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# HYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS FOR THE NUCLEAR MORPHOLOGY OF NGC 4314

## 1 INTRODUCTION

The nuclear ring of a barred spiral galaxy NGC4314 has been studied extensively because of its peculiar morphology in the nuclear region as clearly shown in the Hubble atlas (Sandage, 1961). Earlier photometric studies showed that the color of the nuclear ring is bluer than that of the surrounding regions including the nucleus (Lynds et al., 1973; Benedict, 1980). The blue color of the nuclear ring has been ascribed to the young stellar populations that might have formed from the disk material driven into a nuclear region by the bar potential (Garcia-Barreto et al., 1991; Benedict et al., 1992, 1993, 1996). The presence of the young stellar populations in the nuclear region of NGC 4314 was suggested by the emission lines in the central region (Burbidge & Burbidge, 1962; Wakamatsu & Nishida, 1980) and the nuclear spirals in the the center of the bar (Lynds, 1974; Benedict, 1980). Recent $`HST`$ images of NGC 4314 clearly show that the nuclear ring is a nuclear spiral which consists of recently formed star clusters and $`HII`$ regions (Benedict et al., 1993).

Thanks to extensive numerical studies, we are beginning to understand the formation and evolution of nuclear rings in barred galaxies. The presence of the ILRs is required for the formation of a nuclear ring (Schwarz, 1981, 1984; Combes & Gerin, 1985). The gravitational torque of bar on the gas induces gas inflow which leads to the formation of a nuclear ring at ILRs (Combes, 1996). Because the shape and orientation of a nuclear ring depend on the dynamical properties of a galaxy (Combes & Gerin, 1985; Athanassoula, 1992; Piner et al., 1995; Ann & Lee, 2000), we can use the morphology of a nuclear ring, combined with hydrodynamic simulations, as a probe of the underlying dynamics. A general analysis of gas responses to bar forcing in disk galaxies is given by Ann & Lee (2000).

For NGC 4314 seems to be a classic example of a barred galaxy whose bar drives disk gas into a ring at ILRs, we aim to analyze the morphology and dynamics of the central region of NGC 4314 by SPH simulations. In §2, we describe the global and nuclear morphology of NGC 4314. Models of the present simulations are presented in §3 and the results of SPH simulations are described in §4. Discussion on the nuclear ring morphology and nuclear bar is given in §5 and the conclusions are given in the last section.

## 2 MORPHOLOGY

### 2.1 Global Morphology

NGC 4314 is an early type barred galaxy, classified as SBa. The global morphology of NGC 4314 is characterized by a prominent bar and a peculiar bulge with faint outer spiral arms. There are many photographs and CCD images in the literature which show the general morphology of NGC 4314 but the global morphology is best seen in the Hubble atlas (Sandage, 1961). NGC 4314 is a nearly face-on galaxy with inclination of about $`23^{}`$. The bulge is somewhat elongated along the bar and it seems to be triaxial because it shows isophotal twists. The length, axial ratio, and position angle of the bar are $`66^{\prime \prime }`$, $`4`$, and $`148^{}`$, respectively (Benedict et al., 1996; Ann, 1999). Because the position angle of the major axis of the disk is about $`59^{}`$ (Benedict et al., 1996), the bar aligns almost perpendicular to the disk. The outer spiral arms are very faint but they trace $`130^{}`$ arcs out to $`125^{\prime \prime }`$ from the nucleus (Garcia-Barreto et al., 1991). There seems to be no HII region in the outer arms (Burbidge & Burbidge, 1962). The faintness of the outer spiral arms is due to lack of gas (Gallagher et al., 1975; Garcia-Barreto et al., 1991) which prevents recent star formation in the outer disk. However, the main three components, that is, disk, bulge, and bar have comparable luminosities (Ann, 1999).

### 2.2 Nuclear Morphology

NGC 4314 has been known to have a peculiar morphology in the central part of the galaxy (Sandage, 1961). Earlier studies of NGC 4314 (Benedict, 1980; Garcia-Barreto et al., 1991; Benedict et al., 1992, 1993) showed a nuclear ring and nuclear spiral pattern along with several hot spots in the nuclear region. Fig. 1 shows a deprojected grey scale image of the nuclear region of NGC 4314 captured by $`HST/NICMOS`$ with F160W filter (Mulchaey, 2001). The integration time of the image is 360s. The deprojection of the image was made by using the disk inclination of $`23^{}`$ (Benedict et al., 1996). We adjust the contrast of the image to get the most clear picture of the nuclear features. We see clearly that the nuclear ring of NGC 4314 is a nuclear spiral which consists of young stellar clusters of newly formed massive stars and dust lanes. The dust lanes of spiral pattern extend further than the spiral arms and obscure some parts of the nuclear ring. The diameter of the nuclear ring is $`16^{\prime \prime }`$. It is elongated close to the bar axis which is indicated by the dotted line in Fig. 1. Note, however, that they are not perfectly aligned, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta 10^{}`$. We plot the major axis of the disk as a solid line for comparison.

Along with the nuclear ring, there seems to be an oval or a nuclear bar at the center of the galaxy (Benedict et al., 1992, 1993). The first estimate of the diameter of the nuclear bar is about $`3^{\prime \prime }`$ (Benedict et al., 1992), but Benedict et al. (1996) adopted the diameter of the nuclear bar as $`8^{\prime \prime }`$ from the $`HST`$ image of NGC 4314 (Benedict et al., 1993). To analyze the geometrical properties of the nuclear features, we applied an ellipse fitting to the isophotes of the deprojected image of NGC 4314. Fig. 2 shows the profiles of the luminosity, ellipticity, and position angle of the nuclear region of NGC 4314. The luminosity profile which is dominated by the $`r^{\frac{1}{4}}`$-law bulge is very smooth except for the regions affected by the dust lanes and the nuclear ring. The nuclear bar contributes an appreciable amount of luminosity which makes a shallow gradient from $`r4^{\prime \prime }`$ to the end of the nuclear bar. As indicated in Fig. 2, the nuclear bar ends at $`r5^{\prime \prime }.2`$ and the locations of the dust lanes and the nuclear ring are $`7^{\prime \prime }`$ and $`8^{\prime \prime }`$, respectively. Our estimate of the nuclear bar length agrees with that of Benedict et al. (1996) if we take into account the projection effect.

As shown in Fig. 2, the nuclear bar and the nuclear ring show excess of luminosity above the bulge luminosity while the dust lanes show deficiency of luminosity. The gradual increase of the ellipticity within $`r5.^{\prime \prime }5`$ is due to the nuclear bar. The complicated variation of the ellipticity profile reflects the complex structure of the nuclear region. The ellipticity of the nuclear ring is about 0.35, which is slightly larger than that of the dust lanes. The position angles of the nuclear features are very similar with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta 5^{}`$.

Although the presence of a nuclear bar inside the nuclear ring of NGC 4314 has been suggested (Benedict et al., 1992, 1993, 1996), its morphology is not known yet due to the dominant bulge luminosity. To see the nuclear bar more clearly, we subtracted the axisymmetric bulge component from the deprojected image of NGC 4314 by assuming that the bulge luminosity follows the de Vaucouleurs’s $`r^{\frac{1}{4}}`$ law. To do this, we derived the effective brightness and effective radius of NGC 4314 from the minor axis profile which is little affected by the luminosity of the nuclear bar. Fig. 3 shows the bulge subtracted image of the nuclear region of NGC 4314 where we see clearly the nuclear bar that aligns almost parallel to the nuclear ring. We plot an ellipse whose ellipticity and position angle are determined from the ellipse fitting employed in Fig. 2. We see that the ellipse fits nicely the nuclear ring. The brightest hot spots outside the ellipse belong to the nuclear spiral arms.

## 3 MODELS

The basic numerical method employed in the present study is the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) technique which is known to be a powerful tool for a wide variety of astrophysical problems (see (Monaghan, 1992) for a thorough review). We used the same code as that of Ann & Lee (2000). We simulate the responses of gaseous disk by SPH particles distributed uniformly in the beginning of each simulation, with circular velocities for the centrifugal equilibrium to the gravitational accelerations. The initial radius of the gaseous disk is 4.5 kpc. The number of SPH particles is around 10,000, which gives initial resolution length of about 130 pc. Throughout the calculations, we fixed the temperature of the gaseous disk at 10,000 K, because radiative cooling is effective in the shocked gas. For simplicity and better resolution, our calculations were confined to two-dimensional disk.

### 3.1 The Potential

We assumed that the galactic potential, which is due to three stellar components (bulge, disk, and bar) and the dark halo, is independent of time in the frame corotating with the bar. We include the dark halo to match the observed flat rotation curve in the outer part (Combes et al., 1992). We have performed model simulations with and without a nuclear bar to see the effect of the nuclear bar on the response of gaseous disk. We used the same functional forms of the potentials of disk, bulge, bar, and dark halo as those of Lee et al. (1999). In brief, we assumed the exponential disk (Freeman, 1970), Plummer’s model, bi-axial potential of Long & Murali (1992), and logarithmic potential for disk, bulge, bar, and dark halo, respectively. We add the bar potential slowly over half a bar revolution ($`\tau _{bar}10^8yr`$) to avoid the violent shocks due to a sudden non-axisymmetric force. We ignore the self-gravity of the gaseous disk because its mass is assumed to be a small fraction of the total mass of the model galaxy. The effect of self-gravity is most pronounced in the central region where the density of SPH particles is high due to the bar-driven inflow (Ann & Lee, 2000).

