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# Limits Due to Instrumental Polarisation in CMB Experiments at Microwave Wavelengths

## 1 Introduction

The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which has a black–body (BB) spectrum at a thermodynamic temperature $`T_\mathrm{o}=2.728`$K (Fixsen et al., 1996), is a powerful tool to understand origin and evolution of our universe. The CMB looks almost isotropic and unpolarised and any detection of deviations from an ideal BB would be very important because they allow the estimate of cosmological parameters (Jungman et al. 1996, Zaldarriaga et al. 1997, Efstathiou & Bond 1999). Very small temperature fluctuations in the CMB have been detected at both large (Smooth et al. 1991, Bennet et al. 1996) and small (De Bernardis et al. 2000, Hanany et al. 2000, Miller et al. 1999) angular scales, but only upper limits on the CMB polarisation (CMBP) have been evaluated (Hedman et al. 2000 and see Staggs et al. 1999 for a complete list of the CMB polarisation measurements).

The analysis of the linearly polarised component of the CMB promises to be very important in the cosmological frame. In fact, the CMBP can solve the degeneracies among cosmological parameters that CMB anisotropy alone is not able to remove (Zaldarriaga et al. 1997). Moreover, it allows the separation of scalar and tensorial components of the primordial fluctuations providing a way to disentangle among different inflationary models (Kamionkowski & Kosowsky 1998).

Several microwave experiments, based on radiometric receivers, are either operating or planned to search for the CMB linear polarisation at both large and small angular scales, either from ground or from space. SPOrt111see SPOrt home page http://sport.tesre.bo.cnr.it (Cortiglioni et al. 1999), the Milano Polarimeter (Sironi et al. 1998) and POLAR222see POLAR home page http://cmb.physics.wisc.edu/polar/ (Keating et al. 1998) will operate at $`7^\mathrm{o}`$ scale by using simple optics; PIQUE333see PIQUE home page http://dicke.princeton.edu/ pique/pique.html (Hedman et al., 2000) will investigate angular scales below $`1^\mathrm{o}`$ by means of mirror optics. Both MAP444see MAP home page http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/ (Bennet et al. 1997, Wright 1999) and Planck–LFI555see Planck home page http://astro.estec.esa.nl/SA-general/Projects/Planck/ (Tauber, 2000), even though they do not have polarimeters on board, will also try to derive CMBP information at subdegree angular scale. For all of them the expected signal level is low: on $`7^\mathrm{o}`$ scale the polarised emission can be lower than 1 $`\mu `$K, while on smaller angular scales ($`<1^\mathrm{o}`$) signals can be of the order of few $`\mu `$K.

Moreover, it is well known that CMB experiments have to deal with Galactic contribution removal. In fact, the Galactic background beside its intrinsic interest, acts as a foreground for CMB experiments and only its accurate knowledge will allow detections of the CMB features (Brandt et al. 1994, Dodelson 1997, Bouchet et al. 1999, Tegmark et al 2000, Prunet et al. 1998, Kogut & Hinshaw 2000, Tucci et al. 2000a, Baccigalupi et al. 2000). Our Galaxy is featured by a smoothed linearly polarised background emission, carrying information on the Galactic structure, that has been observed at frequencies up to 2.7 GHz (Brouw & Spoelstra 1976, Junkes et al. 1987, Duncan et al. 1999, Duncan et al. 1997, Uyaniker et al. 1999, McClure-Griffiths et al. 2001, Gaensler et al. 2001), where it results to be dominated by the synchrotron emission.

No all–sky observations of polarised Galactic background have been made so far in the microwave domain, where synchrotron emission should prevails, even though it has been recently suggested that spinning and magnetic dust grain linearly polarised emission should be not negligible in the 20–70 GHz range (Draine & Lazarian 1999, Lazarian & Draine 2000, Tegmark et al. 2000). At millimeter wavelengths, saying above 100 GHz (Kogut et al. 1996), the Galactic emission is dominated by Galactic thermal dust. The expected scenario, showing that in any case the antenna temperatures to be detected are extremely low, is represented in Figure 1.

In spite of this, most of the noise in CMBP experiments would come from the CMB itself, because such experiment must detect a very weak signal (few $`\mu `$K or less) in presence of the strong unpolarised background $`T_\mathrm{o}`$. In addition, the instrumental noise and the atmospheric emission (for ground based experiments) contribute to the total signal collected by the instrument making stronger and variable this unpolarised (unwanted) component.

The losses of radiometer components will transform such an unpolarised part of the input signal in a so called spurious polarised component, which should be kept, in principle, lower than the genuine polarised signal to be searched (namely lower than 1 $`\mu `$K). Every experiment has to deal with such instrumental offsets, which are also detected as genuine polarisation, but they are not. Then, even though in certain conditions suitable scanning strategies or signal modulation techniques may allow the extraction of the true signal by post–processing data analysis (for instance cfr. Revenu et al. 2000, Carretti et al. 2000, Carretti et al. 2001), the common baseline is to keep offsets as low as possible.

However, the most important problem introduced by the offset are its fluctuations, which can strongly degrade the instrument sensitivity. The radiometer sensitivity equation may be written as (Wollack & Pospieszalski 1998, Wollack 1995):

$$\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{rms}}=\sqrt{\frac{k^2T_{\mathrm{sys}}^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }\nu \tau }+T_{\mathrm{offset}}^2\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }G}{G}\right)^2+\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{offset}}^2}$$
(1)
being $`T_{\mathrm{sys}}`$, $`T_{\mathrm{offset}}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{offset}}`$ the system temperature, the offset equivalent temperature and its fluctuation, respectively; $`G`$ is the radiometer gain, $`\tau `$ the integration time, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ the radiofrequency bandwidth and $`k`$ a constant depending on the radiometer type. The first term represents the white noise of an ideal and stable radiometer; both the second and the third terms represent additional noise generated by instrument instabilities driven by the offset.

The main aim of this work is to analyse some usual configuration of microwave polarimeters with respect to the offset generation, to evaluate the effect on the sensitivity degradation introduced by the offset itself. This analysis considers only correlation polarimeters, which are intrinsically more stable with respect to other configurations.

## 2 $`𝐐`$ and $`𝐔`$ Stokes Parameters Measurements

The polarisation status of the radiation is usually described by the Stokes parameters $`I`$, $`Q`$, $`U`$ and $`V`$ (see, for instance, Kraus 1987, Rohlfs & Wilson 2000). The linearly polarised component is fully defined by $`Q`$ and $`U`$, which give the linear polarised intensity and the polarisation angle:

$`I_p`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{Q^2+U^2}`$ (2)
$`\alpha `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{tan}^1(U/Q).`$ (3)
$`V`$ and $`I`$ represent the circularly polarised component and the total emission (unpolarised + polarised), respectively.

Since both the CMB and the Galactic emission are expected to be (partially) linearly polarised, with negligible circular polarisation ($`V0`$), this paper deals only with the $`Q`$ and $`U`$ detection.

$`Q`$ and $`U`$ Stokes parameter measurements using correlation instruments can be carried on in several ways (for instance see SPOrt, Milano Polarimeter, POLAR, PIQUE). However, all of them multiply the two signals, saying $`A`$ and $`B`$ coming from the antenna system, providing two outputs that, using a Fourier spectral representation, can be expressed as:

$`O_1`$ $``$ $`2\mathrm{}(AB^{})`$
$`O_2`$ $``$ $`2\mathrm{}(AB^{})`$ (4)
These instruments can be divided into two groups with respect to the signals to be correlated, depending on the characteristics of the antenna system. In fact, the two signals $`A`$ and $`B`$ can represent either the two circularly or the two linearly polarised components of the incoming radiation.

In the case where $`A`$ and $`B`$ are the right–hand and left–hand circularly polarised components, respectively, the two correlator outputs are proportional to $`Q`$ and $`U`$:

$`O_1`$ $``$ $`2\mathrm{}(E_RE_L^{})=Q`$
$`O_2`$ $``$ $`2\mathrm{}(E_RE_L^{})=U`$ (5)
and they provide a direct and a simultaneous measurement of the two Stokes parameters describing the linear polarisation.

Differently, if $`AE_X`$ and $`BE_Y`$ are the two linearly polarised components with respect to the cartesian reference frame of the instrument, the two correlator outputs are proportional to $`U`$ and $`V`$:

$`O_1`$ $``$ $`2\mathrm{}(E_XE_Y^{})=U`$
$`O_2`$ $``$ $`2\mathrm{}(E_XE_Y^{})=V`$ (6)
providing only one (U) of the two Stokes parameters needed to describe the linear polarisation. However, a rotation of the reference frame converts $`Q`$ into $`U`$ and viceversa through:

$`Q`$ $`=`$ $`Q_0\mathrm{cos}(2\beta )+U_0\mathrm{sin}(2\beta ),`$ (7)
$`U`$ $`=`$ $`U_0\mathrm{cos}(2\beta )Q_0\mathrm{sin}(2\beta ),`$ (8)
where $`\beta `$ is the rotation angle of the antenna around its axis. In this way, the measurement of $`Q`$ can be done with $`\beta =45^\mathrm{o}`$, so that the two parameters can be obtained sequentially. Since this configuration does not provide simultaneously $`Q`$ and $`U`$ its time efficiency is reduced of 50% with respect to the previous configuration, where circularly polarized components are used.

## 3 Spurious Polarisation

In the previous section the outputs for an ideal polarimeter have been described. In real instruments the two channels $`A`$ and $`B`$ are not completed isolated. Hence, they are partially correlated also in presence of unpolarised radiation only.

Such a contamination can be generated only in common parts, that is where signals propagate together (in the same device) and they can cross each to the other. In correlation polarimeters the common parts are the antenna system as well as the correlation unit (see Figure 2).

In order to estimate how these effects can influence the measured outputs $`Q^{}`$ and $`U^{}`$, they will be analyzed with respect to the actual (from the sky) values of the whole Stokes parameters set ($`I`$, $`Q`$, $`U`$, $`V`$).

The contaminated signals $`A^{}`$ and $`B^{}`$ at the output of a device can be expressed, with respect to the ideal ones $`A`$ and $`B`$, as

$`A^{}`$ $`=`$ $`A+bB,`$ (9)
$`B^{}`$ $`=`$ $`aA+B,`$ (10)
where $`a`$ ($`b`$) represents the fractional contamination of $`A`$ ($`B`$) in $`B^{}`$ ($`A^{}`$). Since spurious contributions can be also phase shifted with respect to the parent signals, both $`a`$ and $`b`$ are complex values.

By substituting $`A^{}`$ and $`B^{}`$ in equations 4, through equations 5 (circularly polarised components), the measured $`Q^{}`$ and $`U^{}`$ after correlation are

$`Q^{}`$ $`=`$ $`Q\left[1+\mathrm{}(ab^{})/2\right]`$ (11)
$``$ $`U\left[\mathrm{}(ab^{})/2\right]`$
$`+`$ $`I\left[\mathrm{}(a)+\mathrm{}(b)\right]`$
$`+`$ $`V\left[\mathrm{}(a)\mathrm{}(b)\right],`$
$`U^{}`$ $`=`$ $`U\left[1\mathrm{}(ab^{})/2\right]`$ (12)
$``$ $`Q\left[\mathrm{}(ab^{})/2\right]`$
$``$ $`I\left[\mathrm{}(a)\mathrm{}(b)\right]`$
$``$ $`V\left[\mathrm{}(a)+\mathrm{}(b)\right],`$
That clearly shows $`Q^{}`$ and $`U^{}`$ be contamined by the all Stokes parameters. Since $`|a|,|b|<<1`$ and $`V0`$ (no circular polarisation), the most relevant contamination is due to $`I`$. This is particularly true for CMBP experiments, where $`I`$ (i.e. the total emission) is $`6÷7`$ order of magnitude greater than (expected) $`Q`$ and $`U`$.

In the case of linearly polarised components (equations 6), the quantity $`U^{}`$ is given by

$`U^{}`$ $`=`$ $`U\left[1+\mathrm{}(ab^{})/2\right]`$ (13)
$``$ $`V\left[\mathrm{}(ab^{})/2\right]`$
$`+`$ $`I\left[\mathrm{}(a)+\mathrm{}(b)\right]`$
$`+`$ $`Q\left[\mathrm{}(a)\mathrm{}(b)\right],`$
Even though both $`I`$ and $`Q`$ have first order coefficients, $`IQ`$, and also in this case the most relevant contamination comes from $`I`$. Hence, hereinafter, spurious polarisation will denote the offset term due to $`I`$.

