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# Purification and detection of entangled coherent states

## I  Introduction

The preparation of two spatially separated traveling optical modes in entangled coherent states is of special interest since by representing an outcome of Schrödinger’s thought experiment Schrödinger (1935) and at the same time a state of a bipartite quantum system Bennett et al. (1996), it provides a link between philosopical underpinnings of quantum mechanics and applications in quantum information processing. On the other hand, this state has a chance of its experimental realization in the laboratory.

In this paper, we continue the study of two-mode entangled coherent states, whose preparation is investigated in Howell and Yeazell (2000a). The setup considered in Howell and Yeazell (2000a) applies a Mach-Zehnder interferometer equipped with a cross-Kerr element in each of two spatially separated modes. In turn, it may be regarded as a two-mode extension of an analogous single-mode configuration that is proposed in Gerry (1999) to prepare a superposition of two single-mode coherent states. Here, we put emphasis on the state transmission, purification and detection as subsequent steps of quantum state engineering. In doing so, these schemes can be linked to other work on detection and application of single- and two-mode quantum states. For example, a double-slit configuration in combination with a cross-Kerr element is used in Filip  to measure in terms of interference fringe contrast a variety of quantities representing measures of quantum state distance. Moreover, there is a number of works treating the properties of general interferometry with entangled coherent states Rice and Sanders (1998); Sanders and Rice (1999, 2000); Rice et al. (2000); Bartlett et al. (2001). Applications to quantum teleportation of one qubit are considered in Lee and Kim (2000) for the example of entangled single-photon states and in van Enk and Hirota (2001) for the example of entangled coherent states. In Lee and Kim (2000) also Bell’s inequality is studied and in van Enk and Hirota (2001) the effect of decoherence is analysed. A quantum nondemolition setup to detect presence of a single photon is proposed in Howell and Yeazell (2000b).

In the present work, we pay special attention to entanglement purification, which plays an important role in quantum information processing Bennett et al. (1996) and becomes a delicate issue especially if entangled macroscopically distinguishable quantum states are involved. In particular, we address the question of state evolution if a setup implementing an entanglement purification protocol is left on its own. It turns out that the state purifies itself, albeit with random parity.

The state preparation is achieved by a conditional state reduction connected with a measurement. With the consideration of a spatially extented configuration, the concept of entanglement comes into play. Entanglement cannot be observed in a local context. Therefore, for a such a conditional scheme to be meaningful, there should be an observer who, like a viewer of the drawings in the figures below, has an overlook of the actions performed elsewhere and their results. In our setups, this will be a third party located halfway between the two entangled parties and which communicates with them either by a classical or a quantum channel. Below, we will see that either channel type may be used, depending on the experimental situation.

## II  State preparation and transmission

The scheme relies on cross-Kerr couplers described by operators $`\widehat{K}_{jk}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\pi \widehat{n}_j\widehat{n}_k}`$, where $`\widehat{n}_j`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{a}_j^{}\widehat{a}_j`$, and beam splitters described by operators $`\widehat{U}_{jk}(T,R)`$ defined via the relation

$$\widehat{U}_{jk}^{}\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\widehat{a}_j}{\widehat{a}_k}\right)\widehat{U}_{jk}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}T& R\\ R^{}& T^{}\end{array}\right)\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\widehat{a}_j}{\widehat{a}_k}\right)$$
(1)
by their complex transmittance $`T`$ and reflectance $`R`$ obeying $`|T|^2`$ $`+`$ $`|R|^2`$ $`=`$ $`1`$. We start with the state preparation. Fig. 1 shows the overall setup.

The source of the entangled state consists of a device able to prepare a pulse in a single-photon state $`|1`$, which is fed into one of the input ports of a balanced beam splitter $`\widehat{U}_{23}(T=R=1/\sqrt{2})`$ whose second input port remains in the vacuum state $`|0`$. The pulse leaving this beam splitter is therefore prepared in an entangled two-mode state

$$\widehat{U}_{23}|1_2|0_3=\frac{|0_2|1_3+|1_2|0_3}{\sqrt{2}},$$
(2)
with a mode 2 traveling to Alice’s and a mode 3 traveling to Bob’s station. Alice and Bob use cross-Kerr couplers $`\widehat{K}_{02}`$ and $`\widehat{K}_{13}`$ to mix the received pulse with an incoming signal pulse corresponding to their signal mode 0 and 1, respectively. After that, each of them mixes the pulse from $`\widehat{U}_{23}`$ with one prepared in a coherent state $`|\beta `$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}(|\beta |^2/2)_k\beta ^k/\sqrt{k!}|k`$ (mode 4 and 5) using identical beam splitters $`\widehat{U}_{24}(T,R)`$ and $`\widehat{U}_{35}(T,R)`$, respectively, and performs photon number measurements.

If Alice and Bob detect with their photodetectors 0 and 1 photons as depicted in Fig. 1, their combined action on the signal state can be described by a (“conditional” ) two-mode operator

$`\widehat{Y}`$ $`=`$ $`{}_{2}{}^{}1|_31|_40|_50|\widehat{U}_{35}\widehat{U}_{24}\widehat{K}_{13}\widehat{K}_{02}|\beta _4|\beta _5\widehat{U}_{23}|1_2|0_{3}^{}`$ (3)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{TR0|\beta 1|\beta }{\sqrt{2}}}[(1)^{\widehat{n}_0}+(1)^{\widehat{n}_1}].`$
Note that with regard to the detection result as shown in Fig. 1, Alice’s photodetectors together with the beam splitter $`\widehat{U}_{24}`$ and the coherent state input may be regarded as a unit performing a detection

$${}_{2}{}^{}1|_40|\widehat{U}_{24}|\beta _4=\mathrm{e}^{\frac{|\beta |^2}{2}}(_21|T+_20|R\beta )$$
(4)
in mode 2 (the same holds for the corresponding unit on Bob’s side). When Alice’s and Bob’s signal pulses are initially prepared in coherent states $`|\alpha `$, the two-mode state of the signal pulses leaving $`\widehat{K}_{02}`$ and $`\widehat{K}_{13}`$ becomes

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{01}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{p}}}\widehat{Y}|\alpha _0|\alpha _1`$ (5)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{|\alpha _0|\alpha _1+|\alpha _0|\alpha _1}{\sqrt{2(1+\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2})}}}.`$
The probability

$`p`$ $`=`$ $`{}_{0}{}^{}\alpha |_1\alpha |\widehat{Y}^{}\widehat{Y}|\alpha _0|\alpha _{1}^{}`$ (6)
$`=`$ $`|TR0|\beta 1|\beta |^2(1+\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2})`$
takes for $`|T|^2`$ $`=`$ $`|\beta |^2`$ $`=`$ $`1/2`$ the maximal value

$$p_{\mathrm{max}}=\frac{1+\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2}}{8\mathrm{e}}(8\mathrm{e})^15\%,$$
(7)
which becomes for sufficiently large $`|\alpha |`$ independent of $`\alpha `$. Finally, the classical trigger signal confirming the desired photodetection result is sent to an (observing) third party.

We see that Eq. (5) is a superposition of macroscopically distinguishable states $`|\alpha _0|\alpha _1`$ and $`|\alpha _0|\alpha _1`$. This means that the two-mode entanglement of a single photon triggers the preparation of entangled coherent states with arbitrarily large amplitude $`|\alpha |`$. With regard to entanglement, the case $`|\alpha |`$ $``$ $`1`$ describes the situation of two Schrödinger’s cats Schrödinger (1935): The entangled single-photon state Eq. (2) represents the (microscopic) radioactive atom, the devices at Alice’s and Bob’s station represent the (amplifying) mechanisms releasing the poison, and the signal pulse whose state changes from the initial product state $`|\alpha _0|\alpha _1`$ to Eq. (5) represents two (macroscopic) cats, one of which is killed but it is uncertain which one.

* Alternative:

The state Eq. (5) can also be generated if Alice and Bob prepare the second input modes of $`\widehat{K}_{02}`$ and $`\widehat{K}_{13}`$ in coherent states $`|\beta `$ and send the respective output pulses to a third location where they are mixed using a beam splitter $`\widehat{U}_{23}^{}`$. If behind this beam splitter 1 and 0 photons are detected in mode 2 and 3, respectively, their action can again be described by a conditional operator

$`\widehat{\stackrel{~}{Y}}`$ $`=`$ $`{}_{2}{}^{}1|_30|\widehat{U}_{23}^{}\widehat{K}_{13}\widehat{K}_{02}|\beta _2|\beta _{3}^{}`$ (8)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{0|\beta 1|\beta }{\sqrt{2}}}[(1)^{\widehat{n}_0}+(1)^{\widehat{n}_1}],`$
and the signal state reads

$$\frac{1}{\sqrt{\stackrel{~}{p}}}\widehat{\stackrel{~}{Y}}|\alpha _0|\alpha _1=|\mathrm{\Psi }_{01}.$$
(9)
For $`\beta `$ $`=`$ $`1/\sqrt{2}`$ the success probability becomes $`\stackrel{~}{p}`$ $`=`$ $`4p_{\mathrm{max}}`$, compare Eq. (5) and Eq. (7). The result of this measurement does of course not affect the reduced signal state

$`\mathrm{Tr}_2(\widehat{K}_{02}|\alpha _0|\beta _2_0\alpha |_2\beta |\widehat{K}_{02}^{})`$
$`=C(|\beta |^2)|\alpha _0\alpha |+S(|\beta |^2)|\alpha _0\alpha |`$ (10)
as observed by Alice (analogously Bob) locally. It only changes the information available at the third location. In Eq. (10) we have used the functions

$`C(x)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{e}^x\mathrm{cosh}x,`$ (11a)
$`S(x)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{e}^x\mathrm{sinh}x.`$ (11b)
Let us now consider the transmission of a signal in a two-mode state $`\widehat{\varrho }(x)`$ along a lossy transmission line ranging from $`x`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ to $`x`$ $`=`$ $`l`$ (cf. Fig. 1). In order to model the scattering loss occuring during transmission, we insert at locations $`x_k`$ $`=`$ $`kL/n`$, $`k`$ $`=`$ $`0,1,\mathrm{}`$ beam splitters $`\widehat{U}_{0k}`$ with transmittances $`T_0^{1/n}`$ in Alice’s signal mode and beam splitters $`\widehat{U}_{1k}`$ with transmittances $`T_1^{1/n}`$ in Bob’s signal mode Schubert and Weber (1993). Here, $`T_{0/1}`$ $``$ $`[0,1]`$ define the scattering losses per given length $`L`$. If all the second input modes of these beam splitters are in the vacuum state, we obtain the relation