### 3.2 Model Parameters

The free parameters that define the gravitational potential of each component can be constrained by the mass distributions inferred from the luminosity distributions of NGC 4314. We derived the mass fractions and scale lengths of the disk, the bulge, and the bar from the results of a profile decomposition of the $`V`$-band surface photometry (Ann, 1999). Here we assumed a constant mass-to-luminosity ratio throughout the galaxy. Only exception to this is the bulge scale length because there is no direct match between the scale parameters of the adopted functional form for the bulge potential and those of the assumed function of the bulge luminosity distribution. We also assumed a large extended halo whose mass inside the bar radius is about 10 % of the visible mass. The length of the nuclear bar is assumed to be $`10^{\prime \prime }`$ with its axial ratio of 4. We have assumed the mass of the nuclear bar as 2 % of the primary bar based on its size.

The pattern speed of the bar $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ is constrained by the resonance locations and the maximum rotational velocity that is determined by the radius and mass scale of the galaxy. The length scale of our models is taken as the radius of bar, $`R_{sc}`$=3 kpc, assuming the distance of NGC 4314 as 10 Mpc. We assumed that the total visible mass within the bar radius is $`2\times 10^{10}M_{}`$ which is about 10 times larger than the total mass interior to $`r=450`$ pc (Garcia-Barreto et al., 1991) and one fourth of the dynamical mass of NGC 4314 (Sage, 1993). We assumed the mass of the gaseous disk as 1 % of the total visible mass, $`M_g=2\times 10^8M_{}`$, which is virtually the same as the mass of molecular gas ($`2.1\times 10^8M_{}`$) derived by Benedict et al. (1996). With these radius and mass scales, the dynamical time scale $`\tau _{dyn}`$ is $`1.7\times 10^7`$ yr and the unit of angular frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{sc}`$ is 56.6 km/sec/kpc. Assuming that the bar ends near corotation ($`R_{CR}1.2R_{bar}`$), we determined the pattern speed of the bar as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p=33.6`$ km/sec/kpc which corresponds to 0.6 $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{sc}`$. Our bar pattern speed is almost the same as that derived by the resonance model of Garcia-Barreto et al. (1991). We list the adopted parameters of the models in Table 1. A-model does not have a nuclear bar while B- and C-model have a synchronous nuclear bar and a fast nuclear bar, respectively. The pattern speed of the fast nuclear bar was adopted as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_s12\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ to ensure that the CR of the nuclear bar coincides with the location of the IILR of the primary bar.

Fig. 4 shows the rotation curve and angular frequencies of the simplest mass model (A-model). The shape of the rotation curve is similar to those derived from the $`K`$-band image (Combes et al., 1992) and the CO observations (Benedict et al., 1996). However, our rotation curve rises somewhat more slowly than those of Combes et al. (1992) and Benedict et al. (1996) but it rises more steeply than that of Quillen et al. (1994) which is obtained from a mass model based on a $`K`$-band image. The maximum rotational velocity of the model galaxy is about 180 km/sec which is in a good agreement with Combes et al. (1992) and Benedict et al. (1996). We indicated the resonance locations in Fig. 4, where IILR, OILR, and OLR stand for the inner inner Lindblad resonance, the outer inner Lindblad resonance, and the outer Lindblad resonance, respectively. The pattern speed of the bar is represented as the dot-dashed line. Because the mass of the nuclear bar is assumed to be negligible, the rotation curves of the models with nuclear bars (B- and C-model) are virtually the same as that of the simplest model. The rotation curves of our mass models result in a general agreement between the locations of the IILR of the model galaxies and the observed radius of the nuclear ring of NGC 4314.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 Evolution of Global Morphology

Since the global morphological evolutions of the gaseous disk of the models with and without nuclear bars are very similar, we present the evolution of the simplest model which has no nuclear bar (A-model) in Fig. 5 to see the general gas responses which lead to the development of a nuclear ring, dust lanes and faint outer spiral arms. The number in the upper left corner of each panel represents the evolution time in unit of bar revolution time $`\tau _{bar}`$ that corresponds to $`6.4\tau _{dyn}`$. In the early phase of evolution, a two-armed spiral pattern of density enhancement is developed in the gaseous disk due to bar forcing that drives gas streaming motion. The gas inside the CR moves inward due to the loss of angular momentum to the bar, while the gas outside the CR moves outward by gaining angular momentum from the bar. The spiral pattern inside the CR transforms into a perpendicular nuclear ring near OILR with highly curved symmetric dust lanes within one bar revolution. While the misalignment of the nuclear ring is decreasing and the dust lanes become less curved, the outer spiral arms extend further. The dust lanes eventually turn into the centered straight dust lanes by the time when the nuclear ring aligns to the bar after $`2\tau _{bar}`$.

As the evolution proceeds, the dust lanes become weaker and the size of the nuclear ring decreases with increasing density until they reach a steady state after $`8\tau _{bar}`$. The location and morphology of the nuclear ring after $`5\tau _{bar}`$ resembles those of the nuclear ring of NGC 4314. The faint outer arms are reminiscent pseudo outer rings $`R^{}`$ observed in barred galaxies (Buta, 1995). Most of the gas within the CR is accumulated to the nuclear ring at the IILR but some fraction of gas come across the nuclear ring and falls into the nucleus itself.

Fig. 6 shows a snap shot of the velocity field of the gaseous disk of A-model at $`t=4\tau _{bar}`$. The arrows represent the directions of the particle velocities with the lengths being proportional to the velocities. As is evident in the figure, the SPH particles near the CR have almost zero velocity. The streaming motion of gas particles is easily seen inside the CR where gas particles lead the bar. The streaming motion indicates that there is a large amount of gas inflow along the bar. The velocity of inflowing gas is up to $`100`$ km/sec which agrees with the observations of Benedict et al. (1996). The outer trailing spiral arms are composed of gas particles that move outward by gaining angular momentum from the bar while the straight dust lanes and ring-like structures are composed of gas particles that move inward by losing their angular momentum to the bar. It is also worth noting that the slightly curved leading dust lanes, seen in Fig. 5, are the regions of density enhancement with abrupt velocity changes. The high density and the sudden velocity changes may imply that they are the loci of shock fronts. In later times, when the evolution of the gaseous disk reaches steady state, the streaming motion which leads to the gas inflow toward the nucleus is significantly reduced.

### 4.2 Evolution of Nuclear Region

Although the global morphological evolutions of the gaseous disks are not much different among models with or without nuclear bars, the evolutions of the nuclear features are quite different due to the perturbations by nuclear bars. Fig. 7 shows the evolution of the central part of the gaseous disk of the models with a synchronous nuclear bar (B-model) and a fast nuclear bar with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_s12\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ (C-model), along with that of the simplest model. The CR of the nuclear bar is located near the IILR of the primary bar for the C-model. Because the gas responses outside the nuclear ring are almost identical in every evolution stage, we plot the nuclear regions only for better resolution. The box size of Fig. 7 is 1.2 kpc in one dimension. For easy comparisons of the models with observations, we plot the distribution of the SPH particles with the ellipse representing the nuclear ring of NGC 4314. Because the primary bar lies along the horizontal axis in Fig. 7, we rotate the ellipse accordingly.

The morphology of the inner parts is similar to each other until $`2\tau _{bar}`$ but they evolve differently afterwards. The nuclear ring-like structure developed in A model evolves to a nuclear ring after $`5\tau _{bar}`$ whose general morphology resembles the nuclear ring morphology of NGC 4314. The nuclear ring consists of several fragments of various morphology. However, the spiral pattern observed in the nuclear ring of NGC 4314 can not be reproduced by A-model. The evolution of B-model shows a highly elongated nuclear spiral at $`t2\tau _{bar}`$ with a large accumulation of gas in the nucleus. The nuclear spiral pattern evolves to a nearly circular nuclear ring located far inside the IILR. There is not much gas in the nuclear ring owing to the large amount of infall to the nucleus. The steady state morphology of the nuclear ring of B-model is much different from that of NGC 4314. The nuclear ring-like structure of C-model evolves to several fragments which distribute randomly inside the IILR. But after $`5\tau _{bar}`$, they evolve to a two-armed spiral pattern with a large accumulation of gas near the nucleus. The morphology of the nuclear spiral at $`8\tau _{bar}`$ resembles the nuclear ring morphology of NGC 4314. However, the nuclear spiral developed in C-model is a transient one. Moreover, NGC 4314 has no nuclear structure, similar to that developed in the nucleus of C-model.

There are some similarities in the evolution of the nuclear morphologies among models. All the models show shrinking of nuclear rings with increasing of gas density inside due to the gas inflow toward the nucleus. But, as evident from Fig. 7, while most of the gas inside the CR is accreted between the two ILRs in A-model, a large fraction of the gas inside the CR moves into the nucleus after $`2\tau _{bar}`$ in B-model and after $`3\tau _{bar}`$ in C-model, respectively. One interesting point to be noted is the development of several fragments which are thought to be the regions of density enhancement. Since there is no common property in the structures of the fragments, they might be caused by some sort of dynamical instability due to random shocks.