However, it is possible to reduce the spurious polarisation effect on the overall instrument performances, for example by using modulation techniques. Internal modulations are quite common and they can reduce the problem of spurious polarisation inside the correlation unit. External modulations are more difficult to realise and may also introduce some problems, such as from by either spillover changing or chopping reflectors (Cortiglioni 1995). For these reasons the antenna system will be carefully analysed in the following sections.

## 4 Spurious Polarisation from the Antenna System

Hereinafter, the antenna system will include: the feed horn, the polariser (when circularly polarised components are used) and the OMT (Orthomode Transducer), which separates the two components to be correlated. In order to highlight the effects of the $`I`$ parameter, the sky signal entering the antenna will be considered to be unpolarised and also perfectly matched devices are assumed. In the following, the correlation of both circularly and linearly polarised components are considered.

### 4.1 Correlation of Circularly Polarised Components

Usually, the two circular components are obtanined by means of a waveguide polariser and an OMT (see, for instance, SPOrt and the Milano Polarimeter): the two linear components $`E_X`$ and $`E_Y`$ are collected by the feed horn and the polariser inserts a $`90^\mathrm{o}`$ phase delay between them. Hereafter the Fourier spectral representation will be used and the polariser outputs can be expressed as

$`E_{}`$ $`=`$ $`E_X,`$
$`E_{}`$ $`=`$ $`jE_Y,`$ (14)
where the common phase delay has been omitted. The OMT separates the two orthogonal components. However, since the OMT reference frame is $`45^\mathrm{o}`$ rotated with respect to the polariser, the OMT outputs are

$`A`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(E_XjE_Y)=E_L,`$
$`B`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(E_X+jE_Y)=E_R,`$ (15)
which are the left–hand and the right–hand circularly polarised components. After the amplification, the OMT outputs are multiplied by the correlation unit as in equations 4 and 5 (see Figure 2). In a real instrument there are deviations from this ideal situation, originating in each single device (feed horn, polariser and OMT), as it will be discussed below.

#### 4.1.1 The Feed Horn

The unpolarized radiation (sky and atmospheric emission) is described by the spectral distribution of the incident electric field $`\underset{¯}{E}(\theta ,\varphi )`$, where $`\theta `$ and $`\varphi `$ are the spherical angular coordinates. The signals at the feed horn output can be expressed as

$`V_{}^F`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^\pi }\underset{¯}{E}(\theta ,\varphi )\underset{¯}{h}_{}(\theta ,\varphi )\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta d\varphi +N_{}^F`$
$`V_{}^F`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^\pi }\underset{¯}{E}(\theta ,\varphi )\underset{¯}{h}_{}(\theta ,\varphi )\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta d\varphi +N_{}^F,`$ (16)
where the symbols $``$ and $``$ denote the principal directions of the polariser, $`N_{}^F`$ and $`N_{}^F`$ are the (thermal) noise generated by the feed horn and the vector quantities $`\underset{¯}{h}_{}`$ and $`\underset{¯}{h}_{}`$ are the effective heights of the antenna for the $`x`$ and $`y`$ polarizations, respectively, and corresponding to directions $`\theta `$, $`\varphi `$. However, the antenna pattern can introduce some correlation, giving rise to spurious polarisation. This can be estimated by computing

$`V_{}^FV_{}^{F}{}_{}{}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^\pi }(\underset{¯}{E}\underset{¯}{h}_{})(\underset{¯}{E}\underset{¯}{h}_{})^{}\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta d\varphi `$ (17)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}{\displaystyle _0^\pi }\left[|E_\theta |^2h_\theta h_\theta ^{}+|E_\varphi |^2h_\varphi h_\varphi ^{}\right]\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta d\varphi `$
where cross–products are null due to the uncorrelation among $`E_\theta `$, $`E_\varphi `$, $`N_{}^F`$ and $`N_{}^F`$. In terms of equivalent antenna temperature the correlated instrumental noise can be expressed as (see Appendix LABEL:app1 for details)

$`V_{}^FV_{}^{F}{}_{}{}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^\pi }\mathrm{sin}\theta d\theta {\displaystyle _0^{\pi /2}}d\varphi [\mathrm{\Delta }T_b(\theta ,\varphi )\mathrm{\Delta }T_b(\theta ,\varphi +\pi /2)+`$ (18)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }T_b(\theta ,\varphi +\pi )\mathrm{\Delta }T_b(\theta ,\varphi +3/2\pi )]f(\theta ,\varphi )`$
where

$$f(\theta ,\varphi )=F_\mathrm{e}(\theta ,\varphi )F_\mathrm{o}^{}(\theta ,\varphi +\pi /2)+F_\mathrm{o}(\theta ,\varphi )F_\mathrm{e}^{}(\theta ,\varphi +\pi /2)$$
(19)
and where $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_b(\theta ,\varphi )`$ is the brightness temperature anisotropy distribution of the sky and $`F_\mathrm{e}`$ and $`F_\mathrm{o}`$ are the co–polar and cross–polar radiation patterns for a linearly polarised feed horn, respectively. The relevant result is that the correlation term depends on the radiation anisotropy rather than on the total intensity and that the term $`f(\theta ,\varphi )`$ represents the non ideality of the feed horn from the instrumental correlation points of view rather than the cross-polar pattern (see Figure 3). Moreover, Figure 4 shows that $`f(\theta ,\varphi )`$ mainly consists of 4 lobes, whose size and distance are roughly equal to the HPBW. That means the source of instrumental correlation is the anisotropy smoothed on the HPBW angular scale.

By considering that the anisotropy of the CMB is about 30 $`\mu `$K on $`7^\mathrm{o}`$ angular scale, the contribution of the feed horn can be considered negligible. In fact, in the case of the example of the Figure 4, the integral value of the function $`f(\theta ,\varphi )`$ with respect to the integral of the co–polar pattern $`F_e(\theta ,\varphi )`$ is $`25`$ dB, which yields to a correlation term of the order of 0.1 $`\mu `$K.

#### 4.1.2 Polariser

The polariser can be described by a 4 ports device whose outputs can be expressed in the reference frame defined by its two principal linear polarisations as follows

$`E_{}`$ $`=`$ $`S_{}\left(V_{}^F+N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right)`$
$`E_{}`$ $`=`$ $`S_{}\left(V_{}^F+N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right)`$ (20)
where $`N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}`$ and $`N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}`$ are the noise generated by the polariser and evaluated at its input. The parameters $`S_{}`$ and $`S_{}`$ are the related transmission parameters. In ideal conditions $`S_{}=1`$ and $`S_{}=j`$ (omitting the common phase delay).

#### 4.1.3 OMT

The OMT can be described as a 4 port network as well. In the OMT reference frame the input signals are:

$`E_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left[S_{}\left(V_{}^F+N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right)S_{}\left(V_{}^F+N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right)\right]`$
$`E_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left[S_{}\left(V_{}^F+N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right)+S_{}\left(V_{}^F+N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right)\right]`$ (21)
and the output signals can be written as a linear combination of the input ones:

$`A`$ $`=`$ $`S_{A1}(E_1+N_1^{\mathrm{OMT}})+S_{A2}(E_2+N_2^{\mathrm{OMT}})`$
$`B`$ $`=`$ $`S_{B1}(E_1+N_1^{\mathrm{OMT}})+S_{B2}(E_2+N_2^{\mathrm{OMT}})`$ (22)
where $`S_{A1}`$, $`S_{A2}`$, $`S_{B1}`$, $`S_{B2}`$ are the OMT transmission parameters, that in ideal conditions must be $`S_{A1}/S_{B2}=1`$, $`|S_{A1}|=1`$, and $`S_{A2}=S_{B1}=0`$. $`N_1^{\mathrm{OMT}}`$ and $`N_2^{\mathrm{OMT}}`$ denote the noise generated in the two OMT arms and carried to the OMT input.

From equations 21 and 22, $`A`$ and $`B`$ become

$`A`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left[\left(S_{A1}+S_{A2}\right)S_{}\left(N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}+V_{}^F\right)\left(S_{A1}S_{A2}\right)S_{}\left(N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}+V_{}^F\right)\right]`$
$`+S_{A1}N_1^{\mathrm{OMT}}+S_{A2}N_2^{\mathrm{OMT}}`$
$`B`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}\left[\left(S_{B1}+S_{B2}\right)S_{}\left(N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}+V_{}^F\right)\left(S_{B1}S_{B2}\right)S_{}\left(N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}+V_{}^F\right)\right]`$ (23)
$`+S_{B1}N_1^{\mathrm{OMT}}+S_{B2}N_2^{\mathrm{OMT}}`$
#### 4.1.4 Contamination Terms

The spurious polarization can be estimated by computing the product $`AB^{}`$, which is the spectral density of the spurious contribution to the measured polarization:

$`AB^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(S_{A1}S_{B1}^{}+S_{A2}S_{B2}^{}\right)\left[\left|S_{}\right|^2\left(\left|N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right|^2+\left|V_{}^F\right|^2\right)+\left|S_{}\right|^2\left(\left|N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right|^2+\left|V_{}^F\right|^2\right)\right]`$ (24)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(S_{A1}S_{B2}^{}+S_{A2}S_{B1}^{}\right)\left[\left|S_{}\right|^2\left(\left|N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right|^2+\left|V_{}^F\right|^2\right)\left|S_{}\right|^2\left(\left|N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right|^2+\left|V_{}^F\right|^2\right)\right]`$
$`+`$ $`S_{A1}S_{B1}^{}\left|N_1^{\mathrm{OMT}}\right|^2+S_{A2}S_{B2}^{}\left|N_2^{\mathrm{OMT}}\right|^2`$
where the antenna signals, the polariser and OMT noises are assumed to be uncorrelated so that their crossed products are zero.

Under matching conditions, for the $``$ channel of the polariser the spectral density of the noise can be written in terms of equivalent antenna temperature666here the Boltzmann costant $`k_B`$ is omitted

$`\left|N_{}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right|^2`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}=T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{pol}}`$ (25)
where $`T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}`$ is the polariser physical temperature and $`T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{pol}}`$ is the polariser equivalent noise temperature at its input section. For $`N_{}`$ a similar expression holds.

Because of the presence of the cross–coupling terms $`S_{B1}`$ and $`S_{A2}`$, the noise produced by the OMT cannot be directly derived, as for the polarizer. One should diagonalize the transmission operator, but this would require the knowledge of its scattering matrix and, moreover, the diagonalization should be frequency independent. However, under the assumption that the off-diagonal terms are much smaller than the diagonal ones, a conservative estimation of the OMT noise is:

$`\left|N_1^{\mathrm{OMT}}\right|^2`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{A1}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}=T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}`$ (26)
where $`T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}`$ is the OMT physical temperature and $`T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}`$is the OMT equivalent noise temperature at its input. For the noise $`N_2^{\mathrm{OMT}}`$ a similar formula holds, where $`S_{A1}`$ is substituted with $`S_{B2}`$.

Finally, the expression for the antenna signal is

$`\left|V_{}^F\right|^2`$ $`=`$ $`\eta T_A`$ (27)
$`=`$ $`\eta \left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\eta }}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{horn}}+T_{\mathrm{sky}}+T_{\mathrm{atm}}\right]`$
$`=`$ $`\eta \left(T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{horn}}+T_{\mathrm{sky}}+T_{\mathrm{atm}}\right)`$
where $`\eta `$ is the efficiency of the feed horn, $`T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{horn}}`$ is the feed horn physical temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{horn}}`$ is the feed horn equivalent noise temperature carried to the feed horn input section, $`T_A`$ is the total antenna temperature, $`T_{\mathrm{sky}}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{atm}}`$ are the sky and the atmosphere signals, respectively.

