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# Discrimination between non perfectly known states

## I Introduction

Non-orthogonality of generic quantum states as a pure quantum mechanical phenomenon poses a fundamental obstacle to discrimination between them. Impossibility of perfect distinguishing between non-orthogonal quantum states limits the efficiency of many quantum information protocols, for example communication through a noisy quantum channel. Historically, the first investigation of quantum discrimination was based on von Neumann measurements von Neumann (1955). It determined the error rate bound of discrimination between two pure states. The general Bayesian approach to distinguishing between mixed states with non-equal prior probabilities based on minimization of cost function and positive operator valued measurements (POVM) was developed by Holevo and Helstrom Holevo (1973); Helstrom (1976). In 1987 Ivanovic published a different model of two linear independent pure states discrimination without errors but with the occurrence of an inconclusive result Ivanovic (1987). Subsequently, the minimal probability of the inconclusive result was shown by Dieks and Peres Dieks (1988); Peres (1988) to be the overlap between the states being distinguished. Recently, discrimination techniques have been thoroughly studied, and analytical expressions for optimal POVMs for many quantum discrimination problems have been derived Jaeger and Shimony (1995); Chefles and Barnett (1998a); Sasaki et al. (1998); Chefles (1998); Chefles and Barnett (1998b); Phillips et al. (1998); Barnett (2001); Walgate et al. (2000); Virmani et al. (2001). However analytical results cannot be easily obtained for discrimination problems which incorporate many quantum states without a particular symmetry and numerical methods appear efficient Helstrom (1982); Ježek et al. (2002). Some discrimination devices have been realized experimentally Huttner et al. (1996); Barnett and Riis (1997); Clarke et al. (2001a, b).

So far distinguishability has been studied in the case of maximal information on the states to be distinguished. In this classical approach it is assumed that the sources $`H_i`$ prepare physical systems, for example electron spins or modes of light, in explicitly known quantum states $`\rho _i`$. Discrimination consists in distinguishing between these known states $`\rho _i`$ or equivalently sources $`H_i`$ (they are called hypotheses) having a physical system from one randomly chosen source. The formal solution of this problem is based on the construction of the optimal POVM that minimizes a convenient cost function, for example the error rate or negative information Holevo (1973); Helstrom (1976). The goal of this paper is to develop a discrimination technique applicable to the case when only partial information on hypotheses $`H_i`$ is available. Let us imagine that the quantum states $`\rho _i`$ prepared by the sources $`H_i`$ are not explicitly known but we are allowed to probe each source before discrimination. We can ask what quantum states are produced by these sources and what is the optimal POVM to distinguish between them. This scenario realizes for example in communication through an unknown distorting quantum channel. The hypotheses are explicitly known by transmitter party (Alice) but not by receiver party (Bob). In the calibration stage Alice sends physical systems in the quantum states $`\rho _i^{}`$ from the sources $`H_i`$ in given order down the channel while Bob receives sequence of distorted states $`\rho _i`$. He acquires some information (prior data) on hypothesis $`H_i`$ through a generic measurement of states $`\rho _i`$. In communication stage, which follows, Alice sends a message with the help of her alphabet $`H_i`$. Transmission is successful if Bob is able to discriminate between hypothesis $`H_i`$ or equivalently between quantum states $`\rho _i`$ with the help of prior data.

The article is organized as follows. The standard discrimination is summarized in section II. Novel method of prior data manipulation for simultaneous estimation of the unknown states and design of the optimal discrimination POVM is proposed in section III. Two examples are shown in section IV.

## II Standard approach

Let us consider the following discrimination protocol. Alice chooses in secret a quantum state from the set of two known quantum states $`|1,|2`$ and sends it to Bob who must decide which state was chosen using a POVM measurement. For simplicity, but without the loss of generality, we will consider the same probability for choosing $`|1`$ and $`|2`$. A natural measure of Bob’s failure is the error rate $`\mathrm{ER}=(N_{12}+N_{21})/2N`$, where $`N`$ is the number of trials, $`N_{12}`$ is the number of Bob’s wrong decisions $`|1`$ when $`|2`$ was true and $`N_{21}`$ is the number of his wrong decisions $`|2`$ when $`|1`$ was true. Nonorthogonality of states implies the ultimate lower limit of the error rate—the Helstrom bound Helstrom (1976),

$$\mathrm{ER}\frac{1}{2}\left(1\sqrt{1|1|2|^2}\right).$$
(1)
The optimal POVM measurement $`\mathrm{\Pi }_1,\mathrm{\Pi }_2`$ for the discrimination between two mixed states $`\rho _1,\rho _2`$ is the one that minimizes the error rate

$$\mathrm{ER}=\frac{1}{2}\left(\mathrm{Tr}[\mathrm{\Pi }_1\rho _2]+\mathrm{Tr}[\mathrm{\Pi }_2\rho _1]\right)$$
(2)
subject to the constraint $`\mathrm{\Pi }_1+\mathrm{\Pi }_2=𝟙`$, or equivalently maximizes the functional

$$\mathrm{I}\mathrm{E}=\mathrm{Tr}\left[\mathrm{\Pi }_1\rho _1\right]+\mathrm{Tr}\left[\mathrm{\Pi }_2\rho _2\right]\mathrm{Tr}\left[\lambda (\mathrm{\Pi }_1+\mathrm{\Pi }_2)\right],$$
(3)
where $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}`$ are now treated as independent variables. Variation of (3) subject to the positivity constraint on the operators $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}`$ gives the extremal equations for the optimal POVM elements and for the Lagrange operator multiplier $`\lambda `$,

$$\begin{array}{c}\rho _1\mathrm{\Pi }_1=\lambda \mathrm{\Pi }_1,\rho _2\mathrm{\Pi }_2=\lambda \mathrm{\Pi }_2,\\ \rho _1\mathrm{\Pi }_1+\rho _2\mathrm{\Pi }_2=\lambda .\end{array}$$
(4)
For example, solving extremal equations (4) for two known pure states of qubit $`|\psi _{1,2}=\mathrm{cos}\alpha |+z\pm \mathrm{sin}\alpha |z`$ or corresponding mixed states

$$\rho _{1,2}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}^2\alpha & \pm d\mathrm{cos}\alpha \mathrm{sin}\alpha \\ \pm d\mathrm{cos}\alpha \mathrm{sin}\alpha & \mathrm{sin}^2\alpha \end{array}\right),$$
(5)
parametrized by $`\alpha [0,\pi /4]`$ and $`d[0,1]`$, yields the optimal POVM and ultimate error rate,

$$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}=\frac{1}{2}\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& \pm 1\\ \pm 1& 1\end{array}\right)=|\pm x\pm x|,\\ \mathrm{ER}=\frac{1}{2}(1d\mathrm{sin}2\alpha ).\end{array}$$
(6)
## III Discrimination from partial information

In the previous section we assumed that Bob knows the states $`\rho _{1,2}`$ explicitly and thus he can use this maximal prior information for designing the optimal discrimination POVM. However in real communication through an unknown noisy channel Bob does not know these states perfectly. Therefore a calibration stage needs to be performed first. In this stage Alice transmits a given number of physical systems in state $`\rho _1^{}`$ from the known source $`H_1`$ through communication channel and Bob applies a prior POVM measurement $`\pi _k`$ to the unknown received state $`\rho _1`$. He obtains real noisy data $`f_{1k}`$ that approximate true probabilities $`p_{1k}=\mathrm{Tr}\left[\rho _1\pi _k\right]`$. The same calibration is done for source $`H_2`$. The prior information obtained by Bob during the calibration stage is equivalent to the explicit knowledge of the states $`\rho _{1,2}`$ only in the non-physical case of tomographically complete POVM $`\pi _k`$ and infinitely large number of transmitted states. The most simple and straightforward solution of this modified discrimination problem is obvious. Bob can estimate the states $`\rho _1`$, $`\rho _2`$ from the prior data $`f_{1k}`$, $`f_{2k}`$ and then solve the equations (4) in order to obtain the optimal POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}`$. Unfortunately, succession of these two steps does not represent the optimal strategy. If the data are not sufficient for accurate reconstruction of the states the deviations can be propagated to discrimination step. Another important problem arises from solution of the extremal equations derived from non-symmetrical mixed states obtained as a result of some numerical state reconstruction technique Vogel and Risken (1989); Leonhardt (1997); Hradil (1997); Banaszek et al. (2000); Řeháček et al. (2001).

