text:
# Evolution of the stripe phase as a function of doping from a theoretical analysis of angle-resolved photoemission data

## I Introduction

At present, stripes are at the heart of the debate concerning the mechanism of superconductivity in high-temperature superconductors (HTSC). There is clear experimental evidence for static stripes in Nd-doped LSCO (Nd-LSCO, for example La1.48Nd0.4Sr0.12CuO4) from elastic neutron scattering experiments . The existence of a dynamical stripe phase in the “real” high-Tc compound LSCO or even in YBCO has been conjectured from similar diffraction patterns in the inelastic neutron scattering results . However, it has not been decided so far, whether the observed pattern is due to one-dimensional spin-inhomogeneities (i.e. stripes)  or to two-dimensional incommensurable spin-waves . In the case of YBCO near optimal doping, it has been suggested that the incommensurable fourfold neutron scattering peak is due to the dispersion of the famous 41meV commensurable (found below Tc at momentum $`𝐤=(\pi ,\pi )`$) neutron scattering peak to lower excitation energies around $`𝐤=(\pi ,\pi )`$ . From the theoretical point of view, several numerical analyses, ranging from Hartree-Fock , DMRG  to dynamical mean-field theory  indicate that stripes can be produced by purely strong-correlation effects. On the other hand, structural transformations  as well as long-range Coulomb interactions  may also play an important role in the formation of stripes.

In this article, we provide numerical arguments showing that an essential link in the chain of evidence for stripes is provided by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES): ARPES spectra show hardly any difference between LSCO (dynamical stripes candidate) and Nd-LSCO (static stripe system) . This fact was first pointed out by a semiphenomenological argument by Salkola et al. . In a previous paper, we have shown that salient spectral features of Nd-LSCO and LSCO can be explained by a model with static stripes . Here, we will show that the spectra of LSCO and Nd-LSCO can be almost quantitatively described by different types of stripe states (i.e. site-centered, bond-centered) for a wide variety of dopings. Since the experimental ARPES spectra for LSCO and Nd-LSCO are so similar and their spectra can be quantitatively described by stripe models, we argue that there must be stripes present in LSCO as well, at least in the underdoped to optimally doped regime.

If stripes are present as low-energy excitations in the high-Tc compounds, they must affect the microscopic description of the superconducting state, independently on whether they are an obstacle against superconductivity or even its driving force. In this context, an important question is, whether stripes are bond-centered or site-centered since, theoretically, bond-centered stripes have been shown to enhance superconducting pairing correlations . By analyzing the different scenarios with our technique and comparing the results with ARPES spectra for different dopings, we can decide which type of stripe (bond- or site-centered) better describes the spectrum as a function of doping.

Very recently, Zhou et al.  succeeded in measuring ARPES data on Nd-LSCO and LSCO systems with different doping levels. In the doping region beyond 12% the ARPES results reveal a dual nature of the electronic structure: The straight segments forming the “Fermi surface” in energy-integrated photoemission and the $`(\pi ,0)`$ low-energy excitations, which have been attributed to site-centered stripes for the 12% doping case , are still present but overlaid with more two-dimensional (2D) features reminiscent of a simple tight-binding band-structure for homogeneous 2D systems. Zhou et al. address the experimental question, whether the two features originate from the mixing of two different phases or whether they are intrinsic properties of the same stripe phase. In the first case (phase separation) there should a non-stripe phase with a very high carrier concentration (as estimated from the area inside the Fermi surface) coexisting with a phase of site-centered stripes. The authors remark that there is hardly evidence for such a phase in Nd-LSCO and LSCO at the doping levels under consideration . Another scenario consistent with the experimental observation would be that the system forms more and more bond-centered stripes upon increasing the doping beyond 12%. The possibility for the latter scenario was already indicated by our earlier calculations , where the spectrum of bond-centered stripes resembles the diamond-shaped two-dimensional feature observed by Zhou et al.. In the present article we will show that the evolution of the experimental ARPES with increasing doping can be described by assuming that more and more bond-centered stripes are formed at the expense of site-centered ones (as conjectured previously by Zhou et al.).

Our approach adopts the Cluster-Perturbation-Theory (CPT) developed by Senechal et al. , which consists in splitting the infinite lattice into clusters which are treated by exact diagonalization. The inter-cluster hopping terms are then treated perturbatively, so that one eventually approximates the infinite lattice. This method takes into account exactly the local correlations, which probably are the most important ones in these systems, and at the same time makes all $`k`$ points of the Brillouin Zone available. In addition, this is an ideal method to deal with a “larger unit cell” such as the one present in the stripe phase. One should, however, mention that, at this level, the method is not appropriate to explore stripe stability for a given model. As a matter of fact, this is not the aim of the present work. Rather, via this CPT approach we enforce a stripe pattern by connecting clusters with different hole dopings \[see Fig. (4)\], and study its spectral function to compare with ARPES experiments. A similar approach has been taken in Ref. , where the hole spectral function for site-centered stripe patterns was calculated within the string picture.

Our paper is organized as follows: In section II, we explain in detail how the CPT is applied to the stripe phase. In section III our numerical results are presented and compared with ARPES spectra. The content of this article is summarized in section IV. Finally, the appendix presents an alternative derivation of the CPT equation, by means of a mapping onto a hard-core fermion model. In this appendix, we show that the CPT approximation amounts to neglecting two-particle excitations within this model.

## II Technique

The computational technique for our calculation of the single-particle spectral weight $`A(𝐤,\omega )`$ and for the Green’s function is a special application of the CPT for inhomogeneous systems. This method is based on a strong-coupling perturbation expansion of the (Hubbard model’s) one-body hopping operators linking the individual unit-cells . At lowest order in this expansion, the Green’s function of the infinite lattice can be expressed (in matrix form) as:

$$G^{\mathrm{}}(𝐏,z)=\frac{G^{cluster}(z)}{1ϵ(𝐏)G^{cluster}(z)},$$
(1)
where the matrices $`G^{\mathrm{}}`$, $`G^{cluster}`$, and $`ϵ(𝐏)`$ will be defined around Eq. (2). The authors of ref. have pointed out that the above formula becomes exact in the limit of vanishing interaction ($`U/t=0`$) and, obviously, in the atomic limit ($`t=0`$), and can thus be considered as an interpolation scheme between $`t\mathrm{}`$ and $`t0`$. Notice, however, that this formula does not become exact in the $`U\mathrm{}`$ limit. In the interesting regime where the interaction and the hopping are of the same order of magnitude Sénéchal et al. have shown numerically that Eq.(1) gives as an accurate interpolation between the two limiting cases. Additionally, we have shown in our previous article  that the cluster perturbation technique is ideally suited to study inhomogeneous systems such as the stripe state in the high-Tc compounds.

In order to deal with stripes, the infinite lattice is divided into unit cells of equal size (Fig.(1a)). The unit cell is further divided into independent blocks to incorporate the stripe topology: In the example of Fig.(1), we are interested in a site-centered (“3+1”) configuration with quarter-filled metallic chains alternating with half-filled 3-leg ladders. The 3-leg ladders (here $`3\times 6`$ blocks) and quarter-filled chains (here $`1\times 12`$ with 6 holes, see Fig.(1b)) are solved by exact diagonalization, yielding the single-particle spectral function of the block. The individual Green’s functions of the blocks forming a unit-cell cluster are combined to form the Green’s function of the unit cell $`G^{cluster}`$ at “order zero”, i. e., in which the intra-cluster hopping terms are set to zero. In a second step, the intra-cluster hopping connecting the individual blocks both within the same unit cell and in different unit cells (dashed lines in Fig.(1b)) are incorporated via the cluster perturbation technique. This yields the desired Green’s function of the infinite lattice. Where it was technically feasible, we doubled the unit cell (as in Fig.(1)) and diagonalized two 3-leg ladders with a staggered magnetic field pointing in opposite directions, resulting in a $`\pi `$-phase shifted (between the AF domains) Néel order in the final configuration. This site-centered “$`3+1`$” configuration with $`\pi `$-phase shifted Néel order of stripes was first suggested by Tranquada et al. . Bond-centered stripes, on the other hand, are modeled by 2-leg ladders with alternating filling. In the following, we will refer to this bond-centered configuration as “$`2+2`$”.

Holes can propagate out of the metallic stripes into the AF insulating domains via the inter- and intra-unit-cell hoppings (dashed lines in Fig.(1)). As explained above, our method consists in “forcing” the stripe structure “by hand” in order to study the effects of this structure on the photoemission spectrum. The different hole concentration in the “metallic” and in the “antiferromagnetic” region is achieved by adjusting independently the chemical potential of the individual blocks so that the desired hole density (see Fig. 4) is obtained. This corresponds to introducing an on-site energy shift between the two blocks $`\mathrm{\Delta }1.5t`$. Physically, this shift corresponds to the energy of the stripe formation, possibly produced by a combined effect of strong correlation and of lattice distortion occurring in the low-temperature tetragonal (LTT) phase . Of course, without such an energy shift it would be impossible to obtain such large density oscillations, such as the ones shown in Fig. 4. Indeed, in a homogeneous system the amplitude of charge oscillations remains of the order or less than $`0.1`$, as shown, e. g., by DMRG calculations.

Alternatively equation(1) can be obtained by expressing the fermionic creation/annihilation operator $`c_i^{()}`$ in terms of fermionic creation and annihilation operators $`d_\alpha ^{()}`$ representing the photoemission and inverse photoemission target states $`|\alpha `$ of the diagonalized cluster. This derivation of Eq. (1) is presented in the appendix.

In Eq. (1), $`𝐏`$ is a superlattice wave vector and $`G^{\mathrm{}}`$ is the Green’s function of the “$`\mathrm{}`$-size” 2D system, however, still in a hybrid representation: real space within a cluster and Fourier-space between the clusters. This is related to the fact that $`G^{\mathrm{}}(𝐏,z)`$ is now an $`M\times M`$ matrix in the space of site indices (in the inhomogeneous stripe configuration of Fig.(1b) $`M=2\times (3\times 6)+1\times 12=96`$). Likewise, $`ϵ(𝐏)`$ and $`G^{cluster}`$ are $`M\times M`$ matrices in real space with $`ϵ(𝐏)`$ standing for the perturbation. For the situation in Fig.(1b), the only nonzero elements of the hermitian matrix $`ϵ(𝐏)`$ are represented by the dashed bonds in the figure:

$$ϵ(𝐏)_{l,m}=\{\begin{array}{cc}\hfill t:& \text{dashed bonds inside cell}\hfill \\ \hfill te^{\pm iP_{x/y}}:& \text{bonds connecting cells}\hfill \\ \hfill 0:& \text{elsewhere}\hfill \end{array}.$$
(2)
In order to facilitate diagonalization of the individual clusters, we used periodic boundary conditions along the stripe direction. In principle, this introduces hopping terms, which are not present in the infinite lattice. However, this is not a problem, since these terms can be consistently removed perturbatively by subtracting corresponding terms to the matrix elements of $`ϵ(𝐏)`$.

A complete Fourier representation of $`G^{\mathrm{}}`$ in terms of the original reciprocal lattice then yields the cluster perturbation theory (CPT) approximation .

