text:
# Are There Incongruent Ground States in 2𝐷 Edwards-Anderson Spin Glasses?

## 1 Introduction

The decades-old challenge of understanding the physical nature of laboratory spin glasses and the mathematical nature of spin glass models at low temperature continues. It is a paradigm of the wider effort to analyze the many novel features that occur in disordered systems generally. One can only hope that this effort will achieve some fraction of the successes that have been reached in understanding homogeneous systems — in and out of equilibrium — and that are epitomized by the work of Joel Lebowitz and his many collaborators. It is indeed an honor to contribute to this celebration of Joel’s first $`70`$ years; may he live to $`120`$.

Our focus here is entirely on the Edwards-Anderson (EA)  model on $`𝐙^d`$, simplest of the short-ranged Ising spin glasses, with Hamiltonian

$$_𝒥(\sigma )=\underset{x,y}{}J_{xy}\sigma _x\sigma _y.$$
(1)
Here $`𝒥`$ denotes a specific realization of the couplings $`J_{xy}=J_{x,y}`$, the spins $`\sigma _x=\pm 1`$ and the sum is over nearest-neighbor pairs $`x,y`$ only, with the sites $`x,y`$ on the square lattice $`𝐙^d`$. The $`J_{xy}`$’s are independently chosen from a symmetric, continuous distribution with unbounded support, such as Gaussian with mean zero; we denote by $`\nu `$ the overall disorder distribution for $`𝒥`$.

In this paper, we restrict attention entirely to ground states, and further, to the lowest interesting dimension, $`d=2`$. Of course, for $`d=1`$, and assuming as we do that the $`J_{xy}`$’s are continuously distributed, it is easy to see that the multiplicity of infinite-volume ground states is exactly two — i.e., a single ground state pair (GSP) of spin configurations related to each other by a global spin flip — since, in the absence of frustration, every bond can be satisfied in a ground state.

We are interested in the question of whether there are infinitely many observable GSP’s. By “observable” we mean that these states can be generated without using special $`𝒥`$-dependent boundary conditions. This means that by using, say, periodic boundary conditions on the $`L\times L`$ squares $`S_L`$ centered at the origin, for a sequence of $`L`$’s tending to infinity, also chosen in a $`𝒥`$-independent way, the corresponding sequence of finite-volume GSP’s for the finite-volume Hamiltonians $`_𝒥^{(L)}`$ (when restricted to a fixed, but arbitrarily large window about the origin) will generate an empirical distribution, i.e., a histogram, that in the limit is dispersed over many GSP’s.

## 2 Main Result

### 2.1 Preliminaries: Metastates

To state a precise theorem about the GSP’s that arise in this way, we need to explain the notion of a metastate  in this zero-temperature context. We will do this in the briefest possible way here, using empirical distributions, while delaying to later sections of the paper a discussion of the fact that there are alternative definitions giving rise to the same mathematical object.

First, we note that for a given $`𝒥`$, with all couplings nonzero, a GSP $`\alpha `$ may be identified with the collection of unsatisfied bonds, which we regard as edges in the dual lattice. Now suppose that $`L_j\mathrm{}`$ is a sequence of scale sizes, not depending on $`𝒥`$, such that for $`\nu `$-almost every $`𝒥`$, there is a probability measure (called a metastate) $`\kappa _𝒥`$, defined on the configurations $`\alpha `$ of GSP’s on all of $`𝐙^2`$, which is the limit of the empirical distributions of the finite volume GSP’s $`\alpha _𝒥^{(L)}`$ along the sequence $`L_j`$ as follows: Let $`D_1`$ and $`D_2`$ be disjoint finite sets of dual edges, let $`A(D_1,D_2)`$ denote the event that every edge in $`D_1`$ is unsatisfied and every edge in $`D_2`$ is satisfied; let $`F_𝒥^{(M)}(D_1,D_2)`$ denote the fraction of the indices $`j\{1,\mathrm{},M\}`$ such that all the edges of $`D_1`$ and $`D_2`$ are within the square $`S_{L_j}`$ and such that the GSP $`\alpha _𝒥^{(L_j)}`$ obeys all the requirements of $`A(D_1,D_2)`$; then for every such $`D_1`$ and $`D_2`$,

$$\underset{M\mathrm{}}{lim}F_𝒥^{(M)}(D_1,D_2)=\kappa _𝒥(A(D_1,D_2)).$$
(2)
Thus a metastate for $`T=0`$ is an ensemble of infinite-volume GSP’s that describes the asymptotic fractions of squares, along a subsequence $`L_j`$, for which the various GSP’s are observed (when restricted to windows of fixed, but arbitrarily large, size) within the finite-volume systems. It can be shown by compactness arguments  that such subsequences $`L_j`$ exist; in fact every subsequence has such an $`L_j`$ as a further sub-subsequence. Although it is a reasonable conjecture that any two metastates are in fact the same for almost every $`𝒥`$, no general result has been proved. However, this would be an immediate corollary of the following conjecture, at least for $`d=2`$, which would also imply that the metastate is supported on a single GSP for almost every $`𝒥`$. We note that recent numerical results are consistent with the existence of only a single GSP in two dimensions .

Conjecture 1. Let $`𝒥`$ be chosen from the disorder distribution $`\nu `$ and let $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ be GSP’s chosen independently from $`d=2`$ periodic boundary condition metastates, $`\kappa _𝒥`$ and $`\kappa _𝒥^{}`$ (coming from subsequences $`L_j`$ and $`L_k^{}`$). Then, with probability one, $`\alpha =\beta `$.

### 2.2 Theorem

The main result of this paper is the proof of the following theorem, which we regard as partial verification of the above Conjecture — see the Remark below. Equality of two GSP’s, $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, is of course equivalent to the vanishing of the symmetric difference $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$, the collection of bonds that are satisfied in one of the two GSP’s and unsatisfied in the other. It is not hard to show (see Proposition 1 below) that, at least for periodic boundary conditions, the symmetric difference must consist either of a single domain wall (i.e., a doubly-infinite self-avoiding path in the dual lattice) with strictly positive density or else multiple nonintersecting domain walls which have altogether strictly positive density, but may have zero density individually. A priori, we felt (and still feel) that on a heuristic level, the former scenario for GSP multiplicity is the less plausible of the two. The next theorem rigorously eliminates the latter scenario.

Theorem 1. Let $`𝒥`$ be chosen from the disorder distribution $`\nu `$ and let $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ be GSP’s chosen independently from $`d=2`$ periodic boundary condition metastates, $`\kappa _𝒥`$ and $`\kappa _𝒥^{}`$ (coming from subsequences $`L_j`$ and $`L_k^{}`$). Then, with probability one, either $`\alpha =\beta `$ or else $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$ is a single domain wall with strictly positive density.

Proof. This theorem will be an immediate consequence of three propositions, given in Section 4 of the paper.

Remark. Although Theorem 1 does not eliminate the scenario of multiple GSP’s whose symmetric differences are single positive density domain walls, we suspect that such domain walls do not in fact occur. The proof of Theorem 1 is based on showing that the presence of two or more $`\alpha \beta `$ domain walls would create an instability for both $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ with respect to the flip of a large droplet whose boundary consists of two long segments from adjacent domain walls, connected by two short “rungs” between the walls. The stability of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ to such flips is controlled by the infimum $`E^{}`$ of the necessarily positive rung energies — see Equation (11). Proposition 3 of Sect. 4 proves instability by showing that $`E^{}=0`$, while Proposition 2 there shows that such unstable GSP’s cannot actually occur with nonzero probability. If there were a single domain wall, it would be natural to expect that, like the rungs in Proposition 3, the “pseudo-rungs” that connect sections of the domain wall that are close in Euclidean distance, but greatly separated in distance along the domain wall, could also have arbitrarily low positive energies. If these pseudo-rungs connected long pieces of the domain wall containing some fixed bond (and we emphasize that these properties have not been proved), then single domain walls would be ruled out by an analogue of Proposition 2. The consequence would be that the periodic boundary condition metastate in the $`2D`$ EA Ising spin glass would be unique and supported on a single GSP.

### 2.3 Extension to Other Boundary Conditions

The restriction to periodic boundary conditions in Theorem 1 can in fact be relaxed to allow other boundary conditions that do not depend on $`𝒥`$. For boundary conditions such as antiperiodic that are flip-related to periodic ones, nothing needs to be done, since they yield the same metastate — see Section IV of .

To explain how other boundary conditions can be handled, we begin by noting that the significance of periodic boundary conditions is that they yield translation-invariance of various infinite-volume objects, which in turn is a crucial ingredient in the propositions of the next section. With periodic boundary conditions, translation-invariance is already valid for finite volume. For example, from the random pair $`(𝒥,\alpha _𝒥^{(L)})`$, the finite dimensional distributions of finitely many coupling values and finitely many bond satisfaction variables are unchanged under translation by $`y`$, as long as $`y`$ does not translate any of the finitely many bonds in question beyond $`S_L`$. On the other hand, in the spirit of the empirical distribution construction of the metastate described above, one could rather consider the random pair $`(𝒥,\alpha _𝒥^{()})`$, with $``$ chosen, uniformly at random, from $`L_1,\mathrm{},L_M`$. In that case, there is in a certain sense only approximate translation invariance for finite $`M`$, since the bonds typically do get translated out of $`S_{L_j}`$ for small $`j`$. But full translation-invariance is restored in the limit $`M\mathrm{}`$.

For non-periodic, but still $`𝒥`$-independent, boundary conditions, one can somewhat similarly obtain infinite-volume translation-invariance, as follows. For each $`L`$ and $`x`$, let $`\alpha _𝒥^{(L,x)}`$ denote the GSP in the translated square $`S_L+x`$ with some $`𝒥`$-independent boundary condition, such as free or plus. Next, let $`𝒳(L)`$ denote a uniformly random site in $`S_{L^{}(L)}`$, where the deterministic $`L^{}(L)\mathrm{}`$ with, say, $`LL^{}(L)\mathrm{}`$ (e.g., $`L^{}(L)=\sqrt{L}`$). Then the random pair $`(𝒥,\alpha _𝒥^{(L,𝒳(L))})`$ or, alternatively, $`(𝒥,\alpha _𝒥^{(,𝒳())})`$, has approximate translation-invariance, which becomes exact as $`L\mathrm{}`$, or, alternatively, $`M\mathrm{}`$. Using such an “average over translates” construction, one can obtain metastates coming from, e.g., free or plus boundary conditions, for which the analogue of Theorem 1 will be valid. Such averaging over translates can also be used to obtain translation-invariance for the extended notions of metastates we describe next.

## 3 The Excitation Metastate

An important part of the proof of Theorem 1 is based on extending the notion of metastates so as to describe how a given GSP changes as the couplings in $`𝒥`$ vary. Of course, if Conjecture 1 were true, then, at least for $`d=2`$, there would be, for almost every $`𝒥`$, a GSP $`\alpha _𝒥`$, uniquely determined as being the one on which the periodic boundary condition metastate is supported; thus one would know how $`\alpha _𝒥`$ changes even when infinitely many of the couplings in $`𝒥`$ vary. But in general, since there might be many GSP’s and perhaps even many metastates, it is not so obvious how to formulate the dependence of a given GSP in the support of a metastate even on finitely many couplings.