Now we will formulate the modified discrimination protocol in the general case of $`I`$ sources $`H_i`$, $`i=1,\mathrm{},I`$, and will shown information-based solution of this problem. Let us start with $`I`$ unknown mixed states $`\rho _i`$ produced by the sources $`H_i`$ and propagated through a noisy channel. We observe these states in the calibration stage by prior POVM $`\pi _k`$, $`k=1,\mathrm{},K`$, and obtain prior data $`f_{ik}`$, $`_kf_{ik}=1`$, that approximate the true probabilities

$$p_{ik}=\mathrm{Tr}\left[\rho _i\pi _k\right].$$
(7)
In the discrimination stage the states $`\rho _i`$ are examined in virtual sense by designed discrimination POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j`$, $`j=1,\mathrm{},J`$. If we actually performed this measurement we would obtain frequencies $`F_{ij}`$, $`_jF_{ij}=1`$, sampling probabilities

$$P_{ij}=\mathrm{Tr}\left[\rho _i\mathrm{\Pi }_j\right].$$
(8)
For simplicity, let us consider the same number of states $`\rho _i`$ and designed POVM elements $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j`$, $`I=J`$. In the case of more POVM elements than discriminated states the proposed method would generalize the Ivanovic–Dieks–Peres Ivanovic (1987); Dieks (1988); Peres (1988) unambiguous discrimination or combination of both methods, not the pure Helstrom scheme. For optimal POVM the sum of diagonal frequencies $`_iF_{ii}`$ should be maximal and the error rate $`_{ij}F_{ij}_iF_{ii}`$ should be minimal. Thus the desired discrimination POVM should yield data $`F_{ij}`$ as close to Kronecker’s delta $`\delta _{ij}`$ as possible. This is schematically shown in Fig. 1.

In the case of the finite number of states used for calibration the equalities $`f_{ik}=p_{ik}`$ do not hold exactly. Similarly the equalities $`F_{ij}=P_{ij}=\delta _{ij}`$ are not satisfied because the perfect discrimination between non-orthogonal states is not possible. These equalities are satisfied only approximately and thus cannot be directly used for the estimation of the states $`\rho _i`$ and design of the optimal POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j`$. Therefore equality between data $`f_{ik}`$, $`F_{ij}`$ and probabilities $`p_{ik}`$, $`P_{ij}`$ must be handled in weaker – statistical – manner. We will construct a functional $`\mathrm{I}\mathrm{F}[f_{ik},`$ $`F_{ij},`$ $`p_{ik}(\rho _i),`$ $`P_{ij}(\rho _i,\mathrm{\Pi }_j)]`$ that will serve as a measure of the distance between the data and the probabilities. It should be maximal for states $`\rho _i`$ which produce prior probabilities $`p_{ik}`$ close to prior data $`f_{ik}`$ as possible and simultaneously it should be maximal for and POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j`$ which produces probabilities $`P_{ij}`$ as close to the desired data $`F_{ij}=\delta _{ij}`$ as possible. There are many convex and additive measures of distance between probability distributions. We will choose the one that provides the most simple extremal equations—the log likelihood functional,

$$\mathrm{log}\mathrm{I}\mathrm{L}[\rho _i,\mathrm{\Pi }_j]=\underset{ij}{}\delta _{ij}\mathrm{ln}P_{ij}+\underset{ik}{}f_{ik}\mathrm{ln}p_{ik}.$$
(9)
Log likelihood as a measure of distance between quantum mechanical objects and real data arises from non-normalized multinomial distribution

$$\mathrm{I}\mathrm{L}[\rho _i,\mathrm{\Pi }_j]\underset{ijk}{}P_{ij}^{\delta _{ij}}p_{ik}^{f_{ik}}=\underset{ik}{}P_{ii}p_{ik}^{f_{ik}}.$$
(10)
and has unique properties from the physical Hradil and Summhammer (2000) as well as mathematical Rao (2nd ed. 1973) point of view.

Variation of the log likelihood functional (9),

$$\mathrm{log}\mathrm{I}\mathrm{L}[\rho _i+X_i,\mathrm{\Pi }_j+Y_j]\mathrm{log}\mathrm{I}\mathrm{L}[\rho _i,\mathrm{\Pi }_j]=0,$$
(11)
for all $`X_i`$, $`Y_j`$, that yields extremal equations for the states $`\rho _i`$ and the optimal POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j`$ must preserve trace normalization of the states, $`\mathrm{Tr}[\rho _i]=1`$, and completeness of the POVM, $`_j\mathrm{\Pi }_j=𝟙`$. This necessary constraints can be incorporated with the help of undetermined Lagrange multipliers. The functional to be maximized becomes

$`\mathrm{I}\mathrm{F}[\rho _i,\mathrm{\Pi }_j]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}\delta _{ij}\mathrm{ln}P_{ij}+{\displaystyle \underset{ik}{}}f_{ik}\mathrm{ln}p_{ik}`$ (12)
$`{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}\mu _i\mathrm{Tr}[\rho _i]\mathrm{Tr}[\lambda {\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}\mathrm{\Pi }_j],`$
where $`\rho _i`$ and $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j`$ are the independent variables. The estimated unknown states $`\rho _i^{\mathrm{est}}`$ and the designed optimal discrimination POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j^{\mathrm{opt}}`$ which maximize the functional (12) are solutions of the extremal equations

$$\mu _i^2R_i\rho _iR_i=\rho _i,\lambda ^1S_j\mathrm{\Pi }_jS_j\lambda ^1=\mathrm{\Pi }_j,$$
(13)
where

$`R_i={\displaystyle \frac{1}{P_{ii}}}\mathrm{\Pi }_i+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{f_{ik}}{p_{ik}}}\pi _k,S_j={\displaystyle \frac{1}{P_{jj}}}\rho _j,`$ (14)
$`\mu _i=\left(\mathrm{Tr}\left[R_i\rho _iR_i\right]\right)^{\frac{1}{2}},\lambda =\left({\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}S_j\mathrm{\Pi }_jS_j\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}.`$ (15)
Notice that $`\lambda `$ is positive definite operator and $`\mu _i`$ are positive numbers. The set of nonlinear operator equations (1315) can be solved by means of repeated iterations,

$$\begin{array}{c}(\mu _i^{(n)})^2R_i^{(n)}\rho _i^{(n)}R_i^{(n)}=\rho _i^{(n+1)},\hfill \\ (\lambda ^{(n)})^1S_j^{(n)}\mathrm{\Pi }_j^{(n)}S_j^{(n)}(\lambda ^{(n)})^1=\mathrm{\Pi }_j^{(n+1)}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(16)
The convexity of the log likelihood functional guarantees that these equations have only one global maximum or a plateau of global maxima. As initial iterations we can choose maximally mixed states and POVM elements $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j^{(0)}=\frac{1}{J}𝟙`$. Let us note that when the true states $`\rho _i`$ are mixed the estimated states $`\rho _i^{\mathrm{est}}`$ are biased towards pure states due to the simultaneous construction of the discrimination POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j`$. The reason is that, roughly speaking, the rays are what is important for discrimination, and pure states can be discriminated easier than mixed ones. In another words, the proposed method finds the discrimination POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_j^{\mathrm{opt}}`$ optimal in the sense of maximum likelihood, and simultaneously reconstructs rays corresponding to the unknown states.

## IV Examples

Here we illustrate our procedure on discrimination between two qubit states $`\rho _{1,2}`$, such as two spin states of an electron or two polarization states of a photon. We perform numerical simulations of the prior measurements and we find subsequently the states $`\rho _{1,2}^{\mathrm{est}}`$ and determined the optimal POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}^{\mathrm{opt}}`$ via iterative solution of the extremal equations (1315). In our simulations we assume the class of states (5) and study the dependence of the error rate (2) on angle $`\alpha `$ that controls the overlap between the two discriminated states $`\rho _{1,2}`$. The error rate (2) computed from the true states $`\rho _{1,2}`$ and the optimal POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}^{\mathrm{opt}}`$ is used for evaluating the quality of the designed POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}^{\mathrm{opt}}`$. Thus the optimality of the discrimination POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}^{\mathrm{opt}}`$ obtained with the help of the proposed method is quantified by the standard widely used measure of discrimination success.

In the first example we consider two symmetrical mixed states (5) with $`d=0.9`$ on the Bob’s side of the communication channel. The prior POVM $`\pi _k`$ consists of projective measurements in $`x`$ and $`y`$ directions, each made on $`N=1000`$ physical systems in states $`\rho _{1,2}`$. This represents the calibration stage. Observation $`\{\pi _x,\pi _x,\pi _y,\pi _y\}`$ is tomographically incomplete and thus not sufficient for estimation of mixed states. Nevertheless, this measurement yields some information on the states $`\rho _{1,2}`$ and, discrimination with the error rate less than $`50\%`$ is possible. The error rate (2), $`\frac{1}{2}(\mathrm{Tr}[\mathrm{\Pi }_1^{\mathrm{opt}}\rho _2]+\mathrm{Tr}[\mathrm{\Pi }_2^{\mathrm{opt}}\rho _1])`$, of the optimal discrimination POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}^{\mathrm{opt}}`$ is shown in Fig. 2.