To allow for larger block sizes, we actually diagonalized the $`t`$-$`J`$ model on the blocks to obtain the (block-) Green’s functions as an approximation for the Hubbard model’s (block-) Green’s function. The $`t`$-$`J`$ Hamiltonian is defined as

$$H=t\underset{i,j,\sigma }{}(\widehat{c}_{i,\sigma }^{}\widehat{c}_{j,\sigma }+\text{h.c.})+J\underset{i,j}{}(𝐒_i𝐒_j\frac{n_in_j}{4}).$$
(3)
The sums run over all nearest neighbor pairs $`i,j`$. No double occupancy is allowed. We have chosen the commonly accepted values $`J/t=0.4`$ and $`t0.5eV`$.

The quality of this approximation is tested by comparing single-particle spectral functions of 2+2 bond-centered stripe configurations at 12% doping based on diagonalizations of both Hubbard- and $`t`$-$`J`$ models. In Fig.(2), we show $`A(\stackrel{}{k},\omega )`$ for the standard walk through the Brillouin zone. One observes that the result for the Hubbard model ($`U=8t`$, Fig. (2a)) is very similar to the $`t`$-$`J`$ model result ($`J=0.4t`$, Fig.(2b)): The dispersion is two-dimensional, metallic-like and comparable to a tight-binding dispersion. The only difference between the figures is quantitative, namely, the different Fermi velocities and bandwidths. This difference is predominantly due to the omission of the conditional hopping terms $`J`$ in the $`t`$-$`J`$ Hamiltonian. Another reason may be due to the fact that the basic parameters of the models, the interaction strengths $`J`$ and $`U`$ have not been fine-tuned to match each other. The integrated spectral weight obtained from the two models is depicted in Fig.(3). In both cases, the occupation in momentum space $`n(\stackrel{}{k})`$ is distributed almost isotropically around the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ point. The low-energy excitations for both models indicate a two-dimensional LDA-like Fermi surface, however with additional weight at the $`(\pm \pi ,0)`$, $`(0,\pm \pi )`$ points. The additional $`(\pi ,0)`$ features are sharper in the Hubbard-model case.

Turning on the perturbation allows the holes to travel between the blocks and unit-cells. In Fig.(5), we show the electron concentration (averaged in the direction along the stripes) in the direction perpendicular to the stripes before (thick lines) and after (bars) applying CPT for the stripe configurations that are discussed in this article. As can be seen, the holes do not travel far from the domains that were originally defined, and the electron occupation hardly changes from the unperturbed setup. Therefore, the desired stripe configuration is conserved in our approach.

## III Numerical results

We proceed to the discussion of the spectra for the underdoped region: At 10 % doping, the stripes have a charge periodicity of 5 lattice constants according to the Tranquada picture. This configuration has been modeled by a $`5\times 12`$ unit cell consisting of two half-filled $`4\times 6`$ systems (stacked on top of each other) and a quarter-filled 12-site chain as displayed in Fig.(4a). Fig.(6a) shows that the spectral weight is confined in one-dimensional segments of the Brillouin zone indicating a one-dimensional Fermi surface. The low-energy excitations in Fig.(7a) are mainly located at the $`(\pm \pi ,0)`$ and $`(0,\pm \pi )`$ points in momentum space. In Fig.(8a) the single-particle spectral function for this doping is plotted directly and one observes the characteristic stripe features that have been discussed in detail in : a dispersionless band near $`(\pi ,0)`$ crossing the Fermi surface at $`(\pi ,\pi /4)`$ resulting from the one-dimensional chain oriented in $`y`$-direction, the double-peak structure at $`(\pi ,0)`$ from the hybridization of the metallic band with the top of the antiferromagnetic band and an excitation at $`(\pi /2,\pi /2)`$ at higher binding energies than at $`(\pi ,0)`$. The combined results for this doping agree very well with the recent ARPES results by Zhou et al.  giving further support for the static stripe picture by Tranquada: at least below 12% doping, charge carriers are only present in quarter-filled chains that are alternating with half-filled antiferromagnetic domains and an increasing of doping is realized by lowering the distance between the chains and therefore reducing the effective size of the antiferromagnetic domains.

The incommensuration of the quasi-elastic Neutron scattering does not increase any more beyond a doping level of 12%. The simple picture of one-dimensional chains moving closer together at the expense of antiferromagnetic undoped domains thus cannot be valid in this regime. For a doping of $`1/8`$, we have previously shown that the ARPES data can be explained by assuming that the static stripe system (Nd-LSCO) is in a state of site-centered stripes, where 3-leg antiferromagnetic ladders alternate with quarter-filled chains. Here we will address the question how to describe the system for dopings higher than $`1/8`$ or 12%.

The ARPES results by Zhou et al. suggest that LSCO and Nd-LSCO samples at 15 % doping are in a state that is still mainly in a 3+1 stripe phase since the ARPES results show all the features that have been previously observed for the $`x=0.12`$ samples: one-dimensional Fermi surface and low energy excitations located at $`(\pm \pi ,0)`$ and $`(0,\pm \pi )`$. In addition, however, low-energy excitations appear around the edge of a diamond located at the center of the Brillouin zone. These excitations are connecting the $`(\pi ,0)`$ features. Zhou et al. conjecture that bond-centered stripes are formed at the expense of site-centered ones, since it was shown in our previous calculation that bond-centered stripes do indeed exhibit such a diamond-shaped low-energy excitation pattern. This description is particularly interesting since bond-centered stripes in contrast to site-centered ones have been shown to enhance superconducting pairing correlations . Therefore, this picture may provide a link to the doping dependence of the superconducting transition temperature of LSCO. However, to be able to relate bond-centered stripes to the diamond-shaped low-energy excitations that appear in LSCO and Nd-LSCO at 15 % doping, one has to study bond-centered stripes at higher dopings than $`x=15\%`$, since, in a phase-separated state, they have to carry all the additional holes that make up the overall doping of $`x=15\%`$ of the experimental sample. Here, we study three possibilities of “overdoped” stripe configurations as displayed in Fig.(4) (labeled b,c,d consistent with the figure label of Ref. ):

b) 2+2 bond-centered configuration (AF doped), Fig.(4b): Here, one ladder is at the filling $`n=0.75`$ as in the case of 12% doping and the other ladder (previously undoped in the 12% doping case) with a filling of $`n=0.875`$ yielding an overall doping of 19 %. In this scenario the doped region extends into the antiferromagnetic domain between the charged stripes. Technically, this configuration has been realized by coupling a $`2\times 8`$ ladder (2 holes) with a $`2\times 8`$ ladder (4 holes).

c) 2+2 bond-centered configuration, Fig.(4c): Here, one ladder is at the filling $`n=0.625`$ and the other ladder stays half-filled as in the 12% doping case, again yielding an overall doping of 19 %. In this scenario the excess holes further populate the charged stripe. Technically, this configuration has been realized by coupling a $`2\times 8`$ ladder (no holes) with a $`2\times 8`$ ladder (6 holes).

d) 3+1 site-centered configuration, Fig.(4d): Here, the chain is quarter-filled ($`n=0.5`$) as in the case of 12% doping and the three-leg ladder (previously undoped in the 12% doping case) has a filling of $`n=0.89`$ yielding an overall doping of 21 %. In this scenario, the doped region extends into the antiferromagnetic domain between the charged stripes (as in case b). Technically, this configuration has been realized by coupling two $`3\times 6`$ ladders (2 holes each) with a $`1\times 12`$ chain (6 holes).

In Fig.(6 b,c,d) the electron occupation in momentum space is displayed. Neither of the three configuration shows the typical stripe signatures (one-dimensional distribution of spectral weight) but the weight is more or less isotropically distributed around the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$-point. The spectral weight in Fig.(6 c) is almost circularly distributed and resembles $`n(\stackrel{}{k})`$ of the free electron gas. The weight distribution in Figs. (6 b,d), on the other hand, is more of a diamond shape. In the “phase-separated” picture, we expect the spectral weight stemming from the above configurations (b,c,d) to be superimposed onto the spectral weight coming from the dominating 3+1 site-centered structure which is all concentrated in the one-dimensional segments in momentum space. This might be the reason that in the actual experiment Zhou and coworkers can only resolve the latter.

For the low-energy excitations, the situation is different since a much smaller energy window is integrated and therefore the experiment is more sensitive to smaller amounts of spectral weight: Here, the results of the calculation are shown in Figs. (7 b,c,d). The low-energy excitations of the 2+2 configuration c are concentrated around the $`(\pm \pi /2,\pm \pi /2)`$ points. Overlaying these excitations with the 3+1 site-centered features would not yield the experimentally observed diamond structure connecting the $`(\pi ,0)`$ excitations and therefore this configuration can be discarded. In contrast, the other 2+2 configuration b, where the extra holes are populating the antiferromagnetic domains does indeed show the experimentally observed diamond shape. In this setup, the $`(\pi ,0)`$ features are present as well. They further enhance the low-energy excitations in this region of momentum space which are due to the domains that are still in the 3+1 site-centered configuration (present at 12% doping). The doped 3+1 site-centered configuration d, where the holes extend into the antiferromagnetic region also has its low-energy excitations distributed around a diamond centered at the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ point (Fig. (7 d). However, its features are not as sharp as in Fig.(7 b). This configuration cannot be so easily discarded and might be present in the actual material.

For completeness, we display the single-particle spectral weight of the three “overdoped” stripe configurations in Figs. (8 b,c,d): Configurations b and d show a two-dimensional tight-binding-like dispersion, the difference being the large amount of spectral weight that is concentrated near the Fermi level at $`(\pi ,0)`$ for the bond-centered configuration b, which was also visible in the low-energy excitation plot (Fig.(7 b)). The other bond-centered configuration c, where all doped holes are concentrated in one ladder, only has a Fermi-level crossing at $`(\pi /2,\pi /2)`$ (“hole-pockets”) consistent with Fig.(7 c).

## IV conclusion

In this work, the cluster perturbation technique and its application to the stripe phase of high-Tc materials and related compounds has been studied in detail. The CPT has been applied to Hubbard and $`t`$-$`J`$ systems with different dopings and stripe configurations. The comparison of our results with recent ARPES data suggest that, in the case of LSCO and Nd-LSCO, stripes are present over a wide doping range. For dopings below 12% the system consists of site-centered stripes, whereas for higher dopings more and more bond-centered stripes are present at the expense of site-centered ones. In the case of bond-centered stripes at dopings higher than 12%, we have provided evidence that the excess holes prefer to proliferate out of the stripes into the AF domain.

## acknowledgments

This work owes much to fruitful discussions with Z.-X. Shen and X.J. Zhou. The authors acknowledge financial support from BMBF (05SB8WWA1) and DFG (HA1537/20-1). The calculations were carried out at the high-performance computing centers HLRS (Stuttgart) and LRZ (München).