Neither the statement of Theorem 1 nor that of our three main propositions requires this extension of metastates, but it will be needed for the proofs of the latter two of the main propositions. This extension will be presented in detail in Section 5 of the paper, but we present a short exposition here, since it seems to be of independent interest. Roughly speaking, the extension requires that we keep track of not only the GSP itself, but also of all its excitations in which finitely many spins are forced to take specified values, modulo a global flip. We note that recent numerical studies of spin glasses have analyzed excitations induced in this way  and in more novel ways . There are two types of information about our excitations that one might wish to keep track of: (a) the minimum energy cost required to force the spins, and (b) the pair of spin configurations that does the minimizing — i.e., the excited state. It actually suffices to keep track only of (a), but it is perhaps conceptually simpler to keep track of (b) as well, and we will take that tack.

Suppose $`A`$ is a finite subset of $`𝐙^2`$ (in this discussion, we only take $`d=2`$ for convenience), $`\eta `$ is a spin configuration on $`A`$ and $`L`$ is sufficiently large so that $`AS_L`$. We denote by $`\alpha _𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)}`$ the pair of periodic boundary condition spin configurations on $`S_L`$ with minimum energy subject to the constraint that they equal $`\pm \eta `$ on $`A`$. If $`A`$ is empty or a singleton site, this is just the ordinary finite-volume ground state $`\alpha _𝒥^{(L)}`$. We also define the excitation energy $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)}`$ to be the energy of $`\alpha _𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)}`$ minus the ground state energy of $`\alpha _𝒥^{(L)}`$. Let $`B`$ be a finite set of bonds $`b=x,y`$ and let $`𝒥^B`$ denote a realization of the couplings $`J_b`$ for all $`bB`$. To see how $`\alpha _𝒥^{(L)}`$ and eventually $`\alpha _𝒥`$ varies with $`𝒥^B`$ when all other couplings are fixed, we begin by letting $`A=A(B)`$ denote the set of sites that are endpoints of bonds in $`B`$ and considering the excitation energies $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)}`$ and corresponding excited states $`\alpha _𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)}`$, for all possible spin configurations $`\eta `$ on $`A`$. We also define

$$_{𝒥^B}(\eta )=\underset{x,yB}{}J_{xy}^B\eta _x\eta _y,_𝒥(\eta ;B)=\underset{x,yB}{}J_{xy}\eta _x\eta _y,$$
(3)
and denote by $`𝒥[𝒥^B]`$ the coupling configuration in which each coupling $`J_b`$ of $`𝒥`$ with $`bB`$ is replaced by $`J_b^B`$ and all other couplings are left unchanged. Then, for fixed $`\eta `$, $`\alpha _{𝒥[𝒥^B]}^{A,\eta ,(L)}`$ does not depend on $`𝒥^B`$ and

$`_{𝒥[𝒥^B]}^{(L)}(\alpha _{𝒥[𝒥^B]}^{A,\eta ,(L)})_{𝒥[𝒥^B]}^{(L)}(\alpha _{𝒥[𝒥^B]}^{A,\eta ^{},(L)})=_{𝒥[𝒥^B]}^{(L)}(\alpha _𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)})`$ $``$ $`_{𝒥[𝒥^B]}^{(L)}(\alpha _𝒥^{A,\eta ^{},(L)})`$
$`=(_{𝒥^B}(\eta )_𝒥(\eta ;B))(_{𝒥^B}(\eta ^{})_𝒥(\eta ^{};B)))`$ $`+`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)}\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{A,\eta ^{},(L)}.`$ (4)
Note that $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)}`$ depends on $`𝒥`$ but not on $`𝒥^B`$ while $`_{𝒥^B}(\eta )`$ depends on $`𝒥^B`$ but not on $`𝒥`$. Consider now the finitely many functions, as $`\eta `$ varies on $`A`$,

$$h_\eta ^{(L)}(𝒥^B)\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)}+_{𝒥^B}(\eta )_𝒥(\eta ;B).$$
(5)
These are affine functions of $`𝒥^B`$, and if we define $`\eta _𝒥^{(L)}(𝒥^B)`$ to be the $`\eta `$ that minimizes $`h_\eta ^{(L)}(𝒥^B)`$, it follows that

$$\alpha _{𝒥[𝒥^B]}^{(L)}=\alpha _𝒥^{A,\eta _𝒥^{(L)}(𝒥^B),(L)}.$$
(6)
When letting $`L\mathrm{}`$, we will do so for the ground state $`\alpha _𝒥`$ and simultaneously for the excitation energies $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{A,\eta }`$ and excited states $`\alpha _𝒥^{A,\eta }`$ for all choices of finite $`A`$ and spin configurations $`\eta `$ on $`A`$; a superscript  will denote that collection of choices. Of course, this needs to be done via a metastate construction that extends the “ground metastate” $`\kappa _𝒥`$ described earlier, to what we will call the excitation metastate $`\kappa _𝒥^{\mathrm{}}`$. The excitation metastate is a probability measure on infinite-volume excitation energies and states for the given $`𝒥`$, $`(\mathrm{\Delta }E^{\mathrm{}},\alpha ^{\mathrm{}})`$, which includes the ground metastate since the ground state $`\alpha `$ can be obtained by restricting $`\alpha ^{\mathrm{}}`$ to $`A`$ being the empty set (or a singleton, since we are dealing with periodic boundary conditions that do not break spin-flip symmetry). To see how the ground state $`\alpha `$ changes to $`\alpha _{[𝒥^B]}`$ when the couplings in a fixed finite $`B`$ vary, we can then use the infinite-volume extensions of our last two displayed equations (where $`_{𝒥^B}(\eta )`$ and $`_𝒥(\eta ;B)`$ are as before):

$$h_\eta (𝒥^B)\mathrm{\Delta }E^{A(B),\eta }+_{𝒥^B}(\eta )_𝒥(\eta ;B),$$
(7)
and

$$\alpha _{[𝒥^B]}=\alpha ^{A(B),\eta ^{}(𝒥^B)},$$
(8)
where $`\eta ^{}(𝒥^B)`$ is the $`\eta `$ on $`A(B)`$ that minimizes $`h_\eta (𝒥^B)`$.

## 4 The Main Propositions

In this section, we present the three central propositions leading immediately to Theorem 1. The proof of the first of these, a direct application to spin glasses of general $`2D`$ percolation results of Burton and Keane , will be given in this section. The proof of the second and third propositions will be given in Sect. 6. We begin with a somewhat more detailed discussion of ground metastates than given in the last section. For simplicity, we continue to restrict the discussion to periodic boundary condition metastates, as in Sect. 2.

An (infinite-volume) ground state pair or GSP for a given coupling realization $`𝒥`$ is a pair of spin configurations $`\pm \sigma `$ on $`𝐙^d`$, whose energy, governed by Eq. (1), cannot be lowered by flipping any finite subset of spins. That is, it must satisfy the constraint

$$\underset{x,y𝒞}{}J_{xy}\sigma _x\sigma _y0$$
(9)
along any closed loop $`𝒞`$ in the dual lattice. Infinite-volume ground states are always the limits of finite volume ground states, but, in general, the finite-volume boundary conditions may need to be carefully chosen, depending on $`𝒥`$ and/or the limiting ground state. In a disordered sytem, if there are many distinct GSP’s for typical fixed $`𝒥`$, then in general, as noted in , the limit $`lim_L\mathrm{}\alpha _𝒥^{(L)}`$ doesn’t exist, if the $`L`$’s are chosen in a coupling-independent way. This phenomenon was called chaotic size dependence . The ground metastate, a probability measure $`\kappa _𝒥`$ on the infinite-volume ground states $`\alpha _𝒥`$, was proposed in  as a means of analyzing the way in which $`\alpha _𝒥^{(L)}`$ samples from its various possible limits as $`L\mathrm{}`$. (The metastate was introduced and defined for both zero and positive temperatures, but we confine the discussion here to zero temperature.) The same metastate can be constructed by at least two distinct approaches. The first, introduced earlier by Aizenman and Wehr (AW) , directly employs the randomness of the $`𝒥`$’s, while the “empirical distribution” approach of  and subsequent papers was motivated by, but doesn’t require, the potential presence of chaotic size dependence for fixed $`𝒥`$.

The empirical distribution point of view (and its natural extension to excitation metastates) will be the primary one used throughout this paper. However, we briefly describe the AW construction, since it is the one that directly gives, for, e.g., periodic boundary conditions, the translation invariance that will be crucial in our first proposition; for more details see . Here one considers, for each $`L`$, the random pair $`(𝒥,\alpha _𝒥^{(L)})`$ (where $`\alpha _𝒥^{(L)}`$ is the finite-volume periodic boundary condition GSP obtained using the restriction $`𝒥^{(L)}`$ of $`𝒥`$ to $`S_L`$), and takes the limit of the finite-dimensional distributions along a $`𝒥`$-independent subsequence of $`L`$’s, using compactness. This yields a probability distribution $`𝒦`$ on infinite-volume $`(𝒥,\alpha )`$’s which is translation invariant, under simultaneous lattice translations of $`𝒥`$ and $`\alpha `$, because of the periodic boundary conditions, and is such that the conditional distribution $`\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_𝒥`$ of $`\alpha `$ given $`𝒥`$ is supported entirely on GSP’s for that $`𝒥`$. The conditional distribution $`\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_𝒥`$ is the AW ground metastate.

It is easy to show that there is sequential compactness leading to convergence for $`𝒥`$-independent subsequences of $`L`$’s, as described above. We have conjectured  that all subsequence limits are the same; i.e., that existence of a limit does not require taking a subsequence. Proving this conjecture remains an open problem.

The empirical distribution approach of , as described in Sect. 2, takes a fixed $`𝒥`$ and, roughly speaking, replaces the “$`𝒥`$-randomness” used in the AW construction of $`\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_𝒥`$ with “$`L`$-randomness” — i.e., with chaotic size dependence. The empirical distributions along a subsequence $`(L_1,L_2,\mathrm{})`$ are the measures

$$\kappa _𝒥^M=(1/M)\underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}\delta _{\alpha _𝒥^{(L_k)}},$$
(10)
where $`\delta _\alpha `$ denotes the Dirac delta measure at the state $`\alpha `$ and where for convenience we regard the finite-volume GSP $`\alpha _𝒥^{(L)}`$ as defined in infinite volume by, e.g., taking all bonds outside $`S_L`$ as satisfied. We say that $`\kappa _𝒥^M`$ has a limit $`\kappa _𝒥`$ if the probability of any event $`A(D_1,D_2)`$ (that every edge in $`D_1`$ is unsatisfied and every edge in $`D_2`$ is satisfied, where $`D_1`$ and $`D_2`$ are disjoint finite sets of dual edges) converges to the $`\kappa _𝒥`$-probability of that event.