$`\widehat{\varrho }(x+L/n)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{Tr}_{kk^{}}\left[\widehat{U}_{1k^{}}\widehat{U}_{0k}|0_{kk^{}}\widehat{\varrho }(x)_{kk^{}}0|\widehat{U}_{0k}^{}\widehat{U}_{1k^{}}^{}\right]`$ (12)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{l,l^{}=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(T_0^{2/n}1)^l(T_1^{2/n}1)^l^{}}{l!l^{}!}}`$
$`\times \widehat{a}_1^l^{}\widehat{a}_0^lT_1^{\frac{\widehat{n}_1}{n}}T_0^{\frac{\widehat{n}_0}{n}}\widehat{\varrho }(x)T_0^{\frac{\widehat{n}_0}{n}}T_1^{\frac{\widehat{n}_1}{n}}\widehat{a}_0^l\widehat{a}_1^l^{}.`$
By expanding the exponentials and replacing differences with differentials one may verify that in the limit $`n`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}`$, Eq. (12) yields the well-known master equation of two damped harmonic oscillators Walls and Milburn (1994)

$$L\frac{\mathrm{d}\widehat{\varrho }(x)}{\mathrm{d}x}=\mathrm{ln}T_0_0\widehat{\varrho }(x)+\mathrm{ln}T_1_1\widehat{\varrho }(x),$$
(13)
where

$$_j\widehat{\varrho }=\widehat{n}_j\widehat{\varrho }2\widehat{a}_j\widehat{\varrho }\widehat{a}_j^{}+\widehat{\varrho }\widehat{n}_j.$$
(14)
(Note that the unitary state evolution describing the pulse propagation in free space is taken into account in the interaction picture, which may be envisaged as changing to a co-rotating frame in phase space.) It is sufficient to limit attention to states of the form

$$\widehat{\varrho }(x)=\frac{\widehat{\rho }_{\mathrm{inc}}+r\widehat{\rho }_{\mathrm{coh}}}{2[1+r\mathrm{e}^{2(|\alpha _0|^2+|\alpha _1|^2)}]},$$
(15)
where

$`\widehat{\rho }_{\mathrm{inc}}`$ $`=`$ $`|\alpha _0,\alpha _1\alpha _0,\alpha _1|+|\alpha _0,\alpha _1\alpha _0,\alpha _1|,`$
$`\widehat{\rho }_{\mathrm{coh}}`$ $`=`$ $`|\alpha _0,\alpha _1\alpha _0,\alpha _1|+|\alpha _0,\alpha _1\alpha _0,\alpha _1|`$
($`|\alpha ,\beta `$ $``$ $`|\alpha _0|\beta _1`$), with $`\alpha _j`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha _j(x)`$ being the complex amplitude and $`r`$ $`=`$ $`r(x)`$ being the purity parameter. To see this, consider Alice’s and Bob’s signal pulses which, after leaving $`\widehat{K}_{02}`$ and $`\widehat{K}_{13}`$, enter the transmission line at $`x`$ $`=`$ $`0`$. Their state $`\widehat{\varrho }(0)`$ $`=`$ $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{01}\mathrm{\Psi }|`$, with $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{01}`$ given Eq. (5), can be written in the form of Eq. (15) with

$`r(0)`$ $`=`$ $`1,`$ (16a)
$`\alpha _j(0)`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha .`$ (16b)
A solution of Eq. (13) obeying the initial condition Eqs. (16) is again given by a state of the form Eq. (15) with

$`r(x)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{e}^{2\left(2|\alpha |^2|\alpha _0|^2|\alpha _1|^2\right)},`$ (17a)
$`\alpha _j(x)`$ $`=`$ $`T_j^{\frac{x}{L}}\alpha .`$ (17b)
By inserting Eq. (17b) into Eq. (17a) we see that for large $`|\alpha |`$, the purity parameter $`r`$ decreases much faster then the amplitude $`|\alpha |`$. If the length of the transmission line $`l`$ is small compared to the characteristic length $`L`$ of transparency, we may therefore neglect the damping of the amplitude and the parameters of the state at the end of the transmission line can be approximated by

$`r(l)`$ $`\stackrel{lL}{}`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left[4|\alpha |^2\left(\mathrm{ln}T_0+\mathrm{ln}T_1\right)l/L\right],`$ (18a)
$`\alpha _j(l)`$ $`\stackrel{lL}{}`$ $`\alpha .`$ (18b)
Note that the sensitivity to decoherence is due to the fact that the entangled states are amplified to macroscopic level. The amplitude plays here the role of the separating parameter as does the spatial separation in case of two particles. The information contained in the entanglement itself (see below) is not inreased by Alice’s and Bob’s local operations and does not exceed one ebit van Enk and Hirota (2001) as originally prepared in Eq. (2). While the limit $`|\alpha |`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}`$ represents an unstable state, comparable to a bowl sitting on a sphere, that cannot be perpetuated, the type invariance of the state Eq. (15) under the influence of transmission loss makes it a candidate for a carrier of quantum information in the mesoscopic regime.

## III  State purification

### III.1  Principle

At the receiving end of the transmission line, there is another pair of stations run by, say, Claire and Denis, who receive a state $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$ given by Eq. (15) together with Eqs. (18). Their task is to rebuild the original pure Schrödinger cat-like entangled state $`\widehat{\varrho }(0)`$ as given in Eq. (5). If Claire and Denis can communicate with a third party by means of classical signals only, they must distill $`\widehat{\varrho }(0)`$ from a number of preparations $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$.

Since we have assumed that the change of the complex amplitude due to scattering loss during transmission can be neglected, compare Eqs. (18), the only complex amplitudes occuring in the signal state are $`\pm \alpha `$. On the other hand, for sufficiently small $`\mathrm{exp}(|\alpha |^2)`$, the coherent states $`|+\alpha `$ and $`|\alpha `$ become orthogonal, and therefore form an orthonormal basis, which we denote by $``$ corresponding to $`\alpha `$ and $``$ corresponding to $`\alpha `$. In this way, the signal pulses can be regarded as a bipartite quantum system. The signal state $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$ at the exit of the transmission line can then be rewritten as a mixture

$`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{||+||}{2}}+r{\displaystyle \frac{||+||}{2}}`$ (19)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1+r}{2}}|\mathrm{\Psi }^+\mathrm{\Psi }^+|+{\displaystyle \frac{1r}{2}}|\mathrm{\Psi }^{}\mathrm{\Psi }^{}|`$
of the Bell states

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }^\pm =\frac{|\pm |}{\sqrt{2}}.$$
(20)
In Bennett et al. (1996), the entanglement of formation $`E`$ of a state $`\widehat{\varrho }`$ of a bipartite quantum system is defined and discussed. For a general mixture of Bell states, the expression

$$E=x_+\mathrm{log}_2x_+x_{}\mathrm{log}_2x_{}$$
(21)
is obtained, where $`x_\pm `$ $`=`$ $`1/2\pm \sqrt{p(1p)}`$, with $`p`$ being the maximum of $`1/2`$ and the eigenvalues of $`\widehat{\varrho }`$. For the mixture Eq. (19), this is $`p`$ $`=`$ $`(1+|r|)/2`$. A plot of the entanglement Eq. (21) as a function of $`|r|`$ of the state Eq. (19) in Fig. 5 (solid line) reveals that in the case considered here, entanglement and purity can be regarded as synonyms. In this sense, the state purification and detection represent an entanglement purification and detection.

Let us explain the method of purification we are going to apply before considering its physical implementation. Detailed work on general properties of purification protocols is done in Bennett et al. (1996). Fig. 2 shows the principle.

Each unit $`\widehat{U}`$ describes a two-qubit quantum gate whose action is defined by

$$\widehat{U}\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\hfill |& & & \\ \hfill |& & & \\ \hfill |& & & \\ \hfill |& & & \end{array}\right)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\hfill 1& \hfill 1& \hfill 0& \hfill 0\\ \hfill 0& \hfill 0& \hfill 1& \hfill 1\\ \hfill 0& \hfill 0& \hfill 1& \hfill 1\\ \hfill 1& \hfill 1& \hfill 0& \hfill 0\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\hfill |& & & \\ \hfill |& & & \\ \hfill |& & & \\ \hfill |& & & \end{array}\right).$$
(22)
The detection devices D at the output modes 2 and 3 of these gates detect either a state $`|`$ or $`|`$. Initially, the two signal modes 0 and 1 are prepared in a state Eq. (19). The same holds for the input modes 2 and 3 of all gates. The output state $`\widehat{\varrho }^{(n)}`$ of the signal modes 0 and 1 after the $`n`$th step can be obtained by applying Eq. (22) to Eq. (19) after straightforward algebra. It is given by

$`\widehat{\varrho }^{(n=2k)}={\displaystyle \frac{1+R_n}{2}}|\mathrm{\Psi }^+\mathrm{\Psi }^+|+{\displaystyle \frac{1R_n}{2}}|\mathrm{\Psi }^{}\mathrm{\Psi }^{}|,`$ (23a)
$`\widehat{\varrho }^{(n=2k+1)}={\displaystyle \frac{1+R_n}{2}}|\mathrm{\Phi }^+\mathrm{\Phi }^+|+{\displaystyle \frac{1R_n}{2}}|\mathrm{\Phi }^{}\mathrm{\Phi }^{}|.`$ (23b)
The switch from $`|\mathrm{\Psi }^\pm `$ to the Bell states

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }^\pm =\frac{|\pm |}{\sqrt{2}}.$$
(24)
in case of odd $`n`$ is not relevant for our considerations since the $`|\mathrm{\Psi }^\pm `$ may be reobtained by applying a single-qubit gate in mode 0 or 1. The purity parameter follows from the recursion