## Appendix

The CPT expression for Green’s function of the infinite lattice, Eq. (1), can be obtained in an alternative way by mapping the fermionic operators onto “quasiparticle” operators which create the ionization and affinity states from the ground state. We discuss here for simplicity the homogeneous case, whereby the lattice is divided into equal clusters, although the extension to our case of different clusters is straightforward. Consider now the ground state $`|G`$ of the cluster Hamiltonian (say with $`N`$ particles) and the excited states $`|\alpha `$ with $`N+1`$ and $`N1`$ particles with corresponding excitation energies (including chemical potential) $`\epsilon _\alpha `$. We can think the $`|\alpha `$ as being created from the ground state via a fermionic creation operator

$$|\alpha =d_\alpha ^{}|G,$$
(4)
which must satisfy the hard-core constraint

$$\underset{\alpha }{}d_\alpha ^{}d_\alpha 1.$$
(5)
If one neglects two-particle excitations, the original fermion operators $`c_n^{}`$ ($`n`$ is the combined site and spin index within the cluster) can be expressed in terms of the $`d_\alpha ^{}`$ and $`d_\alpha `$ as

$$c_n^{}=\underset{\mu }{}T_{n,\mu }^{}d_\mu ^{}+\underset{\nu }{}S_{n,\nu }^{}d_\nu $$
(6)
with

$`T_{n,\mu }`$ $`=`$ $`G|c_n|\mu `$ (7)
$`S_{n,\nu }`$ $`=`$ $`\nu |c_n|G.`$ (8)
Here and in the following, we are using the label $`\mu `$ for $`N+1`$-particle (inverse photoemission) states, and $`\nu `$ for $`N1`$-particle (photoemission) states. Other labels will not distinguish between them. In terms of the $`c_n`$, the inter-cluster hopping part of the Hamiltonian has the general form

$$\widehat{𝒯}=\underset{n,m}{}\underset{a,b}{}𝒯_{n,m}(a,b)c_n^{}(a)c_m(b)$$
(9)
where $`a,b`$ label the individual clusters. Neglecting the two-particle excitations and the constraint, the Hamiltonian of the infinite lattice becomes

$$\widehat{H}=\widehat{H}_c+\widehat{𝒯},$$
(10)
where $`\widehat{H}_c`$ is the intra-cluster Hamiltonian

$$\widehat{H}_c=\underset{a}{}\underset{\alpha }{}\epsilon _\alpha d_\alpha ^{}(a)d_\alpha (a),$$
(11)
and we have introduced a cluster index $`a`$ for the $`d_\alpha `$. The Hamiltonian Eq.(10) is now quadratic in the $`d_\alpha `$ operators and can be readily solved exactly by Fourier transformation of the inter-cluster part $`\widehat{𝒯}`$ in the Cluster variables $`a,b`$.

We now show that the resulting Green’s function for the $`c_n`$ operators is given by Eq.(1). For convenience, we first carry out a particle-hole transformation on the operators $`d_\alpha ^{}`$,

$`p_\mu ^{}`$ $`=`$ $`d_\mu ^{}`$ (12)
$`p_\nu ^{}`$ $`=`$ $`d_\nu ,`$ (13)
such that the new operators $`p^{}`$ all create particles. Eq. (6) simplifies to

$$c_n^{}=\underset{\alpha }{}Q_{n,\alpha }^{}p_\alpha ^{},$$
(14)
where the matrix $`Q_{n,\alpha }`$ is given in terms of the $`T`$ and $`S`$ matrices in Eq. (7) as $`Q_{n,\mu }=T_{n,\mu }`$ and $`Q_{n,\nu }=S_{n,\nu }`$ . The particle-hole transformation affects $`\widehat{H}_c`$ which becomes

$$\widehat{H}_c=\underset{\alpha }{}\epsilon _\alpha \eta _\alpha \underset{a}{}p_\alpha ^{}(a)p_\alpha (a)+\text{const.},$$
(15)
with

$`\eta _\mu `$ $`=`$ $`+1`$ (16)
$`\eta _\nu `$ $`=`$ $`1,`$ (17)
and $`\widehat{𝒯}`$ is transformed to

$$\widehat{𝒯}=\underset{a,b}{}\underset{n,m}{}\underset{\alpha ,\beta }{}𝒯_{n,m}(a,b)Q_{n,\alpha }^{}Q_{m,\beta }p_\alpha ^{}(a)p_\beta (b).$$
(18)
The total Hamiltonian Eq. (10) can thus be written in the form

$$\widehat{H}=\underset{a,b}{}\underset{\alpha ,\beta }{}p_\alpha ^{}(a)h_{\alpha ,\beta }(a,b)p_\beta (b)$$
(19)
with

$$h_{\alpha ,\beta }(a,b)=\delta _{\alpha ,\beta }\epsilon _\alpha \eta _\alpha +\left(Q^{}𝒯(a,b)Q\right)_{\alpha ,\beta }.$$
(20)
The Green’s function for the $`p`$ is readily evaluated from Eq. (19)

$$p_\alpha (a),p_\beta ^{}(b)=\left(zh\right)_{\alpha a,\beta b}^1,$$
(21)
where we have considered the terms within braces as matrices in the indices $`\alpha a,\beta b`$, whereby the complex frequency $`z`$ is proportional to the identity matrix. The Green’s function for the “true” particles $`c`$ is readily obtained by inserting the transformation Eq. (14)

$$G_{an,bm}^{\mathrm{}}c_n(a),c_m^{}(b)=\left(Q\left(zh\right)^1Q^{}\right)_{\alpha a,\beta b}.$$
(22)
We now want to show that Eq. (22) is equivalent to Eq. (1).

Consider first the exact Green’s function of a single Cluster

$$G_{an,bm}^{cluster}\delta _{a,b}c_n(a),c_m^{}(a)_c.$$
(23)
By inserting Eq. (7) in its Lehmann representation, one obtains

$`G_{an,am}^{cluster}`$ $`=`$ $`\left[T(z\epsilon )^1T^{}+S(z+\epsilon )^1S^{}\right]_{n,m}`$ (24)
$`=`$ $`\left[Q(z\epsilon \eta )^1Q^{}\right]_{n,m},`$ (25)
where the matrices $`\epsilon `$ and $`\eta `$ are diagonal matrices in the indices $`\alpha ,\beta `$ with values $`\epsilon _\alpha `$, and $`\eta _\alpha `$, respectively.

Using the anticommutation rules, it is now straightforward to show that the product $`QQ^{}`$ is equal to the identity matrix $`I`$. Let us assume for a moment that $`Q`$ is a square matrix, so that $`Q`$ is a unitary matrix, and $`Q^{}Q=I`$ as well. In this way, Eq. (22) can be readily inverted yielding (we consider the matrix $`Q`$ as the identity matrix in the $`a,b`$ indices, i. e. $`Q_{na,\beta b}=\delta _{a,b}Q_{n,\beta }`$)

$`G^\mathrm{}1`$ $`=`$ $`Q\left(zh\right)Q^{}`$ (26)
$`=`$ $`Q(z\epsilon \eta Q^{}𝒯Q)Q^{}=G^{cluster1}𝒯`$ (27)
which is equivalent to Eq. (1), if one considers that $`ϵ(𝐏)`$ (Eq. 2) is nothing but the Fourier transform of $`𝒯`$ in the cluster coordinates $`a`$ and $`b`$.

Unfortunately, $`Q`$ is in general not a square matrix, as there are more single-particle excited states as particles. Therefore, one cannot easily invert Eq. (22). Nevertheless, this problem can be readily overcome. We sketch the main procedure below. The matrix $`Q_{n,\alpha }`$, say with dimensions $`R\times S`$, consists of $`R`$ row orthonormal vectors $`v_\alpha ^{(n)}`$. By appending the remaining $`SR`$ orthonormal vectors to $`Q`$, one obtains a square matrix $`\overline{Q}`$ which is now unitary. For the “extended” Green’s functions $`\overline{G}^{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`\overline{G}^{cluster}`$, obtained by replacing $`Q\overline{Q}`$ in Eqs. (22) and (25), respectively, the relation Eq. (26) obviously holds. It is now a matter of matrix algebra to show that $`G^{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`G^{cluster}`$ are given by the “upper left” $`R\times R`$ blocks (in the $`n,m`$ indices) of the respective “extended matrices, i. e.

$$G_{an,bm}^{\mathrm{}}=\overline{G}_{an,bm}^{\mathrm{}}\text{for }n,mR,$$
(28)
and the same for $`G^{cluster}`$. The last line of Eq. (26), thus, holds for the case of non-square matrices $`Q`$ as well.

In summary, we have shown that the CPT is equivalent to a mapping onto a model of hard-core fermions describing single-particle excitations from the ground state of the cluster. This fact suggest an improvement of the method whereby two-particle processes, such as spin, charge, or pair excitations are taken into account by introducing appropriate hard-core bosons.

## figures


format: text

text:
# Two-band model and MgB2 superconductivity

## References

1. J.Nagamatsu, N.Nakagawa, T.Muranaka, Y.Zenitani and J.Akimitsu, Nature 410, 63 (2001).
2. S.L.Bud’ko et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 1877 (2001).
3. G.Karapetrov et al., cond.-mat./ 0102312 (2001).
4. H.Schmidt et al., cond.-mat./ 0102389 (2001).
5. H.Kotegawa et al., cond.-mat./ 0102334 (2001).
6. W.N.Kang et al., cond.-mat./ 0102313 (2001).
7. Y.Slusky et al., cond.-mat./0102262 (2001).
8. Y.G.Zhao et al., cond.-mat./0103077 (2001).
9. J.Kortus et al., cond.-mat./0101446 (2001).
10. J.M.An, W.E.Pickett, cond.-mat./0102391 (2001).
11. J.E.Hirsh and F.Marsiglio, cond.-mat./0102479 (2001).
12. J.E.Hirsch, con.-mat./0102115 (2001).
13. J.E.Hirsch, Phys. Rev. B, 62, 14487 (2001).
14. K.D.Belashchenko et al., cond.-mat./0102290 (2001).
15. N.Kristoffel, P.Konsin and T.Örd, Rivista Nuovo Cim., 17, No 9, 1 (1994).
16. M.Imada, cond.-mat./0103006 (2001).
17. Y.Wang, T.Plackowski and A.Junod, cond.-mat./0103181 (2001).
18. N.Kristoffel, T.Örd and P.Konsin, Nuovo Cim. 16D, 311 (1994).
19. B.Lorenz, R.L.Meng and C.W.Chu, cond.-mat./0102264 (2001).
20. N.Kristoffel and P.Rubin, Physica C (to be published).
21. P.Konsin, N.Kristoffel, T.Örd, Ann. Physik 2, 279 (1993).
22. T.Örd and N.Kristoffel, J. Low Temp. Phys. 117, 253 (1999).
23. R.K.Kremer, B.J.Gibson and K.Ahn, cond.-mat./0102432 (2001).

Figure captions

Fig. 1. Dependence of $`T_c`$ on chemical potential position.

Fig. 2. Dependence of specific heat jump at $`T=T_c`$ on chemical potential position.


text:
# Pressure imbalance of FRII radio source lobes: a role of energetic proton population

## I Particle acceleration at the jet boundary

For particles with sufficiently high energies the transition layer between the jet and the ambient medium can be approximated as a surface of discontinuous velocity change, a tangential discontinuity (‘td’). If particles’ gyroradia (or mean free paths normal to the jet boundary) are comparable to the actual thickness of this shear-layer interface it becomes an efficient cosmic ray acceleration site provided the considered velocity difference, $`U`$, is relativistic and the sufficient amount of turbulence is present in the medium. The problem was extensively discussed in early eighties by Berezhko with collaborators (see the review by Berezhko 1990) and in the diffusive limit by Earl et al. (1988) and Jokipii et al. (1989). The case of a relativistic jet velocity was considered by Ostrowski (1990, 1998, 2000). The simulations (Ostrowski 1990, cf. Bednarz & Ostrowski 1996 for shock acceleration) show that in favorable conditions the acceleration process acting at relativistic tangential discontinuity of the velocity field can be very rapid, with the time scale

$$\tau _{td}=\alpha \frac{r_g}{c},$$
$`(1)`$
where $`r_g`$ is a particle gyroradius in the ambient medium and – for efficient particle scattering – the numerical factor $`\alpha `$ can be as small as $`10`$. The introduced acceleration time is coupled to the ‘acceleration length’ $`l_{td}\alpha r_g`$ due to particle advection in the jet flow. In the case of a non-relativistic jet or a small velocity gradient in the boundary shear layer the acceleration process is of the second-order in velocity and a rather slow one. Then, the ordinary second-order Fermi process in the turbulent medium can play a significant, or even a dominant role in the acceleration. The acceleration time scales can be evaluated only approximately for these processes, and - for particles residing within the considered layer - we can give an acceleration time scale estimate

$$\tau _{II}=\frac{r_g}{c}\frac{c^2}{V^2+\left(\frac{\lambda U}{D}\right)^2},$$
$`(2)`$
where $`V`$ is a turbulence velocity ($``$ the Alfvén velocity for subsonic turbulence), $`\lambda `$ is a mean particle free path normal to the jet axis and $`D`$ is a shear layer thickness. The first term in the denominator represents the second-order Fermi process, while the second term is for the viscous cosmic ray acceleration. One expects that the first term dominates at low particle energies, while the second at larger energies, with $`\tau _{II}`$ approaching the value given in Eq. (1) for $`\lambda D`$ and $`Uc`$.