It was shown in  that there exists a $`𝒥`$-independent subsubsequence where the limits $`\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_𝒥`$ and $`\kappa _𝒥`$ are the same. For more details and proofs, see . Also see  for additional properties of the metastate, particularly invariance with respect to gauge-related boundary conditions.

Before we state Proposition 1, some additional definitions are needed. Consider a periodic boundary condition metastate $`\kappa _𝒥`$ (in some fixed dimension, not necessarily two) and two GSP’s $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ chosen from $`\kappa _𝒥`$. Then their symmetric difference $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$, as introduced in Sect. 2, is the set of edges in the dual lattice $`𝐙_{}^{𝐝}{}_{}{}^{}`$ that are satisfied in $`\alpha `$ and not $`\beta `$ or vice-versa. If $``$ is the graph whose edge set is $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$ and whose vertices are all sites in $`𝐙_{}^{𝐝}{}_{}{}^{}`$ touching $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$, then a domain wall, defined relative to the two GSP’s, is a cluster (i.e., a maximal connected component) of $``$. (In two dimensions, according to Proposition 1, domain walls are generically doubly-infinite self-avoiding paths in the dual lattice.) The symmetric difference $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$ is the union of all $`\alpha \beta `$ domain walls and may consist of a single domain wall or of multiple domain walls that are site-disjoint and hence also edge-disjoint.

Two distinct GSP’s $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are said to be incongruent if $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$ has a well-defined nonvanishing density within the set of all edges in $`𝐙_{}^{𝐝}{}_{}{}^{}`$; if the density is zero, they are regionally congruent. We do not consider here the case where the density is not well-defined; we will see from Proposition 1 that in fact this cannot happen in two dimensions. In Proposition 1, we will also see that, if there are multiple GSP’s, the “observable” ones are incongruent. Our primary interest is therefore in the question of existence of these “physical” incongruent states, which should be observable by using coupling-independent boundary conditions. As mentioned in Sect. 2, incongruent states may consist of a single positive-density wall, or else of multiple domain walls, which individually may or may not have positive density, but collectively have strictly positive density.

In all our propositions, $`𝒥`$ is chosen from the disorder distribution $`\nu `$ and then $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are GSP’s chosen independently from periodic boundary condition metastates $`\kappa _𝒥`$ and $`\kappa _𝒥^{}`$ (which may be the same), as described above.

Proposition 1.  Distinct $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ in any dimension must, with probability one, be incongruent. In two dimensions, all domain walls comprising $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$ have the following properties with probability one: (i) they are infinite and contain no loops or dangling ends; (ii) they cannot branch and thus are doubly-infinite self-avoiding paths; (iii) they together partition $`𝐙^2`$ into at most two topological half-spaces and/or a finite or infinite number of doubly-infinite topological strips (that also cannot branch — i.e., each strip has two boundary domain walls and exactly one neighboring strip or half-space on each side). (iv) Moreover, each domain wall has a well-defined density and there cannot simultaneously be positive-density and zero-density walls.

Proof of Proposition 1. Let us denote by $`𝒟_𝒥`$ the probability measure on configurations of $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$ corresponding to choosing $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ independently from $`\kappa _𝒥`$ and $`\kappa _𝒥^{}`$, and denote by $`𝒟`$ the measure then obtained by integrating out the couplings $`𝒥`$ with respect to the disorder distribution $`\nu `$. We claim that $`𝒟`$ is translation-invariant. To see this, begin with the translation-invariant measures on joint configurations of couplings and GSP’s $`𝒦(=\nu \kappa _𝒥)`$ and $`𝒦^{}(=\nu \kappa _𝒥^{})`$ and note that the natural coupling $`\nu \kappa _𝒥\kappa _𝒥^{}`$, a measure on $`(𝒥,\alpha ,\beta )`$ configurations, retains translation-invariance. $`𝒟`$ is then translation-invariant since it is just the distribution of $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$ with $`(\alpha ,\beta )`$ distributed as the marginal of this coupled measure. The translation-invariance of $`𝒟`$ in turn implies by the ergodic theorem with respect to $`𝐙_{}^{2}{}_{}{}^{}`$-translations that any “geometrically defined event”, such as a bond belonging to a domain wall, occurs either nowhere or else with strictly positive density. This proves the first claim.

To prove property (i), we note that a domain wall taken from $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$ separates regions in which the spins of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ agree from regions where they disagree. A domain wall therefore cannot end at a point in any finite region. To rule out loops, note that the sum $`_{x,y}J_{xy}\sigma _x\sigma _y`$ along any such loop must have opposite signs in the two GSP’s, violating Eq. (9), unless the sum vanishes. But this occurs with zero probability because the couplings are chosen independently from a continuous distribution.

Claims (ii), (iii), and (iv) are proven in , using percolation-theoretic arguments first presented in ; we sketch the arguments. To prove (ii), suppose that a domain wall branches at some site $`z`$ in the dual lattice. (We note, although it’s not needed for the proof, that the number of branches emanating from $`z`$ must be even, again because domain walls separate regions of spin configuration agreement from regions of disagreement. Hence the minimal branching at $`z`$ is four.) None of these branches may intersect somewhere else, by property (i). By the translation-invariance of $`𝒟`$, there must then be a positive density of branch points, so that the domain wall would have a treelike structure. That implies the existence of an $`ϵ>0`$ such that the boundary of $`S_L`$ is intersected by a number of distinct branches that grows as $`ϵL^2`$ as $`L\mathrm{}`$, which is impossible.

The proof of (iii) uses a similar argument to rule out branching of the strips — see Theorem 2 of  for details. Property (iv) is not needed for subsequent arguments, but is included for completeness; it is proven in Theorem 4 of  and follows readily from the properties just proven. If zero-density and positive-density clusters coexist, then for some $`p>0`$, there is positive $`𝒟`$-probability that the origin of the dual lattice is contained in a zero-density domain wall with an adjacent wall of density at least $`p`$. Let $`𝒮_p`$ be the set of all walls with density greater than or equal to $`p`$. Then there can be no more than $`(1/p)`$ walls in $`𝒮_p`$. The maximum number of walls of density zero that are adjacent to walls belonging to $`𝒮_p`$ (i.e., if every $`𝒮_p`$-wall is surrounded by two zero-density walls whose other adjacent wall does not belong to $`𝒮_p`$) is therefore $`2/p`$. But then the union of such zero-density walls has density zero and so the probability of the event that the origin is contained in a zero-density wall adjacent to a wall in $`𝒮_p`$ is zero, leading to a contradiction. This completes the proof of the proposition.

So the picture we now have of the symmetric difference $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$ is a union of one or more doubly infinite domain walls. These domain walls do not branch or have any internal loops, and they divide the plane into strips or (if there are positive-density domain walls) half-planes. In all cases where there is more than a single domain wall, translation-invariance of $`𝒟`$ implies that distinct domain walls mostly remain within an $`O(1)`$ distance of one another. E.g., there can be no “hourglass”, “martini glass”, etc., domain wall configurations; these can be ruled out by arguments similar to those used in the proof of part (ii) of Proposition 1.

The essential idea behind the proof of Theorem 1 is contained in the next two propositions. Before we state these propositions, we need to introduce the notion of a “rung” between adjacent domain walls. A rung $``$, defined with respect to $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$, is a path of edges in $`𝐙_{}^{2}{}_{}{}^{}`$ connecting two distinct domain walls, with only the first and last sites in $``$ on any domain wall. So $``$ can contain only edges that are not in $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\beta `$, and the corresponding couplings are therefore either both satisfied or both unsatisfied in $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$. The energy $`E_{}`$ of $``$ is defined to be

$$E_{}=\underset{xy}{}J_{xy}\sigma _x\sigma _y,$$
(11)
with $`\sigma _x\sigma _y`$ taken from $`\alpha `$ or equivalently $`\beta `$. It must be that $`E_{}>0`$ with probability one for the following reasons, which we sketch here and make precise later in the proof of Proposition 2. Suppose that a rung could be found with negative energy (there is zero probability of a zero-energy rung); by translation-invariance there would need to be many such rungs between some fixed pair of adjacent domain walls. Consider the “rectangle” formed by two such negative-energy rungs and the connecting segments of the two adjacent domain walls. The sum of $`J_{xy}\sigma _x\sigma _y`$ along the couplings in the domain wall segments would be positive in one GSP (say, $`\alpha `$), and would therefore be negative in the other (say, $`\beta `$). Therefore, the loop formed by the boundary of this rectangle would violate Eq. (9) in GSP $`\beta `$.

It is then natural to ask the deeper question of whether rung energies along any strip are strictly bounded away from zero, or whether their infimum is exactly zero. Propositions 2 and 3 address this question.

Proposition 2. The rung energies $`E_{^{}}`$ between two fixed (adjacent) domain walls cannot be arbitrarily small; i.e., there is zero probability that $`E^{}=inf_{^{}}E_{^{}}=0`$.

Proposition 3. There is zero probability that $`E^{}>0`$.

The contradiction between Propositions 2 and 3 leads directly to Theorem 1. These propositions will be proved in Section 6.

## 5 Transition Values and Flexibilities

In this section, we present two auxiliary propositions. They will be used in the next section to prove Propositions 2 and 3. These auxiliary propositions involve two notions, transition value and flexibility, that arise in the analysis of how a GSP changes when a single coupling, $`J_b`$, varies. Since this is a restricted case of the dependence of $`\alpha _{[𝒥^B]}`$ on a finite collection $`𝒥^B`$ of couplings, we begin the section by providing a more detailed exposition of the excitation metastate than that given in Sect. 3 above.

Along with an empirical distribution construction of the excitation metastate $`\kappa _𝒥^{\mathrm{}}`$ as a probability measure, defined for $`\nu `$-almost every $`𝒥`$, on configurations $`(\mathrm{\Delta }E^{\mathrm{}},\alpha ^{\mathrm{}})`$ of excitation energies and states for the given $`𝒥`$, there is an alternative AW-type construction, as follows. For each $`L`$, consider $`(𝒥,\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{\mathrm{},(L)},\alpha _𝒥^{\mathrm{},(L)})`$, where $`\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{\mathrm{},(L)}`$ and $`\alpha _𝒥^{\mathrm{},(L)}`$ denote the excitation energies and states in $`S_L`$, with periodic boundary conditions, when the spin configuration on $`AS_L`$ is constrained to be $`\pm \eta `$ (for all allowed $`A`$’s and $`\eta `$’s). As in the AW ground metastate construction, one has sequential compactness of the corresponding probability measures, $`𝒦^{\mathrm{},(L)}`$, leading to convergence of the finite dimensional distributions (involving finitely many couplings, finitely many finite $`A`$’s and finitely many $`\eta `$’s) to those of a limiting translation-invariant measure $`𝒦^{\mathrm{}}`$ on infinite-volume configurations $`(𝒥,\mathrm{\Delta }E^{\mathrm{}},\alpha ^{\mathrm{}})`$ along deterministic subsequences of $`L`$’s.

