right)}{\mathrm{cosh}\left(2JD\beta m(n^{}+1)\right)+\gamma (\beta U)}$$
(20)
Where D is the number of next neighbours sites. In the strong coupling limit we can neglect $`\gamma `$ in (20) and when $`n^{}=0`$ we obtain the classical result of the mean field approximation for the hard core bosons model. As we shall see in the following, the knowledge of the expansion up to the second order in the reduced hopping amplitude $`\beta J`$ becomes important to determine the relaxation of local perturbation.

As far as the behaviour of the LQCP is concerned we note that in the non superfluid phase only the statistical average of $`\sigma _{i0}`$ does not vanish and then LQCP becomes trivial $`(\rho _i(\pi _i)=\frac{1}{2})`$. On the other hand it is easily seen that in the superfluid phase the spontaneous symmetry breaking implies a non trivial LQCP $`\rho _i(\pi _i)=\frac{1}{2}\left(1+m_i\mathrm{cos}\theta _i\right)`$. Following the work of reference  it is convenient, for the implementation of a quantum computer on a superfluid phase, to identify the 0-logical state in the i-th site with the dependence of $`\rho _i`$ on $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _i`$. To obtain a 1-logical state we need a local perturbation of LQCP. We consider the effect of an istantaneous local variation of the chemical potential asssociated to a perturbation Hamiltonian $`H_p(t)=\delta (t0^+)H_p`$ with $`H_p=_in_i\theta _i`$. The time evolution of LQCP can be obtained in terms of the time evolution of the statistical average of time dependent raising and lowering operators.

$$\rho _i^\pm (t)=\frac{tr\left(e^{\beta H}exp\left(_k\lambda _k\sigma _{1k}\right)e^{iH_P}\sigma _i^\pm (t)e^{iH_P}\right)}{tr\left(e^{\beta H}exp\left(_k\lambda _k\sigma _{1k}\right)\right)}$$
(21)
Where $`\sigma _i^\pm (t)`$ are operators in the Heisenberg representation. Simple results are obtained assuming that the impulsive perturbation acting on a given site has no influence on next neighbours sites, and if the evolution can be approximated to the first order in the reduced hopping amplitude.

$$\mathrm{ln}\rho _i^\pm (t)=\mathrm{ln}\rho _i^\pm (0^+)\pm ith_i$$
(22)
where $`h_i=J\sqrt{n^{}+1}_km_kϵ_{ik}`$ has the meaning of the internal static field if m is the static order parameter. At this stage of approximation we obtain a free “rotation” around the symmetry breaking direction completely analogous to that found in the magnetic case. We expect that decoherence effects will appear when the correlation of different sites degrees of freadom are taken into account. An evaluation of decoherence can be obtained introducing, in analogy with the reference , a dynamical function

$$G_i^\pm (\lambda ,t)=\mathrm{ln}\left\{Tr\left[e^{\beta H}exp\left(\underset{k}{}(\pm iJt\sqrt{n^{}+1}ϵ_{ik}+\lambda _k)\sigma _{k1}\right)\right]\right\}$$
(23)
We assume that $`\rho _i^\pm (t)`$ can be written as

$$\rho _i^\pm (t)=\mathrm{sin}\theta _i\mathrm{\Lambda }_i^\pm (t)$$
(24)
The dependence on $`\mathrm{sin}\theta _i`$ can be considered as the manifestation of the presence of a 1-logical states in site i. The time behaviour of 1-logical states $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_i^\pm (t)`$ are given in terms of the generating dynamical function.

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_i^\pm (t)=exp\left(G_i^\pm (t)G_i^\pm (0)\right)\frac{G_i^\pm }{\lambda _i}$$
(25)
The equation (25) is actually an extrapolation of the result obtained in the first order expansion in the reduced hopping amplitude $`(\beta J)`$. The calculation of the dynamical generating function can be done introducing a Legendre transform at fixed time and reduced interaction

$$F_i^\pm (m,\beta ,t)=G_i^\pm (\lambda ,\beta ,t)\underset{k}{}\lambda _k(\beta ,t)m_k$$
(26)
Following an analysis similar to that of reference  we obtain

$$F_i^\pm (m,\beta ,t)F_i(m,\beta )\pm iJt\underset{k}{}ϵ_{ik}m_k\mathrm{\Gamma }t^2$$
(27)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is equal to $`J^2(n^{}+1)^2_kϵ_{ik}(1m^2)+O(\beta U)`$. We see that within the present approximation decoherence decreases as the superfluid parameter saturates $`(m^21)`$.

In conclusion we have studied the superfluid phase of a boson system on a regular lattice with a strong on site interaction. The degenerate groundstates of the energy operator associated to each site are used to define a qubit. Hopping of particles among sites defines the interaction of the qubits with the physical environment. The superfluid phase is defined in terms of a generating function associated to the local coherence operator. This operator defines the direction in the subspace of the degenerate groundstates along which symmetry breaking occurs. Non trivial properties of LQCP are found in the superfluid phase. Quantum gating on a single qubit is associated to the modification of LQCP due to a suitable local impulsive gauge perturbation. Decoherence appears only when correction to the mean field approximation are taken into account. Slowing down of decoherence is obtained as the superfluid order parameter approaches saturation. In other words this particular environment gives rise, in the superfluid phase, to an effective field along which qubits tend to align ( 0-logical states ). Excitations of qubits in the orthogonal direction ( 1-logical states ) will relax slower and slower as superfluid order parameter saturates.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

An important goal of analytical as well as lattice investigations of QCD at non-vanishing temperature has been to gain more insight into the temperature dependence of hadron properties below and into the nature of hadronic excitations above the transition temperature from the hadronic to the plasma phase of QCD.

When the temperature is raised towards the transition point, approaching (approximate) chiral symmetry restoration and deconfinement is expected to change the properties of hadrons. In particular, the lightest vector mesons and the temperature dependence of their masses and decay widths have received quite some attention because of their possible relevance to the observed enhancement of low mass dileptons in heavy ion collisions . The theoretical predictions of these properties are, however, model dependent, see e.g.  for a recent review. In the plasma phase, the effective, temperature dependent coupling constant becomes small at large temperatures. One is thus lead to expect that the plasma consists of a gas of only weakly interacting quarks and gluons. In this case, correlation functions of operators with hadron quantum numbers should be described by the exchange of two or three almost free quarks. On the other hand, there are arguments that even at high temperature the hadronic excitation spectrum might be more complicated because of non-perturbative effects in particular in the chromo-magnetic sector of QCD . Thus, in both temperature regimes ab-initio QCD computations are highly desirable.

Hadronic correlation functions at non-vanishing temperature $`T`$ have been the subject of lattice investigations for quite a while. Most of these studies are based on the staggered quark formulation  while only few so far utilized the Wilson discretization  and, just recently, domain wall fermions . Moreover, because of the limited extent of the lattice in the Euclidean time direction, $`0<t<1/T`$, most of these studies investigated spatial correlation functions and screening masses.

Below the transition temperature, detailed lattice investigations and comparisons of hadron masses at $`T=0`$ and at $`T<T_c`$ have been carried out in the quenched approximation so far. Analyses in the staggered fermion discretization  have covered temperatures between $`0.8T_c`$ and $`0.95T_c`$ and did not detect any significant difference between zero-temperature masses and finite-temperature screening masses in the investigated hadron channels. This is also supported by a recent study of spatial and temporal correlation functions of Wilson fermions on anisotropic lattices  at $`T0.93T_c`$.

At temperatures above $`T_c`$, the available lattice results on hadronic correlation functions reflect chiral symmetry restoration because the masses  and screening masses  in the vector ($`\rho `$) and axial vector ($`a_1`$) channel become degenerate. In the pseudoscalar and scalar channels it is observed that $`\pi `$ and $`f_0/\sigma `$ become degenerate at $`T_c`$  while the mass difference between $`\pi `$ and $`a_0/\delta `$ seems to vanish only at higher temperatures, see in particular  for a chiral extrapolation at temperatures closely above $`T_c`$. These findings are in accord with the expected restoration of $`SU_R(N_F)\times SU_L(N_F)`$ and indicate that the anomalous $`U_A(1)`$ symmetry is not effectively restored at the critical temperature.

As far as the values are concerned, in the staggered discretization vector and axial vector screening masses are compatible with the prediction of lowest order perturbation theory i.e. the propagation of (almost) free quarks. Scalar and pseudoscalar channels, however, show substantial deviations from this expectation, at least in the temperature interval between $`T_c`$ and $`2T_c`$. One might argue that this observation indicates the existence of (pseudo) scalar bound states. However, the lowest mass hadron is unlikely to change from a mesonic state to a quark-like quasi-particle at a non-critical temperature. In addition, studies which apply different boundary conditions  suggest that the spectral function is dominated by a two quark cut. For Wilson quarks it is observed  that already at a temperature of about $`1.5T_c`$ the pseudoscalar and vector screening masses are very close to each other. There it also is found that a near degeneracy holds true for the masses. Depending on the source operator utilized, the pseudoscalar is sometimes even heavier than the vector meson. While this behavior can at least qualitatively be explained by the propagation of (almost) free quarks,  provides conflicting evidence since their study of the wave functions, on the other hand, indicates the presence of bound states.

