format: text

text:
# Interacting electrons in a one-dimensional random array of scatterers – A Quantum Dynamics and Monte-Carlo study

## I Introduction

Noninteracting electrons in an array of fixed random scatterers are known to experience Anderson localization at temperature $`T=0`$ in one-dimensional systems. In two-dimensional systems single-parameter scaling theory predicts that all states are localized as well gangoffour . In three-dimensional arrays of random scatterers localization appears at the band extremities, while the center may consist of delocalized states, indicating a disorder driven metal-insulator transition in three dimensions only.

This picture has been challenged by recent experiments, which suggest a metal-insulator transition also in disordered two-dimensional electron systems sarachik . A theoretical explanation dassarma  indicated that the Coulomb interaction between the electrons plays a central role in this effect. Moreover, the experimental study of persistent currents in mesoscopic metal rings rings  yields currents that are two orders of magnitude larger than predicted by theories based on noninteracting electrons theory . These findings suggest that it is the many-particle interaction which leads to delocalization tendencies. To the best of our knowledge this has first been suggested by M. Pollak and coworkers po1 ; po2 .

Evidence for this influence of the Coulomb interaction has been obtained by examining the problem of two interacting electrons in a one-dimensional disordered band shepel . It is, however, not clear whether this schematic model is able to yield answers for more realistic systems described by an ensemble of many electrons. Therefore, attempts have been made to calculate directly the conductivity of a disordered system of many electrons. Numerical results for the ensemble averaged logarithm of the conductance have been obtained for small systems by applying a Hartree-Fock based diagonalization scheme for electrons without epp1 ; epp2  and with spin epp3 . An increase of the conductivity for certain regions in the disorder-interaction parameter space has been demonstrated in these publications.

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: i) We present our approach, which does not rely on small system sizes. This can be applied to a wide variety of different physical systems, such as plasmas, liquids, and solids. ii) As an illustration we study the problem described above. In particular, in this paper we investigate the influence of the many-particle interaction on electronic transport. We consider as a case study a one-dimensional disordered array of scatterers interacting repulsively with the electron system. Without electron-electron interaction such a system shows Anderson localization. It is the purpose of this application to study the effect of the long-range electron-electron Coulomb interaction on the mobility of the electrons.

Anderson localization at temperature $`T=0`$ relies on quantum coherence of electron trajectories and results from interference. The key parameter in the physics of electron interference phenomena is the dephasing time of electrons. At finite temperatures the electron coherence is destroyed by both the electron-electron and the phonon-electron scattering ovtho ; leeram ; belitz ; chaplik . To study the influence of these effects on kinetic electron properties in a random environment we have simulated the quantum dynamics in a one-dimensional canonical ensemble at finite temperature for both interacting and noninteracting electrons using a Quantum-Dynamics-Monte-Carlo scheme. The main quantities calculated in this paper are the temporal momentum-momentum correlation functions, their frequency-domain Fourier transforms and the time dependence of the spatial dispersions. We discovered that the results strongly depend on the electron-electron interaction, clearly demonstrating the delocalizing influence of the many-particle interaction even at finite temperatures.

Our approach also treats the positions of the scattering centers as dynamical variables. We are therefore in the position to generate various initial conditions, including the scenario of “electron bubbles” as an interesting side-result.

We start in Section II by presenting the Quantum-Dynamics-Monte-Carlo approach used in this work, which is based of the Wigner representation of quantum statistical mechanics. It treats both electrons and scatterers on an equal footing. Details of our model, relevant correlation functions and the system of reduced units are introduced in Section III. Numerical results for the momentum-momentum correlation function in the time and frequency domains and for the spatial dispersion are given in Section IV. Finally, Section V contains a discussion of our results.

## II Wigner representation of time correlation functions

According to the Kubo formula the conductivity is the Fourier transform of the current–current correlation function. Generally, time correlation functions $`C_{FA}(t)=\widehat{F}(0)\widehat{A}(t)`$ for a pair of dynamic variables $`F(t)=\widehat{F}(t)`$ and $`A(t)=\widehat{A}(t)`$ are among the most interesting quantities in the study of the dynamics of electrons in disordered systems of scatterers, such as transport coefficients, chemical reaction rates, equilibrium and transient spectroscopy, etc. Our starting point is the general operator expression for the canonical ensemble-averaged time correlation function zubar :

$$C_{FA}(t)=Z^1\text{Tr}\left\{\widehat{F}e^{i\widehat{H}t_c^{}/\mathrm{}}\widehat{A}e^{i\widehat{H}t_c/\mathrm{}}\right\},$$
(1)
where $`\widehat{H}`$ is the Hamiltonian of the system expressed as a sum of the kinetic energy operator, $`\widehat{K}`$, and the potential energy operator, $`\widehat{U}`$. Time is taken to be a complex quantity, $`t_c=ti\mathrm{}\beta /2`$, where $`\beta =1/k_BT`$ is the inverse temperature with $`k_B`$ denoting the Boltzmann constant. The operators $`\widehat{F}`$ and $`\widehat{A}`$ are quantum operators of the dynamic quantities under consideration and $`Z=\text{Tr}\left\{e^{\beta \widehat{H}}\right\}`$ is the partition function.

The Wigner representation of the time correlation function in a $`\upsilon `$–dimensional space can be written as:

$$C_{FA}(t)=(2\pi \mathrm{})^{2\upsilon }𝑑\mu _1𝑑\mu _2F(\mu _1)A(\mu _2)W(\mu _1;\mu _2;t;i\mathrm{}\beta ),$$
(2)
where we introduce the short-hand notation for the phase space point, $`\mu _i=(p_i,q_i),(i=1,2)`$, and $`p`$ and $`q`$ comprise the momenta and coordinates, respectively, of all particles in the system. In the definition (2), $`W(\mu _1;\mu _2;t;i\mathrm{}\beta )`$ is the spectral density expressed as

$`W(\mu _1;\mu _2;t;i\mathrm{}\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`Z^1{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle }d\xi _1d\xi _2e^{i\frac{p_1\xi _1}{\mathrm{}}}e^{i\frac{p_2\xi _2}{\mathrm{}}}\times `$ (3)
$`\times `$ $`q_1+{\displaystyle \frac{\xi _1}{2}}\left|e^{i\widehat{H}t_c^{}/\mathrm{}}\right|q_2{\displaystyle \frac{\xi _2}{2}}q_2+{\displaystyle \frac{\xi _2}{2}}\left|e^{i\widehat{H}t_c/\mathrm{}}\right|q_1{\displaystyle \frac{\xi _1}{2}},`$
and $`A(\mu )`$ denotes Weyl’s symbol tatr1  of the operator $`\widehat{A}`$

$$A(\mu )=𝑑\xi e^{i\frac{p\xi }{\mathrm{}}}q\frac{\xi }{2}\left|\widehat{A}\right|q+\frac{\xi }{2},$$
(4)
and similarly for the operator $`\widehat{F}`$. Hence the problem of the numerical calculation of the canonically averaged time correlation function is reduced to the computation of the spectral density.

To obtain the integral equation for $`W`$ let us introduce the a pair of dynamic $`p,q`$-trajectories $`\{\overline{q}_\tau (\tau ;p_1,q_1,t),\overline{p}_\tau (\tau ;p_1,q_1,t)\}`$ and $`\{\stackrel{~}{q}_\tau (\tau ;p_2,q_2,t),\stackrel{~}{p}_\tau (\tau ;p_2,q_2,t)\}`$ starting at $`\tau =t`$ from the initial condition $`\{q_1,p_1\}`$ and $`\{q_2,p_2\}`$ propagating in ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ time direction, respectively:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\overline{p}}{d\tau }}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}F\left[\overline{q}_\tau (\tau )\right];{\displaystyle \frac{d\overline{q}}{d\tau }}={\displaystyle \frac{\overline{p}_\tau (\tau )}{2m}},`$
with $`\overline{p}_t(\tau =t;p_1,q_1,t)=p_1;\overline{q}_t(\tau =t;p_1,q_1,t)=q_1,`$ (5)
and

$`{\displaystyle \frac{d\stackrel{~}{p}}{d\tau }}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}F\left[\stackrel{~}{q}_\tau (\tau )\right];{\displaystyle \frac{d\stackrel{~}{q}}{d\tau }}={\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{p}_\tau (\tau )}{2m}},`$
with $`\overline{p}_t(\tau =t;p_1,q_1,t)=p_1;\stackrel{~}{q}_t(\tau =t;p_1,q_1,t)=q_1,`$ (6)
$$\text{while}\varpi (s,q)=\frac{4}{(2\pi \mathrm{})^\upsilon \mathrm{}}𝑑q^{}\stackrel{~}{U}(qq^{})\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{2sq^{}}{\mathrm{}}\right)+F(q)\delta (s),$$
(7)
$`\delta (s)`$ is the Dirac delta function and $`F\left(q\right)\stackrel{~}{U}`$ with $`\stackrel{~}{U}`$ being the total potential.

Then as has been proved in filmd1 ; filmd2  the $`W`$ obeys the following integral equation:

$`W(\mu _1;\mu _2;t;i\mathrm{}\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{W}(\overline{p}_0,\overline{q}_0;\stackrel{~}{p}_0,\stackrel{~}{q}_0;i\mathrm{}\beta )+`$ (8)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑\tau {\displaystyle 𝑑sW(\overline{p}_\tau s,\overline{q}_\tau ;\stackrel{~}{p}_\tau ,\stackrel{~}{q}_\tau ;\tau ;i\mathrm{}\beta )\varpi (s,\overline{q}_\tau )}`$
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle _0^t}𝑑\tau {\displaystyle 𝑑sW(\overline{p}_\tau ,\overline{q}_\tau ;\stackrel{~}{p}_\tau s,\stackrel{~}{q}_\tau ;\tau ;i\mathrm{}\beta )\varpi (s,\stackrel{~}{q}_\tau )},`$
where equation (8) has to be supplemented by an initial condition for the spectral density, $`\overline{W}(\mu _1;\mu _2;i\mathrm{}\beta )W(\mu _1;\mu _2;t=0;i\mathrm{}\beta )`$, which can be expressed in the form of a finite difference approximation of the path integral filmd1 ; filmd2 ; feynm :

$`\overline{W}(\mu _1;\mu _2;i\mathrm{}\beta ){\displaystyle 𝑑\stackrel{~}{q}_1\mathrm{}𝑑\stackrel{~}{q}_n𝑑q_1^{}\mathrm{}𝑑q_n^{}\mathrm{\Psi }(\mu _1;\mu _2;\stackrel{~}{q}_1,\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{q}_n;q_1^{},\mathrm{},q_n^{};i\mathrm{}\beta )},`$ (9)
$`\text{with}\mathrm{\Psi }(\mu _1;\mu _2;\stackrel{~}{q}_1,\mathrm{},\stackrel{~}{q}_n;q_1^{},\mathrm{},q_n^{};i\mathrm{}\beta )`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{Z}}q_1\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{K}}\right|\stackrel{~}{q}_1e^{ϵU(\stackrel{~}{q}_1)}\stackrel{~}{q}_1\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{K}}\right|\stackrel{~}{q}_2e^{ϵU(\stackrel{~}{q}_2)}\mathrm{}e^{ϵU(\stackrel{~}{q}_n)}\stackrel{~}{q}_n\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{K}}\right|q_2\phi (p_2;\stackrel{~}{q}_n,q_1^{})\times `$
$`q_2\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{K}}\right|q_1^{}e^{ϵU(q_1^{})}q_1^{}\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{K}}\right|q_2^{}e^{ϵU(q_2^{})}\mathrm{}e^{ϵU(q_n^{})}q_n^{}\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{K}}\right|q_1\phi (p_1;q_n^{},\stackrel{~}{q}_1),`$ (10)
$`\text{where}\phi (p;q^{},q^{\prime \prime })\left(2\lambda ^2\right)^{\upsilon /2}\mathrm{exp}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle \frac{p\lambda }{\mathrm{}}}+i\pi {\displaystyle \frac{q^{}q^{\prime \prime }}{\lambda }}|{\displaystyle \frac{p\lambda }{\mathrm{}}}+i\pi {\displaystyle \frac{q^{}q^{\prime \prime }}{\lambda }}\right],`$ (11)
where $`x|y`$ denotes the scalar product of two vectors $`\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{y}`$. In this expression the original (unknown) density matrix of the correlated system $`e^{\beta (\widehat{K}+\widehat{U})}`$ has been decomposed into $`2n`$ factors, each at a $`2n`$ times higher temperature, with the inverse $`ϵ=\beta /2n`$ and the corresponding high temperature DeBroglie wave length squared $`\lambda ^22\pi \mathrm{}^2ϵ/m`$. This leads to a product of known high-temperature (weakly correlated) density matrices, however, at the price of $`2n`$ additional integrations over the intermediate coordinate vectors (over the “path”). This representation is exact in the limit $`n\mathrm{}`$, and for finite $`n`$ an error of order $`1/n`$ occurs.