## 5 DISCUSSION

### 5.1 Orientation of Nuclear Ring

Most of the nuclear rings observed in real galaxies are misaligned, usually perpendicular to the primary bars (Buta & Crocker, 1993). Thus, the nuclear ring of NGC 4314 which is elongated to the direction nearly parallel to the bar axis with the ellipticity of $`ϵ0.35`$ is a rare example of aligned nuclear rings. The misalignment angle of the nuclear ring with the primary bar is only $`10^{}`$. It is well known that the morphology of nuclear rings depends on the dynamical properties of the host galaxies such as mass distribution and bar pattern speed. The dependence of the nuclear ring morphology on the bar pattern speed was examined by Combes & Gerin (1985) who showed that slow bars induce elongated nuclear rings aligned parallel to the bar while fast bars that allow only one ILR generate circular nuclear rings.

However, there seems to be not much freedom for the pattern speed of a bar because it ends near the CR (Contopoulos, 1980; Athanassoula, 1992). More important parameter that constrains the morphology of nuclear rings is the degree of central mass concentration (Piner et al., 1995; Ann & Lee, 2000). Piner et al. (1995) showed that galaxies with high central concentration and small bar axial ratio have circular nuclear rings, while galaxies with low central concentration and large axial ratios have elongated nuclear rings that tend to be aligned with the bars. The nuclear rings of galaxies which have strong bars with axial ratio of $`\frac{a}{b}4`$, however, can be aligned perpendicular to the bar if the central concentration is very high (Ann & Lee, 2000). Thus, the central concentration of mass distribution seems to be the primary parameter which controls the nuclear ring morphology. The aligned nuclear ring of NGC 4314 is due to the strong bar with a moderate degree of the central concentration of mass.

The central concentration is not an observable quantity but it can be inferred from the rising part of the rotation curve which is mainly determined by the mass distribution of the bulge component. Centrally concentrated bulges give rise to steep rotation curves which allow two ILRs unless the bar pattern speed is unrealistically high. This is the reason for the preponderance of occurrence of nuclear rings in early type galaxies (Buta & Crocker, 1993). In the present mass models, the rising part of the rotation curve strongly depends on the bulge scale length $`r_b`$ in the Plummer spherical potential. We adopted the bulge scale $`r_b=510`$ pc, which is slightly larger than that used by Garcia-Barreto et al. (1991) who modeled NGC 4314 by a Plummer spherical bulge and Toomre disk with bulge scale length of 400 pc.

### 5.2 Shrinking of Nuclear Ring

One interesting phenomenon observed in the evolution of the nuclear morphology is the shrinking of ring-like structures which are formed near OILR. Their sizes are reduced as much as the ratio of the $`R_{OILR}`$ to $`R_{IILR}`$. Such a shrinking is not a common property of nuclear ring evolution. It requires an extremely strong non-axisymmetric potential by which the particles populating the aligned nuclear ring lose angular momentum due to the gravitational torque. Misaligned nuclear rings or aligned nuclear rings with weak bars do not show such a shrinking (Ann & Lee, 2000). The strong non-axisymmetric potential of NGC 4314 is provided by the large axial ratio ($`\frac{a}{b}4`$) and the high mass fraction ($`30`$%) of the primary bar.

Shrinking of the nuclear ring of NGC 4314 is suggested by Combes et al. (1992) from the location of the molecular ring observed by a high resolution CO(J=1-0) mapping of NGC 4314. They interpreted the mismatch of the locations of the radio ring and the molecular ring as a result of the shrinking of the molecular ring which is located inside the radio ring. The position of the radio ring coincides with the optical nuclear ring. However, the time-scale for the shrinking of the molecular ring is very short, comparable to the star formation time-scale of a few $`10^7`$ yr (Combes et al., 1992). In the models with nuclear bars the ring-like structures formed at the OILR shrink to the IILR in a few $`10^8`$ yr, while in the model with no nuclear bar the shrinking time scale is about $`10^9`$ yr.

The slow shrinking of the nuclear ring, as compared with the star formation time-scale, indicates that the mean age of the stellar populations in the nuclear region changes with radius, older age near the OILR and younger age near the IILR, if the nuclear ring of NGC 4314 has evolved from the ring-like structure formed near the OILR. Thus, the variation of stellar colors, progressively becoming redder with increasing distance from the nuclear ring, observed by Benedict et al. (1992) can be explained by the age difference of the stellar populations, as suggested by Benedict et al. (1996).

### 5.3 Pattern Speed of Nuclear Bar

As shown in Fig. 3, there seems to be no question about the presence of a nuclear bar inside the nuclear ring of NGC 4314. Its morphology is similar to that of the primary bar. However, there is no information about the dynamical properties of the nuclear bar except for the small misalignment between the two bars, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta 5^{}`$. In a double barred system, from a dynamical point of view, a favorable situation consists of a faster nuclear bar with its CR at the location of the ILR of the primary bar when the primary bar ends near the CR of the primary bar (Pfenniger & Norman, 1990; Friedli & Martinet, 1993). But, in the case of NGC 4314, there is a possibility of the synchronous rotation due to the virtual alignment of the two bars (Benedict et al., 1996).

However, as evident from Fig. 7, the evolution of gas response inside the OILR depends sensitively on the pattern speed of the nuclear bars. The model with a fast nuclear bar drives a complicated evolution which leads to the formation of a two-armed nuclear spiral resembling the nuclear ring of NGC 4314, while the model with a synchronous nuclear bar develops a smaller and rounder nuclear ring than that of NGC 4314. The spiral pattern developed in the early phase of evolution in the model with a synchronous nuclear bar is very short-lived and highly elongated. Thus, the nuclear bar of NGC 4314 is thought to rotate faster than the primary one. We might observe the nuclear bar when it lies close to the primary bar. However, since there is little gas in the nucleus of NGC 4314 (Garcia-Barreto et al., 1991), there should be some mechanisms which remove the infalled gas inside the nuclear ring if the nuclear structure of NGC 4314 can be explained by the models with a fast nuclear bar.

## 6 CONCLUSIONS

The peculiar nuclear morphology of an early type strong barred galaxy NGC 4314 can be explained by dynamical models in which mass models are constrained by the results of profile decomposition and with the assumption of $`R_{CR}1.2R_{bar}`$ for the bar pattern speed. Our SPH simulations well reproduce the shape and orientation of the nuclear ring of NGC 4314 which is characterized by an elongated ring and spiral arms of young stellar populations, partly obscured by the dust lanes and aligned nearly parallel to the bar ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta 10^{}`$). The aligned nuclear ring of NGC 4314 can be formed from the gas inflow along the bar due to the moderate central concentration of the bulge under the strong barred potential. The constraints of the location of the nuclear ring at the IILR ($`R_{IILR}350`$ pc) and the bar ends near the CR admit a slow rotation of the bar ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_p34`$ km/sec/kpc) which is effective for the mass inflow toward the nucleus.

We have presented the results of three SPH simulations with different assumptions about the nuclear structure; no nuclear bar, a synchronous nuclear bar, and a fast nuclear bar. There is little difference in the evolutions of the global morphology among models but the evolutions of nuclear morphology are quite different due to the different nuclear dynamics. In the beginning of the evolution of the gaseous disks, the nuclear ring forms from the density enhancement of spiral pattern which is originated from the streaming motions due to the gravitational torque on the gas. At the time of nuclear ring formation, it is aligned perpendicular to the primary bar but the misalignment angle decreases after one bar revolution. The diameter of the nuclear ring decreases as the inflowing gas accumulates in the IILR with gradual disappearance of dust lanes along the bar.

If there is no nuclear bar, the nuclear spiral pattern similar to that of NGC 4314 can not be developed even though the general morphology of the nuclear ring located near the IILR resembles the nuclear ring of NGC 4314. The synchronous nuclear bar drives a large infall into the nucleus and develops a highly elongated nuclear spiral at earlier times which evolves to a circular nuclear ring far inside the IILR after $`5\tau _{bar}`$. The steady state morphology induced by the synchronous nuclear bar is much different from the observed one. In the case of the model with a fast nuclear bar ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_s12\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$), the evolution of the nuclear feature is very complicated due to the fluctuating potential by the fast nuclear bar. But, it leads to the formation of a nuclear ring of spiral pattern which resembles the observed nuclear ring of NGC 4314. Thus, the nuclear bar of NGC 4314 seems to rotate faster than the primary bar. The small misalignment between the two bars, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta 5^{}`$ might indicate that we see the nuclear bar of NGC 4314 when it lies close to the primary bar. However, there should be some mechanisms by which the infalled gas is removed from the nucleus if the nuclear morphology of NGC 4314 can be explained by the nuclear dynamics induced by the fast nuclear bar.

I thank Dr. Hyesung Kang for the help in the numerical works and Dr. Hyung Mok Lee for careful reading of the manuscript and discussion. I would like to thank Dr. J. Mulchaey for providing me the HST/NICMOS image of NGC 4314 before publication. I want to thank the anonymous referee for the kind comments by which this paper is much improved. This work was supported by the Interdisciplinary Research Program of KOSEF through grant No. 1999-2-113-001-5.