In addition to these observables, also spatial wave functions have been analyzed . Here one has found a similar behavior as at zero temperature. The observed exponential decay has then been taken as to suggest that the relevant hadronic excitations are bound states also in the plasma phase, at least at temperatures just above $`T_c`$. According to , this behavior could, however, also be explained by the fact that the dimensionally reduced, 3-D effective theory and correspondingly spatial Wilson loops in 3+1 dimensions show confinement . Solving a two-dimensional Schrödinger equation with a potential which includes a temperature dependent (spatial) string tension leads to exponentially decreasing spatial wavefunctions. The corresponding effect on the screening masses  would be an $`𝒪(10\%)`$ correction at the investigated temperatures  which so far could not yet be checked quantitatively.

None of the lattice investigations of hadronic masses at non-vanishing temperatures has attempted to carry out the continuum limit. Most of the mentioned analyses are based on the staggered discretization. A straightforward computation in the Wilson formulation of lattice QCD and a comparison of the results with the staggered ones would thus help to gain an idea about the discretization effects. This is the main goal of this paper.

Since we are extracting screening masses and Lorentz invariance is lost at finite $`T`$ due to the heat bath, we have also computed spatial correlation functions projected onto some non-vanishing momenta and on the lowest non-vanishing bosonic Matsubara frequency. The purpose of this attempt is to test for a sizeable difference between spatial and temporal momentum contributions to the vacuum polarization tensor.

As a by-product of the attempt to construct meson operators with good overlap to the groundstate we also were able to obtain information about the Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes of the investigated mesons, the pion and the $`\rho `$.

The paper is organized as follows: in the next section we present some details of the simulation. This is followed by the presentation and discussion of the obtained screening masses in the pion and the $`\rho `$ channel, both below and above the deconfinement transition. In section 4 we test the dispersion relation at non-vanishing temperature. Section 5 contains our estimates of the wave functions.

## 2 The simulation

The results to be presented here are based on gauge field configurations which have been generated with the standard Wilson gluon action. We used a pseudo-heatbath algorithm  with FHKP updating  in the $`SU(2)`$ subgroups. Each heatbath iteration is supplemented by 4 overrelaxation steps . We have simulated at three values of the bare coupling, $`\beta =6/g^2=6.0,6.2`$ and $`6.4`$. At these $`\beta `$ values the lattice spacing has been determined from quite a variety of observables. Depending on the quantity, the results spread over a range of about 10 % of the central value, however, within the error bars, agreement is observed. In order to obtain the physical temperature of the lattices in units of the critical one, for definiteness we have consistently chosen to set the scale by the string tension , $`T/T_c=(T/\sqrt{\sigma })(\sqrt{\sigma }/T_c)`$, taking $`T_c/\sqrt{\sigma }`$ from . The temporal extent of the finite temperature lattices of $`N_\tau =8`$ then corresponds to physical temperatures of $`T=0.93(1)T_c,1.23(1)T_c`$ and $`1.63(2)T_c`$ at $`\beta =6.0,6.2`$ and $`6.4`$ respectively. The spatial volume of the lattices was chosen as $`24^3`$ and $`32^3`$ at $`\beta =6.0`$, $`24^3`$ at $`\beta =6.2`$ and $`24^2\times 64`$ at $`\beta =6.4`$. In addition to the finite temperature simulations we have carried out runs at zero temperature on lattices of size $`16^3\times 32`$ at $`\beta =6.0`$ and $`24^3\times 48`$ at $`6.2`$ mainly in order to supplement the available literature data on meson masses by results at quark masses in the range between the strange and the charm quark mass. We have generated between 50,000 and 80,000 gauge field configurations and have analyzed configurations separated by 500 or 2000 sweeps (see Table 1). Autocorrelations have been checked to be negligible.

For the fermion part of the action we used the $`𝒪(a)`$ Symanzik-improved Sheikholeslami-Wohlert action  with a tree level clover coefficient of $`c_{sw}=1.0`$. The inversion of the Dirac matrix was carried out by means of an overrelaxed MR algorithm  at moderate to large quark mass values and by the BiCGStabI  for light quarks. In both cases an even-odd partitioning was employed. We encountered only very few moderately exceptional configurations. Including or omitting those did not modify the expectation values. With the same combination of actions as in the present study, the (latest) values of the critical hopping parameter at zero temperature defined by the vanishing of the pion mass have been determined as $`\kappa _c=0.14556(6)`$  and $`\kappa _c=0.14549(2)`$  at $`\beta =6.0`$, $`\kappa _c=0.14315(2)`$  and $`\kappa _c=0.14315(1)`$  at $`\beta =6.2`$ as well as $`\kappa _c=0.14143(3)`$  at $`\beta =6.4`$. These numbers may be used to convert the various values of the hopping parameter into an estimate of the corresponding bare quark masses by means of

$$m_qa=\mathrm{ln}\left[1+\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{1}{\kappa }\frac{1}{\kappa _c}\right)\right]$$
(1)
This has been used also in Table 1 where our run parameters are summarized.

From the computed quark propagators we constructed correlation functions of operators with the quantum numbers of the pseudoscalar and the vector meson. To improve the projection onto the lowest energy state, a gauge invariant extended operator was used on the sink site :

$$_R(x)=\underset{\pm \stackrel{}{e}}{}\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}_\alpha ^i(x)𝒰^{i,j}(xx+R\stackrel{}{e})\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha ,\beta }\mathrm{\Psi }_\beta ^j(x+R\stackrel{}{e})$$
(2)
Here, $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and $`\overline{\mathrm{\Psi }}`$ are a quark and an antiquark field separated by a distance $`R`$, $`i,j`$ denote color indices and $`\alpha ,\beta `$ are spinor ones. Both indices are to be summed over. The quantum numbers are selected by choosing $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\gamma _5`$ for the pseudoscalar and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\gamma _\mu `$ for the vector channel respectively. In the vector channel we have averaged over the polarizations $`\mu `$ perpendicular to the correlation direction. The explicit sum in eq. (2) is over all unit vectors $`\stackrel{}{e}`$ perpendicular to the correlation direction. This extended operator is made gauge invariant by introducing the color parallel transporter $`𝒰`$ from $`x`$ to $`x+R\stackrel{}{e}`$. In order to further improve the projection and in an attempt to resemble the gluon cloud  the parallel transporter is built from smeared link fields. At the source site a strictly local operator ($`R=0`$) was put on the lattice.

The most general correlation function $`C_R(\stackrel{}{p},t)`$ is thus obtained as

$`C_R(\stackrel{}{p},t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\stackrel{}{x}}{}}e^{i\stackrel{}{p}\stackrel{}{x}}P_R(\stackrel{}{x},t)P^{}(\stackrel{}{0},0)`$ (3)
$`=`$ $`<0|P_R|P(\stackrel{}{p})><0|P|P(\stackrel{}{p})>^{}\left\{e^{E_P(\stackrel{}{p})t}+e^{E_P(\stackrel{}{p})(N_\tau t)}\right\}+\mathrm{}`$
where in this particular example the pseudoscalar correlation in the temporal direction was chosen. In eq. (3), the exponential fall-off is given by the energy $`E_P(\stackrel{}{p})`$ of the state $`|P(\stackrel{}{p})>`$ at momentum $`\stackrel{}{p}`$. The dots indicate contributions from excited states with the right quantum numbers. At non-vanishing temperature, because of the limited extent of the lattices in the temporal direction, $`t1/T`$, we computed spatial correlation functions in the $`z`$ direction, $`C_R(\stackrel{}{\stackrel{~}{p}},z)`$, where $`\stackrel{}{\stackrel{~}{p}}`$ denote the momentum components perpendicular to the $`z`$ direction, $`\stackrel{}{\stackrel{~}{p}}=(p_x,p_y,p_t)`$.

The improvement procedure described above leaves quite some freedom in choosing optimal parameters. As for the distance $`R`$ between quark and antiquark, on each configuration we have computed the correlation functions for a variety of different $`R`$ values. This allowed us to find the optimal separation for each lattice spacing and temperature individually. An example of how the separation $`R`$ changes the projection to the lowest mass state is shown in Figure 1. Here we plot the effective mass, defined as $`M^{\mathrm{eff}}(t)=\mathrm{ln}\{C_R(t)/C_R(t+1)\}`$ for $`\stackrel{}{p}=\stackrel{}{0}`$, of the pseudoscalar as a function of $`t`$ for various $`R`$ values. The data has been obtained on the zero temperature lattice at $`\beta =6.2`$ at $`\kappa =0.141`$. The plot illustrates that the contribution of excited states becomes considerably smaller when $`R`$ is raised from 1 to 5 lattice spacings in this example. The data flattens off and reaches a plateau at smaller time separations between source and sink. This allows to extract the lowest mass much more reliably. At $`R7`$ the large $`t`$ limit is approached from below as a single term contributing to eq. (3) is not positive-definite. At the rightmost data point in the figure the effective mass drops slightly because the periodicity of the lattice is being felt by the correlation function. When $`\beta `$ is varied we observe that the optimal distance in lattice units approximately scales with the lattice spacing i.e. stays constant in physical units.

