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# The BeppoSAX view of bright Compton-thin Seyfert 2 galaxies

## 1 Introduction

In this paper we present the analysis of the observations of bright Seyfert 2 galaxies performed with the BeppoSAX satellite. The main aim of this work is to investigate the average X-ray continuum properties of these sources, through a homogeneous analysis of all the BeppoSAX archive data. The broad energy band of BeppoSAX (0.1-200 keV). permits us to separate the main continuum components (“soft excess”, intrinsic power law, reflection) with unprecedented precision.

Several homogeneous analyses of bright Seyfert 2s were published in the past years: Turner & Pounds 1989 (EXOSAT observations, 0.1-10 keV), Nandra & Pounds 1994 and Smith & Done 1996 (GINGA observations, 2-20 keV), Turner et al. 1997 (ASCA observations, 0.5-10 keV). Many of the data analyzed in these works have been more carefully analyzed using specific models for each source. The results are published in many papers where the X-ray emission of a single or a couple of sources is studied in detail. However, the results obtained in these detailed studies are in most cases in agreement with the simpler fits performed in the works quoted above where a large number ($`>20`$) of observations are analyzed. The reason for this agreement is that even if peculiar features can be present in the X-ray spectrum of each source, the statistics is dominated by a continuum well fitted by a few components, namely a thermal emission at low energies (from 0.1 to a few keV), an absorbed power law with photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }2`$, and a reflection component. Therefore, a homogeneous analysis of moderately large samples is the best way to investigate the average X-ray properties of these sources, to test unified models and to look for new correlations between the different spectral parameters.

The main results of the works quoted above support the unified models of AGNs, according to which the narrow emission line (type 2) objects differ from broad emission line objects (type 1) only for the presence of dusty absorbing gas along the line of sight.

The main X-ray spectral properties of Seyfert 2s can be modeled with the following 5 components:

1. A power-law with photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }2`$. X-ray observations of Seyfert 1s (Nandra et al. 1997) show that this power-law extends down to energies of a fraction of keV. At high energies, an exponential cut-off is observed in the BeppoSAX observations of a few objects (Guainazzi et al. 1999, Perola et al. 1999, 2000, Nicastro et al. 2000), at energies from 60 to 300 keV. The physical origin of this component could be a two phase accretion disk, where the soft photons emitted by a “cold” (kT $`<50`$ eV) thick disk are Comptonized by a hot (kT$`100`$ keV) thin corona (Haardt & Maraschi 1993).
2. A photoelectric cut-off of the intrinsic power-law is present at some energy, depending of the column density, NH, of the absorbing gas. If 1022 cm$`{}_{}{}^{2}<`$N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}<10^{23}`$ cm-2, the cut-off energy is below $`2`$ keV, if 1023 cm$`{}_{}{}^{2}<`$N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}<10^{24}`$ cm-2 the cut-off energy is between 2 and 10 keV. If N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}>10^{24}`$ cm-2s-1 no direct emission is observable below 10 keV. The intrinsic component could only be revealed by observations in the 10-100 keV band. If N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}>10^{25}`$ cm-2s-1 the source is completely thick at any energy, and only reflected components (see below) are observable.
3. Thermal soft component: thermal emission, with kT ranging from 0.1 to a few keV is a good description of the soft X-ray emission of most Seyfert 2s. This component in Seyfert 2s cannot be due to emission from the accretion disk (since otherwise it would be obscured like the power-law component), and is probably associated to the warm gas confining the broad emission line clouds.
4. Reflected component: a cold reflected component is often required to obtain a good fit of X-ray spectra of Seyfert galaxies above $`5`$ keV. The reflecting medium could be the accretion disk itself or, alternatively, the inner edge of the absorbing gas (Ghisellini et al. 1994), or a wind (Elvis 2000).

A warm reflection component is also required in many cases. Assuming that this component is due to scattering of the primary component with warm electrons, the spectral shape is the same as in the incident continuum.
5. Iron line: an iron K$`\alpha `$ emission line, at energies E$`6.4`$ keV is observed in most Seyfert galaxies. It is believed to be originated both in the accretion disk and in the absorbing/reflecting circumnuclear gas (Matt et al. 1991, 1996) The observed equivalent width of the line is typically 100-300 eV in Seyfert 1s and in Seyfert 2s with NH lower than a few 1023 cm-2. In sources with heavier absorption the equivalent width is higher (up to several keV) since the continuum at the line energy is more absorbed than the line, that is -at least in part- emitted by the reflecting material along free lines of sight. The line component emitted from far reflectors is narrow, and does not immediately follow the continuum variations, while the disk component can be broad and is expected to vary with almost zero delay with respect to the continuum.

In this work we will use the components described above to fit the 0.1-200 keV observations of a sample of 31 observations of 20 Seyfert 2s, performed by the BeppoSAX satellite in the period 1997-2000. 17 out of these 31 observations are currently unpublished. In Sect. 2 we review the basic properties of the sample and we summarize the data reduction process. In Sect. 3 we describe the models used to fit the data. In Sect. 4 we discuss the results of data analysis. In Sect. 5 we summarize our conclusions.

## 2 Data: selection and reduction

The sample consists of 31 observations of 20 sources (one source was observed 5 times, one 3 times and 5 sources were observed twice). The basic properties of the sample objects are listed in Table 1.

The only selection criteria are a 2-10 keV measured flux higher than 5$`\times 10^{12}`$ erg cm-2 s-1, and a measured absorbing column density lower than 1024 cm-2 (i.e. “Compton thin” sources). As a consequence, the sample contains only high signal-to-noise spectra, that can be studied in considerable detail. The observation log is reported in Table 2. All the observations are available in the BeppoSAX public archive provided by the ASI Science Data Center (SDC). Each source has been observed with 3 narrow-field instruments on board of the Italian/Dutch BeppoSAX satellite: LECS (0.1-10 keV, Parmar et al. 1995), MECS (1.65-10.5 keV, Boella et al. 1995b) and PDS (20-200 keV, Frontera et al. 1995).

The LECS and MECS event files were obtained from the SDC public archive. The spectra were created using the XSELECT v.2.0 code. A circular region of radius 4’, centered on the source, was selected to extract the spectrum. The data were rebinned in order to have at least 20 counts per bin. This allows the use of Gaussian statistics in the model fitting. For the PDS data, we used the spectrum provided by the SDC public archive. The background spectra for the LECS and MECS data were obtained from the long observations of blank field provided by the SDC. Calibration matrices (redistribution matrix, RMF, for all the three instruments, and ancillary (effective area) matrix, ARF, for LECS and MECS) were also provided by the SDC.

The spectra used in the scientific analysis consist of LECS data from 0.1 to 3 keV (above 3 keV the calibration of the LECS is uncertain, and we do not lose much in terms of statistics, since the area of the MECS is significantly higher than that of the LECS above 2 keV); MECS data from 1.65 to 10.5 keV, and PDS data from 20 to 200 keV (in several cases, where the statistics at high energy was too low, we cut the spectrum at 100 keV).

## 3 Model fitting

The data analysis was performed using the XSPEC v.10.0 code. All the errors quoted in this works are at a confidence level of 90% for one interesting parameter.

In all models we fixed the normalization factor between PDS and MECS to 0.8. The uncertainty in this factor is at most 10%, according to the SAX SDC. This is not a dominant source of error, since te typical final errors in the parameters strongly affected by high-energy data are typically much higher. This is due to both the limited number of counts and the degeneracy between some of the spectral components, as will be further discussed in the following Subsections. The normalization between LECS and MECS were left free. The typical best fit values are in the interval 0.6-0.8.

The Galactic absorption is taken into account in all models, by multiplying each component by an extra absorption factor.

First, we fitted the data with a simple model, consisting of an absorbed power law plus an unabsorbed power law. This model is a good zero-order approximation of the continuum in Seyfert 2s. Our main aim is to highlight the other spectral features from the analysis of the residuals. In Table 3 we show the results of the spectral analysis. In Fig. 7 we plot for each spectrum the folded data+model and the contribution to $`\chi ^2`$ from each spectral bin. This is an effective way to look graphically for statistically significant unfitted features.

From the analysis of Fig. 7 we can identify the following unfitted features:

* At low energies (E$`<`$2 keV) several sources present a more complex spectral shape than a simple power-law. This is apparent, for example, for the objects NGC 526a, NGC 4258, NGC 4388, NGC 4507, Cen A.
* An excess around 6.5 keV is present in most observations.
* The high energy spectrum (E$`>`$ 20 keV) is in many cases convex, and cannot be reproduced by a single power-law.

We also note that in all the sources but one (NGC 7679) the photoelectric cut-off is highly significant, and permits a precise determination of the absorbing column density, NH.

At high energies the observed curvature can have two different origins: an high energy exponential cut-off, or a reflection component. In this case a degeneracy between these two components is possible, so we fitted our data with two new models: in the first one (model B) we replaced the unabsorbed power-law with a Raymond-Smith thermal model, and we added a Gaussian and an exponential cut-off to the absorbed power-law. In the second model (model C) we also added a warm reflection component, using a power-law with the photon index equal to that of the primary continuum, and a cold reflection component, using the PEXRAV model in XSPEC. This model assumes an infinite plane geometry for the reflector. This may not be a good approximation of the real reflector. However, the overall spectral shape of the reflection component should be only weakly dependent on the details of the absorber. The dependence of the spectral shape on the reflection angle in the PEXRAV model is low, therefore, given the uncertainty in the real absorber geometry, we chose to fix the inclination angle in the PEXRAV model to the value of $`\theta =`$30 deg (the value has been chosen in order to have an average ratio between the observed section of the absorber and it real area of $`\mathrm{cos}\theta =0.5`$). The results of the fits with model C are summarized in Table 5.

## 4 Results and Discussion

Our models A,B,C provide a good fit to almost all the sources of the sample: we obtained a reduced $`\chi ^2`$ lower than 1.10 in 29 cases out of 31. The best model for each observation, and the reduced $`\chi ^2`$ are listed in Table 6. We briefly comment about the “bad” fits ($`\chi ^2>`$ 1.1) in the Appendix. Here we discuss the main results of our analysis:

### 4.1 Photon Index

The wide energy range and the good statistics of our spectra allow a precise determination of the photon index of the continuum power-law: 90% errors are typically a few percent. The photon index distribution is plotted in Fig. 1 versus the ratio between the reflected and transmitted component (see below for a discussion on this ratio).

The data are from the best fit model, either B or C, according to the minimun reduced $`\chi ^2`$. The average photon index is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{AV}}=1.79\pm 0.01`$. The 1$`\sigma `$ dispersion is 0.23. A similarly interesting parameter is the “effective” photon index, i.e. the slope of a simple power-law fitting the whole spectrum (model A). This parameter is important for studies where the average X-ray SED of AGNs is approximated with a simple power-law (for example, in most synthesis models of the cosmic background). The average photon index derived from Table 3 is $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mathrm{E}=1.76\pm 0.01`$ with a 1$`\sigma `$ dispersion of 0.21. The small discrepancy between the two evaluations of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ are due mainly to the contribution of the reflection component, which is higher at high energies, so flattening the spectrum. The contribution of the high-energy cut-off is small, since for most of the sources only a lower limit can be determined (see below). We note that our sample is the best currently available to determine the average $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ of Seyfert galaxies. The typical extent of this interval is from 2-3 keV up to 200 keV, and even in the worst cases it is more than a decade (from 5-6 keV to 100 keV for NGC 4507). This is a significant improvement with respect to past works, based on GINGA or ASCA data. The photoelectric cut-off does not significantly reduce the energy range over which we observe the intrinsic emission of the AGN and, on the other side, makes simpler the separation of the low energy component.