Deprojected $`HST/NICMOS`$ image of NGC 4314. We see that the nuclear ring of NGC 4314 is a nuclear spiral which consists of young stellar populations and dust lanes. The dust lanes of spiral pattern extend further than the spiral arms and obscure some parts of the nuclear ring. The nuclear ring is elongated close to the major axis of the primary bar which is indicated as a dotted line. The direction of the major axis of the disk is shown by a solid line. The oval shape inside the nuclear ring is due to a nuclear bar which aligns almost parallel to the nuclear ring. The image size is $`19.^{\prime \prime }2\times 19.^{\prime \prime }2`$. North is up and East is to the left.

Luminosity, ellipticity, and position angle profiles of the nuclear region of NGC 4314. The luminosity profile is dominated by the bulge luminosity but the nuclear bar contributes an appreciable amount of luminosity which makes the shallow gradient from $`r4^{\prime \prime }`$ to the end of the nuclear bar at $`r5.^{\prime \prime }2`$. We designate the locations of the end of the nuclear bar, the dust lanes, and the nuclear ring. The gradual increase of the ellipticity within $`r5.^{\prime \prime }5`$ is due to the nuclear bar. The position angles of the nuclear features are similar but the small mismatch ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\theta 5^{}`$) between the orientations of the nuclear bar and the nuclear ring is worth to be noted.

The deprojected and bulge subtracted image of the nuclear region of NGC 4314. We see clearly a nuclear bar inside the nuclear ring. We plot an ellipse which was derived from the ellipse fit employed in Fig. 2. Most of the hot spots which are thought to consist of the nuclear ring are located along the ellipse. We adjust the display level to see the nuclear features most clearly. The image size is $`19.^{\prime \prime }2\times 19.^{\prime \prime }2`$. North is up and East is to the left.

Rotational velocity and angular frequencies of the mass models of NGC 4314. The mass fractions and the scale lengths are constrained by the results of the profile decomposition (Ann, 1999). The horizontal line represents the bar pattern speed $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ which is determined by the assumption of $`R_{CR}1.2R_{bar}`$. We indicate the four resonance positions. The unit of R is 3 kpc and the units of the velocity and the angular frequency are 170 km/sec and 56.6 km/sec/kpc, respectively.

Evolution of the gaseous disk of the simplest model (A-model). At earlier times the nuclear ring shows a large misalignment with the bar but becomes aligned parallel to the bar after $`3\tau _{bar}`$. The diameter of the nuclear ring decreases as it evolves. The number of each panel is the evolution time in unit of $`\tau _{bar}`$ ($`1.1\times 10^8`$ yr). It reaches to the steady state after $`8\tau _{bar}`$. The bar lies horizontally. The box size is 12 kpc in one dimension.

Velocity field of A-model at $`t=4\tau _{bar}`$. The lengths of arrows are proportional to the particle velocities. The particles inside the corotation radius show strong streaming motions along the bar. See the abrupt change of the particle velocity near the bar axis, which might represent the loci of the shock fronts. The length unit is 3 kpc for both axes.

Evolution of the nuclear region of three models. A-model has no nuclear bar and B- and C-model have a synchronous nuclear bar and a fast nuclear bar ($`\mathrm{\Omega }_s12\mathrm{\Omega }p`$), respectively. The ellipse which represents the nuclear ring of NGC 4314 is plotted for easy comparison. Because the primary bar lies horizontally, we rotate the ellipse accordingly. We see that there is no spiral pattern in A-model, while B- and C-model show nuclear spiral pattern, at least in some stages of evolution. Note that the nuclear bars induce much infall into the nucleus. The number of each panel represents the evolution time in unit of $`\tau _{bar}`$. The box size is 1.2 kpc in one dimension.


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# Curved planar quantum wires with Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions

## I Introduction

The spectral properties of curved quantum wires with Dirichlet boundary condition were widely investigated (e.g. , , ). It was shown that any small curvature of the tube in dimensions 2 and 3 produces at least one positive eigenvalue below the essential spectrum threshold. The problem of the existence of such eigenvalues in the straight quantum waveguides with a combination of Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions were also studied (e.g. , ). In the present paper we consider curved planar quantum wires, where Dirichlet boundary condition is imposed on one side of the wire, while the Neumann boundary condition is imposed on the opposite side. Both boundary conditions represent an impenetrable wall in the sense that there is no current through the boundary. They can model two types of interphases in a solid, e.g. in a superconductor, in principle. It is worth to know whether the presence of two types of interphases leads to new nanoscopic phenomena.

We prove that the existence of the discrete eigenvalue essentially depends on the direction of the total bending of the strip. Roughly speaking at least one bound state always exists if the Neumann boundary condition is imposed on the ”outer side” of the boundary, i.e. the one which is locally longer. On the other hand we show that there is no eigenvalue below the essential spectrum threshold provided that the curvature does not change its direction and the Neumann boundary condition is imposed on the inner part of the boundary.

We consider a Schrödinger particle whose motion is confined to a curved planar strip of the width $`d`$. For definiteness, let a curve $`\mathrm{\Gamma }:^2`$ be a $`C^3`$-diffeomorfism of the real axis onto $`\mathrm{\Gamma }()`$. Without loss of generality we can assume $`\dot{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_1(s)^2+\dot{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_2(s)^2=1`$, so $`s`$ is the arc length of the curve. We define the normal vector $`N`$ to the curve $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and the signed curvature $`\gamma `$ in the standard way $`N_1(s)=\dot{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_2(s),N_2(s)=\dot{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_1(s),\gamma (s)=\dot{\mathrm{\Gamma }}(s)\dot{N}(s)`$. Let there exist real positive numbers $`\gamma _{},\gamma _+`$ such that $`\gamma _{}\gamma (s)\gamma _+<1/d`$ for all $`s`$ and let $`\dot{\gamma }`$ be bounded. Let the strip which is the configuration space of the considered particle, $`\mathrm{\Omega }^2`$, be defined by

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\{x,y^2|x,y=\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)+uN(s),s,u(0,d)\}.$$

We are going to consider only strips $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ which are not selfintersecting. We shall denote the parts of the boundary of the region $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ by $`𝒟=\{x,y^2|x,y=\mathrm{\Gamma }(s),s\}`$ and $`𝒩=\{x,y^2|x,y=\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)+dN(s),s\}`$. We impose the Dirichlet boundary condition on the set $`𝒟`$ and the Neumann one on $`𝒩`$.

Putting $`\mathrm{}^2/2m=1`$ we identify according to , ,  the particle Hamiltonian with the unique self-adjoint operator acting in the Hilbert space $`L^2(\times (0,d),\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)\mathrm{d}s\mathrm{d}u)`$ associated with the quadratic form

$$q_0(f,g)=_{}ds_0^ddu\left(\frac{1}{1u\gamma (s)}\overline{\frac{f}{s}}(s,u)\frac{g}{s}(s,u)+\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)\overline{\frac{f}{u}}(s,u)\frac{g}{u}(s,u)\right)$$
(1.1)
defined on the domain

$$Q(q_0)=\{fH^1(\times (0,d))|f(s,0)=0\mathrm{for}\mathrm{a}.\mathrm{e}.\mathrm{s}\},$$

where $`H^1\left(\times (0,d)\right)`$ is the standard Sobolev space and $`f(s,0)`$ denotes the trace of the function $`f`$ on the part of the boundary $`\times \{0\}`$.

###### Remark 1

Using similar “reflection” procedure like in the proof of Theorem 1 in  for trivial case of combination of Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions we can see that our operator acts like Laplace-Beltrami operator

$$L_\mathrm{\Omega }^{DN}=\left(\frac{u\dot{\gamma }(s)}{\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)^3}\frac{}{s}+\frac{1}{\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)^2}\frac{^2}{s^2}+\frac{^2}{u^2}\frac{\gamma (s)}{1u\gamma (s)}\frac{}{u}\right)$$
(1.2)
on the domain $`D(L_\mathrm{\Omega }^{DN})=\{fH^2(\times (0,d))|f(s,0)=0,\frac{f}{u}(s,d)=0\mathrm{for}\mathrm{a}.\mathrm{e}.\mathrm{s}\}`$.

## II Existence of the discrete eigenvalue

Our main goal is to prove three propositions on the existence, resp. the absence, of the discrete spectrum in this, resp. the next section. We use the variational technique first introduced in  for proving the existence statements.

###### Proposition 1

Let there exist a positive real number $`s_0`$ such that $`\gamma (s)0`$ for every $`s`$ satisfying $`|s|s_0`$ and $`_{s_0}^{s_0}\gamma (s)ds<0`$. Then $`inf\sigma \left(L_\mathrm{\Omega }^{DN}\right)<\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}`$.