Contrary to the strong $`R`$ dependence of the effective masses which appears to be physical, details of the gauge field smearing procedure do not seem to matter so much. We have adopted the APE prescription  with a weight of 2 for the link term and 1 for the contribution of the staples. As noted also in , the precise value of the ratio is not too important, contrary to the case of Wilson loops. The smeared links were projected back to $`SU(3)`$ elements. In test runs it turned out that varying the number of smearing iterations between 4 and 12 does not have a big impact on the length of the plateau in effective mass plots, see Figure 1. Moreover, between the $`\beta `$ values analyzed we did not observe significant differences.

## 3 Masses

In this section we present our results on the masses. These were obtained from correlation functions $`C_R(\stackrel{}{p}=0,t)`$, eq. (3), at zero momentum in which case the exponential fall-off is given by the mass, $`E_H(\stackrel{}{p}=0)=M_H`$. For spatial correlation functions the exponential fall-off defines the screening mass.

In order to obtain an estimate of the mass of the lowest state contributing to a given correlation function we first compared the effective mass plots, e.g. Figure 1, for various quark pair distances $`R`$ in search of the optimal $`R`$ value with regard to the onset and stability of the plateau. Subsequently, at the chosen $`R`$ value fits over intervals $`[t_{\mathrm{min}},N_\tau t_{\mathrm{min}}]`$ with varying $`t_{\mathrm{min}}`$ (similarly for the spatial correlations at $`T0`$) were performed, again checking for stability of the mass value. Likewise, we symmetrized the correlation functions around midpoint, $`N_\tau /2`$ and $`N_\sigma /2`$ respectively, and carried out fits including the full covariance matrix. Again, the minimum separation from the source was varied. The results quoted, mass values as well as errors, are obtained from the latter fits, selecting the fit interval by the best $`\chi ^2`$ value. The errors given include an estimate of the systematic error as suggested by a remaining dependence of the mass on $`R`$ and $`t_{\mathrm{min}}`$. Finally, also two-state fits were applied to correlation functions including data at next-to-optimal $`R`$ values and smaller separations from the source in order to further check for consistency.

The results for the ground state masses in the pseudoscalar and the vector channel at the temperatures investigated are summarized in Tables 3 to 4 and are compared with the available zero temperature data in Figures 2 and 3. In the figures we have plotted the so-called pole mass

$$m_H=2\mathrm{sinh}\left(\frac{M_H}{2}\right).$$
(4)
Eq. (4) arises from a lattice meson action with a nearest neighbor symmetric difference discretization which appears to be favored by studies of lattice dispersion relations . Using $`m_H`$ instead of the coefficient $`M_H`$ of the exponential fall-off partly corrects for $`𝒪(am)`$ lattice artefacts. We observe that $`m_V`$ for the vectormeson at zero temperature, unlike $`M_V`$, is strikingly linear in the quark mass up to values in the vicinity of the charm quark mass. For small meson masses the difference between $`m_H`$ and $`M_H`$ is of course negligible.

Figure 2 summarizes the results at $`\beta =6.0`$ which on the high temperature lattice corresponds to a temperature of $`0.93T_c`$. The upper part of the figure shows $`m_V`$ and $`m_P^2`$ at small quark mass values while the lower part covers the entire quark mass range explored. The meson masses are plotted as function of $`m_q`$ where the quark mass is obtained from eq. (1) with $`\kappa _c(T=0)`$ determined from a linear fit in $`m_q`$ to the combined zero temperature literature data on $`m_P^2`$  up to quark mass values $`m_qa<0.08`$. As can be seen from the lowest lying line drawn in the upper part of Figure 2, the linear fit works well and deviations begin to emerge at $`m_qa0.1`$. Our result for the critical kappa value is $`\kappa _c(T=0)=0.14542(2)`$ which deviates marginally from the values quoted in  because we have chosen a fit procedure slightly different from the one adopted there. Note however, that our value is well within the spread of the quoted $`\kappa _c`$ values. Moreover, the upper part of Figure 2 shows that the finite temperature pion (screening) mass retains a small but non-vanishing value at $`\kappa _c(T=0)`$. A fit to the $`m_P^2`$ data at quark mass values up to 0.08 of the form $`c+sm_q`$, shown as the second lowest dotted line, leads to an intercept $`c=0.006(3)`$ at $`m_q=0`$. The slope $`s=3.07(8)`$ is a little larger than the value of $`s=2.87(3)`$ obtained from the equivalent fit to the $`T=0`$ data. Alternatively, one can perform a fit with a temperature dependent $`\kappa _c`$ leading to a slightly different value, $`\kappa _c(T)=0.14550(4)`$.

For the vectormeson masses, when plotted as a function of the zero temperature quark mass, we find that, as a whole, they apparently tend to be somewhat larger than the zero temperature values. In both cases, fits linear in the quark mass work well and we obtain $`m_V=0.42(2)`$ at $`T0.93T_c`$ as opposed to 0.38(1) at $`T=0`$ in the chiral limit. This is shown as the appropriate lines in the upper part of Figure 2. At least part of this difference could, however, be absorbed into the shift in $`\kappa _c`$ mentioned above.

In the lower part of Figure 2 $`m_V`$ and $`m_P`$ are shown linearly over the entire quark mass range explored. At zero temperature, the vectormeson mass is linear in $`m_q`$ over the entire range. A fit ansatz including a term quadratic in the quark mass returns a value of $`0.05(19)`$ for its coefficient which is compatible with 0. The intercept is obtained as $`0.381(6)`$. Within errors this intercept is in agreement with the result of a linear fit, $`m_V=0.379(2)+2.588(5)m_q`$ which is shown in the figure. Note, that these numbers are in agreement with the results for the intercept obtained from the fit to the small quark mass data only. The mass of the pseudoscalar shows a behavior proportional to $`\sqrt{m_q}`$ at small quark masses, as expected from chiral perturbation theory, which turns into a linear one at larger $`m_q`$ values. Correspondingly, we chose a fit ansatz of the form

$$m_P=\sqrt{bm_q+dm_q^2}$$
(5)
which returns $`b=2.57(1)`$ and $`d=5.39(6)`$, shown as the lowest line in the figure.

Regarding the results at non-vanishing temperature, also at large quark masses we do not observe significant differences to the zero temperature data. However, the meson mass values are again plotted at the zero temperature quark masses, i.e. as a function of $`1/\kappa 1/\kappa _c(T=0)`$ with our value of $`\kappa _c`$ at $`T=0`$. In a fit to the pseudoscalar mass data over the entire $`m_q`$ range, we therefore allow for a non-vanishing chiral limit and replace $`m_q`$ by $`m_qm_q+c`$ in the ansatz eq. (5). This fit leads to the second lowest dotted curve in the lower part of Figure 2 with $`c=0.005(2)`$, $`b=2.3(1)`$ and $`d=5.9(2)`$. When fitting the vectormeson over all quark masses we observe a slightly better performance in terms of $`\chi ^2`$ of a fit including terms quadratic in $`m_q`$, $`m_V=0.413(6)+2.45(5)m_q+0.13(5)m_q^2`$, over a linear one, $`m_V=0.401(5)+2.59(1)m_q`$. The quadratic term is not large though and the intercepts have their error bars touching each other. Note however that the intercept of the quadratic fit is in slightly better accord with the result of the linear fit to the small quark mass data. The corresponding line in Figure 2 is the quadratic function.

Summarizing the results at $`T0.93T_c`$, we note that the pion (screening) mass exhibits only a very small value in the zero temperature chiral limit which could be absorbed by a slight shift in the critical kappa value. This might also be a finite size effect as the finite temperature lattice is somewhat bigger in spatial volume than the zero temperature ones. A non-vanishing temperature effect is perhaps seen in the vectormeson data which shows an enhancement of 7 to 10 % over the zero temperature data. It remains to be seen, however, whether this finding persists in the continuum limit. On the other hand, our results in the Wilson discretization are in good agreement with observations made in earlier studies using staggered fermions .

The results for the meson masses at $`\beta =6.2`$ and $`6.4`$ corresponding to the two temperatures above $`T_c`$ which are investigated here, $`T1.23T_c`$ and $`1.63T_c`$ respectively, are summarized in Figure 3. Again, we show $`m_V`$ and $`m_P`$ as a function of the quark mass $`m_q`$ with $`\kappa _c(T=0)`$ determined as explained above from fits to the combined zero temperature pion mass results  at small quark mass. The resulting critical $`\kappa `$ values are $`\kappa _c=0.14313(2)`$ and $`0.14141(3)`$ at 6.2 and 6.4, respectively.

The zero temperature data shows the same behavior as at $`\beta =6.0`$, including the linearity in $`m_q`$ of the vector meson mass up to the largest quark masses explored. At $`\beta =6.2`$ we fitted $`m_V`$ at $`T=0`$ over the entire quark mass range both, quadratically in $`m_q`$, leading to $`m_V=0.283(2)+2.61(2)m_q+0.10(4)m_q^2`$ as well as linearly, $`m_V=0.279(1)+2.65(5)m_q`$. Again, the quadratic term was found to be small and the intercepts are stable. Using only data close to the chiral limit leads to an extrapolated value of $`m_\rho =0.267(8)`$, so that the deviation from the fits to the full data set is a little larger than at $`\beta =6.0`$. The dotted lines given in Figure 3 are the quadratic fits. Note, that the data points labelled by “non-deg” indicate meson masses obtained from propagators with two quarks of non-degenerate masses. They are plotted as a function of an ”effective” quark mass $`\overline{m}_q=(m_{q,1}+m_{q,2})/2`$ and fit very well on the quadratic curves at $`T=0`$. The pseudoscalar data was again fitted with the ansatz of eq. (5) which gives $`b=1.846(8)`$ and $`d=6.22(3)`$ in this case. This is shown again as the lowest line in the figure.