### 4.2 Reflection components

Cold reflection: the cold reflection component peaks around 30 keV. Therefore, the PDS instrument allows a much better measurement of this feature than low energy instruments. The model we used assumes a viewing angle of 30o. Given the statistics in the PDS range, a variation of this angle is analogous to a change in the normalization, since the spectral changes are too tiny to be discriminated. The quantity used to measure the strength of reflection is the ratio, R, between the normalizations of the reflected and transmitted components. A comparison between Table 4 (model B, with no reflection) and Table 5 (model C, with reflection) illustrates the importance of a correct estimate of the reflection component. In most cases adding a reflection component significantly improves the fit (26 out of 31, Table 6). Moreover, in these cases a fit without reflection gives biased estimates of the continuum components: for example, photon indexes and high energy cut-offs are systematically lower in Table 4 than in Table 5.

Finally, it is worth noting that the errors associated to R are significantly higher than those of the other free parameters. This is an effect of the partial degeneracy between the different spectral components, in particular the intrinsic power law, the high-energy cutoff and the cold reflection component. If we freeze these parameters when estimating the errors on R, we obtain much smaller errors.

One of the main debates regarding the cold reflection component is whether it originates from the accretion disk or from cold material farther from the center (eg. the putative “torus” of unified models). Our sample contains multiple observations of 7 sources. This gives us the possibility to study the long term variability of the cold reflection component, and thus to give an estimate to the distance of the reflecting medium: if the reflector is the accretion disk, we expect the reflection and transmitted component to be closely related. In the other case, if the reflector distance from the center is greater than the light path in the characteristic variability time of the primary component, we expect the reflected component to remain constant. In order to study the correlation between the variability of the transmitted and reflected components, we define for each pair of observations of the same source a ratio f=F1/F2 where F is the 2-10 keV flux, and a ratio r=R2/R1. If the reflected component varies together with the transmitted one, the quantities Ri are expected to remain constant, and therefore r=1. If, on the other side, the absolute flux of the reflected component remains constant, then R$`{}_{i}{}^{}`$ 1/Fi, and r=f. In Fig. 2 we plot the quantities r and f. For each pair, we chose the fluxes in order to have F$`{}_{2}{}^{}<F_1`$ (then f$`>1`$). For the two sources with more than two observations (NGC 4507, three observations, and Cen A, 5 observations), we have 2 and 4 pairs, respectively. In these cases, F2 is defined as the lowest measured flux among all the observations of the same source. We also plot the two lines corresponding to r=1 and r=f. The plot clearly shows that the r=f line better represents the measures. This is strong evidence supporting a distant reflector, while the cold reflection from the disk is ruled out by the data.

If the cold reflection is mainly due to a distant reflector, the simplest structure of the circumnuclear medium would be obtained with a single cold medium responsible for both the cold reflection and absorption of the hard X-rays. However, in this scenario the ratios between the reflected and transmitted components are somewhat surprising. The model we used assumes a perfect efficiency reflection (i.e. no transmission) from an infinite plane slab covering a 2$`\pi `$ angle. The normalization factor of the model is relative to the intrinsic continuum. Therefore, even assuming a perfectly face-on line of sight, the ratio between the normalizations of the reflection model and of the power-law should be not higher than 2. The value R=2 is for a completely Compton-thick reflector covering the whole plane angle. Assuming a different geometry for the reflector, in particular a non-planar one, can only slightly change the overall efficiency, as we can evaluate from the comparison of the PEXRAV model with the one of Ghisellini et al. (1994), which assumes a toroidal geometry for the absorber: the results are in agreement within a factor of $`2`$. The model of Ghisellini et al. 1994 also shows that the reflection efficiency drops with the thickness of the reflector: at 30 keV the reflection efficiency is 55% for a Compton thick reflector (N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}10^{25}`$ cm-2), 23% for N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}10^{24}`$ cm-2 and only 8% for N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}10^{23}`$ cm-2. The values for the ratio we obtained (Table 5) are in many cases too high to be explained assuming a homogeneous reflector having the same column density as measured in absorption. In the extreme case of NGC 1365 the best fit value, R=3.8, is not acceptable. We discuss this case in the Appendix. Out of the other 20 objects, 17 have the value of R higher than the maximum allowed by the models described above, the only exceptions being NGC 526a, NGC 2110, NGC 4258 and Cen A. Part of the discrepancy can be due, in some cases, to the fact that the source is observed in a low state, and therefore the value of R is high, as explained above. However, this cannot be the case for 18 sources out of 21. Moreover, even in those cases where multiple observations are available, R is too high even in the high flux states. The only possible explanation is that the absorber is not homogeneous, and a Compton thick medium covers a significant fraction of the solid angle (but not the line of sight). We note that other recent studies on variability of NH support the view of a non homogeneous absorber (Risaliti et al. 2002).

Finally, our sample is useful to investigate the putative correlation between the photon index and the ratio R. Such correlation has been first claimed by Zdziarski et al. 1999, and further analyzed by Matt (2000) and Petrucci et al. (2001), taking advantage of the broad BeppoSAX band. At present it is still debated, since the two parameters are not independent in the fitting procedure, an increase of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ being compensated by a decrease of R. In Fig. 1 we plot the two quantities. A slight increase of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ for R$`>2`$ is present, but the correlation is weaker than that found by Petrucci et al. 2001 for a sample of bright Seyfert 1s. We can explain this discrepancy using an argument of Matt 2000. In order to give a warning about the reality of this correlation, this author shows that if the soft component of the Seyfert 1 MKN 841 is fitted with a warm absorber instead of a blackbody, the best fit photon index changes by $`0.4`$ and, as a consequence, R changes by a factor or $`2`$. This example shows how strong is the dependence among the different components of the continuum models. As we already pointed out above, our fits are made safer by the presence of the photoelectric cut-off, which clearly separates the soft component from the others. As a consequence, the statistical dependence among the two quantities is weaker in our sample. Therefore, the results plotted in Fig. 1 suggest that the correlation is probably not real.

Warm reflection: Adding a warm reflection component improves the fit only for three sources (IRAS 05189-2524, NGC 4388 and Cen A, see Table 5). In these cases the reflection efficiency is between 1% and 6%. In all the other cases we were able to estimate an upper limit for the warm reflection of the order of a few percent of the intrinsic component.

### 4.3 The high-energy cut-off

The energy of the exponential cut-off is plotted versus the photon index in Fig. 3.

In most cases we have only lower limits, however some interesting conclusions can nevertheless be drawn. Many lower limits are too low to give significant constraints. However, we note a significant fraction of detections and lower limits higher than 300 keV: 6 sources out of 20 have have E$`{}_{\mathrm{C}}{}^{}>`$300 keV. We conclude that a photoelectric cut-off in the 100-300 keV band is not an ubiquitous property of Seyfert galaxies.

### 4.4 The iron line

Equivalent width: We detect an iron K$`\alpha `$ line in all the observations but one (NGC 7679). The equivalent width, EW, is in the range 100-300 eV for sources with low absorbing column density (N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}<10^{23}`$ cm-2), in agreement with previous studies, and with the values found in Seyfert 1s (Gilli et al. 1999). In sources with a larger NH, the continuum at the energy of the line is partially absorbed, and the EW of the iron line is therefore expected to be higher. In Fig. 4, where we plot the EW of the iron line versus NH. A correlation is present: sources with N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}>3\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2 have on average an EW higher that sources with N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}<3\times 10^{23}`$, even if the errors are too large to draw solid conclusions.

This correlation suggests that the iron line is produced, at least in part, by a reflector different from the accretion disk. Otherwise, we would not expect any increase of EW with NH, since the line would be as much absorbed as the continuum component. In Fig. 5 we plot the line EW versus the cold reflection ratio, R. A correlation is non clear, even if the errors are again too large to rule out an average increase of EW with R. We also note that in this kind of correlations, where the expected variation of EW is a factor of no more than 2-3, an important role could be played be the inclination of the accretion disk with respect of the line of sight: the primary continuum emission from an edge-on disk is weaker than that of a face-on disk with the same intrinsic luminosity. Therefore, if the iron line is partly produced by an outer reflector, the EW depends on the inclination angle. The effect is a further dilution of the correlations we are trying to investigate.

Line energy and width: In all cases the measured peak energy is compatible with neutral or little ionized iron. In 9 cases out of 31, we measure a line width significantly larger than 0. For all these cases we analyzed the model residuals to look for asymmetries in the line profile. We did not find any significant asymmetry, except than in one case, NGC 6300, which is discussed in the Appendix, and represents a convincing example of a relativistic line in Seyfert 2s.

### 4.5 Soft excess

In this work the soft emission is not analyzed in detail. A single thermal component, plus the warm reflection component, are used to fit the points at energies lower than the photoelectric cut-off. This gives on average good fits. The residuals at low energies are in no case high enough to alter the best fit values of the other high energy parameters which we are more interested to. In the simple model A we fit the soft component with a power-law with a free photon index. The ratio between the absorbed and the unabsorbed power-laws, reported in Column 6 of Table 3, shows that the normalization at 1 keV of the “soft” component is typically a few percent of that of the absorbed component. This confirms the separation of our fits in two almost independent parts: the high energy components depends only on the data at energies higher than the cut-off, while the soft component is entirely determined by the low energy counts.

## 5 Conclusions

We presented a homogeneous analysis of 31 spectra of 20 Compton thin Seyfert 2s observed with the BeppoSAX satellite. We fitted the spectra with multi-component models, including a cold and warm reflection, an iron line, a low-energy thermal emission, and a primary continuum modeled with an absorbed power law with a high-energy cut-off. We also investigated the main correlations among the best fit parameters, in order to test the unified models. The main conclusions are the following.

1. Testing Unified models: The spectra of the objects in our sample are in good agreement with the standard unified model of AGNs: the primary continuum is well represented by a power law with photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.79\pm 0.01`$, with a dispersion $`\sigma (\mathrm{\Gamma })=0.23`$. This is in agreement with previous studies on the hard X-ray emission of Seyfert 2s (Turner et al. 1997, Nandra & Pounds 1989, Smith & Done 1997, Turner & Pounds 1989), and with the hard X-ray spectra of Seyfert 1s. All the objects but one show significant cold absorption by gas with column density $`N_\mathrm{H}>10^{22}`$ cm-2, in agreement with the optical classification of type 2 or 1.8/1.9. The only exception, NGC 7679, is an intriguing object, with no significant absorption in excess to Galactic in the X-rays, but also with no evidence of broad lines in the optical (see the Appendix and Della Ceca et al. 2001 for further discussion). We also fitted the hard spectrum of our objects with a simple absorbed power law, in order to compute the average observed photon index, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. We found $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{eff}}=1.76\pm 0.01`$, with a dispersion $`\sigma (\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mathrm{eff}})=0.21`$.

An iron K$`\alpha `$ emission line at energies $`6.46.6`$ keV is found in all the objects but one (NGC 7679). In agreement with the unified model, the average equivalent width of the line is higher in objects with higher absorbing column density. In 6 cases we found a broad profile of the line. In one case (NGC 6300) this profile is best fitted with a relativistic model. In the other 5 cases, the statistics is not enough to test models of relativistic lines.
2. A reflected component is present in most of the objects (17 out of 21). A debated issue on X-ray spectra of Seyferts is whether the reflection is due to the accretion disk or to a farther reflector. Comparing the variations of the direct and reflected components in the 7 sources with multiple observations, we find that the variability data are better reproduced assuming that the reflector is located far ($`>1`$ light year) from the primary source.
3. The ratio between the reflected and direct components is on average too high for a homogeneous reflector with the same column density as measured in absorption in our spectra. This is an indication that the circumnuclear medium is not homogeneous and probably a Compton thick gas cover a significant fraction of the solid angle. This structure is also suggested by X-ray variability studies of Seyfert galaxies (Risaliti et al. 2002) and will be further tested in a forthcoming detailed study of variability of this sample of AGNs (Risaliti et al. 2002, in preparation).

###### Acknowledgements.

I am grateful to the referee, Dr. K. Iwasawa, for helpful comments. This work was partially supported by the Italian Ministry for University and Research (MURST) under grant Cofin00-02-36.