The marginal distribution of $`𝒥`$ from this $`𝒦^{\mathrm{}}`$ is of course just $`\nu `$ and the conditional distribution of $`(\mathrm{\Delta }E^{\mathrm{}},\alpha ^{\mathrm{}})`$ given $`𝒥`$ is then an excitation metastate $`\stackrel{~}{\kappa }_𝒥^{\mathrm{}}`$, which, like in the ground metastate case, can be shown for $`\nu `$-almost every $`𝒥`$ to equal the $`\kappa _𝒥^{\mathrm{}}`$ constructed via empirical distributions, as the limit along a subsubsequence of

$$(1/M)\underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}\delta _{(\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{\mathrm{},(L_k)},\alpha _𝒥^{\mathrm{},(L_k)})}.$$
(12)
The translation-invariance of $`𝒦^{\mathrm{}}`$ follows, as usual, from the periodic boundary conditions. The relative compactness (tightness) for $`\alpha ^{\mathrm{},(L)}`$ follows from the two-valuedness of spin variables. Finally, the relative compactness (tightness) for $`\mathrm{\Delta }E^{\mathrm{},(L)}`$ follows from the trivial bound,

$$|\mathrm{\Delta }E_𝒥^{A,\eta ,(L)}|\underset{A}{\overset{}{}}|J_{xy}|,$$
(13)
where $`_A^{}`$ denotes the sum over bonds $`x,y`$ with either $`x`$ or $`y`$ or both in $`A`$, together with the fact that the distribution of the $`J_{xy}`$’s does not change with $`L`$.

As explained in Sect. 3, for a given $`𝒥`$, we can extract from $`(\mathrm{\Delta }E^{\mathrm{}},\alpha ^{\mathrm{}})`$ not only the GSP $`\alpha `$, but also $`\alpha _{[𝒥^B]}`$, which describes how the GSP changes when the couplings in a fixed finite set $`B`$ of bonds vary. When $`B`$ consists of a single bond $`b=x,y`$, we write $`\alpha (K^{};b)`$ for the ground state that results when $`J_b`$ is replaced by $`K^{}`$ with all other couplings of $`𝒥`$ left unchanged. It should be clear from Equations (7) and (8) that as $`K^{}`$ varies in $`(\mathrm{},+\mathrm{})`$, the GSP $`\alpha (K^{};b)`$ changes exactly once (this is particularly easy to see in finite volume and the property is preserved in the excitation metastate), from its original configuration $`\alpha `$ when $`K^{}=J_b`$ to a new configuration

$$\alpha ^b=\alpha ^{\{x,y\},\widehat{\eta }},$$
(14)
where $`\widehat{\eta }`$ is one of the two spin configurations on $`\{x,y\}`$ of opposite parity to the original GSP $`\alpha `$ (so that $`\sigma _x\sigma _y`$ is $`+1`$ in one of $`\alpha `$ and $`\alpha ^b`$ and $`1`$ in the other, or equivalently $`J_b`$ is satisfied in one and unsatisfied in the other). We call the value of $`K^{}`$ where this change happens the transition value and denote it by $`K_b`$.

For a given $`b`$, the transition value $`K_b`$ and the unordered set of two GSP’s $`\{\alpha ,\alpha ^b\}`$ do not depend on the value of $`J_b`$, with all other couplings held fixed (again, this is clear for finite volume, and is preserved in the limit). This means that with respect to the probability measure $`𝒦^{\mathrm{}}`$ on infinite-volume configurations $`(𝒥,\mathrm{\Delta }E^{\mathrm{}},\alpha ^{\mathrm{}})`$, the random variables $`K_b`$ and $`J_b`$ are independent. The next proposition is an immediate consequence of this independence.

Proposition 4. With probability one, no coupling $`J_b`$ is exactly at its transition value $`K_b`$.

Proof of Proposition 4. From the independence of $`J_b`$ and $`K_b`$, and the continuity of the distribution of $`J_b`$, it follows that there is probability zero that $`J_bK_b=0`$.

As in the proof of the last proposition, we continue to work on the probability space of $`(𝒥,\mathrm{\Delta }E^{\mathrm{}},\alpha ^{\mathrm{}})`$ configurations with probability measure $`𝒦^{\mathrm{}}`$. When the value of $`J_b`$ is moved from its original value past the transition value $`K_b`$, the change from the original ground state of $`\alpha `$ to the new ground state, and originally excited state, of $`\alpha ^b`$ may involve the flipping of a finite droplet (region of $`𝐙^2`$) or one or more infinite droplets. Thus the symmetric difference $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\alpha ^b`$, representing the dual bonds which change from satisfied to unsatisfied or vice-versa, may consist of a single finite loop or else of one or more infinite disconnected paths, but in all cases some part must pass through $`b`$ since its satisfaction status clearly changes. To help analyze what other bonds $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\alpha ^b`$ may or may not pass through, we introduce the notion of flexibility. The flexibility of a bond $`b=x,y`$ is defined as

$$F_b|K_bJ_b|=(1/2)|\mathrm{\Delta }E^{\{x,y\},\widehat{\eta }}|$$
(15)
and thus is proportional to the excitation energy needed to flip the relative sign of the spins at $`x`$ and $`y`$; it is a measure of the stability of the ground state $`\alpha `$ with respect to fluctuations of the single coupling $`J_b`$.

Proposition 5. For two bonds $`a`$ and $`b`$, there is zero probability that $`F_b>F_a`$ and simultaneously $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\alpha ^a`$ passes through $`b`$.

Proof of Proposition 5. For finite $`L`$, and a bond $`e`$ in $`S_L`$, let us denote by $`F_e^{(L)}|J_eK_e^{(L)}|`$ the finite-volume flexibility. Now $`F_e^{(L)}`$ is clearly the minimum, over all droplets in $`S_L`$, with periodic boundary conditions, whose boundary passes through $`e`$, of (half the) droplet flip energy cost in the GSP $`\alpha ^{(L)}`$. Since this is the case for both $`e=a`$ and $`e=b`$, it is an immediate consequence that the finite-volume droplet boundary $`\alpha ^{(L)}\mathrm{\Delta }\alpha ^{a,(L)}`$ cannot pass through $`b`$ if $`F_b^{(L)}>F_a^{(L)}`$. After $`L\mathrm{}`$, the characterization of $`F_e`$ as a minimum over finite droplets may be lost, but we claim that the conclusion of the proposition still holds. This is because, although the convergence of $`𝒦^{\mathrm{},(L)}`$ along a subsequence to $`𝒦^{\mathrm{}}`$ is not sufficient to imply, e.g., that the probability of $`F_b^{(L)}>F_a^{(L)}`$ converges along the subsequence to the limiting probability of $`F_b>F_a`$, it is sufficent to imply that the probability of the event in the proposition is less than or equal to the the lim inf of the (zero) probability of the corresponding finite-volume events. This completes the proof of the proposition.

## 6 Proof of Propositions 2 and 3

Proof of Proposition 2. Suppose that there are two adjacent domain walls from the GSP’s $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$, $`W_1`$ and $`W_2`$, with $`W_1`$ passing through the origin of the dual lattice, and suppose further that the infimum $`E^{}`$ of rung energies $`E_{^{}}`$ for rungs $`^{}`$ between $`W_1`$ and $`W_2`$ is zero. Our object is to prove that this event has zero probability. If the probability is nonzero, then for every $`ϵ>0`$ there is some $`\mathrm{}(ϵ)<\mathrm{}`$ so that, with nonzero probability, there is a rung $`^{}`$ between $`W_1`$ and $`W_2`$, with the property $`𝒫(ϵ)`$, that its length, defined as the number of bonds, is below $`\mathrm{}(ϵ)`$ and its energy $`E_{^{}}`$ is below $`ϵ`$. But then, by translation-invariance and the lemma given right after this proof, there must, with nonzero probability, be infinitely many such rungs with property $`𝒫(ϵ)`$ with starting points on $`W_1`$ in both directions from the origin along $`W_1`$. Thus we can find two such rungs $``$ and $`^{}`$, one in each direction, and sufficiently far apart that they do not touch each other.

Consider the “rectangular” region of $`𝐙^2`$ whose boundary is the union of these two rungs and the connecting segments, $`C_1`$ and $`C_2`$ of $`W_1`$ and $`W_2`$. The energy cost of flipping the spins in this region in $`\alpha `$ (respectively, in $`\beta `$) is $`+E(C_1,C_2)+E_{}+E_{^{}}`$ (respectively, $`E(C_1,C_2)+E_{}+E_{^{}}`$). Both these quantities must be positive since both $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are GSP’s; hence $`|E(C_1,C_2)|`$ is bounded by $`E_{}+E_{^{}}<2ϵ`$ and the energy costs in both ground states are bounded by $`4ϵ`$. This implies that every bond $`b`$ that $`W_1`$ (or $`W_2`$) passes through has flexibility less than $`2ϵ`$. Since $`ϵ`$ is arbitrary, the flexibilities must be zero, but that would contradict Proposition 4. This, together with the following lemma, completes the proof.

Lemma 1. Suppose $`𝒫`$ is a translation-invariant property of rungs, e.g., the property that the rung energy is below a certain value and/or the rung length is below a certain value. There is zero probability that there exist two adjacent domain walls, $`W_1`$ and $`W_2`$, such that the set of starting points on $`W_1`$ of rungs between $`W_1`$ and $`W_2`$ that satisfy $`𝒫`$ is nonempty without being doubly infinite, i.e., along both directions of $`W_1`$.

Proof of Lemma 1. The proof is based entirely on the translation invariance of the measure $`𝒦^{\mathrm{}}`$. Suppose the claim of the lemma is false. Then for each site $`x`$ in the dual lattice, there is nonzero probability for the event $`A_x`$ that there is a domain wall $`W`$ passing through $`x`$ and an adjacent wall $`W^{}`$ such that $`x`$ is the last site in one of the two directions along $`W`$ such that there is a rung from that site to $`W^{}`$ satisfying $`𝒫`$. Since every domain wall has two directions and at most two adjacent domain walls, there can be at most four sites on any domain wall for which this event occurs. Every domain wall that intersects the square $`S_L`$, sitting inside the infinite lattice, much touch the boundary of the square and thus there are at most $`cL`$ such domain walls for some constant $`c<\mathrm{}`$, and consequently at most $`4cL`$ sites $`x`$ in $`S_L`$ for which $`A_x`$ occurs. But by the ergodic theorem for spatial translations, there is nonzero probability that the number of such sites exceeds $`c^{}L^2`$ for some constant $`c^{}>0`$. This contradiction completes the proof.

Proof of Proposition 3.

For the proof, we need the notion of a “super-satisfied” bond $`b=x,y`$. It is easy to see, for a given $`𝒥`$, that $`b`$ is satisfied in every ground state if $`|J_{xy}|>`$min$`\{M_x,M_y\}`$, where $`M_x`$ is the sum of the three other coupling magnitudes $`|J_{xz}|`$ touching $`x`$, and $`M_y`$ is defined similarly. Such a bond or its dual, called super-satisfied, clearly cannot be part of a domain wall between any two GSP’s.