At $`\beta =6.4`$ only data at small quark masses were available  and we have carried out a linear fit to the vector meson, with the result $`m_V=0.19(1)+3.23(3)m_q`$. Although $`\kappa _c(T=0)`$ was obtained from fits to $`m_P^2`$ in the vicinity of the chiral limit, in Figure 3 we only show, as lines to guide the eye, the results of fits with eq. (5) under the condition that $`m_P<m_V`$ for large $`m_q`$.

In contrast to the situation at $`T<T_c`$, at both temperatures above the transition point the screening masses are markedly different from the zero temperature results, especially at small quark mass values. The curves interpolating the non-zero temperature data are polynomials of third degree for the vectormeson at $`T=1.23T_c`$ and of second degree elsewhere. We have chosen this ansatz because above $`T_c`$ no particular functional form is known so far. The curves are the results of fits to data for degenerate quark masses and are mainly meant to guide the eye. The intercepts were obtained from these fits as $`m_\pi (1.23T_c)=0.63(2)`$, $`m_\rho (1.23T_c)=0.74(2)`$ and $`m_\pi (1.63T_c)=0.735(5)`$, $`m_\rho (1.63T_c)=0.774(8)`$ at the two temperatures respectively. They are discussed in the following.

At high temperatures one expects that the plasma consists of only weakly interacting quarks and gluons. Correspondingly, the correlation functions with mesonic quantum numbers should be described to first approximation by the free propagation of a quark-antiquark pair. In this case the exponential fall-off of the correlation functions is not dominated at large distances by a single mass originating from an isolated pole in the spectral function but rather by all possible energies of quark and antiquark with opposite “momenta” of equal size adding to zero total momentum to which the correlation functions are projected on. Correspondingly, effective masses taken from point to point correlations ($`R=0`$ in eq. (2)) exhibit a rather marked curvature as function of the separation between the meson operators. Tuning $`R`$ away from 0 leads to a suppression of higher quark momenta in the momentum sums. This way, it is possible to obtain plateau-like behavior in effective mass plots also in the free quark case. The lowest value of quark “momentum” in the temporal direction, i.e. the smallest Matsubara frequency is $`\pi T`$ due to the antiperiodic boundary condition for fermions in the $`t`$ direction. This leads to the lowest “energy” contributing to spatial correlation functions of mesonic operators of

$$m_H=2\sqrt{m_q^2+(\pi T)^2}$$
(6)
in the continuum. On a finite lattice, eq. (6) is subject to finite volume and finite lattice spacing corrections, see e.g. . In order to compare our simulation results at $`T>T_c`$ with the free quark case, we have computed the free quark propagator on a finite lattice analytically and performed the sum over all lattice “momenta” $`\stackrel{}{\stackrel{~}{p}}`$ of the quarks numerically. For definiteness, we then plot the effective mass for point to point correlations at a separation $`z=N_\sigma /4`$. This results in the solid curve shown in the upper part of Figure 3.

As in the free case, in our results from the Monte Carlo simulations we are also able to identify plateaux in the effective mass plots when the separation $`R`$, eq. (2), is tuned. The vectormeson and, to a somewhat less degree, the pseudoscalar masses approach the free quark limit as is seen from Figure 3. The remaining differences are becoming smaller with rising temperature. Moreover, the fact that the masses for non-degenerate quark combinations, plotted at $`\overline{m}_q=(m_{q,1}+m_{q,2})/2`$, are above the ones for degenerate quarks would fit into this picture as $`2\sqrt{\overline{m}_q^2+(\pi T)^2}<\sqrt{m_{q,1}^2+(\pi T)^2}+\sqrt{m_{q,2}^2+(\pi T)^2}`$. At large quark masses the Monte Carlo data exceed the free quark curve. This could be explained by noting that in the lattice version of eq. (6) we have used the bare quark mass. At the temperatures investigated one should presumably compare with an effective quark mass which also accounts for a thermal contribution . In addition, it has been argued in the context of dimensional reduction that the (confining) potential of the reduced three-dimensional theory leads to modifications of eq. (6) for screening masses . These modifications will be positive and of order $`\sqrt{\sigma _{\mathrm{spat}}}`$, where $`\sigma _{\mathrm{spat}}`$ is the string tension of spatial Wilson loops, and can be estimated to amount to an $`𝒪(10\%)`$ effect .

Finally, in Figure 4 our results are compared with data obtained in the staggered fermion discretization, both below $`T_c`$  and above . Below $`T_c`$ the $`\pi `$ and $`\rho `$ screening masses are shown in the chiral limit. The agreement between the two discretizations is evident. Above $`T_c`$ the staggered data was computed at a small bare quark mass of $`m_qa=0.02`$ while the Wilson results have been extrapolated to the chiral limit. From Figure 3, however, recall that above $`T_c`$ the screening masses are practically independent of $`m_q`$ at small quark masses. Both data sets have been rescaled by the appropriate ratio of $`2\pi `$, eq. (6), to its finite lattice size corrected value so that the data can immediately be compared with the continuum expectation for free quarks. Figure 4 shows that above $`T_c`$ the $`\rho `$ screening mass rapidly approaches $`2\pi `$. This holds in both discretizations. The pion however behaves very differently for the two lattice actions. In the Wilson case, at $`1.63T_c`$ the pion screening mass is almost degenerate with the $`\rho `$ and close to $`2\pi `$, with a $`\pi `$ to $`\rho `$ ratio of 0.95(1). The same approximate degeneracy of $`\pi `$ and $`\rho `$ screening masses has been observed in the only other quenched analysis with Wilson quarks available so far . Here a ratio of 0.955(7) has been obtained at a temperature of about $`1.5T_c`$. Quite contrary, the staggered pion screening mass is much smaller than the $`\rho `$, $`m_\pi /m_\rho =0.75(2)`$ at $`1.8T_c`$, and even at $`5T_c`$ reaches only about 75 % of two times the lowest Matsubara frequency. There is no immediate explanation at our hands at least. Possible reasons include the different symmetries of the lattice actions at non-vanishing lattice spacing although the lattice spacings are below 0.1 fm, the different aspect ratios although it is hard to see why this should affect the $`\pi `$ to $`\rho `$ ratio, and finite volume effects although those would be expected to go the opposite way. Thus, it is hoped that future systematic studies help to resolve this discrepancy between the two lattice fermion formulations.

## 4 Dispersion relation

At non-zero temperature, Lorentz invariance is broken because the temporal direction is distinguished as the direction of the four-velocity of the heat bath. As a consequence, unlike the zero temperature case where it depends on the Lorentz invariant scalar $`p^2`$, in this case the spectral density will depend on temporal and spatial components $`p_0`$ and $`\stackrel{}{p}`$ separately. At temperatures below the confinement-deconfinement transition the spectrum will still consist of particle excitations, yet, their dispersion relations might be more complicated and reflect the breaking of Lorentzian invariance. The spectral density will be of the form

$$\rho (p_0,\stackrel{}{p})=2\pi ϵ(p_0)\delta (p_0^2\omega ^2(\stackrel{}{p},T))$$
(7)
where

$$\omega ^2(\stackrel{}{p},T)=m^2+\stackrel{}{p}^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}+\mathrm{\Pi }(\stackrel{}{p},T)$$
(8)
contains the temperature dependent vacuum polarization tensor $`\mathrm{\Pi }(\stackrel{}{p},T)`$. As a simple example, assume that the temperature effects can be absorbed into a temperature dependent mass $`m(T)`$ and a coefficient $`A(T)`$ which might also be temperature dependent and different from 1,

$$\omega ^2(\stackrel{}{p},T)m^2(T)+A^2(T)\stackrel{}{p}^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}$$
(9)
Such an approximation might hold at least at small temperatures. In this case, at zero momentum the temporal correlator will decay with the so-called pole mass $`m(T)`$

$$C(\stackrel{}{p}=0,t)\mathrm{exp}(m(T)t)$$
(10)
whereas the spatial correlation function has an exponential fall-off

$$C(\stackrel{}{\stackrel{~}{p}}=0,z)\mathrm{exp}(m_{\mathrm{sc}}(T)z)$$
(11)
determined by the screening mass $`m_{\mathrm{sc}}(T)=m(T)/A(T)`$ which differs from the pole mass if $`A(T)1`$. At non-vanishing “momentum”, $`\stackrel{}{\stackrel{~}{p}}0`$, the exponential decrease of the spatial correlator is described by $`\omega _{\mathrm{sc}}`$,

$$C(\stackrel{}{\stackrel{~}{p}},z)\mathrm{exp}(\omega _{\mathrm{sc}}z)$$
(12)
where in this particularly simple example $`\omega _{\mathrm{sc}}`$ is given as

$$\omega _{\mathrm{sc}}^2=\stackrel{}{p}_{}^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2}}+\frac{\omega _n^2}{A^2}+m_{\mathrm{sc}}^2$$
(13)
Comparing different projections to Matsubara frequencies $`\omega _n=2\pi Tn`$ and to spatial momenta $`\stackrel{}{p}_{}`$ might thus reveal a dispersion relation different from the zero temperature one and, moreover, indicate a coefficient $`A`$ different from 1 and correspondingly a difference between pole and screening mass.