## Appendix A Analysis of single sources

NGC 526a: The same set of BeppoSAX data on this source have been analyzed by Landi et al. (2001). The results obtained by these authors are in agreement with ours, within the errors. In particular, it is confirmed the relatively flat continuum spectrum: the best fit values for the photon index of the intrinsic power law are in the 1.47-1.6 range, in agreement with our result, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.54_{0.04}^{+0.05}`$.

NGC 1365: NGC 1365 is one of the few sources for which our models do not provide a good fit ($`\chi _\mathrm{r}^2`$=1.26 in model C). A more careful analysis of this object was performed by Risaliti et al. (2000). According to this work, the PDS data of NGC 1365 could be contaminated by the nearby active galaxy NGC 1386. Moreover, NGC 1365 shows an high and complex variability during the BeppoSAX observation. However, the best fit values in Risaliti et al. 2000 are in agreement with those obtained with our model C.

NGC 2992: This source shows the strongest long-term variability in our sample. Our analysis is in agreement with that of Gilli et al. (2000).

IRAS 05189-2524: The BeppoSAX observation of this source was analyzed in detail by. Severgnini et al. 2000 The reflected component is not required from the fit ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2=2`$ with one more free parameter). The fit obtained with model B is in agreement with that of Severgnini et al. (2000). The poor statistics ($`\chi _\mathrm{r}^2`$=1.2) is mainly due to an excess in the PDS data around 20 keV. The statistics is however not good enough to understand whether this excess is real or not. We note that given the high noise in the PDS data, Severgnini et al. 2000 chose not to use these data in their analysis.

NGC 4258: NGC 4258 is a nearby galaxy (estimated distance $`7`$ Mpc) hosting a weak AGN. In this object the integrated X-ray emission of galactic sources is not negligible with respect to the AGN contribution. Therefore, in models B and C we added an extra bremmshtralung component to take into account for the galactic contribution. The best fit temperature (kT=7 keV) and normalization are in agreement with those estimated in 5 different measures performed with ASCA (Reynolds et al. 2000). Our results is in agreement with the more detailed analysis of the same data performed by Fiore et al. (2001).

NGC 6300: In Fig. 6 we plot the residuals of the best fit of NGC 6300, obtained with model C, but without the Gaussian component that fits the iron K$`\alpha `$ line. The asymmetry of the line is apparent: a clear “red wing” extends down to $`4`$ keV, while a broad blue wing is absent. We fitted this excess with a relativistic line model. We used the DISKLINE model in XSPEC, leaving all the parameters free. The best fit is obtained with a strongly relativistic profile: the best fit inner radius of the emitting region is 6.5 Shwarzchild radii; the inclination is $`30^o`$. The improvement of the fit, with respect to the simple gaussian fit, is $`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2=27`$. We also tried a diskline modelem for a rotating disk, but the fit is worse, since this model can well reproduce the broad red wing, but not the narrow peak at E=6.1 keV. We note that a possible warning on this result could come from the high NH of this source (N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}2\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2). This implies that the continuum at the low energy peak of the line is partially absorbed. This could introduce systematic errors, making the reality of the red wing of the line less certain than it appears in our fit.

Another possible scenario is the one proposed by Guainazzi (2001): a good fit of the MECS spectrum can be obtained accepting very high values of the ratio R between the reflected and intrinsic component (R$`4`$). In this way the flat profile of the cold reflection spectrum can reproduce the excess between 4 and 6 keV which has been interpreted above as a relativistic wing of the iron line. Such high values of R are possible, as suggested by Guainazzi (2001), if the intrinsic flux is variable, since the observed reflection component is produced by radiation emitted at a different time with respect to the observed primary emission.

ESO 103-G35: The BeppoSAX data of this source have been analyzed by Wilkes et al. (2000). Even if the models used in our work are slightly different, the basic results are in agreement with these authors. The only noticeable discrepancy is about the high energy cut-off measurements. In the first observation we find E$`{}_{\mathrm{C}}{}^{}=84_{33}^{+134}`$ keV. This is the lowest measured cut-off energy in our sample, but it is significantly higher than that found by Wilkes et al. 2000 (E$`{}_{\mathrm{C}}{}^{}=29\pm 10`$ keV).

NGC 7172: There are two published works on the analysis of the same data (Akylas et al. 2001 and Dadina et al. 2001). Akylas et al. 2001 propose a model with no reflection. Their best fit parameters are in agreement with our model B (Table 4). Dadina et al. 2001 find that the inclusion of a cold reflection slightly increase the goodness of the fit. The best fit slope of the continuum is significantly higher in this model Our results are in agreement with Dadina et al. 2001. Our best fit model C (Table 5) is only slightly better than model B, and predicts a steeper intrinsic continuum ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }1.9`$), than model B ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }1.7`$, in agreement with Akylas et al. 2001).

NGC 7582: Turner et al. (2000) present a detailed analysis of the same BeppoSAX data. The results are compatible, but these authors prefer a different interpretation for the high energy emission in excess of the simple powerlaw, which we fit with a strong cold reflection component. Arguing that the required reflection component is too high, they suggest that the intrinsic continuum (which is completely covered by gas with N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}1.4\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2, in agreement with our results), is also absorbed by a second screen with N$`{}_{\mathrm{H}}{}^{}1.6\times 10^{24}`$ cm-2, and a covering factor of $`60`$%.

NGC 7679: This source is peculiar within our sample, for it is the only one with negligible X-ray absorption. The optical classification (pure Seyfert 2) suggests that the BLR emission is obscured by dust by at least 3-4 magnitudes . This, assuming a galactic dust-to-gas ratio, would imply an absorbing column density of at least 6-7 1021 cm-2. We can explain this discrepancy in two ways: a) the dust-to-gas ratio could be much higher than galactic, or the dust could be associated to a warm absorber; b) there could be a “hole” in the absorber of the nuclear source, so that the X-ray emission from the accretion disk is unabsorbed, but the broad lines, emitted by the larger Broad line Region, are obscured. This scenario is not unplausible, given the recent evidence of a complex structure in the Seyfert 2 absorbers (Risaliti et al 2002). Both the fits with and without the reflected component are acceptable (see Table 4 and 5). In our analysis the best reduced $`\chi ^2`$ is obtained with a steep $`\mathrm{\Gamma }2.1`$ power law plus a strong reflected component. However, in a recent study of the same data, Della Ceca et al. (2001) propose a best fit model in agreement with the one in Table 4, without reflection, and with a photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }1.75`$.


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# Ferromagnetism in the Kondo-lattice model

## I Introduction

The Kondo-lattice model (KLM)ZEN51 ; AHA55 ; KAS56 ; KON64 ; NAG74 ; NOL79 ; OVC91 ; DDN98  describes the interplay of itinerant electrons in a partially filled conduction band with quantum-mechanical spins (magnetic moments) localized at certain lattice sites. Typical model properties result from an interband exchange between the two subsystems. They are provided by a model Hamiltonian, which consists of two parts:

$$H=H_s+H_{sf}.$$
(1)
$`H_s`$ describes uncorrelated electrons in a nondegenerate energy band (”$`s`$ electrons”)

$$H_s=\underset{ij\sigma }{}T_{ij}c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{j\sigma },$$
(2)
where $`c_{i\sigma }^{}(c_{i\sigma })`$ creates (annihilates) an electron specified by the lower indices. The index $`i`$ refers to a lattice site $`𝐑_i`$, and $`\sigma =,`$ is the spin projection. $`T_{ij}`$ are the hopping integrals. The second term in Eq. (1) represents an interband exchange as an intra-atomic interaction between the itinerant electron spin $`𝝈_i`$ and the localized spin $`𝐒_i`$ (”$`f`$ electrons”):

$$H_{sf}=J\underset{i}{}𝝈_i𝐒_i.$$
(3)
According to the sign of the exchange coupling $`J`$, a parallel ($`J>0`$) or an antiparallel ($`J<0`$) alignment of itinerant and localized spin is favored with remarkable differences in the physical properties. We restrict our considerations in the following to the $`J>0`$ case, sometimes referred to as ”ferromagnetic Kondo-lattice model”, and also known as ”$`sf`$ ($`sd`$) model”. The applications of the KLM are manifold. In the 1970s it was extensively used to describe the electronic and magneto-optic properties of magnetic semiconductors such as the ferromagnetic EuO and EuS NOL79 ; OVC91 . Most studies focussed on the spectacular temperature dependence of the unoccupied band states. The well-known ”red shift” of the optical absorption edge upon cooling from $`T=T_\text{C}`$ to $`T=0`$ KBJW64  can be understood as a corresponding temperature shift of the lower $`5d`$ conduction-band edge. Recent quasiparticle band-structure calculation for bulk EuOSNO01a  confirm the observed striking temperature dependence as a consequence of a ferromagnetic exchange $`J`$ of the order of some tenth an eV. The interest in EuO, in particular in thin films, was strongly revived by the observation of a temperature driven metal-insulator transition below $`T_\text{C}`$ with a large drop of the resistivity by as much as eight orders of magnitudeSTE01 . This gives rise to a colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) much stronger than that of the manganites as La1-xSrxMnO3. Recently, a surface half-metal-insulator transition was predictedSNO01b  for a Eu(100) film. The reason for this is an exchange-split surface state.

In ferromagnetic local moment metals like Gd a RKKY-type interaction is believed to cause the ferromagnetic order, so that in principle a self-consistent description of magnetic and electronic properties by the KLM is possible. The $`T=0`$-moment of Gd is found to be $`7.63\mu _\text{B}`$RCM75 . $`7\mu _\text{B}`$ stems from the exactly half-filled $`4f`$ shell. The excess moment of $`0.63\mu _\text{B}`$ is due to an induced spin polarization of the ”a priori” nonmagnetic ($`5d,6s`$) conduction-bands, indicating a weak or intermediate $`J>0`$REN99 .

An interesting application of the KLM refers to semimagnetic semiconductors, where randomly distributed Mn2+ or Fe2+ ions provide localized magnetic moments which influence, via the exchange coupling $`J`$, the band states of systems like Ga1-xMnxAsOHN98 . The Mn2+ ions provide both localized spins ($`S=\frac{5}{2}`$, concentration $`x`$) and free carriers (holes, concentration $`x^{}<x`$). The latter take care for an indirect coupling between the moments leading for small $`x`$ even to a ferromagnetic order. The highest $`T_\text{C}`$ so far reached is $`110`$ K for $`x=0.053`$MOS98  where $`x^{}`$ is found to be about $`15\%`$ of the Mn concentration $`x`$. The origin of ferromagnetism in Ga1-xMnxAs is controversial. The authors of Ref. MOS98,  claimed that the measured $`T_\text{C}(x)`$ is consistent with a conventional RKKY interaction between the Mn ions. However, they estimated the exchange coupling $`J`$ to be of several eV, therewith comparable to the Fermi energy. This makes second order perturbation theory with respect to $`J`$ rather questionable. RKKY should be modified to account for higher-order spin polarization terms. In this papar we are going to present a respective proposal.