## II Discussion

Conditions within the large scale jets of FRII radio sources allow for acceleration of cosmic ray protons up to energies $`10^{19}`$ eV (e.g. Rachen & Biermann 1993, Ostrowski 1998). A characteristic feature of the boundary acceleration process in a simple considered model is formation of very flat spectrum of escaping particles. It is due to the on average parallel magnetic field configuration within the shear layer, limiting the low cosmic rays escape. Such particles residing within the shear layer volume can more efficiently stream to higher energies due to acting the acceleration process than to escape diffusively off the jet. At some higher energies escape becomes substantial, leading to the spectrum cut-off formation. In the considered conditions radiative losses are insignificant for protons.

Acting of the above mentioned processes can have pronounced consequences for the jet propagation if the seed particle injection at ‘low energies’ is efficient. Accelerated particles provide a viscous agent slowing down the jet movement. Because the jet energy is transmitted mostly to high energy nuclei, this dissipative process can occur without significant radiative effects. If a jet appearing from the central source with the Lorentz factor $``$ a few slows down to mildly relativistic velocities at large distances, the dissipated jet kinetic energy can be several times larger than the one available in terminal shocks. This amount is sufficient to explain additional pressure component providing stability of radio lobes against pressure of the X-ray emitting gas.

If the above interpretation is true, then some further consequences of the discussed accelerating process may arise. In particular acceleration of nuclei could be energetically inefficient in purely electron-positron jets, leading to less efficient jet breaking at large scales. Also, if the considered energetic particles escape from the radio lobes too fast, the required internal pressure component could not be sustained. A series of such problems are under study now.

The work was supported by the Komitet Badań Naukowych through the grant PB 258/P03/99/17 (MO) and 2 P03D 00415 (MS).


text:
# Extended Brown-Rho Scaling Law with QCD Sum Rules

## Abstract

The scalar and vector self-energies obtained through QCD sum rules are introduced in Quantum Hadrodynamics (QHD) equations. The results indicate that the ratios of coupling constants to respective meson mass have a very small dependence on density. Then, an extended Brown-Rho scaling law is conjectured.

In recent years the density dependence of meson masses and meson-baryon coupling constants have received increasing interest . Medium modification of hadron properties can be seen as a manifestation of quark substructure. One of the principal reasons to study that topic is the success of Quantum Hadrodynamics (QHD)  in the relativistic description of nuclear phenomena. QHD has large success in the explanation of properties of infinite nuclear matter as well as finite nuclei. Several calculations of nuclear structure using QHD and its extensions were made obtaining a good agreement with experimental data .

QHD describes the N-N (nucleon-nucleon) interaction through mesons exchange ($`\pi `$, $`\sigma `$, $`\omega `$, $`\rho `$, etc.). However, for the purposes of this work, only the simplest QHD model, namely QHD-I, which includes nucleons ($`\psi `$) coupled with sigma ($`\sigma `$) and omega ($`\omega `$) mesons, will be considered. In spite of the pion to be the principal component of the N-N interaction, it does not play any role in the model because nuclear matter is an isotropic system with parity conservation. Analyzing the model, it is possible to verify that the real part of the scalar term ($`\sigma `$-meson) is typically of the order of several hundred MeV attractive while the real part of the time component of the vector term ($`\omega `$-meson) is typically of the order of several hundred MeV repulsive. However, the energies involved in problems of nuclear structure are only of a few tens of MeV. An energy of that order is obtained in QHD models due to a large cancellation between the scalar and vector pieces. In fact, scalar mesons produce a long range attractive potential which saturate due to the presence of a repulsive short range potential produced by vector mesons. This process of saturation can be controlled through an appropriate choice of coupling constants. However, there are strong indications that such constants, as well as meson masses, change with the density . So, the success of QHD, which uses fixed values for these amounts, must be explained.

Recent results of the effective field theory (EFT)  have verified that QHD models are consistent with symmetries of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Motivated by that, it will be very interesting to make a connection between QHD and QCD with the intention of studying coupling constants and meson masses in the medium. The natural way to make that connection take into account the nucleon self-energy. That idea was applied by Brockmann and Toki  to connect Relativistic Bruckner-Hartree-Fock Theory and Relativistic Hartree Approach. However, as it is known, the energies involved in nuclear matter problems are very lower than the energy scale of perturbative QCD. Thus, it is necessary to use a nonperturbative procedure. The indicated is the well-known method of QCD sum rules, that was introduced by Shifman, Vainshtein, and Zakharov in the late 1970’s . The QCD sum rule approach was successfully used in a lot of different problems, since hadron properties to particle decay. For the purposes of this work, the most interesting use of QCD sum rules is the possibility of describing properties of a nucleon in the medium. Indeed, QCD sum rules succeed to obtain the nucleon self-energy in terms of quarks and gluons degree of freedom . On the other hand, self-energies obtained in QHD models are dependent on coupling constants and meson masses. The objective of this work is to study these hadronic parameters of a more fundamental point of view.

To study meson-nucleon coupling constants and meson masses in nuclear matter, it is first necessary to solve the nuclear ground state within Relativistic Hartree Approximation. The energy density in the QHD-I model can be written as

$$\epsilon =\frac{1}{2}\frac{m_s^2}{g_s^2}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(s)}^2+\frac{1}{2}\frac{m_v^2}{g_v^2}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(v)}^2+\frac{\gamma }{(2\pi )^3}_0^{k_F}\text{d}^3k\sqrt{|𝐤|^2+M^2},$$
(1)
where $`M^{}`$ is the effective nucleon mass in matter, $`k_F`$ is the Fermi momentum, $`\gamma `$ is the spin-isospin degenerescence, $`g_s`$ and $`g_v`$ are, respectively, the $`\sigma `$-N and the $`\omega `$-N coupling constants and $`m_s`$ and $`m_v`$ are, respectively, the $`\sigma `$\- and $`\omega `$-meson masses. The self-energies $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(s)}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(v)}`$ can be obtained through “tadpole” Feynman diagrams resulting in

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(s)}=M^{}M=\frac{g_s^2}{m_s^2}\rho _s$$
(2)
and

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(v)}^\mu =\delta ^{\mu 0}\frac{g_v^2}{m_v^2}\rho _B,$$
(3)
Here $`M`$ is the free nucleon mass with value $`M939.`$ MeV. The baryon and the scalar densities are, respectively, given by:

$$\rho _B=\frac{\gamma }{6\pi ^2}k_F^3$$
(4)
and

$$\rho _s=\frac{\gamma M^{}}{4\pi ^2}\left[k_FE_F^{}M^2\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{k_F+E_F^{}}{M^{}}\right)\right]$$
(5)
The self-energies (2) and (3) can also be obtained through QCD sum rules. The principal ingredient of this method is the time-ordered correlation function, defined by

$$\mathrm{\Pi }_{\alpha \beta }(q)i\text{d}^4x\text{ e}^{iqx}0|T\left[\eta _\alpha (x)\overline{\eta }_\beta (0)\right]|0,$$
(6)
where $`|0`$ is the physical nonperturbative vacuum state and $`\eta _\alpha (x)`$ is an interpolating field with the quantum numbers of a nucleon. In agreement with Ref. , we have for the proton field

$$\eta (x)=ϵ_{abc}\left[t\left(u_a^TC\gamma _5d_b\right)u_c+\left(u_a^TCd_b\right)\gamma _5u_c\right],$$
(7)
where $`u`$ and $`d`$ are the up and down quark fields, $`a,`$ $`b,`$ $`c`$ are color indices, $`T`$ means transpose, $`C`$ is the charge-conjugation matrix and $`t`$ is an arbitrary real parameter. The OPE for the correlation function (6) can be generated through the following expansion for the quark propagator

$`S_{ab}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`0|T\left[q_a(x)\overline{q}_b(0)\right]|0`$ (8)
$`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \frac{\delta _{ab}}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathit{}}{x^4}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta _{ab}}{12}}\overline{q}q_{vac}+\mathrm{},`$
where $`\overline{q}q_{vac}`$ is the free quark condensate, which can be determined from the Gell-Mann-Oakes-Renner relation,

$$2m_q\overline{q}q_{vac}=m_\pi ^2f_\pi ^2\left(1+O(m_\pi ^2)\right).$$
(9)
Here, $`m_\pi =138`$ MeV is the pion mass, $`f_\pi =93`$ MeV is the pion decay constant and $`m_q=(m_u+m_d)/2`$ is the average quark mass.

The same correlation function, Eq. (6), can be described through a phenomenological anzats inspired in the nucleon Green function. With the fundamental state of the nuclear matter as vacuum and the interacting propagator in the phenomenological side, we obtain the following sum rules

$`M_N^{}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{72t5t^2}{5+2t+5t^2}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{M_B^2\overline{q}q_{\rho _B}}{\frac{1}{16\pi ^2}M_B^4+\frac{2}{3}E_qq^{}q_{\rho _B}}},`$ (10)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(v)}^{QCD}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{M_B^2q^{}q_{\rho _B}}{\frac{3}{64\pi ^2}M_B^4+\frac{1}{2}E_qq^{}q_{\rho _B}}}.`$ (11)
where $`M_B^2`$ represent the Borel mass with value near $`M_B^21`$GeV2, $`q^{}q_{\rho _B}=3\rho _B/2`$ represents the quark density, $`\overline{q}q_{\rho _B}`$ is the in-medium quark condensate  and $`E_q=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(v)}+\sqrt{𝒒^2+M_N^2}`$, with $`|𝒒|`$=270 MeV (i.e., approximately the Fermi momentum). Here, it was not take into account the continuous contribution. The expression (10), with $`t=1`$, is a generalization of the Ioffe’s formula  to finite density. The explicit dependence on the choice of the parameter $`t`$, that means, on the choice of the interpolating field, limits the significance of the Ioffe’s formula to a qualitative role at best. A more realistic value for $`t`$ can be obtained in order to do minimal the contributions coming from continuum model and high dimensional operators in OPE . This better value will be considered later. Calculating the ratio of finite-density to zero-density sum rules, we obtain