The formulae given above are the continuum dispersion relations. They are modified on the lattice. Zero temperature studies  have shown that a lattice dispersion of the form

$$\mathrm{sinh}^2\left(\frac{E}{2}\right)=\underset{k}{}\mathrm{sin}^2\left(\frac{p_k}{2}\right)+\mathrm{sinh}^2\left(\frac{M}{2}\right)$$
(14)
arising from an effective boson action with a nearest-neighbor kinetic term, is best capable to describe lattice data at non-zero momentum.

We investigated the lattice dispersion relation of mesons below $`T_c`$, $`T0.93T_c`$, for different quark masses and compared it with $`T=0`$ data. In Figure 5 we show our results obtained in the pseudoscalar channel at $`\kappa =0.141`$. We have plotted $`M_\pi a`$ obtained by subtracting the momentum contribution $`\mathrm{sin}^2(p_ka/2)`$ from both sides of eq. (14) where $`E`$ is the fitted coefficient of the exponential fall-off in $`z`$ of the spatial correlation function. Results at other $`\kappa `$ values investigated are very similar.

In Figure 5, a $`p_k`$ independence of the data indicates that eq. (14) is the correct dispersion relation. Indeed, it seems to be favored by the zero temperature data. As in , using a different dispersion relation led to data points rising or falling with $`p_k`$.

Regarding the data at $`T=0.93T_c`$, again we observe that the zero-temperature dispersion, eq. (14), is describing the data for non-vanishing spatial momentum components properly. Note that the figure contains data from two different lattice sizes, leading to different values for the spatial momenta. Moreover, the single data point for the lowest bosonic Matsubara frequency $`\omega _1=2\pi T`$ is also lying on the horizontal line, suggesting that the coefficient $`A`$ of eq. (13) is not too far from unity. Of course, this conclusion is tied to the applicability of eq. (13), moreover, the statistical significance is certainly not overwhelming. Nevertheless, this result might be taken as further support for the difference between pole and screening masses not being too large at $`T0.93T_c`$, see also .

In addition to the investigation below $`T_c`$, we also computed the dispersion relation in mesonic channels in the deconfined phase. The results are shown and compared with the free quark case in Figure 6. The former have been determined by fits in the same way as the masses while for the latter, to be definite we use the effective energies at $`N_\sigma /4`$, obtained from sink operators with $`R=4`$. Both, Monte Carlo as well as free quark results are somewhat dependent on the quark-antiquark distance. As can be read off the figure, at $`1.23T_c`$ the data for spatial momenta show systematic deviations from the preferred zero-temperature dispersion relation. These differences have almost disappeared at $`1.63T_c`$ and the data are becoming consistent with the zero-temperature dispersion relation which also happens to describe the free quark case. For the lowest temporal mesonic “momentum”, $`p_t=2\pi T`$, at $`1.23T_c`$ pseudoscalar and vector “energy” both are systematically lower than the corresponding results for a spatial momentum of exactly the same value showing that Lorentzian symmetry is disturbed. At $`1.63T_c`$ the data follow the free quark behavior, in particular insofar in the vector channel the “energy” at $`p_t=2\pi T`$ is much smaller than the “energy” at the same spatial momentum<sup>a</sup><sup>a</sup>aNote that this, at first sight strange behavior can easily be reproduced in the continuum if only the lowest quark Matsubara frequency would contribute to the correlation function. Of course, in this case pseudoscalar and vector channel would lead to the same result. Apparently, the interplay between higher quark momenta and the spin structure is important..

## 5 Wave function

Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes provide information about the probability of finding a pre-arranged configuration of quarks inside a hadron. Their general definition is given by

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(\stackrel{}{R})=0|𝒪(\stackrel{}{R})|H(\stackrel{}{p})$$
(15)
where, for $`|H`$ being a meson state, the operator $`𝒪(\stackrel{}{R})`$ annihilates a quark-antiquark pair with the appropriate quantum numbers separated by $`\stackrel{}{R}`$. The choice of the operator is not unique. On the lattice, Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes have been studied in Coulomb and in Landau gauge or by using various gauge-invariant definitions . The various methods treat the gluon flux tube connecting quark and antiquark in a different way so that it may not be surprising that different definitions of the amplitudes have lead to different results (see however ). Moreover, an immediate connection between the size of a hadron as extracted from the amplitudes and the measured radii has not been demonstrated. Nevertheless, the Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes do provide some qualitative insight into the quark distribution inside a hadron, and in particular they should be able to capture differences in the structure of hadronic excitations at zero and high temperature if these are present .

As a by-product of the attempt to obtain a better projection onto the ground state, in this paper we use a gauge-invariant definition of $`𝒪(\stackrel{}{R})`$ as given in eq. (2) . We analyze S-wave states only as this operator is invariant under $`90^{}`$ rotations. The Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes are determined from simultaneous two-state fits to all the correlation functions $`C_R`$ at all $`R`$ values at which they were calculated. In these fits the ground state mass was required to be the same at all $`R`$ whereas the mass of the second state as well as the amplitudes for both ground and excited state were allowed to be $`R`$ dependent. Again, the fit interval was varied and we checked for stability of the fit results under this variation as well as for agreement of the ground state mass with the numbers obtained as explained in section 3.

The procedure proved stable enough to extract the Bethe-Salpeter amplitude for the ground state as well as to obtain an estimate for the excited state. An example of the results is shown in Figure 7. Here, the wave functions have been normalized to 1 at $`R=0`$. Note that the amplitude of the excited state is vanishing at about 1/2 fm. This corresponds with the observation that at large $`R`$ effective masses approach the plateaux in effective mass plots from below, see Figure 1. The results for the excited states are more sensitive to variations of the fit interval since at small separations from the source more than one excited state can contribute whereas at large separations the excited state dies out. We will thus concentrate on the ground state results in the following.

The ground state wave functions <sup>b</sup><sup>b</sup>bThe excited states could be well fitted by the ansatz $`\mathrm{\Phi }(R)(1R/b_1)\mathrm{exp}((R/a_1)^\nu )`$ which accounts for the node in the wave function.  are fitted with slightly modified hydrogen S-wave functions ,

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(R)\mathrm{exp}((R/a_0)^\nu )$$
(16)
with the free parameters $`a_0`$ and $`\nu `$. In non-relativistic potential models the power of $`R`$ is obtained as $`\nu =1`$ for a purely Coulombic and $`\nu =3/2`$ for a linear potential. The wave functions can be used to compute an estimate of the size of the meson ,

$$r^2=d^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}}\stackrel{}{R}\left(\frac{R}{2}\right)^2\mathrm{\Phi }^2(R)/d^{\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}3}}\stackrel{}{R}\mathrm{\Phi }^2(R)=\frac{a_0^2\mathrm{\Gamma }(5/\nu )}{4^{1+1/\nu }\mathrm{\Gamma }(3/\nu )}.$$
(17)
The results of these fits to the pseudoscalar as well as vector meson ground state are summarized in Table 5. We first want to stress that the measured zero temperature wave functions, i.e. the parameter $`a_0`$ and the radius respectively, scale with $`\beta `$ as the lattice spacing when the (physical) quark mass is fixed. This is lending further support that the investigated observable is physical.

At $`T=0`$, the obtained values for the parameter $`\nu `$ lie between the values for a purely Coulombic and a purely linear potential. The values for $`\nu `$ are slightly increasing with the quark mass and they are larger for the vector meson than for the pseudoscalar. Moreover, the values for $`a_0`$ and for the radii are also increasing with the quark mass and again are larger for the vector meson than for the pseudoscalar. Both effects are consistent with the experimental observation that the $`\rho `$ meson is larger than the pion and thus probes the linear rising part of the potential at larger distances. Compared to the (Coulomb gauge) results of  at the same pseudoscalar to vector meson mass ratio, we observe perfect agreement for the parameter $`\nu `$ of the pseudoscalar ground state whereas our $`\nu `$ value for the vector meson is slightly smaller. The second moments of the meson wave functions, eq. (17), are about 10 % larger than in . Still, as reported there, we obtain radii which are about a factor two smaller than sizes obtained from form factor measurements. Whether this discrepancy is due to the quenched approximation i.e. to not taking proper account of a pion cloud still has to be speculated at the present stage.

At $`T=0.93T_c`$ the pseudoscalar as well as vector meson (spatial) wave functions agree with the (temporal) zero temperature ones at quark masses where we have data for both. This also holds for the excited state, see Figure 7. At this temperature we also have data at small quark masses so that we can attempt a chiral extrapolation. A fit to the squared radii which is linear in $`m_{PS}^2`$ leads to values of $`(r/a)_\pi ^2=7.6(6)`$ and $`(r/a)_\rho ^2=9.6(12)`$, respectively, which are in agreement within errors with the zero-temperature numbers reported in .

At the two temperatures above $`T_c`$ it is observed that the spatial wave functions in lattice units practically remain unchanged between the two $`\beta `$ values. This is distinctively different from the zero temperature situation.