Expression (10) has to be generalized to properly account for spin effects. This gives rise to an additional spin part of the density matrix, whereas exchange effects can be accounted for by the antisymmetrization of only one off-diagonal matrix element in (10). As a result, in (10) one matrix element, for example $`q_1^{}\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{K}}\right|q_2^{}`$ has to be replaced by the antisymmetrized expression $`q_1^{}\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{K}}\right|q_2^{}_A`$ which can be written as the following sum of determinants involving the single-particle density matrix

$`q_1^{}\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{K}}\right|q_2^{}_A{\displaystyle \underset{s=0}{\overset{N}{}}}C_N^sdet\left|q_{1,a}^{}\left|e^{ϵ\widehat{k}}\right|q_{2,b}^{}\right|_s={\displaystyle \underset{s=0}{\overset{N}{}}}C_N^sdet\left|e^{\frac{\pi }{\lambda ^2}\left|q_{1,a}^{}q_{2,b}^{}\right|^2}\right|_s.`$ (12)
Here $`C_N^sN!/s!(Ns)!`$, and $`|q_{1,a}^{}q_{2,b}^{}|`$ denotes the distance between the vertices $`q_1^{}`$ and $`q_2^{}`$ of particles $`a`$ and $`b`$, respectively. As a result of the summation over spin variables and all possible exchange permutations, the determinant carries a subscript $`s`$ denoting the number of electrons having the same spin projection. To improve the accuracy of the obtained expression, in the total potential $`U`$ being the sum of all pair interactions $`U_{ab}`$, we will replace $`U_{ab}U_{ab}^{\mathrm{eff}}`$ where $`U_{ab}^{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is the proper effective quantum pair potential, see below. For more details on the path integral concept, we refer to Refs. zamalin ; prtthr ; filinov76 ; znf76 ; filinov-etal.01ppcf , for recent applications of this approach to correlated Coulomb systems, cf. filinov-etal.00jetpl ; filinov-etal.00jp ; filinov-etal.01jetpl ; afilinov-etal.01prl .

Let us now come back to the integral equation (8). One readily checks that its solution can be represented symbolically by an iteration series of the form

$`W^t`$ $`=`$ $`\overline{W}^t+K_\tau ^tW^\tau `$ (13)
$`=`$ $`\overline{W}^t+K_{\tau _1}^t\overline{W}^{\tau _1}+K_{\tau _2}^tK_{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}\overline{W}^{\tau _1}+K_{\tau _3}^tK_{\tau _2}^{\tau _3}K_{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}\overline{W}^{\tau _1}+\mathrm{},`$
where $`\overline{W}^t`$ and $`\overline{W}^{\tau _1}`$ are the initial quantum spectral densities evolving classically during time intervals $`[0,t]`$ and $`[0,\tau _1]`$, respectively, whereas $`K_{\tau _i}^{\tau _{i+1}}`$ are operators that govern the propagation from time $`\tau _i`$ to $`\tau _{i+1}`$.

Since the time correlation functions (1) are linear functionals of the spectral density, for them the same series representation holds,

$`C_{FA}(t)=(2\pi \mathrm{})^{2\upsilon }{\displaystyle 𝑑\mu _1𝑑\mu _2\varphi (\mu _1;\mu _2)W(\mu _1;\mu _2;t;i\mathrm{}\beta )}\left(\varphi |W^t\right)=`$
$`\left(\varphi |\overline{W}^t\right)+\left(\varphi |K_{\tau _1}^t\overline{W}^{\tau _1}\right)+\left(\varphi |K_{\tau _2}^tK_{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}\overline{W}^{\tau _1}\right)+\left(\varphi |K_{\tau _3}^tK_{\tau _2}^{\tau _3}K_{\tau _1}^{\tau _2}\overline{W}^{\tau _1}\right)+\mathrm{}`$ (14)
where $`\varphi (\mu _1;\mu _2)F(\mu _1)A(\mu _2)`$ and the parentheses $`\left(\mathrm{}|\mathrm{}\right)`$ denote integration over the phase spaces $`\{\mu _1;\mu _2\}`$ as indicated in the first line of the equation.

Note that the mean value $`\overline{F}(t)`$ of a quantum operator $`\widehat{F}`$ can be represented in a form analogous to (14):

$$\overline{F}(t)=(2\pi \mathrm{})^{2\upsilon }𝑑\mu _1𝑑\mu _2\frac{F(\mu _1)+F(\mu _2)}{2}W(\mu _1;\mu _2;t;i\mathrm{}\beta ),$$
(15)
which allows us to increase the efficiency of the simulations. In the following Section we apply this scheme to a system of interacting electrons and random scatterers.

## III Quantum dynamics

As an application, in this work we will consider a system composed of heavy particles (called scatterers) with mass $`m_s`$ and negatively charged electrons with mass $`m_e`$. To avoid bound state effects due to attraction we consider in this case study only negatively charged scatterers, assuming a positve backgroud for charge neutrality. The influence of electron-scatterer attraction will be studied in a further publication.

The possibility to convert a series like (14) into a form convenient for probabilistic interpretation allows us to apply Monte Carlo methods to its evaluation. According to the general theory of the Monte Carlo methods for solving linear integral equations, e.g. sobol , one can simultaneously calculate all terms of the iteration series (14). Using the basic ideas of sobol  we have developed a Monte Carlo scheme, which provides domain sampling of the terms giving the main contribution to the series (14), cf. filmd1 ; filmd2 . This sampling also reduces the numerical expenses for calculating the integrals in each term. For simplicity, in this work, we take into account only the first term of iteration series (14), which is related to the propagation of the initial quantum distribution (11) according to the Hamiltonian equation of motion. This term, however, does not describe pure classical dynamics but accounts for quantum effects filmd3  and, in fact, contains arbitrarily high powers of Planck’s constant. The remaing terms of the iteration series describe momentum jumps filmd1 ; filmd2 ; filmd4  which account for higher-order corrections to the classical dynamics of the quantum distribution (11) which are expected to be relevant in the limit of high density. A detailed investigation of the conditions for which the contribution of the next terms of the iteration series should be taken into account is presented in filmd4 ; filmd5 .

The dynamical evolution of this system is studied along the trajectory pair in phase space, Eqs. (5) and (6), on time scales less than a maximum time $`t^{}`$. This time is chosen small enough such that the system of scatterers is practically stationary within the time interval $`0t<t^{}`$. The initial states of the system evolution are proper equilibrium states and thus relate to physical times much larger than $`t^{}`$. So the initial micro states (particle configurations in phase space) can be randomly generated and an ensemble averaging should be performed with the canonical density operator of the electron-scatterer system, where the latter has been computed by the path integral Monte-Carlo method NEW zamalin  according to the probability distribution, which is proportional to $`\left|\mathrm{\Psi }\right|`$ (10). So due to the time reversibility it is more convenient to start generation of the trajectories (Eqs. (5) and (6)) from time $`\tau =0`$ starting from sampled by Monte Carlo method initial particle configurations (points $`t_j`$ on Fig.1). The phase cofactor of the complex-valued function $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ was taken into account by introducing the weight function sobol ; Ceperley96 ; Berne98  of the initial configurations for the subsequent dynamic evolution. In principle, the method is also applicable to liquids or plasmas by assigning smaller masses to the scatterers.

This approach allows us to generate, in a controlled way, various kinds of initial conditions of the many-body system, in particular (i) those which are characteristic of the fully interacting system \[i.e.including scatterer-scatterer (s-s), electron-scatterer (e-s), and electron-electron (e-e)\] and (ii) those which result if some aspects of these interactions are ignored. In all cases, the short-time dynamics can then be followed by including or excluding the (e-e)-interaction.

For the numerical calculations we introduce dimensionless units, using the maximum value of the time characteristic for the short-time dynamics, $`t^{}`$ as the unit of the dynamic time $`t`$ of the system. So the dimensionless time defined by $`\theta =t/t^{}`$ will always vary between $`0`$ and $`1`$. As a unit of length we take the reciprocal wavenumber $`k^1`$, determined by the ratio $`k^2=2m_eE_0/\mathrm{}^2`$. E.g., for one electron in an external potential field $`\stackrel{~}{U}=V_0U(q)`$ the operator exponent of the time evolution propagator $`\mathrm{exp}(i\widehat{H}t/\mathrm{})`$ can be rewritten in the form

$$\frac{\widehat{H}t}{\mathrm{}}=\left\{\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m_e}\mathrm{\Delta }+V_0U(q)\right\}\frac{t}{\mathrm{}}=\left\{\frac{1}{2M}\mathrm{\Delta }+\xi _0U(q)\right\}\theta $$
(16)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the Laplace operator, $`V_0`$ is characteristic strength of the interaction potential, $`M=\mathrm{}/2E_0t^{}`$, $`\xi _0=V_0/2E_0M=V_0t^{}/\mathrm{}`$.

The tensor of the electrical conductivity is given by:

$$\sigma _{\alpha \gamma }(\omega )=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑te^{i\omega tϵt}_0^\beta 𝑑\lambda \widehat{J}_\gamma \widehat{J}_\alpha (t+i\mathrm{}\lambda )$$
(17)
according to the quantum Kubo formula zubar , where $`ϵ+0`$. The current operator is

$$\widehat{J}_\alpha =\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_e}{}}e\dot{q}_i^\alpha (t)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N_e}{}}\frac{e}{m_e}p_i^\alpha ,$$
(18)
with $`\dot{q}^\alpha `$ being the $`\alpha `$component of the velocity operator of the electron. In the Wigner representation this tensor reads

$$\sigma _{\alpha \gamma }(\omega )=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑te^{i\omega tϵt}_0^\beta 𝑑\lambda \varphi _{\alpha \gamma }(t,\lambda )\frac{k^2}{e^2}\frac{\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_{\alpha \gamma }(\omega )}{2E_0t^{}}$$
(19)
where

$$\varphi _{\alpha \gamma }(t,\lambda )=\widehat{J}_\gamma \widehat{J}_\alpha (t+i\mathrm{}\lambda )=\left(2\pi \mathrm{}\right)^{2\nu }𝑑\mu _1𝑑\mu _2J_\gamma (\mu _1)J_\alpha (\mu _2)W(\mu _1;\mu _2;t;i\mathrm{}\beta ;i\mathrm{}\lambda ),$$
(20)
and the spectral density $`W(\mu _1;\mu _2;t;i\mathrm{}\beta ;i\mathrm{}\lambda )`$ is defined as in Eq. (3) by replacing $`t_c^{}`$ by $`\tau _1=t_1+i\mathrm{}\lambda `$, and $`t_c`$ by $`\tau _2=t_2i\mathrm{}(\beta \lambda )`$. The dimensionless conductivity tensor is denoted by $`\stackrel{~}{\sigma }_{\alpha \gamma }(\omega )`$.