$`{\displaystyle \frac{M_N^{}}{M_N}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\overline{q}q_{\rho _B}}{\overline{q}q_{vac}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+16\pi ^2\frac{E_q}{M_B^4}\rho _N}}\right),`$ (12)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(v)}^{QCD}}{M_N}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{5+2t+5t^2}{72t5t^2}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{1+16\pi ^2\frac{E_q}{M_B^4}\rho _N}}\right){\displaystyle \frac{2}{\overline{q}q_{vac}}}\rho _N.`$ (13)
Comparing expressions (2) and (12), we have for the scalar and vector sectors, respectively,

$$\frac{g_s^2}{m_s^2}=\frac{M_N}{\rho _s}\left[\frac{\overline{q}q_{\rho _B}}{\overline{q}q_{vac}}\left(\frac{1}{1+16\pi ^2\frac{E_q}{M_B^4}\rho _B}\right)1\right]$$
(14)
and

$$\frac{g_v^2}{m_v^2}=M_N\left[\left(\frac{5+2t+5t^2}{72t5t^2}\right)\frac{2}{\overline{q}q_{vac}}\frac{1}{1+16\pi ^2\frac{E_q}{M_B^4}\rho _B}\right].$$
(15)
To analyze the expressions (12-15) is necessary to know the in-medium quark condensate, which can be written as

$$\overline{q}q_{\rho _B}=\left(1\frac{\sigma _N\rho _B}{m_\pi ^2f_\pi ^2}+\mathrm{}\right)\overline{q}q_{vac},$$
(16)
where $`\overline{q}q_{vac}`$ is given by Eq.(9) and the sigma term is estimated in Ref.  as being $`\sigma _N45\pm 10`$ MeV. The expression (16) is only been worth for low densities and considering those conditions we can write in a rude way the following approaches: $`M_B^4E_q\rho _B`$ and $`\rho _B\rho _s`$. Therefore, the scalar sector is written as

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(s)}^{QCD}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _NM_N}{m_\pi ^2f_\pi ^2}}\rho _B,`$ (17)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{g_s^2}{m_s^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _NM_N}{m_\pi ^2f_\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _B}{\rho _s}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma _NM_N}{m_\pi ^2f_\pi ^2}}.`$ (18)
With the Ioffe’s choice $`(t=1)`$, we obtain for the vector sector,

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{(v)}^{QCD}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{8m_qM_N}{m_\pi ^2f_\pi ^2}}\rho _B,`$ (19)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{g_v^2}{m_v^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{8M_Nm_q}{m_\pi ^2f_\pi ^2}}.`$ (20)
The principal conclusion obtained from equations (18) and (20) is that the ratios of coupling constants to respective meson mass are constants for low densities. Some values for these ratios are presented in table 1.

The first line of that table presents the ratios used in Ref. , which were adjusted so that QHD-I reproduces the saturation properties of the nuclear matter. On the other hand, when the self-energies (17) and (19) and the ratios (18) and (20) (low density limit) are applied in Eq.(1), and we require the usual saturation condition for nuclear matter, namely $`\epsilon /\rho _BM=15.75`$ MeV at normal nuclear matter density ($`k_F=1.42`$ fm-1), we obtain the values presented in the second line of table 1. We can observe that the QCDSR results are similar to the respective QHD-I values. However, this is not the most important result. The in-medium behavior of $`g_s^2/m_s^2`$ and $`g_v^2/m_v^2`$, named scalar and vector ratios, respectively, are the principal subject to be studied here.

Despite the fact of we have obtained the equilibrium properties of nuclear matter, the effects despised in the low density approximation must be included. For that, it is necessary to abandon Eq.(16) for the condensate and to use the familiar Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model, which give us the following expression  for the quark condensate:

$$\overline{q}q_{\rho _B}=\frac{N_cM_q}{\pi ^2}_{k_{F_{(q)}}}^{\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NJL}}\text{d}p\frac{p^2}{\sqrt{M_q^2+p^2}}$$
(21)
and

$$M_q=m_q2G_{NJL}\overline{q}q_{\rho _B}.$$
(22)
The Fermi momentum of quarks, $`k_{F_{(q)}}`$, is related to the Fermi momentum of nucleons through the density: $`\rho _q=3\rho _B`$, where $`\rho _q`$ is the quark density. Here $`N_c`$ is the color number, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NJL}`$ is a cutoff, $`G_{NJL}`$ is a coupling constant, $`m_q`$ is the current quark mass and $`M_q`$ is the constituent quark mass, which is dynamically generated by a partial restoration of chiral symmetry. With an appropriate choice of these parameters the NJL model gives us good results for the $`\pi `$-meson mass, $`f_\pi `$, constituent quark mass, condensate, etc. A good choice is $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NJL}=900`$ MeV and $`G_{NJL}=3.54/\mathrm{\Lambda }_{NJL}^2`$, for which the saturation point of nuclear matter is reproduced. The in-medium behavior of the relevant quantities $`g_s^2/m_s^2`$ and $`g_v^2/m_v^2`$, are presented on figure 1. The scalar \[Eq. (14)\] and the vector \[Eq.(15)\] ratios are represented by the solid and the dashed lines, respectively. In these calculation, a more realistic nucleon interpolating field ($`t=1.1`$)  has been used.

In summary, the expressions (17-20) are valid just for the low density region. However, some insight can be obtained from these first results: the ratios of coupling constants to respective meson masses are constants in the low density limit. Actually, the principal conclusion obtained in this work can be summarized by figure 1, where the scalar and the vector ratios are presented as functions of the density. We can observe that they have a small dependence on density and the vector ratio decrease when the density is enlarged. These results corroborate with the observation made in Ref., where the nucleon flow probing higher density requires that $`g_v/m_v`$ be independent of density at low densities and decrease slightly at high densities. The results here obtained indicate that $`(g_s/m_s)_{vac}(g_s/m_s)_{\rho _B}`$ and we can write

$$\frac{(m_s)_{\rho _B}}{(m_s)_{vac}}\frac{(g_s)_{\rho _B}}{(g_s)_{vac}},$$
(23)
The same result is valid for the vector ratio. In other words, coupling constants must change with the same rate of the respective meson mass, in order to keep the ratios unaffected. Therefore, the fact of the ratios remain constants can give us an explanation of how QHD models, that use parameters independent of density, have success to explain the bulk properties of nuclear matter. The same is not true for finite nuclei, where the scalar and vector ratios do not appear explicitly on equations. Thus, the dependence on density of coupling constants and meson masses must be important in these cases.

Equation (23) and its equivalent for the vector sector, permit one to extend the Brown-Rho (BR) scaling law  to include coupling constants in the following way:

$$\frac{M_N^{}}{M_N}\frac{f_\pi ^{}}{f_\pi }\frac{m_s^{}}{m_s}\frac{m_v^{}}{m_v}\frac{g_s^{}}{g_s}\frac{g_v^{}}{g_v},$$
(24)
where the asterisks denote in-medium quantities.

Finally, it is necessary to say that these results are valid at low densities. For nuclear matter in extreme conditions, the ratios should change  and QHD-I must present bad results. Besides, in these calculations the contributions of gluon condensates and other high terms were not included in the OPE. However, we know that the contributions of these terms for the sum rule are very small. The use of an extended version of the sum rules (10) and (11) as well as the importance of scaling for finite nuclei, are left for future works.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo) for the financial support.


text:
# New Limits on the Color-Octet Technirho Mass from its Decay to Dijets

## I Introduction

It is commonly believed that colliders such as the Tevatron (Run II) and the LHC may discover phenomena beyond the Standard Model and reveal the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. Many people believe that this new physics will be described by some sort of super-symmetric extension of the Standard Model. Nevertheless, other logical possibilities still exist and must be considered. One of these alternatives is dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking . Its best known realization, the naïve QCD-like Technicolor idea, has been severely challenged by precision measurement from LEP; however models incorporating ideas such as Walking Technicolor or Top-color assisted Technicolor can evade these difficulties. In this letter we deal with some features which are present in many non-minimal Technicolor models.

A very interesting prediction of this kind of models is the existence of color-nonsinglets resonances. Of special interest is the color octet isosinglet vector resonance called technirho. Its phenomenology has been studied by many authors  and experimental limits on its mass has been established at the Tevatron . However, Zerwekh and Rosenfeld  have shown that the traditional description of the color-octet technirho interactions can be considered incomplete. They propose a complete and explicitly gauge invariant model for the color-octet technirho interactions. An important consequence of their model is that a physical technirho does not couple to two gluons. In this letter we investigate how this result modifies the existing limit on the technirho mass coming from its decay to dijets.

The letter is organized as follow. In Section II we present the methodology we use in our calculation. Section III is devoted to the presentation of our results. Finally, in Section IV we summarize our main conclusions.

## II Methodology

Because the physical technirho does not couple to two gluons, its only contribution to dijets production is through its decay to a quark-anti-quark pair. The technirho-quarks interaction is described by the lagrangian

$$_{\text{int}}=g\mathrm{tan}\alpha \overline{\psi }\gamma ^\mu \rho _\mu ^a\frac{\lambda ^a}{2}\psi $$
(1)
where $`g`$ is the QCD coupling constant and $`\alpha `$ is the technirho-gluon mixing angle with its value given by the formula:

$$\mathrm{sin}\alpha =\frac{g}{\sqrt{2\pi }}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2.91\times 3/N_{tc}}}$$
(2)
where $`N_{tc}`$ is the number of technicolors. In this letter we take the usual value $`N_{tc}=4`$.

We wrote a FORTRAN code in order to convolute the partonic amplitudes with the partonic distribution functions CTEQ2L . In order to compare our results with experimental data, the following kinematical cuts were implemented :

$$\left|\eta \right|<2.0\text{ GeV}\text{ for both jets}$$
(3)
and

$$\left|\mathrm{cos}\theta ^{}\right|=\left|\mathrm{tanh}\left[\frac{(\eta _1\eta _2)}{2}\right]\right|<\frac{2}{3}$$
(4)
where $`\eta `$ is the pseudo-rapidity.

In our calculation we used the one loop expression for the running QCD coupling $`\alpha _{QCD}(Q^2)`$ with $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}=200`$ MeV, a renormalization scale given by $`Q^2=\widehat{s}`$***$`\widehat{s}`$ is the partonic center of mass energy and in our case corresponds to the dijets invariant massand five light quark flavors. We also assume that the technirho decay into two technipions is closed.

## III Results

Table I shows the technirho total width, for different values of the technirho mass, and the signal cross section for a $`p\overline{p}`$ collider running at a center of mass energy given by $`\sqrt{s}=1800`$ GeV.

In figure 1 we compare our result(continuous line) with the prediction obtained using the traditional description of the gluon-technirho mixing (dashed line) and with the $`95\%`$ C.L. upper limit obtained by CDF Collaboration  for a luminosity of $`106`$ pb-1 (black triangles). An extrapolation of the experimental upper limit for a luminosity of $`2000`$ pb-1 (Tevatron Run II) can be obtained from the previous one by scaling inversely with the square root of the luminosity , and it is also plotted in the same figure (white triangles).

Notice that our result is significantly smaller than the prediction of the traditional approach. In fact,according to our result, the CDF data cannot exclude any technirho mass range, which is in contradiction with the accepted limits: $`260<M_{\rho _{T8}}<470`$ GeV.

On the other hand, two mass intervals can be excluded at the Tevatron Run II: $`260<M_{\rho _{T8}}<475`$ GeV and $`600<M_{\rho _{T8}}<775`$ GeV, but an important intermediate mass interval is still allowed. Again, our result is in contradiction with the limits expected by the traditional approach: $`220<M_{\rho _{T8}}<820`$ GeV.