In more detail, fits to the wave functions with eq. (16) return the values given in Table 5. The results for the parameter $`a_0`$ are almost independent of $`\beta `$. The parameter $`\nu `$ takes on values which are larger than at zero temperature. Close to the chiral limit, $`\nu `$ changes from about 1.4 at $`1.23T_c`$ to 1.6 at $`1.63T_c`$ for the pion while for the $`\rho `$ the change with temperature is smaller, $`\nu 1.8`$ and 1.9 respectively. The second moment of the wave function, $`r^2`$, in lattice units stays constant within errors for the $`\rho `$ while for the pion with rising temperature we observe a decrease of the central values, with error bars just overlapping. As the quark mass is increased the size of the state is slightly shrinking.

Translated to physical distances a shrinking of the states’ size with temperature is clearly oberved, Figure 8. At least qualitatively, this observation is in accord with the anticipated behavior  of

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(R)\mathrm{exp}(\sqrt{\sigma _{\mathrm{spat}}(T)\pi T}R^{3/2})$$
(18)
where $`\sigma _{\mathrm{spat}}(T)`$ is the temperature dependent string tension of spatial Wilson loops, $`\sqrt{\sigma _{\mathrm{spat}}(T)}=cg^2(T)T`$. Given the small variation of the effective coupling constant $`g(T)`$ between $`T=1.23`$ and $`1.63T_c`$, $`r^2`$ should thus shrink proportional to $`1/T^2`$ to first approximation. Indeed, this seems to hold for the vector meson whereas the variation with temperature of the pion radius is stronger. Moreover, the power of the $`R`$ dependence is not quite as anticipated. A more detailed investigation along the lines of  is planned for the future.

## 6 Conclusion

In this paper we have presented results of a lattice investigation of meson correlation functions built from improved Wilson quarks on quenched gauge field configurations. Below the confinement-deconfinement transition temperature we do not observe any significant difference between finite temperature screening masses and zero temperature masses. This agrees with earlier findings obtained in the staggered discretization. Likewise, the spatial wavefunctions at non-vanishing temperature agree with wave functions at $`T=0`$. Moreover, the dispersion relation does not seem to depend on whether the “momenta” are chosen to point in the spatial or temporal direction. This can be viewed as a hint towards the similarity of screening and pole masses as has also been reported in an earlier study on anisotropic lattices. Above the critical temperature, we have computed meson screening masses which in both cases, pseudoscalar as well as vector channel, are close to twice the lowest quark Matsubara frequency. Moreover, at $`1.63T_c`$ the “momentum” dependencies of the correlation functions are in agreement with the free quark case while at $`1.23T_c`$ the situation certainly is more complex. Finally, the spatial wave functions, at least qualitatively, behave in accord with the expectation that the temperature dependence of the spatial string tension leads to a narrowing of the wave functions with rising temperature. We thus come to conclude that above $`T_c`$ the spatial correlation functions are consistent with a leading two quark contribution. This still leaves room for infrared non-perturbative effects. Note in this respect that HTL-resummed perturbation theory does not show significant changes in (temporal) correlation functions although the underlying spectral function is quite different from the free case . It is our hope that more refined analysis techniques along the lines set in  and perhaps more systematic studies of infrared properties on large lattices extend the knowledge about hadronic excitations in the plasma phase.

## Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the TMR network ERBFMRX-CT-970122 and the DFG grant Ka 1198/4-1. The numerical work has been carried out on the CRAY T3E at the Konrad Zuse Institut Berlin and to a small part on the CRAY T3E at NIC, FZ Jülich. We thank both institutions for allocation of computer time and H. Stüben as well as N. Attig for their generous help.


text:
# Coulomb and nuclear breakup effects in the single neutron removal reaction 197Au(17C,16C𝛾)X

## Abstract

We analyze the recently obtained new data on the partial cross sections and parallel momentum distributions for transitions to ground as well as excited states of the 16C core, in the one-neutron removal reaction 197Au(17C,16C$`\gamma `$)X at the beam energy of 61 MeV/nucleon. The Coulomb and nuclear breakup components of the one-neutron removal cross sections have been calculated within a finite range distorted wave Born approximation theory and an eikonal model, respectively. The nuclear contributions dominate the partial cross sections for the core excited states. By adding the nuclear and Coulomb cross sections together, a reasonable agreement is obtained with the data for these states. The shapes of the experimental parallel momentum distributions of the core states are described well by the theory.

PACS numbers: 24.10.Eq., 25.60.-t, 25.60.Gc, 24.50.+g

KEYWORD: structure of neutron rich nuclei, Coulomb and nuclear breakup, finite range DWBA and eikonal models

The usefulness of the single nucleon transfer reactions in probing the single-particle structure of the stable nuclei, is well established (see e.g. ). The theory of these reactions developed within the framework of the distorted wave Born approximation (DWBA), has been widely used to analyze the absolute magnitudes and shapes of the measured cross sections to make the angular momentum assignments, and deduce the spectroscopic factors for the ground as well as excited states of the residual nuclei. However, the transfer reactions are not yet routinely used in probing the structure of exotic nuclei near the neutron and proton drip lines. Although the first theoretical  and experimental  studies of the feasibility of such investigations have already been reported, some formidable difficulties (see e.g. ) still persist in the application of this method to probe the exotic nuclei.

Recently, an alternative new and more versatile technique to investigate the spectroscopy of nuclei near the drip line has been developed . In this method one nucleon (usually the valence or halo one) is removed from the projectile (a) in its breakup reaction in the field of a target nucleus. The states of the core (b) populated in this reaction are identified by their gamma ($`\gamma `$) decays, whose intensities are used to measure the partial breakup cross sections for these states. The signatures of the orbital angular momentum ($`\mathrm{}`$) associated with the relative motion of different core states with respect to the valence nucleon (removed from the projectile), are provided by the corresponding parallel momentum distributions also measured in this experiment.

The practical experimental advantages of this method, such as large partial cross sections for the excitation of various bound states of the core fragment, the possibility of using thick targets, and the strong forward focusing of the reaction products, make it possible to work with the high energy projectiles of low beam intensities. This is in contrast with the existing situation in the case of transfer reactions. Furthermore, while in the latter case the angular distributions of the ejectile loose their characteristic $`\mathrm{}`$ dependence at high energies , the parallel momentum distributions of the core states in the breakup reactions still show strong dependence on the $`\mathrm{}`$ value . So far, most of the the studies of the (a,b$`\gamma `$) type of reaction have been reported for the 11Be , 12Be , 14B , and 16,17,19C  projectiles on a light 9Be target. Therefore, for these cases the breakup process is governed almost entirely by only the nuclear interaction between the projectile fragments and the target; the Coulomb breakup contributions are almost negligible for these reactions.

Using the framework of the post form distorted wave Born approximation, a theory for the Coulomb breakup reactions has recently been developed . The finite range effects are included in this theory, which can be applied to projectiles of any core fragment-valence neutron angular momentum structure. This theory has been applied rather successfully to investigate the inclusive data for the breakup of halo nuclei on heavy targets at beam energies below 100 MeV/nucleon . A recent study within this theory  of the A(a,b$`\gamma `$)X type of reaction involving halo projectile nuclei on a 208Pb target, reveals that the characteristics of this reaction are different in a Coulomb dominated process as compared to those in the nuclear dominated one. In the former case, transitions to the excited states of the core fragment are found to be very weak, which has been confirmed in a recent measurement of the 197Au(14B,13B$`\gamma `$)X reaction . The pure Coulomb breakup cross sections decrease strongly with the increasing separation energy and the $`\mathrm{}`$-value of the core-valence neutron relative motion.

In this paper, our aim is to investigate the one-neutron removal reaction of the (a,b$`\gamma `$) type induced by a non-halo nucleus on a heavy target. We would like to see if the predictions of the pure Coulomb breakup reaction in this case are different from those described above. In this context, the 17C is interesting in many respects. The ground state of this nucleus has a spin parity of $`\frac{3}{2}^+`$ , which means that the relative motion of the 16C(g.s.)-valence neutron system has a $`\mathrm{}`$ value of 2. This makes it an unlikely candidate for having a halo structure even though the corresponding one-neutron separation energy (SE) is only 0.729 MeV. Due to its non-halo nature, the breakup of this nucleus is expected to occur in regions around the distance of closest approach. Therefore, nuclear breakup cross sections are likely to be important for this case even if the measurements are performed on a heavy target. Moreover, the excited bound states of 16C can have configurations in which the relative motion between the excited core fragment and the valence neutron has a $`\mathrm{}`$ value of zero. This implies that the partial cross sections for these states of 16C may have larger values even in a Coulomb dominated breakup process.

Motivated by these facts, we undertook the analysis the 197Au(17C,16C$`\gamma `$)X reaction at the beam energy of 61 MeV/nucleon, which was measured in the same experiment in which the data were taken on a 9Be target . The detailed description of the technique and data analysis is presented in . The Doppler corrected $`\gamma `$-ray spectrum from the decay of the 16C residues produced in this reaction, is shown in Fig. 1. It shows feeding to the same states as those seen in the experiment with a 9Be target. The partial cross sections (PCS) for transitions to these states, extracted from the absolute gamma branching ratios, are shown in table I. It can be seen that the PCS to the excited states are quite substantial, which is contrary to the results of the measurements performed  with 14B (a one-neutron halo nucleus) on the same target and beam energy where no transition to the excited core states (of 13B) was observed.