Our model of correlated electrons interacting with an array of random scatterers is described by the following Hamiltonian,

$`\widehat{H}`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{H}_e+\widehat{H}_{es}+\widehat{H}_{ss}=(\widehat{K}_e+\stackrel{~}{U}_{ee})+\stackrel{~}{U}_{es}+(\widehat{K}_s+\stackrel{~}{U}_{ss}),`$
$`\widehat{H}_e`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2M}}{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N_e}{}}}\mathrm{\Delta }_i+{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{\overset{N_e}{}}}\xi _0^{ee}u\left({\displaystyle \frac{|q_iq_j|}{\lambda _{ee}}}\right),`$
$`\widehat{H}_{es}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{N_e}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N_s}{}}}\xi _0^{es}u\left({\displaystyle \frac{|q_iQ_j|}{\lambda _{es}}}\right),`$
$`\widehat{H}_{ss}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2M}}{\displaystyle \frac{m_e}{m_s}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{N_s}{}}}\mathrm{\Delta }_j+{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{\overset{N_s}{}}}\xi _0^{ss}u\left({\displaystyle \frac{|Q_iQ_j|}{\lambda _{ss}}}\right).`$ (21)
In the problem at hand we choose $`m_e/m_s1/20001`$, therefore, on the time scale $`t^{}`$ the scatterers are practically fixed. $`\widehat{H}_{ss}`$ is the Hamiltonian of the scatterers, and $`\xi _0^{ee}=V_0^{ee}t^{}/\mathrm{}`$, $`\xi _0^{es}=V_0^{es}t^{}/\mathrm{}`$ and $`\xi _0^{ss}=V_0^{ss}t^{}/\mathrm{}`$ are the constants of the binary interaction between electrons (e-e) $`u\left(|q_iq_j|/\lambda _{ee}\right)`$, electrons and scatterers (e-s) $`u\left(|q_iQ_j|/\lambda _{es}\right)`$ and between scatterers (s-s) $`u\left(|Q_iQ_j|/\lambda _{ss}\right)`$, respectively. $`q_i`$ represent the positions of the electrons ($`i=1,\mathrm{},N_e`$), and $`Q_j`$ those of the scatterers ($`j=1,\mathrm{},N_s`$).

The (e-e), (e-s) and (s-s) interactions are taken in the form of the Kelbg potential Ke63 ; kelbg , which is the exact quantum pair potential of an ensemble of weakly nonideal and weakly degenerate charged particles:

$$u(|x_{ab}|)=\frac{1}{x_{ab}}\left[1e^{x_{ab}^2}+\sqrt{\pi }x_{ab}\left(1\mathrm{erf}(x_{ab})\right)\right]$$
(22)
where $`x_{ab}=|𝐫_{ab}|/\lambda _{ab}`$, with $`\lambda `$ being the thermal wave length given by $`\lambda _{ab}^2=\frac{\mathrm{}^2\beta }{2\mu _{ab}}`$, $`\mu _{ab}`$ the reduced mass $`\mu _{ab}^1=m_a^1+m_b^1`$, $`V_0^{ab}=\frac{e_ae_b}{\lambda _{ab}}`$ and $`e_a`$, $`e_b`$ being the respective charges. The $`\mathrm{erf}(x)`$ stands for the error function. Note that the Kelbg potential is finite at zero distances and coincides with the Coulomb potential at distances larger than $`\lambda _{ab}`$. This potential has recently been successfully applied to the computation of thermodynamic filinov-etal.00jetpl ; filinov-etal.00jp ; filinov-etal.01ppcf  and dynamic properties golub01pre  of dense quantum plasmas by means of path integral Monte Carlo and classical molecular dynamics methods, respectively. It is, therefore, expected to provide an accurate description of the full Coulomb interaction between all particles within the quantum dynamics approach of the present paper.

Due to the large difference in the masses of electrons and heavy scatterers we can use two simplifications. The first one consists in the antisymmetrization of the density matrix only for electron spins and space coordinates. The second one, as we mentioned above, is the use of the adiabatic approximation for the dynamical evolution, where the positions of the heavy scatterers in each initial configuration were fixed during the electron-dynamics time given by the scale $`t^{}`$. The dynamic evolution has been realized according to relations (5), (6). Let us stress, that the Kelbg potential appearing in the canonical density operator used for ensemble averaging in (10) has to be taken at the inverse temperature $`ϵ\beta /2n`$ while the simulation of the dynamic evolution, according to Eqs. (5,6) involves the Kelbg potential at the temperature $`1/\beta `$.

To simplify the computations we included in (12) only the dominant contribution to the sum over the total electron spin $`s`$ corresponding to $`s=N/2`$ electrons having spin up and down, respectively. The contribution of the other terms decreases rapidly with particle number and vanishes in the thermodynamic limit. To further speed up the convergence of the numerical calculations we bounded the integration over the variables $`q_M,q_1^{},q_M^{},\stackrel{~}{q}_1`$ responsible for oscillations of the function $`\phi `$ in (11) and checked the insensibility of the obtained results to these operations.

## IV Numerical results

We now apply the numerical approach explained above to the problem of an interacting ensemble of electrons and disordered scatterers in one dimension. In all calculations and figures times, frequencies and distances are measured in atomic units. The average distance between electrons, $`R_s=1/n_ea_0`$, was taken to be $`12.0;2.6;0.55`$, the densities of electrons and heavy scatterers are equal. The results obtained were practically insensitive to the variation of the whole number of the particles in Monte Carlo cell from 30 up to 50 and also of the number of high temperature density matrices (determined by the number of factors $`n`$) in (10), ranging from 10 to 20. Estimates of the average statistical error gave the value of the order 5-7 percent. We studied two different temperatures: $`k_BT/|V_0^{es}|=0.45`$ and $`0.28`$, corresponding to $`\lambda _{ee}/a_02.2`$ and $`\lambda _{ee}/a_03.5`$, respectively. The strengths of the three interactions in the system are fixed arbitrarily at the ratio $`V_0^{ee}:V_0^{es}:V_0^{ss}0.7:1:32`$.

According to the Kubo formula zubar  our calculations include two different stages: (i) the generation of the initial conditions (configuration of scatterers and electrons) in the canonical ensemble with probability proportional to the quantum density matrix and (ii) the generation of the dynamic trajectories on time scales $`t^{}`$ in phase space starting from these initial configurations.

The results presented below are related to three different situations. The first two situations refer to the generation of initial configurations used for ensemble averaging, where the (e-e) interaction is fully included (called “interacting ensemble”), while the electron dynamics was simulated in case I. with (e-e) interaction (“interacting dynamics”) and, in case II., without (e-e) interactions (“noninteracting dynamics”). For reference a third situation, III., was studied where the (e-e) interaction is neglected completely, i.e. both, in the initial ensembles (“noninteracting ensemble”) and in the dynamical evolution, see also Fig. 1 for illustration. As we mentioned before to avoid the influence of (e-s) bound state effects we have considered only a system of negatively charged heavy scatterers here. The influence of (e-s) attraction on localization will be studied in a further publication.

### IV.1 Temporal quantum momentum-momentum correlation functions

First we discuss the influence of (e-e) interactions on the temporal quantum momentum-momentum correlation function. Fig. 2 shows momentum-momentum correlation functions corresponding to the situations I. and II. introduced above, i.e. to interacting ensembles with interacting (curves 1) and noninteracting (curves 2) dynamics, respectively. Fig. 2 allows us to compare the obtained functions for two temperatures and densities varying over one order of magnitude.

The traces clearly show coherent oscillations, which are a manifestation of localization tendencies even at finite temperature. Note that at higher temperatures (right-hand panel) these oscillations are less pronounced compared to lower temperatures (left-hand panel). The damping times of these coherent oscillations are clearly different for the noninteracting and interacting dynamics. We observe that the electron-electron interaction leads to a strong reduction (curve 1) of this damping time as compared to (e-e) noninteracting electrons (curve 2). Furthermore, for the noninteracting dynamics the appearance of deep aperiodic modulations is seen. The dynamics of (e-e) noninteracting electrons leads to at least one large oscillation and several damped small ones, reflecting a strong spatial confinement of the electron system in this case. For interacting dynamics both, the first aperiodic modulation and the subsequent damped coherent oscillations are less pronounced.

The damping time for coherent oscillations increases with increasing density and decreasing temperature. The physical reason of this phenomenon is the tendency towards ordering of the scatterers, which is obvious from the corresponding pair distribution functions ($`g_{ss}`$) presented in Fig. 3, which develop periodic modulations for higher densities.

As an interesting side-result Fig. 4 presents the influence of the choice of initial conditions. In the left column we show the momentum-momentum correlation functions corresponding to situations II. and III., i.e. interacting (curves 1) and noninteracting (curves 2) ensembles and, in both cases, dynamics without electron-electron interaction. The analysis of the equilibrium configurations and pair distribution functions for the noninteracting ensemble (right column of Fig. 4) shows that the main contributions to the ensemble averaging result from absolutely different particle configurations if compared to the case of the interacting ensembles discussed above. The (e-e) noninteracting electrons are gathered mainly in the extended deepest potential well, while the heavy scatterers form a potential barrier confining the electrons. The typical initial configuration for equilibrium averaging, therefore, contains a so called ‘electron bubble’. The (e-e) noninteracting electrons oscillate inside this ‘bubble’ with frequencies defined by the eigenvalues of the resulting potential energy profile of this well. On the other hand, for the typical configurations of interacting ensembles (cf. Fig. 3) the scatterers and electrons are both distributed more or less uniformly in space and the potential profile shows only spatial small-scale random inhomogeneities.

In the case of noninteracting ensembles we can see high frequency coherent oscillations with frequencies defined by the potential forming the ‘bubble’, while for interacting ensembles with their spatial small-scale potential profile only aperiodic oscillations (cf. Fig. 2, curves 2) are seen.

### IV.2 Fourier transform of the momentum–momentum time correlation functions

Figures 5 - 7 present the real and imaginary parts of the diagonal elements of the electrical conductivity tensor versus frequency, i.e. the real and imaginary parts of the Fourier transform of the temporal momentum–momentum correlation functions. The real part of the Fourier transform characterizes the Ohmic absorption of electromagnetic energy and has the physical meaning of electron conductivity, while the imaginary part presents $`(ϵ1)\omega `$, where $`ϵ`$ is the permittivity of the system.

Curves 1 and 2 of Fig. 5 show an opposite behavior for vanishing frequency. Most remarkably, the low-frequency conductivity related to the interacting dynamics (curve 1) is positive, while that for the noninteracting dynamics (curve 2) has a maximum at some finite frequency related to the coherent oscillations in the time domain. For lower frequency it changes sign. However, the real part of the conductivity has to be nonzero. The negative contributions are due to weakly damped very slow oscillations with time scales exceeding the scale $`t^{}`$ considered for the calculation of the dynamics for the noninteracting dynamics (see the temporal momentum-momentum correlation functions, Fig. 2). To overcome this deficiency of our model one has to increase the time $`t^{}`$ and/or to take into account the slow motion of the heavy particles, which will destroy the coherent oscillation of the light electrons trapped by the heavy particles and thus suppress these negative values. In fact, we found that calculations performed for longer and longer times lead to decreasing negative contributions for low frequencies.