Now, by substituting this expressions in equation 24, it can be written

$`AB^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(S_{A1}S_{B1}^{}+S_{A2}S_{B2}^{}\right)`$ (28)
$`\left[\left|S_{}\right|^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}+\left|S_{}\right|^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}+\left(\left|S_{}\right|^2+\left|S_{}\right|^2\right)\eta T_A\right]`$
$`+`$ $`S_{A1}S_{B1}^{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{A1}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}+S_{A2}S_{B2}^{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{B2}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(S_{A1}S_{B2}^{}+S_{A2}S_{B1}^{}\right)\left(\left|S_{}\right|^2\left|S_{}\right|^2\right)\left(\eta T_AT_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right)`$
In order to evaluate the level of the correlation product $`AB^{}`$ it can be assumed that $`S_{A1}S_{B2}`$, $`S_{A2}S_{B1}<<1`$ and $`|S_{}||S_{}|`$ where they are summed. In this way, the equation 28 becomes

$`AB^{}`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{}(S_{A1}S_{B1}^{})\left[\left|S_{}\right|^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}+\eta \left|S_{}\right|^2T_A+\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{A1}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}\right]+`$ (29)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left|S_{A1}\right|^2\left(\left|S_{}\right|^2\left|S_{}\right|^2\right)\left(\eta T_AT_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}\right)`$
From equation 29 one can observe that the spurious polarisation of a real antenna system is composed by two terms. The first one is due to the OMT, in fact this term is proportional to the OMT cross–coupling parameter $`S_{B1}`$, describing the insulation between the two OMT channels. The second term is due to the polariser, because is proportional to $`\left|S_{}\right|^2\left|S_{}\right|^2`$. It has to be noted that in this term $`T_A`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}`$ have opposite sign.

Finally, this result can be carried to the feed horn input section as follows:

$`AB_{}^{}{}_{0}{}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\eta }}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{}\right|^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{A1}\right|^2}}AB^{},`$ (30)
that through equations 2527 and 29 transforms in

$`AB_{}^{}{}_{0}{}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}(S_{A1}S_{B1}^{})}{\left|S_{A1}\right|^2}}\left(T_{\mathrm{sky}}+T_{\mathrm{atm}}+T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{Ant}}\right)+`$ (31)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{\left|S_{}\right|^2}{\left|S_{}\right|^2}}\right)\left(T_{\mathrm{sky}}+T_{\mathrm{atm}}+T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{horn}}{\displaystyle \frac{T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}}{\eta }}\right),`$
where

$$T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{Ant}}=T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{horn}}+\frac{1}{\eta }T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{pol}}+\frac{1}{\eta }\frac{1}{|S_{}|^2}T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}$$
(32)
is the noise temperature of the whole antenna system. The equation 31 provides a physical insight into the generation of the spurious polarisation and can be directly compared with the polarised radiation level. One can see how the various noise temperatures as well as the sky and atmosphere emission are partially detected as correlated signals because of the OMT cross–talk and the polariser attenuation difference. In particular we can define two quantities that describe the goodness of the OMT and of the polariser from the spurious polarisation point of view:

$`SP_{\mathrm{OMT}}`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}(S_{A1}S_{B1}^{})}{\left|S_{A1}\right|^2}}`$ (33)
$`SP_{\mathrm{pol}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(1{\displaystyle \frac{\left|S_{}\right|^2}{\left|S_{}\right|^2}}\right)`$ (34)
so that the spurious polarisation produced by the OMT and the polariser and evaluated at the input of the antenna can be expressed as

$`AB_{}^{}{}_{0}{}^{}=SP_{\mathrm{OMT}}\left(T_{\mathrm{sky}}+T_{\mathrm{atm}}+T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{Ant}}\right)+SP_{\mathrm{pol}}\left(T_{\mathrm{sky}}+T_{\mathrm{atm}}+T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{horn}}{\displaystyle \frac{T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}}{\eta }}\right),`$ (35)
Moreover, following the IAU definition of the polarised brightness temperature $`T_b^p`$ (Berkhuijsen 1975), the output for a sky signal, in equivalent antenna temperature at the feed horn input section, is

$`AB_{}^{}{}_{0}{}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`T_b^p(\mathrm{cos}(2\alpha )+j\mathrm{sin}(2\alpha ))`$ (36)
where $`\alpha `$ is the polarisation angle. Therefore, equation 35 provides the estimate of the spurious polarisation level, which can be directly compared to the polarised brightness temperature.

Since the spurious polarisation represents a polarimeter offset, the value computed in equation 35 is the $`T_{\mathrm{offset}}`$ term of equation 1

### 4.2 Correlation of Linearly Polarised Components

The case of a polarimeter correlating linearly polarised components ($`E_X`$ and $`E_Y`$) can be faced in a similar way, but in this case the term due to the polariser does not exist. Also in this case the feed horn contribution is negligible, and the spurious polarisation is described by

$`AB^{}`$ $`=`$ $`S_{A1}S_{B1}^{}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{A1}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}+\eta T_A\right]`$ (37)
$`+`$ $`S_{A2}S_{B2}^{}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{B2}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}+\eta T_A\right]`$
Following the assumptions adopted for the circular polarisation case, it can be reduced to

$`AB^{}`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{}(S_{A1}S_{B1}^{})\left[\eta T_A+\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{\left|S_{A1}\right|^2}}1\right)T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}\right].`$ (38)
that at the feed horn input section yields

$`AB_{}^{}{}_{0}{}^{}`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}(S_{A1}S_{B1}^{})}{\left|S_{A1}\right|^2}}\left(T_{\mathrm{sky}}+T_{\mathrm{atm}}+T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{Ant}}\right)`$ (39)
$`=`$ $`SP_{\mathrm{OMT}}\left(T_{\mathrm{sky}}+T_{\mathrm{atm}}+T_{\mathrm{noise}}^{\mathrm{Ant}}\right)`$
Obviously, here the spurious polarisation is due to the OMT cross–talk only.

## 5 Sensitivity Degradation

The radiometer sensitivity equation (eq. 1) contains the three terms contributing to the rms error in radio measurements. It is clear that both the gain and the offset fluctuation may contribute significantly to the sensitivity degradation, so it is important to estimate the time scale on which their effects are greater than the white noise.

### 5.1 Gain Fluctuations

The noise density power spectrum of the radiometer output (Wollack & Pospieszalski 1998) provides the way to compare these effects:

$`P(f)`$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{k^2T_{\mathrm{sys}}^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }}+T_{\mathrm{offset}}^2\delta g^2(f)+\delta T_{\mathrm{offset}}^2(f)`$ (40)
$`=`$ $`P_{\mathrm{wn}}(f)+P_\mathrm{g}(f)+P_{\mathrm{offset}}(f)`$
being $`\delta g^2(f)`$ and $`\delta T_{\mathrm{offset}}^2(f)`$ the power spectra of gain and offset fluctuations, respectively.

The first term is the white noise (WN): its power spectrum is constant and it depends only on the istantaneous sensitivity $`\sigma _0`$

$$P_{\mathrm{wn}}(f)=2\sigma _0^2=2\frac{k^2T_{\mathrm{sys}}^2}{\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }.$$
(41)
The second term represents the contribution of (amplifier chain) gain fluctuations to the noise power spectrum and it depends on $`T_{\mathrm{offset}}`$. This makes a correlator more stable than a direct detection receiver, for which $`T_{\mathrm{sys}}`$ must be considered instead of $`T_{\mathrm{offset}}`$. Then, in a correlator receiver the contribution of gain fluctuations is a factor $`(T_{\mathrm{offset}}/T_{\mathrm{sys}})^2`$ lower than in a direct detection receiver.

Since $`\delta g^2f^\beta `$ (Wollack, 1995; Wollack & Pospieszalski, 1998) the second term of equation 40 can be written as

$$P_\mathrm{g}(f)=2\sigma _0^2\left(\frac{f_k}{f}\right)^\beta $$
(42)
where the knee frequency $`f_k`$ is the frequency at which the gain fluctuation noise equals the white noise ($`\beta `$ tipically is $`1`$), that is the knee frequency defines the time scale at which gain fluctuations become higher than the instrument white noise. Since a correlation receiver is more stable by a factor $`(T_{\mathrm{offset}}/T_{\mathrm{sys}})^2`$, the relationship between the knee frequencies of a direct detection ($`f_k`$) and a correlation ($`f_k^c`$) receiver based on the same amplifier chain is

$$f_k^c=\left(\frac{T_{\mathrm{offset}}}{T_{\mathrm{sys}}}\right)^{2/\beta }f_k\left(\frac{T_{\mathrm{offset}}}{T_{\mathrm{sys}}}\right)^2f_k$$
(43)
Note that $`f_k^c`$ scales as $`(T_{\mathrm{offset}}/T_{\mathrm{sys}})^2`$ so that, for instance, a ratio $`T_{\mathrm{offset}}/T_{\mathrm{sys}}=10^2`$ makes the correlator stable on a time scale $`10^4`$ longer than an equivalent direct detection receiver.

Table 1 shows offset estimates, computed through equations 35 and 39, for 5 types of experiment. L&R@30 and L&R@90 are ground based polarimeters correlating the left–hand and right–hand circular components at 30 and 90 GHz, respectively, whereas X&Y@30 and X&Y@90 are the cases for linear components. For all of them attenuations have been assumed to be $`1/\eta =0.05`$ dB, $`1/|S_C|^2=0.2`$ dB, $`1/|S_{A1}|^2=0.2`$ dB for feed horn, polariser and OMT, respectively, together with a common physical temperature of 20K. Moreover, as typical values for CMB experiments are assumed: OMT insulation $`|S_{B1}|^230`$ dB and polariser spurious term $`|S_L|^2|S_C|^230`$ dB. Finally, it has been considered also the SPOrt case, the only scheduled space experiment designed to measure the microwave sky polarisation, where physical temperatures are: $`T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{horn}}300\mathrm{K}`$ and $`T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{pol}}=T_{\mathrm{ph}}^{\mathrm{OMT}}80\mathrm{K}`$; attenuations has been assumed as for other experiments. However, since high care has been taken developing the OMT, its insulation term is $`|S_{B1}|^260`$ dB; again, conservatively, $`|S_L|^2|S_C|^230`$ dB is assumed. Also without atmospheric contributions, the OMT is again the main offset source through the cross–correlation of the antenna noise.

Table 1 data suggest that ground based experiments have offsets mainly due to atmosphere emission rather than to the sky signal. Moreover, since this offset is due to the cross–correlation of the OMT, correlating either the circularly or the linearly polarised component is quite equivalent from the offset generation point of view.

Table 2 reports the knee frequencies for the five experiments taken as example, computed by using the offset values of Table 1. The knee frequency allows the estimate of the time

$$t_m\frac{1}{f_k^c}$$
(44)
after that long term drifts degradate the radiometer sensitivity. Signal modulation techniques help to overcome this degradation, but the modulation frequency must be greater than $`f_k^c`$. Table 2 shows, for example, that ground based experiments would need modulation time $`40`$ s (30 GHz experiments) or $`4`$ s (90 GHz experiments). SPOrt looks much more stable and its $`t_m`$ parameters exceeds largely its modulation time (5400s i.e. its orbital period, see Cortiglioni et al. 1999). It should be noted that such a modulation must be inserted before the components responsible of the offset generation, to be effective.

### 5.2 Offset Fluctuations

The offset fluctuation is the second sensitivity degradation term of equation 1. Equations 35 and 39 show that it depends on both the physical temperature and atmospheric emission fluctuations (only for ground based experiment).

Monitoring of physical temperatures and cross–correlations with the data may allow the reduction of this contribution during off-line analysis, but atmospheric fluctuations cannot be recovered and their power spectrum adds to the white noise one. In principle, the atmospheric emission is unpolarised, but the spurious polarisation generated by OMT losses fluctuates as the atmospheric emission does. As in the case of gain fluctuations, the impact on the sensitivity can be estimated in terms of noise power spectrum.

Atmospheric offset fluctuations can be written, following equation 35, as

$`\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{offset}}`$ $`=`$ $`(SP_{\mathrm{OMT}}+SP_{\mathrm{pol}})\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{atm}}`$ (45)
$`=`$ $`S\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mathrm{atm}}`$
and their contribution to the noise power spectrum is given by

$`P_{\mathrm{offset}}`$ $`=`$ $`S^2P_{\mathrm{atm}}`$ (46)
which adds to the white noise and gain fluctuations power spectra, being them uncorrelated.