In the second example we discriminate between the pure state $`\rho _1=|\psi _1\psi _1|`$, $`d=1`$, and the mixed state $`\rho _2`$ (5) with $`d=3/4`$, having prior data from the tomographically complete observation $`\{\pi _x,\pi _x,\pi _y,\pi _y,\pi _z,\pi _z\}`$. Each of these projective measurements in $`x`$, $`y`$ and $`z`$ directions are done with only $`N=10`$ physical systems in states $`\rho _1`$ and $`\rho _2`$. The optimal POVM $`\mathrm{\Pi }_{1,2}^{\mathrm{opt}}`$ can be found with the help of (16). The corresponding error rate is shown in Fig. 3. In the case of an infinitely large number of physical systems used for prior measurement in the calibration stage the prior data $`f_{ik}`$ attain the theoretical probabilities $`p_{ik}`$ and the error rate approaches the bound (6), $`\mathrm{ER}=\frac{1}{2}(1\frac{1+d}{2}\mathrm{sin}2\alpha )=\frac{1}{2}(1\frac{7}{8}\mathrm{sin}2\alpha )`$, as is shown in Fig. 3 by solid line.

## V Conclusion

Simultaneous reconstruction of quantum states and design of optimal quantum discrimination POVM have been presented. Observation on finite samples of physical systems in unknown quantum states in the calibration stage provides the only prior information used for discrimination between these quantum states. The system of the extremal equations (1315) fully determines the unknown states and the optimal POVM for their discrimination. These nonlinear operator equations can be solved by means of repeated iterations. This has been demonstrated on particular examples and verified in many other cases. Typically several hundreds or thousands of iterations are needed for $`10^{16}`$ accuracy. In the case of finite samples of physical systems used for the calibration the Helstrom bound represents a lower limit of the achievable error rate. For tomographically complete prior observation the error rate can come very close to this bound even if the prior measurements are carried out on a small number of states. This means that in practice Alice and Bob need only a few transmitted quantum states for establishing nearly optimal discrimination device. The calibration stage thus can be very short and almost all the states reserved for communication can be used up for transmission of useful data from Alice to Bob. Of course the ratio of the transmitted calibration states to the states used for communication can be adjusted in order to achieve either transmission with maximal speed for the given error rate or transmission with minimal error rate for the given speed. These and others optimization problems can be formulated as a modifications of the presented quantum discrimination protocol.

This work was supported by Grant LN00A015 and by Research Project CEZ: J14/98: 153100009 “Wave and particle optics” of the Czech Ministry of Education. The author would like to thank Radim Filip, Jaromír Fiurášek, Zdeněk Hradil and Jaroslav Řeháček for very helpful discussions and Computer Science Department of Palacký University for computer time.


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# Gamma Ray Bursts and vacuum polarization process in electromagnetic Black Holes

## 1 Introduction

I have accepted with great pleasure the invitation to speak on our theory of Gamma ray Bursts by Pisin Chen for the interest of the program of this meeting which presents important developments on vacuum polarization effects in high energy collisions on which he himself has given so many important contributions.An additional factor has also been the beauty of the location of the school, in the Capri Island. What to me is also very important is that I follow the talks of two pioneers who have opened up some of the most exciting fields of Relativistic Astrophysics: I. F. Mirabel who has first pointed the existence of so called supraluminal behaviour in microquasars galactic sources and Livio Scarsi, the ideator and leader of the Beppo Sax Satellite which has discovered the afterglow of Gamma Ray Bursts sources. This last result has led to an unprecedented collaboration between all fields of space based optical, X and Gamma rays observatories in coincidence with the largest earth based observatories leading to the clear conclusion that Gamma ray Bursts are indeed of cosmological origin and their energy can be in some cases $`10^{54}`$ ergs (see Costa 2001). An energy of $`10^{54}`$ ergs/burst can be easily visualized in its enormity: if we consider the light emitted by a star like our own sun and we multiply such luminosity by the number of stars in our galaxy ($`10^{12}`$) and multiply again such numbers by the total number of galaxies in the Universe ($`10^9`$), this is of the order of $`10^{54}`$ ergs/sec. In other words, during the burst the luminosity of a single GRB can equal the energy emission of the entire Universe. It exist the very clear possibility that the interpretation of both these phenomena, the Micrroquasars and the GRBs, are deeply rooted in the physics of Black Holes to which I have devoted special attention in my theoretical research. I will give some motivation for this possibility in the following.

## 2 On three happenings related to GRBs

The case of Gamma Ray Bursts is for me personally very intriguing. There have been moments in my life which appear to be intertwined with some of the relevant events that are leading to the understanding of such most unique phenomena. Moreover each scientific contribution I have achieved and even apparently occasional occurrences in my life seemingly disconnected appear to acquire special meaning in reaching the understanding of such phenomena.

The first of such happening was the collaboration during my career, started at Princeton in 1967 with John Archibald Wheeler and the one started in 1968 at Tbilisi and then in Moscow with Yakov Borisovich Zel’dovich. Both these scientists were heads and founders of the research in relativistic astrophysics in their countries. But also interesting was the fact that both of them had a principal role, before adressing their attention to the implications of Einstein theory of general relativity to astrophysics, in the nuclear arms race respectively in the USA and Soviet Union. Johnny Wheeler was a leader in the first tactic H Bomb explosdion on the Bikini Atoll. Ya. B. Zeldovich after having contributed to the defense of his country with the Katiuscia rockets had developed with Andrej Sakahrov, the soviet A and H bomb. He was also the proposer of a most unusual and intolerable project to have an H bomb explode on the far side of the moon to demonstrate at ounce the “maturity” of the nuclear and space technology reached by the Soviet Union in the early sixties.

The second happening occurred in 1975. Herbert Gursky and myself had been invited by the AAAS to organize a session on neutron stars, black holes and binary X ray sources for their annual meeting in San Francisco. During the preparation of the meeting we heard that some observations made by the military Vela satellites, conceived in order to monitor the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 banning atomic bomb explosions, had just been unclassified. Doubtlessly the unorthodox proposal of Zel’dovich had been among the motivations to develop such a grandiose militar monitoring system. We asked Ian B. Strong to report, for the first time in a public meeting, on these just observed-released gamma ray bursts (GRBs)(Strong 1975), See Fig. 1.

It was clear since the earliest observations that these signals were not coming either from the Earth or the planetary system. By 1991 a great improvement in knowledge of the distribution of the GRBs came with the NASA launch of the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory which in ten years of observations gave beautiful evidence for the perfect isotropy of the angular distribution of the GRB sources in the sky, see Fig. 2. The sources had to either be at cosmological distances or very close to the solar system in order not to reflect the anisotropic galactic distribution.

The third happening occurred in 1989 when I was elected President of the scientific committee of the Italian Space agency (ASI) and the committee found itself involved with the scrutiny of the first Italian scientific satellite: the SAX satellite. The project was a collaboration between Italy and Netherland: The total estimated cost was roughly 50 millions US dollars, fairly shared by the two partners: 25 milions for Italy and 25 for the Netherlands. The satellite was supposed to fly in 1985. The program had already been delayed four years by the time of our scrutiny started. The costs had correspondingly “skyrocketed” to almost 250 millions US dollars,”fairly” shared by the partners: 225 millions from Italy and 25 from the Netherlands… The real moment of panic came when we learned that the Dutch had run out of money. They could not afford to pay for the wide field x-ray cameras, they were supposed to contribute. We decided to intervene offering to pay roughly six millions US dollars from the limited budget of our committee in order to avoid any further delay and especially to avoid the loss of one of the crucial instruments of the scientific mission. As the delays were augmenting and the expenses of the mission were correspondingly “skyrocketing” further, the ambiance soon deteriorated to inadmissible pressures.Before quitting I insisted on the imperative to accomplish the mission no matter what. In these hard days Livio and I were on opposite sides, but we managed to keep the highest personal and scientific esteem for each other.

The satellite finally was launched in 1996 at a cost still today unknown: it is not yet possible to ascertain if it passed and, if so, of how much the one billion Us dollars mark. Soon after the lunch three of the four gyroscopes failed apparently due to the improper choice of space qualified instruments and the satellite was left without an effective pointing capability.

In spite of all that, thanks also to the determinate action of a number of strongly dedicated and courageous young physicists educated at “La Sapienza” who had joined the Milano based original team, the newly named Beppo-SAX satellite was able to conclude one of the most successful ever scientific missions in Astronomy and Astrophysics. They discovered the afterglows of the GRBs, which in turn have allowed the optical identification of the sources and the determination of their cosmological nature. I am happy today to see Livio here again in the presentation of these most beautiful scientific results. I am also happy to see that also the completion of the wide field x ray camera and the many imperatives to conclude the mission have lead to a successful epilogue.

Thinking about this past situation with hinsight, I have reached a rather unorthodox conclusions: if SAX had flown on time in 1985 and possibly within its planned budget, it would have been a managerial success and quite a saving for the Italian treasury, but very likely not a scientific success. The reason is that in 1985 neither the Space Telescope nor the very large telescopes like KECK and VLT, which have been essential to the optical identification of the GRBs and the establishment of their cosmological distance, were functioning. Of course I do not want to make propaganda in favour of wrong doings, but it appears as if a tremendous force directs human actions not only exploiting great scientific ideas but making use as well of weakness, mistakes and mismanagement in order to reach a final important scientific goal!