Nevertheless, let us stress that the results obtained (Figs. 2 and 5) allow us to conclude that the behavior of the conductivity in the vicinity of zero frequency resembles the characteristic features of Anderson localization (i.e. a vanishing zero-frequency conductivity and enhanced oscillations related to the maximum in the real part at finite frequency) for noninteracting dynamics of electrons. The (e-e) interaction, on the other hand, leads to a strong increase of the conductivity at low frequencies and less pronounced oscillations.

Let us note that the high frequency tails of the real and imaginary parts of the Fourier transforms presented in Figs. 5 and 6 coincide with each other, as the main contribution is due to the fast trajectories with high virtual energy. This means, the (e-e) interaction does not influence the behavior of the high frequency tails. Furthermore, we have checked that the high- frequency tails of the real and imaginary parts of the Fourier transform can be described by the Drude-asymptotics for free electrons. This reflects the fact that also the (e-s) interaction (its coupling constant being comparable to that of the (e-e) interaction) does not effect the behavior of the high-energy trajectories.

The Fourier transform of the correlation functions for noninteracting dynamics and both interacting and noninteracting ensembles are presented in Fig. 7 (cf. also Fig. 4). The most remarkable feature of these figures is the splitting of the peak related to the coherent electron oscillations for the noninteracting ensembles. The positions of the inserted triangles show the energy difference between subsequent eigenenergy levels calculated for an averaged bubble. The comparison of the peak and the triangle positions confirms the fact that zubar  the Fourier transform of the momentum-momentum correlation function contains a sum of products of delta-functions and momentum matrix elements related to transitions between these energy levels. The imaginary part of the Fourier transform presented in the right column of Fig. 7 reflects that these characteristic features are related to the resonance oscillations in the ‘bubble’ mentioned above.

Figure 5 shows that for noninteracting dynamics, at low temperatures and moderate densities, e.g. $`R_s=2.6`$ (cf. Figs. b), a well-resolved absorption peak appears which is related to the electron energy level separation. Note that this peak is present even in the case of interacting ensembles. However, there, the height of this peak is considerably smaller than in the case of noninteracting ensembles (Fig. 7).

### IV.3 Position dispersion

Finally, we discuss the position dispersion of electrons for interacting and noninteracting ensembles and noninteracting dynamics, cf. Fig. 8. Electron localization in the bubble results in a very slow growth (curve 2) of the position dispersion in comparison with the case of the small-scale potential profile (curve 1) of the initial configurations, as seen in Fig. 8. The square root of the position dispersion at times of the order of unity yields the typical size of the bubble. However, for larger times, $`t>80`$, curve 2 shows a behavior, which is typical for particle diffusion. This characteristic change in behavior is due to the tail of the electron energy distribution function and is related to the fact that we are dealing with non-selfaveraging quantities. For the high-frequency tails of the Fourier transforms the virtual energy of the trajectories may be large. These exponentially rare fast trajectories can give an exponentially large contribution to the position dispersion, as the difference in positions of fast trajectories may be exponentially large at sufficiently large time. A similar problem connected with exponentially large contributions of exponentially rare events arises in the consideration of classical wave propagation in random media. There, it is well known gred1  that in one-dimensional systems the dispersion of wave intensities is not self-averaging, as exponentially rare configurations of scatterers can give rise to exponentially large contributions of intensity at large distances from the wave source.

## V Conclusion

The Quantum-Dynamics-Monte-Carlo approach applied to a one-dimensional system of interacting electrons in an array of fixed random scatterers at finite temperature gives strong evidence for an enhancement of the quantum mobility of electrons due to their mutual long-range many-particle interaction and thus substantiates previous expectations drawn from schematic models.

As in our approach the temperature is taken to be nonzero, Anderson localization is not expected to show up in the results for noninteracting electrons in a strict sense. On the other hand, for the considered temperatures (comparable to or less than the coupling constant of the electron-scatterer potential) localization tendencies are clearly observable in this case. They manifest themselves both, in the low-frequency behavior of the momentum-momentum correlation function related to the conductivity of the electron system, and in coherent oscillations. For nonzero electron-electron interaction these localization tendencies are relaxed and the frequency- dependent correlation function has a form not unlike a Drude behavior. The high-frequency tails resemble a Drude-behavior of free electrons in all cases.

For initial conditions describing a noninteracting ensemble, the scattering centers form electron-bubbles which accomodate the \[(e-e) noninteracting\] electrons in their eigenstates and lead to well-defined coherent oscillations. In contrast, for configurations describing interacting ensembles, the scatterers and electrons are both distributed more or less uniformly in space and the potential profile shows only spatial small-scale random inhomogeneities. Then the dynamics of interacting electrons in this spatial small-scale random potential profile shows only fast damped oscillations with much smaller damping time if compared to noninteracting dynamics and results in an increased low-frequency conductivity.

The present work shows that it is possible to treat a system of many quantum particles interacting with each other via the long-range Coulomb potential in a numerically rigorous scheme. Here we have considered the heavy particles to be essentially immobile species. On the other hand, if their mass is being reduced they will take part in the dynamics, and we then have a system resembling a plasma of, e.g., electrons and holes. Such calculations are presently under way and will be published shortly.

## VI Acknowledgments

The authors thank B.L. Altshuler for stimulating discussions and valuable notes and the NIC Jülich for computer time. V. Filinov acknowledges the hospitality of the Graduate College “Optoelectronics of Mesoscopic Semiconductors” and the Department of Physics of the Philipps-Universität Marburg. This work is partly supported by the Max-Planck Research Prize of the Humboldt and Max-Planck Societies, by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the Quantenkohärenz Schwerpunkt, and by the Leibniz Prize. I.V. acknowledges financial support from the Hungarian Research Fund (OTKA) under T029813, T032116 and T034832.

FIGURES

Fig.1 Illustration of the Quantum-Dynamics scheme for computation of the correlation function $`C_{FA}(\tau )`$. The quantum general dynamics scheme generates particle trajectories (long arrows) in phase space $`pq`$ starting from an initial state at $`t=0`$. The two arrows indicate different ensembles used for averaging over the initial states which do (do not) include e-e interaction: interacting ensemble, (noninteracting ensemble). At randomly chosen times $`t_1,\mathrm{},t_i,t_{i+1},\mathrm{},t_K`$, a pair of dynamic trajectories (short arrows) is propagated in positive and negative time direction, e.g. from $`t_i`$ to $`t_i+\tau /2`$ and $`t_i\tau /2`$, respectively. $`C_{FA}(\tau )`$ is averaged over all $`K`$ trajectories. Bold (dashed) arrows indicate (non-)interacting dynamics including (neglecting) e-e interaction.

Fig.2 Temporal momentum-momentum correlation for interacting ensembles for the case of interacting (1) and noninteracting (2) dynamics. Temperatures are $`k_BT/|V_0^{es}|=0.28`$ (left panel: a,b) and $`k_BT/|V_0^{es}|=0.45`$ (right panel: c,d).

Fig.3 e-e, e-s and s-s pair distribution functions for the interacting ensemble, for the same parameters as in Fig. 2.

Fig.4 Left Column: Temporal momentum-momentum correlation functions for the case of noninteracting dynamics and interacting (1) and noninteracting (2) ensembles. Temperature is $`k_BT/|V_0^{es}|=0.45`$. Right Column: Pair distribution functions for the noninteracting ensembles.

Fig.5 Real part of the Fourier transform of the temporal momentum-momentum correlation functions of Fig. 2

Fig.6 Imaginary part of the Fourier transform of the temporal momentum-momentum correlation functions of Fig. 2.

Fig.7 Real part (left column) and imaginary part (right column) of the Fourier transform of the temporal momentum-momentum correlation functions of Fig. 4. Triangles indicate the transition energies between the lowest energy eigenvalues for an anlytical model for the deepest scatterer potential which traps the electrons (vertical coordinates of the triangles are arbitrary).

Fig.8 Electron position dispersion for noninteracting dynamics and interacting (1) versus noninteracting (2) ensembles, cf. Fig. 4.


text:
# Qubitless Quantum Logic

## I Introduction

Current quantum computation and quantum information processing theory is based on the manipulation of two-state subsystems known as physical qubits 1 -3 . (The physical qubits need not be identical to the binary digits used for encoding information, which are called logical qubits). One begins with a system of weakly interacting or noninteracting physical qubits and, in order to implement quantum logic gates, one either applies short pulses of an external field or “turns on” strong coupling between the qubits for short periods of time. For example, in a recent proposal a , the logical qubit states $`|0`$ and $`|1`$ are represented by selected states of three spins in a chain. The states used have $`I=1/2`$ and $`m_I=1/2`$, thus,

$`|0={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(||)|,`$
$`|1=\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}}|{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{6}}}(|+|)|.`$ (1)
Quantum logic gates are implemented in this proposal by turning on the Heisenberg interaction between neighboring spins for short time intervals.

Physical systems with permanent strong interactions between the subsystems are not included in the current theory of quantum computation. We believe that there is a need to extend the theory to include these systems because such interactions can quite realistically be expected in many of the types of physical systems that have been proposed as quantum computers. In this paper, we discuss the implementation of quantum information processing in these systems. As an example, we consider a spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain in a non-uniform magnetic field. We assume that the Heisenberg coupling cannot be turned off, and thus it is impossible to separate the system into weakly interacting subsystems. Nevertheless we show that qubitless quantum logic may be implemented using external electromagnetic pulses. Although this procedure is not scalable to quantum computers with large numbers of qubits, these systems nevertheless can be of use in small quantum devices for opto-electronic interfaces, quantum cryptography and communication, etc. These small devices would store quantum information and perform some elementary quantum manipulation.

## II Logical Qubits without Physical Qubits

We now discuss general requirements for the implementation of quantum logic in a many-level system. We use each energy level to represent a number. For example, the numbers 0 to 3 can be represented within a four-level system. Each stationary state of the system is identified with a binary number,

$$|00_l,|01_l,|10_l,\text{or}|11_l.$$
(2)
The subscript $`l`$ denotes that this is a logical notation and the qubits here should not be identified with any physical entities. Since any quantum logic gate can be decomposed into a sequence of one-qubit rotations and two-qubit controlled-NOT ($`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}`$) gates b , we would like to be able to implement these gates on the logical qubits. For instance, a “$`\pi `$/2”-rotation 2  on logical qubit “1”, $`𝖴_1𝖴_1(\pi /2)`$, corresponds to the following set of transformations,

$`𝖴_1|00_l`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(|00_l+i|10_l),`$
$`𝖴_1|01_l`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(|01_l+i|11_l),`$
$`𝖴_1|10_l`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(|10_l+i|00_l),`$
$`𝖴_1|11_l`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(|11_l+i|01_l),`$ (3)
and the modified controlled-NOT gate, $`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}`$, would operate in the following manner,

$`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}|00_l`$ $`=`$ $`|00_l,`$
$`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}|01_l`$ $`=`$ $`|01_l,`$
$`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}|10_l`$ $`=`$ $`i|11_l,`$
$`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}|11_l`$ $`=`$ $`i|10_l.`$ (4)
Now, we assume that we can drive transitions between the energy levels by applying a cyclic potential, $`V`$, whose frequency is resonant to the energy difference between the levels. A transition between two states is possible only if the matrix element of $`V`$ between those states is nonzero. We assume that any transition which “flips” one of the logical qubits is allowed. This assumption is valid for the model discussed below. If a complete transition between two states takes a time $`T`$ to complete, then application of $`V`$ for this period of time is known as a $`\pi `$-pulse. If a pulse is applied to one of the eigenstates for a time interval $`T`$/2 ($`\pi `$/2-pulse), then a uniform superposition of two states will be created (assuming only resonant transitions occur). For example, upon application of a $`\pi `$/2-pulse to the state $`|00_l`$, resonant to the energy difference between $`|00_l`$ and $`|10_l`$, the transformation which results is,

$$|00_l\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|00_l+i|10_l),$$
(5)
and if the same pulse is applied to $`|10_l`$, the transformation is,

$$|10_l\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}(|10_l+i|00_l).$$
(6)
These are the first and third transformations in (II). The second and fourth transformations can be implemented by the application of a similar pulse, resonant to the energy difference between $`|01_l`$ and $`|11_l`$. Thus, the one-qubit rotation, $`𝖴_1`$, can be implemented by two resonant $`\pi `$/2-pulses. The $`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}`$ gate (II), on the other hand, can be realized by the application of one $`\pi `$-pulse, resonant to the energy difference $`|10_l|11_l`$. These are idealized implementations of the gates, as in reality non-resonant transitions occur, which may give rise to deviations from the ideal output.