As in the proof of Proposition 1, but using the excitation metastates $`\kappa _𝒥^{\mathrm{}}`$ and $`\kappa _{}^{}{}_{𝒥}{}^{\mathrm{}}`$ that extend the ground metastates from which $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are chosen, we work in the probability space with the coupled measure $`\nu \kappa _𝒥^{\mathrm{}}\kappa _{}^{}{}_{𝒥}{}^{\mathrm{}}`$. On this space, we can consider the modified ground states $`\alpha _{[𝒥^B]}`$ and $`\beta _{[𝒥^B]}`$ as any finitely many couplings are varied as well as the transition values and flexibilities for both $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ for all bonds $`b`$.

Now suppose that the rung energy infimum $`E^{}`$ between some pair $`W_1,W_2`$ of domain walls satisfies $`E^{}>0`$ with positive probability; we show this leads to a contradiction. First we find, as in Fig. 1, a rung $``$ and two dual bonds $`b_1,b_2`$ whose locations on $`W_1`$ are respectively in opposite directions from the starting site of $``$, and such that $`E_{}E^{}`$, which we denote by $`\delta `$, is strictly less than the flexibility values for both $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ of both $`b_1,b_2`$. The existence with positive probability of such an $``$, $`b_1`$ and $`b_2`$ follows from the non-vanishing of flexibilities given by Proposition 4 and translation-invariance (e.g., Lemma 1).

But we also want a situation, as in Fig. 1, where all the dual lattice non-domain-wall bonds that touch $`W_1`$ between $`b_1`$ and $`b_2`$, other than the first bond $`a`$ in $``$, are super-satisfied, and remain so regardless of changes of $`J_a`$ (by a bounded amount). We will call these bonds, numbering ten in Fig. 1, the “special” bonds. How do we know that such a situation will occur with nonzero probability? If necessary, we can first adjust the signs and then increase the magnitudes (in an appropriate order) of the couplings of the special bonds, so that they first become satisfied and then super-satisfied. This can be done in an “allowed” way because of our assumption that the distribution of individual couplings has unbounded support. Also, this can be done so that $`\alpha _{[J^B]}`$ and $`\beta _{[J^B]}`$ remain unchanged from $`\alpha `$ or $`\beta `$, and without changing $`E_{}`$, without decreasing any other $`E_{^{}}`$ (and thus without changing $`E^{}`$ or $`E_{}E^{}=\delta `$) and without decreasing the flexibilities of $`b_1`$ or $`b_2`$. Starting from a nonzero probability event, such an allowed change of finitely many couplings in $`𝒥`$ yields an event which still has nonzero probability.

Next, suppose we move $`J_a`$ toward its transition value $`K_a`$ by an amount slightly greater than $`\delta `$. The geometry — see, e.g., Fig. 1 — and Proposition 5 forbid the replacement of either $`\alpha `$ or $`\beta `$ by $`\alpha ^a`$ or $`\beta ^a`$, because it is impossible, under the conditions given, for $`\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }\alpha ^a`$ or $`\beta \mathrm{\Delta }\beta ^a`$ to connect to the end of bond $`a`$ touching $`W_1`$. But this change of $`J_a`$ reduces $`E_{}`$ below $`E_{^{}}`$ for any $`^{}`$ not containing $`a`$, yielding a nonzero probability event that contradicts translation-invariance (i.e., Lemma 1). This completes the proof.


format: text

text:
# Inclusive 𝚺⁻ and 𝚲(𝟏𝟓𝟐𝟎) production in hadronic Z decays

## 1 Introduction

The study of baryon production provides an important tool to test models of the fragmentation process . Beyond the cluster fragmentation model , and the string model which employs many parameters to describe baryon fragmentation, thermodynamical  and phenomenological models  have appeared recently which successfully describe the overall particle production rates in high energy interactions with very few parameters.

At Lep it has been shown that a large fraction of the observed stable mesons stem from decays of scalar and tensor mesons with angular momentum. For baryons this is not the case, as baryon resonances, especially those with orbital excitations, typically have a large decay width and complicated decay modes. Hence these states are difficult to access experimentally in a multihadronic environment. In any case, it is still a question of basic importance as to how far baryon production leads to excited baryonic states.

So far the only orbitally excited baryonic state measured in $`e^+e^{}`$ annihilation is the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ . This paper provides further data on $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ production111The antiparticles are always implicitly included. in hadronic Z decays. For $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ production at the Z so far only two measurements are available , one of them being sensitive only to the sum of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$ states .

The data used throughout this paper were collected by the Delphi detector in 1994 and 1995. In these data taking periods the Delphi microVertex (VD) and Ring Imaging Cherenkov (RICH) detectors were optimally set up and functioning for the analyses presented.

This paper is organised as follows. Section (2) gives a brief overview on the detector, experimental procedures used to select tracks and hadronic events as well as on the specific experimental procedures and corrections used for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ reconstruction. Section (3) presents the results for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production and the corresponding systematic errors. These results are compared to the expectation of fragmentation models and a general phenomenological law of baryon production in Z decays is deduced. Finally we conclude in Section (4).

## 2 The Experimental Procedure and Event Selection

The Delphi detector is described in detail in . The present analysis relies on information provided by the central tracking detectors and the barrel RICH:

* The microVertex Detector (VD) consists of three layers of silicon strip detectors at radii of 6.3, 9.0 and 10.9 cm. $`R\varphi `$ coordinates222In the standard DELPHI coordinate system, the $`z`$ axis is along the electron direction, the $`x`$ axis points towards the centre of LEP, and the $`y`$ axis points upwards. The polar angle to the $`z`$ axis is denoted by $`\theta `$, and the azimuthal angle around the $`z`$ axis by $`\varphi `$; the radial coordinate is $`R=\sqrt{x^2+y^2}`$. in the plane perpendicular to the beam are measured in all three layers. The first and third layers also provide $`z`$ information. The polar angle ($`\theta `$) coverage for a particle passing all three layers is from 44 to 136. The single point resolution has been estimated from real data to be about 8 $`\mu `$m in $`R\varphi `$ and (for charged particles crossing perpendicular to the module) about 9 $`\mu `$m in $`z`$.
* The Inner Detector (ID) consists of an inner drift chamber with jet chamber geometry and 5 cylindrical MWPC (in 1995 straw tube) layers. The jet chamber, between 12 and 23 cm in $`R`$ and 23 and 157 (15-165 for 1995) in $`\theta `$, consists of 24 azimuthal sectors, each providing up to 24 $`R\varphi `$ points.
* The Time Projection Chamber (TPC) is the main tracking device of Delphi. It provides up to 16 space points per particle trajectory for radii between 40 and 110 cm. The precision on the track elements is about 150 $`\mu `$m in $`R\varphi `$ and about 600 $`\mu `$m in $`z`$. A measurement of the energy loss $`dE/dx`$ of a track is provided with a resolution of about 6.5%.
* The Outer Detector (OD) is a 4.7 m long set of 5 layers of drift tubes situated at 2 m radius to the beam which provides precise spatial information in $`R\varphi `$.
* The Barrel Ring Imaging Cherenkov Counter (BRICH) is the main Delphi detector devoted to charged particle identification. It is subdivided into two halves ($`z0`$) and provides particle identification using Cherenkov radiation produced in a liquid or a gas radiator. This radiation, after appropriate focusing, is transformed into photoelectrons in a TPC-like drift structure and the Cherenkov angles of the track in both media are determined. The BRICH detector provides particle identification in the momentum range $`0.7`$ to $`45`$ GeV/$`c`$.

An event was selected as a multihadronic event if the following requirements were satisfied:

* There were at least five well measured charged particles in the event, each with momentum larger than 300 MeV/$`c`$ (400 MeV/$`c`$ for the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ analysis) and a polar angle in the range $`20{}_{}{}^{}<\theta <160^{}`$.
* The total reconstructed energy of these charged tracks had to be larger than 12% of the centre-of-mass energy.
* The total energy of the charged particles in each detector hemisphere (defined by the plane perpendicular to the beam axis) had to exceed 3% of the centre-of-mass energy.
* The tracking devices and, in the case of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ analysis also the BRICH, were fully operational.

After these cuts, about 1.3 million events remained for the 1994 period and 0.6 million events for the 1995 run around the Z0 pole. The $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ analysis is based on both years data, the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ analysis only on the 1994 data.

To study the influence of cuts, inefficiencies and resolution as well as particle re-interactions in the detector, a large set of simulated $`\text{Z}\text{q}\overline{\text{q}}`$ events has been used. This simulated sample has been generated using the Jetset 7.3 model  with the parton shower option. The model parameters were taken from earlier QCD studies . The initial event simulation was followed by a detailed detector simulation . For the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ study a specific set of 10000 of these events has also been produced with at least one $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)\mathrm{pK}^{}`$ per event.

### 2.1 $`𝚺^\mathbf{\pm }`$ Reconstruction

The charged $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ hyperons decay through the weak interaction according to

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$ $`\text{p}\pi ^0`$ $`\left(52\%\right),`$ (1)
$`\text{n}\pi ^+`$ $`\left(48\%\right),`$
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ $`\text{n}\pi ^{}`$ $`\left(100\%\right).`$
The reconstruction of the decay $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm \text{n}\pi ^\pm `$ is based on the large flight length ($`c\tau `$ = 4.43 cm for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`c\tau `$ = 2.4 cm for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$). It allows a determination of the track parameters for the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm `$, if there are at least three hits in the microvertex detector. The decay $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm \text{n}\pi ^\pm `$ is then reconstructed by finding the kink between the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm `$ and the pion which is normally well measured in the other tracking chambers, especially the TPC. Thus, the detection of the neutron is not necessary. The tools needed for the analysis are described in more detail below.

#### 2.1.1 Track reconstruction with the Microvertex Detector

The geometry of the 1994 Delphi microvertex detector allows the determination of the track parameters of a charged particle in two or three dimensions using information from this detector alone. These tracks, called ‘VD tracks’ in the following, can arise from:

* Low-momentum charged particles ($`p`$ 50 MeV/$`c`$) not reaching the TPC due to the bending in the magnetic field.
* Tracks at the borders of the TPC modules not efficiently reconstructed by the standard tracking algorithm.
* Charged particles interacting with the detector material outside the VD.
* Decays such as $`X^\pm Y^\pm `$ \+ neutral particles (e.g. $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm \text{n}\pi ^\pm `$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}\mathrm{\Lambda }\pi ^{}`$, $`\text{K}^\pm /\pi ^\pm \mu ^\pm \nu _\mu `$).

To reconstruct these tracks, the microvertex tracking algorithm initially looks for triplets of $`R\varphi `$ hits in the VD (there must be at least one hit in each layer), not associated to tracks reconstructed by the standard tracking algorithm. This allows a determination of the track parameters in the $`R\varphi `$ plane. A second step searches for unassociated $`z`$ hits in the modules containing the $`R\varphi `$ hits. If there are at least two $`z`$ hits for a $`R\varphi `$ triplet, the full set of parameters is given for that track. To improve the momentum resolution and to remove products of hadronic interactions in the beampipe, the results from the VD tracking were refitted forcing the track to originate from the primary vertex. The $`\chi ^2`$ probability of this fit had to be greater than 0.1%.