$`R_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{R_{n1}\pm r}{1\pm rR_{n1}}},`$ (25a)
$`R_0`$ $`=`$ $`r.`$ (25b)
A plus sign has to be used if the same state is detected in mode 2 and 3 during the $`n`$th step, and a minus sign if different states are detected. The respective probabilities are

$$p_\pm =\frac{1\pm rR_{n1}}{2}.$$
(26)
We see that if $`R_{n1}`$ $`=`$ $`\pm 1`$ then $`R_n`$ $`=`$ $`\pm 1`$. That is, a pure signal state remains unchanged, independently of $`r`$. On the other hand, if $`r`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ then $`R_n`$ $`=`$ $`R_{n1}`$, i.e., the setup cannot alter the signal state without “resources” . Furthermore, if $`|R_{n1}|`$ $`<`$ $`1`$ and assuming that $`|r|`$ $`<`$ $`1`$, we obtain $`|R_n|`$ $`<`$ $`1`$, i.e., a mixed signal state cannot be purified in a finite number of steps. Assume now that we don’t know the measurement results. The identity

$$p_+\left(\frac{R_{n1}+r}{1+rR_{n1}}\right)+p_{}\left(\frac{R_{n1}r}{1rR_{n1}}\right)=R_{n1}$$
(27)
reveals that the expectation value of the purity parameter is not altered from step to step and therefore given by the initial value r. The change of variance during the $`n`$th step is the average of the term

$`p_+\left({\displaystyle \frac{R_{n1}+r}{1+rR_{n1}}}r\right)^2+p_{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{R_{n1}r}{1rR_{n1}}}r\right)^2`$ (28)
$`(R_{n1}r)^2`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r^2(1R_{n1}^2)^2}{1r^2R_{n1}^2}}`$
over the distribution of $`R_{n1}`$. We see that this change is positive unless the distribution of $`R_{n1}^2`$ is sharp with $`R_{n1}^2`$ $`=`$ $`1`$. The probability distribution of a random variable $`R_{\mathrm{}}`$ $``$ $`[1,1]`$ with a given expectation value $`r`$ $``$ $`[1,1]`$ that maximises variance however is $`R_{\mathrm{}}`$ $`=`$ $`\pm 1`$ with probability $`(1\pm r)/2`$. This is just the asymptotic probability distribution of the purity parameter $`R_n`$ for $`n`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}`$ obtained by running the scheme Fig. 2 without knowing or performing detections. If the detection results are known, the progression of the $`R_n`$ \[and with it the signal state $`\widehat{\varrho }^{(n)}`$\] can be computed from Eqs. (25). The random walk of the purity parameter resulting from a monitored free run of the scheme Fig. 2 is simulated in Fig. 3.

As Fig. 3 illustrates, $`R_{\mathrm{}}`$ $`=`$ $`\pm 1`$ with probability $`(1\pm r)/2`$. If the initial value $`r`$ is unknown, the output state will be unknown, but the progress of the purification can still be monitored on the basis of the joint probabilities Eq. (26). The purification is completed as soon as they no longer fluctuate. A successful purification is identified by the inequality $`p_+`$ $`>`$ $`p_{}`$.

By repeatedly running the simulation Fig. 3 one may estimate the average number $`\overline{n}`$ of steps until $`1|R_n|`$ has fallen below a given $`\epsilon `$ $``$ $`1`$. For instance, $`\epsilon `$ $`=`$ $`10^5`$ gives

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill r\\ \hfill \overline{n}\end{array}\begin{array}{ccccccccc}\hfill 0.9& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.8}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.7}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.6}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.5}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.4}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.3}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.2}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}0.1}\\ \hfill 5& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}7}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}10}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}14}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}23}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}37}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}66}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}154}& \hfill \mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}609}\end{array}$$

depending on $`r`$, which tells the average number of steps needed until the variance of the $`R_n`$-distribution remains constant and purification is completed.

An observer unaware of the measurement outcome of the $`n`$th step observes the average

$$p_+\widehat{\varrho }_{|+}^{(n)}+p_{}\widehat{\varrho }_|^{(n)}=\widehat{\varrho }_{(\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Phi })}^{(n1)}$$
(29)
of the states $`\widehat{\varrho }_{|\pm }^{(n)}`$ resulting from events $`\pm `$ with probabilities $`p_\pm `$, compare Eqs. (25) and Eq. (26), which is, apart from the Bell state flip, just the state before this step. As a consequence, such an observer perceives states according to Eqs. (23) but with Eqs. (25) replaced with $`R_n`$ $`=`$ $`R_0`$. In this sense, the scheme in Fig. 2 represents a “quantum state guide” for an arbitrary mixture of either $`|\mathrm{\Psi }^\pm `$ or $`|\mathrm{\Phi }^\pm `$.

### III.2  Implementation

Let us consider, e.g., Claire’s equipment. In order to implement the operation Eq. (22) on coherent states, she may be equipped with a device shown in Fig. 4.

The scheme consists of mirrors M1 and M2 removable on demand and two cross-Kerr couplers $`\widehat{K}_{06}`$ and $`\widehat{K}_{24}`$, themselves coupled to each other by a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The latter consists of balanced beam splitters $`\widehat{U}_{46}(T=R=1/\sqrt{2})`$ and $`\widehat{U}_{64}(T=R=1/\sqrt{2})`$ and is fed with a pulse in a single-photon state $`|1`$. (Alternatively, a coherent state may be used instead.) After passing the cross-Kerr couplers, this photon is detected either in mode 4 or mode 6, depending on whether the ON/OFF-detector gives a signal or not. (An ON/OFF-detector is a photodetector able to discriminate between absence and presence of photons. In Fig. 4 this is denoted by $`j,k`$ $`=`$ 0 and 1 “clicks” , respectively.) The purpose of the detection device drawn in dashed lines is to discriminate between coherent states $`|\pm \alpha `$. In our application, the reduced state at its input port will be a mixture of coherent states $`|\pm \alpha `$, therefore this discrimation can be achieved by mixing the input with a pulse in a coherent state $`|\alpha `$ using beam splitter $`\widehat{U}_{28}(T=R=1/\sqrt{2})`$ and detecting photon presence with an ON/OFF-detector in mode 8. The detector can only give a signal if the sign of the coherent state at the input is negative.

To see how the scheme works, we remove mirrors M1 and M2, and assume that the input mode 2 is prepared in a coherent state $`|\pm \alpha `$. If the ON/OFF-detectors give $`j`$ and $`k`$ clicks ($`j,k`$ $`=`$ $`0,1`$) as shown in the figure, the action of the whole setup on the signal mode 0 can be described by a conditional single-mode operator

$`\widehat{Y}_0(\pm \alpha |j,k)`$
$`=_2(1)^k\alpha |_4j|_61j|\widehat{U}|1_4|0_6|\pm \alpha _2`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1)^{k(\widehat{n}_0+j)}\mathrm{e}^{|\alpha |^2}\left[\mathrm{e}^{\pm |\alpha |^2}(1)^{\widehat{n}_0+j}+\mathrm{e}^{|\alpha |^2}\right]`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(1)^{k(\widehat{n}_0+j)}(1)^{\widehat{n}_0+j}(\mathrm{e}^{|\alpha |^2}1),`$ (30)
where $`\widehat{U}`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{U}_{64}\widehat{K}_{24}\widehat{K}_{06}\widehat{U}_{46}`$. Assume now that Claire receives two consecutive pulses from Alice, each corresponding to a state of the form $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$ given by Eq. (15) together with Eqs. (18). Let us further assume that the purity parameter of the first is $`R`$ \[we denote this state by $`\widehat{\varrho }_{01}(R)`$\] and the second $`r`$. Claire feeds the first pulse into $`\widehat{K}_{06}`$ (i.e., M1 removed) and the second into $`\widehat{K}_{24}`$ (i.e., M1 inserted). Denis, who is equipped with an equivalent device described by an analogous operator $`\widehat{Y}_1`$, does the same with the two pulses he receives from Bob. The state of the pulses leaving the signal outputs (M2 removed) can then be written as

$`\widehat{\varrho }^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{p}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2(1+r\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2})}}`$ (31)
$`\times [\widehat{Y}_0(\alpha )\widehat{Y}_1(\alpha )\widehat{\varrho }_{01}(R)\widehat{Y}_0^{}(\alpha )\widehat{Y}_1^{}(\alpha )`$
$`+\widehat{Y}_0(\alpha )\widehat{Y}_1(\alpha )\widehat{\varrho }_{01}(R)\widehat{Y}_0^{}(\alpha )\widehat{Y}_1^{}(\alpha )`$
$`+r\widehat{Y}_0(\alpha )\widehat{Y}_1(\alpha )\widehat{\varrho }_{01}(R)\widehat{Y}_0^{}(\alpha )\widehat{Y}_1^{}(\alpha )`$
$`+r\widehat{Y}_0(\alpha )\widehat{Y}_1(\alpha )\widehat{\varrho }_{01}(R)\widehat{Y}_0^{}(\alpha )\widehat{Y}_1^{}(\alpha )],`$
where $`\widehat{Y}_l(\pm \alpha )`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{Y}_l(\pm \alpha |j_l,k_l)`$. By inserting the approximated expression of Eq. (30) into Eq. (31), we obtain

$`\widehat{\varrho }^{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2^4p}}{\displaystyle \frac{(1+R^{}\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2})}{(1+r\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2})}}{\displaystyle \frac{[1+(1)^{j_0+j_1}rR]}{(1+R\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2})}}`$ (32)
$`\times \widehat{P}\widehat{\varrho }_{01}(R^{})\widehat{P}^{}.`$
Here,

$$\widehat{P}=(1)^{k_0\widehat{n}_0+(1k_1)\widehat{n}_1}$$
(33)
is a product of phase shifts which Claire and Denis may compensate by inserting appropriate phase plates into their signal modes. In this way, a signal output state $`\widehat{\varrho }_{01}(R^{})`$ can be prepared that has the same form as the input state $`\widehat{\varrho }_{01}(R)`$ except for the purity parameter which has changed to

$$R^{}=\frac{R+(1)^{j_0+j_1}r}{1+(1)^{j_0+j_1}rR}.$$
(34)
From Eq. (32) we obtain the probability

$$p(j_0,k_0,j_1,k_1)\frac{1+(1)^{j_0+j_1}rR}{2^4}(\mathrm{e}^{|\alpha |^2}1).$$
(35)
Claire and Denis may now insert a mirror M2 after the first run to feed the output pulse with purity parameter $`R^{}`$ back into the input port while at the same time a new signal pulse from the transmission line with purity parameter $`r`$ enters the other input port via M1. In this way, the purity parameter of the signal pulse circulating in the feedback loop changes stepwise, e.g., after having completed its $`n`$th round trip according to Eqs. (25) with probability Eq. (26). A positive (negative) sign is realized if $`j_0`$ $`+`$ $`j_1`$ is even (odd). Claire’s and Denis’s only remaining task is to transmit the measurement results $`j`$ and $`k`$ to a third party where they are collected. In those cases when $`R`$ $``$ $`1`$, the third party answers them with the instruction to open their mirrors M2.