While the expenditure on Beppo-SAX were “skyrocketing”, equally exponentially increasing were the numbers of competing theories trying to explain GRBs. see a partial list in Fig. 3

The observations of the Beppo-SAX satellite had a very sobering effect on the theoretical developments for GRB models.Almost the totality of the existing theories, see above partial list, were at once wiped out, not being able to fit the stringent energetics requirements imposed by the observations.

This led us to the return to the model of GRBs, which we had quietly advanced and theoretically developed in all its conceptual complexity starting from the work with Thibau Damour in 1975, essentially based on the possibility of extracting mass-energy from a Black Hole. Such a process is based on the mass-energy formula for Black Holes I had found in 1971 with Demetrios Christodoulou. Following this work it had become evident that Black Holes far from being energy sinks were in principle the most energetic source of energy in the Universe. The extraction of energy from Black Holes can in fact surpass, in principle, chemical, nuclear or thermonuclear energy source both in absolute value and intensity. In practice it is now clear that this happens in GRBs as predicted by our model.

I will shortly recall the background on which our model was conceived, how the concepts of “alive” versus “dead” black holes was introduced, the key role of the reversible and irreversible transformations in Black Holes and the role of quantum vacuum polarization process, and finally indicate some current developments.

## 3 Early steps in the study of Black Holes

The year 1968 with the discovery of pulsars in 1968 and especially with the discovery of the pulsar in the Crab Nebula, can be considered the birthdate of relativistic astrophysics. The observation of the period of that pulsar and its slow-down rate not only clearly gave unequivocal evidence for the identification of the first neutron star in the galaxy but also contributed to the understanding that the energy source of pulsars is very simply the rotational energy of a neutron star.

I was in Princeton in those days initially as a postdoctoral fellow at the university in the group of John Archibald Wheeler, then as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and finally as an instructor and assistant professor at the University. The excitement over the neutron star discovery boldly led us directly to an as yet unexplored classic paper by Robert Julius Oppenheimer and Snyder “on continued gravitational contraction” and this opened up an entirely new field of research to which I have dedicated the remainder of my life and it is still producing some quite important results today. An “effective potential” technique had been used very successfully by Carl Størmer in the 1930s in studying the trajectories of cosmic rays in the Earth’s magnetic field (Størmer 1934). In the fall of 1967 Brandon Carter visited Princeton and presented his remarkable mathematical work leading to the separability of the Hamilton-Jacobi equations for the trajectories of charged particles in the field of a Kerr-Newmann geometry (Carter 1968). This visit had a profound impact on our small group working with John Wheeler on the physics of gravitational collapse. Indeed it was Johnny who had the idea of exploiting the analogy between the trajectories of cosmic rays and spacetime trajectories in general relativity, using the Størmer “effective potential” technique in order to obtain physical consequences from the set of first order differential equations obtained by Carter. I still remember the excitement of preparing the $`2m\times 2m`$ grid plot of the effective potential for particles around a Kerr black hole which finally appeared later in print (Rees, Ruffini and Wheeler 1973,1974; see Fig. (4).

Out of this work came the celebrated result for the maximum binding energy $`1\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}42\%`$ for corotating orbits and $`1\frac{5}{3\sqrt{3}}3.78\%`$ for counter-rotating orbits in the Kerr geometry. We were very pleased to be later associated with Brandon Carter in a “gold medal” award for this work presented by Yevgeny Lifshitz: in the fourth and last edition of volume 2 of the Landau and Lifshitz series (The Classical Theory of Fields 1975), both Brandon’s work and my own work with Wheeler were proposed as named exercises for bright students! In our article “Introducing the Black Hole” (Ruffini and Wheeler 1971) we first proposed the famous “uniqueness theorem” stating that black holes can only be characterized by their mass-energy $`E`$, charge $`Q`$ and angular momentum $`L`$. This analogy between a black hole and a very elementary physical system was imaginatively represented by Johnny in a very unconventional figure in which TV sets, bread, flowers and other objects lose their characteristic features and merge in the process of gravitational collapse into the three fundamental parameters of a black hole, see Fig. 5. That picture became the object of a great deal of lighthearted discussion in the physics community. A proof of this uniqueness theorem, satisfactory for some case of astrophysical interest, has been obtained after twenty five years of meticulous mathematical work (see e.g., Regge and Wheeler, Zerilli, Teukolsky, C.H. Lee, Chandrasekhar.) However, the proof still presents some outstanding technical difficulties in its most general form. Possibly some progress will be reached in the near future with the help of computer algebraic manipulation techniques to overcome the extremely difficult mathematical calculations (see e.g., Cruciani (1999) cru, Cherubini and Ruffini (2000) Bini et al. (2001), Bini et al. (2001)).

It is interesting that this analogy, which appeared at first to be almost trivial, has revealed itself to be one of the most difficult to be proved requiring an enormous effort, unsurpassed in difficulty both in mathematical physics and relativistic field theory.

I am profoundly convinced that the solution of this problem from a mathematical physics point of view will have profound implications for our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics.

## 4  From “dead” to “alive” black Holes

We were still under the sobering effects of the pulsar discovery and the very clear explanation by Tommy Gold and Arrigo Finzi that the rotational energy of the neutron star had to be the energy source of the pulsar phenomenon, when the first meeting of the European Physical Society took place in Florence in 1969. In a stimulating talk Roger Penrose advanced the possibility that, much like in the case of pulsars, the rotational energy of black holes could, in principle, be extracted in an analogous way.

The first specific example of such an energy extraction process by a gedanken experiment was given using the above-mentioned effective potential technique in Ruffini and Wheeler (1970), see Figure (6), and then later by Floyd and Penrose (1971). The reason for showing this figure here is a) to recall the first explicit computation and b) to recall the introduction of the “ergosphere”, the region between the horizon of a Kerr-Newmann metric and the surface of infinite redshift were the energy extraction process can occur, and also c) to emphasize how contrived, difficult and also conceptually novel such an energy-extraction mechanism can be. It is a phenomenon which is not localized at a point but which can occur in an entire region: a global effect which relies essentially on the concept of a field. It can only work, however, for very special parameters and is in general associated with a reduction of the rest mass of the particle involved in the process. It is almost trivial to slow down the rotation of a black hole and increase its horizon by accretion of counter-rotating particles, but it is extremely difficult to extract the rotational energy from a black hole by a slow-down process, as also clearly pointed out by the example in Fig. (6). The establishment of this analogy offered us the opportunity to appreciate once more the profound difference between seemingly similar effects in general relativity and classical field theories. In addition to the existence of totally new phenomena, like the dragging of the inertial frames around a rotating black hole for example, we had the first glimpse of an entirely new field of theoretical physics present in and implied by the field equations of general relativity. The deep discussions of these problems with Demetrios Christodoulou, who was a 17 year old Princeton student at the time, my first graduate student, led us to the discovery of the existence in black holes physics of both “reversible and irreversible transformations”.

Indeed it was by analyzing the capture of test particles by a Black Hole endowed with electromagnetic structure, for short an EMBH, that we identified a set of limiting transformations which did not affect the surface area of an EMBH. These special transformations had to be performed very slowly, with a limiting value of zero kinetic energy on the horizon of the EMBH, see Fig. 7. It became then immediately clear that the total energy of an EMBH could in principle be expressed as a “rest energy” a “Coulomb energy” and a “rotational energy”. The rest energy is “irreducible”, the other two being submitted to positive and negative variations, corresponding respectively to process of addition and extraction of energy.

While Wheeler was mainly studying the thermodynamical analogy, I addressed with Demetrios the fundamental issue of the energetics of EMBHs using the tools of reversible and irreversible transformations. We finally obtained the general mass-energy formula for black holes (Christodoulou and Ruffini 1971):

$`E^2`$ $`=`$ $`M^2c^4=\left(M_{\mathrm{ir}}c^2+{\displaystyle \frac{Q^2}{2\rho _+}}\right)^2+{\displaystyle \frac{L^2c^2}{\rho _+^2}},`$ (1)
$`S`$ $`=`$ $`4\pi \rho _+^2=4\pi \left(r_+^2+{\displaystyle \frac{L^2}{c^2M^2}}\right)=16\pi \left({\displaystyle \frac{G^2}{c^4}}\right)M_{\mathrm{ir}}^2,`$ (2)
with

$$\frac{1}{\rho _+^4}\left(\frac{G^2}{c^8}\right)\left(Q^4+4L^2c^2\right)1,$$
(3)
where $`M_{\mathrm{ir}}`$ is the irreducible mass, $`r_+`$ is the horizon radius, $`\rho _+`$ is the quasi-spheroidal cylindrical coordinate of the horizon evaluated at the equatorial plane, $`S`$ is the horizon surface area, and extreme black holes satisfy the equality in eq. (3). The crucial point is that transformations at constant surface area of the black hole, namely reversible transformations, can release an energy up to 29% of the mass-energy of an extremal rotating black hole and up to 50% of the mass-energy of an extremely magnetized and charged black hole. Since my Les Houches lectures “On the energetics of black holes” (B.C. De Witt 1973) I introduced the concepts of “alive” black hoes, endowed of mas-energy ,of rotation and angular momentum and “dead” black holes uniquely characterized by their masses: one of my main research goals has been to identify an astrophysical setting where the extractable mass-energy of the black hole could manifest itself. As we will see in the following, I propose that this extractable energy of an EMBH is the energy source of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).