#### 2.1.2 Efficiency correction procedure

To be as independent as possible from the detector simulation, especially from the modelling of the VD, the efficiency for reconstructing a VD track has been deduced directly from the data as follows.

Hadronic interactions in the detector material with at least two outgoing tracks were reconstructed by fitting the candidate tracks to a common vertex. The algorithm allows for an arbitrary number and charge configuration of tracks associated to the vertex333The charge of the outgoing tracks may not sum up to the charge of the incoming track for hadronic interactions because an atomic nucleus is involved in the reaction.. The distribution of the measured positions of these vertices shows the material distribution of the Delphi detector (Figure 1). If the incoming particle which caused the interaction is charged444This is most often the case since the production rate of neutral particles causing hadronic interactions (mainly K$`{}_{L}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{0}`$, n and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^0`$) is small compared to the production rate of charged pions, kaons and protons., there is the possibility to reconstruct it as a VD track. To find these particles, the VD tracks were extrapolated to the radius of the interaction vertex and linked as the incoming track to the vertex if the difference in the azimuth angle $`\varphi `$ between the reconstructed vertex and the VD track was below 1.7. This cut was chosen to achieve an efficiency and purity for the linking close to unity. These linked VD tracks have not been used as candidates for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ hyperons to suppress background from hadronic interactions. Finally, hadronic vertices within the polar angle acceptance of the VD were selected and the number of interactions with a link to a VD track was compared to the number of all selected interactions. The efficiency for reconstructing a VD track is then given through

$$ϵ_{\text{VD}}=\frac{p_{hv/vd}N_{hv/vd}}{p_{hv}N_{hv}ϵ_{link}f_c}$$
(2)
where $`N_{hv}`$ is the number of hadronic vertices, $`N_{hv/vd}`$ the number of hadronic vertices with a linked VD track, $`p_{hv}`$ and $`p_{hv/vd}`$ the purities of these samples555$`p_{hv}`$ and $`p_{hv/vd}`$ were estimated directly from the radial distribution of the vertices shown in Figure 1., $`ϵ_{link}`$ the efficiency to link the incoming VD track to the vertex and $`f_c`$ the fraction of charged particles causing hadronic interactions in the detector material. Assuming that the value of $`f_c`$ is the same in real data and simulation and taking into account the $`\theta `$ dependence by multiplying with the $`\theta `$ distribution of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ hyperons in simulated events, the following correction factor for the reconstruction efficiency was deduced:

$$r=\frac{ϵ_{\text{VD}}^{\text{RD}}}{ϵ_{\text{VD}}^{\text{MC}}}=0.91\pm 0.06,$$
(3)
where the error is systematic and comes mainly from the uncertainty in the fraction of charged particles causing hadronic interactions, which has been estimated in the following manner. In the region considered for the positions of reconstructed vertices the fraction of charged particles causing the interactions in the simulation was $`f_c=0.84`$. As a conservative choice, the error on this fraction was chosen to cover the range up to unity within three standard deviations, thus $`f_c=0.84\pm 0.053`$. It is important to stress that this method does not rely on a precise modelling of the material distribution of the detector because the hadronic vertices were only used as candidate endpoints for the VD tracks.

#### 2.1.3 Reconstruction of the decay $`𝚺^\mathbf{\pm }\mathbf{}\text{n}𝝅^\mathbf{\pm }`$

The candidates for the outgoing pion had to fulfil the following criteria:

* Measured track length $`>30`$ cm.
* $`\mathrm{\Delta }p/p<1`$.
* $`IP/\sigma _{IP}>3`$ in $`R\varphi `$ and $`z`$, where $`IP`$ denotes the impact parameter with respect to the primary vertex and $`\sigma _{IP}`$ its error.
* No associated VD hits in the two innermost layers.
* The track must not originate from a reconstructed hadronic interaction.

The $`z`$ information of the VD tracks with at least two VD hits was not used in this analysis, because of differences in the association of two $`z`$ hits between real data and simulation. Thus all VD tracks were treated in exactly the same way.

To find the decay vertex of the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm `$, the intersections (normally two) in the $`R\varphi `$ plane of the VD track with the previously selected pion candidates were reconstructed. To select the correct intersection point, consistency of this point with the incoming and outgoing track was required which included removing intersections in the hemisphere opposite to the tracks. If both points fulfilled all these cuts, the one with the lower radius was chosen. The $`z`$ coordinate of this candidate decay vertex was given by the $`z`$ coordinate of the outgoing pion candidate at this $`R\varphi `$ position. The polar angle $`\theta `$ of the incoming track was calculated using the $`z`$ coordinates of this vertex and of the primary vertex completing the track parameters of the VD track. The momentum of the (unreconstructed) neutron candidate could be computed allowing the calculation of the invariant mass of the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm `$-candidate. The combination was rejected if the calculated $`\theta `$ did not lie within the polar angle range covered by the modules of the VD defining the VD track. Both tracks defining the vertex must have the same charge. In order to reject background, the following additional cuts were applied:

* The probability of the particle decaying within the measured flight distance, calculated under the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ hypothesis, had to be lower than 97%. This efficiently removes background from the decays $`\text{K}/\pi \mu \nu _\mu `$. Due to their long lifetime ($`c\tau `$(K$`{}_{}{}^{\pm })`$ 3.7 m and $`c\tau \left(\pi ^\pm \right)`$ 7.8 m) charged kaons and pions decaying inside the sensitive volume of the tracking chambers tend to have very low momenta. Thus, their decay probability as defined above is close to 100%.
* $`\left|\mathrm{cos}\theta ^{}\right|<0.8`$, where $`\theta ^{}`$ denotes the angle between the outgoing track and the VD track, calculated in the rest frame of the particle reconstructed as VD track, where the pion mass was assumed for the measured outgoing track and the neutron mass for the undetected particle.

The resulting mass spectrum of the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ candidates is shown in Figure 2. A fit with Gaussians for the signal and the reflection from $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}\mathrm{\Lambda }\pi ^{}`$ ($`c\tau =4.91`$ cm), which has the same signature of a kink666The decays $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}\mathrm{\Lambda }\text{K}^{},\mathrm{\Xi }^0\pi ^{}`$ also show this signature, but their contribution is negligible due the low $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ production rate., and a function of the form

$$F\left(M\right)=a_1\left(\left(M1.079\right)\left(a_4M\right)\right)^{a_2}\mathrm{exp}\left(a_3\left(M0.5\left(1.079+a_4\right)\right)\right)$$
(4)
for the background, where 1.079 is the sum of the masses of the neutron and the pion (in GeV/$`c^2`$) and thus the lower kinematical limit, gives a mean mass of $`1196.5\pm 0.4`$ MeV/$`c^2`$ and a width $`\sigma =12.3\pm 0.4`$ MeV/$`c^2`$, in good agreement with the expectation from simulation of $`1197.4\pm 0.3`$ MeV/$`c^2`$ and $`12.2\pm 0.6`$ MeV/$`c^2`$, respectively. To subtract the background, two Gaussians with all parameters left free have been used for the signal to take into account the momentum dependence of its width. This results in a measured signal of $`4820\pm 109`$ $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ decays and $`870\pm 95`$ $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$ decays (statistical errors only).

#### 2.1.4 Measurement of the $`𝚺^{\mathbf{}}`$ differential production rate

Due to the larger branching ratio into the final state n$`\pi `$ (see Eq. (1)) and the longer lifetime ($`c\tau _\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}1.8c\tau _{\mathrm{\Sigma }^+}`$), the efficiency to reconstruct the decay $`\mathrm{\Sigma }\text{n}\pi `$ with the method described above is much higher for the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ than for the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$. To obtain the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ cross-section

$$\sigma _\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}\frac{N}{ϵ^{}}\frac{1}{a}N_{\mathrm{\Sigma }^+}$$

where $`N`$ denotes the number of signal events, $`ϵ^{}`$ the efficiency for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ reconstruction, $`a=\frac{ϵ^{}}{ϵ^+}`$ the ratio of the efficiencies for detecting a $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ or $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$, and $`N_{\mathrm{\Sigma }^+}`$ the true number of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$ in the signal, an estimate for the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$ rate to be subtracted has to be made. For this, the ratio of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$ to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ production from the simulation (Jetset 7.4 with default parameters) has been assumed. An error of 20% has been assigned to this ratio. In the $`x_p`$ bins ($`x_p=2p/\sqrt{s}`$) where the deviation of this ratio from unity is greater than 20%, this deviation has been taken as the systematic error.

The differential $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ production rate has then been measured in nine $`x_p`$ bins. For each $`x_p`$ bin the efficiency has been estimated using the simulated sample with full detector simulation, taking into account the correction factor of equation (3) which was assumed to be independent of $`x_p`$. To obtain the number of signal events, the mass spectra have been fitted using a Gaussian function for the signal, a Gaussian function with position and width fixed to the values obtained from the simulation for the reflection $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}\mathrm{\Lambda }\pi ^{}`$, and a function with four free parameters of the form (4) for the smoothly varying background (see Figure 3). The reflection has not been fitted separately for the last two $`x_p`$ bins due to the large width of the signal. In the last $`x_p`$ bin the signal has not been fitted, but the background obtained from the simulation (including the contribution from the $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$-reflection and normalised to data statistics) has been subtracted to get the number of signal events.

### 2.2 Consistency checks and systematic errors

In addition to the systematic error already mentioned in Section 2.1.2, some more systematic checks have been done to test the consistency between real data and simulation. The quantities used for the selection of the candidates have been compared and good agreement was found. The mass spectrum has been fitted separately for negative and positively charged $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ candidates. One obtains good agreement within the statistical errors ($`2351\pm 73`$ and $`2298\pm 78`$ signal events, respectively). Since $`a=\frac{ϵ^{}}{ϵ^+}`$ (the values are given in Table 3) is a function of the decay length of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$, the flight distance distributions for real data and the simulation have been compared for each $`x_p`$ bin and consistency within the statistical errors has been found.

Since this analysis uses tracks which have been reconstructed using only the microvertex detector of Delphi, a good internal and external alignment of the VD is essential. It has been checked that the widths obtained for the signal in the different $`x_p`$ bins show good agreement between real data and simulation within errors. The signal has been fitted separately for both $`z`$ hemispheres defined through $`\mathrm{cos}\theta _{VDtrack}0`$. Taking into account the $`\theta `$ dependence of the efficiency for reconstructing a VD track (according to (2)), one obtains $`N_{\mathrm{cos}\theta <0}/N_{\mathrm{cos}\theta >0}=1.05\pm 0.05\text{ (stat.)}`$. Another quantity sensitive to the alignment and effects of the tracking, such as misassociating VD hits to the outgoing pion, is the kink angle between the two tracks. The simulation describes the data well, even for very low values ($``$ 5) of this angle, where the reconstruction of two distinct tracks and the kink between them is most critical.

To estimate the uncertainty of the number of signal events, the parametrisation of the background and the mass window for the background subtraction have been varied.