## III Heisenberg Chain Quantum Computer

Consider a chain of $`L`$ spins with uniform nearest-neighbor Heisenberg coupling, $`J`$. The system is subjected to a number of radio-frequency magnetic pulses. The Hamiltonian of the system under the influence of the $`j`$th pulse, (with $`\mathrm{}=1`$) is,

$$=H+V,$$

$$H=\underset{k=0}{\overset{L1}{}}\omega _kI_k^z2J\underset{k=0}{\overset{L2}{}}𝐈_k𝐈_{k+1},$$

$$V=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }}{2}\underset{k=0}{\overset{L1}{}}\left(e^{i(\nu _jt+\varphi _j)}I_k^{}+e^{+i(\nu _jt+\varphi _j)}I_k^+\right),$$
(7)
where $`\omega _k`$ is the Larmor frequency of the $`k`$th spin, $`𝐈_k`$ is the spin operator for the $`k`$th spin, $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the Rabi frequency and $`\nu _j`$ and $`\varphi _j`$ are the frequency and phase of the pulse. Upon diagonalization of $`H`$, we obtain $`2^L`$ eigenstates. Except for two of these states (the ones with spin projection quantum numbers $`m_I=\pm L/2`$), they are entangled superpositions of the individual spin product states.

In the case of uniform Larmor frequency, both the total spin and spin projection operators, $`I_{tot}^2`$ and $`I_{tot}^z`$, commute with $`H`$. Thus the eigenstates have definite values of the total spin quantum number, $`I`$, and the spin projection quantum number, $`m_I`$. The effect of the application of a pulse, assuming only resonant transitions occur, is to give rise to transitions which change the spin projection by $`\mathrm{\Delta }m_I=\pm 1`$, but leave the total spin unchanged. Starting from the ground state, which has $`I=L/2`$, only $`2I+1=L+1`$ levels can be accessed using successive resonant transitions resulting from the application of pulses, out of the total number of $`2^L`$ levels.

Thus, in order to be able to access all possible levels, a non-uniform Larmor frequency (i.e., a non-uniform external magnetic field) is required. In this case, $`H`$ commutes with $`I_{tot}^z`$ but not with $`I_{tot}^2`$. Thus, the eigenstates have definite values of $`m_I`$ but one is not restricted to the subspace of states with a fixed total spin.

## IV Controlled-NOT Gate

As a simple example of the implementation of quantum logic in the Heisenberg system, we consider the modified controlled-NOT gate, $`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}`$, in a two-spin system. We label the eigenstates of $`H`$ (expressed in terms of the eigenstates of $`I_1^z`$ and $`I_2^z`$) with binary numbers, thus,

$`|00_l=|,`$
$`|01_l=\alpha _1|+\alpha _2|,`$
$`|10_l=\alpha _2|+\alpha _1|,`$
$`|11_l=|,`$ (8)
Where $`\alpha _1`$ and $`\alpha _2`$ are functions of the ratio $`J/\delta \omega `$, where $`\delta \omega =\omega _1\omega _0`$. In the limit $`J/\delta \omega \mathrm{}`$, $`\alpha _1=\alpha _2=1/\sqrt{2}`$, and in the limit $`J/\delta \omega 0`$, $`\alpha _1=1`$ and $`\alpha _2=0`$. Note that in this scheme, not only are the logical states entangled superpositions of the spins, but the “0” and “1” states of the logical qubits can’t even be identified with any well-defined states of the overall system. Thus the scheme is qubitless in the sense that a logical qubit doesn’t correspond to any sort of physical subsystem.

The energies of the eigenstates are given by the following expressions:

* for the states $`|00_l`$ and $`|11_l`$ respectively,

$$E_{0,3}=\frac{J}{2}\frac{\omega _0+\omega _1}{2},$$
(9)
* and for the states $`|01_l`$ and $`|10_l`$ respectively,

$$E_{1,2}=+\frac{J}{2}\frac{\delta \omega }{2}.$$
(10)

The non-zero matrix elements of the pulse, $`V`$, in this system are,

$`{}_{l}{}^{}01|V|00_{l}^{}=`$ $`{}_{l}{}^{}11|V|01_{l}^{}=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_0}{2}}e^{i\nu t\varphi },`$
$`{}_{l}{}^{}10|V|00_{l}^{}=`$ $`{}_{l}{}^{}11|V|10_{l}^{}=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_1}{2}}e^{i\nu t\varphi },`$ (11)
where $`\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_1`$ are “effective” Rabi frequencies,

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_{0,1}=(\alpha _1\pm \alpha _2)\mathrm{\Omega }.$$
(12)
Therefore, all transitions involving a flip of one of the logical qubits are allowed.

Using the Schrödinger equation, we can write equations of motion for the probability amplitudes of the logical states, $`C_{00}`$, $`C_{01}`$, etc. In the interaction representation, the evolution of each of the amplitudes will be coupled to the amplitudes of two other states. For example, the equation of motion for $`C_{11}`$ is,

$$i\dot{C}_{11}=\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_0}{2}e^{i[(E_3E_1\nu )t\varphi ]}C_{01}\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_1}{2}e^{i[(E_3E_2\nu )t\varphi ]}C_{10}.$$
(13)
If we apply a pulse resonant to the frequency of the transition $`|10_l|11_l`$, that is $`\nu =E_3E_2`$ then, ignoring the non-resonant transitions, the solution for $`C_{11}`$ is,

$$C_{11}(t)=C_{11}(0)\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_1t}{2}\right)+ie^{i\varphi }C_{10}(0)\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_1t}{2}\right).$$
(14)
Similarly, the solution for $`C_{10}`$ with this pulse is,

$$C_{10}(t)=C_{10}(0)\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_1t}{2}\right)+ie^{+i\varphi }C_{11}(0)\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_1t}{2}\right).$$
(15)
Thus, a pulse with a duration $`\pi `$/$`\mathrm{\Omega }_1`$ (which is known as a $`\pi `$-pulse), causes a complete exchange of probabilities between $`|10_l`$ and $`|11_l`$, while one with a duration $`\pi /2\mathrm{\Omega }_1`$ ($`\pi `$/2-pulse) causes $`|10_l`$ to be transformed into a uniform superposition of the two states and likewise for $`|11_l`$. The $`\pi `$-pulse of frequency $`\nu =E_3E_2`$ and phase $`\varphi =0`$ is clearly what’s required to implement the modified $`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}`$-gate (II).

## V Errors in the Implementation of the Controlled-NOT Gate

In our preceding discussion, we assumed that pulses only drive resonant transitions. However, non-resonant transitions do occur with a finite probability, which can give rise to significant errors even in a single-pulse implementation of a quantum gate. Here we present the results of numerical simulations of the implementation of $`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}`$. As an example, we begin with the following initial amplitudes for the logical states,

$`C_{00}(0)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}},C_{01}(0)=0,C_{10}(0)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}},\text{and}`$
$`C_{11}(0)=0,`$ (16)
and present the simulated final probabilities after a pulse of duration $`\tau =\pi /\mathrm{\Omega }_1`$. The ideal output amplitudes are,

$`C_{00}(0)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}},C_{01}(0)=0,C_{10}(0)=0,\text{and}`$
$`C_{11}(0)={\displaystyle \frac{i}{\sqrt{2}}}.`$ (17)
The simulated final probabilities are plotted in Fig. 1 as functions of the Rabi frequency for four different values of $`\delta \omega `$. All parameters in the simulation are given in units of $`J`$. We chose $`\omega _0=100`$. One can see that the variation of the probabilities definitely shows a dependence on $`\delta \omega `$ as well as an oscillatory dependence on the Rabi frequency. These dependencies can be explained by dividing the non-resonant transitions into two categories:

* Near-Resonant Transitions. In this case there is only one such transition, namely $`|00_l|01_l`$ which, for $`\delta \omega =50`$, has a transition frequency of $`\nu =E_1E_0=99.98`$ as compared to $`\nu =E_3E_2=98.98`$ for the resonant transition.
* Off-Resonant Transitions. In this case there are two, $`|00_l|10_l`$ and $`|01_l|11_l`$ which, for $`\delta \omega =50`$, have transition frequencies of 151.02 and 149.02 respectively.

The effects of all of the above transitions can clearly be seen in the $`\delta \omega =10`$ case. In Fig. 1(b), which shows the final values of $`|C_{01}|^2`$, the large amplitude low frequency oscillations are the result of the near-resonant transitions and the small amplitude high frequency oscillations are the result of the off-resonant transitions. In Fig. 1(c) for $`|C_{10}|^2`$, the primary effect is that of the high frequency oscillations since this state is not directly affected by the near-resonant transition, rather it is affected by an off-resonant one. Figure 1(d) for $`|C_{11}|^2`$ again shows the high frequency oscillations. However, the oscillations are modulated and shifted by the near-resonant transition. This may be explained by a two-step process, $`|11_l|01_l|00_l`$, an off-resonant transition followed by a near-resonant one. In Fig. 1(a) for $`|C_{00}|^2`$ the probability is primarily influenced by the near-resonant transition, but it is shifted upwards due to the off-resonant ones.

In order to decrease the errors on the $`\mathrm{𝖢𝖭}_{10}`$, one can reduce the Rabi frequency, which reduces the effect of all non-resonant transitions. Another method of error reduction can be explained by an analysis of Fig. 1. The graphs clearly show that increasing $`\delta \omega `$ decreases the influence of the off-resonant transitions. This is due to the fact that it increases the difference between the frequencies of the off-resonant transitions on the one hand, and that of the resonant one on the other. When $`\delta \omega `$ is 250, the effect of the off-resonant transitions is almost negligible.

The remaining error is due to the near-resonant transition. This error can be reduced by making use of the “$`2\pi k`$-method” 2 ; c , which essentially involves choosing values of the Rabi frequency where the error due to the near-resonant transition is zero. That is, a Rabi frequency is chosen such that a $`\pi `$-pulse, while giving rise to the resonant transition will also cause an angular change of $`2\pi k`$ (where $`k`$ is an integer), due to the near-resonant one; so that the probabilities of the states affected by the near-resonant transition return to their initial values at the end of the pulse. The condition for this is,

$$\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_0^2+\mathrm{\Delta }^2}\tau =2\pi k,$$
(18)
where $`\tau =\pi /\mathrm{\Omega }_1`$ as before, and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the difference between the near-resonant and resonant transition frequencies. Thus, for $`\delta \omega 250`$, the errors can effectively be reduced by choosing values for the Rabi frequency satisfying the $`2\pi k`$ condition. (Here, we don’t consider more sophisticated pulse shaping methods, which can also be used to reduce the errors in the implementation of quantum logic gates e ).

## VI Shor’s Algorithm

In order to illustrate the implementation of a quantum algorithm in our system, we have performed a simulation of Shor’s algorithm for prime factorizationd . We simulated a pulse sequence for the factorization of the number four in a four-spin Heisenberg chain quantum computer. This is a 16 level-system and the logical states are $`|0000_l,|0001_l,|0010_l,\mathrm{}|1111_l`$, or in decimal notation $`|0_l,|1_l,|2_l,\mathrm{}|15_l`$. We used the same sequence of quantum gates as the simulations on the Ising chain quantum computer c , but the pulses used were those appropriate to the Heisenberg case.