## 5 The paradigm for the identification of the first “black hole” in our galaxy and the development of X-ray astronomy.

The launch of the “Uhuru” satellite by the group directed by Riccardo Giacconi at American Science and Engineering, dedicated to the first systematic examination of the universe in X-rays, marked a fundamental leap forward and generated a tremendous momentum in the field of relativistic astrophysics. The very fortunate collaboration soon established with simultaneous observations in the optical and radio wavelengths allowed generated high quality data on binary star systems composed of a normal star being stripped of matter by a compact massive companion star: either a neutron star or a black hole.

The “maximum mass of a neutron star” was the subject of the thesis of Clifford Rhoades, my second graduate student at Princeton. A criteria was found there to overcome fundamental unknowns about the behavior of matter at supranuclear densities by establishing an absolute upper limit to the neutron star mass based only on general relativity, causality and the behaviour of matter at nuclear and subnuclear densities. This work, presented at the 1972 Les Houches Summer School (B. and C. de Witt 1973), only appeared after a prolongued debate (see the reception and publication dates!) (Rhoades and Ruffini 1974).

The three essential components in establishing the paradigm for the identification of the first black hole in Cygnus X1 (Leach and Ruffini 1973) were

* the “black hole uniqueness theorem”, implying the axial symmetry of the configuration and the absence of regular pulsations from black holes,
* the “effective potential technique”, determining the efficiency of the energy emission in the accretion process, and
* the “upper limit on the maximum mass of a neutron star”, discriminating between an unmagnetized neutron star and a black hole.

These results were also presented in a widely attended session chaired by John Wheeler at the 1972 Texas Symposium in New York, extensively reported on by the New York Times. The New York Academy of Sciences which hosted the symposium had just awarded me their prestigious Cressy Morrison Award for my work on neutron stars and black holes. Much to their dismay I never wrote the paper for the proceedings since it coincided with the one submitted for publication (Leach and Ruffini 1973).

The definition of the paradigm did not come easily but slowly matured after innumerable discussions, mainly by phone, both with Riccardo Giacconi and Herb Gursky. I still remember an irate professor of the Physics Department at Princeton pointing out publicly my outrageous phone bill of $274 for one month, at the time considered scandalous, due to my frequent calls to the Smithsonian, and a much more relaxed and sympathetic attitude about this situation held by the department chairman, Murph Goldberger. This work was finally summarized in two books: one with Herbert Gursky (Gursky and Ruffini 1975), following the 1973 AAAS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, and the second with Riccardo Giacconi (Giacconi and Ruffini 1978) following the 1975 LXV Enrico Fermi Summer School (see also the proceedings of the 1973 Solvay Conference).

## 6 the Heisenberg-Euler critical capacitor and the vacuum polarization around a macroscopic black hole

In 1975, following the work on the energetics of black holes (Christodoulou and Ruffini 1971), we pointed out (Damour and Ruffini, 1975) the existence of the vacuum polarization process a’ la Heisenberg-Euler-Schwinger (Heisenberg and Euler 1935, Schwinger 1951) around black holes endowed with electromagnetic structure (EMBHs). Such a process can only occur for EMBHs of mass smaller then $`7.210^6M_{}`$. The basic energetics implications were contained in Table 1 of that paper (Damour and Ruffini, 1975), where it was also shown that this process is almost reversible in the sense introduced by Christodoulou and Ruffini (1971) and that it extracts the mass energy of an EMBH very efficiently. We also pointed out that this vacuum polarization process around an EMBH offered a natural mechanism for explaining GRBs, just discovered at the time, and the characteristic energetics of the burst could be $`10^{54}`$ ergs, see Fig. 8.

## 7  the ergosphere versus the dyadosphere of a black hole

The enormous energy requirements of GRBs evidenced by the Beppo-SAX satellite, very similar to the ones predicted in Damour & Ruffini (1975) have convinced us to return to our earlier work in studying more accurately the process of vacuum polarization and the region of pair creation around an EMBH. This has led to a) the new concept of the dyadosphere of an EMBH (named for the Greek word dyad for pair) and b) the concept of a plasma-electromagnetic (PEM) pulse and c) the analysis its temporal evolution generating signals with the characteristic features of a GRB.

In our theoretical approach, we claim that through the observations of GRBs, we are witnessing the formation of an EMBH and therefore follow the process of gravitational collapse in real time. Even more important, the tremendous energies involved in the energetics of these sources have their origin in the extractable energy of black holes given in Eqs. (1)–(3) above.

Various models have been proposed in order to extract the rotational energy of black holes by processes of relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (see e.g., Ruffini and Wilson (1975)). It should be expected, however, that these processes are relevant over the long time scales characteristic of accretion processes.

In the present case of gamma ray bursts a sudden mechanism appears to be at work on time scales of the order of few seconds or shorter and they are naturally explained by the vacuum polarization process introduced in Damour & Ruffini (1975).

The fundamental new points we have found re-examining our previous work can be simply summarized, see Preparata, Ruffini and Xue (1998a,b) for details:

* The vacuum polarization process can occur in an extended region around the black hole called the dyadosphere, extending from the horizon radius $`r_+`$ out to the dyadosphere radius $`r_{ds}`$. Only black holes with a mass larger than the upper limit of a neutron star and up to a maximum mass of $`7.210^6M_{}`$ can have a dyadosphere.
* The efficiency of transforming the mass-energy of a black hole into particle-antiparticle pairs outside the horizon can approach 100%, for black holes in the above mass range.
* The created pairs are mainly positron-electron pairs and their number is much larger than the quantity $`Q/e`$ one would have naively expected on the grounds of qualitative considerations. It is actually given by $`N_{\mathrm{pairs}}\frac{Q}{e}\frac{r_{ds}}{\mathrm{}/mc}`$, where $`m`$ and $`e`$ are respectively the electron mass and charge. The energy of the pairs and consequently the emission of the associated electromagnetic radiation as a function of the black hole mass peaks in the gamma X-ray region.

Let us now recall the main results on the dyadosphere obtained in Preparata, Ruffini and Xue (1998a,b). Although the general considerations presented by Damour and Ruffini (1975) refer to a rotating Kerr-Newmann field with axial symmetry about the rotation axis, for simplicity, we there considered the case of a nonrotating Reissner-Nordström EMBH to illustrate the basic gravitational-electrodynamical process. The dyadosphere then lies between the radius

$$r_{\mathrm{ds}}=\left(\frac{\mathrm{}}{mc}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\left(\frac{GM}{c^2}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\left(\frac{m_\mathrm{p}}{m}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\left(\frac{e}{q_\mathrm{p}}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\left(\frac{Q}{\sqrt{G}M}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}$$
(4)
and the horizon radius

$$r_+=\frac{GM}{c^2}\left[1+\sqrt{1\frac{Q^2}{GM^2}}\right].$$
(5)
The number density of pairs created in the dyadosphere is

$$N_{e^+e^{}}\frac{QQ_c}{e}\left[1+\frac{(r_{ds}r_+)}{\frac{\mathrm{}}{mc}}\right],$$
(6)
where $`Q_c=4\pi r_+^2\frac{m^2c^3}{\mathrm{}e}`$. The total energy of pairs, converted from the static electric energy, deposited within the dyadosphere is then

$$E_{e^+e^{}}^{\mathrm{tot}}=\frac{1}{2}\frac{Q^2}{r_+}(1\frac{r_+}{r_{\mathrm{ds}}})(1\left(\frac{r_+}{r_{\mathrm{ds}}}\right)^2).$$
(7)
The analogies between the ergosphere and the dyadosphere are many and extremely attractive:

* Both of them are extended regions around the black hole.
* In both regions the energy of the black hole can be extracted, approaching the limiting case of reversibility as from Christodoulou & Ruffini (1971).
* The electromagnetic energy extraction by the pair creation process in the dyadosphere is much simpler and less contrived than the corresponding process of rotational energy extraction from the ergosphere.