In the theoretical analysis of the data, we assume that the nuclear and Coulomb breakup cross sections (calculated with different theories) can be added and that the Coulomb-nuclear interference term can be neglected. Since this reaction is essentially inclusive in nature (as the measurements are performed only for the heavy fragment), the nuclear partial cross sections (NPC) have contribution from both elastic (also known as diffraction dissociation) and inelastic (also known as stripping or breakup-fusion) breakup modes . Cross sections for both these modes were calculated  within an eikonal model  where the core-target and neutron-target interactions are treated in the black disc approximation and the optical limit of the Glauber theory , respectively. The data of Refs.  have been analyzed within this model. For the semiclassical methods to calculate the nuclear breakup cross sections, we refer to .

The pure Coulomb breakup cross sections have been calculated by using a theory formulated  within the framework of the post form distorted wave Born approximation (DWBA). Within this theory, the triple differential cross section for the reaction, $`a+tb+c+t`$, where $`a`$ is the projectile, $`t`$ the target, and $`b`$ (charged core) and $`c`$ (valence neutron) are the breakup fragments in the final channel, is given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d^3\sigma }{dE_bd\mathrm{\Omega }_bd\mathrm{\Omega }_c}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{}v_a}}\rho (E_b,\mathrm{\Omega }_b,\mathrm{\Omega }_c){\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}m}{}}|\beta _\mathrm{}m|^2,`$ (1)
where $`\rho (E_b,\mathrm{\Omega }_b,\mathrm{\Omega }_c)`$ is the appropriate  three-body phase space factor. The reduced amplitude $`\beta _\mathrm{}m`$ is defined as,

$`\widehat{\mathrm{}}\beta _\mathrm{}m=Z_{\mathrm{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫\chi _b^{()}(𝐤_b,𝐫)e^{i\delta 𝐤_c𝐫}\chi _a^{(+)}(𝐤_a,𝐫)},`$ (2)
where

$`Z_{\mathrm{}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑𝐫_1e^{i(\gamma 𝐤_c\alpha 𝐊)𝐫_1}V_{bc}(𝐫_1)u_{\mathrm{}}(r_1)Y_\mathrm{}m(\widehat{r}_1)},`$ (3)
$`\widehat{\mathrm{}}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{2\mathrm{}+1}.`$ (4)
In Eq. (2) $`\chi ^{}s`$ are the distorted waves for relative motions of the center of mass (c.m.) of $`a`$ and $`t`$ and fragment $`b`$ and $`t`$, respectively. $`𝐤_a`$, $`𝐤_b`$, and $`𝐤_c`$ are the Jacobi wave vectors associated with the relative motions of $`a`$, $`b`$ and $`c`$, respectively. The charged fragment $`b`$ interacts with the target by a point Coulomb interaction, and hence $`\chi _b^{()}(𝐤_b,𝐫)`$ is a Coulomb distorted wave with incoming wave boundary condition. The structure function $`Z_{\mathrm{}}`$ involves the radial part of the wave function ($`u_{\mathrm{}}`$) for the relative motion of the $`b`$-$`c`$ system and the corresponding interaction $`V_{bc}(𝐫_1)`$. For further theoretical details and definitions of other variables, we refer to . It may be noted that Eq. (2) treats the interaction $`V_{bc}`$ to all orders.

An alternative theory of Coulomb breakup has also been developed  within the framework of an adiabatic model. The expressions for the breakup amplitudes, within this theory, are similar to those of the finite range DWBA theory, although the two have been obtained from quite different assumptions. In the studies of breakup reactions carried out so far, the two theories produced almost identical results in most of the cases .

In calculations of both nuclear and Coulomb partial cross sections for populating a given final core fragment state, the projectile ground state is described as having a configuration in which a valence nucleon, with single particle quantum numbers ($`n\mathrm{}j`$) (see e.g. ref ) and an associated spectroscopic factor ($`C^2S`$), is coupled to the specific core state ($`I^\pi `$). The total cross section in each case is the sum  of the cross sections calculated with configurations (having non-vanishing spectroscopic factors) corresponding to all the allowed values of the channel spin.

We assume the ground state (0+) of 16C to arise from the removal of the valence neutron from the configuration ($`0d_{3/2}0^+`$, SE = 0.729 MeV) of the 17C ground state. For the excited $`2^+`$ state at 1.77 MeV, two configurations, ($`0d_{5/2}2^+`$, SE = 2.499 MeV) and ($`1s_{1/2}2^+`$, SE = 2.499 MeV) are considered. For the group of excited states near 4.1 MeV (2,3(+),4+), we assume the configurations, ($`0d_{5/2}I^\pi `$, SE = 4.829 MeV) and ($`1s_{1/2}I^\pi `$, SE = 4.829 MeV). The corresponding spectroscopic factors ($`C^2S`$) are taken from . In each case, the neutron single particle wave function has been calculated in a central Woods-Saxon well of radius 1.25 fm and diffuseness 0.7 fm. The depth of this well is adjusted to reproduce the corresponding value of SE.

Our results for the partial cross sections are shown in table I. It is evident that the theoretical partial cross sections (even the pure Coulomb breakup ones) to the excited states are quite substantial. This is in sharp contrast to the results seen in the case of such reaction studied with halo nuclei having a $`s`$-wave core(g.s.)-neutron relative motion in their ground states. It is interesting to note that the nuclear partial cross sections are quite large. For the ground state of 16C, NPC is of the similar magnitude as the corresponding Coulomb

partial cross section (CPC). However, for the excited states, the NPC dominates the CPC. This can be understood from the fact that Coulomb breakup cross sections decrease strongly as the value of SE increases, while nuclear breakup cross sections have a weaker SE dependence. Furthermore, as expected the cross sections to $`\mathrm{}`$ = 0 states are larger in comparison with those with $`\mathrm{}`$ = 2.

The sum of the NPC and CPC is in reasonable agreement with the data for the excited states. However, for the ground state, the theoretical partial cross section is more than an order of magnitude smaller than the corresponding experimental value. Similar observation was also made in the analysis of the experimental data on a 9Be target . A $`J^\pi `$ assignment of either $`\frac{1}{2}^+`$ or $`\frac{5}{2}^+`$ to the ground state of 17C could enhance the partial cross sections to the ground state of 16C, as it brings in the $`\mathrm{}=0`$ component to this transition. However, presence of this component has been ruled out in  from the measurements of the corresponding parallel momentum distribution, which is found to be broad and similar to the distribution of a $`\mathrm{}=2`$ state. This excluded the $`J^\pi =\frac{1}{2}^+`$ assignment to the 17C ground state. At the same time, with $`J^\pi =\frac{5}{2}^+`$, the calculated partial cross sections were found to be in disagreement with the data . It has been concluded  that only with the assignment $`J^\pi =\frac{3}{2}^+`$ for the ground state of 17C, the trend of the experimental partial cross sections for the excited states can be explained.

In our case the situation is similar. Of course, here the data for the parallel momentum distribution corresponding to the ground state of 16C, have larger statistical errors (see Fig. 2), which may not allow an unambiguous assignment of the $`\mathrm{}`$-value to this state. However, with the $`J^\pi `$ value of $`\frac{1}{2}^+`$ for the ground state of 17C and the corresponding spectroscopic factors , the pure Coulomb partial cross sections are found to be 690 mb, 40 mb and 89 mb corresponding to the states with excitation energies of 0.0 MeV, 1.7 MeV and 4.1 MeV, respectively. Looking at the data, these cross sections, on their own, rule out this assignment of the spin-parity to the 17C ground state. Consideration of the nuclear partial cross sections will worsen the comparison with the data even further. On the other hand, with $`J^\pi =\frac{5}{2}^+`$, the theoretical partial cross section for the transition to the ground state ($``$ 170 mb) is closer to the data. However, the cross section to the group of states at 4.1 MeV is predicted to be larger than that to the 1.77 MeV 2+ state, which is in disagreement with the pattern of the experimental data. Therefore, our calculations too suggest that the most suitable spin-parity assignment for the ground state of 17C is $`\frac{3}{2}^+`$.

Thus, the discrepancy between theoretical and experimental cross sections for the transition to the ground state of 16C can not be resolved by a different spin-parity assignment to the 17C ground state. Furthermore, the theories of the Coulomb and nuclear breakup reactions used here are quite robust; they have been used earlier to explain successfully the Coulomb and nuclear dominated data as discussed above. Although it is desirable to calculate both these cross sections on an equal footing within the same quantum mechanical theory, which would also include the Coulomb-nuclear interference terms, yet this is unlikely to explain the observed one order of magnitude difference between the data and the calculations for the 16C ground state transition. To solve this problem, a couple of possibilities are discussed in Ref. . They essentially, try to invoke mechanisms which go beyond the simple direct one-neutron removal process assumed in the present analysis. If the $`\frac{5}{2}^+`$ state lies very close to the $`\frac{3}{2}^+`$ ground state of 17C, then the coupled channel calculations for the breakup process may help in resolving this discrepancy. However, such calculations, which are difficult to perform at these high energies, have not yet been carried out.