* Alternative:

If Claire and Denis have the option to send a light pulse to a third party, they may proceed as in the alternative explained in Sec. II. The action of the conditional operator Eq. (8) on the signal state $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$ then yields

$$\frac{1}{p}\widehat{\stackrel{~}{Y}}\widehat{\varrho }(l)\widehat{\stackrel{~}{Y}}^{}=(1)^{\widehat{n}_1}\widehat{\varrho }(0)(1)^{\widehat{n}_1},$$
(36)
i.e., after an additional phase shift $`(1)^{\widehat{n}_1}`$, the original pure state is reobtained in an instant without need for additional signal pulses. The success probability becomes

$`p`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{|0|\beta 1|\beta |^2(1+r)(1+\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2})}{1+r\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2}}}`$ (37)
$`=`$ $`4p_{\mathrm{max}}{\displaystyle \frac{1+r}{1+r\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2}}}(|\beta |^2=1/2),`$
compare Eq. (7).

## IV  State detection

We return to Fig. 1. Assume that Claire and Denis receive a sequence of signal pulses sent by Alice and Bob via the lossy transmission line, each in a state $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$ given by Eq. (15) together with Eqs. (18). Their task is now to measure the purity parameter $`r`$ which is assumed to be completely unknown. Neither Claire nor Denis is able to perform this measurement alone, since their reduced signal state becomes according to

$`\mathrm{Tr}_{0/1}\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2(1+r\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2})}}[(|\alpha \alpha |+|\alpha \alpha |)`$ (38)
$`+r\mathrm{e}^{2|\alpha |^2}(|\alpha \alpha |+|\alpha \alpha |)]`$
a mixture of $`|\alpha `$ and $`|\alpha `$ for small $`\mathrm{exp}(|\alpha |^2)`$. Claire and Denis can however insert a photodetector into their signal mode and send a classical bit to a third party depending on whether they have detected an even (event $`e`$) or odd (event $`u`$) number of photons. After a certain number of trials, the third party estimates the coincidence rate

$$M=p(e,e)+p(u,u)p(e,u)p(u,e)$$
(39)
of even and odd events in Claire’s and Denis’s measurement. Inserting the joint probability

$`p(m,n)`$ $`=`$ $`{}_{0}{}^{}m|_1n|\widehat{\varrho }(l)|m_0|n_{1}^{}`$ (40)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{|m|\alpha n|\alpha |^2[1+r(1)^{m+n}]}{1+r\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2}}}`$
of detecting $`m`$ photons in mode 0 and $`n`$ photons in mode 1 gives

$`M`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{m,n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}[p(2m,2n)+p(2m+1,2n+1)`$ (41)
$`p(2m,2n+1)p(2m+1,2n)]`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{r+\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2}}{1+r\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2}}}r(\mathrm{e}^{|\alpha |^2}1).`$
In this way, the purity parameter can be measured as coincidence rate. This possibility is however cumbersome and difficult to implement since a discrimination between even and odd photon numbers requires single-photon resolution of the photodetectors for $`|\alpha |1`$.

* Alternative:

It is however possible to measure $`r`$ nondestructively at a separate location. To achieve this, Claire and Denis prepare modes 6 and 7 in coherent states $`|\gamma `$. After coupling them to the signal modes by cross-Kerr couplers $`\widehat{K}_{06}`$ and $`\widehat{K}_{17}`$, these auxiliary modes are recombined in a double-slit setup as shown in Fig. 1. The purity parameter $`r`$ can there be observed directly as the contrast of the interference fringes emerging on the screen. To see this, we first define the operator

$$\widehat{I}=\widehat{U}^{}(\widehat{a}_6+\widehat{a}_7)^{}(\widehat{a}_6+\widehat{a}_7)\widehat{U},$$
(42)
where

$$\widehat{U}=\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}(\phi _6\widehat{n}_6+\phi _7\widehat{n}_7)}$$
(43)
depends on the phases $`\phi _6`$ and $`\phi _7`$ corresponding to the optical distances between the given point on the screen and aperture 6 or 7. The observed light intensity at some given point on the screen is then approximately given by the expectation value

$$I\widehat{I}=\mathrm{Tr}_{67}(\widehat{\varrho }_{67}\widehat{I}),$$
(44)
compare Schubert and Weber (1993). Here, $`\widehat{\varrho }_{67}`$ is the state of the two modes corresponding to the two input ports (slits or pinholes). While the spatial distribution of the interference pattern is determined by the geometry of the setup \[and the response of the photographic medium or eye which is assumed to be linear in Eq. (42)\], its contrast is determined by the input state. Inserting

$$\widehat{\varrho }_{67}=\mathrm{Tr}_{01}\left(\widehat{K}_{17}\widehat{K}_{06}|\gamma _6|\gamma _7\widehat{\varrho }(l)_6\gamma |_7\gamma |\widehat{K}_{06}^{}\widehat{K}_{17}^{}\right)$$
(45)
yields

$$\widehat{I}=2|\gamma |^2\left(1+\frac{r+\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2}}{1+r\mathrm{e}^{4|\alpha |^2}}\mathrm{cos}\mathrm{\Delta }\phi \right),$$
(46)
whose maxima and minima

$$I_{_{\mathrm{min}}^{\mathrm{max}}}2|\gamma |^2(1\pm |M|),$$
(47)
compare Eq. (41), are located at those of the phase difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }\phi =\phi _7\phi _6`$. The contrast (visibility) is defined by

$$\frac{I_{\mathrm{max}}I_{\mathrm{min}}}{I_{\mathrm{max}}+I_{\mathrm{min}}}=|M||r|(\mathrm{e}^{|\alpha |^2}1).$$
(48)
The sign of $`r`$ follows from the intensity at the symmetry center of the setup for which $`\mathrm{\Delta }\phi `$ $`=`$ $`0`$. If $`r`$ $`>`$ $`0`$, $`I_{\mathrm{max}}`$ is observed, otherwise $`I_{\mathrm{min}}`$. In this way, the contrast of the interference seen on the screen provides a direct “naked-eye” estimation of the purity and entanglement. Note that since $`r`$ is the only unknown parameter, its determination here amounts to a complete knowledge of the state $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$.

To estimate the measurement accuracy of the interference contrast, we consider the variance of $`\widehat{I}`$. By applying Eq. (45) we obtain

$`\sigma ^2I`$ $``$ $`\widehat{I}^2\widehat{I}^2`$
$`=4|\gamma |^4(\mathrm{cos}^2\mathrm{\Delta }\phi 1)+2(1+2|\gamma |^2)\widehat{I}\widehat{I}^2,`$
and inserting Eq. (47) gives the relative uncertainties

$$\frac{\sigma ^2I_{_{\mathrm{min}}^{\mathrm{max}}}}{I_{_{\mathrm{min}}^{\mathrm{max}}}^2}=\frac{1+2|\gamma |^2}{|\gamma |^2(1\pm |M|)}1$$
(50)
of the intensity extremals. We now use these to estimate the relative uncertainty

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma ^2|M|}{|M|^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\left(\frac{|M|}{I_{\mathrm{max}}}\right)^2\sigma ^2I_{\mathrm{max}}+\left(\frac{|M|}{I_{\mathrm{min}}}\right)^2\sigma ^2I_{\mathrm{min}}}{|M|^2}}`$ (51)
$`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{2I_{\mathrm{max}}I_{\mathrm{min}}}{I_{\mathrm{max}}^2I_{\mathrm{min}}^2}}\right)^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{\sigma ^2I_{\mathrm{max}}}{I_{\mathrm{max}}^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma ^2I_{\mathrm{min}}}{I_{\mathrm{min}}^2}}\right)`$
of the contrast. After inserting Eq. (50) together with Eq. (47), Eq. (51) becomes

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\sigma ^2|M|}{|M|^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{|M|^21}{2}}\left(|\gamma |^2+1+|M|^2\right).`$ (52)
For $`|\gamma |`$ $``$ $`0`$ it diverges according to $`(|M|^2\sigma ^2|M|)`$ $``$ $`|\gamma |^2`$ as in the case of a classical interference experiment with coherent states. As a consequence, a long series of repetitions is required to obtain reliable data.

The question arises, how this nondemolition measurement affects the state of the signal pulses. The reduced signal state at the output ports of $`\widehat{K}_{06}`$ and $`\widehat{K}_{17}`$ can be written as

$`\mathrm{Tr}_{67}\left(\widehat{K}_{17}\widehat{K}_{06}|\gamma _6|\gamma _7\widehat{\varrho }(l)_6\gamma |_7\gamma |\widehat{K}_{06}^{}\widehat{K}_{17}^{}\right)`$
$`=C\widehat{\varrho }(l)+S\left[(1)^{\widehat{n}_1}\widehat{\varrho }(l)(1)^{\widehat{n}_1}\right]`$
$`\widehat{\varrho }(x>l),`$ (53)
where $`C`$ $`=`$ $`C(2|\gamma |^2)`$ and $`S`$ $`=`$ $`S(2|\gamma |^2)`$, compare Eqs. (11). Eq. (53) reveals that the effect of the measurement on the signal state $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$ can be neglected if $`|\gamma |^2`$ $``$ $`1`$, independently of $`|\alpha |`$, i.e., the separation of the coherent states. To analyse the remaining entanglement, we write Eq. (53) in a form analogous to Eq. (19),

$`\widehat{\varrho }(x>l)=`$
$`C{\displaystyle \frac{(||+||)+r(||+||)}{2}}`$
$`+S{\displaystyle \frac{(||+||)+r(||+||)}{2}}`$
$`=C{\displaystyle \frac{1+r}{2}}|\mathrm{\Psi }^+\mathrm{\Psi }^+|+C{\displaystyle \frac{1r}{2}}|\mathrm{\Psi }^{}\mathrm{\Psi }^{}|`$
$`+S{\displaystyle \frac{1+r}{2}}|\mathrm{\Phi }^+\mathrm{\Phi }^+|+S{\displaystyle \frac{1r}{2}}|\mathrm{\Phi }^{}\mathrm{\Phi }^{}|.`$ (54)
Eq. (54) reveals that $`\widehat{\varrho }(x>l)`$ is now a mixture of all four Bell states. Inserting $`p`$ $`=`$ $`C(1+|r|)/2`$ into Eq. (21) gives the entanglement of formation remaining after the nondemolition measurement. Fig. 5 (dashed line) shows a plot of $`E(|\gamma |)`$ if the signal was in a pure state prior to entering the cross-Kerr elements, $`r`$ $`=`$ $`1`$. The plot demonstrates that, as a consequence of the high nonlinearity applied, an amplitude of the order $`|\gamma |`$ $``$ $`1`$ suffices to destroy the entanglement.