Shor’s algorithm requires two registers of qubits. We designate the left two logical qubits as the x-register and the right as the y-register. We assume that the initial state is the ground state $`|0000_l=|0_l`$. The algorithm then proceeds in three steps. The first step is to create a uniform superposition in the logical x-register. The state which results from this is,

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(|0000_l+|0100_l+|1000_l+|1100_l)`$ (19)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(|0_l+|4_l+|8_l+|12_l),`$
The resonant pulse sequence to create this state consists of three $`\pi /2`$-pulses - for the transitions $`|0_l|4_l`$, then $`|0_l|8_l`$, then $`|4_l|12_l`$. The next step is to transform to the state,

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }=\frac{1}{2}\underset{x=0}{\overset{3}{}}|x,y(x)_l,$$
(20)
where $`y(x)=3^x`$(mod 4). This is implemented using six $`\pi `$-pulses. The final step is to perform a discrete Fourier transform on the logical x-register. This can be implemented using a sequence of so-called $`𝖠`$\- and $`𝖡`$-gates, which in our system requires 32 ($`\pi `$\- and $`\pi /2`$-) pulses. The final state after implementation of Shor’s algorithm ideally contains the following four states with equal probability,

$$|0001_l,|0011_l,|0101_l,\text{and}|0111_l,$$

or,

$$|1_l,|3_l,|5_l,\text{and}|7_l.$$
(21)
Figure 2 shows the results of our numerical simulations of the 41-pulse sequence. The white bars correspond to the ideal values of the probabilities (1/4) of the states in (21). The black bars are the probabilities resulting from numerical simulations of the pulse sequence. The larger probabilities are shown in Fig. 2(a), and the smaller ones corresponding to errors are shown on an enlarged scale in Fig. 2(b). It can be seen that the simulated probabilities for the states in (21) are very close to their ideal values. The maximum deviation on these states is 0.0066. The probabilities of the unwanted states do not exceed 0.0043. Four unwanted states have probabilities between 0.0030 and 0.0043, and the remainder have probabilities smaller than 0.0005. The sum of the probabilities of the unwanted states is 0.016.

## VII Conclusions

We have demonstrated a scheme for the implementation of quantum information processing in a system of particles with strong permanent interactions. We envisage that a number of these systems could be used for the design of quantum logical devices. We have also shown that a system of strongly coupled particles is qubitless - logical qubits don’t directly correspond to any physical two-state subsystem. Nevertheless, it is possible to implement quantum logic operations in this system.

As an example, we presented results on the implementation of the controlled-NOT gate and Shor’s algorithm in a spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain in a nonuniform magnetic field. The results show that quantum logic can be implemented with resonant electromagnetic pulses and that the errors caused by nonresonant transitions can be effectively reduced.

###### Acknowledgements.

We are grateful to Tony Leggett for useful discussions. This work was supported by the Department of Energy under contract W-7405-ENG-36 and the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences, by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA).


text:
# INFRARED PHOTOMETRY OF THE GLOBULAR CLUSTER PALOMAR 6

## 1 Introduction

Palomar 6 ($`\alpha `$ = 17h 44m, $`\delta `$ = $``$26 13$`\mathrm{}`$; $`l`$ = 2.1, $`b`$ = 1.8; J2000) is a globular cluster $``$ 0.8 kpc from the Galactic center and $``$ 0.2 kpc from the plane (Harris 1996). Since it lies near the Galactic center, it is highly reddened.

Malkan (1981) derived the interstellar reddening for Palomar 6, $`E(BV)`$ = 1.4, based on a reddening-free metallicity index $`Q_{IR}`$.111 $`Q_{IR}`$ is defined to be H2O + 1.5 CO, where H2O and CO are the narrow-band infrared photometric absorption indices from H2O at 2.0 $`\mu `$m and CO at 2.4 $`\mu `$m. Malkan (1981) claimed that there is a correlation between $`Q_{IR}`$ and a reddening-free ultraviolet line-blanketing parameter $`Q_{39}`$ (Zinn 1980) with, $`Q_{IR}=0.045+0.45Q_{39}.`$ Ortolani, Bica, & Barbuy (1995) obtained $`E(BV)`$ = 1.33 $`\pm `$ 0.10 based on the $`VI`$ color magnitude diagram (CMD). Bica et al. (1998) also studied the cluster employing intermediate resolution (5.4 Å pixel-1) integrated spectra and they derived the smallest value of the interstellar reddening value for the cluster, $`E(BV)`$ = 1.25.

The metallicity of the cluster is rather controversial. Malkan (1981) obtained a metallicity of \[Fe/H\] = $``$1.30 for Palomar 6 using the $`Q_{IR}`$ index, ranking it an intermediate metallicity inner halo cluster. Zinn (1985) derived \[Fe/H\] = $``$0.74 for Palomar 6 by reanalyzing Malkan’s photometry. Ortolani et al. (1995) estimated \[Fe/H\] $``$ $``$0.4 based on the $`VI`$ CMD. Minniti (1995) studied the metallicities of seven reddened clusters including Palomar 6. He obtained spectra of six red-giant branch (RGB) stars in Palomar 6 with a 2 Å resolution covering $`\lambda \lambda `$ 4700 – 5400 Å. He suggested that the sum of Mg $`\lambda `$ 5175 Å, Fe $`\lambda `$ 5270 Å, and Fe $`\lambda `$ 5535 Å lines (Mg + 2Fe) is the most sensitive to metallicity following Faber et al. (1985), and he derived \[Fe/H\] = +0.2 $`\pm `$ 0.3 for Palomar 6 based on the location of the giants in the Mg + 2Fe vs $`(JK)_0`$ diagram. More recently, Bica et al. (1998) obtained \[$`Z/Z_{}`$\] = $``$0.09 by measuring Ca II triplet $`\lambda \lambda `$ 8498, 8542, and 8662 Å using the intermediate resolution integrated spectra.

As discussed above, Palomar 6 suffers a large interstellar reddening. The interstellar extinction in the visual passband $`A_V`$ for Palomar 6 is expected to be $``$ 3.9 – 4.3 mag, depending on its true interstellar reddening value, and the apparent visual magnitude of the horizontal branch (HB) $`V_{HB}`$ is $``$ 20 mag (Ortolani et al. 1995). Thus, photometric study of Palomar 6 in the visual passband is very difficult. It is also likely that differential reddening, which is commonly detected in heavily reddened clusters, is present. The IR photometry is, therefore, essential for studying Palomar 6, since it is less sensitive to the interstellar reddening and the differential reddening effect. In this paper, we explore the ground-based $`JHK`$ photometry of Palomar 6. A comparison with $`JK`$ photometry of Minniti, Olszewski, Rieke (1995) is made. The distance modulus using the $`K`$ magnitude of the red horizontal branch (RHB) and the metallicity estimate using the RGB slope of the cluster are discussed.

## 2 Observations and IR data reduction techniques

Our observations were carried out using the 4m telescope at KPNO on the night of June 15 1997 under photometric conditions. The detector was a 256$`\times `$256 HgCdTe NICMOS3 array and the JHK filter system was employed. The image scale was 0.60 arcsec pixel-1 providing a field of view (FOV) of 2.56 $`\times `$ 2.56 arcmin. The journal of observations is presented in Table 1.

During our observations, we dithered the telescope pointing to minimize the effects induced by bad pixels and cosmic ray events. For standard star frames, the telescope pointing was dithered with an offset of 37 arcsec between successive exposures. Offsets of 6 and 10 arcsec were applied for Palomar 6 object frames.

NICMOS3 detectors utilize a hybrid architecture in which each pixel has an associated unit cell which controls the biasing and readout of the pixel. Thus, each pixel is essentially independent of the others and charge bleeding or trailing from saturated pixels is not present. However, this independence also means that such properties as linearity and dark current can vary from pixel to pixel, and it is necessary to calibrate these effects for optimum scientific performance.

The mean dark current of NICMOS3 is known to be $``$ 2 $`e^1`$/sec. However it does not scale simply with the exposure time. Thus we obtained dark frames with the same exposure times as object and standard star frames to calibrate the dark currents.

The non-linearity of the detector sensitivity was also calibrated. We obtained a series of dome flats with exposure times of 3, 10, 15, 20, and 30 sec maintaining the same illumination intensity. We also obtained 1 sec exposures before and after each exposure to monitor possible changes in the illumination. Then the fluxes of each exposure were normalized to that of 1 sec exposures. The measured fluxes for each exposure were plotted as a function of expected fluxes with linear sensitivity. Then we derived a third-order relation,

$$ADU_{corr}=ADU_{obs}[0.9952+0.0744\frac{ADU_{obs}}{32767}0.0489(\frac{ADU_{obs}}{32767})^2],$$
(1)
where $`ADU_{corr}`$ and $`ADU_{obs}`$ are the corrected flux and the observed flux in ADU, respectively. This relation was then applied to each object frame using the IRAF222IRAF (Image Reduction and Analysis Facility) is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under contract with the National Science Foundation. task IRLINCOR. Figure 1 shows the non-linear response curve of NICMOS3 detector. The solid line represents the linear relation and filled circles represent the observed fluxes and open circles represent the corrected fluxes using the relation above.

The sky-flats were generated by median-combining object frames of the individual dithering sequences for each passband. This procedure essentially removes the stellar light and cosmic ray, and provides good sky-flats for less crowded fields, such as standard star frames. The sky-flats generated using Palomar 6 object frames, however, show residuals of stellar images, indicating that this procedure fails when the field is too crowded. Applying sky-flats generated from the other images taken at different times may cause potential problems. It is known that there are two predominant sources of infrared sky background, which are essentially independent, both physically and spectrally. At short wavelengths (in particular $`H`$ passband), the sky is dominated by emission lines from OH in the upper atmosphere (typically 90 km altitude). The strength of these lines can vary over the course of a night; in addition, upper level winds create inhomogeneity and motion of the airglow. As a result, the intensity of the background can vary unpredictably during the night. At longer wavelengths, thermal emission from the telescope optics and optically thick telluric lines predominates. The transition between these two regimes occurs at approximately 2.3 microns, so the background with filters other than $`K^{}`$ or $`K`$ is primarily OH airglow. We produced master sky-flats, which were median-combined sky-flats of the whole set of standard star frames, rather than using sky-flats from a single dithering sequence. Since the standard star frames were taken over the night in our observation, using these master sky-flats will minimize the risk of the abrupt changes of infrared sky background.

Figure 2 shows a comparison between the sky-flat generated using the Palomar 6 frame (upper left) and our master sky-flat (upper right) in the $`J`$ passband. As can be seen, the sky-flat using the Palomar 6 frames shows residuals of stellar light. This causes serious problems in the central part of the cluster, where the field is more crowded. The flat-field corrected images are also shown in the Figure. The lower left panel shows the final image using the sky-flat from the Palomar 6 frames and the lower right panel shows that of using the master sky-flat. The former does not resolve fainter stars very well and even brighter stars were turned out to be affected by the residual flux on the sky flat in the central part of the cluster. Therefore, we used the master sky-flat in our analysis.

It is known that there are several hundred bad pixels in the NICMOS3 detector used in our observation. The bad pixel correction was applied after the flat-field correction step. The bad pixel mask was generated using the standard star frames. The flat-field corrected standard star frames ($``$ 100 frames) were normalized and then median combined. Since the strict definition of a bad pixel is rather subjective except for the non-responsive (dead) pixels, the pixels deviating more than 7 $`\sigma `$ around the mean value (= 1.0) were defined to be bad pixels. The pixel values at the bad pixel position were interpolated using those of nearby pixels. Finally, the object frames in each dithering sequence were combined. Our combined image of Palomar 6 in $`K`$ passband is shown in Figure 3.