The systematic errors due to the efficiency correction and the subtraction of the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$ rate have been added linearly for the different $`x_p`$ bins and thus treated as fully correlated. Statistical and other systematic errors have been added quadratically from bin to bin. Different systematic errors have been added quadratically. The contributions from the different sources to the total error are listed in Table 1.

### 2.3 $`𝚲\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏𝟓𝟐𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$ Reconstruction

Beyond the general cuts given in Section 2 for this analysis it was required that the track impact parameter to the primary vertex was less than 0.5 mm in the $`R\varphi `$-plane and 1 mm in the $`z`$-direction. This requirement strongly reduces contributions of tracks from particle re-interactions inside the detector material. Furthermore there must be at least two tracks inside the angular acceptance $`47^{}<\theta <133^{}`$ of the BRICH.

The $`\mathrm{pK}^{}\left(\overline{\mathrm{p}}\mathrm{K}^+\right)`$ mass-spectra were then constructed for each bin of each individual kinematical variable using identified particles. Particle identification was performed combining $`dE/dx`$ and BRICH information. According to the quality of particle identification the tagging categories loose, standard and tight tags are distinguished for each particle species as well as for so called “heavy” particles combining protons and kaons. To further improve the quality of particle identification for a track of given momentum and (assumed) particle type it was required that information from the detectors specified in Table (2) was present.

A particle was then taken to be a proton if it was tightly tagged. Kaons were required to be tightly tagged in the momentum ranges $`p<3.5`$ GeV$`/c`$ and $`p>9.5`$ GeV$`/c`$. In the intermediate momentum range kaons were also identified by a tight heavy particle tag combined with at least a standard kaon tag. To suppress combinatorial background it was required that the kaon momentum was between 28% and 100% of the proton momentum. This condition has been left out for the determination of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ spin alignment.

Figure (4a) shows the pK- mass spectrum of the overall dataset and Figure (4b) for the scaled momentum range $`x_p>0.4`$. A clear $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ signal is observed in both mass spectra at about the expected mass. The signal to noise ratio improves for the higher $`x_p`$ range indicating that a proper measurement can even be performed for high $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ momenta. It should, however, be noted that here the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ signal became poorly visible if the particle identification requirements were relaxed. It has been checked that there are no prominent reflections from known particle decays in the pK- mass spectrum.

Particle identification inefficiencies, detector imperfections and the different kinematical cuts imposed for charged particle and event selection, were accounted for by applying the approach first described in , developed in  and outlined in brief below.

In the present analysis, the mass spectra were described by an anticipated distribution function, $`f(M,\stackrel{}{a})`$, of the invariant mass $`M`$. The parameters $`\stackrel{}{a}`$ were determined by a least squares fit of the function to the data. The function $`f(M,\stackrel{}{a})`$ had three components:

$$f(M,\stackrel{}{a})=f^S(M,\stackrel{}{a})+f^B(M,\stackrel{}{a})+f^R(M,\stackrel{}{a}),$$
(5)
corresponding to the signal ($`S`$), background ($`B`$), and reflection ($`R`$) contributions respectively.

The signal function, $`f^S(M,\stackrel{}{a})`$, described the resonance signal in the corresponding invariant mass distributions. For the pK- mass distributions it had the form

$`f^S(M,\stackrel{}{a})=a_1PS\left(M\right)BW(M,a_2,a_3),`$ (6)
where the relativistic Breit–Wigner function $`BW`$ for the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$(1520) is multiplied by the function $`PS\left(M\right)`$ to account for the distortion of the resonance Breit–Wigner shape by phase space effects (see  for details).

The background term, $`f^B(M,\stackrel{}{a})`$, was taken to be of the form

$$f^B(M,\stackrel{}{a})=BG_{Jetset}\left(M\right)P(M,\stackrel{}{a}),$$
(7)
where $`BG_{Jetset}\left(M\right)`$ represented the background shape generated by JETSET which describes the gross features of the real background  and $`P(M,\stackrel{}{a})=1+a_4M+a_5M^2+a_6M^3+a_7M^4`$ was a polynomial of order four (sometimes $`a_7`$ has been fixed to zero) introduced to account for possible deviations of $`BG_{Jetset}\left(M\right)`$ from the real background. All pairs of charged particles which do not come from the resonance considered and reflections in the invariant mass spectra were included in the definition of $`BG_{Jetset}\left(M\right)`$. This parametrisation of the background was different from the analytical form used in a previous DELPHI analysis .

The third term, $`f^R(M,\stackrel{}{a})`$, represented the sum of all the reflection functions ($`RF_i`$):

$$f^R(M,\stackrel{}{a})=\underset{i}{}a_{i+7}RF_i\left(M\right).$$
(8)
Reflections arising from particle misidentification and contributing to Equation (8) were considered, for example when resonances in the $`\pi ^+\text{K}^{}`$, $`\text{K}^+\text{K}^{}`$ and p$`\pi ^{}`$ systems (K$`{}_{}{}^{0},\mathrm{\Phi },\mathrm{\Delta }^0`$) distort the pK- mass spectra. Due to the efficient particle identification of the combined RICH and TPC tags and to the high identification purity provided by the tight cuts, the influence of reflections of this type was found to be much smaller than without particle identification.

The functions $`RF_i\left(M\right)`$ in Equation (8) were determined from events generated according to the JETSET model. The contributions of the reflections to the raw mass spectra defined by the function $`\overline{N}_m^R\left(\stackrel{}{a}\right)`$ (see Equation (9) ) were then obtained by passing these events through the detector simulation. This also took proper account of the influence of particle misidentification.

In each mass bin, $`M`$, the number of entries $`\overline{N}_m\left(\stackrel{}{a}\right)`$ predicted by the function $`f(M,\stackrel{}{a})`$, representing a sum of contributions from the resonance signal, background and reflections (see ), is given by

$$\overline{N}_m^G\left(\stackrel{}{a}\right)=C_m^G\underset{n}{}S_{mn}^GA_n^Gf_n^G\left(\stackrel{}{a}\right),$$
(9)
$$f_n^G\left(\stackrel{}{a}\right)=_{M_n}^{M_{n+1}}f^G(M,\stackrel{}{a})𝑑M,$$
(10)
where $`G=S`$, $`B`$ or $`R`$, and $`M_n`$ is the lower edge of the $`n`$-th histogram bin in the distribution of the variable $`M`$. The coefficients $`A_n`$ characterise the detector acceptance and the losses of particles due to the selection criteria imposed, and the $`C_m`$ take into account the contamination of the sample by particles from $`V^0`$ decays, wrongly associated charged particles, secondary interactions, etc. The smearing matrix $`S_{mn}`$ represents the experimental resolution. The $`A_n`$, $`C_m`$ and $`S_{mn}`$ were estimated separately for the resonance signal, background and reflection contributions using the detector simulation program. Due to differences in the detector performance and data processing in different running periods, the simulated events generated for these periods were taken with weights corresponding to the relative number of events in the real data.

The best values for $`\stackrel{}{a}`$ were then determined by a least squares fit of the predictions of Equation (9) to the measured values, $`N_m`$, by minimising the function

$$\chi ^2=\underset{m}{}\left(N_m\overline{N}_m\left(\stackrel{}{a}\right)\right)^2/\sigma _m^2+\underset{i}{}\left(a_i\overline{a}_i\right)^2/\left(\mathrm{\Delta }\overline{a}_i\right)^2,$$
(11)
where $`\sigma _m^2=N_m+\sigma ^2\left(\overline{N}_m\right)`$ and $`\sigma \left(\overline{N}_m\right)`$ is the error on $`\overline{N}_m`$ due to the finite statistics of the simulation used to evaluate $`A_n`$, $`C_m`$ and $`S_{mn}`$. The second sum in Equation (11) constrains some of the fitted parameters $`a_i`$ to the values $`\overline{a}_i\pm \mathrm{\Delta }\overline{a}_i`$ taken from external sources, such as the normalisation of the reflection functions to the particle production rates taken from this and other LEP experiments, and the mass and width taken from the PDG tables . The errors obtained from the fits thus include the corresponding systematic components. As a cross-check the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ mass was also left free in the fit. This lead to a mass of $`1517.5\pm 1.7`$ MeV$`/c^2`$, fully consistent with the PDG value.

In order to determine the full experimental systematic error of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ cross-section the following sources of uncertainty were considered. The influence of an imperfect description of stable hadron spectra by the detector simulation was estimated by varying the charged particle selections leading to an associated systematic error of 3%. An error of 9% was assigned due to the imperfect description of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production by the fragmentation model. It was estimated by varying kinematical distributions of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ like the decay angle and momentum distribution. An uncertainty of 3% on the resonance cross-sections is due to the imperfect description of the particle identification efficiency and the error due to the branching ratios assumed is 2.2% . Uncertainties due to the unknown momentum dependence of the reflections (3%) were assessed by reweighting the shape of the momentum distribution predicted by the model in a range allowed by the fit. Finally the uncertainty in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ line-shape, the background parametrisations and the influence of the binning was estimated to be 12% by choosing different parametrisations and by changing the binnings of the mass spectra. Adding the individual contributions in quadrature leads to a final relative experimental error of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ cross-section of 16%.

## 3 Results

### 3.1 $`𝚺^{\mathbf{}}`$

The results for the differential $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ production rate and reconstruction efficiencies are listed in Table 3. The differential $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ production rate is plotted in Figure 5 together with the predictions of the Jetset 7.4 (default parameters) generator and a previous measurement of the OPAL collaboration . The higher $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^+`$ rate compared to the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ rate in Jetset is due to secondary $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ hyperons, mainly from decays of charm particles. The shape of the $`x_p`$ spectrum is well described in the simulation.

Integrating the differential production rate in the measured $`x_p`$ range from 0.03 to 0.5 gives

$$N_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}/N_\mathrm{Z}^{\mathrm{had}}=0.065\pm 0.002\text{ (stat.)}\pm 0.006\text{ (syst.)}\text{(}\text{Jetset 7.4}\text{: 0.054)}.$$

To get the total production rate, the Jetset 7.4 simulated data has been used to extrapolate to the unobserved $`x_p`$ range. In Jetset 7.4, 18% of the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ hyperons are produced with $`x_p<0.03`$ and 2% with $`x_p>0.5`$. The production cross-section in this $`x_p`$ range has been scaled by the ratio of the measured and simulated cross-section in the measured range $`0.03<x_p<0.5`$. This scaled cross-section has then been added and a systematic error of 50% has been assigned to it.

This gives the mean number of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ hyperons produced in multihadronic Z0 decays

$$N_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}/N_\mathrm{Z}^{\mathrm{had}}=0.081\pm 0.002\text{ (stat.)}\pm 0.006\text{ (syst.)}\pm 0.008\text{ (extr.)},$$

where the last error comes from the extrapolation.

This result is compatible with the corresponding rate in Jetset 7.4 ($`N_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}/N_\mathrm{Z}^{\mathrm{had}}=0.068`$). It is also in good agreement with the measurement from Opal : $`N_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}/N_\mathrm{Z}^{\mathrm{had}}=0.083\pm 0.006\text{ (stat.)}\pm 0.009\text{ (syst.)}`$.