Measurements taken at sea level site (Smoot et al., 1987) show that at 90 GHz the atmospheric fluctuations follow a power law

$$P_{\mathrm{atm}}(f)=f^\alpha \mathrm{for}f[10^3,10^1[$$
(47)
with $`\alpha =8/3`$ and normalisation $`P_{\mathrm{atm}}(0.02\mathrm{Hz})1\mathrm{K}^2\mathrm{Hz}^1`$. Under these assumptions,

Table 3 shows typical power spectrum values for both the atmosphere emission and the corresponding polarimeter offset at different frequencies. Similarly to the gain, offset fluctuations begin to degradate the ideal (white noise) sensitivity when $`P_{\mathrm{offset}}>P_{\mathrm{wn}}`$. Since 90 GHz radiometer amplifiers (HEMT) have typically $`P_{\mathrm{wn}}=0.64`$ mK2Hz-1 (see Wollack & Pospieszalski 1998), the offset fluctuations get over the white noise level at $`f<0.5`$ Hz (see Figure 5). Consequently, modulation techniques with modulation time $`t_m<2`$ s are required for longer integration time.

Such a low $`t_m`$ value suggests to estimate the parameter $`S`$ and the insulation of the OMT needed to ehhance it, for example, up to $`t_m=1000`$ s or, equivalently, to have $`P_{\mathrm{offset}}(f=`$ $`10^3\mathrm{Hz})=P_{\mathrm{wn}}`$ ($`f=10^3`$ Hz represents the limit of equation 47). From equation 47 and Table 3 it can be estimated $`P_{\mathrm{atm}}(10^3)2.9`$ mK2Hz-1, implying $`S^22.2\times 10^{10}`$, that is an OMT insulation $`|S_{B1}|^2<100`$ dB (!) and a difference between the two attenuations of the polariser $`(|S_{}|^2|S_{}|^2)<45`$ dB.

At 30 GHz the water vapour emission and its fluctuations (the main responsible for atmospheric fluctuations) are 6 times lower than at 90 GHz. The corresponding $`P_{\mathrm{offset}}`$ is 36 times lower, bringing to a slightly better situation. In fact, using Table 3 a suitable modulation time $`t_m<8`$ s can be estimated.

In principle, the best sites (like Antarctica), where expected atmospheric fluctuations are lower, allow higher $`t_m`$, that become comparable with values called by gain fluctuations (see Table 2).

## 6 Conclusions

The main aim of this paper is to analyse carefully the problem related to the instrumental (spurious) polarisation, that is generated inside the instrument itself, because it can represent the major source of sensitivity degradation. The reason for this is that also unpolarised signal components, genuinely uncorrelated, would become correlated noise due to losses in real receiver components. Such a correlated noise contributes to produce an offset which is responsible of sensitivity degradation (through gain and offset fluctuations) that, in some cases, can be an insurmountable obstacle to the measure. That is the case, in particular, of the atmosphere emission, which is in principle unpolarised being of thermal origin.

It has been recognised that CMBP investigations require state of the art receivers, able to give system noise, and consequently instantaneous sensitivity, as low as possible. However, it is well known that in any case CMBP measurements should require long integration times because of the extremely low expected signal (10% of the anisotropy or less). As a consequence, the most challenging aspect of such a measurements is the long term stability, which is the base for useful long integration times.

This paper has given some algorithms for spurious polarisation evaluations in different instrumental configurations, identifying the OMT cross–coupling and the polariser attenuation difference as the major causes of correlated noise generation. It has been also demonstrated that the antenna system is responsible of most of the instrumental offset production, which represents the true limit to long integration times needed by CMBP measurements.

The most relevant conclusion is that the best ground based experiment at 30 GHz (90 GHz) cannot ensure integration times longer than 40 s (4 s) without modulation. Alternatively, most critical components like OMT and polariser should have characteristics that are not present at all in commercially available devices. As a consequence a significant step towards detection of CMBP with microwave radiometers should pass through new instrumental configurations based on custom components, rather than on low system noise only. An example of such a philosophy is the SPOrt experiment, that shows how much the long term stability can be improved by using custom designed components together with correlation techniques.

## Acknowledgments

We thank Alessandro Orfei and the SPOrt collaboration for useful discussions; we thank also Piermario Besso and Roberto Vallauri (CSELT) for providing us data of the SPOrt 22 GHz horn. This work has been partially supported by ASI contracts CNR/ASI ARS 99-15 and CNR/ASI ARS 99-06.


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# A simplified model for monopole catalysis of nucleon decay

## 1 Introduction

An interesting feature of magnetic monopoles in gauge theories is that they can catalyse nucleon decay at strong interaction rate . The actual computation of the monopole catalysis cross section remains, however, an open problem. This computation would involve long-distance physics of two different kinds — quark-monopole interactions and QCD phenomena — and also short-distance physics responsible for baryon number non-conservation. Most of the relevant effects are non-perturbative, and this makes even a semi-qualitative calculation difficult.

An approach to this problem was suggested in Ref. . It was proposed to invoke the Skyrme model of a nucleon  which indeed works reasonably well in describing low energy properties of baryons . In the Skyrme model, the nucleon is essentially a classical field theory object, a soliton. Given that the ’t Hooft–Polyakov monopole is also a soliton, the monopole-nucleon interactions are then possible to describe at the level of classical field theory.

In the proposal of Ref. , the monopole is treated as point-like. The non-conservation of baryon number comes in through the boundary condition imposed on the Skyrme field at the monopole centre, i.e., at the singularity. It is not entirely obvious whether concrete mechanisms of baryon number non-conservation indeed produce, in the limit of vanishing monopole size, the conjectured boundary condition. Also, dealing with the singularity and the boundary condition imposed at the singularity may be inconvenient for numerical computations. One more complication inherent in the proposal of Ref.  stems from the fact that the spherically symmetric Skyrme field in the monopole background corresponds to an electrically charged object (“proton”), so one has to explicitly introduce leptons to make baryon number violation consistent with electric charge conservation.

In this paper we present a simplified model where both monopole and Skyrmion are smooth solutions of the classical field equations, the baryon number non-conservation is explicitly built in and is due to the classical analogue  of the triangle anomaly, and there is no necessity to consider leptons. The price to pay is that the Skyrme field in the presence of the monopole does not carry net electric charge, so our model mimicks the monopole catalysed decay of a neutron, rather than a proton.

We shall concentrate on two aspects of our model. First, we study whether or not the baryon number non-conservation proceeds without suppression at the classical level. For this we shall have to consider a region near the monopole core. Of course, it is not realistic to use the non-linear sigma model for describing physics near the core, but this step is inevitable in the classical calculation of monopole catalysis. By carrying out numerical analysis, we show that there are no states with non-zero baryon number on top of the ’t Hooft–Polyakov monopole, irrespectively of the size of the monopole core, i.e., monopole catalysis of nucleon decay indeed takes place.

Second, we find that the regime of “point-like” monopole sets in when the two scales, responsible for the sizes and masses of the monopole and Skyrmion, respectively, are not yet widely different: our results are stable when the ratio of monopole and Skyrmion sizes is below 0.03, and the mass ratio is below 1. This is a good sign for future numerical analysis of the Skyrmion decay in Skyrmion-monopole collisions. Hence, our model may be a reasonable starting point for a semi-realistic calculation of the monopole catalysis cross section.

This paper is organized as follows. We present our model in Section 2. To set the stage, we recapitulate the properties of the monopole and the Skyrmion in Section 3. Section 4 contains our main results, both analytical and numerical. We present concluding remarks in Section 5.

## 2 The model

To motivate our model, we recall first that the simplest theory incorporating Skyrmions has $`SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R`$ global symmetry and contains the sigma field $`U(x)`$ taking values in $`SU(2)`$. We wish to introduce baryon number non-conservation through the classical anomaly in the baryonic current. The baryon number will be anomalous if $`SU(2)_L`$ or $`SU(2)_R`$ or both are gauged. The model should also possess magnetic monopoles; if we do not extend the symmetry group, the monopoles are to be associated with the gauged (part of) $`SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R`$. Gauging $`SU(2)_L`$ alone is not sufficient: in that case the Skyrme field would break the gauge group completely, no electromagnetic $`U(1)`$ would be left unbroken, and there would be no magnetic monopoles. So, we come to fully gauged $`SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R`$ with gauge potentials

$$SU(2)_L:A_\mu $$

$$SU(2)_R:B_\mu $$

Realistic monopoles have very small sizes, so we have to break the non-Abelian symmetry down to an Abelian subgroup at a high energy scale. Thus, we introduce two Higgs triplets $`\mathrm{\Phi }_A`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B`$ in $`(\mathrm{𝟑},\mathrm{𝟏})`$ and $`(\mathrm{𝟏},\mathrm{𝟑})`$ representations, respectively. These break $`SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R`$ down to $`U(1)_L\times U(1)_R`$. The electromagnetic group is the vectorial subgroup of this $`U(1)_L\times U(1)_R`$, so we have to break axial $`U(1)`$ at some point. For simplicity, we consider the minimal option, i.e., we do not introduce extra Higgs fields. Then the axial $`U(1)`$ is broken by the Skyrme field itself. The existence of a relatively long-ranged axial gauge field is an unrealistic feature of our model; however, in this paper we study the dynamics near the monopole core, so it will not be important whether or not the axial $`U(1)`$ is truly long ranged. It is straightforward to extend our model by introducing yet another Higgs field which would break the axial $`U(1)`$, but not the electromagnetic subgroup.

To summarise, our model has $`SU(2)_L\times SU(2)_R`$ gauge symmetry, with the Skyrme field and two Higgs fields in the following representations

$`USU(2),U`$ $`:`$ $`(\mathrm{𝟐},\overline{\mathrm{𝟐}})`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_A`$ $`:`$ $`(\mathrm{𝟑},\mathrm{𝟏})`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_B`$ $`:`$ $`(\mathrm{𝟏},\mathrm{𝟑})`$ (1)
To simplify the calculations, we take the gauge couplings, Higgs self-couplings and vacuum expectation values of the Higgs fields the same in the left and right sectors,

$$g_A=g_Bg,\lambda _A=\lambda _B\lambda ,v_A=v_Bv$$

The action for this model is

$`S`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d^4x\left[\frac{1}{2g^2}\text{Tr}(F_{\mu \nu }^2)\frac{1}{2g^2}\text{Tr}(G_{\mu \nu }^2)\right]}`$ (2)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle d^4x\left[\frac{1}{2}\text{Tr}(D_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_A)^2+\frac{1}{2}\text{Tr}(D_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_B)^2\right]}`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle d^4x\left[\frac{\lambda }{8}\left(\frac{1}{2}\text{Tr}(\mathrm{\Phi }_A^2)+v^2\right)^2+\frac{\lambda }{8}\left(\frac{1}{2}\text{Tr}(\mathrm{\Phi }_B^2)+v^2\right)^2\right]}`$
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle d^4x\left[\frac{F_\pi ^2}{16}\text{Tr}(U^{}D_\mu U)^2+\frac{1}{32e^2}\text{Tr}([U^{}D_\mu U,U^{}D_\nu U]^2)\right]}`$
$`+`$ $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{WZW}`$
where $`F_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`G_{\mu \nu }`$ are the field strengths of $`A_\mu `$ and $`B_\mu `$, the fields $`\mathrm{\Phi }_A`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B`$ are $`2\times 2`$ matrices from the algebras of $`SU(2)_L`$ and $`SU(2)_R`$, respectively,

$`D_\mu U`$ $`=`$ $`_\mu U+A_\mu UUB_\mu `$
$`D_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_A`$ $`=`$ $`_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_A+[A_\mu ,\mathrm{\Phi }_A]`$
$`D_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_B`$ $`=`$ $`_\mu \mathrm{\Phi }_B+[B_\mu ,\mathrm{\Phi }_B]`$ (3)
and $`F_\pi `$ and $`e`$ are the pion decay constant and the Skyrme constant, respectively. The last term in eq. (2) is introduced to reflect anomalies . Unlike in Ref. , this term has almost no effect in our model. In most of this paper we neglect this term, and discuss its effect towards the end.