Proof:  For every $`\mathrm{\Phi }Q(q_0)`$ we define the functional

$$q[\mathrm{\Phi }]=q_0(\mathrm{\Phi },\mathrm{\Phi })\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}\mathrm{\Phi }_{L^2(\times (0,d),(1u\gamma (s))\mathrm{d}u\mathrm{d}s)}^2.$$
(2.1)
According to Rayleigh-Ritz variational method (see e.g. ) it is enough to find a trial function $`\mathrm{\Phi }Q(q_0)`$ such that $`q[\mathrm{\Phi }]<0`$ to prove our proposition. We construct such trial function as follows. Let $`\phi `$ be an arbitrary function from the Schwartz space $`𝒮`$ such that $`\phi (s)=1`$ for $`|s|s_0`$. We use the external scaling, i.e. we define a family of functions

$$\phi _\sigma (s)=\{\begin{array}{ccc}\phi (s)\hfill & \mathrm{for}\hfill & |s|s_0\hfill \\ & & \\ \phi \left(\pm s_0+\sigma (ss_0)\right)\hfill & \mathrm{for}\hfill & |s|s_0\hfill \end{array}$$
(2.2)
with upper signs for $`ss_0`$, lower ones for $`ss_0`$. Now we take a function $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\sigma (s,u)=\sqrt{\frac{2}{d}}\phi _\sigma (s)\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi u}{2d}`$ as a trial function. After straightforward calculation we obtain

$`q[\mathrm{\Phi }_\sigma ]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{d}}{\displaystyle _{}}{\displaystyle _0^d}\left(\left|{\displaystyle \frac{d\phi _\sigma (s)}{ds}}\right|^2{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}^2\frac{\pi u}{2d}}{1u\gamma (s)}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}}\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)\left|\phi _\sigma (s)\right|^2\mathrm{cos}{\displaystyle \frac{\pi u}{d}}\right)duds`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma }{1d\gamma _+}}\dot{\phi }_{L^2()}^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d}}{\displaystyle _{s_0}^{s_0}}\gamma (s)ds.`$
The second term in this estimate is negative by assumption and it is independent of $`\sigma `$. Hence we can choose $`\sigma `$ so small that the whole functional is negative, which finishes the proof.

If we assume in addition e.g. that $`\gamma `$ has a compact support, we can see using simple Dirichlet-Neumann bracketing argument (see e.g. ) that the essential spectrum begins at the value $`\pi ^2/4d^2`$. So we can simply state the following

###### Corollary 1

Let $`\gamma `$ have a compact support and $`_{}\gamma (s)ds<0`$. Then the operator (1.2) has at least one discrete eigenvalue.

###### Proposition 2

Let there exist a positive real number $`s_0`$ such that $`\gamma (s)=0`$ for $`|s|s_0`$. Let $`_{s_0}^{s_0}\gamma (s)ds=0`$ and $`\gamma _{L^2()}>0`$. Then $`inf\sigma \left(L_\mathrm{\Omega }^{DN}\right)<\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}`$, i.e. there exists at least one positive discrete eigenvalue of $`L^{DN}`$.

Proof:  We use the same technique as in the proof of the Proposition 1. We only slightly modify the trial function. Instead of (2.2) we define for any $`\epsilon >0`$ a family of functions

$$\phi _{\sigma ,\epsilon }(s)=\{\begin{array}{ccc}\phi (s)\left(1\epsilon \gamma (s)\right)\hfill & \mathrm{for}\hfill & |s|s_0\hfill \\ & & \\ \phi \left(\pm s_0+\sigma (ss_0)\right)\hfill & \mathrm{for}\hfill & |s|s_0\hfill \end{array}$$
(2.3)
and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{\sigma ,\epsilon }(s,u)=\sqrt{\frac{2}{d}}\phi _{\sigma ,\epsilon }(s)\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi u}{2d}`$. We substitute this function into (2.1) and we obtain

$$q[\mathrm{\Phi }_{\sigma ,\epsilon }]\sigma \dot{\phi }_{L^2()}^2+\epsilon ^2\frac{\dot{\gamma }_{L^2()}^2}{1d\gamma _+}+\epsilon ^2\frac{\gamma _{L^3()}^3}{d}\epsilon \frac{2\gamma _{L^2()}^2}{d}.$$

The term linear in $`\epsilon `$ is negative and choosing $`\epsilon `$ sufficiently small, we can make it dominating over the quadratic one. Finally, we fix this $`\epsilon `$ and choose a small enough $`\sigma `$ to make the right hand side negative.

###### Remark 2

In fact we have used only one step of the original Goldstone and Jaffe construction of the trial function in the proof of the Proposition 1, i.e. the external scaling. We usually need in addition to deform somehow this trial function inside the interval, where original $`\phi (s)=1`$. In the present case this deformation is not necessary, because the first transverse mode function itself is a good trial function due to the different boundary conditions on both sides of the boundary. This deformation is required for the case with zero bending angle, which is seen in the proof of the Proposition 2.

This situation is similar to the proof of Theorem 5.1 in . An unbounded curved quantum layer in $`^3`$ with Dirichlet boundary condition is investigated there. It is proved that there exists at least one isolated eigenvalue provided the reference surface of the layer has a non-positive total Gauss curvature. If the total Gauss curvature is negative the proof does not require to add a deformation term to the “first transverse mode function” while for the zero case it is necessary.

## III Absence of the discrete spectrum

The “nonexistence” counterpart to Proposition 1 could be formulated as follows. Let there exist a positive real number $`s_0`$ such that $`\gamma (s)0`$ for $`s`$ satisfying $`|s|s_0`$ and $`_{s_0}^{s_0}\gamma (s)ds>0`$, then $`inf\sigma \left(L_\mathrm{\Omega }^{DN}\right)\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}`$. But this statement does not hold as the following example shows. Let us consider the quantum wire with following properties. There exist real numbers $`s_1<s_2<s_3<s_4`$ such that $`\gamma (s)=0`$ for $`s(\mathrm{},s_1)(s_2,s_3)(s_4,\mathrm{})`$, $`\gamma (s)<0`$ on $`(s_1,s_2)`$ and $`\gamma (s)>0`$ on $`(s_3,s_4)`$. According to our assumption $`_{}\gamma (s)ds>0`$. We take any function $`\phi (s)H^1()`$ such that $`\phi (s)=1`$ on $`(s_1,s_2)`$ and $`\phi (s)=0`$ on $`(s_3,s_4)`$. Then we construct a function $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\sqrt{\frac{2}{d}}\phi (s)\mathrm{sin}\frac{\pi u}{2d}`$. We substitute this function into the functional (2.1) and we get

$$q[\mathrm{\Phi }]=\dot{\phi }_{L^2()}^2+\frac{1}{d}_{s_1}^{s_2}\gamma (s)ds.$$

Hence $`q[\mathrm{\Phi }]<0`$ for $`d`$ small enough, i.e. for small width of the strip, because $`\gamma (s)<0`$ on $`(s_1,s_2)`$ and the first term does not depend on $`d`$.

We state the weaker proposition in the sequel, the nonexistence statement is its direct corollary. The proof of the proposition will use the following lemma.

###### Lemma 1

Let $`\lambda _0(\alpha )`$ be the lowest eigenvalue of the self-adjoint operator $`\frac{d^2}{du^2}+V(u)`$ acting in the Hilbert space $`L^2\left([0,d]\right)`$ with the domain $`D_\alpha =\{\psi AC^2\left([0,d]\right)|\psi (0)=0,\psi ^{}(d)+\alpha \psi (d)=0\}`$, where $`\alpha `$ is a real number and $`V`$ is a real measurable bounded function on $`[0,d]`$. Then for any $`\alpha _1\alpha _2`$$`\lambda _0(\alpha _1)\lambda _0(\alpha _2)`$. More precisely

$$\lambda _0(\alpha _2)\lambda _0(\alpha _1)+(\alpha _2\alpha _1)\frac{\psi _0(d)^2}{\psi _0^2},$$

where $`\psi _0`$ is a real eigenfunction corresponding to $`\lambda _0(\alpha _1)`$.

Proof:  For $`0<\epsilon <d`$ and $`3+\alpha _2\epsilon >0`$ we define a family of functions

$$\omega _\epsilon (u)=\{\begin{array}{ccc}0\hfill & for\hfill & 0ud\epsilon \hfill \\ & & \\ \frac{\alpha _1\alpha _2}{(3+\alpha _2\epsilon )\epsilon ^2}(ud+\epsilon )^3\psi _0(d)\hfill & for\hfill & d\epsilon ud.\hfill \end{array}$$

Now let $`\phi _{0,\epsilon }=\psi _0+\omega _\epsilon `$. Then obviously $`\phi _{0,\epsilon }C^2\left([0,d]\right)`$, $`\phi _{0,\epsilon }(0)=0`$ and $`\phi _{0,\epsilon }^{}(d)=\alpha _2\phi _{0,\epsilon }(d)`$. Hence $`\phi _{0,\epsilon }D_{\alpha _2}`$. Using integration by parts and the definitions of $`\phi _{0,\epsilon }`$ and $`\omega _\epsilon `$ we directly obtain

$$(\phi _{0,\epsilon },\phi _{0,\epsilon }^{\prime \prime }+V\phi _{0,\epsilon })_{L^2\left([0,d]\right)}=(\psi _0,\psi _0^{\prime \prime }+V\psi _0)_{L^2\left([0,d]\right)}+(\alpha _2\alpha _1)\psi _0(d)^2+𝒪(\epsilon )$$

and in the similar way

$$\phi _{0,\epsilon }^2=\psi _0^2+𝒪(\epsilon ^{\frac{3}{2}}).$$

According to Rayleigh-Ritz variational principle

$$\lambda _0(\alpha _2)\frac{(\phi _{0,\epsilon },\phi _{0,\epsilon }^{\prime \prime }+V\phi _{0,\epsilon })_{L^2\left([0,d]\right)}}{\phi _{0,\epsilon }^2}=\frac{\lambda _0(\alpha _1)\psi _0^2+(\alpha _2\alpha _1)\psi _0(d)^2+𝒪(\epsilon )}{\psi _0^2+𝒪(\epsilon ^{3/2})}.$$

Finally, for $`\epsilon 0^+`$ we have

$$\lambda _0(\alpha _2)\lambda _0(\alpha _1)+(\alpha _2\alpha _1)\frac{\psi _0(d)^2}{\psi _0^2}.\text{ }\text{ }$$

###### Remark 3

The operator defined in the previous lemma is really self-adjoint, it has the purely discrete spectrum and the eigenfunctions can be chosen real .