The parallel momentum distributions (PMD) of each of the 16C core states, are shown in Fig. 2. In this figure we have shown only the pure Coulomb calculations. As stated earlier, the data have large statistical errors for the ground state transition. Even then, it appears to be a broad distribution which supports a $`d`$-wave relative motion for the core(g.s.)-neutron relative motion. For the excited states, the momentum distribution data can only be understood by a combination of the $`s`$-wave and $`d`$-wave distributions, which have narrow and broad widths respectively. However, the difference in relative contributions of these components for the excited states at 1.77 MeV and 4.1 MeV should be noted. This can be attributed to the relative difference in the spectroscopic factors for $`\mathrm{}`$ = 0 and 2 configurations in two cases. The fact that with values of $`C^2S`$ (as given table I) the shapes of the experimental PMDs are described rather well by the theory, provides further support to the assignment of a spin-parity of $`\frac{3}{2}^+`$ to the 17C ground state, as these spectroscopic factors are based upon this assumption. This conclusion is unlikely to be affected by the inclusion of the nuclear breakup in the calculations, as the shapes of the corresponding PMDs are not different from those of the Coulomb ones shown in this figure.

In summary, we investigated the role of the Coulomb and nuclear breakup mechanisms in the one-neutron removal reaction 197Au(17C,16C$`\gamma `$)X studied at the beam energy of 61 MeV/nucleon. Partial cross sections and parallel momentum distributions were measured for the ground as well as excited bound states of the core fragment 16C, by detecting the core residues in coincidence with the $`\gamma `$ rays emitted in the decay of the excited core states. Substantial partial cross sections were found for the excited core states, which is in contrast to the results seen in the case of the similar measurement performed with the one-neutron halo nucleus 14B on this target.

An important observation of our study is that while for the excitation of the core ground state the nuclear partial cross sections are of the similar magnitude as the Coulomb ones, they dominate the calculated cross sections for transitions to the excited states. The sum of these two cross sections, weighted by the spectroscopic factors taken from Ref.  (which is based on a $`\frac{3}{2}^+`$ spin-parity assignment for the ground state of 17C), is able to provide a good description of the experimental data for the partial cross sections for transitions to the excited states of the core. The dominance of the nuclear breakup effects in these data (taken on a heavy target), is reminiscent of the similar observations made  in the case of the breakup of stable nuclei. This supports the fact that 17C is not a halo nucleus even though it has a small one-neutron separation energy. However, the theory is unable to describe the data for the transition to the core ground state. Similar observations were made earlier in the measurement of this reaction on a 9Be target. This situation can not be remedied by a different spin-parity assignment for the 17C ground state.

The shapes of the parallel momentum distributions are described well by the theory. For the excited states an admixture of the $`s`$-wave and $`d`$-wave configurations with spectroscopic factors as given above is necessary to explain the shapes of the observed PMDs. Our work underlines the need for a proper quantum mechanical calculation of the nuclear and Coulomb-nuclear interference breakup terms.

Authors are thankful to other members of the experimental group, namely, T. Aumann, D. Bazin, J.A. Caggiano, B. Davids, T. Glasmacher, P.G. Hansen, R.W. Ibbotson, A. Navin, B.V. Pritychenko, H. Scheit, B.M. Sherrill, M. Steiner, and J. Yurkon, for their valuable collaboration during the experiment and for letting them use the data presented in this paper. Thanks are also due to Alex Brown for providing the spectroscopic factors and to Jeff Tostevin for the eikonal model code used here to perform the nuclear breakup calculations. One of the authors (RS) would like to express his sincere thanks to Pawel Danielewicz for his kind hospitality in the theory group of the Cyclotron Laboratory of the Michigan State University and to Gregers Hansen for several very useful and illuminating discussions. This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant PHY-0070818.


text:
# Just How Final Are Today’s Quantum Structures?Contribution to “Springer Forum: Quantum Structures – Physical, Mathematical and Epistemological Problems”, Liptovsky Jan, 1 September 1998.

## Abstract

I present a selection of conceptual and mathematical problems in the foundations of modern physics as they derive from the title question.

‘Quantum theory’ is widely believed to be the ultimate framework for the description and explanation of physical experience. Daring as such a ‘finality prognosis’ may be, any attempt at its justification will, I believe, invariably lead to qualifications: there seems to be no consensus as to how general the formal framework has to be, nor is there any commonly accepted physical interpretation, including the question whether it is necessary or even possible to go beyond the minimal, probabilistic interpretation. Moreover, there are – and have always been – some ‘clouds on the horizon’, that is, some challenging questions concerning the range of applicability of quantum theory. There is thus good reason to rephrase the finality belief into a (hopefully) tractable programme: to determine those elements of the theory that can defendably be regarded as necessary parts of any future theoretical physical framework. This is the foundational route of exploring the scope of the present quantum theory, and I will list some of the ensuing specific problems. The other line of determining the limits of the theory lays, of course, in its application in new areas of experimental research.

1. Hilbert space framework. The significance of the Hilbert space structure of quantum theory has been largely clarified through the quantum logic approach, features of the proposition lattice being exhibited as necessary, apriori conditions of any empirical scientific language. However, the existence of incommensurable sets of propositions or of physical systems with or without superselection rules must be regarded as contingent facts in this approach. Also, the underlying assumption of ideal measurements of sharp observables can be challenged as an unfounded idealisation, so that a revision of the programme could be envisaged that is based on the more general structure of effect algebras. Finally, a fundamental physical understanding of the selection of the complex field seems to be lacking.

2. Quantum-Classical Connection. It is possible to formulate conditions (such as restrictions of the set of states, or superselection rules) under which a quantum system will appear to display (approximately) classical behaviour. But a theoretical explanation of why, and under what circumstances, such classicality conditions come to be satisfied seems to be lacking. In other words, the emergence of (approximately?) classical properties in systems of increasing size or complexity has remained unexplained, and this fact has led some researchers to question the universal validity of quantum theory. In my opinion, an approach based on decoherence and environment-induced superselection seems to depend on the feasibility of a universal state vector/many minds interpretation of quantum theory. On such an interpretation, decoherence would guarantee the consistency of the descriptions of physical events given by different observers; but due to the global entanglement this would come at the expense of a relativised notion of objectivity where ‘facts’ would appear to have a rather transient nature. On a perhaps more (or more naive?) realistic view, the objective description of such classical behaviour as deterministic phase space evolution requires that on an appropriate macroscopic scale, conjugate dynamical variables have to be coexistent and thus jointly measurable, so that their quantum mechanical representatives must be unsharp observables. Thus I think that the fuzzy probability theory recently developed by Bugajski and Gudder may offer a natural unifying framework for a systematic study of the quantum-classical connection.

3. Quantum measurement problem. This is the question of whether and how the stochastic evolution of states in a measurement, viewed as a physical process subject to the laws of quantum theory can be reconciled with the determinism of the unitary Schrödinger dynamics, which does not allow the entanglement of states corresponding to different outcomes to be broken up. The fact that pointer observables, as macroscopic, classical quantities do conform with an objective description implies that their quantum representations are unsharp observables \[cf. 2. above\]. Thus a relaxation of the concept of objectification is needed that is applicable to unsharp pointers, and the question remains whether ‘unsharp objectification’ opens a way to solving the measurement problem.

4. Quantum theory and relativity. Special or general relativistic spacetime is a particular instance of a classical domain which turned out notoriously hard to unify with quantum structures. The formal problems of relativistic quantum field theory as well as the fundamental conceptual difficulties encountered in quantum gravity and quantum cosmology remain the most challenging fields of investigation for foundational research into quantum structures.

5. Axiomatics of time evolution. The measurement problem and the problem of time in quantum cosmology require a review of the assumptions underlying the unitary evolution law for closed quantum systems. A closed system is a highly idealised construct, as it becomes more and more difficult with increasing size of systems to shield them from their environment. Thus, it appears that the only conceivable ‘large’ closed system is the whole universe. Are the conditions of the theorems of Wigner and Kadison on unitary representations of dynamical maps applicable in this singular case?

6. Operational quantum theory and quantum information. On a more ‘down to earth’ note, quantum mechanics and measurement theory are presently finding exciting applications in the newly emerging field of quantum information processing. The rich structure of quantum state spaces, which encompass the phenomena of superposition and entanglement, seems to open up entirely new perspectives for enhancing the capacities of communication channels as well as the security of codes. This calls for a systematic development of quantum information theory which takes into account the full structure of quantum probability theory. I see a particularly striking observation in the fact that for certain purposes, measurements of unsharp quantum observables are more efficient than sharp measurements.

7. Quantum theory for individual objects. Is quantum theory ‘nothing more’ than a statistical theory, or could the referent of a quantum state be a single object? This question reflects a division of the quantum physics community into two distinct ‘cultures’, corresponding to the two options it addresses. The task of justifying an interpretation that goes beyond a minimal probabilistic interpretation amounts to the task of solving all the quantum puzzles and paradoxes that have made the foundations of quantum mechanics such an exciting enterprise throughout the history of this theory. The needs of quantum cosmology, and also the most recent developments in the experimentation with single microsystems, certainly encourage the search for a sound individual interpretation. Perhaps the answer lies in a fuzzy quantum logic, complemented with an unsharp quantum ontology adapted to a picture of a fuzzy, or soft micro reality.