On the other hand, a comparison of Eq. (54) with Eq. (52) shows that the prize to pay for a gentle measurement on $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$, i.e., keeping $`|\gamma |^2`$ $``$ $`1`$, is a poor accuracy of the obtained data which has to be compensated by a large number of repetitions. We may define a relative deviation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\left[\widehat{\varrho }(x>l)\widehat{\varrho }(l)\right]^2}{\widehat{\varrho }^2(l)}}`$ $`=`$ $`(1C)^2`$ (55)
$``$ $`4|\gamma |^4(|\gamma |1),`$
where the expectation values are evaluated using $`\widehat{\varrho }(l)`$. The product of Eq. (52) and Eq. (55) vanishes with $`|\gamma |^2`$ proportional to $`|\gamma |^2`$.

It may be interesting to note that the complementary behavior of the two types of interaction between signal modes and environment are reflected in their effect on entanglement. The lossy transmission channel is assumed to act on the photon number, leaving the phase unchanged while the nondemolition measurement acts on the phase, leaving the photon number unchanged. As Fig. 6 illustrates, each of them alone degrades the correlation from a quantum to classical level, while their combination is necessary to produce a fully uncorrelated state.

## V  Conclusion and outlook

We have considered a superposition of two-mode coherent states with equal amplitudes but opposite phases under the aspect of preparation, transmission, purification, and detection. The states can be prepared in conditional measurement from an entangled two-mode single-photon state and single-mode coherent states by applying cross-Kerr elements. The master equation describing state evolution in a lossy transmission line can be solved analytically. Its solution shows the well-known transition from a superposition state to a corresponding mixture. The original pure state can be extracted from a number of transmitted copies by local setups which also apply cross-Kerr elements. A monitored run of these setups leads to a semi-probabilistic self-purifcation of the signal state. Purity and entanglement of the transmitted state can be regarded as synonyms and are observable directly as contrast of the interference seen behind a double-slit setup. To achieve this, the double-slit setup is fed with auxilliary modes which were previously coupled to the signal modes by cross-Kerr elements. A decrease of the signal state perturbation caused by this nondemolition measurement is connected with an increase of the measurement uncertainty.

The question arises whether the manipulations discussed in this work can also be applied to two-mode squeezed vacuum states, which represent according to

$`|z_{01}`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{1|z|^2}\mathrm{e}^{z\widehat{a}_0^{}\widehat{a}_1^{}}|0,0(|z|<1)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{|z|^21}}{\pi }}{\displaystyle \mathrm{d}^2\alpha \mathrm{e}^{(|z|^11)|\alpha |^2}|\alpha ,\mathrm{e}^{\mathrm{i}\phi _z}\alpha ^{}}`$
continuous superpositions of two-mode coherent states. Analogously to the limit $`|\alpha |`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}`$ in Eq. (5), the transition $`|z|`$ $``$ $`1`$ can be made in Eq. (V) resulting in an EPR-like state Einstein et al. (1935); Walls and Milburn (1994); Banaszek and Wódkiewicz (1999), which, in contrast to Eq. (5), represents a highly entangled state.

###### Acknowledgements.

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.


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# HI Fluctuations at Large Redshifts: I–Visibility correlation

## 1 Introduction

Various observations indicate that around $`90\%`$ of the HI mass in the redshift range $`2`$ to $`3.5`$ is in clouds which have HI column densities greater than $`2\times 10^{20}\mathrm{atoms}/\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (Peroux et al. 2001, Storrie-Lombardi, McMahon, Irwin 1996, Lanzetta, Wolfe, & Turnshek 1995). These high column density clouds are responsible for the damped Lyman-$`\alpha `$ absorption lines observed along lines of sight to quasars. The flux of HI emission from individual clouds ($`10\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$) is too weak to be detected by existing radio telescopes unless the image of the cloud is significantly magnified by an intervening cluster gravitational lens (Saini, Bharadwaj and Sethi, 2001). Although we may not be able to detect individual clouds, the redshifted HI emission from the distribution of clouds will appear as background radiation in low frequency radio observations. Bharadwaj, Nath and Sethi (2001; hereafter referred to as BNS) have used existing estimates of the HI density at $`z3`$ to infer the mean brightness temperature of $`1\mathrm{mK}`$ at $`\nu 320\mathrm{MHz}`$ for this radiation. The fluctuations in the brightness temperature of this radiation arise from fluctuations in the HI number density and from peculiar velocities. As shown in BNS, the cross-correlation between the temperature fluctuations across different frequencies and different lines of sight is related to the two-point correlation function (or equivalently the power spectrum) of density perturbations at the redshift where the radiation originates. The possibility of measuring this provides a new method for studying large scale structures at high redshifts. Estimates indicate the expected values of the cross-correlations in the brightness temperature to vary from $`10^7\mathrm{K}^2`$ to $`10^8\mathrm{K}^2`$ over intervals corresponding to spatial scales from $`10\mathrm{Mpc}`$ to $`40\mathrm{Mpc}`$ for some of the currently-favoured cosmological models. Estimates of the different contributions to the flux expected in a pixel of a radio image show the contribution from galactic and extragalactic sources and the system noise to be substantially higher than the contribution from the HI radiation. The task of devising a strategy for extracting the signal from the various foregrounds and noise in which it is buried is a problem which has still to be solved. A possible strategy based on the very distinct spectral properties of the foregrounds as against the HI emission is discussed in BNS.

An alternate strategy for using the HI emission from high redshifts to study large scale structures has been discussed by many authors (Subramanian & Padmanabhan 1993, Kumar, Padmanabhan & Subramanian, Bagla, Nath, & Padmanabhan, Bagla 1998). This is based on detecting the HI emission from individual protoclusters at high redshifts. There have also been observational efforts in this direction (see Subrahmanyan & Anantharamaiah 1990 and reference therein). No detections have been made till date. This strategy suffers from the disadvantage that the protoclusters correspond to very large overdense regions which are very rare events. Protoclusters with flux in the range $`3`$ to $`5\mathrm{mJy}`$ are predicted to occur with abundances in the range $`10^810^7\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$ in the CDM model (Subramanian and Padmanabhan, 1993). In the statistical approach proposed in BNS fluctuations of all magnitude in the HI distribution contribute to the signal. The statistical approach allows optimum use of the signal present in all the pixels of the images made at different frequencies across the bandwidth of a typical radio observation. In this paper we take up various issues related to the statistical approach originally proposed in BNS.

The main focus of this paper is the choice of an appropriate statistical estimator to quantify the properties of the signal and the system noise. The statistical estimator proposed in BNS is the cross-correlation between the temperature fluctuations along different lines of sight in radio map made at different frequencies. While this quantity is conceptually very simple, complications arise when it is applied to images produced by radio interferometry, as is the case with most low frequency radio telescopes. Such observations measure the coherence between the signals arriving at any two antennas, a quantity known as the visibility $`V(𝐔)`$. This is measured for all pairs of antennas in the interferometric array. Here $`𝐔`$ refers to the vector joining a pair of antennas, measured in units of $`\lambda `$, projected on the plane perpendicular to the direction which is being imaged.

The image is produced by a Fourier transform of the visibility

$$I_\nu (\stackrel{}{\theta })=V(𝐔)\mathrm{exp}[2\pi i\stackrel{}{\theta }𝐔]d^2𝐔$$
(1)
where $`\stackrel{}{\theta }`$ refers to different positions in the small patch of the sky which is being imaged, and $`I_\nu (\stackrel{}{\theta })`$ is the specific intensity. The contribution of system noise to the signal from each antenna is independent, and the visibilities measured by each pair of antennas are uncorrelated. The noise in the pixels of a radio image constructed from the visibilities is not independent. The correlations in the noise in the pixels depend on the detailed distribution of the different separations (baselines) $`𝐔`$ for which the visibility has been measured. Any strategy based on the statistical analysis of radio images will be faced with the problem of distinguishing the correlations in fluctuations of the HI emission from the correlations in the noise. This complication can be avoided by dealing directly with the visibilities. In this paper we investigate the possibility of detecting the fluctuations in the HI emission using a statistical estimator constructed directly from the visibilities measured in a radio interferometric observation, without making an image.

We next present a brief outline of this paper. In section 2 we calculate the relation between the statistical properties of the HI fluctuations and the visibilities produced by these fluctuations. In Section 3 we present numerical estimates of these quantites for some of the currently favoured cosmological models for the system parameters of GMRT (Swarup et al. 1990). In Section 4, we calculate statistical properties of the visibility correlations arising from the system noise. In Section 5 we present the conclusions and discuss possible directions for future work.