During the night, we observed the six UKIRT faint standard stars (Casali & Hawarden 1992). It should be noted that the number of IR standard stars is small and the most of the IR standard stars by Elias et al. (1982) are too bright for our camera plus telescope configuration. All standard frames were analyzed using the PHOTOMETRY task in DAOPHOTII (Stetson 1995). With the results of aperture photometry, growth curve analysis was performed using DAOGROW (Stetson 1990) to obtain integrated magnitudes.

The extinction coefficients were derived from one standard star (FS25). The first-order $`K`$ passband extinction term $`k_k`$ is 0.101 mag airmass-1 and the first-order color extinction terms $`k_{jk}^{}`$ and $`k_{jh}^{}`$ are $``$0.004 and 0.045 mag airmass-1, respectively.

To calibrate the photometry, the photometric transformations were assumed to have the following form,

$`K_{UKIRT}`$ $`=`$ $`k_0+\zeta _K,`$
$`(JK)_{UKIRT}`$ $`=`$ $`\mu (jk)_0+\zeta _{JK},`$
$`(JH)_{UKIRT}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ(jh)_0+\zeta _{JH}.`$ (2)
The transformation coefficients are $`\zeta _K=3.235\pm 0.010`$, $`\mu =0.957\pm 0.019`$, $`\zeta _{JK}=0.624\pm 0.007`$, $`ϵ=1.006\pm 0.016`$, and $`\zeta _{JH}=0.156\pm 0.004`$ in the UKIRT $`JHK`$ system. (The errors are those of the mean.) Figure 4 shows the residuals of $`K_{UKIRT}`$, $`(JK)_{UKIRT}`$, and $`(HK)_{UKIRT}`$ using these transformation coefficients. The mean values are 0.000 $`\pm `$ 0.010 in the $`K_{UKIRT}`$ passband, 0.000 $`\pm `$ 0.010 in the $`(JK)_{UKIRT}`$ color, and 0.000 $`\pm `$ 0.007 in the $`(HK)_{UKIRT}`$ color. (The errors are those of the mean.)

Point-spread function (PSF) photometry for all Palomar 6 frames was performed using DAOPHOTII and ALLSTAR/ALLFRAME (Stetson 1987, 1994, 1995; Turner 1995). The first step was to perform the aperture photometry with star lists returned from the FIND routine. We calculated PSFs using isolated bright stars. To obtain good PSFs on each frame, at least 3 iterations of neighboring-star removal were performed. For the PSF calculations, we adopted a spatially invariable PSF since, unlike modern CCDs, a NICMOS3 array has a small FOV, so that the stellar radial profiles are not expected to show large variations over the frame. Also, the number of PSF stars is too small (usually 20-30 stars) to calculate reliable variable PSFs in each frame. In case of 2K CCD system, the number of PSF stars are large enough (for example 90-110 stars in Lee & Carney 1999) to calculate a variable PSF in each frame. After the first ALLFRAME pass, we undertook an additional pass to find more stars on the subtracted frames. Since we used a small PSF radius (usually, $`4\times `$FWHM) to compute the PSF magnitude due to crowding, a PSF magnitude must be converted into an aperture magnitude with a larger radius, a process known as aperture correction. The 20 to 30 PSF stars on each frame were used for this purpose. Comparisons of the PSF magnitude and the aperture magnitude from the growth-curve method yielded aperture corrections. Finally airmass corrections and photometric transformations were applied.

To convert the UKIRT $`JHK`$ system to the CIT $`JHK`$ system, we used the following transformation equations given by Casali & Hawarden (1992),

$`K`$ $`=`$ $`K_{UKIRT}0.018(JK)_{UKIRT},`$
$`(JK)`$ $`=`$ $`0.936(JK)_{UKIRT},`$
$`(HK)`$ $`=`$ $`0.960(HK)_{UKIRT}.`$ (3)
## 3 Results and discussions

### 3.1 Color Magnitude Diagrams

Our composite CMDs of Palomar 6 are presented in Figure 5 and the sample CMD data are shown in Table 2. In the Table, the positions (columns 2 and 3) are presented in pixel units (0.60 arcsec pixel-1). The CMD data are available upon request to the authors or the electronic version of the journal. Off-cluster field populations were not obtained during our observation, therefore, the field star contamination is not removed in our CMDs. Since Palomar 6 lies near the Galactic center, the off-cluster field contamination is expected to be very high (see below), and probably variable due to differential reddening.

Our photometric measurements range from the RGB-tip to $``$ 2 mag below the RHB. The most prominent feature in our CMDs is a well-defined RHB morphology at $`H`$ 13.5 mag and $`K`$ 13.3 mag. The scatter in the RGB sequences appear to be larger in ($`JK`$) than in ($`JH`$). This is most likely due to the bright sky background in the $`K`$ passband.

### 3.2 Comparison with the IR photometry of Minniti, Olszewski, & Rieke

Minniti, Olszewski, & Rieke (1995) obtained $`JK`$ photometry of Palomar 6 using the 2.3m telescope equipped with a 256$`\times `$256 HgCdTe NICMOS3 array at the Steward Observatory. Their image scale was same as ours (0.60 arcsec pixel-1), but their observations covered wider area (6.6$`\times `$2.5 arcmin). To calibrate their photometry, they observed the standard stars of Elias et al. (1982). Since standard stars of Elias et al. are too bright for their telescope plus camera configuration, they defocused the telescope to prevent the saturation of bright stars on the detector. They also observed the globular cluster M22 during the same night and they made comparisons with that of Frogel, Persson, & Cohen (1983);

$`\mathrm{\Delta }K_{MORFPC}`$ $`=`$ $`0.15\pm 0.11(n=3),`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }J_{MORFPC}`$ $`=`$ $`0.19\pm 0.15(n=4),`$ (4)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }K_{MORFPC}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }J_{MORFPC}`$ refer to Minniti et al. minus Frogel et al. (The error is 1 $`\sigma `$ level.) They noted that the differences are large because their common stars are typically bright and close to the nonlinear regime of the detector array.

We compare our photometry with that of Minniti et al. in Figure 6. The differences are in the sense our photometry minus that of Minniti et al. We compared 134 common bright stars ($`K`$ $``$ 12 mag in our magnitude scale), and obtained unexpected results.

(i) On average, our $`K`$ magnitudes are 1.384 $`\pm `$ 0.024 mag brighter than those of Minniti et al. (The error is that of the mean.) There exists a gradient in the difference with a slope of $`\mathrm{\Delta }K`$ $``$ 0.099$`\times K`$, in the sense that our $`K`$ magnitudes are slightly brighter than the mean value for the bright stars.

(ii) On average, our $`J`$ magnitudes are 0.705 $`\pm `$ 0.021 mag brighter than those of Minniti et al. There also exists a gradient in the difference with a slope of $`\mathrm{\Delta }J0.108\times J`$, in the sense that our $`J`$ magnitudes for the bright stars are slightly brighter than the mean value.

(iii) Our ($`JK`$) colors are 0.679 $`\pm `$ 0.017 mag redder than those of Minniti et al.

The discrepancies between our work and Minniti et al. are too large to be fully explained by the differences between Minniti et al. and Frogel et al. in M22. We also show CMDs using common stars between our work and Minniti et al. in Figure 7. In the Figure, the left panel represents our photometry and right panel represents that of Minniti et al.333 Dr. Minniti kindly provided his table for Palomar 6. A part of his table is shown below. His $`(JK)`$ color values in the sixth column are 0.6 mag larger than those from the fifth column minus the fourth column. In Figure 7, we adopted the color from the fifth column minus the fourth column. Note that Minniti et al. (1995) used the color in the sixth column in their Figure 3.    X Y $`r`$ $`K`$ $`J`$ $`(JK)`$ $`\sigma K`$ $`\sigma J`$    190.8 321.0 1.30 10.65 11.47 1.42 0.01 0.01  194.2 323.6 5.60 12.54 13.62 1.68 0.04 0.04  182.5 315.5 8.70 13.92 14.94 1.62 0.11 0.13  189.0 310.9 9.20 10.05 11.04 1.59 0.01 0.01  …….

The off-cluster field star contamination is expected to be very high toward Palomar 6, as discussed in the previous section, and it is necessary to know membership RGB stars in our study. On 23 May 1998, we obtained high resolution ($`\lambda /\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ 40,000) IR echelle spectra of 7 bright RGB stars in Palomar 6 and Arcturus for the 12CO 2-0 bandhead centered at $``$ 22045 Å using the 3.5m NASA Infrared Telescope Facilities. In order to derive the heliocentric radial velocities, we cross-correlated our target spectra with that of Arcturus ($`v_r`$ = $``$5.2 km sec-1, Evans 1967). Table 3 shows our heliocentric radial velocity measurements for Palomar 6 RGB stars (see also Figure 3). The third column of the Table shows the membership of RGB stars based on their heliocentric radial velocities. (Hereafter, we refer stars A, C, D, and G as membership RGB stars.) It should be noted that the previous radial velocity of Palomar 6 is based on the low resolution spectroscopic study of Minniti (1995), where the internal measurement error is much larger than ours. We will discuss the spectroscopic study of Palomar 6 RGB stars in a forthcoming paper (Lee, Carney, & Balanchandran 2002, in preparation).

In Figure 8, we show $`VJHK`$ multi-color CMDs for Palomar 6, combining our $`JHK`$ photometry and $`V`$ photometry of Ortolani et al. (1995). Since we already knew the four cluster membership RGB stars (filled circles in the Figure), we drew RGB/RHB fiducial sequences with arbitrary widths in the ($`VK`$, $`V`$) CMD by eye in the extension of the four membership RGB stars. We then removed outliers by cross-examining $`HK`$ and $`JK`$ colors. The remaining stars (likely the cluster membership stars) are plotted by crosses in the Figure. Our ($`VK`$, $`K`$) and ($`VK`$, $`V`$) CMDs may show that our $`JHK`$ photometry shown in Figure 5 suffers a serious field star contamination, which is an expected result since Palomar 6 lies near the Galactic center. The RGB stars are clearly separated into at least 3 distinctive branches in ($`VK`$, $`K`$) and ($`VK`$, $`V`$) CMDs, in which the cluster’s RGB stars are located to the blue indicating that Palomar 6 is more metal-poor or less heavily reddened than the surrounding fields.