Now we are ready to prove the following proposition.

###### Proposition 3

Let $`\gamma (s)0`$ for every $`s`$. Then $`inf\sigma \left(L_\mathrm{\Omega }^{DN}\right)\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}`$.

Proof:  We are going to show that for every $`\mathrm{\Phi }Q(q_0)`$, the functional $`q[\mathrm{\Phi }]`$ is nonnegative. We decompose the function $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ to the transverse orthonormal basis, i.e.

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(s,u)=\underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\varphi _k(s)\chi _k(s;u),$$

where $`\chi _k(s;u)`$ are normalized eigenfunctions of the self-adjoint operator $`h(s)`$ acting in the Hilbert space $`L^2([0,d],(1u\gamma (s))\mathrm{d}u)`$ associated with the quadratic form

$$\stackrel{~}{q}_0(f,g)=_0^d\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)\overline{\frac{df(s;u)}{du}}\frac{dg(s;u)}{du}du$$

defined on the domain

$$Q(\stackrel{~}{q}_0)=\{\psi AC\left([0,d]\right)|\psi (s;0)=0\}$$

for almost every values of the parameter $`s`$. Let us denote by $`\lambda _k`$ the eigenvalues of this operator corresponding to eigenfunctions $`\chi _k`$. Then we can write the functional $`q`$ in the following form

$`q[\mathrm{\Phi }]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{}}ds{\displaystyle _0^d}du\left(\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }(s,u)}{s}}\right|^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{1u\gamma (s)}}+{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}|\varphi _k(s)\chi _k(s;u)|^2\left(\lambda _k{\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}}\right)\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)\right)`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle _{}}ds{\displaystyle _0^d}du|\varphi _k(s)\chi _k(s;u)|^2\left(\lambda _k{\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}}\right)\left(1u\gamma (s)\right).`$
So it is enough to show that the lowest eigenvalue $`\lambda _0(s)`$ of the operator $`h(s)`$ satisfies the condition $`\lambda _0\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}`$. It is easy to see that $`h(s)=\frac{d^2}{du^2}+\frac{\gamma (s)}{1u\gamma (s)}\frac{d}{du}`$ with the domain

$$D\left(h(s)\right)=\{\psi AC^2\left([0,d]\right)|\psi (s;0)=0,\psi ^{}(s;d)=0\}.$$

Therefore $`\chi _k(s;)`$ are solutions of the equation

$$\chi ^{\prime \prime }(s;u)+\frac{\gamma (s)}{1u\gamma (s)}\chi ^{}(s;u)=\lambda (s)\chi (s;u).$$
(3.1)
They are linear combinations of Bessel functions

$$\chi (s;u)=A(s)J_0\left(\frac{\sqrt{\lambda (s)}}{\gamma (s)}\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)\right)+B(s)N_0\left(\frac{\sqrt{\lambda (s)}}{\gamma (s)}\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)\right).$$

Imposing the prescribed boundary conditions we obtain the equation for $`\lambda (s)`$. So $`\lambda _0(s)`$ is the lowest solution of the equation

$$J_0\left(\frac{\sqrt{\lambda (s)}}{\gamma (s)}\right)N_1\left(\frac{\sqrt{\lambda (s)}}{\gamma (s)}\left(1d\gamma (s)\right)\right)N_0\left(\frac{\sqrt{\lambda (s)}}{\gamma (s)}\right)J_1\left(\frac{\sqrt{\lambda (s)}}{\gamma (s)}\left(1d\gamma (s)\right)\right)=0,$$
(3.2)
which will be used later.

Unitary transformation $`\psi (s;u)=\sqrt{1u\gamma (s)}\chi (s;u)`$ from $`L^2([0,d],\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)\mathrm{d}u)`$ onto $`L^2([0,d],\mathrm{d}u)`$ transforms our problem to the one of searching for the lowest eigenvalue of the operator

$$\stackrel{~}{h}(s)=\frac{d^2}{du^2}\frac{\gamma (s)^2}{4\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)^2}$$

on the domain

$$D\left(\stackrel{~}{h}(s)\right)=\{\psi AC^2\left([0,d]\right)|\psi (s;0)=0,\psi ^{}(s;d)+\frac{\gamma (s)}{2\left(1d\gamma (s)\right)}\psi (s;d)=0\}.$$
(3.3)
Let us introduce two more operators acting in the Hilbert space $`L^2\left([0,d]\right)`$, $`h_0=\frac{d^2}{du^2}`$ with the domain $`D\left(h(s)\right)`$ and $`h_1(s)=\frac{d^2}{du^2}`$ with the domain $`D\left(\stackrel{~}{h}(s)\right)`$. It is known that the lowest eigenvalue of $`h_0`$ is $`\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}`$. Let the lowest eigenvalue of $`h_1(s)`$ is denoted by $`\lambda _{0,1}(s)`$ and the corresponding real eigenfunction by $`\psi _0`$. The normalized eigenfunction corresponding to the lowest eigenvalue $`\lambda _0(s)`$ of the operator $`\stackrel{~}{h}(s)`$ is denoted by $`\psi _1`$. Using Lemma 1 and the Rayleigh-Ritz variational principle we can write

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}}`$ $``$ $`\lambda _{0,1}(s){\displaystyle \frac{\gamma (s)}{2\left(1\gamma (s)\right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\psi _0(s;d)^2}{\psi _0^2}}`$
$``$ $`\lambda _0(s){\displaystyle \frac{\gamma (s)}{2\left(1\gamma (s)\right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\psi _0(s;d)^2}{\psi _0^2}}+{\displaystyle _0^d}{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma (s)^2}{4\left(1u\gamma (s)\right)^2}}\left|\psi _1(s;u)\right|^2du`$
$``$ $`\lambda _0(s){\displaystyle \frac{\gamma (s)}{2\left(1\gamma (s)\right)}}{\displaystyle \frac{\psi _0(s;d)^2}{\psi _0^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\gamma (s)^2}{4\left(1d\gamma (s)\right)^2}}.`$
The eigenfunction $`\psi _0`$ is given by the equation

$$\psi _0^{\prime \prime }(s;u)=\lambda _{0,1}(s)\psi _0(s;u)$$

and it satisfies boundary conditions defined in (3.3). Hence $`\psi _0(s;u)=\mathrm{sin}\sqrt{\lambda _{0,1}(s)}u`$ and $`\lambda _{0,1}(s)`$ is the lowest solution of the equation

$$\sqrt{\lambda _{0,1}(s)}=\alpha (s)\mathrm{tan}\sqrt{\lambda _{0,1}(s)}d$$

where $`\alpha (s)=\frac{\gamma (s)}{2\left(1d\gamma (s)\right)}`$. Now necessarily $`\lambda _{0,1}(s)(\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2},\frac{\pi ^2}{d^2})`$ in accordance with the first estimate in (III). We can calculate

$$\frac{\psi _0(s;d)^2}{\psi _0^2}=\frac{\mathrm{sin}^2\sqrt{\lambda _{0,1}(s)}d}{\frac{d}{2}\frac{\mathrm{sin}2\sqrt{\lambda _{0,1}(s)}d}{4\sqrt{\lambda _{0,1}(s)}}}=\frac{2\lambda _{0,1}(s)}{d\left(\alpha (s)^2+\lambda _{0,1}(s)\right)+\alpha (s)}.$$

To see that $`\lambda _0(s)\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}`$, which we want to prove, it is now enough to show

$$\alpha (s)\frac{2\lambda _{0,1}(s)}{d\left(\alpha (s)^2+\lambda _{0,1}(s)\right)+\alpha (s)}\alpha (s)^20$$

due to (III). Using inequality $`\lambda _{0,1}(s)\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}`$ it can be seen that the inequality above holds provided

$$\frac{\pi ^2}{4}\frac{\gamma (s)^2d^2}{4\left(1d\gamma (s)\right)^2}\frac{1+\frac{d\gamma (s)}{2\left(1d\gamma (s)\right)}}{2\frac{d\gamma (s)}{2\left(1d\gamma (s)\right)}}$$
(3.5)
and $`d\gamma (s)<\frac{4}{5}`$. The right hand side of the inequality (3.5) is obviously increasing function of $`d\gamma (s)`$ and it reaches value $`0`$ for $`d\gamma (s)=0`$ and value $`2<\frac{\pi ^2}{4}`$ for $`d\gamma (s)=\frac{2}{3}`$.

In the remaining interval $`d\gamma (s)[\frac{2}{3},1)`$ we can study directly the equation (3.2) using up to the first four terms of the known expansions of Bessel functions into series . It can be seen that the equation cannot be satisfied for values $`d\gamma (s)[\frac{2}{3},1)`$ and $`\lambda _0<\frac{\pi ^2}{4d^2}`$.