Another modern application of the $`J>0`$ KLM aims at the manganese oxides with perovskite structures T1-xDxMnO3 (T=La, Pr, Nd; D=Sr,Ca, Ba, Pb) which have attracted great scientific interest because of their CMRJTM94 ; RAM97 . Parent compounds like the protagonist La3+Mn3+O3 are antiferromagnetic insulators with a localized Mn spin of $`S=2`$. Replacing a trivalent La3+ ion by a divalent earth-alkali ion (Ca2+) leads to a homogenuous valence mixture of the manganese ion (Mn$`{}_{1x}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{3+}`$, Mn$`{}_{x}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{4+}`$). The three $`3dt_{2g}`$ electrons of Mn4+ can be considered as almost localized, forming an $`S=\frac{3}{2}`$ spin. Furthermore, ($`1x`$) electron per Mn site are of $`3de_g`$ type, and itinerant. They are exchange coupled to the $`S=\frac{3}{2}`$ spins, realizing just the situation which is modelled by the KLM. The exchange coupling is ferromagnetic ($`J>0`$). Since the manganites are bad electrical conductors, it can be assumed that the intraatomic exchange $`J>0`$ is much larger than the hopping-matrix element $`|t|`$. With estimated $`e_g`$ bandwidths of $`12`$ eVSPV96  and lower limits for $`J`$ of $`\begin{array}{c}>\\ \end{array}1`$ eVSPV96 , the manganites surely belong to the group of strongly coupled materials. Many fascinating features of the CMR materials can be traced back to an intimate correlation between magnetic and electronic components. One of the not yet fully understood features concerns the spin dynamics in the ferromagnetic phase ($`x0.3`$ in La1-x(Ca,Pb)xMnO3). It was reportedPAH96  that the spin wave dispersion (SWD) of materials with high $`T_\text{C}`$ (e.g.: La0.7Pb0.3MnO3: $`T_\text{C}=355K`$) can be reasonably reproduced by a simple Heisenberg model with nearest-neighbour exchange, only. FurukawaFUR96  gave qualitative arguments that this can be understood for strongly exchange coupled materials. However, strong deviations from the typical Heisenberg behavior of the SWD have been found for manganites with lower $`T_\text{C}`$’sHDC98 ; FDH98 ; DHF00 . It is a challenging question whether or not the softening of the SWD at the zone boundary can be explained by a better treatment of the KLM, i.e. by an appropriate consideration of the influence of the conduction-electron self-energy on the effective coupling between the localized magnetic momentsWAN98 ; VSN01 . Solovyev and TerakuraSTE99  argue in such a way claiming that the SWD-softening has a purely magnetic background. By contrast, Mancini et al.MPP00  believe that the KLM \[Eq. (1)\] has to be extended by a direct (superexchange) interaction between the Mn moments to account for antiferromagnetic tendencies, which dominate the magnetic behaviour of the parent material LaMnO3.

The above-presented, of course incomplete, list documents the rich variety of, at least, qualitative applications for the KLM. However, the model Hamiltonian \[Eq. (1)\] provokes such a complicated many-body problem that approximations have to be tolerated. Most of the recent theoretical work on the KLM, aiming at the CMR-materials , assumed classical spinsFUR99 ; MLS95 ; HVO00 , mainly in order to apply ”dynamical mean field theory” (DMFT). It is surely not unfair to consider this assumption as rather problematic.

It is the intention of the present paper to use a special RKKY technique for a detailed investigation of the magnetic properties of the KLM with ferromagnetic interband exchange. We exploit the method of Ref. NRM97,  to map the interaction operator $`H_{sf}`$ \[Eq. (3)\] to the Heisenberg model Hamiltonian. This is done by averaging out the conduction electron degrees of freedom by properly defined ”restricted” Green functions. The resulting effective Heisenberg exchange integrals are functionals of the itinerant-electron self-energy, and therewith strongly temperature and band occupation dependent. These dependencies manifest themselves in fundamental magnetic properties such as phase diagrams, Curie temperature, spin-wave dispersions and so on.

The electronic self-energy is taken from a ”moment conserving decoupling approach” (MCDA) introduced in Ref. NRM97,  and successfully applied to several topics in previous papers SNO01a ; SNO01b ; REN99 ; SMN01 . The method carefully interpolates between nontrivial limiting cases.

The final goal of our effort is to obtain quantitative information about magnetism and the temperature-dependent electronic structure of real local-moment systems. For this purpose it is intended in a future work to combine our model study with a ”first principles” band-structure calculation. First attempts in this direction were done for EuOSNO01a  and GdREN99 ; however, the magnetic ordering could not yet be derived self-consistently. The paper is organized as follow. In Sec. II we briefly formulate the many-body problem of the KLM. Section III reproduces the most important aspects of the ”modified RKKY-interaction” (M-RKKY), the understanding of which is vital for a correct interpretation of the results, which are discussed in Sec. IV.

## II Kondo-lattice model

The model Hamiltonian \[Eq. (1)\] provokes a nontrivial many-body problem, which can rigorously be solved only for a small number of limiting cases. For practical reasons, it sometimes appears convenient to use the second quantized form of the exchange interaction \[Eq. (3)\],

$$H_{sf}=\frac{1}{2}J\underset{i\sigma }{}(z_\sigma S_i^zn_{i\sigma }+S_i^\sigma c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{i\sigma }),$$
(4)
with the abbreviations:

$$n_{i\sigma }=c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{i\sigma },z_\sigma =\delta _\sigma \delta _\sigma ,S_i^\sigma =S_i^x+iz_\sigma S_i^y.$$
(5)
The first term in Eq. (4) describes an Ising-like interaction between the $`z`$ components of the localized and the itinerant spin. The second term comprises spin-exchange processes between the two subsystems.

To study the conduction-electron properties we use the single-electron Green function,

$$G_{ij\sigma }(E)=c_{i\sigma };c_{j\sigma }^{}_E.$$
(6)
Its equation of motion reads

$`{\displaystyle \underset{m}{}}\left(E\delta _{im}T_{im}\right)G_{mj\sigma }(E)=\mathrm{}\delta _{ij}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}J\{z_\sigma I_{ii,j\sigma }(E)+F_{ii,j\sigma }(E)\},`$
where the two types of interaction terms in Eq. (4) are causing the ”spinflip function”

$$F_{im,j\sigma }(E)=S_i^\sigma c_{m\sigma };c_{j\sigma }^{}_E$$
(8)
and the ”Ising function”

$$I_{im,j\sigma }(E)=S_i^zc_{m\sigma };c_{j\sigma }^{}_E.$$
(9)
These two ”higher” Green functions prevent a direct solution of the equation of motion (II). A formal solution of the Fourier-transformed single-electron Green function,

$$G_{𝐤\sigma }(E)=\frac{1}{N}\underset{ij}{}G_{ij\sigma }(E)e^{i𝐤(𝐑_i𝐑_j)},$$
(10)
defines the complex electron self-energy $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{𝐤\sigma }(E)`$:

$$G_{𝐤\sigma }(E)=\frac{\mathrm{}}{E+\mu +i0^+\epsilon (𝐤)\mathrm{\Sigma }_{𝐤\sigma }(E)},$$
(11)
$$[c_{𝐤\sigma },H_{sf}]_{};c_{𝐤\sigma }_E=\mathrm{\Sigma }_{𝐤\sigma }(E)G_{𝐤\sigma }(E).$$
(12)
$`\epsilon (𝐤)`$ are the Bloch energies:

$$\epsilon (𝐤)=\frac{1}{N}\underset{ij}{}T_{ij}e^{i𝐤(𝐑_i𝐑_j)}.$$
(13)
By use of the quasiparticle density of states

$$\rho _\sigma (E)=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}\pi N}\underset{𝐤}{}\text{ Im}G_{𝐤\sigma }(E\mu ),$$
(14)
we can calculate the spin-dependent occupation numbers

$$n_\sigma =\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}𝑑Ef_{}(E)\rho _\sigma (E),$$
(15)
important to fix the band polarization $`m=n_{}n_{}`$. $`f_{}(E)=(\mathrm{exp}(\beta (E\mu )+1)^1`$ is the Fermi function.

The central quantity is the self-energy, the determination of which solves the problem. However, for finite temperatures and arbitrary band occupations an exact expression is not avaliable. In Ref. NRM97,  a ”moment conserving decoupling approach” (MCDA) predicts the following structure of the self-energy.

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{𝐤\sigma }(E)=\frac{1}{2}Jz_\sigma S^z+\frac{1}{4}J^2D_{𝐤\sigma }(E).$$
(16)
The first term is linear in the coupling $`J`$, and proportional to the the local-moment magnetization $`S^z`$. It represents the result of a mean-field approach which is correct in the weak coupling limit. The second term is predominantly determined by spin-exchange processes between band electrons and localized moments. It is a complicated functional of the self-energy itself. Thus Eq. (16) is not an analytical solution at all, but an implicit equation for $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{𝐤\sigma }(E)`$. The MCDA, the detail of which are presented in ref. NRM97, , is a nonperturbational decoupling approach to a set of properly defined Green functions that correctly reproduces the non-trivial exact limiting cases of the KLM. A weighty example is the special case of a ”ferromagnetically saturated semiconductor” SMA81 ; CMI01 ; BJW64 . The various ”higher” Green functions have been approximated by linear combination of ”lower” functions, where the rigorous spectral representations of these ”higher” Green functions and their exact special cases ($`S=1/2`$, ferromagnetic saturation, …) justify the respective ansatz. Free parameters are finally fitted to exactly known spectral moments. In a certain sense, the method can be considered an interpolation scheme between important limiting cases. It was successfully used in the past for several applicationsSNO01a ; SNO01b ; REN99 ; NRM97 ; SMN01 ; NMR96 . We refer the reader for technical details to one of these papers.

The term $`D_{𝐤\sigma }(E)`$ in Eq. (16) contains certain expectations values such as

* $`n_{i\sigma },\mathrm{}`$,
* $`S_i^z,S_i^\pm S_i^{},(S_i^z)^2`$,…,
* $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\sigma =S_i^zn_{i\sigma },\gamma _\sigma =S_i^\sigma c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{i\sigma }`$,….

By use of the spectral theorem, terms (a) and (c) can exactly be expressed by the Green functions (6), (8) and (9). Besides Eq. (15) it holds

$`\gamma _\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}𝑑Ef_{}(E)\text{ Im}F_{ii,i\sigma }(E\mu ),`$ (17)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{}\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}𝑑Ef_{}(E)\text{ Im}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ii,i\sigma }(E\mu ).`$ (18)
It remains to express the pure ”local-moment” correlations (b) in terms of the electronic self-energy $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{𝐤\sigma }(E)`$ to get a closed system of equations that can be solved self-consistently. A finite coupling between the spin operators must be of indirect nature since the model Hamiltonian \[Eq. (1)\] does not contain any direct exchange. To obtain the pure spin correlations (b), we map the exchange interaction (4) on an effective Heisenberg model with effective exchange integrals $`\widehat{J}_{ij}`$ being functionals of the electronic self-energy. The result is a ”modified” RKKY interaction (M-RKKY) that takes into account the exchange-induced spin polarization of the band electrons. In lowest order it reproduces the conventional RKKY method.

## III Effective Exchange Operator

The starting idea is to map the interband ($`sf`$) exchange on an effective spin Hamiltonian of the Heisenberg type.

$$H_f=\underset{ij}{}\widehat{J}_{ij}𝐒_i𝐒_j.$$
(19)
For this purpose we use the $`sf`$ interaction in the folowing form:

$$H_{sf}=J\frac{\mathrm{}}{N}\underset{i\sigma \sigma ^{}}{}\underset{\mathrm{𝐤𝐪}}{}e^{i𝐪𝐑_i}\left(𝐒_i\widehat{𝝈}\right)_{\sigma \sigma ^{}}c_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤\sigma ^{}}.$$
(20)
$`\widehat{𝝈}`$ is the band electron spin operator, the components of which are Pauli spin matrices. The above-mentioned mapping occurs by averaging out the band electron degrees of freedom:

$$H_{sf}H_{sf}^{(c)}H_f.$$
(21)
Averaging only in the band electron subspace means that $`H_{sf}^{(c)}`$ retains operator character in the $`f`$-spin subspace. According to Eq. (20) we have to calculate

$$c_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤\sigma ^{}}^{(c)}=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Xi }^{}}\text{Tr}\left(e^{\beta H^{}}c_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤\sigma ^{}}\right).$$
(22)
$`H^{}`$ has exactly the same structure as the KLM Hamiltonian $`H`$ \[Eq. (1)\], except for the fact that for the averaging procedure the $`f`$-spin operators are to be considered as c-numbers, therefore not affecting the trace. $`\mathrm{\Xi }^{}`$ is the corresponding grand partition function. The expectation value \[Eq. (22)\] does not necessarily vanish for $`𝐪0`$ and for $`\sigma \sigma ^{}`$, as it would do when averaging in the full Hilbert space of the KLM. To calculate Eq. (22) we introduce a proper ”restricted” Green function.

$$\widehat{G}_{𝐤,𝐤+𝐪}^{\sigma ^{}\sigma }(E)=c_{𝐤\sigma ^{}};c_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }^{}_E^{(c)},$$
(23)
which has the ”normal” definition of a retarted Green function, only the averages have to be done in the Hilbert space of $`H^{}`$. The equation of motion is readily derived for both cases, namely, in the case that $`c_{𝐤\sigma ^{}}`$ is the active operator or $`c_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }^{}`$. By use of the ”free” Green function,

$$G_𝐤^{(0)}(E)=\frac{\mathrm{}}{E+\mu \epsilon (𝐤)},$$
(24)
we can combine both equations:

$`\widehat{G}_{𝐤,𝐤+𝐪}^{\sigma ^{}\sigma }(E)=\delta _{\sigma \sigma ^{}}\delta _{𝐪,\mathrm{𝟎}}G_𝐤^{(0)}(E)`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{J}{2N}}{\displaystyle \underset{i𝐤^{}\sigma ^{\prime \prime }}{}}\{e^{i(𝐤𝐤^{})𝐑_i}G_𝐤^{(0)}(E)(𝐒_i\widehat{𝝈})_{\sigma ^{}\sigma ^{\prime \prime }}\widehat{G}_{𝐤^{},𝐤+𝐪}^{\sigma ^{\prime \prime }\sigma }(E)`$
$`+e^{i(𝐤^{}(𝐤+𝐪))𝐑_i}G_{𝐤+𝐪}^{(0)}(𝐒_i\widehat{𝝈})_{\sigma ^{\prime \prime }\sigma }\widehat{G}_{𝐤,𝐤^{}}^{\sigma ^{}\sigma ^{\prime \prime }}(E)\}.`$
This equation is still exact and can be iterated up to any desired accuracy.