In complete analogy to Refs. , the gauge-invariant baryonic current is

$`j_\mu `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{24\pi ^2}}\epsilon _{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }\text{Tr}(U^{}D_\nu UD_\rho U^{}D_\sigma U)`$ (4)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{16\pi ^2}}\epsilon _{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }\text{Tr}(F_{\rho \sigma }D_\nu UU^{}+G_{\rho \sigma }U^{}D_\nu U)`$
In the absence of the gauge fields, $`A_\mu =B_\mu =0`$, this current reduces to the topological current,

$$k_\mu =\frac{1}{24\pi ^2}\epsilon _{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }\text{Tr}(U^{}_\nu U_\rho U^{}_\sigma U)$$

while in the presence of gauge fields it has an anomaly,

$$_\mu j_\mu =\frac{1}{16\pi ^2}\text{Tr}(\stackrel{~}{F}_{\mu \nu }F_{\mu \nu }\stackrel{~}{G}_{\mu \nu }G_{\mu \nu })$$

Thus, topologically non-trivial gauge fields lead to the non-conservation of baryon number; in particular, they can unwind the Skyrmion (cf. Refs. ).

## 3 Monopole and Skyrmion

If it were not for the Skyrme field $`U`$, the left and right sectors of this model would decouple, the model would reduce to two identical copies of the Georgi–Glashow $`SU(2)`$ model and there would exist two types of ’t Hooft–Polyakov monopoles. In the presence of the Skyrme field, the axial $`U(1)`$ is broken, and there exists only one type of monopole. The monopole solution with zero baryon number has $`U(𝐱)=1`$ everywhere in space, whereas $`A_i(𝐱)=B_i(𝐱)`$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_A(𝐱)=\mathrm{\Phi }_B(𝐱)`$ are precisely the monopole fields of the Georgi–Glashow model. The monopole size is determined by the mass of the vector bosons; at $`vF_\pi `$ one has $`m_V=2gv`$, so that

$$r_{mon}=\frac{1}{2gv}$$
(5)
At large $`v`$, the monopole mass is twice the mass of the $`SU(2)`$ monopole, i.e.,

$$M_{mon}=4\pi D_{mon}\frac{v}{g}$$
(6)
where the numerical constant $`D_{mon}`$ depends slightly on $`\lambda /g^2`$ and at $`\lambda /g^2=0.5`$ is equal to

$$D_{mon}(\lambda /g^2=0.5)2.4$$
(7)
The estimates (5), and (6) and (7) will serve as reference points for our study of the monopole–Skyrmion system.

In the regime of weak gauge coupling, the model possesses the Skyrmion. Once the gauge fields are ignored, this is the standard Skyrmion of the $`SU(2)`$ sigma model. Its radius, as defined in Ref. , is

$$r_{Sk}=\frac{2.1}{eF_\pi }$$
(8)
and its mass is equal to

$$M_{Sk}=4\pi D_{Sk}\frac{F_\pi }{e},D_{Sk}2.9$$
(9)
To mimic the situation existing in Grand Unified Theories, in what follows we shall mostly consider the range of parameters in which the ratios $`r_{mon}/r_{Sk}`$ and $`M_{Sk}/M_{mon}`$ are small.

## 4 Disappearing baryon number

Our main purpose is to consider configurations with non-vanishing baryon number sitting on top of the monopole. We shall see that the baryon number need not be integer, and that there are no static classical solutions with non-zero baryon number. The strategy to deal with such a situation is standard : we shall impose a constraint ensuring that the baryon number takes on a non-vanishing value, find a static classical solution of the constrained system and study the behaviour of energy as a function of the baryon number.

### 4.1 Spherically symmetric Ansatz

We shall seek spherically symmetric solutions of the constrained system. To write down the Ansatz, we note that the action (2) is invariant under the spatial reflection, $`x^0x^0`$, $`𝐱𝐱`$ supplemented by the interchange of the left and right $`SU(2)`$, i.e.,

$`A_0`$ $``$ $`B_0,A_iB_i,B_iA_i`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_A`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B,\mathrm{\Phi }_B\mathrm{\Phi }_A`$
$`U`$ $``$ $`U^{}`$ (10)
In the case of static fields with $`A_0=B_0=0`$, the most general spherically symmetric Ansatz consistent with this discrete symmetry111In our numerical study we used the most general spherically symmetric Ansatz without imposing the symmetry (10). We have found, however, that the solutions always have this symmetry. is

$`A_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{a_1(r)1}{r}}\right)\epsilon _{ijk}\sigma _j\widehat{x}_k+\left({\displaystyle \frac{a_2(r)}{r}}\right)(\sigma _i\widehat{x}_i\widehat{x}\stackrel{}{\sigma })+\left({\displaystyle \frac{a_3(r)}{r}}\right)\widehat{x}_i\widehat{x}\stackrel{}{\sigma }\right]`$
$`B_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\left[\left({\displaystyle \frac{a_1(r)1}{r}}\right)\epsilon _{ijk}\sigma _j\widehat{x}_k\left({\displaystyle \frac{a_2(r)}{r}}\right)(\sigma _i\widehat{x}_i\widehat{x}\stackrel{}{\sigma })\left({\displaystyle \frac{a_3(r)}{r}}\right)\widehat{x}_i\widehat{x}\stackrel{}{\sigma }\right]`$
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_A`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }_B=ivh(r)\widehat{x}\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$
$`U`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}f(r)+i\widehat{x}\stackrel{}{\sigma }\mathrm{sin}f(r)`$ (11)
where $`\widehat{x}`$ is the unit radius-vector. With this Ansatz, regularity of the Skyrme field at the origin requires that $`f(0)`$ is an integer multiple of $`\pi `$; without loss of generality we set

$$f(0)=\pi $$

Other conditions, ensuring that the fields are regular at the origin, are

$$a_1(0)=1,a_2(0)=a_3(0)=0,h(0)=0$$

It is convenient to introduce the dimensionless coordinate,

$$\rho =gvr$$

With this coordinate, the distances are measured essentially in units of the size of the monopole core. The static energy functional is then written as follows (neglecting the WZW term in eq. (2))

$$H=\frac{4\pi v}{g}𝑑\rho (\rho )$$

$``$ $`=`$ $`\left[\left(a_1^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{a_2a_3}{\rho }}\right)^2+\left(a_2^{}{\displaystyle \frac{a_1a_3}{\rho }}\right)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\rho ^2}}(a_1^2+a_2^21)^2\right]`$ (12)
$`+`$ $`2\left[\rho ^2(h^{})^2+2(a_1^2+a_2^2)h^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{4g^2}}\rho ^2(h^21)^2\right]`$
$`+`$ $`\kappa _1(X^2+2Y^2)+{\displaystyle \frac{4\kappa _2}{\rho ^2}}Y^2(2X^2+Y^2)`$
where the prime denotes the derivative with respect to $`\rho `$,

$`X`$ $`=`$ $`\rho f^{}a_3`$
$`Y`$ $`=`$ $`a_1\mathrm{sin}fa_2\mathrm{cos}f`$ (13)
and we introduced the dimensionless parameters

$`\kappa _1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{F_\pi ^2}{8v^2}}`$
$`\kappa _2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{g^2}{64e^2}}`$ (14)
It is worth noting that in terms of these parameters, the ratios of the sizes and masses of the monopole and Skyrmion, as given by eqs. (5) – (9), are expressed as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{r_{mon}}{r_{Sk}}}`$ $`=`$ $`0.084\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _1}{\kappa _2}}}`$ (15)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{M_{Sk}}{M_{mon}}}`$ $`=`$ $`27\sqrt{\kappa _1\kappa _2}`$ (16)
where we take $`\lambda =0.5g^2`$ for definiteness. These ratios must be small in the limit of point-like monopole.

The energy functional (12) is still invariant under radial gauge transformations which shift $`f(\rho )`$ and $`a_3(\rho )`$,

$`f(\rho )`$ $``$ $`f(\rho )+\alpha (\rho )`$
$`a_3(\rho )`$ $``$ $`a_3(\rho )+\rho _\rho \alpha (\rho )`$ (17)
and rotate $`(a_1,a_2)`$. This gauge symmetry is the remnant of the axial $`U(1)`$ (we have fixed the vectorial $`U(1)`$ by imposing the symmetry (10)). We shall fix the remaining gauge freedom shortly.

It follows immediately from eqs. (12) and (13) that in the absence of the monopole, i.e., when $`a_1(\mathrm{})=1`$, $`a_2(\mathrm{})=0`$, the convergence of the term proportional to $`Y^2`$ in the energy integral requires that $`f(\mathrm{})`$ is an integer multiple of $`\pi `$. This means that the winding number of the Skyrme field is integer, and hence is conserved. On the other hand, in the presence of the monopole, one has $`a_1(\mathrm{})=a_2(\mathrm{})=0`$, and the convergence of energy does not impose any constraints on $`f(\mathrm{})`$. In the presence of the monopole, the winding number of the Skyrme field is arbitary.

For spherically symmetric fields, the gauge-invariant baryon number takes the form

$$B=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\rho b(\rho )$$

$`b(\rho )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{d\rho }}\left[f+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(a_1^2a_2^2)\mathrm{sin}2fa_1a_2\mathrm{cos}2f\right]`$ (18)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}\left[(a_1a_2^{}a_1^{}a_2){\displaystyle \frac{a_3}{\rho }}(a_1^2+a_2^21)\right]`$
Like the winding number of the Skyrme field, the baryon number too need not be integer.

### 4.2 The constrained system

To consider configurations with non-vanishing baryon number, it would seem natural to impose a constraint involving the baryon number, e.g.,

$$_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\rho b(\rho )=\text{fixed}$$

However, we have chosen a slightly different constraint which simplifies the equations. We note first that one of the Euler–Lagrange equations following from eq. (12) does not contain the second derivatives. This equation is

$$\rho \frac{\delta H}{\delta a_3}=0$$
(19)
In fact, this equation is not completely independent: its derivative with respect to $`\rho `$ is a consequence of the other Euler–Lagrange equations (this is analogous to the time derivative of Gauss’ law). If $`\delta H/\delta a_3`$ is zero at one value of $`\rho `$, then it is zero everywhere, provided the second-order Euler–Lagrange equations are satisfied. The idea is to impose a constraint which would modify the resulting equations in such a way that the left hand side of eq. (19) be allowed to be a non-vanishing constant, while the second order equations remain intact. The suitable form of this constraint is

$$\frac{1}{\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\rho \left(f^{}\frac{a_3}{\rho }\right)=\text{fixed}$$
(20)
Indeed, upon adding this constraint with the Lagrange multiplier $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ to the Hamiltonian (12), one finds that the only change in the resulting equations is that eq. (19) now becomes

$$\rho \frac{\delta H}{\delta a_3}+\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\pi }=0$$
(21)
The procedure is then to disregard the latter equation altogether, solve the original second order Euler–Lagrange equations and find $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ from eq. (21) (the last step is actually unnecessary).

We note that the constraint (20) is invariant under gauge transformations (17). In fact, this constraint can be written in fully gauge-invariant form, since

$$\left(f^{}\frac{a_3}{\rho }\right)\widehat{x}_i\text{Tr}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_A}{|\mathrm{\Phi }_A|}D_iUU^{}\right)$$

Note also that the expression on the left hand side of eq. (20) coincides with the expression for the baryon number, eq. (18), except for terms in the latter containing $`a_1`$ and $`a_2`$. This indicates that the constraint (20) should give rise to non-vanishing baryon number (indeed, we shall see below that the integral (20) approximates the baryon number very well).