###### Corollary 2

Let $`\gamma `$ satisfy the same assumption as in Proposition 3 and let it have a compact support. Then the operator (1.2) has no discrete eigenvalue.

## Acknowledgements

The authors thank Professor Pavel Exner and Professor Pierre Duclos for useful discussions. The work is supported by GA ASCR grant IAA 1048101.


text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Fault-tolerant quantum error correction (QEC) may be the best way to stabilize the operation of a quantum computer. The physical basis of QEC is an orchestrated flow of entropy from the computer’s qubits out to the environment. In thermodynamic terms, heat is generated in the computer by the imperfection of its operations and by noise sources; the computing qubits are then coupled to ancilliary qubits which have been prepared in low-entropy, i.e. ‘cold’, states, where the coupling is arranged to have the special property that most of the information content of the heat, but none of the information content of the logical computation, passes to the ancillas.

There are various ways to arrange the details of this process, the main ones which have been considered are (1) extract parity check information one bit at a time into groups of qubits prepared in (a close approximation to) ‘cat’ states ; (2) extract several parity checks simultaneously by using ancillas prepared in codeword states of quantum codes ; (3) use a quantum code of toric geometry so that each parity check only involves local groups of bits of finite size . It emerges that in all these methods the resources required to achieve very stable operation are such that the great majority of the qubits and operations of the computer have to be dedicated to this extraction of error information; the forward evolution of the logical computation is, as it were, a small subsidiary process proceeding on the back of the main business of stabilising the machinary. (For example, for each logic gate of the logical algorithm, there may be $`>10^4`$ in the QEC networks.)

The most basic physical requirements of a device which can perform quantum computation are mostly self-evident (a set of stable sytems to act as qubits, controllable coupling between these systems, a means of measuring the final state); a useful more detailed consideration of them has been provided by DiVincenzo . However, in view of the fact that what a quantum computer has to achieve is mostly QEC rather than a general algorithm, there exists a further basic consideration for the physical archicture: the physical device should be one which is well-suited to the requirements of QEC.

This paper will consider what those requirements are, and hence propose a set of desirable properties for quantum computing devices. Apart from the obvious ones of high precision and speed, the most important further properties which emerge are an emphasis on the ease with which information can flow (controllably) in the computer, a suitable geometrical structure of the quantum communication pathways, and the differing requirements of qubits which play differing roles in the computer.

## 2 Logical structure of quantum error correction

The cooling rate offered by QEC is restricted by two main limitations: the space-time size and structure of the network required to extract error syndromes fault-tolerantly, and the physical communication problem. The latter arises because qubits are physical entities which have to occupy physical locations, so that the reliability and speed with which one qubit can interact with another must decrease as a function of the distance between them. Also, measurements of qubits involve a quantum-to-classical communication which can be slow compared to quantum-quantum operations. The logical analysis of algorithms can completely ignore such issues, but when considering the physical requirements of the hardware, they are centrally important.

The communication problem been previously discussed for one type of error-correcting code and physical device (concatenated code and nearest-neighbour interactions ). Here I will make observations which have a wider range of applicability. Some of these are simple but not widely appreciated.

The QEC networks extract error syndromes. The best way to do this fault-tolerantly is either to use a code with a suitable topology  or to prepare encoded $`|0_L`$ states in ancilla blocks, purify these by verification measurements, and then couple each verified ancilla block to a data block to allow error information to pass to the ancilla, before measuring all the ancilla bits  (figure 1). The latter method works for all CSS codes; I adopt it because it allows measurements on encoded bits to be absorbed into the QEC process, which is a useful tool in fault-tolerant processing , because fault-tolerant universal sets of gates can be constructed most simply, and therefore robustly, for CSS codes , and the class includes good codes, i.e. ones with parameters $`[[n,k,d]]`$ such that the rate $`k/n`$ and relative distance $`d/n`$ both remain finite as $`n,k,d\mathrm{}`$ .

The syndrome extraction process under consideration has within it a natural hierarchy of communication needs. The qubits which must be coupled to one another most frequently are those within each ancilla block, since the network to prepare and verify an ancilla is large (thousands of 2-bit gates); to extract a reliable syndrome several ancilla blocks must be able to undergo controlled-not with a given data block; finally the logical algorithm progresses when one data block is coupled to another data block, but this happens infrequently, approximately once per syndrome extraction. All these statements concern the flow of information inside the computer, they need bear no relation to the physical structure of the computer, such as the physical locations of the qubits. The information flow they describe is summarized by figure 2.

Using the diagram, a recovery of the computer is summarized as follows. First a large number of gates operate on the front and back surfaces of figure 2, in only the vertical direction. Measurements are made of the verification bits at the top and bottom, and then the good ancillas are transported horizontally so that at least one good ancilla is adjacent to each data block. For simplicity, let us assume the whole front surface is good, though the argument will not depend on this. Then next the front surface couples to the inner plane, i.e. the data blocks, by either controlled-phase (for $`X`$ error correction) or controlled-not (for $`Z`$ error correction). Then the front surface is measured. For the blocks where a zero syndrome is deduced, nothing further happens, while for those blocks where the syndrome is non-zero, the pre-prepared (and as yet unused) good ancillas on the back surface are coupled to the data to extract further syndromes so that a majority vote can be taken. Finally, the result of the majority vote is used to decide what corrective action to apply, if any, and the relevant operation (one or more single-bit Pauli rotations) is applied directly to the data qubits. The process is repeated for the other type of error syndrome($`X`$ or $`Z`$), gates are then applied between data bits of different blocks to evolve the logical computation, and after this the recovery starts again.

## 3 Physical implications

Moving information around is the main activity of the computer. This process of moving information around is often summarized by the shorthand notation of a vertical ‘gate’ line extending over one or more horizontal ‘qubit’ lines in a quantum network diagram; figures 1 and 4 are examples. It is desirable to reduce the need for information transport represented by these vertical lines, and this can be done by careful network design (see below) but the networks involved in verifying ancillas are not amenable to being completely ‘untangled’ in this way. That is, it is not possible to arrange that the members of every pair of qubits involved in a conditional gate are neighbours when their coupling is required, unless the quantum information is shuffled around between the implementation of one controlled gate and the next. This is especially true when the networks are made as parallel as possible by using the Latin rectangle method described in .

For each controlled-not ($`{}_{}{}^{C}X`$) or controlled-phase ($`{}_{}{}^{C}Z`$) gate, therefore, qubits of information must be physically transported over relatively large distances. The same is true when prepared ancillas are transported horizontally in figure 2.

Recall that another large movement of information takes place at the outer surfaces of figure 2, namely the measurement of the ancillas and verification bits. The timescale of this quantum-to-classical communication in the measurement of the syndromes is important. Such measurement is useful in order that the required substantial processing of the syndromes can be done by reliable classical means, but the time required for this measurement can be a significant fraction of the total duration of the QEC process. Figure 1 gives an example assuming that the time for a single-qubit measurement is $`t_m25`$ times that of a $`{}_{}{}^{C}X`$ gate.This is a reasonable model of ion trap processors but it is not yet clear whether it is of other technologies. If instead a quantum network is used to interpret the syndrome in a unitary way, this further network will itself require a time large compared to the time of a single elementary gate and it must also allow qubits to be relaxed to $`|0`$.

The analysis above implies that the following are primary considerations in designing a robust quantum computer architecture: the physical structure of the computer should map onto the information flow diagram, so that those physical bits which have to communicate most frequently are able to do so most reliably (and for preference at high rate); the physical hardware should be well adapted to information transport; qubits which never need to interact directly, such as different physical bits in the same data block, should be prevented from doing so, in order to minimize correlated errors; fast measurements should be available for the verification and ancilla qubits.

A physical hardware which realizes these properties in a natural way is shown in figure 3. Although the information diagram of figure 2 is 3-dimensional, the front-back dimension is much smaller than the others (it could be 3 to 10 qubits, while the others are hundreds or thousands of qubits for a large computer), so in view of the difficulty of building controllable 3-dimensional structures, it makes sense to ‘squash’ the diagram into 2 dimensions while preserving the logical structure.

Logic gates between non-neighbouring qubits are still necessary, and there are many ways they can be accomplished, the main ones being (1) multiple swap-operations between nearest neighbours, (2) coupling to a physical entity such as a photon or phonon which propagates between the bits, (3) transport of the physical entity storing the qubit from one place to another. Teleportation may be combined with any of these. Models (1) and (2) have been discussed most often: (1) is a natural choice for several solid state technologies, but requires many swaps for each desired logic gate, therefore the swaps must be especially precise. (2) has advantages associated with the speed of light and the insensitivity of photons to electric field noise, but requires coupling between the qubits and light which is hard to engineer in such a way as to achieve all the communication represented in figure 2. Model (3) is a natural choice for qubits stored in the fine or hyperfine structure of movable ions or atoms, since the internal spin state is very well preserved when atoms are transported in vacuum; it may also be possible for electron spin qubits, with the electrons transported inside a semiconductor. The transport model offers the large degree of parallelism indicated in figure 3 in a simple way.