## IV Conclusions

In this letter we have studied the limits of the color-octet technirho through its decay to dijets in the context of a recently proposed complete model for the technirho interactions. Our results are significantly different from what is expected in the framework of the traditional approach to the technirho-gluon mixing. We show, for example, that the data from the Tevatron Run Ib can not exclude any technirho mass range. On the other hand, the Tevatron Run II can exclude masses in the range $`260<M_{\rho _{T8}}<475`$ GeV and $`600<M_{\rho _{T8}}<775`$ GeV

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Claudio Dib and Rogério Rosenfeld for their critical reading of the paper. This work was supported by a Cátedra Presidencial 1997 (Iván Schmidt).

Figure Captions

Figure 1: Our prediction for the signal cross section(continuous line), the CDF upper limits for a luminosity of 106 pb-1 (black triangles) and its extrapolation for a luminosity of 2000 pb-1 (white triangles). Also shown is the cross section predicted by the traditional approach (dashed line)


text:
# Decoherence effects of motion-induced radiation

## I Introduction and brief summary of decoherence theory

The understanding of the quantum-to-classical transition has been the subject of extensive research. The core of the problem is that the Hilbert space of allowed states of a quantum system is huge, whereas the set of states with associated classical properties is a tiny subset of the whole Hilbert space. Some questions that naturally arise are the following: which mechanism is responsible for the classical appearance of macroscopic and mesoscopic quantum systems? How are those few classical states selected from the huge Hilbert space? The common wisdom is that classicality is an emergent property induced on subsystems by their environment.

The interaction between a system S and its environment E creates entanglement (i.e. non reducible correlations) between the states of the system and those of the environment. Imagine that at a given time (say $`t=0`$) the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)`$ of S+E is a product state, that is, there are no initial correlations. We have $`|\mathrm{\Psi }(t=0)=|s|ϵ`$, where the first ket corresponds to the system state (assumed for simplicity to be in a pure state), and the second one to the environmental state, also assumed pure. When the two parts begin to interact, entanglement is generally produced. This means that at a later time $`t`$, the state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)`$ will be given by a linear superposition of the form

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)=|s_1|ϵ_1+|s_2|ϵ_2+\mathrm{}$$
(1)
where $`\{|s_i\}`$ and $`\{|ϵ_i\}`$ are states of the system and environment Hilbert spaces, respectively. If the interaction is such that the states $`|ϵ_i`$ become approximately orthogonal ($`ϵ_n|ϵ_m\delta _{nm}`$), then interference between the system states $`|s_n`$ and $`|s_m`$ will not be observed. These set of states $`\{|s_i\}`$ usually have classical properties. Any quantum superposition of them is a non-classical state, and quickly decays away into a statistical mixture of the states. The coherence of the phase relation between the components of the superposition is lost, and this process is accordingly known as decoherence. In other words, the environment monitors the different classical alternatives for the system (the different states $`|s_i`$), thereby providing which-way information, even though such information is usually unaccessible to the observer. The set of states $`\{|s_i\}`$ are called pointer states , and they are the states within the huge Hilbert space of the system that become less entangled with the environment. Perfect pointer states are those that produce no entanglement at all, so that an initial product state of S+E will remain a product state throughout the interaction time, which means that those states are robust and stay unperturbed by the interaction. All this will be illustrated in Section 3 in the particular case where the environment is the radiation field at zero temperature (vacuum field) and radiation pressure is responsible for the coupling between system (a mirror) and the environment.

A possible method to identify pointer states is called the ‘predictability sieve criterion’ , which is based on the fact that pointer states are the ones that produce least entropy and remain most pure. Let us explain these concepts. The evolution of the closed combined system S+E is unitary, so that the purity of the whole state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is preserved, i.e. $`P(\rho _{S+E})=\mathrm{Tr}\rho _{S+E}^2=1`$ for all times. However, the purity of S is not preserved. To show it one needs to calculate the reduced density matrix of the subsystem S by tracing out the environmental degrees of freedom, $`\rho _S=\mathrm{Tr}_E\rho _{S+E}`$, and then $`P(\rho _S)<1`$. The loss of purity can be associated with a loss of information about the system state. When no measurement involving the environment is made, the density matrix $`\rho _S`$ contains the state of knowledge of an observer about the system, and purity is a measure of that knowledge. Initially, there is full knowledge of the system state, which is described by a single ket state. Subsequently, the interaction with the environment produces entanglement, and part of the information about the system S is lost to the environment, causing a decrease in the purity of the system. One can also measure the information content of $`\rho _S`$ through the von Neumann entropy, $`S(\rho _S)=\mathrm{Tr}\rho _S\mathrm{log}\rho _S`$. Initially one has full information, and entropy is identically zero; as time goes on, information is lost and entropy is produced. Pointer states are least affected by the environment, so their information content is preserved and hence they produce the least entropy. The idea is then to take every state in the Hilbert space of S, calculate the von Neumann entropy at time $`t`$ produced via interaction with the environment starting from the given state of the system, and order the initial states in a tower of increasing entropy. The states that lie at the bottom of such a tower are candidates for pointer states. Finally, one must check that those states remain at the bottom when the time $`t`$ when entropy is calculated is changed, so that the states are robust pointers. If one can satisfy these conditions, one gets the pointer states of the system S. If not, there are no pointer states for the problem. When these ideas are put into practice, it is more convenient to work with the linear entropy, defined as $`S(\rho _S)=1P(\rho _S)=1\mathrm{Tr}\rho _S^2`$.

The determination of pointer states for a given problem depends both on the system and environment dynamics, as well as on their interaction. There are three different regimes: 1) When the system Hamiltonian is irrelevant, pointer states are given by the eigenstates of the system’s operators contained in the interaction Hamiltonian. A typical example is that of a measuring apparatus (the system) that has no internal dynamics, measuring an external reservoir (the environment), say a photocurrent. 2) When the system dynamics as well as the interaction are relevant, pointers come from an interplay between the two. The most thoroughly studied example is that of quantum Brownian motion (QBM), in which a particle is coupled to a set of harmonic oscillators in a thermal state, thereby suffering decoherence . Although the coupling between the system and the environment is of the type position-position, pointer states are not position eigenstates of the system because the self dynamics of the harmonic oscillator interchanges position and momentum every quarter of a cycle. It turns out that the interplay between interaction and self dynamics leads to coherent states as pointers . This second case is also the relevant one for this paper. 3) Finally, when the environment evolves much slower than the system, pointers may correspond to energy eigenstates of the system’s Hamiltonian .

In the above we have ignored the information contained in the environmental state, and that is the reason why one traces over the environmental degrees of freedom in order to find the reduced density matrix of the system. However, the information lost to the environment could be, in principle, intercepted and recovered. Performing measurements on the environment one may extract information about the decohering system. In  it is shown that the preferred pointer states remain unchanged, even when that information is kept and modifies the dynamical evolution of the system.

Another related way to study the dynamical process underlying in the quantum-to-classical transition is via phase space representations of the reduced quantum dynamics for the system S. Among the many possible representations, one of particular interest is the Wigner function $`W(x,p)`$, which is defined as a Fourier transform of the reduced density matrix. $`W(x,p)`$ is a pseudo probability distribution in phase space, and encapsulates the quantum coherence of the system in interference fringes that take both positive and negative values. Imagine that one starts with an initial state for S which is highly non classical, such as a cat state $`|\mathrm{cat}=1/\sqrt{2}(|\alpha +|\alpha )`$, where $`|\alpha `$ is a coherent state with large amplitude ($`|\alpha |1`$). The corresponding Wigner function will have interference fringes, showing the quantum nature of the state. However, when the system is put in contact with the environment and each component of the state becomes entangled with almost orthogonal states of the environment, the interference fringes will be washed out. In the end the Wigner function becomes positive defined, with two peaks at the values corresponding to $`\pm \alpha ,`$ as a true probability distribution. Decoherence transforms the initial pure state into a mixture of the two coherent states $`|\pm \alpha .`$

Until not very long ago the ideas of decoherence were restricted to the theoretical domain. Recent experimental developments have succeeded in studying in real time the process of decoherence in the laboratory, and have tested the predictions of the theory. Here we shall mention a few experiments that have been a hallmark in those developments. First, in the field of cavity QED, superposition states of photons and Rydberg atoms have been created within high-Q microwave cavities. Cat states of around 3 photons have also been produced, and it has been studied how they decay due to decoherence . The coherence of the state was monitored with the help of a measurement of correlations between two consecutive atoms crossing the cavity . Second, in the field of ion trapping, methods for creating superposed motional states of ions were developed, as well as schemes of environment engineering to protect those states from decoherence . Finally, it has been possible to push the size of the cat states further into the macroscopic realm by generating a mesoscopic cat inside a rf-SQUID. The two components of the cat correspond to superconducting currents moving either clockwise or counterclockwise, each containing around $`10^9`$ Cooper pairs .

In what we have discussed so far decoherence has been portraited as a “good” effect, in the sense that is responsible for the quantum-classical transition and the appearance of our classical world. Decoherence can also have a “bad” role in the field of quantum computation and quantum information processing. There one performs logical operations making use of the superposition states of quantum mechanics. For such operations to be successful it is very important to maintain the relative phase between the components of the superpositions all along the operations. If decoherence acts, it produces quantum errors that must be somehow corrected. Several methods have been proposed to minimize the effects of decoherence (see  for an example in nuclear magnetic resonance).

The prototype calculation of environment induced decoherence is the heuristic position-position interaction Hamiltonian for describing quantum Brownian motion, where the environment is taken to be a collection of harmonic oscillators. Although such a model is quite useful for studying many physical processes associated to dissipation and decoherence of a quantum system, the results that follow from it do not apply to every situation. That is, it is necessary to perform a case by case analysis in order to compute physical observables, such as decoherence and damping rates, how they scale with the parameters of the system, the environment, and their coupling, etc. For usual environments (thermal atoms, thermal light, phonons, etc.) it is in principle possible to design engineering schemes to protect the state of the system from decoherence, for example by reducing the coupling to the environment.

Then, the following question naturally arises: is it possible, at least in principle, to have arbitrarily weak decoherence? In this paper, we consider a fundamental source of decoherence that cannot be ‘turned off’: the radiation pressure coupling with the vacuum field . As reviewed in Sec. 2, any particle not completely transparent unavoidably scatters vacuum field fluctuations. This type of coupling is responsible for the Casimir effect. More generally, photons are created out of the vacuum field when moving boundaries are considered, an effect known as dynamical Casimir effect or motion-induced radiation. In Sec. 3, we show how the dynamical Casimir effect engenders decoherence. Our emphasis is on the basic physical ideas, and most of the calculations are referred to , but we also briefly discuss a model alternative to the one employed in this reference.

## II Dynamical Casimir effect

The Casimir effect is perhaps the simplest and most striking effect of the quantum vacuum field (see  for reviews). The essential idea is that the boundary conditions modify the spectrum of the radiation field, and thereby its zero-point energy. This modification has direct physical consequences, leading, for example, to an attractive force between two parallel perfectly-reflecting plates (of surfaces $`A`$) and at a distance $`L,`$ given by

$`F={\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2}{240}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}c}{L^4}}A.`$

A series of recent experiments  reported precision measurements of the Casimir force in agreement with the predictions of Quantum Electrodynamics, although more complete theoretical calculations, taking into account corrections due to finite temperature and conductivity as well as to roughness and geometry of the surfaces are partially yet to be done .