## 2 From Density Fluctuations to Visibility

We consider radio-interferometric observations of a small patch of the sky whose center is in the direction of the unit vector $`𝐧`$ (Figure 1). A small patch of the sky may be treated as a plane, and the angle $`\stackrel{}{\theta }`$ which refers to different directions in the sky (Figure 1) may be treated as a two dimensional vector. Observations at a frequency $`\nu `$ would measure the HI emission from a redshift $`z=(1420\mathrm{MHz}/\nu )1`$ or equivalently a comoving distance $`r_\nu `$. The specific intensity of the redshifted HI emission arriving from any direction $`\stackrel{}{\theta }`$ may be decomposed into two parts

$$I_\nu (\stackrel{}{\theta })=\overline{I}_\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (\stackrel{}{\theta }),$$
(2)
where $`\overline{I}_\nu `$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (𝐧)`$ are the isotropic and the fluctuating components of the specific intensity. The isotropic component $`\overline{I}_\nu `$ is related to $`\overline{n}_{\mathrm{HI}}(z)`$, the mean comoving number density of HI atoms in the excited state at a redshift $`z`$ and we have

$$\overline{I}_\nu =\frac{A_{21}h_Pc\overline{n}_{\mathrm{HI}}(z)}{4\pi H(z)}$$
(3)
where $`A_{21}`$ is the Einstein coefficient for the HI hyperfine transition, $`h_P`$ the Plank constant, $`c`$ the speed of light and $`H(z)`$ the Hubble parameter. This is a slightly rearranged version of Equation (11) of BNS.

The fluctuations in the specific intensity $`\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (\stackrel{}{\theta })`$ arise from fluctuations in the HI number density $`\mathrm{\Delta }n_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐱)`$ and the peculiar velocity $`𝐯(𝐱)`$, where $`𝐱`$ refers to the comoving position $`𝐱=r_\nu (𝐧+\stackrel{}{\theta })`$ The details of the calculation relating these quantities are presented in BNS, and we use a slightly rearranged version of Equation (12) of BNS

$$\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (\stackrel{}{\theta })=\overline{I}_\nu \left[\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }n_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐱)}{\overline{n}_{\mathrm{HI}}}+\frac{(𝐧)(𝐧𝐯(𝐱))}{aH}\right]$$
(4)
where $`a`$ is the scale factor. It should be noted that all the quantities in the right hand side of equation (4) should be evaluated at the epoch when the radiation was emitted.

In this paper we wish to calculate the contribution from the redshifted HI emission to the visibilities $`V_\nu (𝐔)`$ that would be measured in radio-interferometric observations. The relation between the specific intensity and the visibilities is

$$V_\nu (𝐔)=d^2\theta A(\stackrel{}{\theta })\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (\stackrel{}{\theta })e^{i2\pi 𝐔\stackrel{}{\theta }}.$$
(5)
Only the fluctuating part of the specific intensity contributes to the visibility, and we have dropped the isotropic component from eq. (5). Here $`A(\stackrel{}{\theta })`$ is the beam pattern of the individual antennas in the array (primary beam). We use equations (4) and (5) to relate the visibilities to the fluctuations in the HI distribution.

It is convenient to work with $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)`$, the Fourier transform of the density contrast of the HI number density $`\mathrm{\Delta }n_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐱)/\overline{n}_{\mathrm{HI}}`$. We assume that on sufficiently large scales $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)`$ can be related to $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐤)`$, the density contrast of the underlying dark matter distribution, through a linear bias parameter $`b`$ i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)=b_{\mathrm{HI}}\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐤)`$. We also assume that the scales we are dealing with are sufficiently large that we can apply linear theory of density perturbations (Peebles 1980) to relate the peculiar velocities to the fluctuations in the dark matter distribution, $`𝐯(𝐤)=(iaHf(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)𝐤/k)\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐤)`$, where $`f(\mathrm{\Omega }_m)\mathrm{\Omega }_m^{0.6}+\frac{1}{70}[1\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Omega }_m(1+\mathrm{\Omega }_m)]`$ in a spatially flat universe (Lahav et al. 1991). These assumptions allow us to express the fluctuations in the specific intensity as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }I_\nu (\stackrel{}{\theta })=\overline{I}_\nu \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3}\left[1+\frac{\beta k_{}^2}{k^2}\right]\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)e^{ir_\nu (k_{}+𝐤_{}\stackrel{}{\theta })}$$
(6)
where we have decomposed the wave vector $`𝐤`$ into two parts $`𝐤=k_{}𝐧+𝐤_{}`$ where $`k_{}𝐧`$ refers to the component of the Fourier mode $`𝐤`$ along the line of sight to the center of the patch of sky being observed, and $`𝐤_{}`$ refers to the component of $`𝐤`$ in the plane of the sky. We use equation (6) in equation (5) to express the visibility $`V_\nu (𝐔)`$ in terms of $`\mathrm{\Delta }(𝐤)`$. This allows us to carry out the integral over $`\stackrel{}{\theta }`$ which gives us

$`V_\nu (u,v)=\overline{I}_\nu {\displaystyle \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3}\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)\left[1+\frac{\beta k_{}^2}{k^2}\right]e^{ir_\nu k_{}}a(𝐔\frac{𝐤_{}r_\nu }{2\pi })}`$ (7)
where $`a(𝐔)`$ is the Fourier transform of $`A(\stackrel{}{\theta })`$ the primary beam,

$$a(𝐔)=d^2\stackrel{}{\theta }A(\stackrel{}{\theta })e^{i2\pi 𝐔\stackrel{}{\theta }}.$$
(8)
For a Gaussian primary beam pattern $`A(\theta )=e^{\theta ^2/\theta _0^2}`$. the Fourier transform also is a Gaussian and we have

$$a(𝐔)=\pi \theta _0^2\mathrm{exp}\left[\pi ^2\theta _0^2U^2\right]$$
(9)
which we use in the rest of this paper.

Equation (7) relates the contribution to the visibilities from fluctuations in the HI number density. These fluctuations are assumed to be a Gaussian random field, or equivalently the different modes $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)`$ have independent, random phases. This allows us to predict all the statistical properties of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)`$ in terms of the power spectrum of the fluctuations in the HI distribution $`P_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)`$ which is defined as $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{HI}}^{}(𝐤)\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤^{^{}})=(2\pi )^3\delta ^3(𝐤𝐤^{^{}})P_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)`$ where $``$ denotes ensemble average. We use this to calculate the correlation between the visibilities at different baselines $`𝐔`$ and $`𝐔^{^{}}`$ and two different frequencies $`\nu `$ and $`\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$. Here we assume that the bandwidth over which the observations are being carried out is small compared to the central frequency i.e. $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu \nu `$ and $`r_{\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }=r_\nu +r_\nu ^{^{}}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ where $`r_\nu ^{^{}}=\frac{dr_\nu }{d\nu }`$. Using these inputs to calculate the visibility correlation function we obtain

$`V_\nu (𝐔)V_{\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }^{}(𝐔^{^{}})`$ $`=`$ $`\left[\overline{I}_\nu \theta _0^2\pi \right]^2{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3}}P_{\mathrm{HI}}(k)e^{ik_{}r_\nu ^{^{}}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }[1+\beta {\displaystyle \frac{k_{}^2}{k^2}}]^2\times `$ (10)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{(𝐤_{}2\pi 𝐔/r_\nu )^2+(𝐤_{}2\pi 𝐔^{^{}}/r_\nu )^2}{(2/r_\nu \theta _0)^2}}\right]`$
The assumption of linear bias allows us to relate $`P_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)`$ to $`P(𝐤)`$ the power spectrum of density fluctuations in the dark matter distribution through the linear bias parameter $`P_{\mathrm{HI}}(𝐤)=b^2P(𝐤)`$. We use this in later sections to obtain numerical estimates for different cosmological models.

We next turn our attention to a qualitative analysis of equation (10) to determine the nature and extent of the correlations between the visibilities measured at different baselines. This is largely governed by term $`\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(𝐤_{}2\pi 𝐔/r_\nu )^2+(𝐤_{}2\pi 𝐔^{^{}}/r_\nu )^2}{(2/r_\nu \theta _0)^2}\right]`$ which arises because the observations have a limited sky coverage determined by the primary beam pattern. This term is very small for all values of $`𝐤_{}`$ unless $`𝐔𝐔^{^{}}<1/\theta _0`$. The parameter $`\theta _0`$ is related to the the FWHM of the primary beam and $`\theta _00.6\theta _{\mathrm{FWHM}}`$, which allows us to relate $`\theta _0`$ to $`D`$ the diameter of the individual antennas as $`\theta _0\lambda /D`$. We also express $`𝐔`$ and $`𝐔^{^{}}`$ in terms of $`𝐝`$ and $`𝐝^{^{}}`$, the physical separations between the pairs of antennas as $`𝐔=𝐝/\lambda `$ and $`𝐔^{^{}}=𝐝^{^{}}/\lambda ^{^{}}`$ It should be noted that here and throughout we assume that $`\lambda ^{^{}}=\lambda (1\mathrm{\Delta }\nu /\nu )`$ with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu <<\nu `$. Using these we see that the condition for the visibilities to be correlated can be expressed as $`𝐝𝐝^{^{}}<D`$. This implies that the visibilities measured by a pair of antennas separated by the displacement $`𝐝`$ will be correlated to the visibilities measured by another pair separated by a displacement $`𝐝^{^{}}`$ only if difference in the two displacements $`𝐝`$ and $`𝐝^{^{}}`$ is less than the antenna diameter. The consequences of this for a typical antenna configuration are

* The visibilities measured at various frequencies by the same pair of antennas are correlated.
* The visibilities measured by different pairs of antennas are uncorrelated.