### 3.2 $`𝚲\mathbf{(}\mathrm{𝟏𝟓𝟐𝟎}\mathbf{)}`$

The $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ has $`J^P=\frac{3}{2}^{}`$ with isospin 0 and quark content (uds). It decays strongly but with a comparably small decay width of $`15.6\pm 1.0`$ MeV/$`c^2`$ as it is a $`D_{03}`$ state which predominantly decays into a $`J^P=\frac{1}{2}^+`$ baryon and one pseudoscalar meson. The $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ branching fraction used in the analysis is taken as half of the branching fraction to nucleon and kaon of 45%:

$`B(\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ $`\text{pK}^{})`$ $`22.5\%.`$
The total $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ rate is measured from a fit to the mass spectrum given in Figure (4a) corresponding to the scaled energy777$`x_E^{\mathrm{\Lambda }(1520)}=\frac{2E^{\mathrm{\Lambda }(1520)}}{\sqrt{s}}`$ range $`0.035<x_E^{\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)}<1`$:

$$N_{\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)}/N_\mathrm{Z}^{\mathrm{had}}=0.0285\pm 0.0048\text{ (fit)}.$$

The fit error includes the statistical error and also accounts for uncertainties in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ mass and width and the normalisation of the reflection functions (see Section 2.3). The fitted rate agrees well with the integrated rate from the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ inclusive $`x_E`$ spectrum (see below). To estimate the total rate of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production this value has to be corrected for the small unmeasured $`x_E`$ range $`x_E^{\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)}<0.035`$. This correction was estimated using a modified Jetset 7.4 model (see below) normalised to the data in the measured momentum range. An additional systematic error of 50% of this correction has been assumed. This yields for the overall $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production rate

$$N_{\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)}/N_\mathrm{Z}^{\mathrm{had}}=0.0293\pm 0.0049\text{ (fit)}\pm 0.0047\text{ (syst.)}\pm 0.0003\text{ (extr.)}$$

including the systematic errors considered in Section 2.3. This result is slightly higher than, though fully consistent with, the Opal result .

In order to exclude that the observed $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$’s originate predominantly from heavy (b,c) particle decays the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production has been determined individually for samples strongly enriched in b-quarks and light quarks respectively . This enrichment relies on increased particle impact parameters due to the high lifetime of B hadrons . No significant change in $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production has been found in either sample which leads to the conclusion that the dominant part of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production originates from fragmentation.

The observed $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ rate is comparable to that of the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm \left(1385\right)`$  which has the same strangeness and total spin. It can be concluded that the orbital excitation ($`L=1`$) of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ does not lead to a suppression of particle production. The comparably large observed $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ rate suggests that also other orbitally excited baryonic states are produced in fragmentation. In consequence, due to the vast amount of orbitally excited states, a large part of the observed stable baryons may descend from these excited states. This agrees with the expectations of the phenomenological models . Thus for baryons the situation is likely to be similar to the mesonic case. It is highly desirable to verify the production of other orbitally excited baryonic states, however, this is experimentally demanding due to the large width and complicated decay modes of these states.

In order to determine a possible spin alignment of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$’s the distribution of the cosine of the kaon angle, $`\mathrm{cos}\vartheta _K`$, in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ rest system with respect to the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ direction is plotted in Figure (6) for $`x_p>0.07`$. This distribution has been fitted with the expected form of the angular distribution:

$$W\left(\mathrm{cos}\vartheta _\mathrm{K}\right)=\rho \frac{1+3\mathrm{cos}^2\vartheta _\mathrm{K}}{4}+\left(1\rho \right)\frac{33\mathrm{cos}^2\vartheta _\mathrm{K}}{4}$$
(12)
with $`\rho =\rho _{\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}}+\rho _{\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{2}}`$, $`\rho _{ii}`$ denoting the spin-density matrix element. The fit yields $`\rho =0.4\pm 0.2`$, thus no significant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ spin alignment is observed. The specified error includes the statistical error and the error due to the uncertainty in the background shape.

Furthermore, the approximate symmetry of this distribution with respect to $`\mathrm{cos}\vartheta _K=0`$ presents evidence for the validity of this analysis as possible errors in particle identification and corrections would, in general, lead to a distorted $`\mathrm{cos}\vartheta _K`$ distribution.

The measured scaled energy $`x_E^{\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)}`$ distribution is given in Table (4) and shown in Figure (7) compared to the Opal result . At low $`x_E`$ both measurements agree within error. For $`x_E>0.3`$ this measurement yields a rate about three times higher. Note that in this energy range a clear $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ signal is observed (see Figure (4b)). The measurements are compared to predictions of modified Herwig 5.9 and Jetset 7.4 models. $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production has been implemented in these models either by replacing the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^0\left(1385\right)`$ by the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ in the case of Jetset 7.4 or by adding only the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ to the particle list in case of Herwig 5.9. The predicted rates should not be expected to be well reproduced by the models and the model predictions have been renormalised to the observed $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ rate. The general shape of the fragmentation function is reproduced well by both models.

In order to demonstrate the importance of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production in Figure (8) the ratio of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ to $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ production is shown as function of the scaled momentum $`x_p`$. For this comparison the measurement of  is taken as it covers a similar range in scaled momentum like this $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ measurement. It is seen that at small $`x_p`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production is about a factor 20 less than $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ production. At large $`x_p`$, however, this reduces to a factor $``$2.5. Such a behaviour would be expected from general fragmentation dynamics due to the higher mass of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$. An increase of this ratio is also expected if many $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$’s stem from resonance decays. Finally it is interesting to note that the ratio of $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ to proton production is identical, within error, at low energies  and in hadronic Z decays (as calculated from this result and ).

### 3.3 Discussion on baryon multiplicities

The measured $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production rates may now be more generally compared to the Lep average values for all baryons . In Figure (9a) the sum of the production rates of all states of an isomultiplet from the well known baryon octet and decuplet and for the orbitally excited isoscalar $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$(1520) are shown as a function of the corresponding particle mass squared, $`M^2`$. In the case that not all states of an isomultiplet are measured at Lep, equal production rates for these states are assumed. Therefore the vertical axis of the Figure (9a) is denoted by $`\left(2I+1\right)n`$, where $`n`$ is the mean number of a given particle per hadronic Z0 decay. It is seen that the mass dependence of the production rates is almost identical for the following sets of baryons:

1. $`N`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ with strangeness S=0;
2. $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$(1520) with S=1 and
3. $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$, $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$ with S=2.

Finally the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ rate is well predicted if the same mass dependence with an additional suppression for the higher strangeness (S=3) is assumed, as taken from the difference of the first and second or second and third set, respectively. All data points from these three sets and the $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$ are well fitted ($`\chi ^2/ndf=5.9/6`$) by the ansatz (see dotted lines in Figure (9a))

$$\gamma ^S\left(2I+1\right)n=A\mathrm{exp}\left(bM^2\right).$$
(13)
The values of the fitted parameters are: $`A=20.1\pm 1.5`$, $`\gamma =0.482\pm 0.022`$ and $`b=2.61\pm 0.08`$ (GeV/$`c^2`$)-2. As decays of high mass particles feed down to lower mass states, it is to be expected that especially the slope parameter $`b`$ for primary produced baryons differs from the fitted value. If the production rates are weighted by $`\gamma ^S`$ a universal mass dependence is observed for all baryons (see Figure (9b)).

A similarly simple behaviour was found for scalar, vector and tensor mesons . Note that for mesons the production rates per spin and isospin projection were used. This is implicit in the figures shown in , as the experimental rates for mesons are customarily specified for each isospin state individually. The mass dependence for mesons, contrary to the baryonic case is exponential in mass, $`M`$, thus for mesons

$$\gamma ^k\frac{1}{2J+1}n=A\mathrm{exp}\left(bM\right),$$
(14)
where $`k`$ is the number of $`s`$ and $`\overline{s}`$ quarks in the meson. For baryons and mesons an almost identical value of $`\gamma 0.5`$ was found. A stronger fall-off with the mass for baryons, compared to mesons, is to be expected as baryons are produced in pairs.

## 4 Conclusions

The differential cross-section of the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ hyperon has been measured in multihadronic Z decays by reconstructing the kink between the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}`$ and the outgoing pion in the decay $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}\text{n}\pi ^{}`$. The measured production rate is

$$N_\mathrm{\Sigma }^{}/N_\mathrm{Z}^{\mathrm{had}}=0.081\pm 0.002\text{ (stat.)}\pm 0.006\text{ (syst.)}\pm 0.008\text{ (extr.)}.$$

This result is about 20% above the prediction of the Jetset 7.4 model, but nevertheless compatible. The shape of the differential cross-section is well described in this model.

The differential cross-section of the orbitally excited $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ baryon has been measured relying strongly on the particle identification capabilities of the Delphi detector. The $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ is the only measured orbitally excited baryon produced in fragmentation at Lep. Its production rate is found to be

$$N_{\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)}/N_\mathrm{Z}^{\mathrm{had}}=0.0293\pm 0.0049\left(\mathrm{fit}\right)\pm 0.0047(\mathrm{syst}.)\pm 0.0003(\mathrm{extr}.).$$

This rate is similar to that of the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^\pm \left(1385\right)`$ and suggests that also other orbitally excited baryonic states are produced in fragmentation. The shape of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ fragmentation function is well described by the Jetset 7.4 and Herwig 5.9 fragmentation model if $`\mathrm{\Lambda }\left(1520\right)`$ production is introduced.

It has also been shown that the production rates of all baryonic states measured so far at Lep can be parametrised by a phenomenological law.

### Acknowledgements

We are greatly indebted to our technical collaborators, to the members of the CERN-SL Division for the excellent performance of the LEP collider, and to the funding agencies for their support in building and operating the DELPHI detector.
We acknowledge in particular the support of
Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Traffics, GZ 616.364/2-III/2a/98,
FNRS–FWO, Belgium,
FINEP, CNPq, CAPES, FUJB and FAPERJ, Brazil,
Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade, GA CR 202/96/0450 and GA AVCR A1010521,
Danish Natural Research Council,
Commission of the European Communities (DG XII),
Direction des Sciences de la Mati$`\stackrel{`}{\text{e}}`$re, CEA, France,
Bundesministerium f$`\ddot{\text{u}}`$r Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie, Germany,
General Secretariat for Research and Technology, Greece,
National Science Foundation (NWO) and Foundation for Research on Matter (FOM), The Netherlands,
Norwegian Research Council,
State Committee for Scientific Research, Poland, 2P03B06015, 2P03B1116 and SPUB/P03/178/98,
JNICT–Junta Nacional de Investigação Científica e Tecnol$`\stackrel{´}{\text{o}}`$gica, Portugal,
Vedecka grantova agentura MS SR, Slovakia, Nr. 95/5195/134,
Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Slovenia,
CICYT, Spain, AEN96–1661 and AEN96-1681,
The Swedish Natural Science Research Council,
Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, UK,
Department of Energy, USA, DE–FG02–94ER40817.