The Casimir force may also be computed by taking the average of the Maxwell stress tensor over the field vacuum state . This method suggests that the Casimir force is itself a fluctuating quantity, as noted by Barton. Its fluctuations were first computed for plane perfectly reflecting mirrors , and later for spherical and spheroidal particles . More generally, any particle scattering the radiation field is under the action of a fluctuating radiation pressure force exerted by the vacuum field, even in the situations where the average force vanishes (for example a single plane mirror at rest). The coupling responsible for those fluctuations also gives rise to a dissipative force, when the particle is moving in vacuum. Dissipation of the mirror’s mechanical energy is needed to enforce energy conservation, since the motion induces the emission of pairs of photons (for reviews see ). Because of their common physical origin, fluctuations and dissipation are related by a very general result , whose most known application is the Einstein relation between diffusion and friction coefficients for a Brownian particle in the high-temperature limit. This connection provides a very useful tool for deriving the response to an external small perturbation from the fluctuations in the unperturbed case. Linear response theory was employed by Jaekel and Reynaud to infer the vacuum radiation pressure force on partially-reflecting moving mirrors in the one-dimensional (1D) case . For a single perfect mirror (position $`x(t)`$) the force is given by

$$F=\frac{\mathrm{}}{6\pi c^2}\frac{d^3x}{dt^3},$$
(2)
a result first obtained by solving the boundary conditions of a moving mirror in the long wavelength approximation, and assuming the effect of the motion to be a small perturbation . Eq. (2) was also derived as the $`n\mathrm{}`$ limit of a moving half-space of refractive index $`n`$ . It also corresponds to the nonrelativistic approximation of the exact result (for a perfect mirror) derived with the help of a conformal coordinate transformation to the co-moving frame .

Since the wave equation in three dimensions is not invariant under a general conformal transformation, only approximated methods are used in this case. The dissipative force on a plane mirror was computed within the long wavelength approximation for a scalar  and electromagnetic  field models. The angular and frequency distributions of the emitted radiation were also computed for a single plane moving mirror , a moving dielectric half-space   and two parallel plane mirrors . Linear response theory was employed to derive the dissipative force on moving spheres . Small but otherwise arbitrary time-dependent deformations of an initially plane surface were analyzed with the help of different approaches: linear response theory , long wavelength approximation , and path integrals .

The magnitude of the dynamical Casimir effect may be illustrated with the following example, which we shall discuss in detail in Sec. 3. We consider that the ‘mirror’ is a particle of mass $`M`$ in a 1D harmonic potential, such that the oscillation frequency is $`\omega _0.`$ From Eq. (2), the equation of motion reads

$$\frac{d^2x}{dt^2}=\omega _0^2x+\frac{\mathrm{}}{6\pi Mc^2}\frac{d^3x}{dt^3}.$$
(3)
For any situation of physical interest, the zero point energy is much smaller than the rest mass energy: $`\mathrm{}\omega _0Mc^2.`$ In this case, (3) has solutions corresponding to oscillations damped at the rate

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }=\frac{\mathrm{}\omega _0}{12\pi Mc^2}\omega _0\omega _0,$$
(4)
showing that the dynamical Casimir effect provides a tiny perturbation of the free oscillations.

As could be expected, a larger effect takes place when field modes of a cavity resonator are coupled to the moving boundaries, mainly when the mechanical frequency lies close to a given cavity eigenfrequency. Moore considered a scalar 1D field inside a cavity where one of the mirrors follows a prescribed motion . The field modes were formally built in terms of the solution of a functional equation. This method was later developed  and extended to the case where the two mirrors are set in motion . The case of partially-transmitting mirrors was also calculated, allowing for a reliable estimation of the orders of magnitude for the rate of transmitted photons and the number of photons inside the cavity at steady-state . So far, few three-dimensional (3D) calculations along these lines have been reported. A rectangular cavity made of perfectly-reflecting moving mirrors  , and a spherical bubble with time-dependent radius  were analyzed, the latter motivated by the problem of sonoluminescence.

In this article we only consider a single scatterer, so that no resonant enhancement takes place. In this section, we have shown that the radiation pressure coupling gives rise to energy damping of a particle scattering vacuum fluctuations. In the next section, we show that it also destroys the quantum coherence of the particle.

## III Decoherence and the Casimir effect

Most treatments of the dynamical Casimir effect consider the particle that scatters the vacuum field (the ‘mirror’) to follow a prescribed motion (an exception is Ref. , which considers fluctuations of position of a particle driven by vacuum radiation pressure). In this article, however, we want to focus on the particle as the dynamical degree of freedom of interest. More specifically, we analyze how the radiation pressure coupling destroys the quantum coherence of an initial superposition state of the particle.

We consider as before that the particle is in a harmonic potential well, corresponding to a frequency of oscillation $`\omega _0.`$ The connection with the previous approaches, where the (classical) particle is assumed to follow a prescribed oscillation, is made by taking a coherent quasi-classical state $`|\alpha `$ for the particle, so that the combined particle-field state at $`t=0`$ is

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }(t=0)=|\alpha |0,$$
(5)
where we have assumed that the field is initially in the vacuum state $`|0`$. The oscillation gives rise to the emission of photon pairs at time $`t`$ at the field modes $`\lambda _1`$ and $`\lambda _2,`$ with probability amplitudes $`b(\lambda _1,\lambda _2,t):`$

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)=|\alpha \left(B(t)|0+\underset{\lambda _1,\lambda _2}{}b(\lambda _1,\lambda _2,t)|\lambda _1,\lambda _2\right),$$
(6)
where $`B(t)`$ is such that this state is normalized. As discussed in Sec. 2 (see, in particular, Eq. (4)), the energy damping associated to the dynamical Casimir effect is very small. This effect, and more generally the recoil of the particle, is neglected in (6), where the particle state is assumed not to be modified. Even at this level of approximation, there is decoherence, as we show by taking the initial state of the particle to be the cat state $`|\mathrm{cat}=(|\alpha +|\alpha )/\sqrt{2},`$ an example already mentioned in Sec. 1. It corresponds to the coherent superposition of two wavepackets oscillating out-of-phase in the harmonic potential well. The amplitudes $`b(\lambda _1,\lambda _2,t)`$ depend on the phase of the oscillation, so that they have an opposite sign when we take the state $`|\alpha .`$ Since the evolution operator is linear, the complete state at time $`t`$ is the superposition of the r.-h.-s. of (6) with the analogous state for $`|\alpha .`$ It turns out to be an entangled state of the form discussed in (1):

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)=|\alpha |ϵ^{(+)}(t)+|\alpha |ϵ^{()}(t),$$
(7)
with $`|ϵ^{(\pm )}(t)=B(t)|0\pm _{\lambda _1,\lambda _2}b(\lambda _1,\lambda _2,t)|\lambda _1,\lambda _2.`$ These field states work as tags for the particle states, providing which-way information about the phase of the oscillation. As time goes on, the information gets better defined, since

$$ϵ^{()}(t)|ϵ^{(+)}(t)=12\underset{\lambda _1,\lambda _2}{}|b(\lambda _1,\lambda _2,t)|^2$$
(8)
decreases as the probability for photon emission increases. When the emitted photons are not detected, all the relevant information about the particle is contained in the reduced matrix $`\rho (t)=\mathrm{Tr}_\mathrm{F}(|\mathrm{\Psi }(t)\mathrm{\Psi }(t)|),`$ where the trace is taken over the field states. Since the interference term is gradually washed out as a consequence of the photon emission effect and the corresponding entanglement with the field, $`\rho (t)`$ decays into the statistical mixture $`\rho _m=(|\alpha \alpha |+|\alpha \alpha |)/2.`$ The corresponding time scale $`t_d`$ may be computed  from Eq. (7), and turns out to be proportional to the energy damping time $`1/\mathrm{\Gamma },`$ which is related to the two-photon probabilities by energy conservation:

$$t_d=\frac{1}{4|\alpha |^2}\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}.$$
(9)
Eq. (9) also holds when the coupling with the environment is described by a heuristic master equation in the Lindblad form (derived with the help of the rotating-wave approximation) , as well as in the case of position-position coupling to a zero-temperature environment of harmonic oscillators, and has a very simple interpretation : if $`1/\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is the time needed to damp the energy $`2|\alpha |^2\mathrm{}\omega _0,`$ it corresponds to the emission of $`2|\alpha |^2`$ pairs of photons (each pair has a total energy equal to $`\mathrm{}\omega _0`$). On the other hand, coherence is much more delicate than energy, since a single photon provides which-way information that destroys the quantum phase of the cat state. Hence the decoherence time is the time scale for the emission of a single photon. Since $`4|\alpha |^2`$ photons are emitted during the time interval $`1/\mathrm{\Gamma },`$ the time for a single photon scales as in the r.-h.-s. of (9).

Eq. (9) only holds when $`|\alpha |1.`$ In this limit, decoherence is much faster than damping, justifying the approach of neglecting the decay of the amplitude $`\alpha `$ of the coherent states in (6) and (7). This is of course in line with the idea that in the ‘macroscopic’ limit weird non-classical states are extremely fragile and difficult to observe. For truly macroscopic systems $`t_d`$ is so short that no experimental monitoring of the decoherence process is possible. However the validity of Eq. (9) is restricted by the additional condition that decoherence is slower than the free oscillation (this condition is fulfilled by the experiments   discussed in Sec. 1). In this regime, the particle oscillates several times in the potential well before coherence is lost, and the r.-h.-s. of Eq. (9) may be written in terms of the distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }x=2\sqrt{2\mathrm{}/M\omega _0}|\alpha |`$ between the two wavepackets when they are at their turning points ($`M`$ is the mass of the particle):

$$t_d=4\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }x_0}{\mathrm{\Delta }x}\right)^2\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }},$$
(10)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }x_0=\sqrt{\mathrm{}/(2M\omega _0)}`$ is the position uncertainty of the oscillator ground state. Eq. (10) shows more explicitly that the decoherence rate scales as the squared distance in phase space between the two components of the cat state. In Eq. (9), the distance is expressed in terms of the squared difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha =2\alpha `$ between the amplitudes of the two coherent states $`|\pm \alpha .`$ Such dependence, already experimentally observed in , was fully verified in . Thus, the decoherence rate is directly connected to the quality of which-way information, for the possibility of resolving the two wavepackets is quantified by the distance between them divided by their width $`\mathrm{\Delta }x_0.`$

The second factor entering in the r.-h.-s. of (9) is the damping coefficient $`\mathrm{\Gamma }.`$ Rather than a phenomenological constant, here $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ quantifies the strength of the radiation pressure coupling to the vacuum field, and is calculated from first principles. As discussed in Sec. 2, it may be obtained directly from the expression for the dissipative radiation pressure force on the particle. In the 1D case, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is given by Eq. (4), which jointly with Eq. (9) yields

$$t_d=\frac{3}{(v/c)^2}\frac{2\pi }{\omega _0},$$
(11)
where $`v=\sqrt{2\mathrm{}\omega _0/M}|\alpha |`$ is the velocity of the wavepackets at the moment they cross the bottom of the potential well. Therefore, in the nonrelativistic limit considered in this paper, decoherence is much slower than the free oscillation. The ratio between the two time scales is even larger when considering the real 3D case. If we take a spherical perfectly-reflecting particle of radius $`R`$ smaller than the range of oscillation, then $`\omega _0R/c<v/c1.`$ Since the relevant field modes have frequencies of the order of $`\omega _0,`$ in this limit the particle is much smaller than typical wavelengths (Rayleigh scattering regime), and hence is weakly coupled to the field. The dissipative force in this regime was calculated in ; the resulting damping coefficient scales as the squared polarizability of the sphere, leading to an additional factor $`(\omega _0R/c)^6:`$

$$t_d=\frac{324}{(v/c)^2}\left(\frac{c}{\omega _0R}\right)^6\frac{2\pi }{\omega _0}\left(\frac{c}{v}\right)^8\frac{2\pi }{\omega _0}.$$
(12)
It is also possible to analyze the decoherence effect in a more complete theoretical framework, where the dynamical radiation pressure coupling between particle and field is fully taken into account. This approach also accounts properly for damping of the particle’s energy, as well as for additional effects resulting from the coupling with the field. Moreover, it allows us to analyze decoherence in the more general case of an arbitrary temperature of the field. An ab-initio Hamiltonian model for the particle-field system was derived from first principles in Ref. . This model was the starting point for the discussion of decoherence in Refs.  and . The field scattering corresponds to frequency dependent reflection and transmission coefficients that satisfy the passivity requirements discussed in . This means that the dynamics of the particle does not suffer from the instabilities associated to the model of a perfect mirror (as well known from classical electron theory, Eq. (3) is plagued with ‘runaway’ solutions).