The fact that one no longer has to consider the variations of $`a_3`$ simplifies the analysis considerably. We can now impose the gauge condition

$$a_3=0$$

directly in the Hamiltonian. Thus, the problem reduces to solving the Euler–Lagrange equations following from the functional

$$\stackrel{~}{H}H(a_3=0)=\frac{4\pi v}{g}𝑑\rho \stackrel{~}{}(\rho )$$

$`\stackrel{~}{}`$ $`=`$ $`\left[(a_1^{})^2+(a_2^{})^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\rho ^2}}(a_1^2+a_2^21)^2\right]`$ (22)
$`+`$ $`2\left[\rho ^2(h^{})^2+2(a_1^2+a_2^2)h^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\lambda }{4g^2}}\rho ^2(h^21)^2\right]`$
$`+`$ $`\kappa _1(\rho ^2(f^{})^2+2Y^2)+{\displaystyle \frac{4\kappa _2}{\rho ^2}}Y^2(2\rho ^2(f^{})^2+Y^2)`$
where $`Y`$ is defined in eq. (13). All these equations are of second order; their form is not very illuminating, and we do not reproduce all of them here. We only write down the equation which is obtained by varying $`\stackrel{~}{H}`$ with respect to $`f`$,

$$\frac{}{\rho }\left[(\kappa _1\rho ^2+8\kappa _2Y^2)f^{}\right]=2\left[\kappa _1+4\kappa _2(f^{})^2+4\frac{\kappa _2}{\rho ^2}Y^2\right](a_1\mathrm{cos}f+a_2\mathrm{sin}f)Y$$
(23)
It is straightforward to see that $`a_1`$ and $`a_2`$ decay exponentially at large $`\rho `$,

$$a_1,a_2C\text{e}^{2\rho }+C^{}\text{e}^{\sqrt{4+2\kappa _1}\rho }$$

Hence, away from the monopole core, equation (23) becomes

$$(\rho ^2f^{})^{}=0$$

and its solution is

$$f(\rho )=f_{\mathrm{}}+\frac{c_f}{\rho }$$
(24)
where $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`c_f`$ are constants. In fact, only the asymptotic value $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$ is a free parameter (for given $`\kappa _1`$ and $`\kappa _2`$), as the constant $`c_f`$ is a function of $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$ for the soultions of the complete system.

Thus, the system of Euler–Lagrange equations, corresponding to the functional (22), admits a one-parameter family of solutions parametrized by the asymptotic value $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$. The baryon number and the energy for the solutions are determined by $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$.

### 4.3 Numerical results

We have obtained these families of solutions numerically for various values of $`\kappa _1`$ and $`\kappa _2`$ and computed their energies and baryon numbers. We shall present our results for a fixed value of the Higgs self-coupling,

$$\lambda /g^2=0.5$$

To a good accuracy the baryon number is a linear function of $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$: according to eq.(18), in the gauge $`a_3=0`$ we have

$$B=\frac{\pi f_{\mathrm{}}}{\pi }+\frac{1}{\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\rho (a_1a_2^{}a_1^{}a_2)$$
(25)
The last integral here is small; we shall discuss this property later on.

Our first result is that the energy is always a monotonic function of the baryon number. This is shown in Fig. 1 for three sets of parameters $`(\kappa _1,\kappa _2)`$. This means that there are no static solutions with non-vanishing baryon number on top of the monopole.

We note that the third set of parameters, $`\kappa _1=10^4`$, $`\kappa _2=0.1`$ corresponds to a very small size of the monopole core as compared to the Skyrmion size, $`r_{mon}/r_{Sk}=2.710^3`$. It is natural to expect that in this case, the regime of “point-like” monopole is realized. Let us discuss this in some detail, with the of purpose of estimating the range of parameters at which this regime sets in.

The situation of interest is when the monopole is small and heavy,

$$\frac{r_{mon}}{r_{Sk}}1,\frac{M_{mon}}{M_{Sk}}1$$

This situation occurs at small $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2`$ and $`\kappa _1\kappa _2`$, see eqs. (15), (16). In this case the monopole core is unaffected by the Skyrme field, i.e., the profiles of $`a_1(\rho )`$ and $`h(\rho )`$ coincide with the undistorted monopole profiles (and hence are independent of the baryon number), whereas $`a_2(\rho )`$ is small. The first two terms in eq. (22) are then irrelevant, and the properties of the radial Skyrme field $`f`$ are determined by the Hamiltonian

$`(EM_{mon})[f]`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi {\displaystyle \frac{F_\pi }{\sqrt{512}e}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\rho (\stackrel{~}{}\stackrel{~}{}_{mon})(\rho )}`$
$`\stackrel{~}{}\stackrel{~}{}_{mon}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _1}{\kappa _2}}}\left[\rho ^2(f^{})^2+2Y^2\right]+4\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _2}{\kappa _1}}}{\displaystyle \frac{Y^2}{\rho ^2}}\left[2\rho ^2(f^{})^2+Y^2\right]`$ (26)
where we made use of eq. (14). The fields $`a_1`$ and $`h`$ entering this expression are spectators (they correspond to the undistorted monopole). This is what we mean by the regime of “point-like” monopole. In fact, the monopole is in some sense never point-like, as its core affects the asymptotics of the radial Skyrme field (this feature we shall discuss later on), so it is more appropriate to speak of a spectator monopole.

There are several properties of the spectator monopole regime that may be used to estimate the range of parameters at which it is actually realised:

(i) the profiles of $`a_1`$ and $`h`$ must coincide with the undistorted monopole profiles;

(ii) the profile $`f(\rho )`$ should depend on the ratio $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2`$, and not on the overall magnitude of $`\kappa _{1,2}`$; in particular, for fixed $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$, the second asymptotic coefficient $`c_f`$ in eq. (24) should depend on $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2`$ only (this follows from eq. (26));

(iii) the baryon number should be equal to $`(\pi f_{\mathrm{}})/\pi `$ (this follows from eq. (25) and $`a_2=0`$);

(iv) The energy, referenced from the monopole mass and expressed in units of the Skyrmion mass, must depend only on the baryon number and ratio $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2`$,

$$\frac{EM_{mon}}{M_{Sk}}=\mathrm{\Delta }E(B,\frac{\kappa _1}{\kappa _2})$$

(this again follows from eq. (26)).

The properties (ii) – (iv) are illustrated in Figs. 2 – 4.

The property (i) is particularly useful for establishing at what values of $`\kappa _1`$ (i.e., $`F_\pi /v`$) the spectator monopole regime sets in for given $`\kappa _2`$ (i.e., for given $`g^2/e^2`$). We present the corresponding plots in Fig. 5.

Figures 2 – 5 show that the spectator monopole regime sets in at fairly large $`\kappa _1`$ and $`\kappa _2`$, as large as $`\kappa _1=0.01`$, $`\kappa _2=0.1`$. These values of parameters correspond to $`r_{mon}0.03r_{Sk}`$ and $`M_{Sk}M_{mon}`$. A “point-like” monopole need not be really very small and very heavy.

### 4.4 Radial Skyrme field

Let us now discuss how the asymptotics of the radial Skyrme function, namely, the constant $`c_f`$ at given $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$, depends on the properties of the monopole core in the spectator monopole regime. At small $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2`$, the behaviour (24) terminates at $`\rho >1`$ where the monopole function $`a_1`$ is already exponentially decaying (i.e., somewhat outside the core). Indeed, the term $`8\kappa _2Y^2`$ on the left hand side of eq. (23) becomes comparable to $`\kappa _1\rho ^2`$ at

$$a_1\mathrm{sin}f\sqrt{\frac{\kappa _1}{\kappa _2}}\rho $$
(27)
This implies that the regime (24) terminates when $`a_1`$ is small, and $`\rho |\mathrm{ln}a_1|/2`$ is larger than 1. For a crude estimate we take into account this effect only, set $`\mathrm{sin}f1`$ on the left hand side and $`\rho 1`$ on the right hand side of eq. (27) and obtain that the asymptotic regime (24) terminates at

$$\rho \rho _c=\frac{1}{4}|\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\kappa _1}{\kappa _2}\right)|$$
(28)
At this value of $`\rho `$, the function $`f(\rho )`$ should be reasonably close to its value at $`\rho =0`$, i.e., $`f(\rho _c)\pi `$. Hence

$$\frac{c_f}{\rho _c}(\pi f_{\mathrm{}})$$

that is

$$c_f\frac{1}{4}(\pi f_{\mathrm{}})|\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\kappa _1}{\kappa _2}\right)|$$

up to terms varying slower than logarithmically. This shows that $`c_f`$ depends on the ratio $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2`$ logarithmically. We confirmed this expectation by numerical calculations, though instead of the coefficient $`\pi /4`$ at $`f_{\mathrm{}}=0`$, we obtained that in the spectator monopole regime

$$c_f=0.61|\mathrm{ln}\left(\frac{\kappa _1}{\kappa _2}\right)|+\text{const},f_{\mathrm{}}=0$$

Thus, in terms of the physical coordinate $`r`$, the radial Skyrme function outside the core behaves as

$$f(r)=f_{\mathrm{}}+\text{const}\frac{r_{mon}|\mathrm{ln}(r_{mon}/r_{Sk})|}{r}$$
(29)
Everywhere in space, except for a region close to the monopole core, the least energy configuration with given baryon number is the $`r`$-independent hedgehog field, $`f=\mathrm{cos}f_{\mathrm{}}+i\widehat{x}\stackrel{}{\sigma }\mathrm{sin}f_{\mathrm{}}`$, while $`f(r)`$ changes from $`\pi `$ to $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$ near $`\rho \rho _c`$.

A crude estimate for the energy of configurations with, say, $`B=1`$ is obtained by integrating the energy density, $`(F_\pi ^2/8)r^2(f^{})^2`$, over the region $`rr_cgv\rho _c`$. One finds, using the asymptotics (24)

$$(EM_{mon})\frac{F_\pi ^2}{gv}\frac{c_f^2}{\rho _c}$$

i.e., up to logarithms,

$$(EM_{mon})\frac{F_\pi ^2}{gv}$$
(30)
Hence, the Skyrmion looses most of its mass when approaching the monopole. This is illustrated in Fig. 6.

We note in passing that if the baryon number were conserved, there would exist Skyrmion–monopole bound states with binding energy almost equal to the mass of the Skyrmion. This is in accord with Refs. .

### 4.5 Effect of Wess–Zumino–Witten term

Let us now discuss the Wess–Zumino–Witten term in the action, the last term in eq. (2). In our context, its main effect is to generate charge densities induced by the Skyrme and gauge fields . A suitable gauge for calculating this effect is $`U=1`$. In this gauge, the WZW term is  (we write the terms which do not vanish in the $`SU(2)`$ case)

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{WZW}=d^4xϵ^{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }Z_{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }$$

$$Z_{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }=\frac{n}{48\pi ^2}\text{Tr}\left[A_\mu A_\nu _\lambda B_\rho +B_\mu B_\nu _\lambda A_\rho +\frac{1}{2}(A_\mu A_\nu B_\lambda B_\rho +B_\mu A_\nu B_\lambda A_\rho )\right]$$

where $`n`$ is an integer (number of colours in QCD). A straigtforward calculation gives for general spherically symmetric fields

$$d^3xϵ^{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }Z_{\mu \nu \lambda \rho }=\frac{n}{48\pi ^2}4\pi r^2𝑑rZ$$

$$Z=\frac{\stackrel{~}{a}_0}{r^2}[\frac{\stackrel{~}{b}_3}{r}(\stackrel{~}{b}_1\stackrel{~}{a}_2\stackrel{~}{a}_1\stackrel{~}{b}_2)\stackrel{~}{b}_2^{}(\stackrel{~}{a}_2\stackrel{~}{b}_2)\stackrel{~}{b}_1^{}(\stackrel{~}{a}_1\stackrel{~}{b}_1)]+(\stackrel{~}{a}\stackrel{~}{b})$$

where $`\stackrel{~}{a}_i`$, $`\stackrel{~}{b}_i`$ are the radial fields in the gauge $`U=1`$ (in writing this formula we did not assume the symmetry (10); the field $`B_i`$ has the same form as $`A_i`$ in (11) but with $`b_i`$ substituted for $`a_i`$), and

$$\stackrel{~}{a}_0=i\text{Tr}(\widehat{x}\stackrel{}{\sigma }A_0),\stackrel{~}{b}_0=i\text{Tr}(\widehat{x}\stackrel{}{\sigma }B_0)$$

Making use of the symmetry (10), we find

$$Z=\frac{2(\stackrel{~}{a}_0+\stackrel{~}{b}_0)}{r^2}\left(\stackrel{~}{a}_2\stackrel{~}{a}_2^{}\frac{\stackrel{~}{a}_1\stackrel{~}{a}_2\stackrel{~}{a}_3}{r}\right)$$
(31)
Hence, the WZW term induces (vectorial) electric charge density in the vicinity of the monopole.