The thick vertical lines on figure 2 emphasize that most of the processing is that required for ancilla preparation and verification. One could envisage carrying out some of this using qubits stored in degrees of freedom such as phonons or photons which can interact simultaneously with several fixed qubits, in order to prepare ancillas in fewer operations. However, the following thermodynamic argument shows that not much can be gained that way. The whole purpose of the ancilla preparation is to prepare a physical entity in a state of low entropy, using operations (quantum gates and communication) which are noisy. This is possible because the structure of the network is itself a highly ordered entity. This structure is guaranteed by the classical device which controls the gates. The classical device is assumed to be highly reliable at this level, i.e. it will never generate gate operations in the wrong order, or on the wrong qubits, etc. In order that the structure of the network can allow sufficient negative entropy to flow into the preparation (along with the undesirable but unavoidable entropy from the noise) the network must be complicated and must involve a large number of separate operations having uncorrelated noise.

## 4 Typical gate distance

Suppose the speed and precision of a gate between qubits separated by distance $`s`$ scales as $`1+s/D`$; this is a reasonable estimate for model (1) with $`D=1`$ and for model (3) with $`D1`$. If a given computation requires a noise level below $`\gamma `$ per controlled-not gate without taking communication costs into account, and the gates are required between qubits separated on average by $`\overline{s}`$, then the precision required per local gate is of order $`\gamma /\overline{s}`$ and $`\gamma `$ in models (1) and (3) respectively. If the precision of memory must be below $`ϵ`$ per qubit-time-step without taking communication costs into account, then it must be of order $`ϵ/\overline{s}`$ and $`ϵ`$, in models (1) and (3) respectively.

In order to compare performances, and to interpret noise tolerance calculations which do not take communication costs directly into account, it is necessary to know the mean distance $`\overline{s}`$ for the networks involved in error correction. I have calculated this distance for two error correcting codes which have a special significance, namely the $`[[23,1,7]]`$ Golay code and the $`[[127,27,15]]`$ BCH code. The former has the best threshold behaviour when we take the measurement time into account ; the latter has an especially good combination of space efficiency and noise tolerance ; and the two combined produce a powerful concatenated code.

The calculation assumed the qubits of any given ancilla and its verification bits are layed out along a line, as in figs 2 and 3. The calculation explicitly considered the verification network (that labelled $`H`$ in fig. 1); the generation network $`G`$ is similar but simpler so $`H`$ gives a better guide to the requirements. The network was constructed by converting the check matrix $`H`$ into the form $`H=(IA)`$ where $`I`$ is an identity matrix and extracting $`A`$; a latin rectangle was constructed for $`A`$; this rectangle produces the verification network as discussed in . At this stage a network has been obtained which gives the set of logical gates between logical qubits as a function of time. The network was next converted into a “shuttled” form, in which each two-bit gate is assumed to consist of a transport of one of the two physical bits so that it becomes adjacent to the other, with the intermediate bits shifted upwards or downwards (as in a shift register), followed by the logical gate between the now neighbouring bits. The rest of the network is then adjusted to take account of the new bit locations. Thus the physical locations of the logical bits continually change as each successive gate is applied.

The details of the physical device will dictate what form these bit displacements take. For example, the effect of multiple swap operations is precisely the shift described, but if we transport bits as in fig. 3 then it is not necessary to shift the intermediate bits. In both cases the mean distance calculation works the same way, however, since it computes the distances between bits measured in units of the number of intervening bits.

The mean distance of the network is defined to be the separation of the physical bits involved in a given two-bit gate in the “shuttled” network at the time gate is applied, (i.e. just before the transport operation), averaged over all the gates of the network.

There is some flexibility in the construction of these networks. For example, there are many latin rectangles of minimum alphabet for the $`A`$ matrix, there is a choice of the ordering of the logical bits when the ancilla state is first generated, and there is a choice of which bit to transport in each gate. The network was optimized by the following procedure. First a latin rectangle of minimum alphabet was formed, and then adjusted so as to minimize the maximum number of occurences of any given symbol in the matrix without increasing the alphabet size. This minimizes the number of gates which must operate in parallel given that a network of fewest time steps is being used. Next the verification network was constructed from the latin rectangle, and then adjusted by use of a simulated annealing algorithm: the cost $`c`$ of a given change in the shuttled network was calculated and the change introduced with probability $`\mathrm{exp}(c/T)`$ where $`T`$ is a temperature measure which was slowly reduced (changes with $`c<0`$ were always incorporated). The changes which were tried in this way were random changes in the order of the bits of the ancilla at the beginning of the network, and a change in the choice of which bit to transport in each gate. The algorithm was designed to reduce the maximum separation of any gate in the shuttled network, and then among networks which agree on that to minimize the $`r.m.s.`$ separation. To accomplish this, first $`c=\mathrm{\Delta }(j\times \mathrm{max}(s))`$ was used, where $`\mathrm{max}(s)`$ is the maximum separation found in the shuttled network , and $`j`$ is the number of gates having this separation; whenever this $`c`$ was zero then $`c=\mathrm{\Delta }s^2^{1/2}`$ was used instead. The simulated annealing algorithm was run through many cycles of ‘heating’ followed by slow ‘cooling’ in order to search for a global minimum.

The resulting network for the case of the Golay code is shown in full in figure 4. This optimized network has a distribution of gate distances with mean $`\overline{s}_\mathrm{G}=6`$, median $`5`$ and maximum $`12`$. 12 gates act in parallel at the start of the network, and thereafter 7. The corresponding results for the $`[[127,2915]]`$ BCH code were $`\overline{s}_{\mathrm{BCH}}=22`$, median $`19`$, maximum $`72`$. 78 gates act in parallel at the start of the network, and thereafter 42. In both cases the mean distance can be reduced slightly if more gates act in parallel at some steps, or if a higher maximum distance is allowed. Also, further changes in the structure of the network may allow slight reductions in distance. A transport of the verification bits back out to the side locations may be useful before they are measured. Such a final transport would not influence the average distance of the network significantly.

A fairly large computer could be stabilized by means of the BCH code alone . In this case, and assuming a physical arrangement similar to that of fig 3, the results imply that a device where information transport is by swaps between nearest neighbours (method (1)) will require those swap operations to be approximately a factor 20 more precise than the controlled-gate operations of a device where low-noise transport (e.g. by method (3)) over a distance of $`D>20`$ qubits is available.

For very large quantum algorithms a concatenation of codes may be necessary. In this case, each of the logical bits in figure 2 has to be considered to be itself encoded and corrected; this adds a further two dimensions to the information flow diagram for each layer of concatenation. All these dimensions have to be compressed into a maximum of 3 for the physical device; I will assume 2 here for the layout of the qubits, the 3rd can be used for implementing gates and readout. The resulting structure could be for example as in figure 5. The inner, Golay, code works on the 23-bit inner blocks and its operation is dominated by the ancilla preparation and the gates between ancilla and data, therefore its noise threshold will be a factor $`f`$ lower for the swap operations in method (1) than for the controlled-gate operations in method (3), with $`f`$ in the range approximately 3 to $`\overline{s}_\mathrm{G}=6`$. For the outer, BCH, code, it is seen from fig. 5 that vertical distances (preparation and verification of ancillas) are multiplied by a factor 5, compared to the bare BCH code, if 4 ancillas per block are adopted for the inner code (as in fig. 5, this speeds the inner recovery time) or by a factor 3 if 2 ancillas per block are adopted. This gives a mean separation between $`3\overline{s}_{\mathrm{BCH}}=66`$ and $`5\overline{s}_{\mathrm{BCH}}=110`$ for the vertical network. Horizontal distances for the transport of ancillas and coupling to data are multiplied by 23, making a mean horizontal distance of order 50 if we assume the required ancilla transport distance at the outer level to be 2 on average.

Therefore if transport is by swap operations, the noise of these must be small enough to reduce the swap gate noise of the outer code by a factor in the range approximately 60 to 110, compared to the case of transport at no cost. Since the inner code is 3-error correcting, a reduction in physical gate noise by a factor $`110^{1/4}3.2`$ suffices. This is in addition to the factor 3 to 6 already mentioned, making 10 to 20 overall.

In model (3) the transport cost in the concatenated code is small if $`D>40`$ since then it is negligible for the inner recoveries, and the noise associated with the vertical transport distances up to approximately $`3D`$ only causes a small fractional change in the noise accumulating in the recovery networks for the Golay code. This is because most of the noise to be corrected by each inner recovery network then remains that associated with the inner network itself.

I conclude that for this concatenated code, the swap operations in model (1) must be an order of magnitude more precise than the controlled-gates in model (3), assuming the transport distance-scale $`D`$ in model (3) satisfies $`D>40`$.

To conclude overall, transportation of information is the main activity of a quantum computer stabilized by fault-tolerant QEC. This flow has a natural geometry, and the physical computer should be designed to reflect this geometry. The information flow needs to be fast within the ancillas, and moderately fast between ancillas and data, and between ancillas and a classical measuring device, but can be relatively slow elsewhere. The size and complexity of the set of operations to prepare ancillas cannot be further reduced unless the individual operations are made more precise, since otherwise insufficient entropy will be extracted. Mean transport distances for optimized networks to implement two important error correcting codes have been calculated. A computer based on physical qubits which can themselves be easily transported, as well as interact for gate operations, is attractive for achieving the right kind of information flow.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the EPSRC and the Research Training and Development and Human Potential Programs of the European Union.

References