For the rest of the paper we shall consider only the correlation between the visibilities measured at various frequencies by the same pair of antennas. We use the notation $`V_\nu (𝐔)V_{\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }^{}(𝐔)`$ to denote the correlation between the visibilities measured at two different frequencies by the pair of antennas at a physical separation $`𝐝=c𝐔/\nu `$. The fact that this physical separation $`𝐝`$ will correspond to a different baseline $`𝐔^{^{}}=(\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }\nu )𝐝/c`$ at the frequency $`\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ is ignored throughout as $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu \nu `$. Equation (10) can now be used to obtain

$`V_\nu (𝐔)V_{\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }^{}(𝐔)`$ $`=`$ $`\left[\overline{I}_\nu \theta _0^2\pi \right]^2{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi )^3}}P_{\mathrm{HI}}(k)e^{ik_{}r_\nu ^{^{}}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }[1+\beta {\displaystyle \frac{k_{}^2}{k^2}}]^2\times `$ (11)
$`\times `$ $`\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{(𝐤_{}2\pi 𝐔/r_\nu )^2}{2(1/r_\nu \theta _0)^2}}\right]`$
The role of the Gaussian in equation (11) arising from the primary beam pattern is to ensure that most of the contribution is from Fourier modes for which $`𝐤_{}(2\pi /r_\nu )𝐔`$. Equation (11) is further simplified if we approximate the Gaussian with a Dirac Delta function

$$\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{(𝐤_{}2\pi 𝐔/r_\nu )^2}{2(1/r_\nu \theta _0)^2}\right]\frac{2\pi }{r_\nu ^2\theta _0^2}\delta ^2\left(𝐤_{}\frac{2\pi }{r_\nu }𝐔\right)$$
(12)
whereby only Fourier modes for which $`𝐤_{}=(2\pi /r_\nu )𝐔`$ contribute. This allows us to do two of the integrals in equation (11) giving us

$`V_\nu (𝐔)V_{\nu +\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }^{}(𝐔)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\left[\overline{I}_\nu \theta _0^2\right]^2}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}dk_{}{\displaystyle \frac{P_{\mathrm{HI}}(k)}{r_\nu ^2\theta _o^2}}\mathrm{cos}(k_{}r_\nu ^{^{}}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu )\times `$ (13)
$`\times `$ $`\left[1+\beta {\displaystyle \frac{k_{}^2}{k^2}}\right]^2\mathrm{with}k=\sqrt{k_{}^2+(2\pi /r_\nu )^2U^2}`$
Equations (11) and (13) represent the main results of this section. They relate the correlation in the visibilities to the power spectrum of fluctuations in the HI distribution. The visibility correlations at any baseline $`U`$ are seen to be sensitive to Fourier modes $`2\pi U/r_\nu `$. It comes from the fact that each visibility measurement is sensitive to one Fourier mode in the plane of the sky, which arises from the projection of three-dimensional Fourier modes making different angles with the plane of the sky. The typical length scales $`\pi /k`$ that contribute to the measurement for any baseline $`U`$ are $`30h^1\mathrm{Mpc}(100/U)`$.

In the next section we use these equations to make predictions for the visibility correlations expected in the currently favoured cosmological models and we discuss the possibility of observing these.

## 3 Results

Equation (3) can be calculated to give:

$$\overline{I}_\nu =\frac{5.4h\mathrm{Jy}}{\mathrm{degree}^2}\mathrm{\Omega }_{gas}(z)\left[\mathrm{\Omega }_{m0}(1+z)^3+\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{\Lambda }0}\right]^{1/2}(1+z)^3$$
(14)
for a spatially flat cosmological model. Here $`(1+z)=1420/\nu `$, $`\nu `$ being the observed frequency. We use $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{gas}(z)=10^3`$ as a fiducial value throughout for $`z1`$ (Peroux et al. 2001). We give results for the currently-favoured cosmological model: spatially-flat with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{\mathrm{\Lambda }0}=0.7`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{m0}=0.3`$ (Perlmutter et al. 1999, de Bernardis et al. 2000). We use $`h=0.7`$ whenever quoting a numerical value (Freedman et al. 2001).

For GMRT $`\theta _{\mathrm{FWHM}}=1.8^{}\times (325\mathrm{MHz}/\nu )`$. We plot the visibility correlation function in Figures 2 and 3 for the GMRT channels centered around $`\nu =325\mathrm{MHz}`$ and $`\nu =610\mathrm{M}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}`$ for COBE-normalized power spectrum (Bunn & White 1996) and $`b=1`$. GMRT has a total bandwidth of $`16\mathrm{MHz}`$ at these frequencies in 128 channels. The visibility correlation function shown in the figures is averaged over one of the these channels with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =1.25\mathrm{kHz}`$. The correlation function is not very sensitive to the width of the channel so long as the channel width $`\text{a few}\mathrm{kHz}`$.

For $`\nu =\nu ^{}`$, the signal ($`\sqrt{V_\nu (𝐔)V_\nu ^{}(𝐔)}`$) is $`10\text{}50\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$ for baselines $`|𝐔|100\text{}1000`$. GMRT has 15 antennas in a central array within a radius of $`1\mathrm{km}`$. Antenna pairs formed from these antennas will be most sensitive to the signal.

For $`\nu \nu ^{}`$, the correlation signal is seen to dip sharply as frequency separation is increased. The signal is anti-correlated and drops below $`1\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$ for $`\nu ^{}\nu 2\mathrm{MHz}`$. For $`\nu ^{}\nu 0.5\mathrm{MHz}`$ the signal is $`5\text{}30\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$ for baselines $`500`$.

In Figure 2 and 3 we assume that the HI distribution follows the underlying dark matter distribution, .i.e. $`b=1`$. However this may not be true; observed structures at any redshift are expected to be biased with respect to the underlying mass distribution (see e.g. Bardeen et al. 1986). This bias is expected to be higher at larger redshifts and the observed strong clustering of high redshift galaxies is at least partly owing to this fact (Steidel et al. 1998). In this paper we adopt a simple model of bias and assume it to be linear and independent of the Fourier mode. Though the exact dependence of the HI signal on the bias is complicated (Eq. (13), the signal scales roughly linearly with bias. This means that for a moderately biased HI distribution $`b2`$ the signal could be higher by a factor of two.

## 4 Noise

For each visibility measurement in the UV plane, the contribution comes from both the signal from HI fluctuations $`S_\nu `$, the detector noise $`N_\nu `$, and various galactic and extragalactic foregrounds. We consider here the contribution from only the HI signal and the noise. The visibility measurement gives:

$$V_\nu (𝐔)=S_\nu (𝐔)+N_\nu (𝐔)$$
(15)
Both $`S`$ and $`N`$ are complex quantities with both real and imaginary parts distributed as Gaussian random variables (see e.g. Crane & Napier 1989 for properties of noise). The signal is a Gaussian random field because it is linear in density perturbation $`\mathrm{\Delta }(\stackrel{}{k})`$ which is expected to be a Gaussian random field for large scales (small $`k`$) (see e.g. Peacock 1999, Bardeen et al. 1986). The signal and noise are uncorrelated with each other. The reality condition of the surface brightness (Eq. 1) and the noise in the real space implies $`S(𝐔)=S^{}(𝐔)`$ and $`N(𝐔)=N^{}(𝐔)`$ Our aim is to construct bilinear combinations like $`V_\nu (𝐔)V_\nu ^{}^{}(𝐔)`$ and to detect $`S_\nu (𝐔)S_\nu ^{}^{}(𝐔)`$. $`\nu `$ and $`\nu ^{}`$ will in general be different. The average signal $`S_\nu (𝐔)S_\nu ^{}^{}(𝐔)`$ is calculated in the previous section. The average noise correlation, for $`\nu =\nu ^{}`$:

$$N_\nu (𝐔)N_\nu ^{}(𝐔)=\left[\frac{T_{\mathrm{sys}}}{K\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }\nu \mathrm{\Delta }t}}\right]^2$$
(16)
Here $`T_{\mathrm{sys}}`$ is the system temperature, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu `$ is the bandwidth, $`K`$ is the antenna gain, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ is the time of integration for one visibility measurement. For $`\nu \nu ^{}`$ the noise correlation vanishes as the noise in different frequency channels is uncorrelated.

Estimator of the signal: From the measured visibility it is possible to write several estimators of the signal. The simplest such estimator is:

$$\widehat{S}=V_\nu (𝐔)V_\nu ^{}^{}(𝐔)N_\nu (𝐔)N_\nu ^{}(𝐔)$$
(17)
This estimator is clearly unbiased, i.e.

$$\widehat{S}=S_\nu (𝐔)S_\nu ^{}^{}(𝐔).$$

The quantity of interest to us is the variance of the estimated signal: $`\sigma (\widehat{S})^2=\widehat{S}^2\widehat{S}^2`$. This quantity is calculated to be (see Appendix A for a derivation):

$$\sigma ^2(\widehat{S})\frac{q}{n}N_\nu (𝐔)N_\nu ^{}(𝐔)^2$$
(18)
$`q=2`$ for $`\nu =\nu ^{}`$ and $`q=1`$ for $`\nu \nu ^{}`$. $`n`$ is the total number of visibility measurements. The signal-to-noise for the detection of the HI fluctuation signal is $`\widehat{S}/\sigma (\widehat{S})`$.

The value of $`n`$ for a given $`|𝐔|`$ in general depends on the antenna positions, frequency coverage, and the position of the source in the sky. To calculate the value of $`n`$ we first consider the case when $`\nu =\nu ^{}`$.

Case I– $`\nu =\nu ^{}`$: To get a simple estimate, assume that a pair of antennas describes circular tracks in the UV plane with radius $`|𝐔|`$ and that these tracks do not overlap with the tracks of other antenna pairs, then $`n=T/\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ for each frequency channel, where $`T`$ is the total time of observation. (The actual observation is more complicated because the antenna tracks cross in the UV plane.) For this case, Eq. (18) gives, using Eq. (16):

$$\sigma ^2(\widehat{S})=\left[\frac{2T_{\mathrm{sys}}}{K\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }\nu T}}\right]^2$$
(19)
Before proceeding further it is useful to calculate the expected noise for the GMRT. We shall take the fiducial observing frequency to be $`320\mathrm{MHz}`$. At this frequency the GMRT system temperature $`T_s110\mathrm{K}`$. GMRT has a total bandwidth of $`16\mathrm{MHz}`$ at this frequency in 128 channels. To calculate the quantity in Eq. (16) we take one channel ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu =125\mathrm{kHz}`$) and an integration time of $`\mathrm{\Delta }t=30\mathrm{sec}`$ for one ’instantaneous’ measurement for a given baseline. The antenna gain at this frequency $`K=0.32\mathrm{K}\mathrm{Jy}^1`$. Using this Eq. (16) gives the noise correlation to be $`175\mathrm{mJy}`$. As this is much larger than the expected signal calculated in the last section, we are justified in neglecting the signal term in Eq. (26) in the appendix. For total time of integration $`T=10\mathrm{hrs}`$, Eq. (19) gives $`\sigma (\widehat{S})5\mathrm{mJy}`$.

As each frequency channel gives a realization of the signal, the noise can be reduced further by using all the frequency channels. This gives $`n=N_{\mathrm{chan}}\times T/\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ with $`N_{\mathrm{chan}}=128`$ for GMRT; Eq. (19) gives $`\sigma (\widehat{S})0.45\mathrm{mJy}`$. Even though we made a few simplifying assumptions in calculating the noise, this is the typical value obtainable in a real experiment. The expected noise is much larger than the expected signal from the HI fluctuations and therefore an experiment like GMRT cannot detect the HI fluctuation for a given $`|𝐔|`$ or by using a single pair of antennas in a reasonable amount of integration time.