We have to check that the Coulomb self-interaction due to this effect does not spoil our previous analysis. Let us estimate the Coulomb energy, making use of the spectator monopole approximation. Returning to the original gauge $`a_3=b_3=0`$, and setting $`a_2=b_2=0`$, we obtain

$$Z=\frac{2(a_0+b_0)}{r^2}a_1a_1^{}\mathrm{sin}^2f$$

The electric charge density is induced in the region where $`f`$ is substantially different from $`\pi `$. This occurs near and above $`\rho \rho _c`$, where $`a_1`$ is small. Making use of eq. (27) we find that the total induced charge is, up to logarithms,

$$Q[a_1(\rho _c)\mathrm{sin}f(\rho _c)]^2\frac{\kappa _1}{\kappa _2}\frac{e^2F_\pi ^2}{g^2v^2}$$

Since $`r_cr_{mon}(gv)^1`$, up to logarithms, we obtain an estimate for the Coulomb energy

$$E_{Coul}\frac{g^2Q^2}{r_c}\frac{F_\pi ^2}{gv}\left(\frac{e^2F_\pi }{v}\right)^2$$

which is very small compared to eq. (30).

Hence, in our model, the Skyrmion on top of the monopole is (nearly) neutral, and the Coulomb energy is negligible. The WZW term in the action may be safely ignored.

## 5 Discussion

For fixed parameters of the model, $`\kappa _1`$ and $`\kappa _2`$, we have constructed the family of constrained solutions along which the baryon number monotonically decreases to zero and energy monotonically decreases to the monopole mass. These solutions, however, have different behaviours of the Skyrme field at spatial infinity, i.e., different values of the radial Skyrme function at $`r=\mathrm{}`$. One may doubt that the system can actualy travel along this path in configuration space: in the gauge $`A_0=B_0=0`$, the kinetic energy contains a term

$$\frac{\pi F_\pi }{2}r^2𝑑r\dot{f}^2$$

which diverges if $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$ changes in time. Also, the baryonic current (4) has spatial components whose asymptotics at large $`r`$ (again in the gauge $`A_0=B_0=0`$) are

$$j_i=\frac{\widehat{x}_i}{4\pi ^2r^2}\dot{f}$$
(32)
For $`\dot{f}_{\mathrm{}}0`$, there is the baryonic flux at $`r\mathrm{}`$,

$$F=j_i𝑑\mathrm{\Sigma }^i=\frac{1}{\pi }\dot{f_{\mathrm{}}}$$

This may seem to indicate that the bayon number leaks to spatial infinity.

Certainly, an evolution with infinite kinetic energy is impossible, so in the gauge $`A_0=B_0=0`$ the asymptotic value $`f_{\mathrm{}}`$ cannot change in time. To see how, in this gauge, the system can travel along the path with varying baryon number (say, leading from $`B=1`$ to $`B=0`$), one has first to transform each constrained solution of our family to a gauge in which $`f(r)`$ rapidly tends to zero as $`r\mathrm{}`$. According to eqs. (17), (24), each configuration of the new family will have non-vanishing $`a_3`$, so that at large $`\rho `$

$$a_3=\frac{c_f}{\rho }$$
(33)
Because of gauge invariance, the baryon numbers and energies of old and new configurations will be the same.

Travelling along the new path in the configuration space does not cost infinite kinetic energy. Indeed, in the gauge $`A_0=B_0=0`$, the electric field at large $`r`$ behaves as

$$F_{0i}\frac{\dot{a}_3}{r}\frac{\dot{c}_f}{r^2}$$

and the integral of $`F_{0i}^2`$ converges. Also, the baryonic current (32) vanishes as $`r\mathrm{}`$, so the baryon number does not leak to spatial infinity. It merely disappears.

Acknowledgements

This work was carried out in the framework of projects SC/2000/020 and IC/2000/021 of Enterprise-Ireland. The work of V.R. has been supported in part by the Council for Presidential Grants and State Support of Leading Scientific Schools, grant 00-15-96626, RFBR grant 99-01-18410 and CRDF grant (award RP1-2103).

Figure captions

Fig 1. Energy (referenced from the monopole mass and expressed in units of the Skyrmion mass) versus baryon number for $`\kappa _2=0.1`$, and $`\kappa _1=0.01`$ (solid line) $`\kappa _1=0.001`$, (dashed line), $`\kappa _1=0.0001`$ (dotted line).

Figure 2. The asymptotic coefficient $`c_f`$ (see eq. (24)) at $`f_{\mathrm{}}=0`$ as a function of $`\kappa _1`$ for fixed ratio $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2=0.1`$ (squares) and $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2=0.01`$ (bullets).

Figure 3. The baryon number as a function of $`\kappa _1`$ for two values of the ratio $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2`$:

(a) $`(B1)`$ at $`f_{\mathrm{}}=0`$;

(b) $`(B0.5)`$ at $`f_{\mathrm{}}=\pi /2`$.

Figure 4.  Energy as a function of baryon number at different $`\kappa _1`$ and fixed ratio (a) $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2=0.1`$; (b) $`\kappa _1/\kappa _2=0.01`$. The curves for $`\kappa _10.0001`$ are indistinguishable.

Figure 5. Profiles of the functions $`a_1`$, $`a_2`$, $`h`$ and $`f`$ for $`\kappa _2=1`$ and $`\kappa _1=1`$ (dotted line), $`\kappa _1=0.1`$ (dashed line), $`\kappa _1=0.01`$ (solid line). For $`\kappa _10.01`$ the profiles of $`a_1`$, $`a_2`$ and $`h`$ are indistinguishable and coincide with the undistorted monopole profiles.

Figure 6. Energy (referenced from the monopole mass and expressed in units of the Skyrmion mass) for the configurations with baryon number $`B=1`$ as a function of $`\kappa _1`$ for a fixed value of $`\kappa _2`$.


text:
# Anomalous diffusion and dynamical localization in a parabolic map

## Abstract

We study numerically classical and quantum dynamics of a piecewise parabolic area preserving map on a cylinder which emerges from the bounce map of elongated triangular billiards. The classical map exhibits anomalous diffusion. Quantization of the same map results in a system with dynamical localization and pure point spectrum.

PACS numbers: 05.45.Pq, 05.45.Mt

As the Schrödinger equation is linear, it cannot posses exponential instability in time as do the classical equations of motion. Quantum time evolution is dynamically stable  and all Lyapunov exponents are strictly zero. This does not contradict the correspondence principle as the quantum evolution still mimics classical exponential instability up to so-called log-time $`\mathrm{log}1/\mathrm{}`$. For larger times, the classical evolution develops details on scales smaller than $`\mathrm{}`$ and the strict correspondence is lost. In some quantum systems there is another time scale, connected with the phenomena of dynamical localization. This is purely quantum interference effect and results in a quantum suppression of classical diffusion. For times smaller than this so-called break time $`t<t_\mathrm{B}`$, quantum evolution follows the classical diffusion. Afterwards, the quantum system “notices” it’s discrete spectrum and the diffusion stops, resulting in a localized state. Since the break time $`t_\mathrm{B}`$ is usually much larger than the log-time, exponential instability may not be relevant for dynamical localization, although all known examples of dynamical localization, from kicked rotors and maps to quantum billiards, take place in classically chaotic systems.

There are several reasons for studying systems without exponential instability. Most important is to gain insight into the old question, namely what are the necessary and sufficient properties of a system in order to display certain statistical properties. This question can be addressed in classical as well as in quantum mechanics. In this Letter we study a simple dynamical model with purely parabolic, non-chaotic and non-integrable, classical time evolution. By means of numerical experiments and heuristic arguments we show that the model exhibits anomalous classical diffusion whose mechanism is essentially different from the one that is commonly observed in softly chaotic, i.e. KAM, systems. Furthermore, we show that the quantization of the same model displays dynamical localization, supporting a provocative claim that dynamical localization can exist without classical chaos and without normal classical diffusion.

Triangular billiards are among the simplest classical systems without exponential instability. It is worth mentioning that a triangular billiard is equivalent to the motion of three particles on a ring (provided all three angles are smaller than $`\pi /2`$) with their masses connected to the angles of a triangle . Here we consider a special asymptotic case of an elongated triangular billiard with one angle $`\gamma `$ being very small , where it was shown that in the limit $`\gamma 0`$ the bounce map, relating two successive collisions with the short sides of a triangle read

$`v_{n+1}`$ $`=`$ $`v_n+2(u_n[u_n]\mu (1)^{[u_n]})`$ (1)
$`u_{n+1}`$ $`=`$ $`u_n2v_{n+1}(mod2),`$ (2)
where $`u,v`$ are suitable position-momentum Birkhoff coordinates, $`\mu `$ is a parameter measuring the asymmetry of two non-small angles, and $`[u_n]`$ is the nearest integer to $`u_n`$. Definition range for variables $`(u,v)`$ is a cylinder. Furthermore, if compactified onto a torus $`(u\text{ (mod }2),v\text{ (mod }1))`$, the map (2) can be rewritten in new variables $`x,y[1,1)`$, with $`y_n=2(1)^n(u_n+v_n\frac{1}{2})`$ and $`x_n=(1)^n(u_n\frac{1}{2})`$,

$`y_{n+1}`$ $`=`$ $`y_n+4\mu \text{sgn}x_n(\text{mod }2)`$ (3)
$`x_{n+1}`$ $`=`$ $`x_n+y_{n+1}(\text{mod }2),`$ (4)
where $`\text{sgn}x_n`$ denotes the sign $`\pm 1`$ of $`x_n`$. Both maps, the map (2) and the so called triangle map (4) are area preserving and (piece-wise) parabolic, therefore they do not exhibit exponential instability. We stress once again that the maps (2) and (4) are equivalent only if both are considered on the 2-torus. In the present paper we will focus on the classical and quantum properties of the map (2) on the cylinder. Let us first discuss its classical properties.

If considered on the torus (4), three different cases of parameters must be distinguished: (i) If the parameter $`\mu =k/2l`$ and the initial $`y_0=2m/l`$ are both rational ($`x_0`$ can be arbitrary irrational) then the dynamics can be reduced to a permutation on a finite integer lattice $`l\times l`$, hence all orbits are periodic with period which divides $`l^2`$. (ii) The parameter $`\mu =k/2l`$ is rational, but $`x_0`$ and $`y_0`$ are irrational. In this case, the dynamics is pseudointegrable and the motion appears to be ergodic on the invariant curve which is a set of $`l`$ helices $`(yy_0)l\text{ (mod }2)=0`$. (iii) If the parameter $`\mu `$ as well as initial coordinates $`x_0,y_0`$ are irrational then the motion appears to be ergodic on the whole phase space. However, the exploration of the phase space is very slow, namely it was found numerically that the number of different values of $`y_t`$ visited up to time $`t`$ grows as $`\mathrm{log}t`$, i.e. weak ergodicity .

If we consider the same three cases in the original variables $`u`$ and $`v`$, that is the map (2) on the cylinder, the case (i) results in a ballistic transport as generic periodic orbits of the triangle map now result in ballistic orbits. In pseudointegrable case (ii) one may focus on the motion along infinite invariant helices ($`(u+v)l\text{ (mod }1)=\mathrm{const}`$). Numerical evidence suggests strongly that the motion along the helix exhibits anomalous diffusion $`(v_nv_0)^2n^\alpha `$, with exponent $`1<\alpha <2`$ which depends on parameters $`\mu ,u_0,v_0`$. In weakly ergodic case (iii), we have ‘logarithmically slow’ diffusion transverse to the helices due to weak ergodicity and ‘faster than normal’ diffusion along the helix. As a result we find numerically significant power-law anomalous diffusion in momentum variable $`(v_nv_0)^2n^\alpha `$. Therefore, the transport properties of the triangle map (2) in cases (ii) and (iii) are quite similar, hence the irrationality of $`\mu `$ does not seem to play very important role, apart from determining the dimensionality of the invariant surface. From now on, we set in all numerical experiments $`\mu =(\frac{1}{2}(\sqrt{5}1)e^1)/8`$ (same as in ), but note that results are practically independent of this particular value.