In first order, where the restricted Green function on the right-hand side of \[Eq. (III)\] is replaced by the ”free” Green function Eq. (24), one obtains

$`\left(\widehat{G}_{𝐤,𝐤+𝐪}^{\sigma ^{}\sigma }(E)\right)^{(1)}=\delta _{\sigma \sigma ^{}}\delta _{𝐪,\mathrm{𝟎}}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{J}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}e^{i𝐪𝐑_i}G_𝐤^{(0)}(E)\left(𝐒_i\widehat{𝝈}\right)_{\sigma ^{}\sigma }G_{𝐤+𝐪}^{(0)}.`$
Exploiting the spectral theorem in the restricted Hilbert space, for the expectation value \[Eq. (22)\] one finds

$$\begin{array}{c}\left(\frac{1}{N}\underset{𝐤}{}c_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }^{}c_{𝐤\sigma ^{}}^{(c)}\right)^{(1)}=\delta _{\sigma \sigma ^{}}\delta _{𝐪,\mathrm{𝟎}}\frac{1}{N}\underset{𝐤}{}f_{}(\epsilon (𝐤))\hfill \\ \hfill \frac{J}{\mathrm{}}\frac{1}{N}\underset{i}{}e^{i𝐪𝐑_i}D_𝐪^{(1)}\left(𝐒_i\widehat{𝝈}\right)_{\sigma ^{}\sigma }.\end{array}$$
(27)
Here we have defined

$$D_𝐪^{(1)}=\frac{1}{\pi }\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}𝑑Ef_{}(E)\text{ Im}\frac{1}{N}\underset{𝐤}{}G_𝐤^{(0)}(E\mu )G_{𝐤+𝐪}^{(0)}(E\mu ).$$
(28)
Because of

$$𝐒_i\widehat{𝝈}=\frac{1}{2}\left(\begin{array}{cc}S_i^z& S_i^{}\\ S_i^+& S_i^z\end{array}\right)$$
(29)
one realizes that the first term in Eq. (27) does not contribute to Eq. (21), while the second term gives rise to an effective Hamiltonian like Eq. (19) with the following effective exchange integrals:

$$\widehat{J}_{ij}^{(1)}=\frac{1}{N}\underset{𝐪}{}\widehat{J}^{(1)}(𝐪)e^{i𝐪(𝐑_i𝐑_j)},$$
(30)
$`\widehat{J}^{(1)}(𝐪)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}J^2D_𝐪^{(1)}`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}J^2\mathrm{}^2{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{f_{}(\epsilon (𝐤+𝐪))f_{}(\epsilon (𝐤))}{\epsilon (𝐤+𝐪)\epsilon (𝐤)}}.`$
This is the classical RKKY exchange, which comes out in first order of our Green function procedure.

It is well-known that Eq. (III) can be equivalently derived by conventional second-order perturbation theory starting from an unpolarized conduction electron gas. In order to incorporate the exchange-induced spin polarization of the conduction electrons to higher order, it almost suggests itself to modify approximation (III) by replacing in the exact expression \[Eq. (III)\] the restricted Green function by the full, all polarization processes containing single-electron Green function \[Eq. (6)\]:

$`\widehat{G}_{𝐤^{},𝐤+𝐪}^{\sigma ^{\prime \prime }\sigma }(E)`$ $`\delta _{\sigma ^{\prime \prime }\sigma }\delta _{𝐤^{}𝐤+𝐪}G_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }(E),`$ (32)
$`\widehat{G}_{𝐤,𝐤^{}}^{\sigma ^{}\sigma ^{\prime \prime }}(E)`$ $`\delta _{\sigma ^{}\sigma ^{\prime \prime }}\delta _{\mathrm{𝐤𝐤}^{}}G_{𝐤\sigma ^{}}(E).`$ (33)
For the required expectation value \[Eq. (22)\], we obtain an expression similar to Eq. (27), only $`D_𝐪^{(1)}`$ has to be replaced by

$`D_𝐪^{\sigma \sigma ^{}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\pi }}{\displaystyle \underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}dEf_{}(E)\text{ Im}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐤}{}}\times `$
$`\times (G_𝐤^{(0)}(E\mu )G_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }(E\mu )+`$
$`+G_{𝐤+𝐪}^{(0)}(E\mu )G_{𝐤\sigma ^{}}(E\mu )).`$
Exploiting the inversion symmetry, one proves

$$D_𝐪^{}=D_𝐪^{}=\frac{1}{2}\underset{\sigma }{}D_𝐪^{\sigma \sigma }.$$
(35)
This guarantees an isotropic effective exchange operator Eq. (19) with the exchange-integral

$$\begin{array}{c}\widehat{J}(𝐪)=\frac{J^2}{4}\underset{\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}dEf_{}(E)\frac{1}{N}\underset{𝐤\sigma }{}(\frac{1}{\pi }\text{ Im}(G_𝐤^{(0)}(E\mu )\times ..\hfill \\ \hfill ..\times G_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }(E\mu ))).\end{array}$$
(36)
Via $`G_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }(E\mu )`$ the effective exchange is a functional of the electronic self-energy Eq. (16), and therefore receives a distinct temperature and electron density dependence.

To obtain the magnetic properties of the local-moment system from the effective operator \[Eq. (19)\], we use the spin Green function

$$P_{ij}^{(a)}(E)=S_i^+;e^{aS_j^z}S_j^{}_E$$
(37)
first proposed by CallenCAL63 . $`a`$ is a real number, which eventually helps to derive several spin-correlation functions by applying the spectral theorem to $`P_{ij}^{(a)}(E)`$ and a proper differentiation with respect to $`a`$. The equation of motion of $`P_{ij}^{(a)}(E)`$ reads

$$\begin{array}{c}EP_{ij}^{(a)}(E)=2\mathrm{}\delta _{ij}A_a2\mathrm{}\underset{m}{}\widehat{J}_{im}\times \hfill \\ \hfill \times \left(S_m^+S_i^zS_i^+S_m^z\right);e^{aS_j^z}S_j^{}_E.\end{array}$$
(38)
Here we have abbreviated

$$A_a=[S_i^+,e^{aS_i^z}S_i^{}]_{}.$$
(39)
It is well-known that a simple random-phase-approximation decoupling of the higher Green function on the right-hand side of Eq. (38) yields surprisingly convincing results in the low- and high- temperature region (”Tyablikov-approximation”). Doing so, after a Fourier-transformation we obtain

$$P_𝐪^{(a)}(E)=\frac{2\mathrm{}^2A_a}{EE(𝐪)+i0^+}.$$
(40)
In this approximation the magnon energies $`E(𝐪)`$ are real:

$$E(𝐪)=2\mathrm{}S^z\left(\widehat{J}_\mathrm{𝟎}\widehat{J}(𝐪)\right),$$
(41)
$$\widehat{J}_0=\widehat{J}(𝐪=\mathrm{𝟎})=\underset{i}{}\widehat{J}_{ij}.$$
(42)
Following the Callen-methodCAL63  for the local-moment magnetization one obtains

$$S^z=\mathrm{}\frac{(1+S+\phi )\phi ^{2S+1}+(S+\phi )(1+\phi )^{2S+1}}{(1+\phi )^{2S+1}\phi ^{2S+1}}.$$
(43)
$`\phi `$ is the average magnon number,

$$\phi (S)=\frac{1}{N}\underset{𝐪}{}\frac{1}{e^{\beta E(𝐪)}1},$$
(44)
which determines $`S^z`$ and many other spin correlations. Some typical examples are

$`S^{}S^+`$ $`=`$ $`2\mathrm{}S^z\phi (S),`$ (45)
$`(S^z)^3`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}^3S(S+1)\phi (S)+\mathrm{}^2S^z(S(S+1)+.`$ (46)
$`.+\phi (S))\mathrm{}(S^z)^2(1+3\phi (S)).`$
Via Eq. (36) all spin correlations \[Eqs. (43)-(46)\] are fixed by the electron self-energy \[Eq. (16)\].

The key quantity of ferromagnetism is the Curie temperature $`T_\text{C}`$. Performing the limiting process

$$TT_\text{C}^{()};S^z0^+$$
(47)
one finds, from Eq. (43),

$$k_\text{B}T_\text{C}=\frac{2}{3}\mathrm{}^2S(S+1)\left[\frac{1}{N}\underset{𝐪}{}\left(\widehat{J}_\mathrm{𝟎}\widehat{J}(𝐪)\right)_{T_\text{C}}^1\right]^1.$$
(48)
The effective exchange integrals are temperature-dependent and have to be used here for $`TT_\text{C}`$.

For the results presented in Sec. IV, we have used the self-energy approach of Ref. NRM97, . The same approach has been applied in Refs. SNO01a, ; SNO01b, ; SMN01, ; REN99, ; MSN01, , so that we can refrain here from presenting details of the method. As explained after Eq. (16) the self-energy of Ref. NRM97,  depends on three types of expectation values: purely electronic terms, which are accessible with the single-particle Green function \[Eq. (6)\]; pure local-spin correlation such as Eqs. (43), (45), (46); and mixed itinerant-electron-local-moment correlations, which are expressible by the ”higher” Green functions \[Eqs. (8) and (9)\]. Eventually, we have a closed system of equations that can be solved self-consistently for the desired electronic and magnetic properties of the KLM. Some typical results are discussed in Sec. IV.

## IV Magnetic Properties

We have evaluated our theory for a s.c. lattice (bandwidth: $`W=1`$ eV) to find out the magnetic properties of the ferromagnetic KLM. The latter are, however, strongly correlated with the electronic properties, so that they can not be understood without referring to the itinerant-electron subsystem.