Here we describe the radiation pressure coupling with the alternative, more intuitive model, where the interaction Hamiltonian corresponds to the energy transfer between field and particle:

$$H_{\mathrm{int}}=xF,$$
(13)
where $`F`$ is the radiation pressure force on the particle, and $`x`$ its position. This type of model was extensively employed in several contexts associated to the dynamical Casimir effect . Here we focus on the limit where the particle perfectly reflects the (1D) field, but a discussion of partially-reflecting mirrors along these lines is also possible. As shown below, it leads to results for the decoherence and damping rates in agreement with those found in Ref. .

Starting from (13), we derive a master equation for the reduced density matrix of the particle. It is similar to the master equation for QBM, derived from the position-position interaction Hamiltonian. Technically, the essential difference arises from the fact that the force operator $`F`$ in (13) is quadratic in the field operators, which leads to a damping coefficient that depends on the state (and hence temperature) of the field (reservoir). Although the formalism relies on a 1D model, the final results may be generalized to the 3D case.

We write the master equation in terms of the Wigner function $`W(x,p,t):`$

$$_tW=\frac{p}{M}_xW+M\omega _0^{}{}_{}{}^{2}x_pW+2\mathrm{\Gamma }_p(pW)+D_1\frac{^2W}{p^2}D_2\frac{^2W}{xp}.$$
(14)
The first two terms in (14) correspond to the harmonic oscillation in the potential well, with a frequency $`\omega _0^{}=\omega _0+\delta \omega `$ modified by the coupling with the field (on the other hand, when the interaction Hamiltonian is linear in the momentum of the particle, a mass correction appears ). The remaining terms describe non-unitary evolution. The damping as well as the diffusion coefficients $`D_1`$ and $`D_2`$ are time dependent and given in terms of correlation functions of the force operator. The diffusion coefficients are related to the symmetric correlation function:

$$\sigma _{FF}(t)=\{F(t),F(0)\},$$
(15)
where the brackets denote the anticommutator, and the average is taken over the field state (thermal equilibrium, temperature $`T`$).

The term proportional to $`D_2`$ in (14) yields a negligible contribution, so that we focus on $`D_1:`$

$$D_1(t)=\frac{1}{2}\frac{d\omega }{2\pi }\sigma _{FF}[\omega ]\mathrm{sync}_t(\omega ),$$
(16)
where $`\sigma _{FF}[\omega ]`$ is the Fourier transform of $`\sigma _{FF}(t)`$ and

$$\mathrm{sync}_t(\omega )=\frac{\mathrm{sin}[(\omega \omega _0)t]}{\omega \omega _0}$$

is a function peaked around $`\omega =\omega _0`$ of width $`2\pi /t.`$ Clearly, for a time $`t`$ long enough, the function $`\mathrm{sync}_t(\omega )`$ is so sharply peaked that $`\sigma _{FF}[\omega ]`$ is approximately constant over the short frequency interval that contributes in the integral in Eq. (16), and hence may be replaced by its value at $`\omega =\omega _0.`$ In this case, we find

$$D_1(t\mathrm{})=\frac{1}{4}\sigma _{FF}[\omega _0].$$
(17)
A sufficient (and also necessary at $`T=0`$) condition for the validity of (17) is $`\omega _0t1.`$ In other words, for times much longer than the period of oscillation, the field fluctuations at frequency $`\omega _0`$ provide the dominant contribution to diffusion.

The damping coefficient is likewise connected to the average value of the commutator of the force operator taken at different times (anti-symmetric correlation function). When the interaction Hamiltonian is linear in the operators of the environment, as in the position-position model, the commutator is a c-number times a delta function (in time), and as a consequence, the damping coefficient has a constant value that does not depend on the state of the environment. As already mentioned, this is not the case for radiation pressure coupling. In particular, the damping coefficient depends on the temperature of the field, as could be expected having in mind the Stefan-Boltzmann law. At zero temperature, we recover the result given by Eq. (4).

We calculate the pointer states using the predictability sieve criterion, discarding all information about the environment, as discussed in Sec. 1. We start from the master equation, and evaluate the rate of change of linear entropy, assuming an initial pure state. It is straightforward to show that the entropy is minimized for minimum uncertainty Gaussian states, hence the pointer states are the coherent states. This result agrees with the well-known fact that coherent states provide the closest possible realization of a classical state of oscillation, given the constraint imposed by the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. In short, coherent states remain approximately pure because they do not entangle with field states, at least for times shorter than the damping time $`1/\mathrm{\Gamma },`$ as shown by Eq. (6).

On the opposite extreme in Hilbert space, superpositions of coherent states are highly nonclassical and cannot last when the distance between the two components is large. This may be analyzed in detail from Eq. (14). The coherence of the initial state is imprinted on the Wigner function in the form of an interference term $`W_{\mathrm{int}}`$ that oscillates in phase space. When the two state components are spatially separated by a distance $`\mathrm{\Delta }x,`$ the oscillation is along the axis of momentum: $`W_{\mathrm{int}}(x,p)\mathrm{cos}(\mathrm{\Delta }xp/\mathrm{}).`$ Thus, according to Eq. (14), diffusion washes out this oscillatory term, the faster the larger the value of $`\mathrm{\Delta }x.`$ With an additional factor of $`2`$ to take into account the average over several free rotations of the state in phase space, we find

$$t_d=2\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{D_1(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2}.$$
(18)
To derive the decoherence time when the field is in the vacuum sate, we compute the correlation function $`\sigma _{FF}[\omega _0]`$ at zero temperature. When replacing the result for $`D_1`$ as given by (17) into (18), we obtain the same result already derived in this Section by a more elementary method.

For finite temperatures, the spectrum is approximately constant at low frequencies, so that (17) also holds when $`\omega _0kT/\mathrm{}`$ ($`k`$ is the Boltzmann constant), including the free particle limit $`\omega _0=0,`$ provided that the entire frequency interval around $`\omega _0`$ is contained in the low frequency part of the spectrum, which corresponds to the condition $`1/tkT/\mathrm{}.`$ The damping coefficient may calculated in the high temperature limit as well, and the results are in agreement with Einstein relation

$$D_1=2MkT\mathrm{\Gamma }.$$
(19)
More generally, we may derive a relation between diffusion and damping coefficients valid for arbitrary values of temperature , including $`T=0,`$ starting from the general relation between symmetric and anti-symmetric correlation functions (fluctuation-dissipation theorem).

The decoherence time for high $`T`$ is derived by replacing (19) into (18). As we discuss below, usually in this limit decoherence is faster than the free oscillation, so that, contrary to the $`T=0`$ case, there is no average over many oscillations in this case. To describe the decoherence process, we must evaluate the diffusion coefficient at a time $`t`$ much shorter than $`t_d.`$ Hence, we are allowed to use its asymptotic value as given by the Einstein relation (19) only if we assume that $`t_d\mathrm{}/(kT).`$ The resulting expression is very general , and also holds in the free particle case:

$$t_d=\frac{\lambda _T^2}{(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2}\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }},$$
(20)
where $`\lambda _T=\mathrm{}/\sqrt{2MkT}`$ is the de Broglie wavelength of a particle of mass $`M`$ in thermal equilibrium. Eq. (20) has a form similar to (10), except that now the reference of distance is set by thermal fluctuations instead of zero point fluctuations.

In order to complete the evaluation of the decoherence time, we need to evaluate the damping coefficient $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ in the high temperature limit. We consider as before a sphere of radius $`R,`$ which is usually much larger than typical field wavelengths, which are of the order of $`\mathrm{}c/(kT)`$ (except for very low temperatures or very small spheres). In this short-wavelength regime, the radiation pressure force may be calculated by replacing the surface of the sphere by a collection of tangent planes, and the final result reads

$$F=\frac{4\pi ^3}{45}\frac{(kT)^4}{\mathrm{}^3c^4}R^2\frac{dx}{dt}.$$
(21)
The force scales with the surface or cross section of the sphere, and is proportional to $`T^4,`$ in agreement with Stefan-Boltzmann law. As opposed to the vacuum case, here we have a true friction force, i.e. proportional to the velocity of the particle and not to higher-order time derivative as in Eq. (2) (the thermal field is not Lorentz invariant).

In the free case ($`\omega _0=0`$), $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is simply the coefficient multiplying the velocity in Eq. (21) divided by $`M.`$ Then, with the help of (20) we find

$$t_d=\frac{45}{8\pi ^3}\frac{\mathrm{}^5c^4}{(kT)^5R^2(\mathrm{\Delta }x)^2}.$$
(22)
Eq. (22) shows that the decoherence time depends strongly on temperature (the same temperature dependence was found in Ref. ). Even at the temperature corresponding to the cosmic background radiation, $`T=2.7\mathrm{K},`$ radiation pressure is a very efficient source of decoherence. As an example, for $`R=1\mathrm{c}\mathrm{m},`$ we have $`t_d=2.7\times 10^{21}/(\mathrm{\Delta }x[\mathrm{m}])^2\mathrm{s},`$ which is in the nanosecond range for a separation $`\mathrm{\Delta }x=1\mu \mathrm{m}.`$

## IV Conclusion

The master equation provides a complete description of the particle dynamics when no measurement on the field is made. It accounts for the renormalization of the oscillation frequency, damping, and diffusion and the associated decoherence effect. It also allows for the determination of the pointer states, and all that for any temperature $`T.`$ On the other hand, the decoherence time scale at $`T=0`$ may be calculated by a simpler approach, in which we follow the evolution of the complete particle-field state, calculated with the help of the superposition principle, and trace over the field at the very end. This approach explicitly shows that decoherence results from entanglement between particle and field states.

The decoherence induced by radiation pressure coupling with vacuum fluctuations is a very slow effect, when compared with the the time scale of the free evolution. Yet, it is remarkable, from a conceptual point-of-view, that classical behavior of a macroscopic system emerges from the formalism of Quantum Mechanics itself, even though in very long time scale, provided that the quantum vacuum radiation field is taken into account.

P.A.M.N. thanks M.T. Jaekel, A. Lambrecht and S. Reynaud for discussions, and CNPq, PRONEX and FAPERJ for partial financial support.