If we denote by $`\rho (v,t)`$ the density of a swarm of trajectories along the momentum axis as a function of time $`t`$, $`\rho 𝑑v=1`$, then the dispersion $`\sigma ^2(t)=v^2\rho (v,t)𝑑vt^\alpha `$ grows faster than linear and defines exponent $`\alpha `$ (see the inset in fig. 2). For our map (2) the exponent of anomalous diffusion is approximately $`\alpha =1.81\pm 0.01`$ and only weakly depends on $`\mu `$. In addition to that, as we show in fig.1, the momentum-density starting from initial $`\rho (v,0)=\delta (v)`$ satisfies a scaling law $`\rho (v,t)=t^{\alpha /2}f(v/t^{\alpha /2})`$ where the scaling function $`f(x)`$ has asymptotically ($`|x|\mathrm{}`$) exponential tails. Anomalous diffusion is usually explained in terms of Lévy walks which emerge as a consequence of some hierarchical structures in phase space that exhibit scaling. For smooth Hamiltonian systems, these structures are stable KAM islands with sticky boundaries. Orbit wanders throughout the chaotic sea, but now and then it gets trapped around one of those islands, causing temporary ballistic motion. However, it seems obvious that successive ballistic flights are uncorrelated as the orbit spends the meantime in the chaotic sea with positive Lyapunov exponent, justifying a random walk approximation, which gives relation between the exponent of anomalous diffusion and the distribution of flight lengths for individual ballistic periods . To our knowledge, all so far studied cases of anomalous diffusion involved systems with Lyapunov chaos, except recently studied “square-ring” billiard . For systems without exponential instability the connection between Lévy flights and the exponent of anomalous diffusion cannot be so simple. This is clearly confirmed by our experiments. The distribution of individual flight lengths has been found to fall as $`(\mathrm{\Delta }v)^\beta `$ with $`\beta 2.9`$, whether according to the random walk approximation this exponent should be $`\beta =4\alpha 2.2`$. The reason for the discrepancy are strong correlations between consecutive flights. We have computed the correlation function between flight lengths $`\mathrm{\Delta }v(t)\mathrm{\Delta }v(0)`$ and found that it falls only very slowly, perhaps as $`t^\kappa `$ with the exponent around $`\kappa 0.1`$.

We note again the fact that the map (2) exhibits anomalous diffusion also for a pseudointegrable case of rational $`\mu `$, and irrational $`y_0`$. Irrational $`y_0`$ can be successively approximated by rational initial momenta $`y_02m_i/l_i`$, e.g. by its continued fraction approximations, for which the orbit is ballistic. Since the system is parabolic, such approximate orbit will follow an exact orbit up to times of order $`tl_i`$, which is typically smaller than the period of ballistic orbit compactified on a torus $`l_i^2`$. Hence there is no contradiction between the ballistic spreading for the rational approximates and the anomalous spreading for the irrational initial conditions. The question of explaining anomalous diffusion can perhaps be reduced to the number theoretic study of periodic orbits. Note also that anomalous diffusion implies fractal singular continous spectrum of classical time evolution.

We now turn to the quantum version of the map (2). Quantization goes along the standard lines (e.g. ), writing the Hamiltonian of the map (2) as $`\widehat{\mathrm{H}}=\widehat{\mathrm{T}}(\widehat{\mathrm{v}})+\delta _\mathrm{p}(t)V(\widehat{\mathrm{u}})`$, where $`\delta _\mathrm{p}(t)=_n\delta (tn)`$, the kinetic part is $`\widehat{\mathrm{T}}(\widehat{\mathrm{v}})=\widehat{\mathrm{v}}^2=^2/u^2`$ and the potential is

$$V(u)=(|u|+\mu 1/2)^2,\mathrm{for}|u|1,$$
(5)
and is periodic in $`u`$ with the period 2. Here we shifted the origin of $`u`$ to the $`1/2`$ with respect to (2) in order to have a symmetry $`V(u)=V(u)`$. Note that potential $`V(u)`$ has a discontinuous derivative at integer values of $`u`$. In order to have a finite Hilbert space for numerical work, we compactify our cylindrical phase space to the torus $`(u\text{ (mod }Q),v\text{ (mod }P))`$, where $`Q2`$ and $`P`$ is the periodicity (number of fundamental cells) in $`v`$-direction. Because we want to study diffusion, periodicity in the momentum $`P`$ will be set to some large integer, so that the phase space will effectively mimic a cylinder. Using periodic boundary conditions $`u+Q|\psi =u|\psi `$, $`v+P|\psi =v|\psi `$, in position, momentum representation, respectively, $`\mathrm{}`$ must satisfy $`QP/2\pi \mathrm{}=N`$, where $`N`$ is an integer giving the dimension of the Hilbert space. There are natural finite position and momentum bases satisfying the above boundary conditions, namely $`|u_j`$ and $`|v_k`$ respectively, with $`u_j=(jN/2)Q/N,j=0,1,\mathrm{}N1`$ and $`v_k=(kN/2)P/N,k=0,1,\mathrm{}N1`$. We perform quantum evolution $`|\psi (t)=\widehat{\mathrm{U}}^t|\psi (0)`$ by decomposing the unitary propagator $`\widehat{\mathrm{U}}=\mathrm{exp}(i\widehat{\mathrm{T}}/\mathrm{})\mathrm{exp}(i\widehat{\mathrm{V}}/\mathrm{})`$ to diagonal kinetic and potential part, with entries $`\mathrm{exp}(iv_k^2/\mathrm{})`$ and $`\mathrm{exp}(iV(u_j)/\mathrm{})`$ respectively, where Fourier transformation between the two bases $`u_j|v_k=N^{1/2}\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}u_jv_k/\mathrm{}}`$ is coded efficiently using FFT-algorithm.

Our main goal was to simulate time evolution and check quantum-classical correspondence with anomalous diffusion for short times and possibility of dynamical localization for longer times. We argued earlier that local (in)stability of a classical system may not play a key role in dynamical localization. We know that in cases of normal classical diffusion one often finds pure point spectrum of quantum evolution, like e.g. in kicked rotor , and that ballistic classical spreading, since it is typically associated with regular structures in classical phase space, implies (at least partly) continuous quantum spectrum. However, the case of anomalous classical diffusion is much less clear. At least there are no examples with an anomalous classical diffusion, that would exhibit dynamical localization, i.e. pure point quantum spectrum. It is therefore important to check the nature of a quantum spectrum for our map. We have done this along two independent lines: direct time evolution in the momentum space and the solution of an eigenvalue problem.

Following the time evolution of an initial momentum state $`v|\psi (0):=\delta (v)`$, we can check whether we have pure point spectrum or not. This has been performed using two different methods. The first method, which we call torus approximation (TA) has been described above and is a standard approach for dealing with quantum maps on cylinders. We have chosen $`P/N`$ to be a continued fraction approximation of a noble irrational $`\pi \mathrm{}=1/(M+\sigma _{\mathrm{GM}})`$, where $`\sigma _{\mathrm{GM}}=(\sqrt{5}+1)/2`$ and $`M`$ is an integer which determines the size of inverse $`\mathrm{}`$. By increasing $`M`$ we approach the semiclassical limit while increasing $`P`$ improves the accuracy of TA. However, we should note that within TA due to periodicity $`P`$ in momentum direction $`v`$ we face significant aliasing of power-law tails in Fourier transform of a non-smooth potential $`V(u)`$. Thus we have devised an alternative quantum evolution with an absorbing boundary (AB) in the momentum space. We truncate the Hilbert space to the set of $`N+1`$ momenta $`v_k=\pi \mathrm{}k`$ with $`k=N/2,\mathrm{},N/2`$, where now we can take any irrational value of $`\mathrm{}`$ since we do not require periodicity in momentum space. The propagator for AB method is a finite nearly-unitary matrix $`U_{k,l}=\theta (k)\mathrm{exp}(iv_k^2/\mathrm{}))\xi _{kl}`$ where $`\theta (k)=1`$ if $`|k|N/2`$ and $`\theta (k)=0`$ otherwise. Now we calculate the Fourier components of the potential propagator $`\xi _k=(1/2)_1^1𝑑u\mathrm{exp}(i\pi kuiV(u)/\mathrm{})`$ exactly in terms of complex error function, that is with no aliasing, however we may loose some quantum probability leaking from the system for large momenta. Controlling the stability of the results, e.g. the quantum dispersion $`\sigma ^2(t)=\psi (t)|\widehat{\mathrm{v}}^2|\psi (t)`$ and the stay probability $`\eta (t)=\psi (t)|\psi (t)`$ with increasing $`N`$ we observe that AB method is typically much more efficient than TA, i.e. it converges for smaller dimension $`N`$. In general we found that results on $`\sigma ^2(t)`$ of both methods agree up to some time scale which monotonically increases with increasing $`N`$. Beyond that time, $`\sigma ^2(t)`$ of TA tends to overshoot due to aliased probability at large momenta, while $`\sigma ^2(t)`$ of AB remains stable.

In fig.2 time dependence of a quantum dispersion $`\sigma ^2(t)`$ is shown for several values of $`M`$ together with the classical case. For cases $`M=100`$, $`M=50`$, and $`M=0`$ (inset) TA results are shown for $`P/N=6765/687446,4181/215815`$, and $`P/N=121393/196418`$, respectively, which do not deviate significantly from the AB results within entire time range $`t<10^5`$. However, for $`M=25`$ AB result for $`N=60000`$ satisfying $`\eta (t)>1610^7`$ is shown instead, since we were not able to reach convergence of TA in the entire time range within accessible values of $`N`$. One can see that the quantum evolution follows the classical diffusion up to some time, after which dynamical localization sets in. The localization is clearly demonstrated for small $`M`$, but for smaller $`\mathrm{}`$ (e.g. $`M=100`$) the localization length seems to increase very fast with $`M`$ and the saturation could not be reached numerically within a reasonable time of computation. However, using standard heuristic arguments, namely that the quantum spread roughly follows the classical $`\sigma ^2t^\alpha `$ until the relaxation (break) time $`t=t_\mathrm{B}`$ which is proportional to the density of ‘operative eigenstates’ $`t_\mathrm{B}\mathrm{}^1\sigma `$, we derive an asymptotic $`\mathrm{}`$-dependence of the localization length, $`\sigma _\mathrm{l}(\mathrm{})1/\mathrm{}^{\alpha /(2\alpha )}.`$ In our case, since $`\alpha `$ is quite close to ballistic value of $`2`$ giving formally $`\sigma _\mathrm{l}=\mathrm{}`$, the localization length is predicted to grow very fast asymptotically, $`\sigma _\mathrm{l}\mathrm{}^{9.5}M^{9.5}`$. Of course, we should be aware that the asymptotic scaling $`\sigma _\mathrm{l}(\mathrm{})`$ is effectively not very accurate for not very small $`\mathrm{}`$ and not very long times $`t`$ where the classical spread increases with a smaller and varying effective exponent. In addition, localized states of time evolution $`v_k|\psi (\mathrm{})`$, as well as eigenstates of $`\widehat{\mathrm{U}}`$, have an interesting structure: an initial exponential decay with a rapid crossover to an asymptotic power law tail ($`v^4`$) which is expected due to non-smooth $`C^0`$ potential (5) (see fig. 3). For smaller $`M`$ the width of the central exponentially localized part of the wave function is smaller and the main contribution to $`\sigma ^2`$ comes from the spiky fluctuating power-law tails, as a results of which $`\sigma ^2(t)`$ exhibits big fluctuations as a function of time (see insets in figs.2,4). On the other hand, in the semiclassical limit the central exponential part of the wave function becomes wider and consequently the tails become less important.

The results of a stationary analysis of quasi-energy spectrum and eigenstates of the quantum propagator are fully compatible with the results of direct time evolution. We have diagonalized the matrix $`\mathrm{U}_{k,l}`$ within TA and all eigenfunctions were found to be localized. We also analyzed the spectral nearest neighbor spacing distribution $`P(s)`$ which, as expected, is always found to have a Poisson shape $`\mathrm{exp}(s)`$ (see fig. 4). We must remark that by decreasing the size of the Hilbert space $`N`$ at fixed $`\mathrm{}`$ (or $`M`$), we obtain a transition to random matrix (Wigner-like) spectral distribution when $`P`$ becomes comparable or smaller than localization length $`\sigma _l`$.

In conclusion, we have demonstrated dynamical localization in a quantum system whose classical counterpart is a non-integrable, piecewise parabolic (locally stable) map and exhibits super-normal anomalous diffusion. The result implies that local dynamical instability of a classical system is not necessary for dynamical localization. The mechanism of anomalous diffusion is here more complicated than in hierarchical chaotic systems, as the consecutive Lévy flights are strongly correlated.

Financial support by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports of Slovenia is gratefully acknowledged.