## 8 the EM pulse of an atomic explosion versus the PEM pulse of a black hole

The analysis of the radially resolved evolution of the energy deposited within the $`e^+e^{}`$-pair and photon plasma fluid created in the dyadosphere of an EMBH is much more complex then we had initially anticipated. The collaboration with Jim Wilson and his group at Livermore Radiation Laboratory has been very important to us. We decided to join forces and propose a new collaboration with the Livermore group renewing the successful collaboration with Jim in 1974 (Ruffini and Wilson 1975). We proceeded in parallel: in Rome with simple almost analytic models to be then validated by the Livermore codes (Wilson, Salmonson and Mathews 1997,1998).

For the evolution we assumed the relativistic hydrodynamic equations, for details see Ruffini et al. (1998,1999). We assumed the plasma fluid of $`e^+e^{}`$-pairs, photons and baryons to be a simple perfect fluid in the curved space-time. The baryon-number and energy-momentum conservation laws are

$`(n_BU^\mu )_{;\mu }`$ $`=`$ $`(n_BU^t)_{,t}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}(r^2n_BU^r)_{,r}=0,`$ (8)
$`(T_\mu ^\sigma )_{;\sigma }`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (9)
and the rate equation:

$$(n_{e^\pm }U^\mu )_{;\mu }=\overline{\sigma v}\left[n_e^{}(T)n_{e^+}(T)n_e^{}n_{e^+}\right],$$
(10)
where $`U^\mu `$ is the four-velocity of the plasma fluid, $`n_B`$ the proper baryon-number density, $`n_{e^\pm }`$ are the proper densities of electrons and positrons ($`e^\pm `$), $`\sigma `$ is the mean pair annihilation-creation cross-section, $`v`$ is the thermal velocity of the $`e^\pm `$, and $`n_{e^\pm }(T)`$ are the proper number-densities of the $`e^\pm `$ at an appropriate equilibrium temperature $`T`$. The calculations are continued until the plasma fluid expands, cools and the $`e^+e^{}`$ pairs recombine and the system becomes optically thin.

The results of the Livermore computer code are compared and contrasted with three almost analytical models: (i) spherical model: the radial component of the four-velocity is of the form $`U(r)=U\frac{r}{}`$, where $`U`$ is the four-velocity at the surface ($`r=`$) of the plasma, similar to a portion of a Friedmann model, (ii) slab 1: $`U(r)=U_r=\mathrm{const}.`$, an expanding slab with constant width $`𝒟=R_{}`$ in the coordinate frame in which the plasma is moving, (iii) slab 2: an expanding slab with constant width $`R_2R_1=R_{}`$ in the comoving frame of the plasma. We compute the relativistic Lorentz gamma factor $`\gamma `$ of the expanding $`e^+e^{}`$ pair and photon plasma.

Figure (9) shows a comparison of the Lorentz factor of the expanding fluid as a function of radius for all the models. One sees that the one-dimensional code (only a few significant points are plotted) matches the expansion pattern of a shell of constant coordinate thickness.

In analogy with the notorious electromagnetic radiation EM pulse of certain explosive events, we called this relativistic counterpart of an expanding pair electromagnetic radiation shell a PEM pulse.

In recent work we have computed the interaction of the expanding plasma with the surrounding baryonic matter (Ruffini, et al. 2000), see Fig .10. We have also been able to follow the expansion process all the way to the point where the transparency condition is reached and what we have defined the “proper GRB” (P-GRB) is emitted (Bianco, et al. 2001), see Fig. 11. We have then proceeded to develop the basic work to describe the afterglow of GRBs (Ruffini, et al. 2001). These results of our theoretical model have reached the point where they can be subjected to a direct comparison with the observational data.

## 9 Three new paradigms for the interpretation of GRBs. Obtained after the Capri meeting

Starting from this theoretical background, presented in CAPRI, we have moved ahead to fit the observational data on the basis of the EMBH model. We have used the GRB 991216 as a prototype, both for its very high energetics, which we have estimated in the range of $`E_{\mathrm{dya}}9.57\times 10^{52}`$ ergs, as well as for the superb data obtained by the Chandra and RXTE satellites. In order to understand the GRB phenomenon, we have found it necessary to formulate three new paradigms in our novel approach:

1. The Relative Space-Time Transformation (RSTT) paradigm. See Ruffini, Bianco, Chardonnet, Fraschetti, Xue (2001a).
2. The Interpretation of the Burst Structure (IBS) paradigm. See Ruffini, Bianco, Chardonnet, Fraschetti, Xue (2001b).
3. The Multiple-Collapse Time Sequence (MCTS) paradigm. See Ruffini, Bianco, Chardonnet, Fraschetti, Xue (2001c).

These results are currently being expanded in a detailed presentation.

## 10 Conclusions

In view of the above experiences, I have formulated some conclusions which may be of more general validity:

* Analogies. The analogies between classical regimes and general relativistic regimes have been at times helpful in giving the opportunity to glance on the enormous richness of the new physical processes contained in Einstein’s theory of spacetime structure. In some cases they have allowed us to extend our knowledge and formalize new physical laws, the derivation of Eqs. (1)–(3) is a good example. Such analogies have also provided dramatic evidence of the enormous differences in depth and physical complexity between classical physics and general relativistic effects. The cases of extracting rotational energy from a neutron star and from a rotating black hole are good examples.
* New paradigms and their verifications. The establishment of new paradigms is essential to scientific process and is certainly not easy to do. Such paradigms are important in order to guide a meaningful comparison between theories and observations and much attention should be given to their development and inner conceptual consistency.Always the major factor driving the progress of scientific knowledge is the confrontation of theoretical predictions and the new paradigms of interpretation with observational data. In recent years the evolution of new technologies has permitted dramatic improvement in the sensitivity of the observational apparata. It is very gratifying that in this process of learning the structure of our Universe, the observational data intervene not in a marginal way, but with clear and unequivocal results: they confirm the correct theories and their paradigms by impressive agreement and they disprove the wrong ones by equally impressive disagreement.
* The Gamma Ray astrophysics present a new area of research which transcends all preceeding ones. It implies the verification of general relativistic effects in totally unexplored and new regimes, it implies as well the extrapolation of current knowledge of subnuclear high energy physics into regimes again unexplored up to now on our planet, it needs technical developments in instrumentation both from space and from the ground unprecedented both for complexity, accuracy and need of coordination. The undestanding of this phenomena requires a totally novel style of research and is extremely promising for promoting the discovery of new fundamental physical laws in Nature.


text:
# Information cloning of harmonic oscillator coherent states and its fidelity.

## I Introduction

The no-cloning theorem expresses the inability to copy an unknown quantum state. The original version  of the theorem invoked the principle of linear superposition. The stronger restriction on cloning in fact comes from the unitarity of the cloning transformation itself. Accordingly, only mutually orthogonal states can be cloned universally. For class-dependent cloning the corresponding statement is that states belonging to the same class should still be mutually orthogonal but states belonging to distinct classes need not be so.

This precludes perfect cloning of even subclasses of harmonic oscillator coherent states. Cerf et al  have shown that there is an optimal fidelity to cloning coherent states. Many significant results regarding optimality of cloning of coherent states have appeared recently in the literature . Proposals for optical implementations have also been made .

In this paper we wish to present an alternate route to the question of cloning coherent states. We show that it is possible to make arbitrary number of copies of coherent states with exactly the same information content as the original unknown state. Complete information about a coherent state is contained in the complex coherency parameter $`\alpha `$. Thus by information cloning what we mean is the ability to make arbitrary number of copies of coherent states whose coherency parameter is $`c(N)\alpha `$ where $`\alpha `$ is the coherency parameter of the unknown coherent state and $`c(N)`$ is a known constant depending on the number of copies made.

We consider $`1+N`$ systems of harmonic oscillators whose creation and annihilation operators are the set $`(a,a^{}),(b_k,b_k^{})`$ (where the index $`k`$ takes on values $`1,..,N`$) satisfying the commutation relations

$$[a,a^{}]=1;[b_j,b_k^{}]=\delta _{jk};[a,b_k]=0;[a^{},b_k]=0$$
(1)
Coherent states parametrised by a complex number are given by

$$|\alpha >=D(\alpha )|0>$$
(2)
where $`|0>`$ is the ground state and the unitary operator $`D(\alpha )`$ is given by

$$D(\alpha )=e^{\alpha a^{}\alpha ^{}a}$$
(3)
Let us consider a disentangled set of coherent states $`|\alpha >|\beta _1>_1|\beta _2>_2\mathrm{}|\beta _N>_N`$ and consider the action of the unitary transformation

$$U=e^{t(a^{}_j\kappa _jb_ja_j\kappa _j^{}b_j^{})}$$
(4)
By an application of the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff identity and the fact that $`U|0>|0>_1..|0>_N=|0>|0>_1..|0>_N`$ it is easy to see that the resulting state is also a disentangled set of coherent states expressed by