Fig. 1 shows the quasiparticle density of states (QDOS) $`\rho _\sigma (E)`$ for a band occupation $`n=0.2`$ and a moderate exchange coupling $`J=0.2`$ eV. The self-consistently determined Curie temperature turns out to be $`T_\text{C}=232K`$. In the low-temperature, ferromagnetic phase the QDOS exhibits a remarkable temperature-dependence. For $`T0`$ the $``$ spectrum becomes rather simple (solid line in the upper half of Fig. 1) since the local-moment system is ferromagnetically saturated. A $``$ electron has therefore no chance to exchange its spin with the localized spins. That means that only the Ising-like interaction term in Eq. (4) really works, leading to a rigid shift of about $`\frac{1}{2}JS`$ of $`\rho _{}(E)`$ with respect to the ”free” Bloch DOS $`\rho _0(E)`$. The down-spin QDOS, however, is much more complicated, because a $``$ electron can exchange its spin with the saturated localized spins. That can, e.g., be done by emitting a magnon $`\mathrm{}\omega (𝐪)`$, where the electron reverses its spin from $``$ to $``$. Consequently, this part of the spectrum (”scattering states”) exactly coincides with $`\rho _{}(E)`$. However, the $``$ electron has another possibility to exchange its spin with the perfectly aligned localized spins. It can polarize its local spin surrounding by repeated magnon emission and reabsorption. This can even lead to a bound state, which we call the ”magnetic polaron”. For the special case of a single $``$ electron in an otherwise empty conduction band coupled to a ferromagnetically saturated spin system the formation of the magnetic polaron can rigorously be shown SMA81 ; NDM85  (see Fig. 1 in Ref. MSN01, ). Formation of a polaron costs more energy than magnon emission. Polaron states therefore build the upper part of the $``$ spectrum.

Magnon emission by the $``$ electron is equivalent to magnon absorption of a $``$ electron, with one exception: magnon absorption can occur only if there are magnons in the system. This is not the case at $`T=0`$ in the ferromagnetic saturation. At finite temperature, however, there are magnons to be absorbed by $``$ electrons. Consequently, scattering states appear in the $``$ spectrum too. Because of the possible spin exchange both spin spectra occupy exactly the same energy region at all $`T>0`$. It is interesting to observe that even for such a moderate coupling $`J=0.2`$ eV ($`W=1`$ eV) there opens a gap between a lower and an upper quasiparticle subband. In the lower subband the electron hops mainly over lattice sites, where it orients its spin parallel to the local moment, either without or with preceding spin-flip by magnon emission (absorption). The upper subband consists of polaron states with finite lifetimes. Note that such elementary processes are not recognizable when for mathematical simplicity classical spins ($`S\mathrm{}`$) are assumed FUR99 ; MLS95 ; HVO00 . The QDOS in Fig. 1 clearly demonstrates that the conduction electrons are not at all fully spin polarized as is often used in DMFT treatments of the KLMFUR96 ; HVO00 . That is true only in the unphysical limit $`S\mathrm{}.`$

Let us now concentrate the rest of the discussion on the magnetic properties of the KLM. They are determined by the respective behaviour of the effective exchange integrals $`\widehat{J}_{ij}`$.

Fig. 2 shows the distance dependence of $`\widehat{J}_{ij}`$ as it follows from the conventional RKKY \[Eq. (30)\]. We recognize the well-known oscillating and long-range behavior. According to Eq. (III) two parameters influence the oscillation: the interband exchange $`J`$ and the band occupation $`n`$. The ”amplitude” of the oscillation is proportional to $`J^2`$, while the ”period” is fixed via the chemical potential $`\mu `$ by the conduction electron density $`n`$. A remarkable temperature dependence is not observed.

The oscillations of the effective exchange integrals $`\widehat{J}_{ij}`$ are

less regular when higher-order polarization effects in the conduction band are taken into account \[Eq. (36)\]. Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 show two examples for two different $`J`$’s and several band occupations $`n`$.

The nonregular $`J`$ dependence results from the fact, that $`J`$ appears in Eq. (36) not only as a prefactor $`J^2`$ but also in a complicated manner via the Green function $`G_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }(E\mu )`$ of the polarized itinerant electron system. Of similar complexity is the $`n`$ dependence. In the conventional RKKY \[Eq. (III)\] it comes into play only through the chemical potential in the Fermi function, while in the full expression \[Eq. (36)\], several correlation functions as $`n_\sigma `$, $`S^zn_\sigma `$, $`S^\sigma c_\sigma ^{}c_\sigma `$,…\[Eqs. (15), (17), (18)\] contribute to the $`n`$ dependence.

To demonstrate the influence of the interband exchange coupling $`J`$ on the effective Heisenberg-exchange integrals $`\widehat{J}_{ij}`$ in more detail, in Fig. 5 we plot the $`J`$ dependence of $`J_x`$, $`x=1,\mathrm{},9`$. $`J_x`$ is the effective exchange integral between sites separated along the (100) direction by $`x`$ lattice constants.111Note that $`J_2`$ is already the fourth-nearest neighbour..

$`J_4,\mathrm{},J_9`$ show an oscillatory structure in the weak-coupling region, being, one order of magnitude smaller than $`J_{2,3}`$ and even two orders of magnitude smaller than $`J_1`$. For $`J>0.2`$ eV $`J_3,\mathrm{},J_9`$ are so strongly damped that the magnetism of the KLM can be described by a Heisenberg model with next- and next-nearest-neighbor exchanges only. In the weak-coupling regime, however, the higher terms $`J_3,\mathrm{},J_9`$ can not be neglected. Similar statements can be found inFUR96 . Maybe this is an explanation why CMR materials with high $`T_\text{C}`$ can be described reasonably wellPAH96  by a short-range Heisenberg model, while other materials with lower $`T_\text{C}`$ exhibit strong deviationsHDC98 ; FDH98 ; DHF00 . In any case the main contribution to the exchange coupling stems from the next-nearest-neighbors. $`J_1`$ determines the stable magnetic configuration. The negative slope of $`J_1`$ for $`J>0.5`$ eV indicates already a breakdown of the ferromagnetic order, which is more carefully inspected below.

The effective exchange integrals $`J_x`$ exhibit an interesting electron-density dependence (Fig. 6). For low densities up to $`n=0.3`$ only $`J_1`$ is of importance. A Heisenberg model with nearest-neighbour exchange will appropriately describe the magnetic properties of the KLM.

For larger $`n`$, however, the exchange interaction becomes very long-range, even $`J_9`$ is not negligible. From Fig. 5 and 6 we learn that the interplay between local interband exchange $`J`$ and band occupation $`n`$ does lead to a rather complicated behaviour of the effective RKKY exchange integrals.

The effective exchange integrals determine the magnetic properties of the KLM. On the other hand, they depend on the electron self-energy which is strongly influenced by magnetic correlation functions. Typical examples of the latter are plotted in Fig. 7, calculated for $`n=0.2`$ and $`J=0.2`$ eV.

The electronic part of the self-consistent solution, represented by the temperature dependent QDOS, is shown in Fig. 1. The Curie temperature is found as $`T_\text{C}=232`$ K. The local-moment magnetization $`S^z`$ is of Brillouin function type, and the qualitative shapes of the other spin correlations are also familiar from the pure Heisenberg model.

The key-quantity of ferromagnetism is the Curie temperature $`T_\text{C}`$. $`T_\text{C}>0`$ comes out as a consequence of an indirect coupling between the local moments, mediated by spin polarization of itinerant electrons. Therefore, a strong particle density dependence of $`T_\text{C}`$ has to be expected. Figure 8 shows $`T_\text{C}(n)`$ for various $`J`$ from the weak to moderate coupling regime, calculated according to \[Eq. (48)\].

Ferromagnetism appears for low particle (hole) densities, where the ferromagnetic region increases with increasing $`J`$. The $`T_\text{C}`$ values are of realistic order. A similar $`n`$ dependence of $`T_\text{C}`$ has been found in Ref. CMI01,  within an extended multi-band KLM. No ferromagnetism appears around half-filling ($`n=1`$). It can be speculated that antiferromagnetism, which is not considered within our approach, becomes stable near $`n=1`$. It is

interesting to compare the results of Fig. 8 with their conterparts from conventional RKKY (Fig. 9), using the same model parameters and the same $`T_\text{C}`$-formula \[Eq. (48)\]. The $`T_\text{C}`$ values are higher, but the region of $`n`$ where ferromagnetism appears, is distinctly narrower. The critical $`n`$, where $`T_\text{C}`$ vanishes again, is independent of $`J`$, in contrast to the full theory in Fig. 8.

The Curie temperature shows a remarkable $`J`$ dependence, which is plotted in Fig. 10 for various band occupations. According to conventional RKKY theory one would expect a monotonic increase of $`T_\text{C}`$ with increasing $`J`$. A mean-field evaluation of the effective Heisenberg model would lead to $`T_\text{C}J^2`$.

Our theory becomes identical to conventional RKKY theory for small $`J`$. However, because of the random-phase-approximation (RPA) treatment of the Heisenberg operator \[Eq. (19)\], there are deviations of $`T_\text{C}`$ from the $`J^2`$ behavior even for small $`J`$. A more important and very characteristic feature of our modified RKKY approach is the appearence of a critical coupling $`J_c`$ for band occupations $`n0.13`$, below which no ferromagnetism occurs. This occurs for band fillings, for which conventional RKKY theory fails to yield a ferromagnetic RPA solution (Fig. 9). Therefore the existence of $`J_c`$ does not disprove the agreement of conventional and modified RKKY theory for small $`J`$. After a steep increase as function of $`J`$, $`T_\text{C}`$ runs into a kind of saturation, where the plateau becomes smaller the larger the bandfilling $`n`$. With a further increase of $`J`$, the Curie temperature again decreases and disappears at an upper critical $`J`$ value. The upper critical value of $`J`$ coincides with the point where the stiffness constant $`D`$ of the spin-wave dispersion \[Eq. (41)\] ($`E(𝐪)D𝐪^2`$ near the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ point) becomes negative due to a respective behavior of the dominating effective exchange integrals $`J_1,J_2,J_3`$ (see inset in Fig. 5 and Eq. (48)). It can be suspected that for larger $`J`$ the local-moment system becomes antiferromagnetic. Furthermore, it cannot be excluded that for still larger $`J`$’s the system returns to ferromagnetism. These features are far beyond conventional RKKY theory and due to higher order polarization terms, which come into play via the full Green function $`G_{𝐤+𝐪\sigma }(E\mu )`$ in the expression (36) for the effective exchange integral $`\widehat{J}(𝐪)`$. The manganites are often treated as ferromagnets with $`J\mathrm{}`$ in the KLMFUR96 . According to Fig. 10 this must be reexamined. For $`JW`$ ferromagnetism is unlikely in the KLM.

The spin-wave dispersion, plotted in Fig. 11 for the main symmetry direction, obtains, via the effective exchange integrals a distinct temperature dependence. Upon heating the dispersion relation uniformly softens, disappearing above $`T_\text{C}`$. This agrees qualitatively with the a neutron-scattering study of the spin dynamics in the manganite Pr0.63Sr0.37MnO3HDC98 . However, we do not share the view of the authors of Ref. HDC98, , i.e., that the unexcepted results rule out a simple Heisenberg Hamiltonian. In our opinion the Heisenberg model works as long as the exchange integrals are renormalized in a proper way by the conduction-electron self-energy.

Changing the doping in the III-V based diluted magnetic semiconductors such as Ga1-xMnxAs, or in manganites like La1-xCaxMnO3, does alter the band occupation and therewith the physics of these materials. It is therefore worthwhile to inspect the $`n`$ dependence of the spin-wave dispersion. This is done in Fig. 12 for low bandoccupations and in Fig. 13 for higher band occupations for a model system with $`J=0.2`$ eV. For low densities (Fig. 12) we observe a strengthening of the magnon dispersion with increasing band filling, while the opposite is true for stronger fillings (Fig. 13). This is in accordance with the $`T_\text{C}`$ behavior of Fig. 8. The band occupation $`n=0.485`$ is very close to the upper critical point of the $`J=0.2`$ eV curve in Fig. 8. The corresponding spin-wave dispersion in Fig. 13 shows a strong softening. A slightly higher $`n`$ leads to parts of the Brillouin zone with negative magnon energies, i.e. the ferromagnetic ground state becomes unstable. The stiffness $`D`$, defined by $`E(𝐪)D𝐪^2`$ for $`𝐪\mathrm{𝟎}`$, becomes negative. The points where $`D=D(n,J,T=0)=0^+`$ exactly coincide in our theory with those for which $`T_\text{C}=T_\text{C}(n,J)0`$, directly derived from the local-moment magnetization $`S^z`$. Qualitatively the same $`n`$ dependence of the spin-wave dispersion is reported in Ref. WMH98, .