To reduce the noise further one must consider averaging the signal over more than one pair of antennas. One such estimator is the map RMS which uses information from all possible baselines. The total number of ’instantaneous’ baselines for an experiment with $`N`$ antennas is $`N(N1)/2`$. This gives $`n=N_{\mathrm{chan}}N(N1)/2\times T/\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ and gives a further decrease of a factor $`N/\sqrt{2}`$ in the sensitivity. In the previous section we showed that much of the contribution to signal comes from baselines $`1000\lambda `$. GMRT has 15 antennas in the central array within a radius of $`1\mathrm{km}`$. Much of the contribution to the signal will come from these antenna pairs.

Taking $`N=15`$ in the calculation of noise sensitivity, we get $`\sigma (\widehat{S})40\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$ for 10 hours of integration. The average signal (averaged over 15 antennas of the central GMRT array) is $`20\text{}40\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$. This means that a few sigma detection of the signal might be feasible in integration time $`100\mathrm{hrs}`$ using the central array of GMRT.

Case II– $`\nu \nu ^{}`$: In this case, $`N_\nu (𝐔)N_\nu ^{}(𝐔)=0`$ and the variance of the signal estimator is smaller by a factor of 2 (Eq. (18)). The rest of the calculations proceeds similar to the first case. The number of distinct pairs for two different frequencies will depend on the separation of the frequencies. However, one must also take into account the line width of the damped Lyman-$`\alpha `$ clouds which is $`200\mathrm{km}\mathrm{sec}^1`$ (Prochaska & Wolfe 1998). The line width of each GMRT channel is $`120\mathrm{km}\mathrm{sec}^1`$. This means that one damped Lyman-$`\alpha `$ cloud will spill over in many frequency channels, thereby creating a correlation in the signal for nearby channels. This correlation must be accounted for before the HI fluctuation signal can be extracted. It is hard to do it analytically and this issue will be addressed in future using simulations of the HI signal. However it is possible to get the typical noise sensitivity for this measurement.

The total number of frequency channel pairs is $`N_{\mathrm{chan}}(N_{\mathrm{chan}}1)/2`$. Each pair gives a different realization of noise. If we average the signal over all baselines and all frequency pairs, we get $`n=N(N1)/2N_{\mathrm{chan}}(N_{\mathrm{chan}}1)/2`$. This is larger than the maximum value of $`n`$ in the first case by a factor of $`N_{\mathrm{chan}}/2`$. However it would be meaningful to average over all channel-pairs if the signal is significant for all such cross-correlations. As seen in the previous section, the correlation between different channels falls rapidly for separation $`1\mathrm{MHz}`$, therefore the number of useful channels pairs is less than the maximum possible. The value of $`n`$ however is still likely to be more than in the previous case. For example if we average the signal over all the frequency channels with $`\nu ^{}\nu 0.5\mathrm{MHz}`$, the expected signal is $`10\text{}20\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$. The number of frequency pairs are $`5N_{\mathrm{chan}}`$ in this case. This gives $`\sigma (\widehat{S})15\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$ for ten hours of integration. From this discussion we can conclude that it might also be possible to extract this signal for integration time $`100\mathrm{hrs}`$ using GMRT.

The noise in detecting the HI signal $`\sigma (\widehat{S})`$ is comparable to the sensitivity for detecting continuum sources. This is so even though the HI clouds emit line radiation. Therefore the method of observing fluctuations in HI radiation makes more optimal use of all the frequency width available in the experiment. The individual clouds are very faint (flux $`10\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$ (Saini et al. 2001)) and cannot be detected using GMRT because the line sensitivity $`50\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$ for 100 hrs of integration needed to detect the HI fluctuations.

## 5 Conclusions and Discussion

Our main results are:

* The correlation in measured visibilities owing to density inhomogeneities and peculiar velocities of the HI distribution at high redshifts can be related to the power spectrum of the HI distribution (Eq. (13)). The visibility correlation for any baseline $`U`$ is sensitive to Fourier modes $`2\pi U/r_\nu `$. This means that the typical length scales probed for any baseline are $`30h^1\mathrm{Mpc}(100/U)`$.
* The signal is strongest for baselines $`1000`$ and for $`\nu =\nu ^{}`$, i.e. on the same two-dimesional map, the correlation is between $`2\times 10^9\mathrm{Jy}^2`$ and $`10^{10}\mathrm{Jy}^2`$.
* For $`\nu \nu ^{}`$, i.e., cross-correlation signal, the correlation signal is $`10^9\text{}10^{11}\mathrm{Jy}^2`$ for baselines $`|𝐔|500`$ for $`\nu ^{}\nu 0.5\mathrm{MHz}`$. The correlation is negative for most baselines for $`\nu ^{}\nu 2\mathrm{MHz}`$ and falls below $`10^{12}\mathrm{Jy}^2`$.
* GMRT might detect these signals for integration times $`100\mathrm{hrs}`$. We argue that measuring visibility correlations in the presence of system noise makes optimal use of the fact that the noise is uncorrelated across baselines and frequency channels. The error for these measurements is comparable to and can even be smaller than the continuum sensitivity of the instrument.

The signal and noise analyses given in this paper are for the system parameters of the currently-operational GMRT. However it can be easily extended to future telescopes like Square Kilometer Array (SKA) <sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1see http://www.nfra.nl/skai/ and Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) <sup>2</sup><sup>2</sup>2see http://www.astron.nl/lofar. Our analysis can also be extended to higher redshifts ($`z5`$) as the HI content of the universe at these redshifts is beginning to be known (see e.g. Peroux et al. 2001).

In this paper we neglected two other contributions to the visibility correlations: galactic and extra-galactic foregrounds and the Poisson fluctuations owing to point-like nature of HI clouds. The galactic foregrounds are expected to be dominated by the fluctuations in the synchrotron radiation from the Galaxy. The only existing all-sky map at low radio frequencies is the $`408\mathrm{MHz}`$ Haslam map (Haslam et al. 1982). This map has an angular resolution of $`1^{}`$ and therefore cannot give much information on the angular scales of interest to us. The extra-galactic foregrounds get most of its contribution from the radio point-sources. Little is know about the radio point sources at sensitivity levels ($`100\mu \mathrm{Jy}`$) and frequencies of relevance in this paper. However it seems likely that these foregrounds will dominate the HI signal (BNS 2001), and a possible strategy to remove foregrounds was discussed in BNS (2001). This issue will be discussed in a later paper by using simulations of the HI signal and the foregrounds.

The HI at large redshift is locked up in discrete clouds. This will give rise to visibility correlations even in the absence of gravitational instability. This signal also depends on the mass function of the HI clouds (Saini et al. 2001) and therefore the detection of this signal can give important clue about how the HI at high redshift is distributed. We shall attempt to estimate this signal from simulation of the high redshift HI in a later publication.

## Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Jayaram Chengalur for many useful discussions. We are thankful to late K. R. Anantharamiah for helpful comments on the noise properties of interferometric experiments.

## Appendix A

The HI fluctuation signal and the noise satisfy the following conditions:

$`S_\nu (𝐔)S_\nu ^{}(𝐔^{})`$ $`=`$ $`S_\nu (𝐔)S_\nu ^{}(𝐔)\delta _D(𝐔𝐔^{})`$ (20)
$`N_\nu (𝐔)N_\nu ^{}(𝐔^{})`$ $`=`$ $`N_\nu (𝐔)N_\nu (𝐔)\delta _D(𝐔𝐔^{})\delta _D(\nu \nu ^{})`$ (21)
Note that the signal is correlated across frequency channels while the noise is not. Let us assume that any interferometric experiment makes $`n`$ measurements of the visibility for given $`|𝐔|`$ and the quantities (like visibility correlation function) are estimated by averaging over these measurement. Using this it is seen that the signal (for $`\nu =\nu ^{}`$) and the noise can be treated as $`n`$ uncorrelated, random variables with the same mean and variance. In such a case, the estimated average equals the average of any of the random numbers and the variance of the estimated ’signal’ is $`1/n`$ times the variance of any of the random variable (see e.g. Papoulis 1965; this result is independent of the probability distribution functions of the individual variables). Of particular interest to us is the variance of the estimator in Eq. (17) for a given $`|\stackrel{}{u}|`$. The variance is estimated from $`n`$ realizations of the random variable $`\widehat{S}`$. It is given by:

$$\sigma ^2(\widehat{S})=\frac{\sigma ^2}{n}$$
(22)
Here $`\sigma ^2=\widehat{S}^2\widehat{S}^2`$ is the variance of any realization of $`\widehat{S}`$.

It is given by, using the definitions of $`V`$ and $`N`$ from Eq. (15):

$$\sigma ^2=V_\nu V_\nu ^{}V_\nu V_\nu ^{}+N_\nu N_\nu ^{}^22N_\nu N_\nu ^{}V_\nu V_\nu ^{}S_\nu S_\nu ^{}^2$$
(23)
To simplify this expression further we use the fact that for a Gaussian random process, the expectation value of four random numbers is given by

$$x_1x_2x_3x_4=x_1x_2x_3x_4+x_1x_3x_2x_4+x_2x_4x_1x_3$$

We first consider the case when $`\nu =\nu ^{}`$. Eq. (23) then reduces to:

$$\sigma ^2=3V_\nu V_\nu ^{}^2+N_\nu N_\nu ^{}^22N_\nu N_\nu ^{}V_\nu V_\nu ^{}S_\nu S_\nu ^{}^2$$
(24)
Again using Eq. (15) for the definition of $`V_\nu V_\nu ^{}`$, this simplifies to:

$$\sigma ^2=2\times \left(S_\nu S_\nu +N_\nu N_\nu \right)^2$$
(25)
The case when $`\nu =\nu ^{}`$ is slightly more complicated. Making a simplifying assumption that the signal contribution can be dropped while calculating the four-point functions in Eq. (23) (for justification see the text), we get:

$$\sigma ^2N_\nu N_\nu ^2$$
(26)
Eqs. (25) and (26) along with Eq. (22) gives Eq. (18).