$$|\alpha ^{}>|\beta _1^{}>_1..|\beta _N^{}>_N=U|\alpha >|\beta _1>_1..|\beta _N>_N$$
(5)
It is useful to transform the problem to the case where all $`\kappa _j`$ are real through a redefinition of the creation and annihilation operators. Denoting $`\kappa _j=r_je^{i\delta _j}`$ we can introduce the tranformation

$$\stackrel{~}{a}=a\stackrel{~}{b}_j=e^{i\delta _j}b_j\stackrel{~}{b}_j^{}=e^{i\delta _j}b_j^{}$$
(6)
This leaves the commutation relations of eqn (1) unchanged

$$[\stackrel{~}{a},\stackrel{~}{a}^{}]=1;[\stackrel{~}{b}_j,\stackrel{~}{b}_k^{}]=\delta _{jk};[\stackrel{~}{a},\stackrel{~}{b}_k]=0;[\stackrel{~}{a}^{},\stackrel{~}{b}_k]=0$$
(7)
The parametrisation of the coherent states are correspondingly redefined as

$$\stackrel{~}{\alpha }=\alpha \stackrel{~}{\beta }_j=e^{i\delta _j}\beta _j$$
(8)
The unitary operator $`U`$ takes the form

$$\stackrel{~}{U}=e^{t(\stackrel{~}{a}^{}_jr_j\stackrel{~}{b}_j\stackrel{~}{a}_jr_j\stackrel{~}{b}_j^{})}$$
(9)
The initial state is

$$|I>=D(\stackrel{~}{\alpha })D(\stackrel{~}{\beta }_1)_1\mathrm{}D(\stackrel{~}{\beta }_N)_N|0>|0>_1..|0>_N$$
(10)
Defining

$$\stackrel{~}{a}(t)=\stackrel{~}{U}\stackrel{~}{a}\stackrel{~}{U}^{}\stackrel{~}{b}_j(t)=\stackrel{~}{U}\stackrel{~}{b}_j\stackrel{~}{U}^{}$$
(11)
one easily gets the differential equations

$$\frac{d}{dt}\stackrel{~}{a}(t)=\underset{j}{}r_j\stackrel{~}{b}_j(t)\frac{d}{dt}\stackrel{~}{b}_j(t)=r_j\stackrel{~}{a}(t)$$
(12)
The solutions to these eqns are straightforward to find:

$`\stackrel{~}{a}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}rt\stackrel{~}{a}{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{r_j}{r}}\mathrm{sin}rt\stackrel{~}{b}_j`$ (13)
$`\stackrel{~}{b}_j(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r_j}{r}}\mathrm{sin}rt\stackrel{~}{a}+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\stackrel{~}{M}_{jk}(t)\stackrel{~}{b}_k`$ (14)
where $`r=\sqrt{(}_jr_j^2)`$ and

$$\stackrel{~}{M}_{jk}=\delta _{jk}\frac{r_jr_k}{r^2}(1\mathrm{cos}rt)$$
(15)
This transformation induces a transformation on the parameters $`(\stackrel{~}{\alpha },\stackrel{~}{\beta }_j)`$ which can be represented by the matrix $`\stackrel{~}{𝒰}`$ i.e $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_a(t)=\stackrel{~}{𝒰}_{ab}\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_b`$. We have introduced the notation $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_a`$ with $`a=1,\mathrm{},N+1`$ such that $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_1=\stackrel{~}{\alpha },\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_k=\stackrel{~}{\beta }_{k1}(k2)`$ and a similar notation for the $`(\alpha ,\beta _j)`$ with $`𝒰`$ as the corresponding matrix. Then we have

$$\stackrel{~}{𝒰}_{1a}=\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}\mathrm{cos}rt& \frac{r_1}{r}\mathrm{sin}rt& ..& ..& \frac{r_N}{r}\mathrm{sin}rt\end{array}\right)$$
(16)
$$\stackrel{~}{𝒰}_{ab}=\frac{r_{a1}}{r}\mathrm{sin}rt\delta _{b1}+(1\delta _{b1})\stackrel{~}{M}_{a1,b1}$$
(17)
where eqn (17) is defined for $`a2`$. Equivalently

$$\stackrel{~}{𝒰}=\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}\mathrm{cos}rt& \frac{r_1}{r}\mathrm{sin}rt& ..& ..& \frac{r_N}{r}\mathrm{sin}rt\\ \frac{r_1}{r}\mathrm{sin}rt& \stackrel{~}{M}_{11}& ..& ..& \stackrel{~}{M}_{1N}\\ ..& ..& ..& ..& \\ ..& ..& ..& ..& \\ \frac{r_N}{r}\mathrm{sin}rt& \stackrel{~}{M}_{N1}& ..& ..& \stackrel{~}{M}_{NN}\end{array}\right)$$
(18)
It is easy to show that the matrix $`\stackrel{~}{𝒰}`$ is Orthogonal satisfying

$$\underset{a}{}\stackrel{~}{𝒰}_{ab}\stackrel{~}{𝒰}_{ac}=\delta _{bc}$$
(19)
The orthogonality of this matrix can be demonstrated directly on physical grounds. It can easily be seen that $`U`$(respectively $`\stackrel{~}{U}`$) commutes with $`a^{}a+_kb_k^{}b_k`$ (respectively $`\stackrel{~}{a}^{}\stackrel{~}{a}+_k\stackrel{~}{b}_k^{}\stackrel{~}{b}_k`$). This implies that

$`|\stackrel{~}{\alpha }(t)|^2+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}|\stackrel{~}{\beta }_k(t)|^2`$ $`=`$ $`|\stackrel{~}{\alpha }|^2+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}|\stackrel{~}{\beta }_k|^2`$ (20)
$`|\alpha (t)|^2+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}|\beta _k(t)|^2`$ $`=`$ $`|\alpha |^2+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}|\beta _k|^2`$ (21)
This means that $`\stackrel{~}{𝒰},𝒰`$ are Unitary matrices. Since $`\stackrel{~}{𝒰}`$ is real it is Orthogonal. The orthogonality of $`\stackrel{~}{𝒰}`$ leads to another very important quadratic invariant in addition to the ones stated in eqn(19), namely,

$$\stackrel{~}{\alpha }^(t)^2+_k\stackrel{~}{\beta }_k(t)^2=\stackrel{~}{\alpha }^2+_k\stackrel{~}{\beta }_k^2$$
(22)
In fact for two independent sets of coherent state parameters $`(\alpha ,\stackrel{}{\beta }),(\eta ,\stackrel{}{\xi })`$ we have the invariants

$`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }(t)\stackrel{~}{\eta }(t)+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\stackrel{~}{\beta }_k(t)\stackrel{~}{\xi }(t)_k`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }\stackrel{~}{\eta }+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\stackrel{~}{\beta }_k\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ (23)
$`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }^{}(t)\stackrel{~}{\eta }(t)+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\stackrel{~}{\beta }_k^{}(t)\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k(t)`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }^{}\stackrel{~}{\eta }+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\stackrel{~}{\beta }_k^{}\stackrel{~}{\xi }_k`$ (24)
Inverting the transformations in eqn (8) it is 8 straightforward to obtain

$$𝒰=\left(\begin{array}{ccccc}\mathrm{cos}rt& \frac{r_1}{r}e^{i\delta _1}\mathrm{sin}rt& ..& ..& \frac{r_N}{r}e^{i\delta _N}\mathrm{sin}rt\\ \frac{r_1}{r}e^{i\delta _1}\mathrm{sin}rt& M_{11}& ..& ..& M_{1N}\\ ..& ..& ..& ..& \\ ..& ..& ..& ..& \\ \frac{r_N}{r}e^{i\delta _N}\mathrm{sin}rt& M_{N1}& ..& ..& M_{NN}\end{array}\right)$$
(25)
where

$$M_{jk}=\delta _{jk}e^{i\delta _ji\delta _k}\frac{r_jr_k}{r^2}(1\mathrm{cos}rt)$$
(26)
The corresponding quadratic invariants are

$`\alpha (t)\eta (t)+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}e^{2i\delta _k}\beta _k(t)\xi (t)`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha \eta +{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}e^{2i\delta _k}\beta _k\xi `$ (27)
$`\alpha ^{}(t)\eta (t)+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\beta _k^{}(t)\xi (t)`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha ^{}\eta +{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}\beta _k^{}\xi `$ (28)
With these results we first illustrate the hurdles to be overcome in cloning the harmonic oscillator coherent states. For this purpose let us look at the case $`N=1`$. In this case the state obtained after applying the unitary transformation $`U`$ is

$`\alpha (t)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}rt\alpha +e^{i\delta }\mathrm{sin}rt\beta `$ (29)
$`\beta (t)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{cos}rt\beta e^{i\delta }\mathrm{sin}rt\alpha `$ (30)
Here the best that can be achieved is to set $`\mathrm{sin}rt=1`$ and remove known phases through the unitary operator $`e^{i\gamma a^{}a}`$ and one sees that it only amounts to swapping but not cloning. Next, in the general $`N`$ case, the coefficients of $`\alpha `$ in all $`\beta _k(t)`$ must be made to have the same magnitude implying $`r_1=r_2=\mathrm{}..=r_n`$. With the choice $`\beta _1=\beta _2=..=\beta _N`$ one gets

$$\beta _k(t)=e^{i\delta _k}\frac{\mathrm{sin}rt}{\sqrt{N}}\alpha $$
(31)
With the optimal choice of $`\mathrm{sin}rt=1`$ and using appropriate unitary transformations to remove known phases one gets N copies of the state $`|\frac{\alpha }{\sqrt{N}}>`$.