An example for the $`J`$ dependence of the spin-wave dispersion is presented in Fig. 14 ($`n=0.2`$, $`T=0`$ K, $`S=\frac{7}{2}`$). Again we observe a strengthening of the dispersion

with $`J`$ when $`T_\text{C}`$ increases simultaneously, and a softening, when $`T_\text{C}`$ decreases (see Fig. 10).

## V Summary

We have evaluated an approximate but self-consistent theory for a local-moment ferromagnet described within the framework of the ferromagnetic Kondo-lattice model. Candidates for this model are magnetic semiconductors (EuO, EuS), diluted magnetic semiconductors (Ga1-xMnxAs), magnetic metals (Gd, Dy, Tb) and CMR materials (La1-xCaxMnO3). We have used a previously developed Green function techniqueNRM97  for a detailed investigation of the magnetic properties of the exchange-coupled local moment-itinerant electron system. An extended RKKY mechanism has been worked out to derive magnetic phase diagrams as well as spin-wave dispersions. The latter show strong dependencies on temperature (uniform softening for $`TT_\text{C}`$), on the band occupation $`n`$, and on the exchange coupling $`J`$. These dependencies are due to the respective behaviors of the effective exchange integrals between the localized moments. The effective exchange integrals are found by mapping the interband exchange ($`sf`$) coupling, characteristic of the KLM, to an effective Heisenberg model. They turn out to be functions of the electronic self-energy, being therewith strongly temperature and electron density dependent. For small $`J`$ our theory reproduces the results of the well-known conventional RKKY treatment, which represents second-order perturbation theory to the KLM. Already for very moderate $`J`$, however, substantial deviations appear, when higher-order terms of the induced conduction-electron spin polarization bring their influence to bear.

For the future the presented approach has to be extended to antiferromagnetic moment configurations in order to complete the phase diagram. Furthermore, Coulomb correlations have to be introduced for the conduction-electron subsystem. Their neglect in the original KLM seems to be only poorly justified.

It is further intended to apply the modified RKKY procedure to the antiferromagnetic KLM ($`J<0`$) in order to investigate the interplay between ”Kondo screening” and RKKY. This, however, requires a serious check whether or not the MCDA in its present formNRM97  is able to account for the subtle low-temperature (Kondo) physics.


text:
# Maximal entanglement of squeezed vacuum states via swapping with number-phase measurement

## Abstract

We propose a method to refine entanglement via swapping from a pair of squeezed vacuum states by performing the Bell measurement of number sum and phase difference. The resultant states are maximally entangled by adjusting the two squeezing parameters to the same value. We then describe the teleportation of number states by using the entangled states prepared in this way.

Recently, information technologies with quantum systems have widely been investigated. Among these advances, quantum teleportation was first proposed via a protocol by using a two-dimensional system BBCJPW . This original protocol adopts internal degrees of freedom as Bell measurement variable, e.g., the polarization of light, while other protocols were proposed later to teleport the quadrature phase components Braunstein ; Milburn  and the photon number states Milburn ; Cochrane ; Cochrane-Milburn . Furthermore, the concept of entanglement swapping, which transfers entanglement from one system to another, appeared in the verification experiment of teleportation Pan .

In this article, we address the quantum teleportation in the photon number states. Great efforts have been done so far theoretically and experimentally for the teleportation of photon polarization (two dimensional) and that of quadrature components (infinite dimensional). Then, it may be desired as an important future step to realize the teleportation in more than two (but finite) dimensions. The photon number states seem to be very promising for such a teleportiation. The essential ingredients for teleportation are the EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) resource and the Bell measurement. At present, squeezed vacuum states generated by parametric down conversion are used as EPR resource almost uniquely in the experiments utilizing photons, including the proposals of number state teleportation Milburn ; Cochrane ; Cochrane-Milburn . Strictly speaking, however, the squeezed vacuum state is not ideal, since it has non-uniform number distribution. Hence, the Fock space of number states should be restricted effectively to some finite dimensional subspace in order to prepare physically an ideal EPR resource for perfect teleportation. This is suitably achieved by the number sum measurement on two photon modes. Furthermore, the phase difference is conjugate to the number sum, as shown later, and they naturally provide the joint Bell measurement.

In this way, it is realized that the number sum and phase difference measurements are essential for the multi-dimensional teleportation utilizing photons. We here formulate properly this Bell measurement by describing the simultaneous eigenstates of the Hermitian operators of number sum and phase difference. Then, we propose a novel method to achieve the desired entanglement in the number basis. The Bell measurement plays a crucial role even for this purpose. Specifically, by performing the number-phase measurement on the relevant two photon modes, the EPR states with more favorable distribution can be obtained via swapping from a pair of squeezed vacuum states. In particular, by adjusting the two squeezing parameters to the same value, we obtain the maximally entangled states via swapping (MESS) with uniform distribution. These MESS’s can be used for a reliable teleportation protocol based on the number-phase Bell measurement.

A two-mode squeezed vacuum state is given as

$$|\lambda _{ab}=(1\lambda ^2)^{1/2}\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\lambda ^n|n_a|n_b,$$
(1)
where $`\lambda `$ is the squeezing parameter. This non-uniform distribution with $`\lambda <1`$ in Eq. (1) is attributed to the fact that the Fock space is infinite dimensional while the energy should be finite for the physical states. In contrast, we will show in the following that the physical EPR state of maximal entanglement with uniform distribution may be obtained if the Fock space is effectively cut off at certain photon number. We begin with taking the Bell basis (a complete set of orthonormal entangled states) for the number sum and phase difference in the two-mode Fock space $`\{|n_a_a|n_b_b\}`$ as:

$$|N,m_{ab}=\underset{k=0}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{[(\omega _{N+1}^{})^m\alpha ^{}]^k}{\sqrt{N+1}}|Nk_a|k_b,$$
(2)
where $`m=0,1,\mathrm{},N`$ $`\mathrm{mod}N+1`$ ($`|N,1_{ab}|N,N_{ab}`$, etc). The $`(N+1)`$-root to generate a $`\mathrm{Z}_{N+1}`$ is given by

$$\omega _{N+1}\mathrm{exp}\left[i2\pi /(N+1)\right],(\omega _{N+1})^{N+1}=1.$$
(3)
A certain phase factor $`\alpha `$ ($`|\alpha |=1`$) is also introduced, which will be specified later. The transformation matrix $`𝒰_{mk}^{(N)}[(\omega _{N+1}^{})^m\alpha ^{}]^k/\sqrt{N+1}`$ in Eq. (2) is really unitary due to the completeness of the $`(N+1)`$-roots $`1,\omega _{N+1},\mathrm{},\omega _{N+1}^N`$. These orthonormal Bell states $`|N,m_{ab}`$ are maximally entangled with $`|𝒰_{mk}^{(N)}|=1/\sqrt{N+1}`$, spanning the subspace $`\{|Nk_a|k_b\}`$ with number sum $`N=n_a+n_b`$. Hence, they serve promisingly as the basis for $`(N+1)`$-dimensional teleportation.

It is here the essential point that these Bell states are maximally entangled even in terms of the phase states defined by Pegg and Barnett P-B :

$`|N,m_{ab}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}[i\varphi _0^{(N,a)}N]`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{m^{}=0}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{[(\omega _{N+1}^{})^{m^{}+m}]^N}{\sqrt{N+1}}}|\varphi _{m^{}+m}^{(N,a)}_a|\varphi _m^{}^{(N,b)}_b.`$
To derive this expression, we take the relations between the number states and the phase states ($`p=a,b`$),

$`|n_p={\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{exp}[in\varphi _m^{(N,p)}]}{\sqrt{N+1}}}|\varphi _m^{(N,p)}_p,`$ (5)
$`|\varphi _m^{(N,p)}_p={\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{N}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{exp}[in\varphi _m^{(N,p)}]}{\sqrt{N+1}}}|n_p.`$ (6)
The phases are defined with resolution $`2\pi /(N+1)`$ as

$$\varphi _m^{(N,p)}=\varphi _0^{(N,p)}+\frac{2\pi }{N+1}m.$$
(7)
Here, the superscript $`(N,p)`$ denotes the fact that these phase eigenvalues may include the arbitrary reference phases $`\varphi _0^{(N,p)}`$ possibly depending on the resolutions ($`N`$). By noting $`\mathrm{exp}[i\varphi _m^{(N,p)}]=(\omega _{N+1})^m\mathrm{exp}[i\varphi _0^{(N,p)}]`$ in substituting Eq. (5) into Eq. (2), the phase factor $`\alpha `$ is specified as

$$\alpha =\alpha _{ab}=\mathrm{exp}[i(\varphi _0^{(N,a)}\varphi _0^{(N,b)})]$$
(8)
for reducing the phase factors coming from $`\varphi _0^{(N,a)}`$ and $`\varphi _0^{(N,b)}`$ to the overall $`\mathrm{exp}[i\varphi _0^{(N,a)}N]`$. Then, Eq. (LABEL:bell-phase) is led by using the $`\mathrm{Z}_{N+1}`$ completeness with integer $`m`$,

$$\underset{k=0}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{[(\omega _{N+1})^m]^k}{N+1}=\delta _{m0}^{(N+1)}=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & (m=0\mathrm{mod}N+1)\hfill \\ 0\hfill & (m0\mathrm{mod}N+1)\hfill \end{array}.$$
(9)
The Bell measurement of number sum and phase difference is represented by the Hermitian operators,

$$\widehat{N}_{a+b}\widehat{N}_a+\widehat{N}_b,\widehat{\varphi }_{ab}\underset{N=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}[\widehat{\varphi }^{(N,a)}\widehat{\varphi }^{(N,b)}]\widehat{P}_N.$$
(10)
Here, $`\widehat{\varphi }^{(N,a)}`$ and $`\widehat{\varphi }^{(N,b)}`$ are the phase operators on the modes $`a`$ and $`b`$, respectively, providing the eigenvalues of Eq. (7). The resolution $`2\pi /(N+1)`$ common to the modes $`a`$ and $`b`$ should be taken for the phase difference to be consistent with the number sum. The projection operator $`\widehat{P}_N`$ extracts the states in the subspace $`\{|Nk_a|k_b\}`$ with number sum $`N`$. As seen clearly from Eqs. (2) and (LABEL:bell-phase), the Bell states are the simultaneous eigenstates of number sum and phase difference:

$`\widehat{N}_{a+b}|N,m=N|N,m,`$ (11)
$`\widehat{\varphi }_{ab}|N,m=\varphi _m^{(N,ab)}|N,m,`$ (12)
where the phase difference eigenvalues are given by

$$\varphi _m^{(N,ab)}=[\varphi _0^{(N,a)}\varphi _0^{(N,b)}]+\frac{2\pi }{N+1}m.$$
(13)
Since $`[\widehat{\varphi }^{(N,a)}\widehat{\varphi }^{(N,b)}]`$ does not change the number sum $`N`$, it commutes with $`\widehat{P}_N`$ as required for the Hermiticity of the entire phase difference operator $`\widehat{\varphi }_{ab}`$. These results clarify that in the subspace with number sum $`N`$ the phase difference operator introduced by Luis and Sánchez-Soto L-S  indeed coincides with the difference of the phase operators of the individual modes a la Pegg and Barnett P-B , while it is not separable in the entire two-mode Fock space. It is also obvious from Eqs. (11) and (12) that $`\widehat{N}_{a+b}`$ and $`\widehat{\varphi }_{ab}`$ are commutable:

$$[\widehat{N}_{a+b},\widehat{\varphi }_{ab}]=0.$$
(14)
Now we prepare a pair of squeezed vacuum states, 1-2 system and 3-4 system, for entanglement and teleportation. They can in fact be expressed in an entangled form via swapping (1-2, 3-4) $``$ (1-4, 2-3) as