In Figure 9, we show ($`VI`$, $`V`$) CMDs for 47 Tuc (Kaluzny et al. 1998) and Palomar 6 (Ortolani et al. 1995). For the 47 Tuc CMD, we show a model isochrone for \[Fe/H\] = $``$0.83 and \[$`\alpha `$/Fe\] = +0.30 (Bergbusch & VandenBerg 2001) and the location of RHB stars in 47 Tuc (see also Figure 34 of VandenBerg 2000). For the Palomar 6 CMD, filled circles are for Palomar 6 membership RGB stars, crosses for stars selected from multi-color CMDs (see Figure 8), and gray dots for stars within 1 arcmin from the cluster center. Since the model isochrone provides an excellent match with 47 Tuc, we adopt this model isochrone as a fiducial sequence for 47 Tuc. We then derived the relative distance modulus and interstellar reddening for Palomar 6 with respect to those for 47 Tuc by adjusting this model isochrone’s magnitude to match with those of four Palomar 6 RGB stars (filled circles) and the model isochrone’s color to match with the color that Ortolani et al. (1995) obtained at the intersection between the RHB and the RGB. The crossing point between the two dashed lines centered at $`V`$ = 19.7 mag and $`VI`$ = 2.7 mag indicates the RHB magnitude obtained by Ortolani et al. (1995). The color difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }(VI)`$ = 1.65 mag is corresponding to $`\mathrm{\Delta }E(BV)`$ = 1.27 mag, assuming $`E(VI)=1.3E(BV)`$, and the magnitude difference $`\mathrm{\Delta }V`$ = 5.1 mag corresponds to $`\mathrm{\Delta }(mM)_0`$ = 1.16 mag, in the sense of Palomar 6 minus 47 Tuc. It should be noted that the RHB magnitude reported by Ortolani et al. (1995) appears to be $``$ 0.4 - 0.5 mag fainter than that expected from 47 Tuc (the closed box at $`V`$ $``$ 19.2). Using these relative distance modulus and interstellar reddening values, we compare $`JK`$ photometry for 47 Tuc and Palomar 6 in Figure 10. The filled circles are for the 47 Tuc RGB/RHB stars (Frogel et al. 1981) and dotted lines at $`K`$ $``$ 6.5 mag represent the RGB-tip $`K`$ magnitude for 47 Tuc (Ferraro et al. 2000). The colors and the magnitudes of the current work (a) and those of Minniti et al. (b) are shifted by $`\mathrm{\Delta }(JK)`$ = $``$0.67 mag and $`\mathrm{\Delta }K`$ = 1.60 mag, assuming $`\mathrm{\Delta }E(BV)`$ = 1.27 and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(mM)_0`$ = 1.16 mag between Palomar 6 and 47 Tuc. In Figure 10-(a), we also show the mean magnitude and color of the Palomar 6 RHB stars (see below). Our RGB-tip $`K`$ magnitude appears to be consistent with that of 47 Tuc, while that of Minniti et al. (1995) appears to be $``$ 1.5 mag fainter than 47 Tuc.

A comparison with 2 MICRON ALL-SKY SURVEY (2MASS, Curtri et al. 2000) may also provide an opportunity to assess our photometry, although 2MASS may have a potential problem in crowded fields due to a larger pixel scale (2 arcsec pixel-1). Figure 11 shows a comparison of our photometry with that of 2MASS. Since 2MASS employed the $`K_S`$ passband, we converted our magnitudes and colors into those of the 2MASS photometric system using the transformation relations given by Carpenter (2001). The results are

$`\mathrm{\Delta }K_S`$ $`=`$ $`0.010\pm 0.021,`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }(JK_S)`$ $`=`$ $`0.152\pm 0.018,`$
$`\mathrm{\Delta }(HK_S)`$ $`=`$ $`0.070\pm 0.020,`$ (5)
where the difference are in the sense our work minus 2MASS in the 2MASS photometric system. (The errors are those of the mean.) The difference in the $`(JK_S)`$ color is rather large, in the sense that our photometry is $``$ 0.15 mag bluer than that of 2MASS, but the differences are much smaller than 1.4 mag in the $`K_S`$ passband or 0.7 mag in the $`(JK_S)`$ color.

Finally, we observed the four high proper motion stars (LHS 514, 2584, 2824, and 3094) during the same night. Table 4 shows a comparison of the unpublished results of Carney and our measurements. As can be seen in the Table, our measurements are in good agreement with that of Carney to within 0.1 mag. Therefore we conclude that the discrepancy between our work and that of Minniti et al. (1995) is most likely due to the inaccurate photometric measurement by Minniti et al. (1995).

### 3.3 Distance modulus and interstellar reddening

We derive the distance modulus and the interstellar reddening for Palomar 6 using the method described by Kuchinski et al. (1995), who recommended to use the magnitude and the color at the intersection between the RGB and the RHB in IR photometry. In Figure 12, we show the $`JK`$ CMD for 47 Tuc of Frogel et al. (1981). We also show the slope of the RGB and the mean RHB magnitude and color. Kuchinski et al. (1995) obtained $`(JK)_{(RGB,RHB)}`$ = 0.55 mag and $`K_{(RGB,RHB)}`$ = 12.02 mag at the intersection point between the RGB and RHB for 47 Tuc. Following the similar method, we derived these values for Palomar 6, using the possible membership stars obtained from Figure 8. First, we derive the slope of the Palomar 6 RGB stars

$$(JK)=0.0751(\pm 0.0040)\times K+2.2030(\pm 0.0452).$$
(6)
We then define a rectangle whose sides are parallel to $`JK`$ and $`K`$ by eye and calculate the mean color and magnitude. We obtain $`JK_{RHB}`$ = 1.09 $`\pm `$ 0.04 mag and $`K_{RHB}`$ = 13.53 $`\pm `$ 0.15 mag for Palomar 6. (The error is 1 $`\sigma `$ level.) In Figure 12, we show the slope of the RGB, the rectangle that we adopted and the mean RHB color and magnitude for Palomar 6. We obtain $`(JK)_{(RGB,RHB)}`$ = 1.19 mag for Palomar 6 using Equation 6.

By comparing the magnitudes $`K_{(RGB,RHB)}`$ and the colors $`(JK)_{(RGB,RHB)}`$ at the RGB/RHB intersection points between 47 Tuc and Palomar 6, we obtained $`\mathrm{\Delta }E(BV)`$ = 1.21 mag and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(mM)_0`$ = 1.09 mag, assuming $`E(JK)=0.53E(BV)`$ and $`A_K=0.35E(BV)`$ (Rieke & Lebofsky 1985). Using the distance modulus $`(mM)_0`$ = 13.25 mag and the interstellar reddening $`E(BV)`$ = 0.04 mag for 47 Tuc (Harris 1996), we obtained the interstellar reddening $`E(BV)`$ = 1.25 mag and the distance modulus $`(mM)_0`$ = 14.34 mag for Palomar 6. We also derive these values using the $`JH`$ CMD. We obtained $`(JH)_{(RGB,RHB)}`$ = 0.52 mag and $`H_{(RGB,RHB)}`$ = 12.10 mag for 47 Tuc, and $`(JH)_{(RGB,RHB)}`$ = 0.95 mag and $`H_{(RGB,RHB)}`$ = 13.77 mag for Palomar 6. Assuming $`E(JH)=0.33E(BV)`$ and $`A_H=0.54E(BV)`$ (Rieke & Lebofsky 1985), we obtained $`E(BV)`$ = 1.34 mag and $`(mM)_0`$ = 14.22 mag for Palomar 6. For our study, we adopt the mean values, $`E(BV)`$ = 1.30 mag and $`(mM)_0`$ = 14.28 mag for Palomar 6. Our interstellar reddening estimate for Palomar 6 shows good agreement with previous values. However, our distance modulus estimate is $``$ 0.5 mag smaller than that of Ortolani et al. (1995) who obtained $`(mM)_0`$ = 14.76 using the HB magnitude shown in Figure 8. Using our distance modulus, the distance of Palomar 6 from the sun is $``$ 7.2 kpc. The Galactocentric distance $`R_{GC}`$ becomes 0.9 kpc if $`R_0`$ = 8.0 kpc (Reid 1993). Palomar 6 is clearly located in the Galaxy’s central regions.

Finally, a caution is advised for using RHB magnitudes to estimate the distance modulus of the metal-rich globular clusters. Sandage (1990) studied the vertical height of the horizontal branch of the globular clusters as a function of metallicity. His study suggested that the vertical height of the HB increases with metallicity. For example, the vertical height of the 47 Tuc RHB is $``$ 0.7 mag in the visual passband. Palomar 6 is expected to have the similar value of the RHB vertical height (see his Figure 16). In our CMDs, the Palomar 6 RHB vertical height is $``$ 0.5 - 0.6 mag in the $`K`$ passband. It should also be noted that the $`K_0`$ magnitude of field red clump stars in the Galactic bulge is $``$ 13 mag (Alves 2000), having similar magnitude to Palomar 6 RHB stars depending on the interstellar reddening toward field red clump stars. Thus accidental inclusion of field red clump stars in our Palomar 6 CMD could be high and future photometric study of the off-cluster field would be desirable.

### 3.4 Metallicity

Kuchinski et al. (1995) studied the slope of the RGB in the ($`JK,K`$) CMD as a reddening- and distance-independent metallicity index for metal-rich globular cluster systems. They derived a linear relation between metallicity and the slope of the RGB

$$[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=3.09(\pm 0.90)24.85(\pm 8.90)\times (RGBslope),$$
(7)
where the slope of the RGB is defined to be $`(JK)K\times (RGBslope)`$. Kuchinski & Frogel (1995) recalculated this linear relation with the addition of two more clusters and they obtained,

$$[\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{H}]=2.98(\pm 0.70)23.84(\pm 6.83)\times (RGBslope).$$
(8)
We derived the slope of RGB of Palomar 6 and our result is shown in Figure 11 and Equation 6. As Kuchinski et al. (1995) and Kuchinski & Frogel (1995) noted, the slope of the RGB does not depend on the interstellar reddening and, therefore, conversion to dereddened colors and magnitudes is not necessary. With our slope for Palomar 6, we obtained \[Fe/H\] = $``$1.22 $`\pm `$ 0.18 using Equation 7 (Kuchinski et al. 1995) and $``$1.19 $`\pm `$ 0.18 using Equation 8 (Kuchinski & Frogel 1995). It should be noted that our results are from selected Palomar 6 RGB stars as discussed in the previous section. If we use all RGB stars, \[Fe/H\] = $``$1.05 $`\pm `$ 0.19 using Equation 7 and $``$1.03 $`\pm `$ 0.19 using Equation 8 and they are slightly lower than those from selected RGB stars.444Referee kindly pointed out that the IR HB morphology of Palomar 6 may indicate that its metallicity is between M69 (\[Fe/H\] = $``$0.6) and NGC 6553 (\[Fe/H\] = $``$0.3) from Figure 1 of Ferraro et al. (2000). It should be noted that, however, the HB morphology is vulnerable to other effects besides metallicity (see for example Lee, Demarque, & Zinn 1994).

Our metallicity estimate for Palomar 6 is consistent with that of Malkan (1981), but does not agree with those of Zinn (1985), Ortolani et al. (1995) and Minniti (1995). The metallicity of Palomar 6 will be discussed in the subsequent paper. We obtained \[Fe/H\] of the three RGB stars in Palomar 6 using high-resolution ($`\lambda /\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda `$ 40,000) IR echelle spectra. Our metallicity of Palomar 6 using IR spectra is \[Fe/H\] = $``$1.08 $`\pm `$ 0.06, consistent with those derived from the slope of the RGB.

## 4 Summary

We have presented the $`JHK`$ photometry of Palomar 6. Our photometric measurements range from the RGB-tip to $``$ 2 mag below the RHB. Our photometry does not agree with that of Minniti et al. (1995) and an independent study using the southern telescope facilities would be very desirable in the future.

We have discussed the distance modulus and interstellar reddening of Palomar 6 by comparing the mean magnitude and color of the RHB stars with respect to those of 47 Tuc. Our interstellar reddening estimate is consistent with previous values by others, while our distance modulus is slightly smaller than that of Ortolani et al. (1995), who obtained the distance modulus of Palomar 6 by using the similar method in the visual passband. Nevertheless, our study has suggested that Palomar 6 is clearly located in the Galaxy’s central regions.

We have also discussed the metallicity of Palomar 6 using the slope of the RGB. Our metallicity estimate is in good agreement with that of Malkan (1981), but does not agree with those of Zinn (1985), Ortolani et al. (1995) and Minniti et al. (1995).

This is part of Ph.D. thesis work of J. -W. Lee at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. J. -W. Lee thanks Dr. Dante Minniti for providing his photometric table. We also thank an anonymous referee for useful comments and a careful review of the paper. This research was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) grant number GO-07318.04-96A from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555 and the National Science Foundation grants AST96$``$19381 and AST99$``$88156. Support for this work was also provided in part by the Creative Research Initiative Program of Korean Ministry of Science and Technology.