### A Information cloning

Thus we are able to produce N-copies not of the original state $`|\alpha >`$ but of a state of the form $`|\frac{\alpha }{\sqrt{N}}>`$ which has the same information content as $`|\alpha >`$ in the sense that a complete determination of the latter is equivalent to a complete determination of the former. This is what we would like to call cloning of information in contrast to cloning of the quantum state itself. It is quite plausible that in many circumstances of interest cloning in this more restricted sense may suffice.

Superficially this may appear to be a triviality in the sense that one can always apply known unitary transformations on unknown quantum states to produce states with the same information content in the sense used above. But what is nontrivial in our construction is that arbitrary number of copies of such information-equivalent states can be produced.

Fidelity of cloning was interpreted by  as $`<\alpha |\rho _1|\alpha >`$ where $`|\alpha >`$ is the unknown coherent that was cloned and $`\rho _1`$ is the one-particle reduced density matrix of the output. In the Gaussian-cloners of the type considered in  there are N-copies of $`\rho _1`$ which are all mixed states. In contrast our information cloning produces N-copies which are pure states. We call the fidelity introduced by  Overlap Fidelity. This overlap fidelity for our information cloning is

$$F_{info}^{overlap}=e^{|\alpha |^2(1\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}})^2}$$
(32)
Not only can this be very small it is also not universal.

We introduce another notion of fidelity which we call Measurement Fidelity by which we mean the best reconstruction of the original unknown state that can be achieved through actual measurements performed in some optimal way. Before proceeding we give the formula for the optimal overlap fidelity of $`NM`$ cloning of coherent states

$$F_{N,M}^{overlap}=\frac{MN}{MN+NM}$$
(33)
We now propose using the copies of the information-equivalent states to estimate the parameter $`\alpha `$. Normally when the available number of copies of a state is very large, one one can estimate the state quite accurately and use that to create arbitrary number of clones of the original coherent state. However, in our proposal for information cloning even though the number of copies $`N`$ can be arbitrarily large, the coherency parameter given by $`\frac{\alpha }{\sqrt{N}}`$ becomes arbitrarily small while the variances in $`\alpha `$ remain the same as in the original state. This raises the question as to how best the original state can be reconstructed and about the statistical significance of our information cloning procedure.

On introducing momentum and position operators $`\widehat{p},\widehat{x}`$ through

$$\widehat{x}=\frac{(a+a^{})}{\sqrt{2}}\widehat{p}=\frac{(aa^{})}{\sqrt{2}i}$$
(34)
the probability distributions  in position and momentum representations are given by

$`|\psi _{clone}(x)|^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi }}}e^{(x\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}\alpha _R)^2}`$ (35)
$`|\psi _{clone}(p)|^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi }}}e^{(p\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}\alpha _I)^2}`$ (36)
Let us distribute our $`N`$-copies into two groups of $`N/2`$ each and use one to estimate $`\alpha _R`$ through position measurements and the other to estimate $`\alpha _I`$ through momentum measurements. Let $`y_N`$ denote the average value of the position obtained in $`N/2`$ measurements and let $`z_N`$ denote the average value of momentum also obtained in $`N/2`$ measurements. The central limit theorem states that the probability distributions for $`y_N,z_N`$ are given by

$`f_x(y_N)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{N}{2\pi }}}e^{\frac{N}{2}(y_N\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}\alpha _R)^2}`$ (37)
$`f_p(z_N)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{N}{2\pi }}}e^{\frac{N}{2}(z_N\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}\alpha _I)^2}`$ (38)
The estimated value of $`\alpha `$ is

$$\alpha _{est}=\frac{y_N+iz_N}{\sqrt{2}}\sqrt{N}$$
(39)
The measurement fidelity $`F^{meas}`$ can be understood as the quantity $`|<\alpha |\alpha _{est}>|^2`$:

$$F^{meas}=e^{|\alpha \alpha _{est}|^2}$$
(40)
The probability distribution for $`F`$ is given by

$$p(F)dF=𝑑z_N𝑑y_N\delta (z_N^2+y_N^2\frac{2}{N}|\alpha _{est}|^2)f_x(y_N)f_p(z_N)$$
(41)
It is straightforward to show that

$$p(F)dF=dF$$
(42)
Consequently the average value of $`F^{meas}`$ is

$$\overline{F}_{1,N}^{meas}=1/2$$

Now we generalise our results to the $`M^{}N^{}`$ case. We start with $`M`$ copies and let each copy be information cloned to $`N`$ copies so we have $`MN`$ copies finally.

The position and momentum distributions are still given by eqn (35) but now $`NM/2`$ measurements are carried out for position and momentum. Consequently

$`f_x(y_{MN})`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{MN}{2\pi }}}e^{\frac{MN}{2}(y_{MN}\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}\alpha _R)^2}`$ (43)
$`f_p(z_{MN})`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{MN}{2\pi }}}e^{\frac{MN}{2}(z_{MN}\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}\alpha _I)^2}`$ (44)
The estimated value of $`\alpha `$ is still given by eqn(39). One finally obtains

$$p_{M,MN}(F)dF=MF^{M1}dF$$
(45)
The average measurement fidelity in this case is given by

$$\overline{F}_{M,MN}^{meas}=\frac{M}{M+1}$$
(46)
This approaches $`1`$ as $`M\mathrm{}`$.

These fidelities should not be directly compared with eqn(33). As emphasised by Massar and Popescu  there can be many notions of fidelities and two schemes should be compared only with the same criterion for fidelity. So we compute the measurement fidelity for Gaussian cloners. Each copy is the Gaussian mixture

$$\rho =d^2\alpha \frac{A_{M,MN}}{\pi }e^{A_{M,MN}|\alpha |^2}|\alpha _0+\alpha ><\alpha _0+\alpha |$$
(47)
Where $`A_{M,MN}`$ given by

$$A_{M,MN}=\frac{MN}{N1}$$
(48)
reproduces eqn (33). The position and momentum distributions in the Gaussian mixture are given by

$`p_{Gauss}(x)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi }}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{A_{M,MN}}{A_{M,MN}+2}}}e^{(x\sqrt{2}\alpha _R)^2}`$ (49)
$`p_{Gauss}(p)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{\pi }}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{A_{M,MN}}{A_{M,MN}+2}}}e^{(p\sqrt{2}\alpha _I)^2}`$ (50)
The analogues of eqns (43) are given by

$`f_x(y_{MN})`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{MNA_{M,MN}}{2\pi (A_{M,MN}+2)}}}e^{\frac{MN}{2}(y_{MN}\sqrt{2}\alpha _{0R})^2}`$ (51)
$`f_p(z_{MN})`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{MNA_{M,MN}}{2\pi (A_{M,MN}+2)}}}e^{\frac{MN}{2}(z_{MN}\sqrt{2}\alpha _{0I})^2}`$ (52)
The estimate for the coherency parameter is

$$\alpha _{est}=\frac{y_{MN}+iz_{MN}}{\sqrt{2}}$$
(53)
The resulting measurement fidelity distribution is

$$p_{M,MN}^{Gauss}(F)dF=F^{\frac{MNA_{M,MN}}{2(A_{M,MN}+2)}1}dF$$
(54)
while the average measurement fidelity is

$$\overline{F}_{M,MN}^{Gauss}=\frac{M^2N^2}{M^2N^2+2MN+4N4}$$
(55)
For $`M=1,N=2`$ the measurement fidelities for Gaussian and Information cloning are $`1/3`$ and $`1/2`$ respectively. For $`M=1,N=4`$ these become $`4/9`$ and $`1/2`$. For $`M=2,N=2`$ these are $`4/7`$ and $`2/3`$ while for $`M=2,N=4`$ they become $`16/23`$ and $`2/3`$ respectively.

### B Conclusion

In this paper we have demonstrated the concept of information cloning for harmonic oscillator coherent states. The principal difference with the Gaussian cloning of  is that in our case the outputs are pure and disentangled states. The coherency parameter for the output states is reduced by the factor $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{N}}`$ where $`N`$ is the number of copies. The variances are unchanged. We have also introduced the notion of measurement fidelity which is different from the notion of fidelity introduced in . For purposes of comparison we have calculated the measurement fidelities for Gaussian cloners also. In the case of $`d`$-level quantum states a formula is available giving the fidelity that can be achieved given $`N`$ copies . Our formula eqn (46) is such a relation for coherent states.