$`|\lambda _{12}|\lambda ^{}_{34}`$ $`=`$ $`(1\lambda ^2)^{1/2}(1\lambda ^2)^{1/2}`$ (15)
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{N=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{N}{}}}\lambda ^{Nk}\lambda ^k|Nk_1|k_4|Nk_2|k_3`$
$`=`$ $`(1\lambda ^2)^{1/2}(1\lambda ^2)^{1/2}`$
$`\times `$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{N=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\lambda ^N{\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{N}{}}}|N,m_{23}|N,m_{14}^{(r)}`$
with the generalized Bell states including the ratio of the squeezing parameters $`r\lambda ^{}/\lambda `$,

$$|N,m_{14}^{(r)}=\underset{k=0}{\overset{N}{}}r^k\frac{[(\omega _{N+1}^{})^m\alpha _{14}^{}]^k}{\sqrt{N+1}}|Nk_1|k_4,$$
(16)
where $`\alpha _{14}=\alpha _{23}^{}`$. The relation (15) is derived by extending the sum over $`k`$ with $`\delta _{kk^{}}^{(N+1)}`$ as

$$\underset{k=0}{\overset{N}{}}(\mathrm{})(\alpha _{23}^{}\alpha _{23})^k=\underset{k=0}{\overset{N}{}}\underset{k^{}=0}{\overset{N}{}}\delta _{kk^{}}^{(N+1)}(\mathrm{})(\alpha _{23}^{})^k(\alpha _{23})^k^{}$$
(17)
and by taking the completeness of $`\mathrm{Z}_{N+1}`$ for $`\delta _{kk^{}}^{(N+1)}=\delta _{(kk^{})0}^{(N+1)}`$ as given in Eq. (9). Then, the Bell states, maximally entangled with $`\lambda =\lambda ^{}`$, are obtained in Eq. (15) by performing the number-phase Bell measurement on the 2-3 system, as shown in Fig. 1 as a part of quantum teleportation with MESS:

$$|\lambda _{12}|\lambda ^{}_{34}|N,m_{14}^{(r)}\stackrel{\lambda =\lambda ^{}}{}|N,m_{14}.$$
(18)
The probability to obtain the result $`(N,m)`$ with $`\lambda =\lambda ^{}`$ in this Bell measurement is given from Eq. (15) by

$$P(N,m,\lambda )=(1\lambda ^2)^2\lambda ^{2N}.$$
(19)
The original squeezed vacuum states have the non-uniform distribution with weight $`(\lambda ^n)^2`$. In contrast, the resultant Bell states $`|N,m_{14}`$ with $`\lambda =\lambda ^{}`$ are maximally entangled, having the uniform distribution in $`(n_1,n_4)=(Nk,k)`$ of the modes 1 and 4. Hence, they provide the ideal EPR resource for the teleportation of photon number states, as shown in Fig. 1. The target state may generally be prepared as

$$|\psi _\mathrm{T}=\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}c_n|n_\mathrm{T}.$$
(20)
Alice and Bob share the Bell state $`|N,m_{14}^{(r)}`$ of the 1-4 system, which is prepared by Clare with the number-phase measurement on the modes 2 and 3 giving the result $`(N,m)`$. Then, Alice performs the number-phase measurement on the modes T and 1 giving the result $`(N^{},m^{})`$, and the output state in the mode 4 is left for Bob as

$`|\psi ^{}_{\mathrm{out}}`$ $`=`$ $`{}_{1\mathrm{T}}{}^{}N^{},m^{}||\psi _{\mathrm{T}}^{}|N,m_{14}^{(r)}`$ (21)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=n_0}{\overset{N^{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{exp}[i\varphi (N,m,N^{},m^{})(n\mathrm{\Delta }N)]}{\sqrt{N+1}\sqrt{N^{}+1}}}`$
$`\times `$ $`[(\omega _{N^{}+1})^m^{}\alpha _{1\mathrm{T}}]^{\mathrm{\Delta }N}r^{n\mathrm{\Delta }N}c_n|n\mathrm{\Delta }N_4`$
with $`\mathrm{\Delta }NN^{}N`$, $`n_0\mathrm{max}[0,\mathrm{\Delta }N]`$ and

$$\varphi (N,m,N^{},m^{})\mathrm{arg}[(\omega _{N^{}+1}^{})^m^{}\alpha _{1\mathrm{T}}^{}(\omega _{N+1}^{})^m\alpha _{14}].$$
(22)
Here, due to the condition $`0n\mathrm{\Delta }NN`$ for the mode 4, the sum is taken over the photon number $`n`$ as

$$n=\{\begin{array}{cc}0,\mathrm{},N^{}\hfill & (N^{}N)\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Delta }N,\mathrm{},N^{}\hfill & (N^{}>N)\hfill \end{array}.$$
(23)
We have explicitly introduced Clare who prepares the EPR resource, since in the present method the entangled state is obtained depending on the result of Bell measurement. In contrast, it is usually the implicit recognition that one certain EPR resource, e.g., the singlet state of photon polarizations, is prepared automatically by some device, which is known preceding to a teleportation experiment. In any case, the information on the EPR resource should be told to Bob.

Clare informs Bob what Bell state is prepared with the result $`(N,m)`$, and Alice tells Bob the result $`(N^{},m^{})`$ of Bell measurement. Then, according to these classical messages Bob performs a unitary transformation $`|\psi _{\mathrm{out}}=U_{\mathrm{\Delta }N}U_\varphi |\psi ^{}_{\mathrm{out}}`$ to reconstruct the original state as faithfully as possible. The phase $`\varphi (N,m,N^{},m^{})`$ can be removed by an operation with number operator as

$$U_\varphi =\mathrm{exp}[i\widehat{N}_4\varphi (N,m,N^{},m^{})].$$
(24)
Then, the number shift of $`\mathrm{\Delta }N`$ can be made by another operation with phase operator P-B  as

$$U_{\mathrm{\Delta }N}=\mathrm{exp}[i\widehat{\varphi }^{(\mathrm{max}[N,N^{}],4)}\mathrm{\Delta }N].$$
(25)
As a result, the output state is obtained as

$$|\psi _{\mathrm{out}}=\frac{[(\omega _{N^{}+1})^m^{}\alpha _{1\mathrm{T}}/r]^{\mathrm{\Delta }N}}{\sqrt{N+1}\sqrt{N^{}+1}}\underset{n=n_0}{\overset{N^{}}{}}r^nc_n|n_4.$$
(26)
That is, the number state teleportation is made as

$$c_n(0n<\mathrm{})r^nc_n(\mathrm{max}[0,\mathrm{\Delta }N]nN^{})$$
(27)
up to the physically irrelevant overall phase factor. In particular, by adjusting $`\lambda =\lambda ^{}`$ ($`r=1`$), the target state is faithfully reproduced in the range of photon number 0 to $`N^{}`$ for the case of $`\mathrm{\Delta }N0`$ ($`N^{}N`$). In other words, if the target state is prepared in the range 0 to certain maximal number $`\overline{N}`$, the probability for its successful teleportation with $`\overline{N}N^{}N`$ is given by

$$Q(\overline{N},\lambda )=\underset{N^{}=\overline{N}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{m^{}=0}{\overset{N^{}}{}}\underset{N=N^{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{m=0}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{P(N,m,\lambda )}{(N+1)(N^{}+1)}=\lambda ^{2\overline{N}}.$$
(28)
We finally discuss possible experimental realizations of our method to prepare the MESS’s and the number state teleportation with them ($`\lambda =\lambda ^{}`$ for definiteness). The case of $`N=N^{}=1`$ may be regarded as the basis-reduced version of the scheme of Bennett et al BBCJPW . In fact, we have the two Bell states $`|N^{}=1,m^{}=0_{1\mathrm{T}}`$ and $`|N^{}=1,m^{}=1_{1\mathrm{T}}`$ rather than four. The number of Bell states is reduced by half if only the EPR resource with $`N=1`$ is used upon the Bell measurement by Clare. The number-phase measurement can be realized for $`N=1`$ with beam splitter and phase shift generating a unitary transformation of the modes 2 and 3 as

$`\left(\begin{array}{c}a_2^{}\\ a_3^{}\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{cc}c& s\eta \\ s\xi & c\eta \xi \end{array}\right)_{(23)}\left(\begin{array}{c}a_2^{}^{}\\ a_3^{}^{}\end{array}\right).`$ (35)
By taking $`c=1/\sqrt{2}`$, $`s=1/\sqrt{2}`$, $`\eta =1`$, $`\xi =1`$, the Bell states ($`N=1,m=0,1`$) are transformed as

$$|1,0_{23}=|1_2^{}|0_3^{},|1,1_{23}=|0_2^{}|1_3^{}.$$
(36)
Then, by making the single photon countings on the modes $`2^{}`$ and $`3^{}`$, we can identify either of the Bell states with $`N=1`$, obtaining the EPR resource $`|1,0_{14}`$ or $`|1,1_{14}`$. The same technique can be used on the modes T and 1, and teleportation of a qubit $`|\psi _\mathrm{T}=c_0|0_\mathrm{T}+c_1|1_\mathrm{T}`$ is completed in the probability $`P(1,m,\lambda )=(1\lambda ^2)^2\lambda ^2`$ (e.g., $`0.14`$ for $`\lambda =0.5`$), as seen from Eq. (28) with fixed $`N=N^{}=1`$. The other results of the photon counters are discarded for this minimal protocol. It is here interesting to mention that based on a similar idea an experimental result has been reported recently for the teleportation of the vacuum-one-photon qubit LSPM .

The Bell measurements may be done partially even for $`N=2`$. The point is to introduce an ancilla mode $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{a}}`$. Then, by making a series of unitary transformations such as in Eq. (35) among the modes 2, 3 and $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{a}}`$, it is possible to realize that only the Bell state $`|N=2,m=0_{23}|0_{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{a}}}`$ has the component of $`|0_2^{}|1_3^{}|1_{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{a}}^{}}`$, while the other Bell states $`|N=2,m=1,2_{23}|0_{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{a}}}`$ do not. This means that if we observe the state $`|0_2^{}|1_3^{}|1_{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{a}}^{}}`$ with single photon detectors, we can identify at least $`|N=2,m=0_{23}|0_{\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{a}}}`$, producing the EPR resource $`|N=2,m=0_{14}`$. The relevant parameters are taken for the sequential transformations as $`c=1/\sqrt{2},s=1/\sqrt{2},\eta =1,\xi =1`$ for $`(2\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{a}})`$ $``$ $`c=\sqrt{2/3},s=1/\sqrt{3},\eta =1,\xi =(1+i)/\sqrt{2}`$ for $`(3\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{a}})`$ $``$ $`c=\sqrt{3/8},s=\sqrt{5/8},\eta =1,\xi =(3+i)/\sqrt{10}`$ for $`(23)`$. This procedure may be extended for $`N>2`$.

We believe that the present analysis promotes the theoretical and experimental efforts for the number sum and phase difference measurements, which are essential for realizing the $`(N+1)`$-dimensional entanglement and teleportation utilizing photons. It is here notable that some ideas and attempts have appeared recently for the phase difference measurement pdm . While the partial Bell measurements may be done with linear operations such as beam splitters and phase shifts, some non-linear operations will be needed for the perfect Bell measurement, which is one of very challenging issues in the future for fundamental quantum physics.

In summary, we have formulated the Bell measurement in the photon number basis by describing the simultaneous eigenstates of number sum and phase difference. Then, we have proposed a novel method to refine entanglement via swapping from a pair of squeezed vacuum states by performing this number-phase Bell measurement. By adjusting the two squeezing parameters to the same value, these states are maximally entangled. These MESS’s can really be used for the reliable teleportation of number states based on the number-phase Bell measurement. We have also discussed some feasible experimental realizations of the number-phase measurement for preparing MESS’s and performing teleportation utilizing them, where beam splitters with phase shifts and single photon counters may be used.

The authors would like to thank M. Tada for valuable discussions.